Journal of Investigative Medicine
| Richard W. McCallum, MD | Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center El Paso, USA |
| Erge Edgu-Fry, PhD | League City, Texas, USA |
| John Dickinson, MD, PhD | Nebraska Medical Center, Omaha, Nebraska, USA |
| Georgina Grado | Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center El Paso, USA |
| Michael J. McPhaul, MD | Quest Diagnostics Nichols Institute, Dana Point, California, USA |
| Mohammad Bashashati, MD | The University of Texas, Austin, Texas, USA |
| Michael S. Bronze, MD | University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, Oklahoma, USA |
| Peter N. Van Buren, MD | University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, TX, USA |
| Paul Casner, MD | Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center El Paso, USA |
| Jorge Cervantes, MD, PhD | Nova Southeastern University, Fort Lauderdale, Florida, USA |
| David P. Cistola, MD, PhD | Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center El Paso, USA |
| Ricardo Correa, MD | University of Arizona College of Medicine, Phoenix, Arizona |
| Samrat U. Das, MD | Duke University School of Medicine, Durham, North Carolina, USA |
| Patrice Delafontaine, MD, FACC, FACP, FAHA, FESC | Tulane University Health Sciences Center, New Orleans, Louisiana |
| Alok Dwivedi, MD, PhD | Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center El Paso, USA |
| James M. Fleckenstein, MD | Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, St. Louis, Missouri |
| Ghazala Hayat, MD | St. Louis University, St. Louis, Missouri |
| Octavian C. Ioachimescu, MD, PhD | Emory University School of Medicine, Georgia, USA |
| Jairam Krishnamurthy, MD | University of Nebraska Medical Center, Omaha, NE, USA |
| Richard A. Lange, MD, MBA | Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center, El Paso, TX, USA |
| Joshua De Leon, MD | NYU Long Island School of Medicine, Mineola, New York |
| Robert T. Means, Jr., MD | East Tennessee State University, Johnson City, Tennessee, USA |
| Zuber D. Mulla, PhD, CPH | Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center El Paso, El Paso, Texas, USA |
| MingMing Ning, MD | Mass General Hospital/Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA |
| Don C. Rockey, MD | Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston, SC, USA |
| Michael Schivo, MD, MAS | MASUC Davis Medical Center, Sacramento, California, USA |
| Ralf Thiele, MD | University of Rochester, Rochester, NY, USA |
| Peter Thompson, MD, MS | Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center El Paso, El Paso, Texas |
| Peter H. Wiernik, MD | Cancer Research Foundation, Chappaqua, NY, USA |
| Amir A. Zeki, MD, MAS | University of California, Davis, USA |
| Yutong Zhao, MD, PhD | Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, USA |
| Leticia M. Ryan, MD, MPH | Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, MD, USA |
| Sushila Arya, MD, MS, FACOG | University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Cente, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma |
| Stephanie L. Baer, MD | Charlie Norwood VA Medical Center and Georgia Regents University, Augusta, Georgia |
| Syed Bukhari | Temple University Health System, Philadelphia, PA, USA |
| Everardo Cobos, MD, FACP | David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, Los Angeles, California |
| Dawn B. Davis, MD, PhD | University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, Wisconsin |
| Janice P. Dutcher, MD | Cancer Research Foundation, The Bronx, New York |
| Vijay Gayam, MD | Interfaith Medical Center, Brooklyn, New York |
| Elvira Gosmanova, MD, FASN | Samuel S Stratton VA Medical Center, Albany, New York |
| Lei Huang, PhD, MD | First Affiliated Hospital of Anhui Medical University, Hefei, China |
| Prashant Joshi, MD | Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center, El Paso, Texas |
| Darine Kassar, MD | Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center, El Paso, Texas |
| Armand A. Krikorian, MD, FACE | UIC/Advocate Christ Medical Center, Oak Lawn, Illinois |
| Gloria Lena Vega, MD | UT Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, Texas |
| Suthat Liangpunsakul MD, MPH | Indiana University School of Medicine, Westfield, Indiana |
| Shu-Yi Liao, MD, MPH, ScD | University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, Aurora, Colorado |
| Marco Marcelli, MD | Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Texas |
| Nils Nickel | Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center El Paso, El Paso, Texas, USA |
| Chandra Ojha, MD, MRCP, FACC, FSCAI | Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center El Paso, El Paso, Texas |
| Allison B. Reiss, MD | NYU Long Island School of Medicine, Mineola, New York |
| Florence Rothenberg, MS, MD | University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, Ohio |
| Gurdeep Singh, MD, FACE | Lake Erie College of Osteopathic Medicine, Binghamton, New York |
| Attaya Suvannasankha, MD | University of Indiana Medical Center, Indianapolis, Indiana |
| Abraham Thomas, MD, MPH | Baystate Endocrinology, Springfield, Massachusetts |
| Kristina Utzschneider, MD | VA Puget Sound Health Care System, Seattle, Washington |
| Cherry Wongtrakool, MD | Emory University School of Medicine, Decatur, Georgia |
Journal of Investigative Medicine (JIM)
This Journal recommends that authors follow the Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals formulated by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE).
Please read the guidelines below and then visit the Journal’s submission site https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/jinvestigativemed to upload your manuscript. Please note that manuscripts not conforming to these guidelines may be returned.
There are no fees payable to submit or publish in this Journal. Open Access options are available - see section 3.3 below.
Please send queries concerning the submission or review process to the Managing Editor, Erge Edgu-Fry, PhD, at journal@afmr.org. If you have any questions about publishing with Sage, please visit the Sage Journal Solutions Portal.
- What do we publish?
1.1 Aims & Scope
1.2 Article types
1.3 Writing your paper - Editorial policies
2.1 Peer review policy
2.2 Authorship
2.3 Acknowledgements
2.4 Funding
2.5 Declaration of conflicting interests
2.6 Research ethics and patient consent
2.7 Clinical trials
2.8 Reporting guidelines
2.9 Research data - Publishing policies
3.1 Publication ethics
3.2 Contributor’s publishing agreement
3.3 Open access and author archiving
3.4 Authorship agreement and prior publication - Preparing your manuscript
4.1 Formatting
4.2 Artwork, figures and other graphics
4.3 Supplemental material
4.4 Reference style
4.5 English language editing services - Submitting your manuscript
5.1 ORCID
5.2 Information required for completing your submission
5.3 Permissions - On acceptance and publication
6.1 Sage Production
6.2 Online First publication
6.3 Access to your published article
6.4 Promoting your article - Further information
7.1 Appealing the publication decision
The Journal of Investigative Medicine (JIM) is the official publication of the American Federation for Medical Research (AFMR). The journal is peer-reviewed and publishes high-quality original articles and reviews in the areas of basic, translational and clinical research. JIM publishes on all topics and specialty areas that are critical to the conduct of the entire spectrum of biomedical research, from the translation of clinical observations at the bedside to basic and animal research to clinical research and the implementation of innovative medical care. In addition, we meet the academic needs of our AFMR membership by addressing topics of academic challenges and career development.
Original research
Original research should not exceed 5,000 words and six figures or tables (not including abstract, keywords, key messages summary, references, or supplementary material). Articles must be fully documented reports of original research, but should be as concise as possible without compromising the data. Articles should be organized as follows: Title page (including title, author names and affiliations, corresponding author, and running head and abbreviations), Unstructured Abstract (250 words max), Introduction, Materials & Methods, Results, Discussion, Conflict of Interest, Acknowledgments, References, Tables, Figure Legends, and Supplementary Material.
Please include the key messages of your article after your abstract using the following headings. This section should be no more than 3-5 sentences and should be distinct from the abstract; be succinct, specific, and accurate.
- What is already known on this topic – summarise the state of scientific knowledge on this subject before you did your study and why this study needed to be done
- What this study adds – summarise what we now know as a result of this study that we did not know before
- How this study might affect research, practice or policy – summarise the implications of this study
This will be published as a summary box after the abstract in the final published article.
Brief report
These reports should be of scientific excellence in clinical or translational research, but not sufficient to warrant publication as Original Research. Examples of appropriate Brief Reports may include: (1) studies that report limited but provocative observations OR (2) relevant negative studies that can
provide new information on important topics.
The text of a Brief Report is limited to 2,000 words. Brief Reports should include an unstructured abstract of no more than 250 words and no more than two display items.
Systematic review
This article type includes all research reviews that systematically synthesize evidence (e.g., Systematic reviews, Meta-analysis, Scoping reviews, Mixed methods reviews, etc). Please include the research type in your title to make the nature of your study clear.
Follow Original research article requirements.
Review
Narrative review articles are expected to be comprehensive, scholarly, and balanced, presenting an expert curation of the medical literature on the topic of interest. Originality is critical in order to contribute to the medical literature, and the perspective should be fresh and the synthesis unique. Authors of reviews should realize that the Journal is multidisciplinary and that reviews for such a journal require appropriate interpretive material. Clarity of presentation is a major criterion for acceptance.
Generally, reviews are limited to 250-word abstract, 4,000-word text, excluding references, and five figures. Authors are encouraged to consult the Editor before submitting a review for consideration.
Research tools and issues
Research Tools and Issues are scholarly works and educational reviews focusing on areas of broad interest to the research community, including topics relevant to the conduct of clinical research, mentoring, and career development.
Manuscripts should not exceed 4,000 words, excluding title page, abstract, references, and supplementary material
Experimental biology symposia
The AFMR sponsors one or more symposia each year within the context of the Experimental Biology meeting. These symposia are translational in focus and are designed to highlight important recent basic science developments that are being brought to the bedside. It is anticipated that each presenter within each symposium will submit a manuscript to Journal of Investigative Medicine that summarizes the work described in their symposium talk.
Each manuscript should be self-contained, as the publication may not be coordinated with the publication of other manuscripts from the same symposium. The presenters are encouraged to present sufficient background and detail to permit a full appreciation of the importance and implications of their work. It is anticipated that most Experimental Biology Symposium manuscripts will be 2000-6000 words in length. The liberal use of figures and diagrams is encouraged.
Please include the key messages of your article after your abstract using the following headings. This section should be no more than 3-5 sentences and should be distinct from the abstract; be succinct, specific and accurate.
- What is already known on this topic – summarise the state of scientific knowledge on this subject before you did your study and why this study needed to be done
- What this study adds – summarise what we now know as a result of this study that we did not know before
- How this study might affect research, practice or policy – summarise the implications of this study
This will be published as a summary box after the abstract in the final published article.
Letters to the Editor
Letters to the Editor commenting on published articles may be submitted. These comments should be directed at confirming the results (from a different approach), extending the original report, or refuting results or the authors' interpretation. Maximum length is 1000 words; maximum number of references is 15. The Editor reserves the right to decide on publication of letters, shorten them, remove objectionable comments, and make other changes in accord with the style of the journal.
The Sage Author Gateway has some general advice on how to get published, plus links to further resources.
1.3.1 Make your article discoverable
For information and guidance on how to make your article more discoverable, visit our Gateway page on How to Help Readers Find Your Article Online.
Sage does not permit the use of author-suggested (recommended) reviewers at any stage of the submission process, be that through the web-based submission system or other communication.
Reviewers should be experts in their fields and should be able to provide an objective assessment of the manuscript. Our policy is that reviewers should not be assigned to a paper if:
- The reviewer is based at the same institution as any of the co-authors.
- The reviewer is based at the funding body of the paper.
- The author has recommended the reviewer.
Papers should only be submitted for consideration once consent is given by all contributing authors. Those submitting papers should carefully check that all those whose work contributed to the paper are acknowledged as contributing authors.
Institution emails for all submitting and corresponding authors. Please update email addresses for authors to institutional email addresses. If you do not have an institutional email address, please provide an official letter from your institution showing affiliation.
The list of authors should include all those who can legitimately claim authorship. This is all those who:
- Made a substantial contribution to the concept or design of the work; or acquisition, analysis or interpretation of data,
- Drafted the article or revised it critically for important intellectual content,
- Approved the version to be published,
- Each author should have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for appropriate portions of the content.
Authors should meet the conditions of all the points above. When a large, multicentre group has conducted the work, the group should identify the individuals who accept direct responsibility for the manuscript. These individuals should fully meet the criteria for authorship.
Please note that AI chatbots, for example ChatGPT, should not be listed as authors. For more information see the policy on Use of ChatGPT and generative AI tools.
All contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship should be listed in an Acknowledgements section. Examples of those who might be acknowledged include a person who provided purely technical help, or a department chair who provided only general support. Any acknowledgements should appear first at the end of your article prior to your Declaration of Conflicting Interests (if applicable), any notes and your References.
Per ICMJE recommendations, it is best practice to obtain consent from non-author contributors who you are acknowledging in your paper.
2.3.1 Third party submissions
Where an individual who is not listed as an author submits a manuscript on behalf of the author(s), a statement must be included in the Acknowledgements section of the manuscript and in the accompanying cover letter. The statements must:
- Disclose this type of editorial assistance – including the individual’s name, company and level of input
- Identify any entities that paid for this assistance
- Confirm that the listed authors have authorized the submission of their manuscript via third party and approved any statements or declarations, e.g. conflicting interests, funding, etc.
Where appropriate, Sage reserves the right to deny consideration to manuscripts submitted by a third party rather than by the authors themselves.
2.3.2 Writing assistance
Individuals who provided writing assistance, e.g. from a specialist communications company, do not qualify as authors and so should be included in the Acknowledgements section. Authors must disclose any writing assistance – including the individual’s name, company and level of input – and identify the entity that paid for this assistance. It is not necessary to disclose use of language polishing services.
JIM requires all authors to acknowledge their funding in a consistent fashion under a separate heading. Please visit the Funding Acknowledgements page on the Sage Journal Author Gateway to confirm the format of the acknowledgment text in the event of funding, or state that: This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.
2.5 Declaration of conflicting interests
Please ensure that a ‘Declaration of Conflicting Interests’ statement is included at the end of your manuscript, after any acknowledgements and prior to the references. If no conflict exists, please state that ‘The Author(s) declare(s) that there is no conflict of interest’. For guidance on conflict of interest statements, please see the ICMJE recommendations here.
2.6 Research ethics and patient consent
Medical research involving human subjects must be conducted according to the World Medical Association Declaration of Helsinki.
Submitted manuscripts should conform to the ICMJE Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals, and all papers reporting animal and/or human studies must state in the methods section that the relevant ethics committee or institutional review board provided (or waived) approval. Please ensure that you have provided the full name and institution of the review committee, in addition to the approval number.
For research articles, authors are also required to state in the methods section whether participants provided informed consent and whether the consent was written or verbal.
Information on informed consent to report individual cases or case series should be included in the manuscript text. A statement is required regarding whether written informed consent for patient information and images to be published was provided by the patient(s) or a legally authorized representative. Please do not submit the patient’s actual written informed consent with your article, as this in itself breaches the patient’s confidentiality. The Journal requests that you confirm to us, in writing, that you have obtained written informed consent but the written consent itself should be held by the authors/investigators themselves, for example in a patient’s hospital record. The confirmatory letter may be uploaded with your submission as a separate file.
Please also refer to the ICMJE Recommendations for the Protection of Research Participants.
All research involving animals submitted for publication must be approved by an ethics committee with oversight of the facility in which the studies were conducted. The journal has adopted the ARRIVE guidelines.
JIM conforms to the ICMJE requirement that clinical trials are registered in a WHO-approved public trials registry at or before the time of first patient enrolment as a condition of consideration for publication. The trial registry name and URL, and registration number must be included at the end of the abstract.
The relevant EQUATOR Network reporting guidelines should be followed depending on the type of study. For example, all randomized controlled trials submitted for publication should include a completed CONSORT flow chart as a cited figure and the completed CONSORT checklist should be uploaded with your submission as a supplementary file. Systematic reviews and meta-analyses should include the completed PRISMA flow chart as a cited figure and the completed PRISMA checklist should be uploaded with your submission as a supplementary file. The EQUATOR wizard can help you identify the appropriate guideline. If your research involves animals, you will be asked to confirm that you have carefully read and adhered to the ARRIVE guidelines.
Other resources can be found at NLM’s Research Reporting Guidelines and Initiatives.
The Journal is committed to facilitating openness, transparency and reproducibility of research, and has the following research data sharing policy. For more information, including FAQs please visit the Sage Research Data policy pages.
Subject to appropriate ethical and legal considerations, authors are encouraged to:
- Share your research data in a relevant public data repository
- Include a data availability statement linking to your data. If it is not possible to share your data, use the statement to confirm why it cannot be shared.
- Cite this data in your research
Peer reviewers may be asked to peer review the research data prior to publication.
- Peer reviewers may be asked to assess compliance with the research data policy
- Peer reviewers may be asked to assess research data files
If you need to anonymize your research data for peer review, please refer to our Research Data Sharing FAQs for guidance.
Sage is committed to upholding the integrity of the academic record. We encourage authors to refer to the Committee on Publication Ethics’ International Standards for Authors and view the Publication Ethics page on the Sage Author Gateway
3.1.1 Plagiarism
JIM and Sage take issues of copyright infringement, plagiarism or other breaches of best practice in publication very seriously. We seek to protect the rights of our authors and we always investigate claims of plagiarism or misuse of published articles. Equally, we seek to protect the reputation of the Journal against malpractice. Submitted articles may be checked with duplication-checking software. Where an article, for example, is found to have plagiarized other work or included third-party copyright material without permission or with insufficient acknowledgement, or where the authorship of the article is contested, we reserve the right to take action including, but not limited to: publishing an erratum or corrigendum (correction); retracting the article; taking up the matter with the head of department or dean of the author's institution and/or relevant academic bodies or societies; or taking appropriate legal action.
If material has been previously published it is not generally acceptable for publication in a Sage journal. However, there are certain circumstances where previously published material can be considered for publication. Please refer to the guidance on the Sage Author Gateway or if in doubt, contact the Editor at the address given below.
3.2 Contributor’s publishing agreement
Before publication, Sage requires the author as the rights holder to sign a Journal Contributor’s Publishing Agreement. Sage’s Journal Contributor’s Publishing Agreement is an exclusive licence agreement which means that the author retains copyright in the work but grants Sage the sole and exclusive right and licence to publish for the full legal term of copyright. Exceptions may exist where an assignment of copyright is required or preferred by a proprietor other than Sage. In this case copyright in the work will be assigned from the author to the society. For more information, please visit the Sage Author Gateway.
3.3 Open access and author archiving
JIM offers optional open access publishing via the Sage Choice programme and Open Access agreements, where authors can publish open access either discounted or free of charge depending on the agreement with Sage. Find out if your institution is participating by visiting Open Access Agreements at Sage. For more information on Open Access publishing options at Sage please visit Sage Open Access. For information on funding body compliance, and depositing your article in repositories, please visit Sage’s Author Archiving and Re-Use Guidelines and Publishing Policies.
3.4 Authorship agreement and prior publication
As part of the submission process you will be required to warrant that you are submitting your original work, that you have the rights in the work, and that you have obtained and can supply all necessary permissions for the reproduction of any copyright works not owned by you, that you are submitting the work for first publication in the Journal and that it is not being considered for publication elsewhere and has not already been published elsewhere. Please see our guidelines on prior publication and note that JIM will consider submissions of papers that have been posted on preprint servers; please alert the Editorial Office when submitting (contact details are at the end of these guidelines) and include the DOI for the preprint in the designated field in the manuscript submission system. Authors should not post an updated version of their paper on the preprint server while it is being peer reviewed for possible publication in the Journal. If the article is accepted for publication, the author may re-use their work according to the Journal's author archiving policy. If your paper is accepted, you must include a link on your preprint to the final version of your paper.
4. Preparing your manuscript for submission
The preferred format for your manuscript is Microsoft Word.
-For original articles, authors should also complete a summary 'box' indicating the significance of the study. Insert the summary box just after the abstract in the main document. The following headings must be used.
What is already known about this subject: 3-4 bullet points
What are the new findings: 3-4 bullet points
How might it impact on clinical practice in the foreseeable future?
-Please supply an unstructured abstract of no more than 250 words. There should not be any headings within the abstract and it should be only one paragraph.
4.2 Artwork, figures and other graphics
For guidance on the preparation of illustrations, pictures and graphs in electronic format, please visit Sage’s Manuscript Submission Guidelines.
-Remove all figures from the body of the manuscript and upload them as separate files. Note that we do not accept figures in Word document, PDF or PowerPoint format.
All figures and images should be supplied as high-quality image files. We recommend TIFF or EPS format; however, we can also accept figure files of the following types: BMP, EPI, GIF, JPEG, PNG,PNG8, PNG24, PNG32, PS, PSD, SVG, WMF. Please ensure images are a minimum of 300dpi resolution.
Figures supplied in color will appear in color online. There is no charge for reproducing figures in color.
This Journal is able to host additional materials online (e.g. datasets, podcasts, videos, images etc.) alongside the full-text of the article. For more information please refer to our guidelines on submitting supplemental files.
Number references consecutively in the order they appear in the manuscript. Use superscript numerals to identify references in text, tables, and figure legends. References cited only in tables or figure legends should be numbered last. Use the style set forth in 'Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals,' (http://www.nlm.nih.gov/bsd/uniform_requirements.html). The titles of journals should be abbreviated according to the style used in the list of Journals Indexed for MEDLINE, as found in PubMed, posted by the US National Library of Medicine.
4.5 English language editing services
Authors seeking assistance with English language editing, translation, or figure and manuscript formatting to fit the Journal’s specifications should consider using Sage Language Services. Visit Sage Language Services on our Journal Author Gateway for further information.
JIM is hosted on Sage Track, a web based online submission and peer review system powered by ScholarOne™ Manuscripts. Visit https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/jinvestigativemed to login and submit your article online.
IMPORTANT: Please check whether you already have an account in the system before trying to create a new one. If you have reviewed or authored for the Journal in the past year it is likely that you will have had an account created. For further guidance on submitting your manuscript online please visit ScholarOne Online Help.
5.2 Information required for completing your submission
You will be asked to provide contact details and academic affiliations for all co-authors via the submission system and identify who is to be the corresponding author. These details must match what appears on your manuscript. The affiliation listed in the manuscript should be the institution where the research was conducted. If an author has moved to a new institution since completing the research, the new affiliation can be included in a manuscript note at the end of the paper. At this stage please ensure you have included all the required statements and declarations and uploaded any additional supplementary files (including reporting guidelines where relevant).
Please also ensure that you have obtained any necessary permission from copyright holders for reproducing any illustrations, tables, figures or lengthy quotations previously published elsewhere. For further information including guidance on fair dealing for criticism and review, please see the Copyright and Permissions page on the Sage Author Gateway.
6. On acceptance and publication
Your Sage Production Editor will keep you informed as to your article’s progress throughout the production process. Proofs will be made available to the corresponding author via our editing portal Sage Edit or by email, and corrections should be made directly or notified to us promptly. Authors are reminded to check their proofs carefully to confirm that all author information, including names, affiliations, sequence and contact details are correct, and that Funding and Conflict of Interest statements, if any, are accurate.
Online First allows final articles (completed and approved articles awaiting assignment to a future issue) to be published online prior to their inclusion in a journal issue, which significantly reduces the lead time between submission and publication. Visit the Sage Journals help page for more details, including how to cite Online First articles.
6.3 Access to your published article
Sage provides authors with online access to their final article.
Publication is not the end of the process! You can help disseminate your paper and ensure it is as widely read and cited as possible. The Sage Author Gateway has numerous resources to help you promote your work. Visit the Promote Your Article page on the Gateway for tips and advice.
Any correspondence, queries or additional requests for information on the manuscript submission process should be sent to the Managing editor at journal@afmr.org.
7.1 Appealing the publication decision
Editors have very broad discretion in determining whether an article is an appropriate fit for their journal. Many manuscripts are declined with a very general statement of the rejection decision. These decisions are not eligible for formal appeal unless the author believes the decision to reject the manuscript was based on an error in the review of the article, in which case the author may appeal the decision by providing the Editor with a detailed written description of the error they believe occurred.
If an author believes the decision regarding their manuscript was affected by a publication ethics breach, the author may contact the publisher with a detailed written description of their concern, and information supporting the concern, at publication_ethics@sagepub.com