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Journal of Rehabilitation and Assistive Technologies Engineering

Journal of Rehabilitation and Assistive Technologies Engineering

Published in Association with American Orthotic & Prosthetic Association

eISSN: 20556683 | ISSN: 20556683 | Current volume: 10 | Current issue: 1 Frequency: Yearly

Journal Highlights

  • Indexed using Clarivate Analytics: Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI) and PubMed Central (PMC)
  • Rigorous peer review of your research


The Journal of Rehabilitation and Assistive Technologies Engineering is a peer-reviewed, open access, interdisciplinary journal which focusses on the engineering aspects and practical applications of rehabilitation and assistive technologies. For more information, please view the Aims and Scope tab.

Journal of Rehabilitation and Assistive Technologies Engineering has a number of Special Collections. For more information on the Special Collection Topics and how to submit please visit the website.

This journal is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).


Submission information

Submit your manuscript today:http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/jrate

Open access article processing charge (APC information)

Publication in the journal is subject to payment of an Article Processing Charge (APC)*. The APC serves to support the journal and ensures that articles are freely accessible online in perpetuity under a Creative Commons licence.

The article processing charge (APC) for this journal is currently 2000 USD.

AOPA members will receive a 50% discount on the APC.


Contact

Please direct any queries to ratejournal@sagepub.co.uk

*The article processing charge (APC) is payable when a manuscript is accepted after peer review, before it is published. The APC is subject to taxes where applicable. Please see further details here.

The Journal of Rehabilitation and Assistive Technologies Engineering is an interdisciplinary journal focusing on the engineering aspects and their practical applications of rehabilitation and assistive technologies. It covers engineering design, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, engineering devices and their applications, robotics and biomedical engineering.

Its aim is to publish peer-reviewed work in areas of age-related rehabilitation, incontinence technology, blast injury rehabilitation, neurorehabilitation, functional rehabilitation, technologies promoting independent living and any area where the application of engineering technology can be applied.

The journal is a vital contribution to the area of rehabilitation engineering and aimed at practitioners, clinicians, engineers and project managers and charities working with people with severe disabilities.

The Scope includes but is not limited to:

· Mechanical devices used in therapeutic or supportive processes

· Electrical devices and sensors used in therapeutic or supportive processes

· Rehabilitation Robotics

· Active Orthotics

· Mobility aids such as hoists, lifts, ramps and wheelchairs

· Age-Related Rehabilitation Engineering

· Prosthetics

Editor-in-Chief
Kath M Bogie D.Phil, FAIMBE Case Western Reserve University, USA
Editor-in-Chief Emeritus
Garth Johnson BSc, FREng, CEng, FIMechE University of Newcastle , UK
Associate Editors
Nachiappan Chockalingam PhD CEng CSci PFHEA FIPEM FISB Staffordshire University, UK
Mei Lan Fang BSc, MPH, PhD Simon Fraser University, Canada
Dr Justin F. Gallagher CEng MIMechE FHEA University of Leeds, UK
Sara Koehler-McNicholas, PhD Minneapolis VA Health Care System and University of Minnesota
Dr Adam G. Metcalf University of Leeds, UK 
Alex Mihailidis BASc, MASc, PhD, PEng University of Toronto, Canada
Anand Pandyan BEng, PhD Bournemouth University, UK
Andrew Sixsmith Simon Fraser University, Canada
Raymond Tong BEng, PhD The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
Ana Luisa Trejos, PhD, MASc, BSc Western University, Canada
Matthew M. Wernke, PhD WillowWood Global LLC
Dr Peter Worsley mCSP PhD University of Southampton, UK
Shane R. Wurdeman, PhD, MSPO, CP Hanger Clinic, USA
Editorial Advisory Board
Jennifer Boger PhD, Peng University of Waterloo, Canada
Jane Burridge MCSP, LGSM, PhD University of Southampton, UK
Nicolas Garcia-Aracil, BS, MS, PhD Universidad Miguel Hernandez de Elche, Spain
Deepak Joshi PhD Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), India
Bong-Keun Jung O.T.D., O.T.R. Seoul National University, South Korea
Jeffrey W. Jutai BSc, MSc, PhD University of Ottawa, Canada
Rui C.V. Loureiro Ph.D., M.Sc., B.Eng. (HONS), MIET, MIEEE University College London, UK
Marcus Pandy PhD University of Melbourne, Australia
Ian Swain BSc PhD CEng FIET CSci FIPEM Salisbury District Hospital, UK
Saeed Zahedi BS, PhD Blatchford Clinical Services, UK
  • Clarivate Analytics: Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI)
  • Ei Compendex
  • Google Scholar: h-5 index - 11, h-5 median - 13
  • ProQuest
  • PubMed Central (PMC)
  •  

    1. Open Access
    2. Article processing charge (APC)
    3. Article Types
      3.1 Abstracts
    4. Editorial policies
      4.1 Peer Review Policy
      4.2 Authorship
      4.3 Declarations
      4.4 Studies involving human research
      4.5 Research Data
    5. Publishing policies
      5.1 Publication ethics
      5.2 Contributor's publishing agreement
    6. Preparing your manuscript
      6.1 Word processing formats
      6.2 Artwork, figures and other graphics
      6.3 Supplementary material
      6.4 Reference style
      6.5 English language editing services
    7. Submitting your manuscript
      7.1 ORCID
      7.2 Information required for completing your submission
      7.3 Corresponding author contact details
      7.4 Permissions
    8. On acceptance and publication
      8.1 Sage Production
      8.2 Continuous publication
      8.3 Promoting your article
    9. Further information

    This Journal is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics

    Please read the guidelines below then visit the journal’s submission site https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/jrate to upload your manuscript. Please note that manuscripts not conforming to these guidelines may be returned. Remember you can log in to the submission site at any time to check on the progress of your paper through the peer review process. 

    Only manuscripts of sufficient quality that meet the aims and scope of Journal of Rehabilitation and Assistive Technologies Engineering will be reviewed.

    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, 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, and that you have obtained and can supply all necessary permissions for the reproduction of any copyright works not owned by you.

    Journal of Rehabilitation and Assistive Technologies Engineering may accept submissions of papers that have been posted on pre-print 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.

    1. Open Access

    Journal of Rehabilitation and Assistive Technologies Engineering is an open access, peer-reviewed journal. Each article accepted by peer review is made freely available online immediately upon publication, is published under a Creative Commons license and will be hosted online in perpetuity. Publication costs of the journal are covered by the collection of article processing charges which are paid by the funder, institution or author of each manuscript upon acceptance. There is no charge for submitting a paper to the journal.

    For general information on open access at Sage please visit the Open Access page or view our Open Access FAQs.

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    2. Article processing charge (APC)

    If, after peer review your manuscript is accepted for publication, a one-time article processing charge (APC) is payable. This APC covers the cost of publication and ensures that your article will be freely available online in perpetuity under a Creative Commons licence.

    The APC for this journal is 2000 USD. 50% discount for AOPA members.

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    3. Article types

    Original Research Article: Describes a piece of original research, or some aspect of design development, manufacture, operation and maintenance, or engineering education. Structured headings are required.

    Review Article: A critical review of the state-of-the-art with examples of applications in design and profitable manufacture without extensive analysis.

    Case study: Describes the application of a technique, procedure or management concept in a real situation. Structured headings are desirable. Please note that written informed consent to publish the images and medical details is required for all case studies.

    Technical Note: A short, interim statement on a research project or description of some new development.

    Letter: Contains correspondence typically pertaining to a recent or concurrently published article within the journal. Comments and critiques may be passed on to the authors of the original article to write a Response. Letters of this nature should contain a maximum of 800 words and 5 references. Letters will typically be peer reviewed by one reviewer and the handling Editor.

    Supplementary Material: Raw data, videos, presentation in addition to the above article types.
    Manuscripts should not normally exceed 6,000 words. The main body of the paper is to be preceded by an abstract of no more than 200 words.

    AOPA Member Article: If you are an AOPA member submitting your article to the journal then please use the 'AOPA Member Article' as your article type in' Step 1: Type, Title & Abstract' during the submission process and indicate in your cover letter that you are submitting as an AOPA member.

    3.1 Abstracts
    An abstract of no more than 200 words must accompany all articles. Please be concise, avoid the use of acronyms and abbreviations, and do not cite references in the abstract.
    Original Research Articles require structured abstracts with the following format: Introduction (description of rationale for study), Methods (brief description of methods or study design), Results (summary of significant results), and Conclusions (succinct statement of data interpretation).

    For Review Articles the abstract should be a single, unstructured paragraph stating the scope of the review, the main themes covered, and conclusions which may be drawn from the review including implications for clinical practice and future work.

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    4. Editorial policies

    4.1 Peer review policy

    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

    •  The reviewer has provided a personal (e.g. Gmail/Yahoo/Hotmail) email account and an institutional email account cannot be found after performing a basic Google search (name, department and institution). 

    4.2 Authorship

    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.

    The list of authors should include all those who can legitimately claim authorship. This is all those who:

    (i) Made a substantial contribution to the concept or design of the work; or acquisition, analysis or interpretation of data,
    (ii) Drafted the article or revised it critically for important intellectual content,
    (iii) Approved the version to be published,
    (iv) 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 of 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.

    Acquisition of funding, collection of data, or general supervision of the research group alone does not constitute authorship, although all contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship should be listed in the Acknowledgments section. Please refer to the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) authorship guidelines for more information on 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.

    4.3 Declarations
    At the end of your article the following declaration statements should be included in the order listed below:

    DECLARATIONS
    Conflicting interests
    Funding
    Guarantor**
    Contributorship
    Acknowledgements

    Please see the below example of a completed declarations section:

    DECLARATIONS
    Conflicting interests: MS is an employee of XXX. BF has received grants from XXX.
    Funding: This work was supported by the Medical Research Council [grant number XXX].
    Guarantor: BF
    Contributorship: BF and NP researched literature and conceived the study. MS was involved in protocol development, gaining ethical approval, patient recruitment and data analysis. BF wrote the first draft of the manuscript. All authors reviewed and edited the manuscript and approved the final version of the manuscript
    Acknowledgements: We would like to thank XXX XXXX for his assistance and guidance in this research.
    *Please state author names as initials*
    ** The guarantor is the person willing to take full responsibility for the article, including for the accuracy and appropriateness of the reference list. This will often be the most senior member of the research group and is commonly also the author for correspondence.**

    Please read the following information carefully for additional information regarding these declarations.

    4.3.1 Declaration of conflicting interests

    It is the policy of Journal of Rehabilitation and Assistive Technologies Engineering to require a declaration of conflicting interests from all authors enabling a statement to be carried within the paginated pages of all published articles.

    Please ensure that a ‘Declaration of Conflicting Interests’ statement is included at the end of your manuscript. 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 refer to the ICMJE recommendations, from where you can download a disclosure of conflicts of interest form.

    4.3.2 Funding

    Journal of Rehabilitation and Assistive Technologies Engineering 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. 

    4.3.3 Acknowledgements

    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.

    4.3.3.1 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.

    4.3.3.2 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.

    4.4 Studies involving human research

    4.4.1 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.

    For more specific details regarding patients identifying information and the protection of privacy, please refer to the ICMJE Recommendations for the Protection of Research Participants.

    4.4.2 Clinical trials
    Journal of Rehabiliation and Assistive Technologies Engineering endorses the ICMJE requirement that clinical trials are registered in a WHO-approved public trials registry at or before the time of first patient enrolment. However, consistent with the AllTrials campaign, retrospectively registered trials will be considered if the justification for late registration is acceptable. The trial registry name and URL, and registration number must be included at the end of the abstract.

    4.4.3 Reporting guidelines
    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.

    Other resources can be found at NLM’s Research Reporting Guidelines and Initiatives.

    4.5 Research Data

    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, we encourage you to consider using the statement to explain why it cannot be shared.
    • cite this data in your research

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    5. Publishing policies

    5.1 Publication ethics

    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.

    5.1.1 Plagiarism

    Journal of Rehabilitation and Assistive Technologies Engineering 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.

    5.1.2 Prior publication

    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. 

    5.2 Contributor's publishing agreement

    Before publication Sage requires the author as the rights holder to sign a Journal Contributor’s Publishing Agreement. Journal of Rehabilitation and Assistive Technologies Engineering publishes manuscripts under Creative Commons licenses. The standard license for the journal is Creative Commons by Attribution Non-Commercial (CC BY-NC), which allows others to re-use the work without permission as long as the work is properly referenced and the use is non-commercial. For more information, you are advised to visit Sage's OA licenses page.

    Alternative license arrangements are available, for example, to meet particular funder mandates, made at the author’s request.

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    6. Preparing your manuscript

    6.1 Word processing formats

    The preferred format for your manuscript is Word. LaTeX files are also accepted. Word and (La)Tex templates are available on the Manuscript Submission Guidelines page of our Author Gateway.

    Please note that your file name should not include any hypens. Please instead use underscores where required.

    6.2 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.

    Figures supplied in colour will appear in colour online.

    6.3 Supplementary material

    This journal is able to host additional materials online alongside the full-text of the article. Supplemental files will be subjected to peer-review alongside the article. For more information please refer to our guidelines on submitting supplementary files.

    6.4 Reference style

    Journal of Rehabilitation and Assistive Technologies Engineering adheres to the Sage Vancouver reference style. Please review the guidelines on Sage Vancouver to ensure your manuscript conforms to this reference style.

    If you use EndNote to manage references, you can download the Sage Vancouver output file here.

    6.5 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. 

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    7. Submitting your manuscript

    7.1 ORCID

    As part of our commitment to ensuring an ethical, transparent and fair peer review process Sage is a supporting member of ORCID, the Open Researcher and Contributor ID. ORCID provides a unique and persistent digital identifier that distinguishes researchers from every other researcher, even those who share the same name, and, through integration in key research workflows such as manuscript and grant submission, supports automated linkages between researchers and their professional activities, ensuring that their work is recognized. 

    The collection of ORCID iDs from corresponding authors is now part of the submission process of this journal. If you already have an ORCID iD you will be asked to associate that to your submission during the online submission process. We also strongly encourage all co-authors to link their ORCID ID to their accounts in our online peer review platforms. It takes seconds to do: click the link when prompted, sign into your ORCID account and our systems are automatically updated. Your ORCID iD will become part of your accepted publication’s metadata, making your work attributable to you and only you. Your ORCID iD is published with your article so that fellow researchers reading your work can link to your ORCID profile and from there link to your other publications.

    If you do not already have an ORCID iD please follow this link to create one or visit our ORCID homepage to learn more.

    7.2 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. 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).

    7.3 Corresponding author contact details

    Provide full contact details for the corresponding author including email, mailing address and telephone numbers. Academic affiliations are required for all co-authors. These details should be presented separately to the main text of the article to facilitate anonymous peer review.

    7.4 Permissions

    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.

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    8. On acceptance and publication

    If your paper is accepted for publication after peer review, you will first be asked to complete the contributor’s publishing agreement. Once your manuscript files have been check for Sage Production, the corresponding author will be asked to pay the article processing charge (APC) via a payment link. Once the APC has been processed, your article will be prepared for publication and can appear online within an average of 30 days. Please note that no production work will occur on your paper until the APC has been received.

    8.1 Sage Production

    Your Sage Production Editor will keep you informed as to your article’s progress throughout the production process. Proofs will be sent by PDF to the corresponding author and should be returned 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.

    8.2 Online publication

    One of the many benefits of publishing your research in an open access journal is the speed to publication. With no page count constraints, your article will be published online in a fully citable form with a DOI number as soon as it has completed the production process. At this time it will be completely free to view and download for all. 

    8.3 Promoting your 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.

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    9. Further information

    Any correspondence, queries or additional requests for information on the manuscript submission process should be sent to the Journal of Rehabilitation and Assistive Technologies Engineering editorial office as follows:

    Professor Kath Bogie
    kmb3@case.edu

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