About

Aims and scope

Orphanet Journal of Rare Diseases is an open access, peer-reviewed journal that encompasses all aspects of rare diseases and orphan drugs. The journal publishes high-quality reviews on specific rare diseases. In addition, the journal may consider articles on clinical trial outcome reports, either positive or negative, and articles on public health issues in the field of rare diseases and orphan drugs. The journal does not accept case reports which do not present clinical or pathological findings that can provide information about the mechanisms of a disease. Case reports which just present phenotype information, should not be considered.

Open access

All articles published by Orphanet Journal of Rare Diseases are made freely and permanently accessible online immediately upon publication, without subscription charges or registration barriers. Further information about open access can be found here.

As authors of articles published in Orphanet Journal of Rare Diseases you are the copyright holders of your article and have granted to any third party, in advance and in perpetuity, the right to use, reproduce or disseminate your article according to the licence terms.

For those of you who are US government employees or are prevented from being copyright holders for similar reasons, BMC can accommodate non-standard copyright lines. Please contact us if further information is needed.

Article processing charges (APC)

Authors who publish open access in Orphanet Journal of Rare Diseases are required to pay an article processing charge (APC). The APC price will be determined from the date on which the article is accepted for publication.

The current APC, subject to VAT or local taxes where applicable, is: £2090.00/$2890.00/€2390.00

Visit our open access support portal and our Journal Pricing FAQs for further information.

Open access funding

Visit Springer Nature’s open access funding & support services for information about research funders and institutions that provide funding for APCs.

Springer Nature offers agreements that enable institutions to cover open access publishing costs. Learn more about our open access agreements to check your eligibility and discover whether this journal is included.

Springer Nature offers APC waivers and discounts for articles published in our fully open access journals whose corresponding authors are based in the world’s lowest income countries (see our APC waivers and discounts policy for further information). Requests for APC waivers and discounts from other authors will be considered on a case-by-case basis, and may be granted in cases of financial need (see our open access policies for journals for more information). All applications for discretionary APC waivers and discounts should be made at the point of manuscript submission; requests made during the review process or after acceptance are unable to be considered.

Indexing services

All articles published in Orphanet Journal of Rare Diseases are included in:

Citebase
DOAJ
Embase
EmCare
MEDLINE
OAIster
PubMed
PubMed Central
Science Citation Index Expanded
SCImago
Scopus
SOCOLAR
Zetoc

The full text of all articles is deposited in digital archives around the world to guarantee long-term digital preservation. You can also access all articles published by BioMed Central on SpringerLink.

Peer-review policy

Peer-review is the system used to assess the quality of a manuscript before it is published. Independent researchers in the relevant research area assess submitted manuscripts for originality, validity and significance to help editors determine whether the manuscript should be published in their journal. You can read more about the peer-review process here.

Orphanet Journal of Rare Diseases operates a single-blind peer-review system, where the reviewers are aware of the names and affiliations of the authors, but the reviewer reports provided to authors are anonymous.

The benefit of single-blind peer review is that it is the traditional model of peer review that many reviewers are comfortable with, and it facilitates a dispassionate critique of a manuscript.

Publication of research articles by Orphanet Journal of Rare Diseases is dependent primarily on their scientific validity and coherence as judged by our external expert editors and/or peer reviewers, who will also assess whether the writing is comprehensible and whether the work represents a useful contribution to the field. Submitted manuscripts will be screened for relevance and style. Manuscripts deemed suitable for review will be sent to at least two experts, and possibly a statistical reviewer, to determine originality, scientific merit, and significance to the field.

Orphanet Journal of Rare Diseases considers the following types of article: Brief report, Methodology, Research, Software, and Workflow. For more specific information, please take a look at our Submission Guidelines.

Editorial policies

All manuscripts submitted to Orphanet Journal of Rare Diseases should adhere to BioMed Central's editorial policies.

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Citing articles in Orphanet Journal of Rare Diseases

Articles in Orphanet Journal of Rare Diseases should be cited in the same way as articles in a traditional journal. Because articles are not printed, they do not have page numbers; instead, they are given a unique article number.

Article citations follow this format:

Authors: Title. Orphanet J Rare Dis [year], [volume number]:[article number].

e.g. Roberts LD, Hassall DG, Winegar DA, Haselden JN, Nicholls AW, Griffin JL: Increased hepatic oxidative metabolism distinguishes the action of Peroxisome Proliferator-Activated Receptor delta from Peroxisome Proliferator-Activated Receptor gamma in the Ob/Ob mouse. Orphanet J Rare Dis 2009, 1:115.

refers to article 115 from Volume 1 of the journal.

Appeals and complaints

Authors who wish to appeal a rejection or make a complaint should follow the procedure outlined in the BMC Editorial Policies .

Benefits of publishing with BMC

High visibility

Orphanet Journal of Rare Diseases's open access policy allows maximum visibility of articles published in the journal as they are available to a wide, global audience.

Speed of publication

Orphanet Journal of Rare Diseases offers a fast publication schedule whilst maintaining rigorous peer review; all articles must be submitted online, and peer review is managed fully electronically (articles are distributed in PDF form, which is automatically generated from the submitted files). Articles will be published with their final citation after acceptance, in both fully browsable web form, and as a formatted PDF.

Flexibility

Online publication in Orphanet Journal of Rare Diseases gives you the opportunity to publish large datasets, large numbers of color illustrations and moving pictures, to display data in a form that can be read directly by other software packages so as to allow readers to manipulate the data for themselves, and to create all relevant links (for example, to PubMed, to sequence and other databases, and to other articles).

Promotion and press coverage

Articles published in Orphanet Journal of Rare Diseases are included in article alerts and regular email updates. Some may be highlighted on Orphanet Journal of Rare Diseases’s pages and on the BMC homepage.

In addition, articles published in Orphanet Journal of Rare Diseases may be promoted by press releases to the general or scientific press. These activities increase the exposure and number of accesses for articles published in Orphanet Journal of Rare Diseases. A list of articles recently press-released by journals published by BMC is available here.

Copyright

As an author of an article published in Cancer & Metabolism you retain the copyright of your article and you are free to reproduce and disseminate your work. For further information, see our guide to licensing, copyright and author rights.

For further information about the advantages of publishing in a journal from BMC, please click here.