About Diagnostic Pathology

What is Diagnostic Pathology?

Diagnostic Pathology is an Open Access, peer-reviewed, online journal that considers research in surgical and clinical pathology, immunology, and biology, with a special focus on cutting-edge approaches in diagnostic pathology and tissue-based therapy.

Diagnostic Pathology covers all aspects of surgical pathology, including classic diagnostic pathology, prognosis-related diagnosis (tumor stages, prognosis markers, such as MIB-percentage, hormone receptors, etc.), and therapy-related findings. The journal will also focus on the technological aspects of pathology, including molecular biology techniques, morphometry aspects (stereology, DNA analysis, syntactic structure analysis), communication aspects (telecommunication, virtual microscopy, virtual pathology institutions, etc.), and electronic education and quality assurance (for example interactive publication, on-line references with automated updating, etc.).

These modern technologies occupy the field of pathology to a large extent, and tissue-based diagnosis is probably the most affected medical discipline. Diagnostic Pathology will provide an integrative journal for molecular pathology (biology) and digital pathology (virtual pathology), creating an open case discussion platform to be used during daily diagnostic work.

Content overview

Diagnostic Pathology considers the following types of articles:

• Research: reports of data from original research.
• Reviews: comprehensive, authoritative, descriptions of any subject within the scope of the journal. These articles are usually written by opinion leaders that have been invited by the Editorial Board.
• Book reviews: short summaries of the strengths and weaknesses of a book. They should evaluate its overall usefulness to the intended audience.
• Case reports: reports of clinical cases that can be educational, describe a diagnostic or therapeutic dilemma, suggest an association, or present an important adverse reaction.
• Commentaries: short, focused and opinionated articles on any subject within the scope of the journal. These articles are usually related to a contemporary issue, such as recent research findings, and are often written by opinion leaders.
• Database articles: describe a new database or a substantial improvement of an existing database.
• Debate articles: present an argument that is not essentially based on practical research. Debate articles can report on all aspects of the subject including sociological and ethical aspects.
• Hypotheses: short articles presenting an untested original hypothesis backed solely by previously published results rather than any new evidence.
• Methodology articles: present a new experimental method, test or procedure. The method described may either be completely new, or may offer a better version of an existing method.
• Short reports: brief reports of data from original research.
• Software articles: describe the source code for software applications, tools or algorithm implementations. Typically, an archive of the source code of the current version of the software should be included with the submitted manuscript as a supplementary file.
• Study protocols: describe proposed or ongoing research, providing a detailed account of the hypothesis, rationale, and methodology of the study.

Peer review policies

Manuscripts submitted to Diagnostic Pathology will be evaluated initially by the Editor-in-Chief, who may decline it, choose appropriate reviewers from the Editorial Board or from outside, or assign it to a Section Editor for review. The Section Editor will recruit at least two members of the Editorial Board to give comments, and can call upon outside experts should s/he feel the need.

Based on these reviews a recommendation will be made for rejection, revision or acceptance; the final decision lies with the Editor-in-Chief. It is expected that the review period will not exceed three weeks. Rejected works are permitted one additional round of re-submission. If the resubmitted work is declined again, the decision is final.

Edited by Klaus Kayser, Diagnostic Pathology is supported by an international Editorial Board.

Publishing in Diagnostic Pathology

All articles will be listed in PubMed immediately upon acceptance (after peer review), and will be covered by PubMed Central and Scopus.

Articles in Diagnostic Pathology should be cited in the same way as articles in a traditional journal. However, because articles in this journal are not printed, they do not have page numbers. Instead, they have a unique article number.

The following citation:

Diagn Pathol 2004, 2:1

refers to article 1 from volume 2 of the journal.

As an online journal, Diagnostic Pathology does not have issue numbers. Each volume corresponds to a calendar year.

To keep up to date with the latest articles from Diagnostic Pathology, why not register to receive alerts? Registration also enables you to customise your subject areas of interest, store your searches, and submit your manuscripts.

Submission of manuscripts

Manuscripts should be submitted electronically to Diagnostic Pathology using the online submission system. Full details of how to submit a manuscript are given in the instructions for authors.

General journal policies

Diagnostic Pathology is published  by BioMed Central, an independent publisher committed to ensuring peer-reviewed biomedical research is Open Access. That means it is freely and universally accessible online, it is archived in at least one internationally recognised free access repository, and its authors retain copyright, allowing anyone to reproduce or disseminate articles, according to the BioMed Central copyright and licence agreement. Diagnostic Pathology however, has taken this further by making all its content Open Access.

Diagnostic Pathology's articles are archived in PubMed Central, the US National Library of Medicine's full-text repository of life science literature, and also in repositories at the University of Potsdam in Germany, at INIST in France and in e-Depot, the National Library of the Netherlands' digital archive of all electronic publications. The journal is also participating in the British Library's e-journals pilot project, and plans to deposit copies of all articles with the British Library.

BioMed Central is working closely with the Thomson Reuters (ISI) to ensure that citation analysis of articles published in Diagnostic Pathology will be available.

Diagnostic Pathology is able to deliver summaries of frequently updated content via Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds. These are accessible via the orange "XML" button at the top of the list of recent articles or the list of most accessed articles. For more information about RSS feeds see our publisher's website.

For further information about general policies please see the instructions for authors.