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About

Aims and scope

International Breastfeeding Journal encompasses all aspects of breastfeeding. The journal addresses the need for a high quality multi-disciplinary journal in the field.
 
Breastfeeding is recognized as an important public health issue with enormous social and economic implications. Infants who do not receive breast milk are likely to experience poorer health outcomes than breastfed infants; mothers who do not breastfeed increase their own health risks.
In order to help women breastfeed successfully, there is a need to understand both the physiology of lactation and the social and cultural context within which breastfeeding occurs.
 
The journal addresses all of these aspects, including identifying women who are at increased risk of not breastfeeding; the impediments to breastfeeding and the health effects of not breastfeeding for infants and their mothers; interventions to increase breastfeeding initiation and duration; and the management of breastfeeding problems.

Additional Author Information

An objective of the International Breastfeeding Journal is to promote breastfeeding through addressing issues that encourage breastfeeding initiation, duration and effective management. This includes recognizing that artificial feeding is at times a harmful practice. 

For this reason, it would be unethical for the journal to accept manuscripts that received funding, sponsorship of any other type of support from infant formula manufacturers.

In addition, International Breastfeeding Journal will not consider manuscripts without appropriate trial registration; registration must be completed prior to patient enrollment. Retrospective registration will not be accepted.

Open access

All articles published by International Breastfeeding Journal 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 International Breastfeeding Journal 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 BMC license agreement.

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 International Breastfeeding Journal 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 International Breastfeeding Journal are included in:

  • CABI
  • DOAJ
  • EmCare
  • Google Scholar
  • MEDLINE
  • PubMed
  • PubMed Central
  • SCImago
  • Scopus
  • Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE)

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.

International Breastfeeding Journal 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.

Submitted manuscripts will generally be reviewed by two or more experts who will be asked to evaluate whether the manuscript is scientifically sound and coherent, whether it duplicates already published work, and whether or not the manuscript is sufficiently clear for publication. The Editor will reach a decision based on these reports and, where necessary, they will consult with members of the Editorial Board.

Editorial policies

All manuscripts submitted to International Breastfeeding Journal 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 International Breastfeeding Journal

Articles in International Breastfeeding Journal 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. Int Breastfeed J [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. Int Breastfeed J 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

International Breastfeeding Journal'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

International Breastfeeding Journal 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 International Breastfeeding Journal 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 International Breastfeeding Journal are included in article alerts and regular email updates. Some may be highlighted on International Breastfeeding Journal’s pages and on the BMC homepage.

In addition, articles published in International Breastfeeding Journal 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 International Breastfeeding Journal. A list of articles recently press-released by journals published by BMC is available here.

Copyright

As an author of an article published in International Breastfeeding Journal you retain the copyright of your article and you are free to reproduce and disseminate your work (for further details, see the BMC license agreement).

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

Annual Journal Metrics

  • 2022 Citation Impact
    3.5 - 2-year Impact Factor
    4.0 - 5-year Impact Factor
    1.715 - SNIP (Source Normalized Impact per Paper)
    0.990 - SJR (SCImago Journal Rank)

    2023 Speed
    10 days submission to first editorial decision for all manuscripts (Median)
    219 days submission to accept (Median)

    2023 Usage 
    1,339,755 downloads
    1,321 Altmetric mentions