About International Breastfeeding Journal

What is International Breastfeeding Journal?

International Breastfeeding Journal is an Open Access, peer-reviewed online journal that will encompass all aspects of breastfeeding.

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 seeks to address 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.

Publications on the topic of breastfeeding are wide ranging. Articles about breastfeeding are currently published in nursing, midwifery, paediatric, obstetric, family medicine, public health, immunology, physiology, sociology and many other general journals. There is a need for a high quality multi-disciplinary journal in the field of breastfeeding, which International Breastfeeding Journal aims to provide. In addition, electronic publishing allows fast publication time for authors and Open Access ensures the journal is easily accessible to readers.

Content overview

International Breastfeeding Journal 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• Study protocols: describe proposed or ongoing research, providing a detailed account of the hypothesis, rationale, and methodology of the study.

Peer review policies

Two or more experts will review submitted manuscripts. The Editor-in-Chief will decide whether manuscripts will be published following peer-review, in consultation with the Editorial Board where necessary.

Edited by Lisa Amir, International Breastfeeding Journal is supported by an expert Editorial Board.

Publishing in International Breastfeeding Journal

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

Articles in International Breastfeeding Journal 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:

Int Breastfeed J 2004, 2:1

refers to article 1 from volume 2 of the journal.

As an online journal, International Breastfeeding Journal does not have issue numbers. Each volume corresponds to a calendar year.

To keep up to date with the latest articles from International Breastfeeding Journal, 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 International Breastfeeding Journal using the online submission system. Full details of how to submit a manuscript are given in the instructions for authors.

General journal policies

International Breastfeeding Journal is published by BioMed Central, part of Springer Science+Business Media. BioMed Central is 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. International Breastfeeding Journal however, has taken this further by making all its content open access.

International Breastfeeding Journal's articles are archived in PubMed Central, the US National Library of Medicine's full-text repository of life science literature, and also 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.

International Breastfeeding Journal 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.