Accessibility of information published in Physical Therapy in Sport

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Physical Therapy in Sport is now entering its eighth year of publication, a landmark important for the physical therapies and sports medicine professions. Whilst publication avenues for research and practice-based information are increasing in these disciplines, they still do not approach the level of many other areas in medicine and health. This, in part, is due to the relative infancy of the sports medicine and sports rehabilitation professions. Given this constraint it is imperative that information published from these disciplines is disseminated as broadly as possible to researchers and practitioners alike.

In my editorial a year ago (Kolt, 2006), I reported on several developments relevant to promoting and further developing Physical Therapy in Sport. We have now been using an online manuscript submission and management system, the Elsevier Editorial System (EES), for the past year. Feedback from authors has been extremely positive and has highlighted the faster turnaround of manuscript decisions, and the ability to track the progress of manuscripts through the review and editorial stages. For our large number of reviewers around the world, EES has meant more efficient practices and access to similar articles in databases such as MEDLINE and Scopus, and search engines such as Scirus. Also previously mentioned, was the gaining of an Impact Factor rating for 2004 and being listed in both the Rehabilitation and the Sports Sciences lists of the Journal Citation Reports^®. With the release of the 2005 Impact Factors we saw Physical Therapy in Sport increase its Impact Factor by over 60% to 0.513. This increase was paralleled by a rise of 3 places in the Rehabilitation ranked list and 6 places in the Sports Sciences list. These results are testament to the increasing profile of the journal, and we look forward to seeing further improvements when the 2006 Impact Factors are released shortly.

The only disappointment experienced in the past 12 months has been the decision by the National Library of Medicine not to accept Physical Therapy in Sport for inclusion in MEDLINE at this stage. Whilst the feedback on the journal in terms of scientific merit, editorial work, production quality, and importance was rated reasonably positively, there was a suggestion of moving to articles with larger sample sizes. Whilst one could debate the logistics and importance of larger sample sizes in the discipline areas we cover, the feedback will be noted for the future development of the journal. Our plans are to make a further application to the National Library of Medicine next year after attending to the feedback provided. The initial disappointment of this decision is far outweighed by the knowledge that papers published in Physical Therapy in Sport have an ever-increasing reach through many databases, indexing, and abstracting media. For example, Physical Therapy in Sport is included in EMBASE/Excerpta Medica, CINAHL, PEDro, ScienceDirect, SMART, SIRC SportDiscus, ISI SciSearch ©, ISI Focus on Sport Science & Medicine ©, and Science Citation Index Expanded. In particular, I would like to point out the journal's inclusion in Scopus™, the world's largest abstract and citation database. Scopus covers over 15,000 peer-reviewed titles from more than 4,000 international publishers, and of these, 5,300 are in the health sciences (including 100% coverage of MEDLINE titles). With an avenue such as Scopus to disseminate research and other peer-reviewed information, authors who publish in Physical Therapy in Sport can be assured that their work is being read across the globe.

An exciting venture for 2007 involves Elsevier, through its journals Physiotherapy, Physical Therapy in Sport, and Manual Therapy providing publishing services to the 2007 World Confederation for Physical Therapy (WCPT) International Congress being held in Vancouver. These services will include the publication of Congress abstracts and the publication of selected proceedings as supplements or special issues to the three journals. As well, the Editors of Physical Therapy in Sport, as part of a larger group of experienced editors of physical therapy journals, will be running a workshop on writing for publication at the Congress. I urge as many of you as possible to attend the Congress and look forward to meeting many of you there.

From more global matters to the papers published in this issue. We lead with a paper by Brewer and colleagues identifying issues of potential concern to patients regarding anterior cruciate ligament surgery. They used thematic content analysis of the archived postings of two online message boards, and concluded that a substantial number of people that use these internet communications do so to learn about the surgery and rehabilitation (e.g., complications, returning to sport, rehabilitation progress) and to assist in decision making around whether to have the surgery. The second paper by Stevens and colleagues investigates a trunk muscle activity during low load axial rotation exercise, and the relevance of increasing resistance. Peeler and Anderson examined the reliability of the Thomas test for assessing range of motion around the hip joint. McEvoy and colleagues examined elite cyclists and found that their anterior pelvic tilt was significantly greater (and with less variability) than that of non-cyclists. In an interesting study, Cronin and colleagues investigated the effects of different vibratory stimuli on dynamic range of motion of the hamstrings. In this issue we also include a review paper on the prevalence of patellofemoral pain by Callaghan and Selfe, and a further paper in our Research Without Tears series looking at the use of qualitative research techniques in orthopaedic and sports physical therapy.

This year is a busy and important one for the physical therapy profession. I urge you to support and attend the WCPT International Congress, and I am sure that we will all learn much from the work presented there.

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Reference 

1. Kolt GS. Moving forwards with Physical Therapy in Sport. Physical Therapy in Sport. 2006;7:1–2
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