Aims and Scope
What the Journal of Digestive Disorders and Diagnosis publishes
The journal publishes peer-reviewed research on disorders of the digestive system and on the methods by which those disorders are recognized, characterized and followed over time.
Its title sets its boundaries, and both halves of it are load-bearing. This page states what that means in practice: which subjects are eligible, how a submission is judged against the claims it makes, and what sits outside the journal’s remit.
ISSN
2574-4526
Access
Open access
Publication history
Publishing since 2016
Publisher
Open Access Pub
The subject
The digestive system, end to end
The journal’s subject is the digestive system and the organs that serve it: the esophagus, stomach, and small and large intestine, together with the liver, biliary system and pancreas. Work on any of them is eligible, at any stage of a condition.
Eligibility follows the subject, not a single technique. A study of a mechanism, a study of how a condition is detected, a study of how it is managed and a study of what happens afterwards are all within remit when digestive disease is what the work is about.
Mechanism and pathology
Cellular, molecular, microbial, immunological and physiological work on how digestive disease arises and progresses.
Diagnosis and assessment
Imaging, endoscopic, laboratory, histopathological and computational methods — how they are developed, validated, compared and interpreted.
Management and outcome
Medical, endoscopic, surgical, nutritional and supportive approaches, and the outcomes that follow them.
Prevention and population
Epidemiology, screening and surveillance, risk, health services and delivery of care, where digestive disease is the subject.
Hepatology and the pancreas
Liver, biliary and pancreatic disease on the same terms as the digestive tract, including viral, metabolic, inflammatory and neoplastic conditions.
Interdisciplinary work
Radiology, pathology, microbiology, nutrition, genetics, pharmacology, surgery and data science, where the question is a digestive one.
How submissions are judged
Subject fit and evidence are two separate tests
The first test is whether the work is about digestive disease or its diagnosis. The second is whether the evidence supports the claims the manuscript actually makes. Confusing the two narrows a journal without improving it.
A mechanistic study, a methodological critique, a negative result and a single well-documented case each answer a different kind of question. None of them is required to demonstrate a clinical outcome in order to be eligible; each is held to the standard its own claims require.
Eligibility
The journal considers research relevant to digestive disorders and their diagnosis across basic, translational, clinical and population-based approaches. Evidence requirements reflect the study design and the claims made.
A claim about clinical use, diagnostic performance or treatment effect is assessed against the evidence appropriate to that claim. A study that does not make such a claim is not asked to support one.
Decisions
Editorial decisions are based on scope, scientific quality, methodological rigor, ethical compliance, reporting quality, and relevance to the journal.
Peer review
Single-blind by default; double-blind review is available on request.
Manuscripts that proceed to external peer review are normally evaluated by at least two independent subject-matter experts.
Formats
The article types the journal accepts
These are the routine submission categories. Preparation requirements for each are set out in the instructions for authors.
Research Article
Original investigations, including clinical, translational, mechanistic, diagnostic-accuracy and population studies.
Review Article
Critical syntheses of the evidence on a defined question in digestive disease or its diagnosis.
Systematic Review and Meta-analysis
A review carried out to a stated protocol, reporting how studies were sought, selected and appraised, with quantitative synthesis where the data allow it.
Methods Article
A method, assay, protocol or analytical approach, described together with the evidence that shows how it performs.
Data/Resource Article
A dataset, cohort, registry, biobank or comparable resource, described together with what it can be used to study.
Short Communication
A concise report of a focused finding or observation.
Case Report
A documented presentation, diagnostic course or complication that teaches something generalizable.
Invitation only
Two further formats are published at the journal’s invitation rather than through open submission: Editorial — invitation only, and Perspective/Commentary — invitation only.
The boundary
What sits outside the remit
Work whose subject is not digestive disease or its diagnosis belongs in a journal of its own field. That boundary is about subject, not about method, discipline or the stage of the research.
Where a manuscript sits at an edge — a nutritional study with digestive consequences, a data-science method demonstrated on digestive data, a general pathology finding — the editorial question is whether digestive disease is what the work is about.
- Conditions of other organ systems, where the digestive system is incidental
- General method development with no digestive application demonstrated
- Work whose conclusions are not supported by the evidence presented
- Submissions that do not meet the journal’s ethical and reporting requirements
The journal’s published record illustrates this scope; it does not define its limits. Subjects the journal has not yet published remain eligible.
Next
Preparing a submission
Authors should read the instructions for authors before preparing a manuscript, and the editorial policies for the journal’s ethics and integrity requirements.