About the journal
International Journal of Vasculitis
The International Journal of Vasculitis publishes peer-reviewed research on vasculitis — inflammatory disease of the blood vessels. Its subject is the full span of that work: the immune and vascular mechanisms that injure the vessel wall, the systems that classify the resulting syndromes, the pathology, imaging, serology and genetics used to recognize them, the treatment decisions that follow, and the course those decisions produce over time. The journal is published by Open Access Pub, and its articles are free to read on publication.
Where to start
This page explains what the journal is for, the territory it covers, who it is written for and how manuscripts are judged. Detailed scientific eligibility is set out separately.
The field crosses systems
Vasculitis is a family of diseases and a shared problem across specialties. Vessels of every size run through every organ, so one inflammatory process presents as a kidney problem, a nerve problem, a skin problem or a lung problem depending on where it lands, and it is studied at the bench, at the bedside and across cohorts. The journal is organized around that whole arc.
- Mechanisms
- The immune and vascular biology of vessel-wall injury: autoantibody-mediated damage, complement dysregulation, neutrophil extracellular traps, cytokine and adhesion signaling, endothelial dysfunction, and the experimental, genetic and computational models used to test them.
- Classification
- The nomenclature, criteria and vessel-size frameworks that give these syndromes their names, and the work of separating a primary vasculitis from the conditions that resemble one.
- Diagnosis
- Histopathology, imaging, serology, genetic testing and candidate biomarkers, and how such findings are read together when a presentation overlaps other disease.
- Treatment
- Induction and maintenance of remission, immunosuppressive and biologic therapy, and the management of relapse and of treatment-related risk.
- Outcomes
- The course a disease takes: organ damage, relapse, comorbidity and survival, and the longitudinal and epidemiologic work that measures it over years.
Across specialties
Work of this kind is done in immunology and pathology, and equally in rheumatology, nephrology, neurology, dermatology, pulmonology, cardiovascular medicine and internal medicine. A manuscript belongs here when its question concerns inflammatory vascular disease, whether it is answered in a laboratory, in a clinic or across a cohort. A single-discipline study is as welcome as a translational one.
Who the journal serves
The readership is defined by the problem rather than by a job title.
Investigators
Researchers working on how inflammation injures the vessel wall, in immunology, vascular biology and pathology, including those building the model systems and assays the rest of the field depends on.
Clinicians
Rheumatologists, nephrologists, neurologists, dermatologists, pulmonologists and internists for whom these syndromes arrive as a diagnostic problem and a treatment decision.
Translational and methodological researchers
Those developing classification criteria, diagnostic tests, biomarkers, outcome measures and cohort studies that connect mechanism to clinical course.
Editorial responsibility
The journal's responsibility is to judge three things: whether a manuscript's question belongs to this field, whether its evidence supports what it claims, and whether the work was conducted and reported to the standard its design requires.
That judgment is made by editors and independent reviewers, and it is made on the work. Research involving human participants or animals is expected to carry the approvals and consent that the study requires, and authors disclose their funding and competing interests.
- Review model
- Single-blind by default; double-blind review is available on request.
- Screening
- All submissions undergo initial editorial screening. Manuscripts that meet the journal's scope and minimum requirements proceed to independent peer review.
- Reviewers
- Manuscripts that proceed to external peer review are normally evaluated by at least two independent subject-matter experts.
- Decisions
- Editorial decisions are based on scope, scientific quality, methodological rigor, ethical compliance, reporting quality, and relevance to the journal.
- Independence
- Those decisions remain independent of fees, services, memberships, and roles.