About Gut Pathogens

What is Gut Pathogens?

Gut Pathogens, the official journal of The International Society for Genomic and Evolutionary Microbiology (Isogem), is an open access, peer-reviewed online journal that will encompass all aspects of the biology and pathogenesis of bacterial, parasitic and viral infections of the gut, including their diagnosis and clinical management.

Topical areas include, but are not limited to:

• Microbial etiology of gut ailments
• Gut invasion mechanisms
• Microbial toxins and virulence factors in infections of the gut and associated glands - liver, pancreas
• Bacterial adaptation to gut niches and evolution of pathogenicity
• Biology and ecology of gut commensals and microbiota in health and disease
• Biology and ecology of probiotic organisms
• Host susceptibility or resistance to gut pathogens
• Immune mechanisms of gut infections
• Etiology of inflammatory bowel diseases
• Molecular and serological diagnosis
• Treatment and drug resistance mechanisms
• Molecular epidemiology, transmission dynamics and evolutionary genetics
• Vaccines for gut pathogens
• Comparative and veterinary infectious diseases of the gut

Gut Pathogens aims to provide a much-needed open access home for high-quality research in this area.

Content overview

Gut Pathogens considers the following types of article:

Research articles: reports of data from original research.
Reviews: comprehensive, authoritative, descriptions of any subject within the scope of the journal.
Case reports: describe a major healthcare intervention, usually from a public health perspective. Case study articles that include a rigorous assessment of the processes and impact of the intervention as well as recommendations for future interventions will be considered favourably. Note that Case study articles should not describe an individual patient - authors should use the case report format for such descriptions.
Commentaries: short, focused and opinionated articles on any subject within the journal's scope. These articles focus on specific issues and are about 800 words.
Letters to the Editor.
Hypotheses: short articles presenting an untested original hypothesis backed solely by previously published results rather than any new evidence. They should outline significant progress in thinking that would also be testable, and be about 1500 words.
Short reports: brief reports of data from original research, usually about 1500 words.

Peer review policies

Gut Pathogens operates a closed peer-review policy. Manuscripts submitted to Gut Pathogens will be examined by the Editor-in-Chief before being sent for peer review. Manuscripts will be sent to two reviewers, one of which may be a member of the Gut Pathogens Editorial Board with specialist knowledge in the area of the submitted manuscript. If conflicting recommendations arise from the peer-review, the manuscript will be sent for further review. Statisticians will be consulted where needed, and final decisions will be made by the Editor-in-Chief with consultation of the Editorial Board.

Edited by Francis Megraud, Leonardo Sechi and Niyaz Ahmed, Gut Pathogens is supported by an international Editorial Board.

Publishing in Gut Pathogens

All articles will be listed in PubMed immediately upon acceptance (after peer review), and will be covered by PubMed Central.

Articles in Gut Pathogens 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:

Gut Pathog 2004, 2:1

refers to article 1 from volume 2 of the journal.

As an online journal, Gut Pathogens does not have issue numbers. Each volume corresponds to a calendar year.

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

General journal policies

Gut Pathogens is published  by BioMed Central, an independent publisher 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. Gut Pathogens however, has taken this further by making all its content Open Access.

Gut Pathogens'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.

BioMed Central is working closely with the Thomson Reuters (ISI) to ensure that citation analysis of articles published in Gut Pathogens will be available.

Gut Pathogens is able to deliver summaries of frequently updated content via Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds. For more information about RSS feeds see our publisher's website.

For further information about general policies please see the instructions for authors.