Submissions

Author Guidelines

Article Processing Charges

Pain and Rehabilitation charges no fees to authors at any stage of the submission or publication process. There are no submission fees, editorial processing charges, article processing charges (APCs), page charges, or colour charges. Publishing in this journal is entirely free of charge.

Aims and Scope

Pain and Rehabilitation is a peer-reviewed, multimedia, open access journal published in collaboration with the Physiotherapy Pain Association, a Professional Network of the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy.

The purpose of this journal is to share original research, service evaluations, reviews, and protocol articles that contribute to improving the understanding of people with pain and associated care and rehabilitation. Our mission is to encourage dialogue among rehabilitation professionals, patients, families, caregivers, and policymakers about how we understand pain and how we design services and care for people living with it.

Pain and Rehabilitation publishes work in a wide range of formats, including original research articles, perspectives pieces, personal narratives, reflections, poetry, video or photo essays, and reviews of books or films relevant to pain and rehabilitation. We welcome submissions from clinicians, researchers, students, patients, caregivers, healthcare professionals, and administrators.

Writing with People at the Centre

A note from our editorial team, informed by our Lived Experience Associate Editor

When contextualising your work, particularly in the introduction, we encourage you to foreground the experiences of people living with pain rather than leading primarily with economic arguments about the burden or cost of chronic pain conditions.

We understand why economic framing is common. It is often used to justify research investment and to make the case for why a topic matters. But when the case for caring about pain is made primarily in terms of lost productivity, healthcare costs, or economic burden, it can inadvertently position people with pain as a problem to be solved rather than as people whose lives and experiences are the reason this work matters. It can also feel alienating or reductive to the very people this research is intended to serve.

Instead, we invite you to open with what it is actually like to live with chronic pain: the impact on relationships, identity, daily life, sleep, work, connection, and wellbeing. Draw on patient narratives, qualitative evidence, and the voices of people with lived experience to set the scene for your work. Economic evidence can still be included where it is genuinely relevant, but we ask that it sits alongside a human account of what is at stake rather than substituting for one.

This is not about softening your argument. It is about making it more accurate. The primary reason chronic pain matters is not its economic cost. It is the effect it has on people's lives.

Choosing outcome measures that matter

We also encourage authors to consider carefully which outcome measures they use and report, and to think about whether these reflect what is most meaningful to people living with pain.

Clinical and physiological measures have an important place in pain and rehabilitation research, but they do not always capture what people with pain most want to see change. Outcomes such as function, independence, participation, sleep, mood, and overall quality of life are frequently what matters most, and these are often under-represented in how research findings are framed and reported.

Where your study design permits, we encourage you to include validated quality of life measures alongside other outcome measures and to give appropriate weight to these in your results and discussion. Where qualitative methods are used, we encourage you to attend carefully to what participants themselves identify as meaningful change.

If your study did not include quality of life measures but you recognise in retrospect that they would have added value, we welcome an honest reflection on this as a limitation. This kind of reflexivity is itself a contribution to the field.

Lived Experience Evidence, PPI, and Ethical Reflection

Pain and Rehabilitation recognises that knowledge about pain and rehabilitation is generated in many ways and by many people, not only through formal research. We use the term "lived experience evidence" to describe knowledge that comes from the direct experience of living with pain, navigating healthcare systems, or caring for someone who does. We value this knowledge as evidence in its own right, not as a supplement to "proper" research, and we actively welcome submissions that draw on it.

This includes personal narratives, reflective accounts, patient perspectives, and work that has been shaped or co-produced with people with lived experience through patient and public involvement. It also includes practitioner-generated knowledge: clinical reflections, service observations, and practice-based insights developed through years of working alongside people with pain.

Because this kind of knowledge does not always travel through formal ethical review processes, we ask all authors whose work draws on the experiences, contributions, or voices of others to reflect carefully on the ethical dimensions of their work before submitting. We are not asking you to produce ethics committee approval where none is required. We are asking you to think honestly about the following questions and to address them briefly in your submission, either within the methods section or in a short accompanying statement.

A framework for ethical reflection

• Were the people whose experiences or contributions feature in your work aware of how those contributions might be used, and in what form?
• Did they have a meaningful opportunity to shape how their knowledge or experience is represented?
• Have you protected the privacy and dignity of anyone whose experiences are drawn upon, through anonymisation or other appropriate means where relevant?
• Where someone's contribution has been substantial, have you considered whether they should be named as a co-author rather than acknowledged or anonymised?
• Are there any power imbalances between you as author and the people whose knowledge informs your work that are worth naming and reflecting on?

There are no right or wrong answers to these questions and we do not expect perfection. What we are looking for is genuine engagement with them.

Co-authorship with people with lived experience

We actively encourage co-authorship between clinicians or researchers and people with lived experience, where contributions genuinely meet authorship criteria. Too often, the people whose knowledge most directly informs a piece of work are acknowledged in a footnote rather than listed as authors. We think this is worth challenging.

We follow the ICMJE criteria for authorship. If a person with lived experience has shaped your research questions, contributed to the interpretation of findings, helped draft or substantially review the manuscript, or brought knowledge to the work that is reflected in its content, they may well meet these criteria. We encourage you to have that conversation with your collaborators early, before the work is complete.

A useful test: would the work look meaningfully different without that person's involvement? If yes, authorship is likely appropriate. If no, acknowledgement may be more fitting, but that distinction is worth making consciously and transparently rather than by default.

Where co-authorship with a person with lived experience is included, we welcome a brief note in the author contributions section describing the nature of each author's contribution.

A note on what counts as research

We encourage authors to use the HRA Decision Tool as a starting point for any work involving the collection of data from or about people. For work that draws on lived experience evidence, personal narrative, or practitioner reflection, formal ethical approval may not be required. What is always required is the kind of ethical reflection described above. If you are genuinely uncertain about the ethical status of your work, please contact us before submitting.

A Note for Students

We actively welcome submissions from students at all stages of their training, whether that is a reflection on a clinical placement, a case discussion, a literature review, a perspective piece, or original research.

You do not need prior publishing experience. The peer review process is here to develop your work and our editorial team will support you through it. If you are unsure whether your idea is suitable, please feel free to contact us before submitting.

We also welcome submissions from students working in collaboration with clinicians, supervisors, or people with lived experience, and we encourage co-authorship where contributions meet authorship criteria.

How to Submit

To reduce barriers to submission, we have a two-stage process. You may submit your manuscript as a single Word or PDF file with no specific layout requirements during the initial peer review stage. Formatting requirements only apply at the revision stage.

Initial submission requirements

• Submit as a single Word or PDF file.
• All manuscripts must include: abstract, keywords, introduction, methods, results, conclusions, and any tables or figures with captions.
• References may follow any consistent style. Use of DOIs is required where available. The journal's reference style will be applied at the proof stage.
• Figures should be of sufficient quality for review purposes.

At revision stage, authors will be asked to provide editable source files and to format the manuscript according to the journal's requirements.

Submission Preparation Checklist

Before submitting, please confirm the following:

• The submission has not been previously published and is not under consideration elsewhere.
• All authors have consented to be identified as authors.
• All references have been checked for accuracy and completeness.
• All tables and figures are numbered and labelled.
• Permission has been obtained to publish all photos, datasets, and other third-party material included in the submission.
• A declarations document has been prepared covering conflicts of interest, funding, ethical approval, and informed consent (see Declarations section below).

Peer Review

Pain and Rehabilitation operates a strictly double-blind peer review process in which the reviewer's name is withheld from the author and the author's name from the reviewer. Submissions must adhere to our anonymisation guidelines. Each manuscript is reviewed by at least two independent reviewers.

All articles are assigned to an issue immediately upon acceptance, without a waiting period. This means immediate publication for all authors following completion of post-acceptance production.

Authorship

Papers should only be submitted once consent has been given by all contributing authors. The list of authors should include all those who can legitimately claim authorship, meaning all those who:

• Made a substantial contribution to the conception and design, acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data;
• Drafted the article or revised it critically for important intellectual content;
• Approved the final version to be published; and
• Agree to be accountable for appropriate portions of the content.

AI tools may not be listed as authors.

Declarations

All authors must provide a declarations document alongside their submission, covering the following:

Conflicts of interest: All authors must declare any financial, personal, or professional relationships that could be perceived as influencing their work. A declaration must be included in all published articles.

Funding: All sources of funding for the research must be acknowledged under a separate heading.

Ethical approval: If the work involves human or animal subjects, authors must confirm that the work was carried out in accordance with: the Declaration of Helsinki (human research); EU Directive 2010/63/EU (animal research); and the ICMJE Uniform Requirements. Patients' names, initials, and hospital numbers must not be used. The privacy rights of human subjects must always be observed.

Informed consent: Authors must confirm that all appropriate consents have been obtained and are available for inspection.

Acknowledgements: Any individuals who contributed to the work but do not meet authorship criteria should be acknowledged here.

Clinical Trials

Pain and Rehabilitation endorses the ICMJE requirement that clinical trials are registered in a WHO-approved public trials registry at or before the time of first patient enrolment. Retrospectively registered trials will be considered where the justification for late registration is acceptable, consistent with the AllTrials campaign. The trial registry name, URL, and registration number must be included at the end of the abstract.

Reporting Guidelines

Authors should follow the relevant EQUATOR Network reporting guidelines for their study type. For example, randomised controlled trials should include a completed CONSORT flow chart as a cited figure and a completed CONSORT checklist as a supplementary file. Further guidance is available from the NLM Research Reporting Guidelines.

Use of Artificial Intelligence

Pain and Rehabilitation defines artificial intelligence broadly to include large language models, machine learning, deep learning, natural language processing, computer vision, predictive analytics, and other computational technologies that generate, transform, or interpret information.

Transparency: AI tools may be used only with full disclosure. Authors must report: where AI tools were used; which tools were used; why they were used; and how outputs were evaluated, edited, or verified by humans. AI use must be reported in the contributor section and, where relevant, in the methods section. Failure to disclose AI use may result in rejection or post-publication action.

Authorship: AI tools may not be listed as authors. Authorship is restricted to individuals able to take responsibility for the accuracy, interpretation, and integrity of the work.

Author responsibility: Human authors remain fully responsible for all AI-assisted content, including factual accuracy, originality, citation integrity, and ethical compliance.

Peer review: Reviewers may use AI tools only to improve the clarity of their own writing. Confidential manuscript content must not be uploaded to AI tools without guaranteed privacy protections. Reviewers remain fully accountable for their reports.

Screening: The journal may use screening tools to identify AI-generated text, manipulated images, or fabricated references. Screening may trigger requests for clarification, revision, rejection, or retraction.

This policy will be reviewed at least every six months. It has been developed with reference to the AI publishing guidance of the British Medical Journal, COPE, and WAME.

Copyright

Authors retain copyright of their work published in Pain and Rehabilitation. By submitting to this journal, authors grant Pain and Rehabilitation the right of first publication. The work is simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence, which permits unrestricted sharing and adaptation provided appropriate attribution is given.

Authors are free to enter into separate arrangements for non-exclusive distribution of the published version (for example, depositing it in an institutional repository or including it in a book), provided the original publication in Pain and Rehabilitation is acknowledged.

Self-Archiving and Repository Policy

Pain and Rehabilitation supports open scholarly communication and encourages authors to deposit versions of their work in institutional or subject repositories. Authors may deposit the preprint, accepted manuscript, or final published version of record in any repository of their choice, at any time, with no embargo period. Authors are asked to include a citation to the published version and a link to the article DOI where possible.

Interested in contributing as a reviewer or editorial board member? We welcome expressions of interest from authors and researchers who would like to support the journal. Please contact the editorial team at christopher.seenan@stir.ac.uk.