PTJ: Physical Therapy & Rehabilitation Journal (2024)

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Having worked with many multidisciplinary rehabilitation research teams throughout my career, I have frequently encountered a reluctance of many of my colleagues to publish our work in Physical Therapy (PTJ). The common refrain is: “Why should we submit our work to a journal whose target audience is physical therapists, when we are trying to reach a much broader audience with our research?” Such a concern is not unreasonable when a journal such as ours is named after its primary audience, namely, physical therapists. Unfortunately, many rehabilitation researchers interpret the journal title “Physical Therapy” to mean “physical therapy only.” I have long believed that our journal title results in some excellent rehabilitation research being published in other journals when the work could have found a home in ours. Over the past decade, the number of journals in the physical therapy and rehabilitation space has increased, and the best authors have many more journals from which to choose.

In practice, PTJ has always encouraged the submission of research and commentary that are relevant to all of rehabilitation, written by authors ranging across the rehabilitation professions and broader health sciences. PTJ’s stated vision is “To become the preeminent international journal in physical therapy and rehabilitation by publishing and promoting original research and relevant information that advance clinical practice, inform policy, and engender a powerful and sustained impact on the health of individuals and communities.” PTJ is making impressive strides toward realizing our stated vision, as evidenced by our role in responding to the global coronavirus pandemic. As of September 29, 2020, PTJ received more than 100 COVID-19 submissions from across the globe. To date, PTJ has published more than 30 articles documenting clinician experience and timely research on COVID-19–related topics such as:

• The increasing role of telehealth during the COVID-19 pandemic

• Recovery after severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS)

• A prone positioning rehabilitation team approach for patients with SARS,

• Home- and community-based rehabilitation of adults with post–intensive care syndrome

• The impact of social isolation due to COVID-19 on children with pediatric disorders

• A paradigm shift in rehabilitation in acute care settings during the COVID-19 pandemic

• Guidelines for physical therapist hospital-based practice with patients with COVID-19

• Lessons for COVID-19 rehabilitation from HIV rehabilitation

• Physical therapist intervention for patients with COVID-19 in a geriatric setting

• Doctor of physical therapy education in a hybrid learning environment

• Acute rehabilitation of a patient with COVID-19 myocarditis

• Brachial plexus neuropathies during the COVID-19 pandemic

All accepted COVID-19 articles have been compiled in a PTJ Virtual Collection that is freely available to all at https://academic.oup.com/ptj/pages/covid-19). This collection provides a readily accessible and valuable resource to rehabilitation specialists responding to the global COVID-19 crisis.

On assuming the role of editor-in-chief 5years ago, I expressed my desire to consider rebranding our journal to attract a much broader audience of authors and readers across the global rehabilitation landscape. During my first term, PTJ’s Editorial Board, American Physical Therapy Association (APTA) staff, and copublisher Oxford University Press discussed the pros and cons of the current journal title. As PTJ has grown its international presence, sharpened its focus on high-impact studies, and reached out to researchers conducting relevant work in a wide range of critical topic areas, I believe the time has come to take the step I first raised 5years ago. Toward that end, the PTJ team has identified that “PTJ: Physical Therapy & Rehabilitation Journal” would be a more appropriate “brand” for our journal, one that aligns with our stated vision and scope of interests as a scientific publication. PTJ also will have a new logo that aligns with APTA’s unified brand, reinforcing that PTJ is the flagship scientific journal of APTA.

In January 2021, when the 100th anniversary of APTA and PTJ officially begins, the PTJ website and masthead will read “PTJ: Physical Therapy & Rehabilitation Journal”—a fitting marker for the broadening reach of PTJ as it enters its own second century. My sincere hope is that we continue to attract the very highest quality research conducted by physical therapist and other rehabilitation researchers across the globe so that PTJ can provide the very latest and very best information to physical therapy and rehabilitation researchers, practitioners, and educators and society at large.

Other developments to watch for in 2021: PTJ moves to a continuous publication model, which means that articles no longer must wait for months to appear in an issue. Instead, as soon as an accepted manuscript is edited, typeset, and approved by the author, it will be published in the current month (ie, if an article becomes final in February, it will be published in February). In addition, PTJ is moving to a standardized template that will speed the editorial/production process.

© The Author(s) 2020. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Physical Therapy Association. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com

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