About this journal

Journal of Translational Research is a peer-reviewed, Open Access Journal that welcomes submissions of all articles that report scientific discoveries that can translate into the improvement of clinical medicine and human health, well-being and longevity. This journal will report on all aspects of translational research, including articles aimed at understanding and improving translational science and will be of interest to anyone involved within a translational medicine discipline. The journal is part of our Elevate Series.

This means that you will receive a concierge-level publishing experience, including dedicated support from our expert in-house Editorial team, with guaranteed response times of within 48 hours, an initial decision on whether your article will be peer reviewed within 5 working days, and a first decision on your research within an average of 22 working days.

The journal welcomes for consideration the following article types: Research Article, Review Articl, Data Note, Method, Registered Report and Rapid Communication. All articles received by the journal will be subject to single anonymos peer review.  

Translational research is any research designed to take basic science results and move them toward or into clinical practice, as well as research which utilizes clinical observations as inspiration to design new basic science experiments. The journal welcomes submissions that utilizes non-animal models and advances alternative methods, including AI and other transformative research. Ultimately, we want to publish science that aims to bring more treatments to more people more rapidly.

The journal adopts a multidisciplinary approach to disseminate the latest research and support the fastest possible transfer of knowledge to the relevant communities. There is a real need to reduce the time it takes to go from bench to bedside and the public, governments, and funding bodies now demand that the research enterprise incorporates the entire journey from basic science to clinical practice and takes clinical observations and uses them to drive new basic hypotheses. This journal sets the tone for progress in translational research with the following sections:

Translational Science denotes the science behind the conduct of the translational research. Translational Science aims to develop empirically driven, best practices that increase the speed at which fundamental discoveries move from “bench to bedside”. Translational Science principles are designed to be applicable to a broad range of medical disorders, and to facilitate the scale at which translation to the clinical trenches occurs. As such, Translational Science includes a wide range of investigation types. Examples could include developing, evaluating, and applying data harmonization techniques to establish data lakes that link multiple learning health systems to study any number of medical disorders. Translational Science studies could facilitate establishing a system that provides access to vetted tools for designing studies or designing a robust system for reproducing findings from clinical trials prior to dissemination. Translational science can help develop systematic approaches to back translate observations from the clinic and community settings, to guide pre-clinical hypotheses and further pre-clinical research. This section addresses strategies for doing research that speed up our ability to translate new discoveries into safe and effective treatments for patients as soon as possible.

Implementation Science addresses the gap between research and practice to accelerate the process of ensuring what we know works gets delivered into real-world settings without delay. Research in this section studies the factors and strategies that lead to the successful implementation of evidence-based discovery integration within specific research and care settings and will help to bridge the research gap that exists between proven research and implementation into practice and policy.

Translational Informatics provides methods and tools that enables researchers to translate pre-clinical research into the clinic more rapidly. This includes software systems implementation that assists with sample and study management to take traditionally separate data sets and disciplines and interrogate that data in a holistic manner that improves our ability to get safe and effective treatments to the correct patients. This also includes post-marketing surveillance of new treatments for new side effects or other important information regarding the broader use of any particular treatment or therapy.

Clinical Trial Study Designs reports on new methods of designing clinical trials for use in translational research. An example of this is using real world evidence to conduct distributed recruitment and data collection for a randomized prospective controlled trial. Articles in this section utilize new techniques of designing and validating clinical trials for translational research, including synthetic trials and methods for speeding up drug development, including in silica methods. This section also publishes trials that employ real-world evidence which is increasingly being accepted by national and regulatory bodies.

Basic Science Methods includes new methods of conducting basic science that will empower translational researchers. As we rethink the methods we use in basic science, we need studies that report new methods that will engage partners in clinical trials and in implementation science to be more ready to take important basic science discoveries and rapidly translate them, where supported by best evidence, into safe and effective therapies for patients. This section reports on those new methods and will assist in speeding up the process of translating research from the bench to the bedside, and back again. We also would be pleased to consider articles that help to decrease the current regulatory burden. This also can include novel genomic data analysis methods and new laboratory-based methodologies.

Community Engagement includes ways of engaging communities, including those that are under-represented in research studies, bringing them into the research ecosystem. The goal is that our cohorts closely resemble the population on which a therapy will eventually be used. The section considers how to engage those communities impacted by translational research and ensure that new translational research reaches community medicine and those that report population outcomes. This includes patient-centric precision medicine that tailors personalized care to specific communities. The section also considers articles that address public health outreach efforts, including uptake of vaccinations, participation in trials, and providing much needed medical data. We believe that this will assist us with adoption of new treatments and therefore improved clinical outcomes.

Editor-in-Chief:

Professor Peter Elkin ([email protected]) - Professor and Chair, Department of Biomedical Informatics, University at Buffalo, Buffalo, NY, USA

Translational Science 

Section Editor:

Professor Ruth O'Hara - Professor and Senior Associate Dean for Research, Psych/Public Mental Health & Population Sciences, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

Editorial Board: 

Dr Hongsong Zhang - Department of Cardiology, Nanjing First Hospital, Nanjing Medical University, Nanjing China 

Implementation Science

Section Editor:

Professor Ross Koppel - Professor, Senior Fellow, Adjunct Professor, Perelmen School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA 

Editorial Board:

Dr Reza Yousefi-Nooraie - Assistant Professor, Department of Public Health Sciences and Center for Community Health and Prevention, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY, USA

Clinical Trial Study Designs

Section Editor:

Professor Andrew Balas - Professor, Department of Health Management, Economics, & Policy, School of Public Health, Augusta University, Augusta, GA, USA

Community Engagement

Section Editor:

Professor Elizabeth A. Shenkman - Professor, Department Chair, Department of Health Outcomes and Biomedical Informatics, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA 

Editorial Board:

Professor Alejandro Soto-Gutierrez - Professor, Division of Experimental Pathology, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, USA

News, offers and calls for papers

News and offers

• Learn more about this new open access journal, part of the Elevate series.