About

Aims and scope

BMC Cardiovascular Disorders is an open access, peer-reviewed journal that considers articles on the characterization, prevention, diagnosis and treatment of disorders of the heart and circulatory system. The journal welcomes clinical, basic and translational science studies that provide insights into the pathophysiology, molecular and cell biology, genetics, pharmacology, or epidemiology of cardiovascular diseases. Articles on surgical advancements and new technologies aiding in the diagnosis, monitoring and computational modelling of cardiovascular disorders are also considered.

BMC Cardiovascular Disorders is part of the BMC series which publishes subject-specific journals focused on the needs of individual research communities across all areas of biology and medicine. We do not make editorial decisions on the basis of the interest of a study or its perceived impact. Studies must be scientifically valid; for research articles this includes a scientifically sound research question, the use of suitable methods and analysis, and following community-agreed standards relevant to the research field.

More specifically:

The journal focuses on all types of diseases affecting the heart and the small and large vessels throughout the body. These can be broadly categorized but not restricted to:

Heart failure
Cardiomyopathies (e.g. dilated, hypertrophic and arrhythmogenic cardiomyopathy).
Arrhythmias (e.g. Atrial fibrillation, atrial flutter).
Valvular heart diseases (e.g. rheumatic heart disease, bicuspid valve, Marfan syndrome, congenital).
Congenital heart diseases (e.g. aortic stenosis, atrial septal defects, pulmonary stenosis, tetralogy of Fallot, Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension).
Hypertension
Myocardial infarction
Immunity, inflammation in cardiovascular diseases (e.g. COVID-19, endothelial dysfunction).
Vascular diseases (e.g. coronary artery disease, aneurysm, atherosclerosis, calcification).
Cerebrovascular diseases (e.g. stroke, small vessels disease and vascular dementia. Studies should focus on the vascular and not the neuronal aspect of these diseases.

BMC Cardiovascular Disorders considers papers describing all well-established clinical and experimental approaches. However, we are particularly interested in studies describing state-of-the art experimental designs and new technologies, as well as studies of interdisciplinary nature. A non-exhaustive list of subjects is below:

Cardiac regeneration and tissue engineering (e.g. stem-cell based therapy paracrine effects, gene therapy, direct cell-cell conversion/reprogramming, cell-cycle checkpoints release, inflammatory response, 3D scaffolds, cardiac patches).
In vitro modelling of heart and circulatory disorders (e.g. induced pluripotent stem cells-based, gene editing, animal models, cardiac organoids and organ-on-chip models).
System-based approaches in Cardiovascular Disorders (e.g. Network Biology, ‘Omics’, Systems Genetics).
Surgical advancements (e.g. heart transplantation, aortic valve replacement).
Medical Imaging (e.g. echocardiography, computed tomography, cardiovascular magnetic resonance imaging, positron emission tomography, angiography, metabolic imaging, hyperpolarized 13C MRS/I).
Computational modelling, artificial intelligence and cardiovascular disorders (e.g. medical devices, instrumentation, diagnosis and risk prediction, personalized treatment, medical imaging, biomarkers modelling, biomechanical modelling, biophysical modelling, drug effect modelling).
Digital Technologies and Cardiovascular Disorders (e.g. medical sensors, mobile apps, remote medical care, patient follow-up, patient-related data, telemedicine, technology and assisted decision –making, robotic interventions, digital solutions in clinical workflows).

Open access

All articles published by BMC Cardiovascular Disorders are made freely and permanently accessible online immediately upon publication, without subscription charges or registration barriers. Further information about open access can be found here.

As authors of articles published in BMC Cardiovascular Disorders you are the copyright holders of your article and have granted to any third party, in advance and in perpetuity, the right to use, reproduce or disseminate your article, according to the BMC license agreement.

For those of you who are US government employees or are prevented from being copyright holders for similar reasons, BMC can accommodate non-standard copyright lines. Please contact us if further information is needed.

Article-processing charges

Open access publishing is not without costs. BMC Cardiovascular Disorders therefore levies an article-processing charge of £1890.00/$2690.00/€2190.00 for each article accepted for publication, plus VAT or local taxes where applicable.

If the corresponding author's institution participates in our open access membership program, some or all of the publication cost may be covered (more details available on the membership page). We routinely waive charges for authors from low-income countries. For other countries, article-processing charge waivers or discounts are granted on a case-by-case basis to authors with insufficient funds. Authors can request a waiver or discount during the submission process. For further details, see our article-processing charge page.

Visit Springer Nature’s open access funding & support services for information about research funders and institutions that provide funding for APCs.

Springer Nature offers agreements that enable institutions to cover open access publishing costs. Learn more about our open access agreements to check your eligibility and discover whether this journal is included.

For more information on APCs please see our Journal Pricing FAQs

Indexing services

All articles published in BMC Cardiovascular Disorders are included in:

ANVUR
CAB Abstracts
CAS
CNKI
Dimentions
DOAJ
EBSCO Biomedical Reference Collection
Embase
Gale
Google Scholar
INIS Atomindex
Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China
Journal Citation Reports/Science Edition
MEDLINE
Naver
OCLC WorldCat Discovery Service
ProQuest Central
ProQuest Health & Medical Collection
ProQuest Health Research Premium Collection
ProQuest Medical Database
ProQuest Natural Science Collection
ProQuest SciTech Premium Collection
ProQuest-Exlibris Primo
ProQuest Summon
PubMed Central
Reaxys
SCImago
SCOPUS
Science Citation Index Expanded (SciSearch)
Semantic Scholar
TD Net Discovery Service
UGC-CARE List (India)

The full text of all articles is deposited in digital archives around the world to guarantee long-term digital preservation. You can also access all articles published by BioMed Central on SpringerLink.

Peer-review policy

Peer-review is the system used to assess the quality of a manuscript before it is published. Independent researchers in the relevant research area assess submitted manuscripts for originality, validity and significance to help editors determine whether the manuscript should be published in their journal. You can read more about the peer-review process here.

In cases where the journal is unable to find sufficient peer reviewers, the services of a publishing partner, Research Square, may be used to identify suitable reviewers and provide reports to avoid further delays for authors. Reviewers recruited by Research Square are paid a small honorarium for completing the review within a specified timeframe. Honoraria are paid regardless of the reviewer recommendation. With Research Square, a double-anonymous peer review system is in operation.

In cases where reports have been obtained by Research Square, the peer review reports will be unsigned unless the reviewer opts in to sign the report.

BMC Cardiovascular Disorders operates a transparent peer-review system, where, if the article is published, the reviewer reports are published online alongside the article under a Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 but the reviewer is not named.

The benefit of transparent peer review is that it increases transparency. In addition, published reports can serve an educational purpose in helping facilitate training and research into peer review.

Manuscripts submitted to BMC Cardiovascular Disorders are assessed by our Editors and/or peer reviewers. Editor(s) are expected to obtain a minimum of two peer reviewers for manuscripts reporting primary research or secondary analysis of primary research. It is recognized that in some exceptional circumstances, particularly in niche and emerging fields, it may not be possible to obtain two independent peer reviewers. In such cases, Editor(s) may wish to make a decision to publish based on one peer review report. When making a decision based on one report, Editor(s) are expected to only do so if the peer review report meets the standards set out in the Springer Nature Code of Conduct (section Peer-Review). Overall editorial responsibility for the journal is with the Editor with Editorial Board Members acting as handling editors.

BMC Cardiovascular Disorders is part of the BMC series which publishes subject-specific journals focused on the needs of individual research communities across all areas of biology and medicine. We do not make editorial decisions on the basis of the interest of a study or its likely impact. Studies must be scientifically valid; for research articles this includes a scientifically sound research question, the use of suitable methods and analysis, and following community-agreed standards relevant to the research field.

Specific criteria for other article types can be found in the submission guidelines.

BMC series - open, inclusive and trusted.

Collections and Special issues

All articles submitted to Collections and Special issues are peer reviewed in line with the journal’s standard peer review policy and are subject to all of the journal’s standard editorial and publishing policies. This includes the journal’s policy on competing interests. The Editors declare no competing interests with the submissions which they have handled through the peer review process. The peer review of any submissions for which the Editors have competing interests is handled by another Editor who has no competing interests.

Editorial policies

All manuscripts submitted to BMC Cardiovascular Disorders should adhere to BioMed Central's editorial policies.

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Appeals and complaints

Authors who wish to appeal a rejection or make a complaint should follow the procedure outlined in the BMC Editorial Policies.

Citing articles in BMC Cardiovascular Disorders

Articles in BMC Cardiovascular Disorders should be cited in the same way as articles in a traditional journal. Because articles are not printed, they do not have page numbers; instead, they are given a unique article number.

Article citations follow this format:

Authors: Title. BMC Cardiovasc Disord [year], [volume number]:[article number].

e.g. Roberts LD, Hassall DG, Winegar DA, Haselden JN, Nicholls AW, Griffin JL: Increased hepatic oxidative metabolism distinguishes the action of Peroxisome Proliferator-Activated Receptor delta from Peroxisome Proliferator-Activated Receptor gamma in the Ob/Ob mouse. BMC Cardiovasc Disord 2009, 1:115.

refers to article 115 from Volume 1 of the journal.

Benefits of publishing with BMC

High visibility

BMC Cardiovascular Disorders's open access policy allows maximum visibility of articles published in the journal as they are available to a wide, global audience.

Speed of publication

BMC Cardiovascular Disorders offers a fast publication schedule whilst maintaining rigorous peer review; all articles must be submitted online, and peer review is managed fully electronically (articles are distributed in PDF form, which is automatically generated from the submitted files). Articles will be published with their final citation after acceptance, in both fully browsable web form, and as a formatted PDF.

Flexibility

Online publication in BMC Cardiovascular Disorders gives you the opportunity to publish large datasets, large numbers of color illustrations and moving pictures, to display data in a form that can be read directly by other software packages so as to allow readers to manipulate the data for themselves, and to create all relevant links (for example, to PubMed, to sequence and other databases, and to other articles).

Promotion and press coverage

Articles published in BMC Cardiovascular Disorders are included in article alerts and regular email updates. Some may be highlighted on BMC Cardiovascular Disorders’s pages and on the BMC homepage.

In addition, articles published in BMC Cardiovascular Disorders may be promoted by press releases to the general or scientific press. These activities increase the exposure and number of accesses for articles published in BMC Cardiovascular Disorders. A list of articles recently press-released by journals published by BMC is available here.

Copyright

As an author of an article published in BMC Cardiovascular Disorders you retain the copyright of your article and you are free to reproduce and disseminate your work (for further details, see the BMC license agreement).

For further information about the advantages of publishing in a journal from BMC, please click here.