Fisioterapia e Pesquisa
Brief History
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The journal Fisioterapia e Pesquisa / Physiotherapy & Research (ISSN 1809-2950), continuing the Revista de Fisioterapia da Universidade de São Paulo (ISSN 1413-7879), is a scientific journal founded in 1994, dedicated to disseminating scientific production and promoting knowledge in the fields of physiotherapy, rehabilitation, and related disciplines, encompassing basic, clinical, and applied research. The journal publishes manuscripts in Portuguese, English, and Spanish and adopts peer review. Articles are evaluated by national and international researchers and professionals in the field. The abbreviated journal title is Fisioter Pesqui., which should be used in bibliographies, references, footnotes, and bibliographic legends. Periodicity: continuous publication. |
Open Access
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The journal Fisioterapia e Pesquisa follows the Open Access model, allowing unrestricted virtual access (including financial restrictions) to all scientific texts published by the journal. Open access is the condition in which the copyright holder of an academic work grants usage rights to third parties through an open license (Creative Commons Attribution, CC-BY), allowing immediate free access to the work and authorizing any user to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of the articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose. |
Compliance with Open Science
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The journal adopts the principles of Open Science and the open access model, in accordance with the guidelines of SciELO, the Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI), and the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) All content is made freely available, allowing the reading, sharing, reuse, and distribution of articles, provided that the original authorship is properly cited. In this context, the journal adopts the following guidelines:
At the time of submission, the corresponding author must complete the Open Science Compliance Form, informing:
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Publication Ethics
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The journal Fisioterapia e Pesquisa follows the standards of conduct and good practices established by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), Council of Science Editors (CSE), and World Association of Medical Editors (WAME). According to these guidelines, failure to comply with the established conditions may result in the publication of an appropriate correction and retraction statement. Special attention should be given to cases of plagiarism, duplicate or redundant publication, data fabrication and falsification, corrections, and retractions. Authors submitting articles to the journal declare that their content is original and guarantee that the work has neither been published nor is it under review/evaluation by any other publication. The journal Fisioterapia e Pesquisa requires authors to Register Clinical Trials in an International Clinical Trials Registry. For clinical trials conducted in Brazil, authors should consult Brazilian Clinical Trials Registry. Manuscripts describing primary results of unregistered trials will be rejected before peer review. Research involving laboratory animals must be submitted to the Institution’s Ethics Committee (including the protocol number), in accordance with Brazilian legislation and the guidelines of the Council for International Organization of Medical Sciences (CIOMS). Research involving human participants must be submitted to the Institution’s Ethics Committee (including the protocol number), in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki of 1975, revised in 2024 (World Medical Association), and Resolução 466/2012 do Conselho Nacional de Saúde do Brasil. Manuscripts must be accompanied by a statement ensuring that the research was conducted with the informed and appropriate consent of each participant. Written consent from the patient (or legal guardian, when applicable) must be obtained for the publication of any details or photographs that may identify an individual. In addition, the journal Fisioterapia e Pesquisa is committed to ethics and quality in publication. The journal supports the standards of ethical behavior expected from all parties involved in the publication process: authors, editors, and reviewers. Plagiarism or any other unethical behavior is not accepted. |
Focus and Scope
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The journal publishes original articles related to the fields of physical therapy, rehabilitation, and related disciplines. Manuscripts are evaluated based on originality, scientific relevance, methodological rigor, and contribution to the advancement of knowledge. After a preliminary analysis regarding compliance with the journal’s guidelines and editorial scope, manuscripts are forwarded to the editors responsible and subsequently submitted for evaluation by specialists in the field. All manuscripts are screened using the Turnitin similarity detection tool at different stages of the editorial process, aiming to ensure scientific integrity and the originality of publications. Approved articles are published according to the chronological order of final acceptance. |
Digital Preservation
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The journal follows the standards defined by the SciELO Program Digital Preservation Policy. |
Indexing Sources
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Bibliographic Information
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Websites
Preprints
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The journal accepts manuscripts previously deposited in recognized preprint servers, before or during submission to the journal. The deposit of preprints does not compromise the originality of the manuscript. In these cases, the evaluation process may not fully adopt the double-blind model, considering the possibility of author identification. Authors must inform, at the time of submission, of the name of the server and the respective digital identifier (DOI), through the Open Science Compliance Form. Derived Submissions Theses and Dissertations Manuscripts derived from theses and dissertations are accepted, provided they are adapted to the scientific article format and comply with the journal standards. Papers Presented at Scientific Events Manuscripts derived from papers presented at congresses, symposia, and scientific meetings are also accepted, provided they have not been fully published in conference proceedings. In both cases, the origin of the manuscript must be informed at the time of submission. Originality and Exclusivity Submitted manuscripts must be original and may not be simultaneously under evaluation by another journal, except when previously made available in preprint servers. |
Peer Review Process
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The journal adopts a double-blind peer review process, preserving anonymity between authors and reviewers, except for manuscripts previously made available as preprints. Published manuscripts must include the name(s) of the editor(s) involved in the peer review process. Initially, manuscripts are evaluated regarding their compliance with the journal’s scope and editorial guidelines. Subsequently, they are forwarded to two ad hoc reviewers who are specialists in the study topic. The reviewers’ recommendations may result in:
When revisions are requested, authors must resubmit the revised manuscript within the established deadline. Depending on the nature of the changes, the manuscript may undergo an additional round of review. Authors may request reconsideration of the editorial decision by providing a well-founded justification. |
Open Data
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The journal recommends that authors make primary research data and supplementary materials available in recognized and certified repositories. This practice contributes to transparency, preservation, sharing, and scientific reproducibility. When public data sharing is not possible, authors must inform the conditions for access. The repositories used must be cited in the manuscript and in the references, in accordance with the journal’s data citation guidelines. For data sharing, authors may use institutional repositories or identify thematic and certified repositories appropriate to the study area, such as those indicated by the SciELO List of Repositories for Research Data Deposit. |
Article Processing Charges
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There are no submission, review, or publication fees. Publication is exclusively in electronic format. For articles submitted in Portuguese There are no submission or publication fees for articles submitted in Portuguese. The journal encourages bilingual publication (requiring translation into English after acceptance), with costs borne by the authors. For articles submitted in English There are no submission or publication fees for articles submitted in English. The journal encourages bilingual publication, also in Portuguese, with costs borne by the authors. For articles submitted in Spanish There are no submission or publication fees for articles submitted in Spanish. The journal encourages bilingual publication (requiring translation into English after acceptance), and translation and language revision costs are the responsibility of the authors. |
Ethics Policy, Misconduct, Errata, and Retractions
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The journal adopts rigorous ethical principles throughout all stages of the editorial process and does not tolerate scientific misconduct practices by authors, reviewers, or editors. Authors must declare that the research was conducted in accordance with ethical and scientific integrity standards, as well as disclosing funding sources and potential conflicts of interest. Research involving human beings or animals must present approval from the respective Ethics Committee, according to current legislation. Studies involving humans must indicate the obtainment of the Free and Informed Consent Form (FICF). For research conducted in virtual environments, the guidelines of CONEP – National Research Ethics Commission are adopted. For studies conducted outside Brazil, compliance with ethical standards in force in the country of origin and applicable international guidelines is recommended. Clinical trials must be registered in internationally recognized databases, such as ClinicalTrials.gov or the International Clinical Trials Registry Platform (ICTRP) of the World Health Organization, and the registration number must be included in the manuscript. The journal follows the guidelines of the “Guide to Good Practices for Strengthening Ethics in Scientific Publication", as well as the Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), recommendations of the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), and the principles of the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA). All suspicions of scientific misconduct will be investigated. When necessary, errata, retractions, clarifications, or expressions of concern may be published. Responsibilities of Authors Authors must:
Responsibilities of Reviewers Reviewers must:
Responsibilities of Editors Editors must:
In cases of corrections, errata, and retractions, the journal will follow SciELO guidelines for recording and publishing such documents. |
Conflict of Interest Policy
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Conflicts of interest may be personal, commercial, political, academic, or financial in nature. Conflicts of interest may occur when authors, reviewers, or editors have interests that could influence the preparation or evaluation of manuscripts. Upon manuscript submission, authors are responsible for acknowledging and disclosing any financial or other conflicts of interest that may have influenced the work. If there is any potential conflict of interest, the author(s) must inform it in a separate signed document attached to the submission platform. For additional information, please refer to: Disclosure of Financial and Non-Financial Relationships and Activities, and Conflicts of Interest. |
Adoption of similarity checking software
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The journal Fisioterapia e Pesquisa has established guidelines, standards, and style requirements that must be followed. To prevent plagiarism in submitted manuscripts, Fisioterapia e Pesquisa uses the Turnitin text similarity detection tool. This screening is carried out immediately after a manuscript is accepted for publication. |
Transparency in the Use of Artificial Intelligence
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Authors using generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) tools must transparently inform how these technologies were employed in the preparation of the manuscript, both in the cover letter and in the submitted text. The following must be informed:
The guidelines follow the recommendations of COPE and the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors - https://www.icmje.org/icmje-recommendations.pdf |
Sex and Gender Issues
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Manuscripts are evaluated without discrimination based on gender, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, or political position. The journal recommends the adoption of the Sex and Gender Equity in Research (SAGER) guidelines, promoting the appropriate and consistent use of sex and gender concepts throughout the research. The journal also seeks to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion within its editorial board and review process. |
Ethics Committee
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The journal Fisioterapia e Pesquisa requires authors to register clinical trials in an International Clinical Trials Registry. For clinical trials conducted in Brazil, authors should consult http://www.ensaiosclinicos.gov.br/. Research involving laboratory animals must be submitted to the institution’s Ethics Committee (with a protocol number), in accordance with Brazilian legislation and the guidelines of the Council for International Organization of Medical Sciences (CIOMS). Research involving human subjects must be submitted to the institution’s Ethics Committee (with a protocol number), in accordance with the 1975 Declaration of Helsinki, revised in 2024 (World Medical Association), and Resolution 466/2012 of the Brazilian National Health Council. Manuscripts must be accompanied by a statement ensuring that the research was conducted with appropriate informed consent from each participant. For publication of any detail or photograph that may identify an individual, written consent must be obtained from the patient (or legal guardian, when applicable). |
Copyright
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Fisioterapia e Pesquisa adopts the Creative Commons CC BY license. Therefore, copyright remains with the authors, and third parties may read, download, copy, distribute, print, and index the full texts of articles; create links to the complete articles; use them for data mining; integrate them into software; or employ them for any other lawful purpose, including commercial use, provided that appropriate credit is given. |
Intellectual Property and Terms of Use
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Website responsibility All content in the journal and articles published by Fisioterapia e Pesquisa, unless otherwise specified, are licensed under the CC BY license. Author responsibility Fisioterapia e Pesquisa encourages authors to self-archive their accepted manuscripts by publishing them in personal blogs, institutional repositories, and academic social media, as well as sharing them on their personal social media, provided that the full citation to the journal website version is included. Authors of articles published in Fisioterapia e Pesquisa retain copyright of their work, licensing it under the Creative Commons Attribution license, which allows articles to be reused and distributed without restriction, provided that the original work is properly cited. |
Sponsors and Funding Agencies
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The journal is supported by the following institutions:
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Editor-in-Chief
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Editorial Board
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Associate Editors
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Editorial production
Journal email: revfisio@usp.br ORCID: 0000-0003-3700-7700
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Articles submitted for evaluation must be original and unpublished, except for those available in preprint repositories, and simultaneous submission to another journal is not permitted. When submitting the manuscript, the author must complete and attach the “Open Science Compliance Form” as a supplementary file. Through this document, the author declares adherence to Open Science practices. The journal Fisioterapia e Pesquisa is a multilingual publication and publishes articles written in Portuguese, Spanish, and English, reviewed in their original language. Publication of the English translation is mandatory when the article is submitted in Portuguese, and publication of a Portuguese version is encouraged when the manuscript was originally written in a foreign language. Manuscripts submitted in Spanish are also encouraged to be published in English. The manuscripts and their possible versions or translations will be fully available in electronic format on the Scientific Electronic Library Online (SciELO) website, with a DOI (Digital Object Identifier) assigned to each version. Fisioterapia e Pesquisa declares that the concepts and opinions expressed in the published texts are entirely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of its editorial board. |
Types of Accepted Documents
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Types of publication: Clinical Trials: CONSORT e and Clinical Trial Registration identification according to criteria validated and established by WHO and ICMJE. Systematic Reviews and Meta-analyses: PRISMA. Whenever possible, present the agreement method adopted for the analysis of included articles, for example, Kappa. Scoping Reviews: following the PRISMA-ScR methodology. Observational studies: including case-control, cohort, and cross-sectional studies, following the recommendations of the STROBE statement. Case studies: may be accepted when describing specific and unique situations that justify publication, accompanied by a brief literature review. CARE. Clinical Trial Protocols: Must follow the Standard Protocol Items: Recommendations for Interventional Trials (SPIRIT) guidelines. |
Author Contributions
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All individuals who contributed to the conception, development, and analysis of the presented data are identified as authors. Therefore, upon manuscript submission, the corresponding author must report each author’s contributions according to one of the following roles: Problem formulation and conceptualization; Data analysis; Active participation in discussion of results; Writing; and Review and approval of the final version of the manuscript. This information will be included in the “Author Contributions” section at the end of the manuscript. It is recommended to follow the taxonomy proposed by CRedit. |
Structure and Preparation of the Manuscript
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File type: doc or docx (MS Word). Text: Official spelling, A4 page format, single spacing, Times New Roman font size 10. Margins of 2.5 cm. Title: Maximum of 18 words, only in the manuscript language, in bold, using uppercase letters only at the beginning of the title and in proper nouns. Abbreviations, acronyms, and geographic location of the research should not be used. Authors’ names: Full names, without abbreviations, numbered using Arabic numerals, including institution, affiliation, city, state, and country. Authors must indicate how their name should be cited for database indexing and include email address and ORCID ID. Institution: should follow the hierarchy: University, School/Faculty, and Department. Corresponding author information: Author’s name, mailing address, telephone number, and email address. Manuscripts derived from dissertations or theses: must indicate in a footnote, marked with an asterisk, the title, year, and institution where it was presented. Resumo and Abstract: Must be written in Portuguese and English and, if possible, also in Spanish. The structure must contain: Introduction, Objective, Methodology, Results, and Conclusions, except for theoretical studies. Clinical Trials must include the registration number at the end of the abstract. Descriptors: Indicate three to six descriptors identifying the main topic of the manuscript, separated by semicolons and extracted from DeCS (Descriptors in Health Sciences), prepared by BIREME, or MeSH (Medical Subject Headings), prepared by the NLM (National Library of Medicine). Main document: A complete file containing all information described below and a blinded copy file without any identification of authorship, institution, location, Ethics Committee number, or registration must be attached. |
Article Submission Format
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Text Structure Cover page (only in the complete file), Abstracts, Introduction, Methodology, Results, Discussion, Conclusion, and References. Must be included in the full version of the article and contain:
Example: Author1, Author2, Author3
Corresponding author address
Introduction: Brief definition of the problem studied, justifying its importance and knowledge gaps, based on updated national and international references. It should be no longer than one and a half pages. Citations must be numerical, superscript, and without parentheses. Methodology: The section should be subdivided into the following topics: Study design; Population; Setting; Selection criteria; Sample definition (if applicable); Data collection; Data analysis/treatment; Ethical aspects. Results: Presentation and description of the obtained data, without interpretations or comments. Tables, charts, and figures may be included to facilitate understanding. The text should complement or highlight the most relevant information without repeating data already presented in tables or figures. The number of participants is part of this section. Discussion: Should be restricted to the obtained data and achieved results, highlighting new and relevant aspects observed in the study and discussing agreements and disagreements with other published national and international studies, in addition to study limitations and clinical relevance, when applicable. Conclusion or Final Considerations: Must be direct, clear, and objective, responding to the hypotheses or objectives and based on the results and discussion. References should not be cited. |
Digital Assets
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Figures: Tables, Charts, and Figures (maximum of five) must be obligatorily inserted in the body of the text, without repeated information, and with clear and informative titles. Tables must include in their titles the location, state, country, and year of data collection. (They must be submitted as separate files during submission, as indicated on the platform). Graphs, flowcharts, and similar materials must be editable, in vector format. Photographs, images, and other materials must have a final resolution of 300 DPI. Both may be in color and must be legible. When not produced by the authors, all illustrations must indicate the appropriate source. |
References and Citations
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References: Maximum of 30 references (except for review studies, depending on the search and inclusion strategy). A proportion of 80% of references from scientific journals must be maintained, with at least half indexed in international databases. A maximum of 15% self-citation among citable documents is allowed. DOI must be included. Use the “Vancouver” style. Journal abbreviations must be indexed in MEDLINE. They must be numbered consecutively in the order in which they appear in the text and presented in the text, tables, and legends using superscript Arabic numerals. Examples: Asthma is the most common chronic respiratory disease among school-aged children and may lead to impaired pulmonary function and be life-threatening if not treated early during exacerbations and inter-episode periods1-3. As highlighted by David et al.10
ARTICLES
BOOKS Israel HA. Synovial fluid analysis. In: Merril RG, editor. Disorders of the temporomandibular joint I: diagnosis and arthroscopy. Philadelphia: Saunders; 1989. p. 85–92.
DISSERTATIONS AND THESES |
Supplementary Documents
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Open Science Compliance Form Authors must submit the signed Open Science Compliance Form (by all authors), according to the SciELO template. |
Funding Statement
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Acknowledgments These should include contributions from individuals, groups, or institutions that deserve recognition but do not meet the criteria for authorship. If applicable, they should be placed before the references. Funding Acknowledgments of financial support received from funding agencies for the research and/or manuscript preparation should be included, if applicable. The name of the funding agency must be written in full, followed by the grant number or according to the agency’s own citation guidelines. |
Additional Information
Contact
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Universidade de São Paulo. Faculdade de Medicina da USP. Hospital das Clínicas. Instituto de Gestão e Saúde. Núcleo Editorial de Revistas Científicas. Rua Dr. Ovídio Pires de Campos, 225. 2º andar – Cerqueira César. São Paulo, SP, Brasil. CEP 05403-010. Telefone: +55 11 2661-7703 E-mail: revfisio@usp.br |
Read our Open Access Statement