Submissions

Author Guidelines

Invasive Physiotherapy and Musculoskeletal Medicine accepts submissions in English or Spanish. Accepted articles are published in both languages; the Editor-in-Chief coordinates the version in the other language after acceptance. Use the separate title-page and manuscript Word templates in the language of submission and upload both files in Word format (.docx) through OJS; PDF manuscripts are not accepted.

Before submission

The work must be original and must not be under consideration by another journal. Disclose preprints, conference abstracts and related publications in the cover letter and cite them where appropriate. Follow the journal's policies on duplicate publication, research ethics, conflicts of interest, authorship and use of artificial intelligence.

Manuscript types

The journal accepts randomized controlled trials (RCT); systematic reviews (SR); scoping and narrative reviews (NR); clinical case reports and case series (CCS); observational studies (OS); study protocols (PR); non-randomized interventional and quasi-experimental studies (non-RCT); preclinical and experimental laboratory studies (studies in live animals, ex vivo and in vitro studies, cadaveric experiments and bench models); consensus studies (Delphi, nominal group and similar methods); qualitative studies; and technical and methodological articles (new or modified procedures and approaches, including ultrasound-guided techniques and cadaveric and anatomical studies supporting invasive procedures; methodological developments; documentary technical comparisons; and reliability, measurement validity and diagnostic accuracy studies). Select the matching section during submission and follow the corresponding template and reporting guidance. Editorials and letters may be considered at the invitation or discretion of the editors.

Submission files

Provide a cover letter in the OJS Comments to the Editor field, a separate title page, the manuscript file and any supplementary material. The cover letter should identify the article type, confirm the status of prior and concurrent dissemination, disclose funding and competing interests, and mention permissions for reused material.

Title page

Include the article title, all authors' names and affiliations, ORCID identifiers, corresponding author's email, author contributions, funding, competing interests, acknowledgments and ethics or registration details as applicable. Confirm that all authors approved the submitted version. Requests to change the byline follow the Authorship and Contributions Policy.

Manuscript

Use the Word manuscript template. The journal uses single-blind review: reviewers know the authors' identities, while authors do not know the reviewers' identities. Keep author details on the separate title page for production. Supply an English and Spanish title, abstract and keywords where required by the template; the journal coordinates translation of the accepted article into the other language. Structure the main text and provide methods, results and conclusions appropriate to the study design. Report ethics approval, consent, clinical trial registration, funding and AI use where applicable. Where ethical approval is required, authors must identify the approving body and provide the approval reference and date. Where approval was waived or was not required, authors must explicitly explain the reason and the applicable institutional or regulatory basis, identifying any authority that granted a waiver. See the Research Involving Humans, Animals and Informed Consent Policy. All research articles must include a Data Availability Statement (see the Research Data Policy).

Reporting guidelines and study registration

Manuscripts must follow the reporting guideline that applies to the study design, as listed by the EQUATOR Network (for example, CONSORT 2025 for randomised trials, TREND for non-randomised interventional studies, STROBE for observational studies, PRISMA for systematic reviews, CARE for case reports, ARRIVE 2.0 for animal studies and SPIRIT 2025 for trial protocols), and include the completed checklist at submission. CARE-DN is strongly recommended for dry needling case reports, and PhyCARE for other physiotherapy case reports. Consensus studies must follow ACCORD and include the completed checklist at submission. DELPHISTAR is strongly recommended for Delphi studies. CREDES may be used as supplementary guidance but does not replace ACCORD. Diagnostic accuracy studies must follow STARD 2015 and include the completed checklist at submission.

Clinical trials must be registered in a public registry before the first participant gives consent, in line with ICMJE recommendations, and the registration number must be reported in the abstract and the Methods. If the trial was registered after enrolment began, authors must state that it was registered retrospectively and give the registration date; the editors may ask for the reasons and assess such cases individually. Systematic reviews should be registered in PROSPERO, OSF or INPLASY before data extraction; if a review was not registered, authors must explain why in the Methods.

References, tables and figures

Use Vancouver-style numbered references in order of first citation. Check all citations and include DOI links where available. Number tables and figures in the order cited, give clear titles or legends, and obtain permission and participant consent where required for reproduced or identifiable material. Supply accessible descriptions of informative figures where practical.

Templates and help

Download the separate title-page and manuscript Word files from Article Types & Templates. See the OJS registration and submission guide or contact the journal with questions.

Submission Preparation Checklist

All submissions must meet the following requirements.

This submission meets the requirements outlined in the Author Guidelines.
This submission has not been previously published, nor is it before another journal for consideration.
All references have been checked for accuracy and completeness.
All tables and figures have been numbered and labeled.
Permission has been obtained to publish all photos, datasets and other material provided with this submission.
The manuscript includes a Data Availability Statement, as required by the Research Data Policy.
The title page and the manuscript are uploaded as separate Word files (.docx), prepared with the current IPMM template for the article type.

Copyright Notice

Authors being published in this journal agree to the following terms:

The authors retain their copyrights but guarantee the journal's right to be the first publisher of the work, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license, which allows others to share the work, provided that they acknowledge its authorship and initial publication in this journal.

Authors may separately subscribe additional agreements for the non-exclusive distribution of the work published in the journal (for example, including it in an institutional repository or publishing it in a book), with recognition of its initial publication in this journal.

Authors are allowed and encouraged to disseminate their work electronically (for example, in institutional repositories or on their own websites) before and during the submission process, as this may result in productive exchanges, as well as more and earlier citations of the works to be published.

All authors respect the Author Contributions Policy

Privacy Statement

This Privacy Statement explains how personal data are processed on the website and in the editorial activity of Invasive Physiotherapy and Musculoskeletal Medicine (IPMM), in accordance with Regulation (EU) 2016/679 (General Data Protection Regulation, GDPR) and Spanish Organic Law 3/2018 on the Protection of Personal Data and Guarantee of Digital Rights (LOPDGDD).

Data controller

The data controller is the Asociación para la Investigación en la Discapacidad Motriz (AIDIMO), tax ID (CIF) G99134926, Calle Ibón de Estanés 12, 50011 Zaragoza, Spain, publisher of the journal. Any question about this statement or about the processing of your data can be sent to editor@invasivephysiotherapy.com.

Data we process, purposes and legal basis

Registered users, authors and reviewers. When you register or take part in the editorial process, the journal hosting platform (Open Journal Systems, OJS) stores the data you provide, such as name, email address, affiliation, country, ORCID iD, biographical statement, reviewing interests and the content of submissions and reviews. These data are used to manage submissions, peer review, editorial communications and publication. The legal basis is your consent given at registration and the performance of the editorial and publication relationship you request (Article 6.1.a and 6.1.b GDPR). Authors who submit are responsible for ensuring that all co-authors have read this statement and agree to their data being processed for these purposes. Authors are also responsible for the human subject data that appear in the research they report.

Published articles. The names, affiliations, ORCID iDs and contact details of authors that appear in published articles form part of the permanent scholarly record. They are made publicly available and are shared with DOI registration, indexing and archiving services (such as Crossref and bibliographic databases, including through the OAI-PMH protocol). The legal basis is the performance of the publication agreement and the public interest in the availability and integrity of the scholarly record.

Similarity checking. To safeguard publication ethics, submitted manuscripts may be checked for overlapping text through Crossref Similarity Check, a service provided by Turnitin. The legal basis is the legitimate interest of the journal in preventing plagiarism and research misconduct (Article 6.1.f GDPR).

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Your data are not sold or used for purposes other than those described here. They may be accessed, solely to provide their services, by the following categories of recipients: the website hosting provider (SiteGround); Crossref and Turnitin (DOI registration and similarity checking); Google Ireland Limited and Metricool Software, S.L. (audience analytics, only with consent); and indexing and archiving services for published metadata. Data that help develop OJS may be shared with its developer, the Public Knowledge Project (PKP), only in anonymised and aggregated form, with appropriate exceptions such as article metrics.

International transfers

Some providers, such as Google and Turnitin, may process data outside the European Economic Area. In those cases, transfers are covered by the safeguards provided for in the GDPR, such as an adequacy decision (including the EU-US Data Privacy Framework) or standard contractual clauses adopted by the European Commission.

Retention

Account data are kept while your account remains active or until you ask for it to be deleted. Records of submissions and peer review are kept for as long as needed to guarantee the integrity of the editorial process and to respond to possible ethical queries. Data published in articles are kept permanently as part of the scholarly record. Analytics cookies are kept for the periods stated in the Cookies Policy, and analytics data are processed in aggregated form.

Your rights

You can exercise your rights of access, rectification, erasure, restriction of processing, objection and data portability, and withdraw your consent at any time without affecting the lawfulness of prior processing, by writing to editor@invasivephysiotherapy.com. If you have a user account and wish to have it deleted, please contact us. Requests to erase data that form part of a published article will be assessed taking into account the public interest in the availability and integrity of the scholarly record, as recognised by the GDPR. If you consider that your rights have not been respected, you may lodge a complaint with the Spanish Data Protection Agency (Agencia Española de Protección de Datos, www.aepd.es).

Security

The journal applies appropriate technical and organisational measures to protect personal data, including encrypted connections (HTTPS), access restricted to authorised editorial staff and regular updates of the platform.

Changes to this statement

This statement may be updated to reflect changes in the website or in the applicable regulations. Last updated: 2 November 2026.