Aims and Scope
International Journal of Vasculitis
Vasculitis is inflammatory disease of the blood vessels: a family of conditions in which immune activity injures the vessel wall and, through it, the organ the vessel supplies. International Journal of Vasculitis publishes peer-reviewed research across that field — mechanisms, classification, diagnosis, treatment and outcomes — in vessels of every size and in every organ system they reach.
Using this page
This is the definitive statement of what the journal considers. Every other page follows it.
The territory
Vessels run through every organ, so vasculitis is met in several specialties at once: immunology, pathology, rheumatology, nephrology, neurology, dermatology, pulmonology, cardiovascular medicine and internal medicine. The journal treats that whole territory as one field rather than as a set of separate clinical niches.
- Mechanisms
- The immune and vascular biology of vessel-wall injury: autoantibody-mediated damage, complement dysregulation, neutrophil extracellular traps, cytokine and adhesion signaling, endothelial dysfunction, and the experimental, genetic and computational models used to test them.
- Classification
- The nomenclature, criteria and vessel-size frameworks that give these syndromes their names, and the work of separating a primary vasculitis from the conditions that resemble one.
- Diagnosis
- Histopathology, imaging, serology, genetic testing and candidate biomarkers, and how such findings are read together when a presentation overlaps other disease.
- Treatment
- Induction and maintenance of remission, immunosuppressive and biologic therapy, and the management of relapse and of treatment-related risk.
- Outcomes
- The course a disease takes: organ damage, relapse, comorbidity and survival, and the longitudinal and epidemiologic work that measures it over years.
Methods and evidence
Laboratory, translational, clinical, epidemiologic and methodological work are equally eligible; what a manuscript is judged on is the question it asks and the evidence it brings to it.
What is in scope
Vessel size
Large-, medium- and small-vessel disease, and the overlap syndromes that cross those categories.
No vessel calibre is privileged; the classification frameworks themselves are a subject of the journal.
Organ systems
Renal, pulmonary, neurological, cutaneous, ophthalmic, gastrointestinal and cardiovascular involvement, and multi-system disease.
Single-organ vasculitis is in scope on the same terms as systemic disease.
Populations
Adult and pediatric disease, and the monogenic autoinflammatory conditions that present with vasculitis.
Forms of evidence
Mechanistic and model-system studies, diagnostic and biomarker evaluation, therapeutic studies, cohort and registry analyses, classification and criteria work, and methodological contributions.
A well-posed study of one mechanism is as eligible as a multicenter cohort.
Related vascular biology
Work on vascular injury, repair and remodeling is considered where it bears on inflammatory vascular disease.
The test is whether the question illuminates inflammation of the vessel wall.
Where the boundary falls
The boundary is drawn by subject, not by method or by specialty.
The test
A manuscript belongs in this journal when inflammation of the blood-vessel wall is the subject of its question — as the thing being explained, measured, classified, diagnosed, treated or followed over time. Work on vascular disease in which inflammation is incidental belongs with the specialty that owns its question, and the editorial office is glad to say so early rather than late.
How scope is applied
Scope is the first question asked of a manuscript and the one the editorial office can answer fastest. Authors who are unsure whether a study fits are welcome to ask before preparing a full submission.
Fit is assessed against this page, not against what the journal has published before. The archive records the work that has arrived; it does not set the limit of what may.
- Screening
- All submissions undergo initial editorial screening. Manuscripts that meet the journal's scope and minimum requirements proceed to independent peer review.
- Review model
- Single-blind by default; double-blind review is available on request.
- Reviewers
- Manuscripts that proceed to external peer review are normally evaluated by at least two independent subject-matter experts.
- Decisions
- Editorial decisions are based on scope, scientific quality, methodological rigor, ethical compliance, reporting quality, and relevance to the journal.
- Independence
- Those decisions remain independent of fees, services, memberships, and roles.