About Cough

What is Cough?

Cough is an Open Access, peer-reviewed, online journal that will encompass the scientific and clinical aspects of both acute and chronic cough.

Cough is the commonest respiratory symptom for which patients seek medical advice. The cough reflex is a protective physiological mechanism that defends against aspiration of harmful substances into the respiratory tree. However, when the cough reflex becomes pathologically sensitised, the cough becomes highly disruptive, profoundly affects quality of life and serves no useful physiological purpose. The establishment of specialist cough centres around the world has highlighted the magnitude of the problem of chronic cough. A better understanding of the mechanisms behind cough should ultimately lead to more effective treatments, and further research into these mechanisms is urgently required.

Over the years there has been increasing international interest in cough research both at the basic science and clinical level. Despite this, until now there has been no dedicated journal that publishes articles concentrating exclusively on cough. By starting such a journal we can provide a forum that will bring together all disciplines that have an interest in this field: basic scientists in the disciplines of physiology, pharmacology, molecular biology, neuroscience along with clinicians in fields of pulmonary medicine, ENT surgery and gastroenterology. Such a forum will assist with the coordination and influence the direction of future research in this field.

Content overview

Cough considers the following types of articles:

• Research: reports of data from original research.
• Reviews: comprehensive, authoritative, descriptions of any subject within the scope of the journal. These articles are usually written by opinion leaders that have been invited by the Editorial Board.
• Case reports: reports of clinical cases that can be educational, describe a diagnostic or therapeutic dilemma, suggest an association, or present an important adverse reaction.
• Commentaries: short, focused and opinionated articles on any subject within the scope of the journal. These articles are usually related to a contemporary issue, such as recent research findings, and are often written by opinion leaders.
• Hypotheses: short articles presenting an untested original hypothesis backed solely by previously published results rather than any new evidence.
• Methodology articles: present a new experimental method, test or procedure. The method described may either be completely new, or may offer a better version of an existing method.
• Short reports: brief reports of data from original research.

Peer review policies

Submitted manuscripts that fall within the scope of the journal will be sent to at least two expert reviewers. The peer review process will be anonymous.

Edited by Kian Fan Chung and Rubaiyat Haque, Cough is supported by an international Editorial Board.

Publishing in Cough

All articles will be listed in PubMed immediately upon acceptance (after peer review), and will be covered by PubMed Central, CABI and Scopus.

Articles in Cough should be cited in the same way as articles in a traditional journal. However, because articles in this journal are not printed, they do not have page numbers. Instead, they have a unique article number.

The following citation:

Cough 2004, 2:1

refers to article 1 from volume 2 of the journal.

As an online journal, Cough does not have issue numbers. Each volume corresponds to a calendar year.

To keep up to date with the latest articles from Cough, why not register to receive alerts? Registration also enables you to customise your subject areas of interest, store your searches, and submit your manuscripts.

Submission of manuscripts

Manuscripts should be submitted electronically to Cough using the online submission system. Full details of how to submit a manuscript are given in the instructions for authors.

General journal policies

Cough is published  by BioMed Central, an independent publisher committed to ensuring peer-reviewed biomedical research is Open Access. That means it is freely and universally accessible online, it is archived in at least one internationally recognised free access repository, and its authors retain copyright, allowing anyone to reproduce or disseminate articles, according to the BioMed Central copyright and licence agreement. Cough however, has taken this further by making all its content Open Access.

Cough's articles are archived in PubMed Central, the US National Library of Medicine's full-text repository of life science literature, and also in repositories at the University of Potsdam in Germany, at INIST in France and in e-Depot, the National Library of the Netherlands' digital archive of all electronic publications. The journal is also participating in the British Library's e-journals pilot project, and plans to deposit copies of all articles with the British Library.

BioMed Central is working closely with the Thomson Reuters (ISI) to ensure that citation analysis of articles published in Cough will be available.

Cough is able to deliver summaries of frequently updated content via Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds. These are accessible via the orange "XML" button at the top of the list of recent articles or the list of most accessed articles. For more information about RSS feeds see our publisher's website.

For further information about general policies please see the instructions for authors.