About the Journal

Focus and Scope

JMIR Research Protocols (JRP, ISSN 1929-0748, Impact Factor: 1.4) publishes peer-reviewed, openly accessible research ideas and grant proposals, study and trial protocols, reports of ongoing research, current methods and approaches (Preliminary results from pilot studies, early results, and formative research should now be published in JMIR Formative Research). While the original focus was on the design of medical and health-related research and technology innovations, JMIR Research Protocols publishes research protocols, proposals, and methods in all areas of medical and health research.

  • JRP publishes protocols and grant proposals in all areas of medicine (and their peer-review reports, if available) including wet lab methods
  • JRP is fully open access, with full-text articles deposited in PubMed Central
  • JRP publishes research protocols, grant proposals, and early reports of ongoing and planned work that encourages collaboration and early feedback, and reduces duplication of effort
  • JRP will be a valuable resource for researchers who want to learn about current research methodologies and how to write a winning grant proposal
  • JRP creates an early scientific record for researchers who have developed novel methodologies, software, innovations or elaborate protocols
  • JRP facilitates subsequent publication of results demonstrating that the methodology has already been reviewed, and reduces the effort of writing up the results, as the protocol can be easily referenced
  • JRP demonstrates to reviewers of subsequent results papers that authors followed and adhered to carefully developed and described a priori methods
  • In an effort to make research more reproducible and to avoid problems such as switched outcomes, many journals now require publication of research protocols (even for non-RCTs)
  • Studies whose protocols or grant proposals have been accepted in JRP are "in principle accepted" for subsequent publication of results in other JMIR journals as long as authors adhere to their original protocol, regardless of study results (even if they are negative), reducing publication bias in medicine
  • Published protocols will receive a Registered Report Identifier which will facilitate publication of the subsequent results paper; see What is a Registered Report?
  • Authors publishing their protocols in JRP will receive a 20% discount on the article processing fee if they publish their results in another journal of the JMIR journal family (for example, JMIR for ehealth studies, i-JMR for others)

For more information on why to publish protocols or proposals see our Knowledge Base article Why should I publish my protocol or grant proposal?

In 2024, JMIR Research Protocols received a Journal Impact Factor™ of 1.4 (5-Year Journal Impact Factor™: 1.5) according to the latest release of the Journal Citation Reports™ from Clarivate, 2024.

With a CiteScore of 2.4, JMIR Research Protocols ranks in the 66th percentile (#211 of 636) as a Q2 journal in the field of General Medicine, according to Scopus data.

JMIR Research Protocols is indexed in PubMed, PubMed Central (PMC), MEDLINE, Sherpa Romeo, DOAJ, Scopus, Web of Science(WoS)/ESCI/SCIE, and EBSCO.