About JOM

Why the journal exists

The journal connects research across the disciplines that study obesity.

Who the journal is for

The people who treat, study, measure and plan for obesity, and who need to read each other.

• Clinicians in obesity medicine

  Physicians managing obesity and its comorbidities, and the bariatric and metabolic teams reporting procedural and long-term outcomes.

• Nutrition scientists and dietitians

  Researchers and practitioners working on dietary intervention, energy balance, nutritional assessment and eating behavior.

• Behavioral scientists and psychologists

  Researchers in behavior change, eating disorders in the context of obesity, weight stigma and the psychological outcomes of treatment.

• Metabolic and exercise researchers

  Investigators in adipose and hepatic metabolism, insulin resistance, body composition, and the physiology of activity and inactivity.

• Epidemiologists and public health researchers

  Those measuring prevalence and trend, evaluating prevention programs, and studying the environments and policies that shape risk.

• Health services researchers

  Those studying how obesity care is delivered, who reaches it, what it costs and how services can be organized to work better.

Responsible research

Obesity research runs on human participants, on drug, device and surgical therapy, on children, and on measurements from which a person can be recognized.

• Participants

  Ethics, consent and privacy

  Research involving human participants, identifiable information or biological material requires an ethics statement naming the approving committee and its reference number, or explaining an applicable exemption. Authors state whether consent to participate was obtained where required, and written consent for publication is required for identifiable case material. Research involving children and adolescents must report how assent and parental or guardian consent were obtained.

• Trials

  Registration and reporting standards

  Interventional clinical trials must be registered in an accepted public trial registry at or before the first participant provides consent for enrollment. The registry name, registration number, and registration date must be reported in the manuscript. Reporting follows the standard for the design: CONSORT for trials, STROBE for observational studies, PRISMA for systematic reviews, CARE for case reports, and ARRIVE for animal research.

• Interests

  Funding and competing interests

  All funding sources and competing interests are disclosed. In this field that explicitly includes any interest in a commercial weight-management product or service, in a pharmaceutical or device manufacturer, and in a food or nutrition industry sponsor. Disclosure is required of authors, and of editors and reviewers in relation to the manuscripts they handle.

• The record

  Data, corrections and integrity

  Every empirical research manuscript must include a data-availability statement. Published work that is later found to be wrong is corrected or retracted in public and in the version of record, and concerns about published work are handled under the journal's editorial policies rather than informally.

Editorial policies in full Instructions for authors

Editorial responsibility

Who decides, on what basis, and what happens when someone is too close to a manuscript.

• Editor-in-Chief

  Responsible for the journal's scholarly direction

  The Editor-in-Chief sets the journal's editorial direction, is accountable for its scope and standards, and takes final responsibility for decisions on the manuscripts the journal handles.

• Editorial board

  Subject oversight across the journal's domains

  Board members provide subject oversight in their own areas, advise on scope and standards, and handle or advise on manuscripts in their fields. The full board, with each member's country and ORCID iD where recorded, is listed on the editorial board page.

• Reviewers

  Independent subject-matter assessment

  Reviewers assess whether the question is worth answering, whether the design answers it, and whether the reporting supports the conclusion. Their reports inform the decision; they do not make it. Reviewers work under the journal's confidentiality and artificial-intelligence rules, which are set out in the reviewer guidelines.

• Conflicts

  Recusal, not disclosure alone

  An editor or reviewer with an interest in a submission — an institutional, financial, commercial or personal relationship that a reasonable reader would want to know about — is recused from handling it, and the manuscript is reassigned. This applies to submissions from an editor's own institution or research group as much as to commercially sponsored work.

The editorial board For editors

Where to go next

The pages that carry each of these rules in full.

• Aims and scope

  The journal covers assessment, prevention, treatment and long-term management of obesity; its biology and determinants; and its physical, psychological and social consequences. The complete scientific boundaries are set out on the Aims and Scope page.

• Editorial board

  Every board member, with country and ORCID iD where recorded.

• Latest research

  What the journal has most recently published, with authors, affiliations and DOIs.

• Editorial policies

  Ethics, consent, trial registration, data availability, corrections and retractions.

• Instructions for authors

  How to prepare a manuscript, by article type, before submitting it.

• Indexing and discovery

  What the journal's identifiers and open license do, stated without overclaim.

Submit a manuscript

Three routes are open: the publisher's portal at ManuscriptZone, the simple manuscript submission form preselected for this journal, and assisted submission through the editorial office at [email protected]. Authors must use only one submission route for the same manuscript.