About American Journal of Rhinology

American Journal of Rhinology

About American Journal of Rhinology

American Journal of Rhinology is the original title, used from volume 1 in 1987 to volume 22 in 2008, of the journal that continues from volume 23 in 2009 as American Journal of Rhinology & Allergy. This Journals World record, post 358170, carries the original title and the original ISSN pair: print ISSN 1050-6586 and online ISSN 1539-6290. Its publisher is listed on this record as SAGE Publishing, and SAGE is the publisher of the continuing title, whose archive on the SAGE platform runs from March 1987 onward. Anchoring the profile to those identifiers matters, because the continuing title has a different ISSN pair, 1945-8924 and 1945-8932, and a separate Journals World record. The two records describe successive phases of one journal lineage, not two unrelated journals with similar names.

The journal is a peer-reviewed scientific publication in rhinology, the subspecialty of otolaryngology concerned with the nose, paranasal sinuses and related structures, together with the allergic conditions that affect the upper airway. SAGE describes the continuing journal as committed to expanding knowledge and publishing the best clinical and basic research within rhinology and allergy, with a focus on information that contributes to improved quality of care for patients with nasal and sinus disorders. That description also fairly characterises the ambition of the original title, whose readers were principally specialists treating sinonasal disease rather than general medical readers looking for introductory material.

This profile therefore treats American Journal of Rhinology as a historical and continuing-lineage record. It explains what the journal published under this name, how its scope is documented by the publisher, how the 2009 retitling should be understood, and what an author or reader should check today before citing, submitting to or subscribing through the current title. Where a detail belongs only to the current title, such as its present impact factor or editor-in-chief, the profile says so explicitly and does not project that detail backwards onto the 1987 to 2008 period without qualification.

Journal at a Glance

• Original title: American Journal of Rhinology, 1987 to 2008, volumes 1 to 22
• Continuing title from 2009: American Journal of Rhinology & Allergy, from volume 23
• Print ISSN for this record: 1050-6586
• Online ISSN for this record: 1539-6290
• ISSN-L: 1050-6586, as listed in library records for the title history
• Publisher: SAGE Publications, listed on this record as SAGE Publishing
• Language: English
• Field: rhinology, sinonasal medicine and surgery, and upper-airway allergy
• Primary readership named by the publisher for the continuing title: otolaryngologists, allergists and plastic surgeons
• Manuscript system for the continuing title: Manuscript Central, named by SAGE in its journal overview

Frequency information found for the continuing title lists six issues per year. A reader using that figure for the historical title should confirm the schedule for the specific volume year being cited, because frequency and issue patterns can change over a run of more than two decades. The safest bibliographic practice is to cite the volume, issue, pages and year exactly as they appear on the article itself, rather than reconstructing them from the current journal masthead.

History and Title Change

The archive begins in 1987. Library title-history records divide the run cleanly: American Journal of Rhinology for volumes 1 to 22, covering 1987 to 2008, and American Journal of Rhinology & Allergy from volume 23 in 2009 onward. The continuity of volume numbering is important evidence. A new journal starting in 2009 would ordinarily begin again at volume 1; this journal instead continued its numbering, its archive and its subject community while broadening the title to name allergy explicitly. SAGE presents the combined archive, from 1987 to the present, under the current title on its platform.

The retitling reflects the clinical reality of the field. Allergic inflammation is a central driver of rhinitis and contributes to chronic rhinosinusitis, nasal polyps and asthma comorbidity. Surgeons, allergists and physicians treating these conditions share patients, diagnostic tests and therapies. Naming allergy in the title signalled to authors and indexers that immunologic and medical management papers belonged alongside surgical papers, and it helped readers searching under allergy terms to find work that might earlier have been shelved only under rhinology or otolaryngology.

For citation integrity, the title change must be respected. Articles published up to 2008 should be cited under American Journal of Rhinology and the original ISSNs; articles from 2009 onward should be cited under American Journal of Rhinology & Allergy and its ISSNs. Library catalogues link the two through title-history notes. Conflating them can create false duplicate records, broken interlibrary requests and incorrect journal-level metric attribution, because bibliometric databases normally treat a title change with new ISSNs as a linked but distinct serial record.

Aims, Scope and Editorial Purpose

SAGE's overview for the continuing journal states that it publishes peer-reviewed original research, clinical trials and review articles, and that its focus is information contributing to improved quality of care for patients with nasal and sinus disorders. Those three article families and that patient-care focus define the core scope. A manuscript fits best when it advances understanding, diagnosis, treatment or outcomes in rhinology, rather than presenting a general ear, nose and throat case with only incidental nasal involvement.

Scope also includes basic research. The publisher's wording places clinical and basic research side by side, which means laboratory and translational studies of sinonasal tissue, inflammation, infection and allergy are in scope when their relevance to nasal and sinus disease is clear. Purely technical papers from distant fields, by contrast, need a direct rhinologic application to belong here. Authors should make that application explicit in the title, abstract and discussion instead of leaving editors to infer it.

Plastic surgeons are named among the primary readers, reflecting reconstructive and functional nasal surgery, rhinoplasty outcomes and skull-base reconstruction. That readership widens the journal beyond a narrow sinus audience without turning it into a general plastic surgery journal. Papers on nasal reconstruction or septal surgery fit when nasal function, airway or sinonasal outcomes are central to the question being studied.

Scope in Depth

Chronic rhinosinusitis, with and without nasal polyps, sits at the centre of the journal's clinical identity. Papers in this area examine phenotyping and endotyping, inflammatory mechanisms, medical therapy, biologic treatments as they emerged in later practice, surgical outcomes and recurrence. For the historical title, readers should expect the evidence base of its period: studies framed before some current biologic and guideline vocabularies became standard can still be valuable for their surgical series, outcome instruments and longitudinal observations, but they should be read in the context of the classification and treatment options available when they were published.

Although the word allergy was added to the title only in 2009, allergic disease was present in the earlier journal through rhinitis, immunotherapy, pharmacotherapy and the links between upper and lower airways. Work on allergic rhinitis addresses diagnosis, allergen exposure, antihistamines and intranasal therapies, quality of life and comorbidity with asthma and sinus disease. The later retitling made this strand explicit rather than creating it from nothing, and a careful profile of the 1987 to 2008 title should explain that continuity so that authors do not mistake the older title for a purely surgical journal.

Endoscopic approaches to the paranasal sinuses, frontal sinus surgery, skull-base access through nasal corridors, reconstruction and complication avoidance form a major surgical strand. Papers describe technique, anatomy, image guidance, outcomes and revision surgery. Such articles are read by practising rhinologists for operative detail as much as for statistics, so clear description of indications, patient selection, follow-up and adverse events matters. Historical surgical papers also document how practice changed as endoscopic methods matured, which gives the back archive a value beyond the citation record of any single article.

Smell dysfunction, nasal airflow, mucociliary function and the lived burden of sinonasal disease connect laboratory measurement to patient experience. The journal's scope, as described by its publisher for the continuing title, is explicitly tied to improved quality of care for patients with nasal and sinus disorders, and outcome research supports that aim. Validated questionnaires, symptom scores and quality-of-life instruments recur in this literature. Authors preparing related work should define outcomes before treatment, report follow-up completely and avoid claiming patient benefit from surrogate measures alone.

Basic research on sinonasal epithelium, inflammation, infection, biofilms, mucus, ciliary function and immune responses provides the mechanistic counterpart to clinical series. Translational papers try to move a laboratory observation toward diagnosis or therapy, for example through biomarkers or new delivery methods for topical treatment. Strength in this strand depends on methods that other groups can reproduce: sample handling, inclusion criteria for tissue donors, controls and assay detail. Readers evaluating older basic-science papers should check whether terminology and assays have since been refined.

Article Types and What Each Must Do

Original research is the backbone. Strong original papers state a focused question, describe the study design and setting, define inclusion and exclusion criteria, report outcomes completely and discuss limitations honestly. In surgical research that includes surgeon experience, concurrent procedures and follow-up duration. In medical research it includes adherence, rescue treatment and adverse events. Retrospective series, which are common in subspecialty surgery, should be presented as such and should not use language that implies randomised evidence.

Clinical trials require particular care. Registration, ethics approval, consent, allocation, blinding where feasible, pre-specified outcomes and complete accounting of participants are the elements readers need to judge credibility. The continuing journal uses double anonymised peer review, as described below, but anonymised review does not replace transparent reporting. Authors should follow the reporting guideline appropriate to their design and include it in their submission preparation.

Review articles in this journal are expected to synthesise, not merely summarise. A useful review maps where evidence agrees, where studies conflict because of population or method, and what a clinician should do while evidence remains incomplete. Case reports, brief communications, letters and invited contributions also appear in the wider title family, as reflected in publisher listings of publication types for the continuing journal. Such shorter forms fit best when a case teaches a diagnostic lesson, a technique is genuinely novel or a letter corrects or extends a published paper.

Peer Review and Editorial Process

SAGE describes the continuing journal's review model as double anonymised: the reviewer's name is withheld from the author and the author's name is withheld from the reviewer. Authors submitting today should therefore prepare an anonymised manuscript file and a separate title page in the manner the submission system requests, removing identifying details from text, figures and file properties. They should not assume the historical title used an identical workflow in every year of its run; the documented statement concerns the journal as it operates now.

Submission for the continuing title is through Manuscript Central at the address SAGE gives in its overview, mc.manuscriptcentral.com/ajra. That address belongs to the current title, American Journal of Rhinology & Allergy. There is no separate live submission route for the retired title name, and an author who searches only for the old title may reach library records rather than the editorial office. Checking the ISSN and volume continuity on the SAGE site is a practical way to confirm that the current portal is the correct destination for this lineage.

Editorial leadership changes over time. SAGE advertising material for the continuing journal named Raj Sindwani as editor-in-chief in the material consulted for this profile. Because editors serve terms, readers should verify the current masthead on the SAGE journal page before addressing correspondence, and should not attribute that editorship to the 1987 to 2008 period. No editor for the original-title period is named in this profile, because a complete, officially verified list for those years could not be verified from the sources consulted.

Metrics, Indexing and How to Read Them

SAGE displays an Impact Factor of 2.8 and a five-year Impact Factor of 2.5 for American Journal of Rhinology & Allergy on its journal page in the material consulted. Those figures belong to the continuing title and to the Journal Citation Reports year attached to them on that page at the time of consultation. They are not metrics for the 1987 to 2008 title in isolation, and this profile does not present them as such. Journal metrics change annually, so any author comparing journals should record the year and source of each figure rather than copying a number without context.

The presence of the journal family in medical indexing is long-standing. Articles from the journal are represented in PubMed and in the PubMed Central courtesy listings that credit SAGE Publications, and NLM catalogue information for the original title is associated with the ISSN pair on this record. Indexing of a journal title does not guarantee indexing of every item type; editorials, letters and supplements can be treated differently by databases. Authors with a funder or institutional requirement should check the specific database record for the article type they plan to submit.

Citation counts for individual classic papers in this field, such as work on nasoseptal flap reconstruction and on the epidemiology and burden of chronic rhinosinusitis, illustrate the journal's role in shaping practice, but a single highly cited paper does not describe a typical paper's reception. Readers should use journal-level metrics as one signal among several, alongside fit, readership, review quality and the audience that will actually act on the findings.

Access, Subscriptions and the Archive

Library records describe the journal as a subscription title with authentication-based access, with full text available through institutional arrangements, rather than as a fully open access journal. SAGE also offers open access routes for individual articles under its publishing options, and institutional agreements can change what an author pays or what a reader can reach. Because agreements vary by country, institution and year, this profile does not state a single article processing charge for the journal; the current figure, if any applies to a chosen route, should be checked in the SAGE submission and open access information for the continuing title.

The digital archive's continuity is a practical benefit. A clinician tracing how frontal sinus surgery or chronic rhinosinusitis treatment evolved can move from a 1990s paper under the old title to a recent paper under the new title within one publisher platform, provided their institution subscribes to the relevant backfile. Interlibrary and catalogue records that link the ISSN-L help preserve that chain. When a link fails, searching by article title, volume and year is usually more reliable than searching by journal title alone across the 2009 boundary.

For Authors: Fit, Preparation and Common Mistakes

The most common fit mistake is submitting general otolaryngology work with weak rhinologic content. A tonsil, ear or head-and-neck paper does not become rhinology because one symptom involves the nose. Conversely, a strong paper on nasal physiology, sinus surgery, allergic rhinitis or olfactory loss can fit even when its methods come from immunology, radiology, physiology or outcomes research, provided the rhinologic question leads the manuscript.

Preparation should include a careful check of recent related papers in the journal under both titles. That check serves two purposes: it shows the author how similar questions were framed and reported, and it prevents accidental duplication of a series the same group has already published. Overlapping patient cohorts must be disclosed. In a relatively small subspecialty, editors and reviewers are likely to recognise a cohort described in an earlier paper, and undisclosed overlap damages trust far more than a transparent update with longer follow-up.

Reporting should match design. Randomised work needs trial reporting, observational work needs clear cohort definition, diagnostic work needs a reference standard, and systematic reviews need a reproducible search. Figures in surgical papers should show anatomy and outcome clearly without identifying patients. Consent for identifiable images, ethics approval for human and animal work, funding and competing interests should all be handled before submission rather than after acceptance, when delays are harder to absorb.

For Readers and Librarians

Readers should treat the 2009 boundary as a change of label, not a change of subject community. A literature search limited to the current title will miss more than two decades of foundational work, while a search limited to the original title will miss all current evidence. Searching both ISSN pairs and both title forms, then deduplicating by article title and DOI where present, is the reliable approach for systematic reviews in rhinology.

Librarians should keep the title-history link visible in catalogues, preserve the distinction between the ISSN pairs for holdings and usage statistics, and note that the SAGE archive presents the combined run under the current title. That combination can confuse patrons who hold a citation to the old title; a short catalogue note explaining the volume continuity, volumes 1 to 22 under the old name and volume 23 onward under the new name, resolves most such queries.

Clinicians reading older papers should translate recommendations through current guidelines. Diagnostic criteria for chronic rhinosinusitis, imaging practice, topical and systemic therapy and the role of biologics have all developed since the original title ceased. An older paper can remain the best source for a surgical technique or a natural-history observation while being superseded for drug choice. Dating evidence is not a weakness of the archive; it is the normal condition of a specialty journal with a long run.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is American Journal of Rhinology the same journal as American Journal of Rhinology & Allergy? They are successive titles of one journal lineage. The original title ran from 1987 to 2008, volumes 1 to 22, with ISSNs 1050-6586 and 1539-6290. The continuing title began in 2009 at volume 23 with ISSNs 1945-8924 and 1945-8932. Cite each article under the title and ISSN in force when it was published.

Can I submit a manuscript to American Journal of Rhinology today? Submissions are made to the continuing title through the SAGE Manuscript Central portal named in the journal overview. There is no separate submission system for the retired title. Before submitting, confirm on the SAGE page that the journal code and title match this lineage.

Is the journal open access? The journal is primarily a subscription title, with publisher open access options for individual articles. The exact route, licence and any charge depend on the option chosen and on institutional agreements in force at submission, so authors should check the current SAGE information rather than relying on a figure quoted in a secondary listing.

What subjects fit best? Original research, clinical trials and reviews that improve care for nasal and sinus disorders, including chronic rhinosinusitis, allergic rhinitis, endoscopic sinus surgery, olfaction, sinonasal basic science and related reconstructive work, provided the rhinologic question is central.

Verification Notes for This Record

The identity in this profile is anchored to the Journals World record itself: title American Journal of Rhinology, slug american-journal-of-rhinology, publisher SAGE Publishing and ISSNs 10506586 and 15396290 in the record's structured text. Title history, volume ranges and the second ISSN pair were cross-checked against library records that list both phases of the serial. Aims, readership, review model and submission address are taken from SAGE's own journal overview for the continuing title, and are labelled as current-title information where they could differ from historical practice.

A duplicate check found the separate record for American Journal of Rhinology and Allergy, post 12091, with 282 words and ISSNs 19458924 and 19458932 in its text. That record is thin and represents the successor title, not the same ISSN record, so this profile was published on the present post and the pair is reported as a title-succession relationship. No other record with this post's exact title and ISSN pair and full-depth content was found in the direct slug checks performed for this batch.