About Manuelle Medizin

Manuelle Medizin

Manuelle Medizin is the German-language medical journal for manual medicine, published by Springer-Verlag and issued by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Manuelle Medizin (DGMM). Appearing with four issues per year since 1962, it is the scientific organ of the German manual-medicine community, addressing physicians from orthopaedics, trauma surgery, general medicine, rheumatology, internal medicine and traumatology, as well as physiotherapists in clinics and practices. Since 2018 the journal has carried the subtitle "European Journal of Manual Medicine", reflecting its European orientation. Through its interdisciplinary approach it promotes the scientific, practical and professional development of manual medicine: the diagnosis, therapy and prevention of reversible functional disorders of the musculoskeletal system.

Overview

Manuelle Medizin is the Zeitschrift, the journal, of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Manuelle Medizin e.V. (DGMM), the German scientific society for manual medicine based in Hamm. The DGMM, a member of the Arbeitsgemeinschaft der Wissenschaftlichen Medizinischen Fachgesellschaften, has published the journal with Springer-Verlag since 1962, with four issues per year. The journal is simultaneously the European journal "European Journal of Manual Medicine", a title it has carried as its subtitle since the first issue of 2018.

The readership spans the disciplines that practice manual medicine: physicians from orthopaedics, trauma surgery, general medicine, rheumatology, internal medicine and traumatology, and the physiotherapists and Krankengymnasten in clinics and practices. The journal's aim, through its interdisciplinary approach, is the scientific, practical and professional development of manual medicine: the medical discipline concerned with the comprehensive diagnosis, therapy and prevention of reversible functional disorders of the locomotor system and the associated organ systems.

The content combines the scientific and the practical. Practice-oriented review articles take up selected topics and compile the current knowledge from all areas of manual and osteopathic medicine, with the emphasis on the evaluation of scientific results in the light of practical experience: the readership receives concrete recommendations for action. Freely submitted original articles present important clinical studies and serve the scientific exchange; case reports show interesting case examples and unusual courses of disease and treatment. All submitted manuscripts are peer-reviewed, with originals and reviews passing through a formal peer-review process.

History

The journal Manuelle Medizin has been published since 1962, making it one of the longest-running specialist journals for manual medicine in the world. The 1960s were the formative years of the German manual-medicine movement: the physicians who had learned the manual diagnostic and therapeutic techniques, from the chirotherapy tradition to the osteopathic influences, organised themselves in the scientific societies and created the journal as their scientific organ.

The DGMM, founded to coordinate the scientific development and the postgraduate training of physicians in manual medicine including osteopathy, took the journal as its voice: the collection and promotion of scientific works in the field, the representation of manual medicine within German and international medical science, and the organisation of scientific conferences. The journal documented the discipline's development through the decades: the systematisation of the techniques, the scientific investigation of the mechanisms, the integration of the imaging and the neurophysiology, and the professional debates on the training standards.

The subtitle history reflects the discipline's conceptual development. Until issue 12 of 2017, the journal carried the subtitle "Chirotherapie | Manuelle Therapie | Ärztliche Osteopathie | Ärztliche Chiropraktik | Muskuloskeletale Medizin": the enumeration of the historically and market-oriented designations under which manual diagnostics and treatment had developed. The editorial explained that the underlying concepts have large overlaps, centred on function and functional disorder, directed at the functional diseases of the musculoskeletal system. From issue 1 of 2018, the new subtitle "European Journal of Manual Medicine" expresses the journal's European ambition: to open the results to a broader circle of interested readers across Europe.

The DGMM's corporate members, including the Deutsche Gesellschaft für muskuloskelettale Medizin (DGMSM), the Dr.-Karl-Sell-Ärzteseminar Neutrauchburg (MWE) and the Ärztevereinigung für Manuelle Medizin – Ärzteseminar Berlin (ÄMM), document the journal's anchoring in the training institutions. Internationally the society is connected with the European Society of Manual Medicine (ESSOMM) and the Fédération Internationale de Médecine Manuelle.

Content and Sections

The review articles, the Übersichtsarbeiten, are the journal's core: practice-oriented compilations of the current knowledge on selected topics from all areas of manual and osteopathic medicine. The topics range from the manual-medicine interventions for back pain to the questions of orthodontics and dentistry, which the journal also addresses. The emphasis lies on the evaluation of the scientific results under consideration of practical experience: the readers receive concrete Handlungsempfehlungen, recommendations for action, for their clinical practice.

The original articles, the Originalien, present the clinical studies: the freely submitted manuscripts that document the research of the manual-medicine community, from the efficacy studies to the health-services research. The 2011 descriptive analysis of manual medicine in Germany, based on a survey of 301 physicians, exemplifies the journal's role as the forum for the discipline's self-investigation: the indications, the observed therapeutic effects, the influencing factors, and the comparison of the schools.

The case reports, the Kasuistiken, show the interesting cases: the unusual courses of disease and treatment that illustrate the diagnostic and therapeutic possibilities of manual medicine. The professional and society news keeps the readers informed about the DGMM's activities: the training programmes, the conferences, the European developments, and the professional-political debates.

Publisher and Organization

Manuelle Medizin is published by Springer-Verlag, the Berlin and Heidelberg-based science publisher, now part of Springer Nature. The journal is issued by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Manuelle Medizin e.V. (DGMM), the scientific society based in Hamm, which has published the journal with Springer since 1962. The DGMM is a member of the Arbeitsgemeinschaft der Wissenschaftlichen Medizinischen Fachgesellschaften (AWMF), the umbrella organisation of German medical scientific societies.

The journal's quality management follows the scientific standards: all submitted manuscripts are reviewed, with originals and reviews undergoing peer review, and all manuscripts reporting human research must follow the Declaration of Helsinki. The digital home is springermedizin.de, Springer's medical portal, where the journal's articles are published with their abstracts, metadata and references, accessible to the subscribers and the institutional users.

The business model is the scientific journal's: the institutional and personal subscriptions, the society memberships that include the journal, and the digital licensing through Springer's platforms. The four-issues-per-year rhythm serves the specialist community's needs: the thorough, peer-reviewed content rather than the news flow.

Digital Presence

The journal's digital home is springermedizin.de, where Manuelle Medizin has its own journal page with the aims and scope, the peer-review policies, and the article archive. The articles are published with German abstracts and English metadata, indexed in the scientific databases, and accessible through Springer's institutional licensing. The DOI system gives each article its permanent identifier.

The digital strategy serves the scientific journal: the print issues provide the curated, peer-reviewed content, the digital platform the searchability, the alerting and the reference linking. For the manual-medicine community, the journal remains the scientific organ: the place where the discipline's research is published, debated and archived. The European subtitle reflects the readership's geography: the manual-medicine practitioners across Europe, from the German training seminars to the ESSOMM network, find in the journal their common scientific forum. With more than six decades of publication since 1962, its European subtitle since 2018, and its anchoring in the DGMM and Springer-Verlag, Manuelle Medizin remains the German-language journal for manual medicine, in print four times a year and online every day.