prefactory note
Makoto Ishikawa, the deceased honorary president, Kaifukuki Rehabilitation Ward Association
The area of rehabilitation medicine includes an extremely diverse range of fields and is a highly original area in medicine that derives from many different professions. Furthermore, many aspects of this kind of medicine have not yet been sufficiently verified.
Scientific verification is essential if rehabilitation medicine is to make a larger contribution to medicine in the future. In Japan, the "Kaifukuki Rehabilitation Ward" system for intensive rehabilitation (a governmental insurance system for rehabilitation wards for patients during their convalescent period) was introduced in 2000. The hospitals using this system got together to form the Kaifukuki Rehabilitation Ward Association in 2001, and since then, the association has held a large number of training workshops, made recommendations taking into account the results of field surveys, and has done its utmost to develop the rehabilitation field.
We hereby publish the JJCRS in order to support further progress in the rehabilitation field. The results of verifications of rehabilitation should be widely disclosed. Such disclosures can be expected to lead to the further development of the rehabilitation field.
Places for journals, etc., are necessary for disclosure, but it has to be said that there are not enough organizations providing these journals, etc., in Japan at the present time. Publishing in book form has its advantages, but it has the drawbacks that the amount that can be published is constrained, the number of readers is limited, etc. Therefore, we concluded that publishing an Internet open access journal would be the best solution because it has the advantages that any researcher can make a submission to it and have their article read by a large number of readers.
Furthermore, announcements of research results need to be given international exposure; therefore, we have made JJCRS a bilingual journal in English and Japanese. This method satisfies both the desire of Japanese readers to read the journal in Japanese and the imperative to make the content available to readers all around the world. By all means, please take advantage of this new system.
