About Health Research Policy and Systems

What is Health Research Policy and Systems?

Health Research Policy and Systems is an Open Access, peer-reviewed, online journal that aims to provide a platform for the global research community to share their views, findings, insights and successes.

Health Research Policy and Systems considers manuscripts that investigate the role of evidence-based health policy and health research systems in ensuring the efficient utilization and application of knowledge to improve health and health equity, especially in developing countries. Research is the foundation for improvements in public health. The problem is that people involved in different areas of research, together with managers and administrators in charge of research entities, do not communicate sufficiently with each other. How well informed is the public of the results of their research? How do they make sure that what they do will actually improve health? Do they have good links with the decision makers who can actually influence how their research findings are used? Is the money used to sponsor their activities spent wisely, fairly and efficiently? Are there means to assess the impact and utility of their work? How many of them are leaving the country for greener pastures? How can they be enticed to stay?

Through the publication and dissemination of quality research, the journal's mission is to provide a vehicle and a forum for furthering the intellectual debate and discourse on the important role of evidence-based Health Research Policy and Systems. It is all about sharing knowledge in order to improve health and health equity, especially in developing countries.

Content overview

Health Research Policy and Systems considers the following types of articles:

• Research - reports of data from original research.
• Commentaries - short, focused and opinionated articles on any subject within the journal's scope. These articles are usually related to a contemporary issue, such as recent research findings, and are often written by opinion leaders invited by the Editorial Board.
• Reviews - comprehensive, authoritative descriptions of any subject within the scope of Health Research Policy and Systems; these articles are usually written by opinion leaders that have been invited by the Editorial Board.

Peer review policies

• A policy of open peer review is adopted by the journal.
• Peer review in Health Research Policy and Systems is designed to ensure that the research published is based on sound principles of science.
• We recognize the importance of highlighting articles that contain the most interesting, important or significant research. Peer reviewers are asked to indicate articles they consider to be especially interesting or significant. These articles will be given greater prominence within the journal and greater external publicity.

Edited by Miguel Gonzalez Block and Stephen Hanney, Health Research Policy and Systems is supported by an international Editorial Board.

Publishing in Health Research Policy and Systems

All articles will be listed in PubMed immediately upon acceptance (after peer review), and will be covered by PubMed Central and Embase.

Articles in Health Research Policy and Systems should be cited in the same way as articles in a traditional journal. However, because articles in this journal are not printed, they do not have page numbers. Instead, they have a unique article number.

The following citation:

Health Res Policy Sys 2004, 2:1

refers to article 1 from volume 2 of the journal.

As an online journal, Health Research Policy and Systems does not have issue numbers. Each volume corresponds to a calendar year.

To keep up to date with the latest articles from Health Research Policy and Systems, why not register to receive alerts? Registration also enables you to customise your subject areas of interest, store your searches, and submit your manuscripts.

Submission of manuscripts

Manuscripts should be submitted electronically to Health Research Policy and Systems using the online submission system. Full details of how to submit a manuscript are given in the instructions for authors.

General journal policies

Health Research Policy and Systems is published  by BioMed Central, an independent publisher committed to ensuring peer-reviewed biomedical research is Open Access. That means it is freely and universally accessible online, it is archived in at least one internationally recognised free access repository, and its authors retain copyright, allowing anyone to reproduce or disseminate articles, according to the BioMed Central copyright and licence agreement. Health Research Policy and Systems however, has taken this further by making all its content Open Access.

Health Research Policy and Systems's articles are archived in PubMed Central, the US National Library of Medicine's full-text repository of life science literature, and also in repositories at the University of Potsdam in Germany, at INIST in France and in e-Depot, the National Library of the Netherlands' digital archive of all electronic publications. The journal is also participating in the British Library's e-journals pilot project, and plans to deposit copies of all articles with the British Library.

BioMed Central is working closely with the Thomson Reuters (ISI) to ensure that citation analysis of articles published in Health Research Policy and Systems will be available.

Health Research Policy and Systems is able to deliver summaries of frequently updated content via Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds. These are accessible via the orange "XML" button at the top of the list of recent articles or the list of most accessed articles. For more information about RSS feeds see our publisher's website.

For further information about general policies please see the instructions for authors.