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About

Aims and scope

Health Research Policy and Systems covers all aspects of the organisation and use of health research – including agenda setting, building health research capacity, and how research as a whole benefits decision makers, practitioners in health and related fields, and society at large.

Why publish your article in Health Research Policy and Systems?

  • Published in collaboration with the World Health Organization.
  • We explore the role of evidence-based health policy and health research systems in ensuring that knowledge from research is used effectively to improve health and health equity.
  • We take an international approach that specifically includes low-middle income countries.
  • Open access publication ensures that your article can be easily discovered, accessed, used, and shared, maximising your impact and acting as a springboard for further discovery.

Health Research Policy and Systems considers manuscripts that investigate the role of evidence-based health policy and health research systems in ensuring knowledge from research is effectively used to improve health and health equity, especially in low- and middle-income countries.

We are interested in both how health research can shape health policy and systems, and how health systems and policy can shape health research.

Our scope includes work on health research agenda-setting, research capacity-building, collaborative research production, research impact assessment and how research can best help health decision-makers, including health policy-makers, practitioners, consumers and society at large.

In considering manuscripts, we particularly look for articles that report the results of research on the prioritisation, conduct or use of research (‘research-on-research’) and/or that explicitly investigating the interaction between research and health policy or health systems.

We are keen to consider manuscripts that:

  • Provide insights on how the many, varying people involved in health (clinicians, consumers, managers, policy-makers, administrators, media, funders, researchers) can work more effectively together to improve health.
  • Explore what we can learn from other areas of research and policy to improve the use of health research in health policy, and how we can support collaborative and interdisciplinary research for health.
  • Describe and test approaches, frameworks and measures to strengthen health systems research and promote evidence-informed health policies, as well as innovative demonstrations of health systems impact.

We do not usually publish articles that solely address translation of research into practice in one clinical area or health service context.

Our mission is to support and further the discussion, debate and development of effective health research, policy and systems. We aim to bring diverse groups of people together with research evidence to overcome important health problems.

Open access

All articles published by Health Research Policy and Systems are made freely and permanently accessible online immediately upon publication, without subscription charges or registration barriers. Further information about open access can be found here.

As authors of articles published in Health Research Policy and Systems you are the copyright holders of your article and have granted to any third party, in advance and in perpetuity, the right to use, reproduce or disseminate your article, according to the BMC license agreement.

For those of you who are US government employees or are prevented from being copyright holders for similar reasons, BMC can accommodate non-standard copyright lines. Please contact us if further information is needed.

Article processing charges (APC)

Authors who publish open access in Health Research Policy and Systems are required to pay an article processing charge (APC). The APC price will be determined from the date on which the article is accepted for publication.

The current APC, subject to VAT or local taxes where applicable, is: £2390.00/$3390.00/€2790.00

Visit our open access support portal and our Journal Pricing FAQs for further information.

Open access funding

Visit Springer Nature’s open access funding & support services for information about research funders and institutions that provide funding for APCs.

Springer Nature offers agreements that enable institutions to cover open access publishing costs. Learn more about our open access agreements to check your eligibility and discover whether this journal is included.

Springer Nature offers APC waivers and discounts for articles published in our fully open access journals whose corresponding authors are based in the world’s lowest income countries (see our APC waivers and discounts policy for further information). Requests for APC waivers and discounts from other authors will be considered on a case-by-case basis, and may be granted in cases of financial need (see our open access policies for journals for more information). All applications for discretionary APC waivers and discounts should be made at the point of manuscript submission; requests made during the review process or after acceptance are unable to be considered.

Indexing services

All articles published in Health Research Policy and Systems are included in:

  • CABI
  • Cinahl
  • Citebase
  • DOAJ
  • Embase
  • EmCare
  • Global Health
  • MEDLINE
  • OAIster
  • PubMed
  • PubMed Central
  • SCImago
  • Scopus
  • Social Sciences Citation Index
  • SOCOLAR
  • Zetoc

The full text of all articles is deposited in digital archives around the world to guarantee long-term digital preservation. You can also access all articles published by BioMed Central on SpringerLink.

Peer-review policy

Peer-review is the system used to assess the quality of a manuscript before it is published. Independent researchers in the relevant research area assess submitted manuscripts for originality, validity and significance to help editors determine whether the manuscript should be published in their journal. You can read more about the peer-review process here.

Health Research Policy and Systems operates an open peer-review system, where the reviewers' names are included on the peer-review reports. In addition, if the article is published, the named reports are published online alongside the article as part of a 'pre-publication history'.

Publication of research articles by Health Research Policy and Systems is dependent primarily on their scientific validity and coherence as judged by our external expert editors and/or peer reviewers, who will also assess whether the writing is comprehensible and whether the work represents a useful contribution to the field.

Editorial policies

All manuscripts submitted to Health Research Policy and Systems should adhere to BioMed Central's editorial policies.

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Citing articles in Health Research Policy and Systems

Articles in Health Research Policy and Systems  should be cited in the same way as articles in a traditional journal. Because articles are not printed, they do not have page numbers; instead, they are given a unique article number.

Article citations follow this format:

Authors: Title. Health Res Policy Sys [year], [volume number]:[article number].

e.g. Roberts LD, Hassall DG, Winegar DA, Haselden JN, Nicholls AW, Griffin JL: Increased hepatic oxidative metabolism distinguishes the action of Peroxisome Proliferator-Activated Receptor delta from Peroxisome Proliferator-Activated Receptor gamma in the Ob/Ob mouse. Health Res Policy Sys 2009, 1:115.

Refers to article 115 from Volume 1 of the journal.

Appeals and complaints

Authors who wish to appeal a rejection or make a complaint should follow the procedure outlined in the BMC Editorial Policies.

Benefits of publishing with BMC

High visibility

Health Research Policy and Systems's open access policy allows maximum visibility of articles published in the journal as they are available to a wide, global audience. 

Speed of publication

Health Research Policy and Systems offers a fast publication schedule whilst maintaining rigorous peer review; all articles must be submitted online, and peer review is managed fully electronically (articles are distributed in PDF form, which is automatically generated from the submitted files). Articles will be published with their final citation after acceptance, in both fully browsable web form, and as a formatted PDF.

Flexibility

Online publication in Health Research Policy and Systems gives you the opportunity to publish large datasets, large numbers of color illustrations and moving pictures, to display data in a form that can be read directly by other software packages so as to allow readers to manipulate the data for themselves, and to create all relevant links (for example, to PubMed, to sequence and other databases, and to other articles).

Promotion and press coverage

Articles published in Health Research Policy and Systems are included in article alerts and regular email updates. Some may be highlighted on Health Research Policy and Systems’s pages and on the BMC homepage.

In addition, articles published in Health Research Policy and Systems may be promoted by press releases to the general or scientific press. These activities increase the exposure and number of accesses for articles published in Health Research Policy and Systems. A list of articles recently press-released by journals published by BMC is available here.

Copyright

As an author of an article published in Health Research Policy and Systems you retain the copyright of your article and you are free to reproduce and disseminate your work (for further details, see the BMC license agreement).

For further information about the advantages of publishing in a journal from BMC, please click here.