About International Journal for Equity in Health

What is International Journal for Equity in Health?

International Journal for Equity in Health is an Open Access, peer-reviewed, online journal presenting evidence relevant to the search for, and attainment of, equity in health across and within countries.

International Journal for Equity in Health aims to improve the understanding of issues that influence the health of populations. This includes the discussion of political, policy-related, economic, social and health services-related influences, particularly with regard to systematic differences in distributions of one or more aspects of health in population groups defined demographically, geographically, or socially.

Although there is a large amount of literature on the 'social determinants' of health, this focuses heavily on influences at the level of the individual, and, at most, on influences at the community level. The literature is relatively sparse on influences in the policy and political arenas and is especially deficient in analyses that examine the population-attributable fraction of ill health resulting from the different categories of influences. Because policy-makers need these sorts of information in order to make informed choices among alternatives, such information is needed.

Content overview

International Journal for Equity in Health considers the following types of articles:

• Research - reports of data from original research.
• Annotated bibliographies - compilations of bibliographic references for a limited, coherent subject area, with annotations either for each included article or other reference, or for groups of articles.
• Commentaries - short, focussed and opinionated articles on any subject within the scope of the journal. 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.

Peer review policies

Peer review in International Journal for Equity in Health is designed to ensure that the research published is 'good science'. The journal recognizes the importance of highlighting articles that contain the most interesting, important or significant research. Peer reviewers are asked to indicate which articles they consider to be especially interesting or significant. These articles will be given greater prominence within International Journal for Equity in Health and greater external publicity.

Manuscripts submitted to International Journal for Equity in Health will generally be reviewed by two external experts. Reviewers will have four possible options, for each manuscript:

Edited by Barbara Starfield, International Journal for Equity in Health is supported by an expert Editorial Board.

Publishing in International Journal for Equity in Health

All articles are listed in PubMed immediately upon acceptance (after peer review), and are covered by PubMed Central, Thomson Reuters (ISI), CABI, Embase, PAIS International and Current Contents.

Articles in International Journal for Equity in Health 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:

Int J Equity Health 2004, 2:1

refers to article 1 from volume 2 of the journal.

As an online journal, International Journal for Equity in Health does not have issue numbers. Each volume corresponds to a calendar year.

To keep up to date with the latest articles from International Journal for Equity in Health, 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 International Journal for Equity in Health using the online submission system. Full details of how to submit a manuscript are given in the instructions for authors.

General journal policies

International Journal for Equity in Health 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. International Journal for Equity in Health however, has taken this further by making all its content open access.

International Journal for Equity in Health's articles are archived in PubMed Central, the US National Library of Medicine's full-text repository of life science literature, and also 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 Thomson Reuters (ISI) to ensure that citation analysis of articles published in International Journal for Equity in Health will be available.

International Journal for Equity in Health 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.