Public health journal

A public health journal is a scientific journal devoted to the field of public health, including epidemiology, biostatistics, and health care (including nursing and all medical specialties). Most of these journals are peer-reviewed. Public health journals commonly arose as the journal of societies, such as the precursor to the British Medical Association, and would originally be collections of letters sent to the society by distant members, with an account of the proceedings of the society's recent meetings distributed to various members and the library. The increase in public health research since WWII has seen a rapid increase in the number of articles and journals.

Content

Public health journals are mainly read by doctors, nurses, and other practitioners rather than scientists, but they are "filled with increasingly complex science" which depends upon complex statistics which they may have difficulty understanding. In response they have turned towards publishing "articles that are more journalism than science" such as reviews, news, and educational material.

Editorial review

In this process, articles which meet the minimum requirements for submission (such as including the necessary descriptions of funding, privacy and publication releases, ethics/institutional review board approval, statements of original work, signatures of authors, and so on,) are first looked over by a managing editor or a member of an editorial board. They may be referred back to the authors for revision and resubmission, rejected, or presented to the editorial board for final approval.

Peer review

A more stringent review process includes a full peer review. After first review by a managing editor or member of an editorial board, an article which has good possibilities will be sent out for review by two or more researchers in the specific area. If these reviews are positive the article may be referred back to the authors to address any comments by the reviewers, or (rarely) may be accepted immediately by the editorial board.

Blind review

One common review process is the same as the peer review above, except all references to the authors are removed from the article before review by the researchers.

Content

Public health journals cover a wide range of topics. Inevitably there is a need for specialization. Generally speaking the journals tend to be intervention/practice focused. They may be categorized by medical specialization, client age focus, or practice focus.

Types of publications

Editorial

Letter to the Editor

Short communication

Case report. Although has some usefulness in clinical practice, the case report is being recently suspended from most of the top-ranked medical literature as not being evidence based medicine. Thus data of rare medical situations, in which large randomized double-blind placebo-controlled trials can not be conducted, may be rejected from publication and be restricted from the medical community.

Original research

Literature review, systematic review and meta-analysis

Abstracts from scientific meetings

Technical notes

Abstracts from other (international) journals

Clinical images of interest. This type of publication is popular in the Dermatology literature.

Internet and open access

By the end of the 20th century, most public health journals were available online, thus increasing their accessibility. There is a general move from print as primary medium to electronic publication, an example being the online journals published by BioMed Central.

With the advent of online publication, some public health journals are transforming from traditional subscription-based and pay-per-view access to open access for some or all of their content.

See also

List of medical journals

List of nursing journals

References

Public health journal