JOURNAL POLICY
Aims and scope
Global Health Focus welcomes manuscripts that prioritise solving problems facing health, humanity and planet earth through knowledge generation and sharing of evidence. The journal accepts wide-ranging topics on public health, global health, One Health, planetary health, health systems, health policy, health economics, health equity, population health, tropical infections and other themes concerning human health and wellbeing.
Publisher
Global Health Focus is published by GHF, an international initiative that develops critical thinkers, leaders, researchers, and innovators through its popular emerging leaders’ program in global health, research capacity building, and the creation of knowledge and evidence for translation to global health policy and practice.
Frequency of publication
Global Health Focus publishes four issues annually. Based on the volume of incoming submissions, there may be additional or supplementary issues.
Open access
All articles published by Global Health Focus are made freely and permanently accessible online immediately upon publication, without subscription charges or registration barriers.
Article processing fees
There is no article processing fee for authors.
Peer-review policy
Global Health Focus operates a single-blind peer review system, where the reviewers are aware of the names and affiliations of the authors. Manuscripts are reviewed by two or more experts to evaluate the scientific validity of the methods and contents, duplication of published work and the overall quality of the manuscript. In addition, the editors will ensure that the manuscripts published contain adequate scientific strengths and merits.
The editor and any editorial staff will not disclose any information about the submitted manuscript to anyone other than the corresponding author, reviewers, potential reviewers, other editorial advisors, and the publisher before its publication.
Editorial decision stages
The editorial decision on a manuscript will be based on the comments from the reviewers and editors. All editorial decisions will be communicated through the Editor-in-Chief. After the manuscript passes the initial technical check, the Editor-in-Chief makes the decision whether to initiate the peer review process. If the manuscript passes the initial screening stage, it is assigned to a Handling Editor who will curate the manuscript through at least two reviewers. Following this, an editorial decision is made to accept, reject or ask for revisions. For a manuscript that is resubmitted for revisions, the Editor-in-Chief can make the final editorial decision based on the recommendation of the Handling Editor and/or reviewers.
Authorship criteria and changes to authorship
Authorship of a manuscript is based on the following criteria:
- Substantial contribution to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis and interpretation of data for the work; AND
- Drafting the work or reviewing it critically for important intellectual content; AND
- Final approval of the version to be published; AND
- Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.
One of the authors should be identified as the corresponding author. All authors should declare their conflicts of interest.
If authors request for any change in the author list after submission or publication, such a request must be accompanied with a signed agreement of all authors listed and all authors added or removed and a written explanation on the change of author list.
Those who have helped in the project or writing the manuscript but do not meet the authorship criteria should be mentioned in the acknowledgment section.
The use of artificial intelligence-assisted technology in writing scientific manuscripts will not be listed as authors.
Conflict of interest
Authors must declare financial and non-financial relationships, activities and conflicts of interest defined by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors. Authors must declare conflicts of interest as a part of commitment towards ensuring transparency in the scientific process.
For any manuscript, where any one of the editorial board members are listed as author, he/she/they will be blinded in the entire online review process.
Research ethics policy
Research involving human or animal subjects must be accompanied with evidence of approvals from research ethics committees and the research method must meet the global best practices on health research. If there is any concern about ethical practices involved in the research, Global Health Focus will not publish such manuscripts. If readers suspect any misconduct or breach of ethical principles in articles published in our journal, please report to the journal office or the Editor-in-Chief. The journal reserves the right to withdraw or retract articles if serious ethical misconduct is reported.
Standard reporting guidelines
Global Health Focus encourages and endorses the use of an appropriate reporting guideline available at the EQUATOR Network.
Copyright and licencing
For all articles published in Global Health Focus, the copyright is retained by the authors. Articles are licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
Withdrawal, retraction and complaint policy
The authors may withdraw the manuscript at any time before publication. After the article has been published, it cannot be withdrawn.
If the author discovers any significant error or inaccuracy within the contents of his or her published document, the author is obligated to notify the journal editor or publisher and cooperate with the editor to retract or correct the paper.
The journal has the right to withdraw the manuscript or the article if there is sufficient evidence of scientific misconduct, gross data manipulation, ethical misconduct, plagiarism or fraudulent use of data without the consent of its owner. An article may be removed from the journal website when subjected to legal limitations with publisher, copyright holder or author. Any evidence of inaccurate data representation, violating legal rights, scientific data tampering and risk of harm to others may lead to removal of the article from the journal.
An article may be withdrawn or retracted if there are any legal disputes or any copyright infringements involving the manuscript or article. The original article will be removed from the online archive and the PDF or HTML link will display as “retracted”.
If a reader notices any concern for the scientific validity or veracity of information presented in a published article or any complaints on scientific or ethical misconduct, please contact the journal editorial office and the Editor-in-Chief. The journal office must take action on every complaint and take appropriate action.
Archiving and repository
A full archival copy of all publications is archived in the journal website.
