SSPH+ Journals

The second year of Gold Open Access (OA) publishing of the two SSPH+ journals International Journal of Public Health (IJPH) and Public Health Reviews (PHR) was marked by a steady increase in submissions and a brisk demand for our Article Processing Charge (APC) waiver support programs. In line with the global reach of the journals, the Globequity platinum fee waiver program, funded by swissuniversities, supported 23 publications by first authors from 13 low and middle income countries. Six SSPH+ PhD students benefited from discounts funded by SSPH+.

The reflections on "I don't have time" - is this the end of peer review?" in an editorial were complemented by a well-received survey about how to overcome the peer review crisis and best reward the important work of peer review (results will be published in summer 2023). A fundamental basis for the success of the SSPH+ journals is the dedicated work of more than 80 editors handling the rigorous peer review process. As “society journals”, PHR and IJPH guarantee the Editorial Office and all editorial decisions to be fully independent of the publisher. Handling manuscripts was particularly demanding during the last two years of transition to OA publishing. To honor these efforts, SSPH+ decided to offer editors a fee-for-service appreciation for handling the 2021/2022 submissions. The model serves as a pilot to possiby adopt a long-term concept carried by the SSPH+ vision to use the revenues of the not-for-profit SSPH+ journals to support a) those leading the editorial tasks, b) the training of the SSPH+ PhD students and c) for APC fee waiver programs. An example for the latter is the SSPH+ decision to provide a full APC fee waiver to all articles co-authored by SSPH+ faculty members until the end of 2023.

Journal productivity in 2022 totals 931 submissions, 349 publications, 12 open Calls and 4 new Calls in 2022. Moreover, the Young Researcher Editorial training program of IJPH was again highly successful, see more information on this here.