SSPH+ Journals

The International Journal of Public Health and Public Health Reviews are independent society journals owned and published by the non-profit Swiss School of Public Health (SSPH+) using the systems and services of Frontiers. The journals are managed by a fully independent editorial office based at the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute (Swiss TPH). For more information, please refer to our journal policy.

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WAIVERS

GLOBEQUITY: Promoting platinum open access for low and middle income country scientists – A publication fee waiver program for two Swiss society journals.

The GLOBEQUITY program counters an inequity where scientists in LMIC+ face discriminatory barriers to publish open access (OA) given that their governments, universities and research institutions cannot fund the article processing charges (APC). In addition, agreements of publishers supporting OA are signed mostly with high-income countries and wealthy research institutions.

To promote global equity in OA, GLOBEQUITY supports authors from low/middle income countries and from some countries in economic transition (LMIC+) with extended APC discounts or platinum open access (OA) until 2024. Eligible are first authors affiliated with institutions in low/ middle income countries (research4life classification) and in additional countries in Latin America, Central and Eastern Europe, Asia and Africa, who do not have access to other APC funds.

GLOBEQUITY is funded by the Open Science Program of swissuniversities.

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APC Waiver Program for SSPH+ Affiliates

In December 2023, the SSPH+ Affiliate APC Waiver Program was extended until the end of 2024.

IJPH and PHR manuscripts with successful peer-review and with at least one author affiliated with SSPH+ (at time of submission) will be published free of charge (no APC is due) under the following conditions:

  • Manuscripts must be submitted by 31.12.2024
  • At least one author is an SSPH+ Faculty member or is part of the research group or department of an SSPH+ Faculty member (i.e., same primary affiliation)
  • To qualify for this SSPH+ APC Waiver Program, review articles (all forms, including policy briefs) must be submitted to Public Health Reviews and original articles to International Journal of Public Health, thus, review articles submitted to IJPH will not qualify for the fee waiver.
  • As part of our efforts to strengthen the journals’ quality and performance, beneficiaries of SSPH+ fee waivers are expected to provide feedback – upon request – about their experience with the review and publishing process (simple short survey).

Find more information and procedure here.

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Quality in Publishing

On November 30th 2023, the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) announced that they will no longer fund Open Access articles in special issues due to the supposed use of “inconsistent process”. We oppose this policy, since we believe that it is not possible to determine quality based on whether an article is published as part of a special issue or as a regular publication. Indeed, our journals operate exactly the same rigorous peer review process for special issue and regular submissions. We believe that scientific funding policy should instead focus on the true problems in scientific publishing: threats to editorial independence and rigor in peer review processes. Read our full response to this SNSF policy here.

Prof. em. Nino Künzli, Chair SSPH+ Journals and Editor in Chief, Int J of Public Health
Dr. Christopher Woodrow, Managing Editor SSPH+ Journals, Swiss TPH
Dr. Anke Berger, former Managing Editor SSPH+ Journals, Swiss TPH