SSPH+ Journal Policy


Journal Policy

  1. IJPH and PHR are independent “society journals” owned by the Swiss School of Public Health (SSPH+), a non-profit Foundation of twelve Swiss universities.
  2. In accordance with the requirements of the main national and international research authorities, IJPH and PHR have been published Gold Open Access since 2021.
  3. A fully independent Editorial Office and respected Editors-in-Chief, Senior and Associate Editors set the editorial policies, launch calls, and manage a rigorous double blind peer review process with rounds of author revisions. All decisions are made solely by these scientists.
  4. As a non-profit foundation, SSPH+ uses the income from the journals’ APC to fund its Editorial Office, pay the publishing services (per published article), waive APCs for SSPH+ faculty (2023) and support public health sciences, e.g., in a highly innovative editorial training for young researchers (YRE).
  5. Swissuniversities – the association of all universities of Switzerland – awarded our journals with the Globequity APC Feewaiver program (2022-2024) to fund APCs of authors from low- and middle-income countries.
  6. Both journals are published using the systems and services of the Swiss company Frontiers (based in Lausanne). The collaboration began in 2021 and is based on a fully transparent and fair service contract. As in the past with SpringerNature, Frontiers has no influence on the editorial strategy, peer review, or editorial decisions of our journals.
  7. SSPH+ selected Frontiers after a rigorous tender process. Frontiers is accredited and a member of major organizations involved in the regulation of publications and ethical issues, such as COPE, OASPA - Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association, and DOAJ - Directory of Open Access Journals.

Update: removal of IJPH and PHR from an anonymous website

In March 2023, a new anonymous website listed IJPH and PHR as “predatory journals”, along with other society journals published by Frontiers. The SSPH+ Directorate promptly requested the removal of our journals from this list (see our first and second letters). The removal was completed on June 16th 2023.