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Public Health Reports welcome contributions that help to meet the informational needs of public health professionals and students by describing important scientific and programmatic developments, new technologies, relevant policy issues and current scientific debates. Specific manuscripts for publication can include:
• Letters to the editor
• Feature articles
• Research articles
• Practice articles
• Viewpoints and Commentaries
• Special columns |
Contributors are indexed or abstracted in MEDLINE/PubMed, Current Contents, EMBASE/Excerpta Medica, Pais International, LexisNexis, and EBSCOhost.
Please refer to the following sections for more detailed information and guidelines:
 Writing for Public Health Reports
What to Expect After Submission
Contributions & Their Length
Conflicts of Interest
Cover Letter
The Manuscript
Peer Review
Copyright
"From the Schools of Public Health" Section
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We welcome contributions that help us meet the information needs of public health professionals by describing important scientific and programmatic developments, new technologies, relevant policy issues, and current scientific debates.
In general, PHR conforms to Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals (Public Health Rep 1997;112:253-63), available online at www.icmje.org/index.html.
Submit manuscripts electronically in Microsoft Word (doc) or (pdf) to:
Laurence D. Reed, Acting Editor, Public Health Reports
manuscripts@publichealthreports.org.
Although not necessary nor encouraged, hard copy submissions
can be sent to:
Public Health Reports
7774 Heatherglen Drive
Cincinnati, OH 45255
Tel: (513) 232-3190
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Submitters will receive acknowledgment of receipt within 48 hours. Typically, decisions regarding external peer review are provided within two to three weeks. This does not imply acceptance for publication by PHR. Evaluation criteria include, but are not limited to importance of a question, quality/age of data, appropriateness of methods/data analyses, link of discussion to results/conclusions, and impact/contribution to the field.
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Letters to the Editor: We welcome and encourage the submission of letters; please limit letters to 500 words.
Feature Articles: Features present the current status of a subject area and implications for policy, practice, or future research. Features should be no more than 4,000 words and should include a 150-word unstructured synopsis.
Research Articles: We seek to publish research that is fully developed and original. To avoid redundant publishing, we do not accept preliminary reports or reports of studies that are only incrementally different from previously published research. Research articles should be no more than 3,000 words and should include a structured synopsis (Objectives, Methods, Results, Conclusions) of up to 250 words.
Practice Articles: We publish articles describing innovative public health programs and initiatives, their current status, and documented outcomes. Practice articles should be no more than 3,000 words and should include a 150-word unstructured synopsis.
Viewpoints and Commentaries: These are short opinion pieces, often solicited, addressing contemporary public health issues.
Columns: Regular peer-reviewed columns include Law and the Public’s Health, Public Health Chronicles, Global Health Matters, Local Acts, Environmental Health, and From the Schools of Public Health. We welcome letters of inquiry proposing article ideas for columns.
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Full disclosure and avoiding the appearance of a conflict are our guiding principles. Please provide a statement regarding any potential conflict when you submit your manuscript to PHR. We will decide what should be disclosed to our readers. Similarly, you must disclose any similar or related work submitted or published elsewhere.
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When submitting your manuscript, please include a cover letter describing the article and explaining why it is unique, relevant, and applicable to PHR. The cover letter should also include a statement that the material has not been published nor is being considered for publication elsewhere. The cover letter should also note Institutional Review Board approval for all studies involving people, medical records, and human tissues.
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Here's what your manuscript should look like:
Title Page: (a) title (short and descriptive); (b) full names of all authors, including their graduate degrees (please limit number of authors to 10); (c) all authors' institutional affliations and job titles during the course of the research (and current affliations and titles if different); (d) name, street address, telephone number, fax number, and e-mail address of corresponding author; (e) word count of the text (exclusive of synopsis, tables, and references), and the number of charts, tables, and figures.
Synopsis: The abstract is your work's face to the world, as published in various medical indexes; a good abstract promotes readership. Synopses of Feature and Practice articles should be a maximum of 150 words without abbreviations, symbols, or references to tables or graphs. Structured synopses of Research articles (250-word maximum) should contain four parts labeled Objectives, Methods, Results, and Conclusions.
Text: In writing for PHR. keep in mind that public health is an extremely broad field and most readers will be in parts of the field other than your own. Your introduction or lead is particularly important. Please define terms that are not universally understood and avoid the use of jargon.
Research: Research articles should be divided into five sections: Introduction/purpose, Methods, Results, Discussion, and Conclusions. In the Methods section, tell readers “who, what, when, where, and why,” and provide a full explanation in the Methods section of how you arrived at each finding reported in the Results section. In the Discussion section, emphasize impact and value added to public health and discuss study limitations. Use active rather than passive voice throughout the article.
References: Please consult the Uniform Requirements section on references, or see the National Library of Medicine's “Citing Medicine: The NLM Style Guide for Authors, Editors, and Publishers,” available online here. Numerical references should not be embedded in the text (i.e., please do not use the "Footnote and Endnote" function in Microsoft Word for references). Citations of personal communications or unpublished material should appear in the text. PHR does not use substantive footnotes.
Article Length: Except for Feature articles, please limit manuscript length to approximately 3,000 words, excluding synopsis, tables, and references. With rare exceptions, PHR does not include appendices.
Page numbering and line spacing/numbering: To aid in the review process, please include page and line numbers in the manuscript and use 1.5-line spacing for optimal readability.
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After an initial review by our editorial committee, we select promising contributions for peer review; these are sent to two or more external reviewers.
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Authors assign copyright to the Association of Schools of Public Health. Authors may use their own material in other publications provided PHR is acknowledged as the original place of publication.
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Contributions by ASPH member faculty and students are also needed for the three ASPH-sponsored columns of the journal.
Faculty members may submit articles for the following two columns:
• On Linkages: practice-based activities at the schools
• On Academics: articles about academic public health
Students, fellows, or working professionals up to two years post-graduation from ASPH-member schools may submit articles for the Student Column. Click here for a flyer announcing the Student Column.
To submit an article to any of the three ASPH-sponsored columns of Public Health Reports, send a short abstract using an abstract guideline form via email to John McElligott at jmcelligott@asph.org.
After an abstract is reviewed and a full manuscript is requested, authors should follow the same guidelines listed above. A summary of the guidelines is available here.
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