Journals Library

Journals

About the Journals

The National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) is the world’s first health research funder to publish comprehensive accounts of its commissioned research within its own publicly and permanently available journals. The NIHR Journals Library comprises a suite of six open access peer-reviewed journals reporting results from a range of health research areas:

Reports published in the NIHR Journals Library provide a full account of the research project, including methods and a full description of the results. The full reports complement shorter articles submitted for publication in other peer-review journals which the NIHR actively encourages researchers to do as part of their dissemination strategy.

Following a successful pilot, threaded publication is now the primary publishing route for research published in the Journals Library.  Researchers are able to tell the story of their research through a collection of articles, published by the NIHR Journals Library or in an external journal, and a synopsis, which draws the threads together once the research is completed. Find out more about the threaded publication model. 

Full description of research
Reproducible
Positive, neutral and negative results reported
Peer-reviewed and copy-edited
Published in an open access journal  

 

Publication Process

Editorial office

Our dedicated publishing and production teams, along with a network of experts, ensure that we continue to publish high-quality, trusted research. Final reports are delivered to the editorial office at the NIHR Coordinating Centre at the University of Southampton. We manage the editorial review process between the editors, reviewers and authors, ahead of sending the report to the production house. We take an active role in ensuring that our editorial process is responsible and transparent and our authors are expected to meet publishing ethical requirements. We also co-ordinate the editorial boards, and manage the relationship with the production house. 

For details of how to contact the Editorial Office, please see the contact us page.

Expert reviewers

Our community of reviewers plays a vital part in maintaining and improving the quality of the Journals Library. Reviewers are usually sourced from our database of experts, from author suggestions, or from peer-to-peer recommendations. Typically, for each report, four reviewers are chosen for suitability by the editors, and will cover a variety of relevant areas in their reviews. The Journals Library has a system of single blind review, where authors do not know who has reviewed or edited their final reports. If you would like to be a reviewer, please register.

Production house

Our production house is Newgen Publishing UK.  We have a dedicated project management team at Newgen who are responsible for managing the production stage following editorial review.  This involves copy-editing, typesettting and producing the electronic files of reports.  When reports reach Newgen, they are copy-edited and proofread by professional writers and proof-readers who liaise directly with the report author and editors.

Publication

The NIHR Journals Library is committed to maintaining the content it publishes and to alerting readers to changes if and when they occur.

We provide the opportunity for our readers to comment on and/or raise issues based on the reports published in the Journals Library.  Comments submitted are electronic letters which are sent to the editors.  If you would like to add a comment you can find an online form at the bottom of each report page.

Editorial Boards and Groups

The editorial board and groups consist of active clinicians and clinical academics (or the equivalent in public health), health policy experts, programme directors and the editor-in-chief of the NIHR Journals Library.

The NIHR Journals Library editors work across all of the journals. They review final reports alongside reviewer comments, and ensure that authors meet the required standards for publication in the Journals Library. They meet three times a year to discuss live publishing issues, the development of the journals and to revise and review publishing policies and guidance.

Members of the NIHR Journals Library editorial boards and groups are required to declare any interests which conflict, or may be considered to conflict, with NIHR business, or may be perceived as influencing decisions made in the course of their work within the NIHR. All members are asked to complete the Register of Interest form (annually), which is intended to capture long term predictable interests that could be perceived to lead to conflicts of interest. These and other interests are judged on a case by case basis at individual meetings. View the Register of Interests for the editorial boards and groups.

NIHR Journals Library Editor-in-Chief

Dr Cat Chatfield

NIHR Journals Library -Senior Journal Editors

Dr Eugenia Cronin - Public Health Research 

Dr Peter Davidson - Efficacy and Mechanism Evaluation & Deputy Editor Health Technology Assessment

Professor Andrée Le May - Programme Grants for Applied Research 

Professor Catriona McDaid - Health Technology Assessment 

Dr Emma Pitchforth - Global Health Research 

Professor Helen Snooks - Health and Social Care Delivery Research 

NIHR Journals Library Editors

Professor Matthias Beck

Dr Tessa Crilly

Tara Lamont

Professor William McGuire

Professor Geoffrey Meads

Professor James Raftery

Dr Rob Riemsma

Professor Helen Roberts

Professor Jonathan Ross

The only occasion when details about a final report might be passed to a third party without the authors’ prior permission is if the editors suspect serious research misconduct (please see Publication Ethics for further information).

Open Access

Total and complete publication of research findings is part of the NIHR’s commitment to the principles of open access and adding value to all stages of research, ensuring best use of public money to benefit the health and wealth of the nation.

All journals in the NIHR Journals Library are open access and are free to view and download online (print copies can be purchased from the individual report pages).

Launched in 1997, Health Technology Assessment (HTA) has an impact factor of 3.6 and is ranked 32nd (out of 105 titles) in the 'Health Care Sciences & Services' category of the Clarivate 2022 Journal Citation Reports (Science Edition). It is also indexed by MEDLINE, CINAHL (EBSCO), EMBASE, NCBI Bookshelf, DOAJ, Europe PMC, the Cochrane Library, INAHTA, the British Nursing Index, Ulrichsweb, and the Clarivate Science Citation Index. 

Health and Social Care Delivery Research (HSDR) was launched in 2013 and is indexed by MEDLINE, Europe PMC, DOAJ, INAHTA, Ulrichsweb and NCBI Bookshelf. 

Efficacy and Mechanism Evaluation (EME) was launched in 2014 and is indexed by Europe PMC, DOAJ, Ulrichsweb and NCBI Bookshelf. 

Programme Grants for Applied Research (PGfAR) was launched in 2013 and is indexed by Europe PMC, NCBI Bookshelf, DOAJ, Ulrichsweb and SCOPUS. 

Public Health Research (PHR) was launched in 2013 and is indexed by MEDLINE, Europe PMC, NCBI Bookshelf, DOAJ, INAHTA and Ulrichsweb.

The Department of Health & Social Care (DHSC) and the Medical Research Council (MRC), in association with a number of other UK biomedical funders, is a partner in an initiative to establish Europe PubMed Central (Europe PMC).

Led by the Wellcome Trust, the aim of this initiative is to create a stable, permanent and free-to-digital archive of the full text, peer reviewed research publications (and datasets) that arise from research funded through the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) and other members of the Europe PMC Funders Group.

Please see the NIHR Policy on Open Access for its funded research.

Transparency

Ensuring that our published research is open access is an important part of our commitment to transparency. We are also transparent about what our editorial process entails and are responsible in our approach to editorial reviewThis ensures that the research published in our journals is trustworthy and of high-quality. Our Information for Authors includes comprehensive information about the editorial process and we provide full details of the requirements for our peer reviewers 

We ask our authors to follow our guidance on publication ethics and support the use of a declaration of transparency (for further information please see the Equator website: https://www.equator-network.org/2014/08/12/declaration-of-transparency/)  

Readers of our journals are able to respond to published research through electronic letters to the editor.   

Publication ethics

We take an active role in the prevention of plagiarism, falsification of data, fabrication of results and other areas of ethical misconduct. All journals in the NIHR Journals Library are members of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). This is a UK-based charity, with over 7000 members worldwide from all academic fields. COPE advises editors and publishers on how to handle cases of research and publication misconduct. 

Plagiarism detection software is used to check all reports submitted to the NIHR Journals Library.  

We support the use of a declaration of transparency. For further information please see the Equator website: https://www.equator-network.org/2014/08/12/declaration-of-transparency/  

Please see our policies for more information about our requirements for authors. 

Research Practice

The research NIHR funds is world-leading and we operate to the highest standards. Consistent with this, we are signatories of both the Concordat to Support Research Integrity and the Concordat to Support the Career Development of Researchers.

At NIHR, we expect our staff and the researchers we fund to abide by all regulatory and legislative frameworks in relation to research practice, transparency and governance.

All NIHR-funded researchers are required to follow NIHR policies and guidelines relating to research practice, research culture and integrity and Privacy and FOI. This includes policies around study registration, the use of animals in research, research integrity and patient consent.

Research Misconduct

Should there be concerns that a project suffered misconduct in research, publication, or professional behaviour, the case may be discussed in confidence with the editorial board, or referred to COPE or any other relevant authorities. Concerns about research misconduct will be investigated by the relevant NIHR programme and publication of the Journals Library report may be delayed until the matter is resolved.