Editorial Policies
The Journal of Human Health Research (JHHR, ISSN 2576-9383) sets the editorial standards its Editor-in-Chief and reviewers apply to every submission. This page covers the policies specific to JHHR — peer review, authorship, human- and animal-research ethics, corrections, appeals and licensing — and links out to the wider publishing policies that Open Access Pub, the journal’s publisher, applies across all of its journals.
At a glance
- Peer review model
- Single-blind (double-blind on request)
- Originality screening
- iThenticate, before every submission is sent for review
- Research ethics
- Appropriate approval, consent or documented waiver, and animal-welfare reporting where applicable
- Corrections & retractions
- Per COPE guidance — full process on the Retraction Policy page
- 01Editorial decision-making & peer review
- 02Authorship & research integrity
- 03Human-participant research & data protection
- 04Animal research & welfare
- 05Data availability & permissions
- 06Corrections, retractions, appeals & complaints
- 07Copyright, licensing & open access
- 08Policies that apply publisher-wide
Editorial decision-making & peer review
Who decides, and how a manuscript is reviewed before that decision is made.
Editorial independence
Editorial decisions on JHHR submissions are made by the journal’s Editor-in-Chief and handling editors on the basis of scientific and scholarly merit, independent of commercial, advertising or sponsorship considerations. Current editors are listed on the Editorial Board.
Peer review model
JHHR uses single-blind (double-blind on request) peer review: reviewer identities are withheld from authors by default, and an author may request double-blind review for their submission. The Editor-in-Chief screens each submission for scope and originality before assigning it to independent reviewers, whose written feedback informs the editorial decision.
Reviewer & editor conflicts of interest
An editor or reviewer must declare and recuse themselves from a manuscript involving their own work, their institution, close collaborators, or any significant personal, academic or financial competing interest. An independent editor is assigned where practicable.
Authorship & research integrity
What is expected of authors, and how originality and misconduct concerns are handled.
Author conflicts of interest
Authors disclose any financial, personal or institutional relationship that could be seen to influence their research at the time of submission.
Originality & duplicate-publication screening
Submitted manuscripts are screened for originality using iThenticate before being sent for review.
Suspected misconduct
Concerns about plagiarism, data fabrication, authorship disputes or other research-integrity issues are handled in line with Open Access Pub’s publication-ethics framework. Read the Ethics framework →
Human-participant research & data protection
Because JHHR publishes human-health research, these requirements apply on top of everything above.
Ethics approval
Research involving human participants must report appropriate approval from an institutional review board or ethics committee, including the institution and approval number where issued, or a documented waiver where applicable, consistent with the Declaration of Helsinki.
Informed consent
Research involving human participants must report informed consent, or a documented ethics-committee waiver, where applicable.
Consent for publication of identifiable information
Where a manuscript includes identifiable clinical details, images or case information, written consent for publication is required from the participant — or from next of kin if the participant is deceased.
De-identification & confidentiality
Research data must be appropriately de-identified according to applicable institutional requirements and national or regional data-protection law. HIPAA requirements apply where relevant in the United States.
These policies support — they do not replace — the ethical, legal and professional obligations that already apply to the research. Institutional review board approval, applicable data-protection law and institutional consent requirements remain the authors’ responsibility. The data-availability and permissions requirements below provide the journal-specific guidance.
Animal research & welfare
Animal and preclinical studies are considered only when direct relevance to human health is clearly defined.
Ethics approval
Authors must report approval from the responsible institutional animal-ethics committee and provide the approval number where one was issued.
Welfare standards
The manuscript must identify the applicable national, regional and institutional welfare regulations and describe measures taken to minimize harm.
Reporting guidance
Animal studies should follow the ARRIVE guidelines or another relevant reporting standard, and the methods must permit assessment of design, conduct and welfare safeguards.
Data availability & permissions
What every empirical manuscript must state about its underlying data.
Every empirical JHHR manuscript must include a Data Availability Statement describing how the underlying data can be accessed — whether the data are included with the article, available from the corresponding author on reasonable request, or restricted because of participant-confidentiality requirements.
Authors are encouraged to deposit data in a recognized repository — Figshare, Dryad or Zenodo for general research data, or a domain-specific repository such as ClinicalTrials.gov, NCBI GEO or dbGaP where applicable — and to obtain written permission, with attribution, for any previously published material reused in a submission.
Corrections, retractions & raising a concern
How the published record is corrected, and how to reach the editorial office.
Corrections
An author or publisher error that does not affect the scientific validity of a published article is addressed with a correction or erratum.
Retractions
Where a serious concern is confirmed — such as data fabrication, plagiarism, or a finding that undermines an article’s conclusions — JHHR follows COPE guidance on retraction. The publisher’s Retraction Policy sets out the full process. Read the Retraction Policy →
Raising a concern or requesting a correction
Authors, readers or reviewers who believe a published article, or the handling of a submission, needs to be reviewed or corrected can contact the editorial office directly, and the concern is reviewed by the team responsible for the journal.
Appeals and complaints
Authors may submit a reasoned appeal or complaint to the editorial office. The matter is considered by an editor or publisher representative who was not responsible for the original decision where practicable. An appeal requests reconsideration on scholarly or procedural grounds and does not guarantee a different outcome.
Copyright, licensing & open access
What authors keep, and what readers are free to do with a published article.
JHHR publishes under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0). Authors retain copyright in their work and grant Open Access Pub a non-exclusive license to publish. JHHR also supports posting preprints to a recognized preprint server ahead of submission.
This policy includes the treatment of third-party material within a manuscript; the publisher’s broader Open Access Policy applies alongside it.
Policies that apply across Open Access Pub
The policies above are specific to JHHR. Open Access Pub, the publisher, also maintains the following policies, which apply the same way across all of its journals, including this one.
Continue with the right information
Explore the guidance, editorial context and published record that support an informed submission.
For reviewers & editors
Know the journal
Preparing a submission to JHHR?
Review the author instructions for manuscript preparation, ethical disclosures and the submission process.
Read author instructions →
Digital preservation
This journal’s content is committed to Portico, a not-for-profit digital-preservation archive run by ITHAKA (the organisation behind JSTOR). As articles are deposited they enter Portico’s permanent archive, so the scholarly record stays available for the long term — even if a title one day ceases to publish. Read our preservation policy.