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About

Aims and scope

Health & Justice is a fully open access, peer-reviewed journal presenting original experimental research and commentary on the area of health and well-being of people involved in the adult or juvenile justice system, including policy makers and practitioners. The journal fills a gap in the literature by encouraging interdisciplinary, translational science to explore possible ways of introducing health innovations in the justice system.

Health & Justice covers a broad array of research topics and is open to submissions from varied disciplines, including: public health, criminology and criminal justice, medical science, psychology, sociology, neuroscience, anthropology and the social sciences. We welcome original research, meta-analyses and systematic reviews, implementation science, study protocols and clinical practice guidelines, as well as commentary and perspectives on new and upcoming issues in the field.

Health & Justice aims for a broad reach, including researchers, justice practitioners, such as judges, prosecutors and defenders, probation officers, law-enforcement, treatment providers, plus mental health and medical personnel working with justice-involved individuals

New Content ItemWe are proud to acknowledge that over 50% of the articles published in Health & Justice in 2023 were related to one or more of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Springer Nature supports the SDGs through a dedicated SDG Programme and is a signatory of the SDG Publishers Compact.

Benefits of publishing with BMC

High visibility

Health & Justice's open access policy allows maximum visibility of articles published in the journal as they are available to a wide, global audience. 

Speed of publication

Health & Justice offers a fast publication schedule whilst maintaining rigorous peer review; all articles must be submitted online, and peer review is managed fully electronically (articles are distributed in PDF form, which is automatically generated from the submitted files). Articles will be published with their final citation after acceptance, in both fully browsable web form, and as a formatted PDF.

Flexibility

Online publication in Health & Justice gives you the opportunity to publish large datasets, large numbers of color illustrations and moving pictures, to display data in a form that can be read directly by other software packages so as to allow readers to manipulate the data for themselves, and to create all relevant links (for example, to PubMed, to sequence and other databases, and to other articles).

Promotion and press coverage

Articles published in Health & Justice are included in article alerts and regular email updates. Some may be highlighted on Health & Justiceā€™s pages and on the BMC homepage.

In addition, articles published in Health & Justice may be promoted by press releases to the general or scientific press. These activities increase the exposure and number of accesses for articles published in Health & Justice. A list of articles recently press-released by journals published by BMC is available here.

Copyright

As an author of an article published in Cancer & Metabolism you retain the copyright of your article and you are free to reproduce and disseminate your work. For further information, see our guide to licensing, copyright and author rights

For further information about the advantages of publishing in a journal from BMC, please click here.

Open access

All articles published by Health & Justice are made freely and permanently accessible online immediately upon publication, without subscription charges or registration barriers. Further information about open access can be found here

As authors of articles published in Health & Justice you are the copyright holders of your article and have granted to any third party, in advance and in perpetuity, the right to use, reproduce or disseminate your article according to the licence terms

For those of you who are US government employees or are prevented from being copyright holders for similar reasons, BMC can accommodate non-standard copyright lines. Please contact us if further information is needed.

Article processing charges (APC)

Authors who publish open access in Health & Justice are required to pay an article processing charge (APC). The APC price will be determined from the date on which the article is accepted for publication.

The current APC, subject to VAT or local taxes where applicable, is: Ā£1240.00/$1890.00/ā‚¬1490.00

Visit our open access support portal and our Journal Pricing FAQs for further information.

Open access funding

Visit Springer Natureā€™s open access funding & support services for information about research funders and institutions that provide funding for APCs.

Springer Nature offers agreements that enable institutions to cover open access publishing costs. Learn more about our open access agreements to check your eligibility and discover whether this journal is included.

Springer Nature offers APC waivers and discounts for articles published in our fully open access journals whose corresponding authors are based in the worldā€™s lowest income countries (see our APC waivers and discounts policy for further information). Requests for APC waivers and discounts from other authors will be considered on a case-by-case basis, and may be granted in cases of financial need (see our open access policies for journals for more information). All applications for discretionary APC waivers and discounts should be made at the point of manuscript submission; requests made during the review process or after acceptance are unable to be considered.

Indexing services

All articles published in ā€‹Health & Justice are included in:

  • PubMed
  • PubMedCentral
  • Emerging Sources Citation Index
  • SCOPUS
  • CKNI
  • Criminal Justice Periodical Index
  • DOAJ
  • EBSCO Criminal Justice Abstracts
  • EBSCO Discovery Service
  • EBSCO TOC Premier
  • OCLC
  • ProQuest Central
  • ProQuest Health Management Database
  • ProQuest Health Research Premium Collection
  • ProQuest Public Health Database
  • ProQuest Social Science Collection
  • Summon by ProQuest
  • Web of Science

The full text of all articles is deposited in digital archives around the world to guarantee long-term digital preservation. You can also access all articles published by BMC on SpringerLink.

We are working closely with relevant indexing services including Web of Science (Clarivate Analytics) to ensure that articles published in Health & Justice will be available in their databases when appropriate.

Peer-review policy

Peer-review is the system used to assess the quality of a manuscript before it is published. Independent researchers in the relevant research area assess submitted manuscripts for originality, validity and significance to help editors determine whether the manuscript should be published in their journal. You can read more about the peer-review process here.

Health & Justice operates a double-blind peer-review system, where the reviewers do not know the names or affiliations of the authors and the reviewer reports provided to the authors are anonymous.

The benefit of double-blind peer review is that it allows reviewers to judge the manuscript based on content alone, and they are not unconsciously biased by knowledge of who the authors are.

Submitted manuscripts will generally be reviewed by two or more experts who will be asked to evaluate whether the manuscript is scientifically sound and coherent, whether it duplicates already published work, and whether or not the manuscript is sufficiently clear for publication. The Editors will reach a decision based on these reports and, where necessary, they will consult with members of the Editorial Board.

Editorial policies

All manuscripts submitted to Health & Justice should adhere to BMC's editorial policies.

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Citing articles in Health & Justice

Articles in Health & Justice  should be cited in the same way as articles in a traditional journal. Because articles are not printed, they do not have page numbers; instead, they are given a unique article number.

Article citations follow this format:

Authors: Title. Health Justice [year], [volume number]:[article number].

e.g. Roberts LD, Hassall DG, Winegar DA, Haselden JN, Nicholls AW, Griffin JL: Increased hepatic oxidative metabolism distinguishes the action of Peroxisome Proliferator-Activated Receptor delta from Peroxisome Proliferator-Activated Receptor gamma in the Ob/Ob mouse. Health Justice 2009, 1:115.

refers to article 115 from Volume 1 of the journal.

Appeals and complaints

Authors who wish to appeal a rejection or make a complaint should follow the procedure outlined in the BMC Editorial Policies.

Annual Journal Metrics

  • Citation Impact 2023
    Journal Impact Factor: 3.0
    5-year Journal Impact Factor: N/A
    Source Normalized Impact per Paper (SNIP): 1.313
    SCImago Journal Rank (SJR): 0.813

    Speed 2023
    Submission to first editorial decision (median days): 14
    Submission to acceptance (median days): 210

    Usage 2023
    Downloads: 559,179
    Altmetric mentions: 946