Aims and Scope
The Journal of Medicine, Law & Public Health publishes peer-reviewed research at the intersection of clinical practice, legal frameworks and population health. This page states what the journal publishes, what it does not, and the forms in which it accepts work. It is the reference against which submissions are assessed at editorial triage.
Aim
To advance medical and public health practice, with particular attention to practice-changing evidence, the development of health law, and the effect of health policy on population health outcomes.
Scope
The journal welcomes manuscripts across the following areas. The list describes the journal's centre of gravity rather than its limits; work that plainly speaks to medicine, health law or public health will be considered on its merits.
- Medical law and ethics
- Disease epidemiology and modelling
- Digital public health and health informatics
- Nutritional and mental health
- Ageing and public health
- Occupational health and practice
- Environmental health, hazards and safety
- Public health education and training
- Health communication, policy and economics
- Emergency and disaster medicine
- Physical and social determinants of health
- Behavioural and other disorders
- Health services and infrastructure
Article types
Word limits exclude the abstract, references, tables and figure legends.
- Original Article
- Original research. Structured abstract of up to 200 words; manuscript up to 3,000 words. Must follow the applicable reporting guideline.
- Review
- Systematic, scoping or narrative review. Systematic reviews must follow PRISMA and state their registration where one exists.
- Case Report
- A single instructive case. Unstructured abstract; up to 1,500 words. Written patient consent is required.
- Case Series
- A small consecutive series with a common clinical thread.
- Clinical Images
- One or more images of teaching value with a short accompanying text. No abstract.
- Commentary
- Argued comment on a question of practice, law or policy. No abstract.
- Letter to the Editor
- Correspondence on work published in the journal, normally within six months. Up to 800 words. No abstract.
- Editorial
- Commissioned by the editors.
- Law and Ethics
- Legal analysis, case commentary or legislative discussion. Footnotes are permitted; OSCOLA citation is accepted for legal sources.
- Policy Analysis
- Assessment of a health policy, its implementation or its effects.
- Short Report
- Concise original findings that do not require a full article.
- Book Review
- Up to 1,000 words.
What the journal does not publish
Stating this plainly saves authors time and reduces desk rejection. The journal will normally return without review:
- Work with no discernible connection to medicine, health law or public health.
- Laboratory or animal studies with no articulated route to clinical or population health relevance.
- Research involving human participants without evidence of ethics committee approval, or without an explanation of why approval was not required.
- Case reports without documented written patient consent.
- Clinical trials not prospectively registered in a public registry.
- Manuscripts under consideration elsewhere, or substantially overlapping the authors' published work.
- Promotional or commercially sponsored content presented as research.
- Submissions whose language prevents the editors from assessing the science. Authors are encouraged to seek language support before submitting; the journal uses British spelling.
Readership
The journal is read by healthcare providers, legal practitioners and scholars, public health professionals, researchers and policymakers. Manuscripts should be intelligible to a reader who is expert in one of those fields but not necessarily in the others.
Language and audience
The journal publishes in English. Metadata is additionally recorded in Arabic where authors supply it. Titles and abstracts are published in English for every article so that the work is discoverable by an international readership.
Manuscripts are assessed against this page at triage, then by double-blind peer review. Questions about whether a manuscript falls within scope are welcome in advance at editorial.board@jmlph.net.
