Journal of Health and Social Sciences: A reputable, DOAJ-indexed, free, open access journal
Journal Title: Journal of Health and Social Sciences - Year 2019, Vol 4, Issue 1
Abstract
Three years ago, the Italian Society for Psychotherapy and Social Development (SIPISS) established the Journal of Health and Social Sciences (JHSS) as a forum for the interdisciplinary exchange of views from scientists from around the world to promote the growth of modern man. The sentiments ‘science in society and science for society’ and the ‘art of medicine as love of humanity’ inspired me and Dr Ferrari as co-founders and editors in chief of the Journal, as they motivate the belief that science may contribute to knowledge, progress, peace and social development. JHSS focuses on public health with an interdisciplinary view of health from a wide range of fields, including medicine, psychology and social sciences [1]. Public health is concerned with improving the health of people all over the world and is the ideal arena for contributions from medicine, sociology of health and psychology as it provides an interdisciplinary approach that may accelerate improvements in health by addressing global and regional health inequalities [2]. However, the journal’s research findings must be shared with policy makers, organizations and other researchers, and strong research ethics are essential in converting research into political action. Therefore, our Journal established a place where academics and practitioners meet to overcome the conflicts and dualities in their relationships [3]. JHSS is also a place where research from developing countries, which is often underrepresented in the international health debate, is represented to a similar extent as research from developed countries. Finally, JHSS is a place where research findings are freely available and accessible, so they have the greatest possible impact on health and health inequalities. Today, we launch the journal’s subtitle, The Italian Journal for Interdisciplinary Health and Social Development, in order to give much more emphasis on the SIPISS’ perspectives and greater clarity to the target audience and content, which concerns a broad and interdisciplinary view on public health by drawing on medicine, psychology and social sciences contributions. Thank you, Dr Giuseppe Ferrari, psychologist and publisher, for making JHSS a full, open-access journal that is free of charge for authors. The journal has no hidden costs for either readers or authors. In addition, JHSS has not received any economic support from public or economic institutions or pharmaceutical companies. JHSS is pure because it is free of any political or economic pressures; it is propelled by highly passionate, enthusiastic, competent contributing researchers and their tireless work. It is rare to be able to deliver high-quality publications at no cost. The journal is published by Edizioni FS, which is a small international publishing house, and I am very proud that it actively faces the scientific challenge with important publishers of academic journals, who are also owners of well-known databases and scientific indexes. Consequently, I enthusiastically embraced the opportunity to be the journal’s director and provide scientific guidance for this courageous project. Thanks to the combined efforts of some of the editorial board members and authors, our journal published 79 high-quality manuscripts from 2016 to 2018 (39 original articles, 10 commentaries, 5 reviews and 25 other types of manuscripts, including 25 works from developing countries and 54 from developed countries). In a time when it is difficult to give voice to voiceless people, JHSS provides room for discussions and views from researchers from poor and disadvantages countries on issues that have a significant health impact on all people, from climate change to other themes in global public health. Based on these figures and high-quality publications, Journal of Health and Social Sciences was included in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), which is an independent, high-quality database, and Hinari, which is a prestigious free biomedical database provided by the World Health Organization. The DOAJ guarantees scientific quality because it only publishes high-quality, open access titles after the research passes a serious evaluation process conducted by a panel of leading experts in scientific publishing. Discriminating between legitimate and predatory journals is difficult, and in 2016, the DOAJ removed approximately 3,330 journals from its database due to their failure to submit valid reapplications based on new criteria established by the DOAJ in response to the ‘maturing open access arena’ and the ‘greater demands made on open access publishing by questionable journals and publishers’ [4]. The DOAJ identifies predatory, illegitimate, deceptive and unethical publishers as ‘questionable publishers’ based on reasonable content, services, transparency and business behaviour standards [4]. Therefore, DOAJ may be considered just as prestigious as Pubmed, Medline and Scopus due to its relevancy and importance in open access publishing. Recently, JHSS set up an Advance Online Publication system that provides final online versions of articles before they are compiled and published in an issue, providing the most rapid access to accepted papers, which can be quickly cited using the date of the posting, the title and authors of the article, name of the journal, the quotation ‘Advance online publication’ and the paper’s DOI [5]. I am sure that this advance publication system will be helpful in gaining access to other important indexes as soon as possible. However, I believe that the most important requisites in this field are ethical works and passionate readers and researchers who will support the journal’s mission to close the value gap existing between JHSS and journal already indexed in Web of Science. Indexes and ‘Impact Factor’ of journals are often wrongly used for evaluating research [6-8]. I believe that our open-access view, along with a shared spirit of ideals, are welcomed by the global scientific community and will give the journal enough of a reward to continue ensuring the highest possible levels of scientific quality for our readers and authors. Beyond the Impact Factor!
Authors and Affiliations
Francesco Chirico
Keywords
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- EP ID EP561732
- DOI 10.19204/2019/jrln1
- Views 100
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