About the Journal

The Indian Association of Preventive and Social Medicine, founded in 1974, is a nonprofit professional organization of specialists in Epidemiology, Health Management, Health Promotion, and Family Medicine, which is dedicated to the promotion of public health by bringing its members' expertise to the development of public health policies, an advocate for education, research, and programs of Community Medicine and providing a forum for the regular exchange of views & information.

Indian Journal of Community Health (IJCH) with ISSN PRINT: 0971-7587; ISSN ONLINE: 2248-9509, is an official national publication of Indian Association of Preventive and Social Medicine (IAPSM). It is a peer-reviewed, quarterly journal with both online and print version. The IJCH full text articles are available online at http://www.iapsmupuk.org/journal/index.php/ijch with free access (Open Access) to its contents with no subscription or pay per view fees required from the readers for reading online IJCH publications. IJCH permits authors to self-archive final accepted version of the articles on any OAI-compliant institutional / subject-based repository.

Abstracting and Indexing Information

The journal is registered with the following abstracting partners:
EBSCO Publishing's Electronic Databases, EMBSAE; Google Scholar, Hinari, PubMed (Selected citations only*)

The journal is indexed with, or included in, the following:
CINAHL, Emerging Sources Citation Index, Indian Science Abstracts, IndMed, Scimago Journal Ranking, SCOPUS, Web of Science.

Aim& Scope of the journal

Indian Journal of Community Health (IJCH) is an open access, peer reviewed journal which is published quarterly by the Indian Association of Preventive and Social Medicine (IAPSM) - a body of 5000 plus public health professionals & academicians. The Journal is indexed with internationally reputed indexing agencies and publishes Editorial commentaries, CMEs, Viewpoints, Original articles, Review articles, Case studies, Book reviews, “Letters to editor” etc., dealing with priority public health issues. It invites quality research articles covering areas such as epidemiology, public health (administration, policy, planning & implementation), medical educational technology, nutrition, maternal & child health, communicable/ non communicable diseases, environmental / occupational health, health equity and equality, etc. with special emphasis on original research findings that are relevant for developing country perspectives including India.

The journal has a very transparent and robust system for reviewing articles with the help of editorial board / reviewers which include eminent scholars from India & abroad. It also publishes articles from other developing and developed nations, with an ultimate aim to contribute to the knowledge & practice of Public Health.

IJCH provides an avenue to medical scientists for publication of original research work so as to facilitate use of research for public health action. The scope of the Journal is broad. Original research articles are invited on public health, primary health care, epidemiology, health administration, health systems, health economics, health promotion, public health nutrition, communicable and non-communicable diseases, maternal and child health, occupational and environmental health, social and preventive medicine and social science which have potential to promote evidence-based public health action. The Journal also include editorial, commentaries, perspectives, state of the art reviews, research briefs, policy and practice, reports from the field, public health classics, letters to the editor and book reviews.

Editorial Policies

IJCH expect the highest ethical standards from their authors, reviewers and editors when conducting research, submitting papers and throughout the peer-review process.

Editorial Workflow

Peer Review: IJCH employs a double-blind peer review process, in which the author identities are concealed from the reviewers, and vice versa, throughout the review process.

Peer Review Process: The following is the editorial workflow that every manuscript submitted to the journal undergoes during the course of the peer-review process. The entire editorial workflow is performed using OJS. Once a manuscript is submitted, the manuscript is assigned to an Editor most appropriate to handle it based on the subject of the manuscript and the availability of the Editors. If the Editor determines that the manuscript is not of sufficient quality to go through the normal review process or if the subject of the manuscript is not appropriate to the journal scope, the Editor rejects the manuscript with no further processing.

If the Editor determines that the submitted manuscript is of sufficient quality and falls within the scope of the journal, he/she assigns the manuscript to a minimum of 2 and a maximum of 5 external reviewers for peer-review. The reviewers submit their reports on the manuscripts along with their recommendation of one of the following actions to the Editor:

Accept Submission / Revision Required / Resubmit for Review / Resubmit Elsewhere / Decline Submission / See Comments

When all reviewers have submitted their reports, the Editor can make one of the following editorial recommendations:

Accept Submission / Revision Required / Resubmit for Review / Decline Submission

If the Editor recommends “Accept Submission” the manuscript is accepted for publication.

If the Editor recommends “Revision Required” the authors are notified to prepare and submit a final copy of their manuscript with the required changes suggested by the reviewers. Only the Editor reviews the revised manuscript after the changes have been made by the authors. Once the Editor is satisfied with the final manuscript, the manuscript can be accepted.

If the Editor recommends “Resubmit for Review ” the authors are notified to prepare and submit a revised copy of their manuscript with the required changes suggested by the reviewers. The revised manuscript after the changes have been made by the authors wiil again go under a fresh peer review.

If the Editor recommends "Decline Submission", the manuscript is immediately rejected. Also, if two of the reviewers recommend Decline Submission, the manuscript is immediately rejected.

The editorial workflow gives the Editors the authority in rejecting any manuscript because of inappropriateness of its subject, lack of quality, or incorrectness of its results.

This review process is to ensure a high-quality, fair, and unbiased double blinded peer-review process of every manuscript submitted to the journal, since any manuscript must be recommended by one or more (usually two or more) external reviewers along with the Editor in charge of the manuscript in order for it to be accepted for publication in the journal. Moreover, even the finally published articles’ readers and authors have ample opportunities to review the publications and correspondingly communicate to IJCH in case if the published materials correspondingly warrant any publication of erratum/corrections in future IJCH issues.

Journal statistics (2022)

Days to First Editorial Decision

28

 Days to Accept

89

 Days to Reject

19

Acceptance Rate

28%

Rejection Rate

72%

 Desk Reject Rate

25%

 After Review Reject Rate

47%

Time from Acceptance to Publication 21 days (online) and 2 months (print)

Journal Ethics

IJCH is committed to meeting and upholding standards of ethical behavior at all stages of the publication process. We follow closely the industry associations, such as the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), Directory Open Access Journals (DOAJ), Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA) and World Association of Medical Editors (WAME), that set standards and provide guidelines for best practices in order to meet these requirements; (https://doaj.org/bestpractice). 

Open Access Publication and Creative Commons Licensing

IJCH provides immediate open access to its published articles with the principle so as to make scientific research available to the readers that will inturn lead to global exchange of knowledge and articles are distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License, which allows others to share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially.

Digital Archiving

IJCH use Open Journal Software (OJS) that provides long-term digital preservation through with CLOCKSS. As CLOCKSS enables any library to maintain their own archive of content of IJCH, with minimal technical effort and using cheaply available hardware.

Ahead of Print policy

Articles published online under the Ahead of Print model are considered published and can be cited and quoted. IJCH has a policy that changes will not be made after publication of an article without following accepted procedures for making corrections to the scientific record.

Redundant or duplicate publication

The IJCH strongly discourages duplication/reduplication of data already published in other journals (even when certain cosmetic changes/additions are made). If and when duplication is detected after publishing in IJCH, the journal will be forced to ‘retract’ such articles.  All papers submitted to IJCH are subject to peer review process. All accepted papers will be suitably edited before publication.

Duplicate or redundant publication is a publication that overlaps substantially with one already published, in press, or in an electronic media submission. (International Committee of Medical Editors. http://www.icmje.org/recommendations/browse/publishing-and-editorial-issues/overlapping-publications.html). Duplicate or redundant submission is the same manuscript (or the same data) that is submitted to different journals at the same time. International copyright laws, ethical conduct, and cost effective use of resources require that readers can be assured that what they are reading is original. (International Council of Medical Editors. http://www.icmje.org/recommendations/browse/publishing-and-editorial-issues/overlapping-publications.html). Submitted manuscripts should not have been published or currently submitted elsewhere. Duplicate publication is a violation of the APA code of ethics (APA Publication Manual, 2010) and will be grounds for prompt rejection of the submitted manuscript. If the editor was not aware of the violation and the article has been published, a notice of duplicate submission and the ethical violation will be published.

Retraction policy

In response to complaints, allegations and recognitions of research misconduct and breaches in publication ethical standards on the part of readers, authors, reviewers, advisors and editors along with corresponding opportunities for appeals in these regards, IJCH abide by COPE Retraction Guidelines. (http://publicationethics.org/files/retraction%20guidelines_0.pdf)

Plagiarism Policy

Plagiarism is when an author attempts to pass off someone else’s work as his or her own. Duplicate publication, sometimes called self-plagiarism, occurs when an author reuses substantial parts of his or her own published work without providing the appropriate references. This can range from getting an identical paper published in multiple journals, to ‘salami-slicing’, where authors add small amounts of new data to a previous paper.

Many online softwares are now available to detect possible plagiarism which an author may use before submitting a manuscript to IJCH.

On Detection of Plagiarism following actions can be taken:-

  • Immediate rejection of the manuscript.
  • Prohibition against all of the authors for any new submissions either individually or in combination with other authors of the manuscript, as well as in combination with any other authors.
  • Prohibition against all of the authors from serving on the Editorial Board of IJCH.
  • If an author submits a manuscript to IJCH with significant overlap with a manuscript submitted to another journal simultaneously, and this overlap is discovered during the review process or after the publications of both papers, the editor of the other journal is notified and the case is treated as a severe plagiarism case.
  • In the case of a publication being submitted that was originally published in another language, the title, date and journal of the original publication must be identified by the authors, and the copyright must be obtained. The editor may accept such a translated publication to bring it to the attention of a wider audience.
  • In case Author wants to use material from the other Authors Article then it is mandatory to cite the same in references. Else the Author needs to change the language completely and use his/ her own language.

Conflicts of interest

At the point of submission, policy requires that each author reveal any financial interests or connections, direct or indirect, or other situations that might raise the question of bias in the work reported or the conclusions, implications, or opinions stated - including pertinent commercial or other sources of funding for the individual author(s) or for the associated department(s) or organization(s), personal relationships, or direct academic competition. If the manuscript is accepted, Conflict of Interest information will be communicated in a published statement.

Permissions to reproduce previously published material

Permission is required to reproduce material (such as illustrations) from the copyright holder. Articles cannot be published without these permissions.

Patient consent forms

The protection of a patient's right to privacy is essential. Please collect and keep copies of patients’ consent forms on which patients or other subjects of your experiments clearly grant permission for the publication of photographs or other material that might identify them. If the consent form for your research did not specifically include this, please obtain it or remove the identifying material. A statement to the effect that such consent had been obtained must be included in the ‘Methods’ section of your paper. If necessary the Editors may request a copy of any consent forms.

Ethics committee approval

All articles dealing with original human or animal data must include a statement on ethics approval at the beginning of the Methods section. This paragraph must contain the following information: the name and address of the ethics committee responsible; the protocol number that was attributed by this ethics committee; and the date of approval by the ethics committee.

The paragraph could read, for example:

"Ethical approval for this study (Ethical Committee N° NAC 207) was provided by the Ethical Committee NAC of Geneva University Hospitals, Geneva, on 12 February 2007."

In addition, and as stated above, for studies conducted on human participants you must state clearly that you obtained written informed consent from the study participants; please also look at the latest version of the Declaration of Helsinki. Similarly, for experiments involving animals you must state the care of animal and licensing guidelines under which the study was performed and report these in accordance with the ARRIVE (Animals in Research: Reporting In Vivo Experiments) statement. If ethics clearance was not necessary, or if there was any deviation from these standard ethical requests, please state why it was not required. Please note that the editors may ask you to provide evidence of ethical approval. If you have approval from a National Drug Agency (or similar) please state this and provide details, this can be particularly useful when discussing the use of unlicensed drugs.

Supplementary Issue Policy

The cost towards publishing a single special supplementary issue of IJCH is Rs. 1,00,000/- (INR) per issue. This cost is based on the following specifications i.e.  Page size 8.5" X 11", Printing Offset printing, Pages - 90 b/w + 10 full color pages + 4 Color cover pages, Paper - 90 gsm art paper, Cover paper 250 gsm art card, Cover printing, Four color, Binding Perfect binding, Printing Offset using CTP plates, Lamination BOPP, DTP Including two electronic proofs. Moreover, we will provide 100 print copies for circulation.

Advertisements Policy

ONLINE: While advertisements are crucial to IJCH to be able to keep all content free for everyone, ethical considerations are in place to ensure the integrity of the journal and its content. Pop-up" and "banner" ads may appear on a random, rotating basis. The advertiser has no control or input over the pages where their ads appear.

PRINT: IJCH with high circulation and visibility, offer excellent media for promotion of events like CME, Workshops or conferences of academic or research interest through advertisement. Advertisers will never be shown any manuscripts or other content prior to publication.

The Editorial Board has full and final approval over the content of all advertisements contact by e-mail at chiefeditor [AT] iapsmupuk [DOT] org for query.

http://www.iapsmupuk.org/journal/index.php/IJCH/about/submissions

To counter automated-bots-initiated “virally”-infected-submissions as well as to cover initial processing (including plagiarism screening) of all submissions and finally for making all final publications as open-access online articles (along with associated print copy publications and their shipping/mailing services), the self-reliant high-quality software/formatting/copyediting services maintaining IJCH charges the following Article Processing Fee. However, article processing fees and/or advertisement fees http://www.iapsmupuk.org/journal/index.php/IJCH/about or their waivers do not influence the editorial decisions in regard to the articles’ acceptance for final publications in IJCH. These high publishing standards are reinforced by the fact that despite available avenues for appropriate, well-targeted and unobtrusive direct marketing recruiting submissions for IJCH, IJCH editorial team has not needed to explore those avenues at all over the years because of high quality submissions made by authors from India and abroad on their own to IJCH with it being an official national publication of Indian Association of Preventive and Social Medicine (IAPSM).

Subscriptions

All the registered members of the Indian Association of Preventive and Social Medicine (IAPSM) and currently working as faculty in Community Medicine at various Medical Colleges are entitled to receive a free copy of the journal. Non-Members and Institutional library can also subscribe to journal at nominal subscription fee