Authors

Editorial policy

BMJ Global Health adheres to the highest standards concerning its editorial policies on publication ethics and scientific misconduct. The journal follows guidance produced by bodies that include the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), the World Association of Medical Editors (WAME), the Council of Science Editors and the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE).To view all BMJ Journal policies please refer to the BMJ Author Hub policies page, including information about our Editors' roles and responsibilities. Authors are required to submit a statement that their study obtained ethics approval (or a statement that it was not required and why) and that participants gave informed consent. Our Editors will consider whether the work is morally acceptable as determined by the World Medical Association’s Declaration of Helsinki. In addition to this, in line with General Medical Council guidelines, an article that contains personal medical information about an identifiable living individual requires patients explicit consent (in the format of a signed BMJ patient consent form) before we will publish it. Please find further details on BMJ research ethics policies (human participants and animals) and consent for publication; including a link to the downloadable consent form.
To make the best decision on how to deal with a manuscript BMJ Global Health needs to know about any competing interests authors may have; this includes any commercial, financial or non-financial associations that may be relevant to the submitted article. Authors must download and complete a copy of the ICMJE Conflict of Interest disclosure form. In addition to this BMJ Global Health ensures that all advertising and sponsorship associated with the journal does not influence editorial decisions, is immediately distinguishable from editorial content and meets all other BMJ guidelines. Please find more information about competing interests and a link to the form. We take seriously all possible misconduct. If an Editor, author or reader has concerns that a submitted article describes something that might be considered to constitute misconduct in research, publication or professional behaviour they should forward their concerns to the journal. The publisher will deal with allegations appropriately following ICMJE and COPE guidelines. Corrections and retractions are considered where an article has already been published; corrections, expressions of concern or a retraction notices will be published as soon as possible in line with the BMJ correction and retraction policy.

Copyright and authors’ rights

As an open access journal, BMJ Global Health adheres to the Budapest Open Access Initiative definition of open access. Articles are published under an exclusive licence or non-exclusive licence for UK Crown employees or where BMJ has agreed CC BY applies. For US Federal Government officers or employees acting as part of their official duties, the terms are as stated in accordance with our licence terms. Authors or their employers retain copyright. Such open access articles can be reused under the terms of the relevant Creative Commons licence to facilitate reuse of the content. Please refer to the BMJ Global Health Author Licence.
When publishing in BMJ Global Health, authors choose between two licence types – CC-BY-NC and CC-BY (Creative Commons open access licences require payment of an article processing charge). As an author, you may wish to post your article in an institutional or subject repository, or on a scientific social sharing network. You may also link your published article to your preprint (if applicable). What you can do with your article, without seeking permission, depends on the licence you have chosen and the version of your article. Please refer to the BMJ author self-archiving and permissions policies page for more information.

Preprints

Preprints foster openness, accessibility and collaboration by allowing authors to make their findings immediately available to the research community and receive feedback on an article before it is submitted to a journal for formal publication. BMJ fully supports and encourages the archiving of preprints in any recognised, not-for-profit server such as medRxiv. BMJ does not consider the posting of an article in a dedicated preprint repository to be prior publication.
Preprints are reports of work that have not been peer reviewed; Preprints should therefore not be used to guide clinical practice, health-related behaviour or health policy. For more information, please refer to our Preprint policy page.

Article transfer service

BMJ is committed to ensuring that all good quality research is published. Our article transfer service helps authors find the best journal for their research while providing an easy and smooth publication process. If authors agree to transfer their manuscript, all versions, supplementary files and peer reviewer comments are automatically transferred; there is no need to resubmit or reformat. Authors who submit to the BMJ Global Health and are rejected will be offered the option of transferring to another BMJ Journal, such as BMJ Public Health or BMJ Open.
Please note that the article transfer service does not guarantee acceptance but you should receive a quicker initial decision on your manuscript. Contact the Transfer Editor at transfers@bmj.com

Article processing charges

BMJ Global Health is an open access journal and levies an Article Processing Charge (APC) of 3,245 GBP (exclusive of VAT for UK and EU authors) for Original research, Analysis and Practice papers.  The APC for Editorials and Commentaries is 1,622 GBP (exclusive of VAT for UK and EU authors). There are no submission, colour or page charges.

Waivers and discounts

BMJ journals offer waivers for the full Article Processing Charge (100% discount of the APC) where all authors are based in low-income countries. See full waiver list*. Requests for waivers should be made before or during initial submission**. If an article reports funding from a funder with an open access mandate or policy that covers paying APCs, BMJ expects that the APC will be paid. Visit our author hub to learn more about our waivers policy and how to request one. You might be eligible for institutional funding. A number of institutions have open access agreements with BMJ which can either cover the whole cost of open access publishing for authors at participating institutions or can allow authors to receive a discount of the Article Processing Charge (APC). Visit BMJ’s open access agreements page to find out whether your institution is a member and what discounts you may be entitled to.
* These lists are based on the HINARI Core Offer Groups A and B, and the World Bank Country and Lending Groups, downloaded in July 2021. They will be updated annually. **Please note that applications for waivers or discounts should be made during initial submission and not after an article has been accepted. Editors are not involved in this process and the ability to pay has no bearing on editorial decisions. Payment will not be required unless your article is accepted. Accepted articles will not be published until payment has been received. BMJ does not refund APCs once paid.

Provenance and peer review

Articles submitted to BMJ Global Health are predominantly unsolicited and all articles are subject to peer review. The journal operates single anonymised peer review whereby the names of the reviewers are hidden from the author; usually two external reviewer reports are obtained before original research articles are accepted for publication. Manuscripts authored by a member of a journal’s editorial team are independently peer reviewed; an editor will have no input or influence on the peer review process or publication decision for their own article. For more information on what to expect during the peer review process please refer to BMJ Author Hub - the peer review process. BMJ is committed to transparency. Every article we publish includes a description of its provenance (commissioned or not commissioned) and whether it was internally or externally peer reviewed. BMJ requests that all reviewers adhere to a set of basic principles and standards during the peer-review process in research publication; these are based on the COPE Ethical Guidelines for Peer Reviewers. Please refer to our peer review terms and conditions policy page.
Plagiarism is the appropriation of the language, ideas or thoughts of another without crediting their true source and representation of them as one’s own original work. BMJ is a member of CrossCheck by CrossRef and iThenticate. iThenticate is a plagiarism screening service that verifies the originality of content submitted before publication. BMJ runs manuscripts through iThenticate during the peer review process. Authors, researchers and freelancers can also use iThenticate to screen their work before submission by visiting www.ithenticate.com. Reader responses, questions and comments to published content are welcomed by BMJ Global Health; these should be submitted electronically via the journal's website. Please find further details on how to publish a response and the terms and requirements.

Reporting patient and public involvement in research

BMJ encourages active patient and public involvement in clinical research as part of its patient and public partnership strategy. To support co-production of research we request that authors provide a Patient and Public Involvement statement in the methods section of their papers, under the subheading ‘Patient and public involvement’. We appreciate that patient and public involvement is relatively new and may not be feasible or appropriate for all papers. We, therefore, continue to consider papers where patients were not involved. The Patient and Public Involvement statement should provide a brief response to the following questions, tailored as appropriate for the study design reported (access examples of the Patient and Public Involvement statement):
  • At what stage in the research process were patients/the public first involved in the research and how?
  • How were the research question(s) and outcome measures developed and informed by their priorities, experience, and preferences?
  • How were patients/the public involved in the design of this study?
  • How were they involved in the recruitment to and conduct of the study?
  • Were they asked to assess the burden of the intervention and time required to participate in the research?
  • How were (or will) they be involved in your plans to disseminate the study results to participants and relevant wider patient communities (e.g. by choosing what information/results to share, when, and in what format)?
If patients were not involved please state this. In addition to considering the points above we advise authors to look at guidance for best reporting of patient and public involvement as set out in the GRIPP2 reporting checklist. If the Patient and Public Involvement statement is missing in the submitted manuscript we will request that authors provide it.

Data sharing

BMJ Global Health adheres to BMJ's Tier 3 data policy. We strongly encourage that data generated by your research that supports your article be made available as soon as possible, wherever legally and ethically possible. All research articles must contain a Data Availability Statement. For more information and FAQs, please see BMJ's full Data Sharing Policy page.

ORCID

BMJ Global Health mandates ORCID iDs for the submitting author at the time of article submission; co-authors and reviewers are strongly encouraged to also connect their ScholarOne accounts to ORCID. We strongly believe that the increased use and integration of ORCID iDs will be beneficial for the whole research community.
Please find more information about ORCID and BMJ’s policy on our Author Hub.

Rapid responses

A rapid response is a moderated but not peer reviewed online response to a published article in BMJ Global Health; it will not receive a DOI and will not be indexed. Find out more about responses and how to submit a response.

Submission guidelines

Please review the below article type specifications including the required article lengths, illustrations, table limits and reference counts. The word count excludes the title page, abstract, tables, acknowledgements, contributions and references. Manuscripts should be as succinct as possible. Please include any funding statements, acknowledgements, and contributor statements in your submission. Figures should be submitted separately in either TIFF or PDF format. For further support when making your submission please refer to the resources available on the BMJ Author Hub. Here you will find information on writing and formatting your research through to the peer review process and promoting your paper.We encourage authors to ensure that research articles are written in accordance with the relevant research reporting guideline. You may also wish to use the language editing and translation services provided by BMJ Author Services. (These services are paid for by the author and do not guarantee that your paper will be considered or accepted by the journal.)

Original research

Research papers address specific questions and/or social phenomena in depth, and in such a way that speaks to and connects with the findings of other studies addressing the same question and/or phenomenon. The question and/or phenomenon under inquiry must be clearly articulated, preferably framed in terms of major global health issues or debates, and with analysis (especially of qualitative data) informed by social science theories, in defining the research question, framing the analysis, organising the results and/or reflecting on the findings. Research reviews that systematically synthesise evidence (e.g. Systematic reviews, Meta-analysis, Scoping reviews, Mixed methods reviews, etc) should be submitted as Original research. Please include the research type in your title to make the nature of your study clear. Full papers (including systematic reviews) should follow the basic structure of abstract, introduction, methods, results, discussion, conclusion, references, and tables and figures as appropriate. There is an online data repository for extra information, tables, figures and appendices. However, we would encourage as much methods and data to be contained in the manuscript as possible. All research on human subjects must have been approved by the appropriate ethics committee and must have conformed to the principles embodied in the Declaration of Helsinki. A statement to this effect must be included in the methods section of the paper. We encourage the use of the Sex and Gender Equity in Research (SAGER) guidelines for reporting of sex and gender information in study design, data analyses, results and interpretation. This includes the correct use of the terms sex (when reporting biological factors) and gender (when reporting identity, psychosocial, or cultural factors) and separate reporting and interpretation of the data by sex and gender. If sex and/or gender information are not reported, this should be explained. See SAGER guidelines and Sex and gender reporting in global health: new editorial policies. Authors submitting research from international partnerships between high-income countries and low- and/or middle-income countries are required to include an author reflexivity statement. See the Consensus statement on measures to promote equitable authorship in the publication of research from international partnerships (please provide answers to the questions in Table 2, guided by the example in Appendix S1) and the editorial on Using scientific authorship criteria as a tool for equitable inclusion in global health research.
Following the lead of The BMJ and its patient partnership strategyBMJ Global Health is encouraging active patient involvement in setting the research agenda. As such, we require authors of Research Articles to add a Patient and Public Involvement statement in the Methods section. Please see more details in the 'Reporting public involvement in research' section. Please include the key messages of your article after your abstract using the following headings. This section should be no more than 3-5 sentences and should be distinct from the abstract; be succinct, specific and accurate.
  • What is already known on this topic - summarise the state of scientific knowledge on this subject before you did your study and why this study needed to be done
  • What this study adds - summarise what we now know as a result of this study that we did not know before
  • How this study might affect research, practice or policy - summarise the implications of this study
This will be published as a summary box after the abstract in the final published article. Word count: up to 5000 We recognise that some studies may need more space. Requests to exceed this word count should be made to the Editor before submission. Requests will need to be justified, and will be handled on a case by case basis. Structured or unstructured abstract: up to 300 words Structured abstracts should have the following headings: - Introduction - Methods - Results - Conclusion Key questions: see above Tables/illustrations: up to 5 References: up to 100 Article Processing Charge GBP 3245

Analysis

Analysis papers are submitted and invited papers which discuss topical issues in global health, and may involve the analysis of new or existing data or an evaluation of the existing evidence on a topic. We look for an engaging style, an even-handed approach in evaluating evidence, a lucid line of argument, and a worthwhile conclusion. Research reviews that systematically synthesise evidence (e.g. Systematic reviews, Meta-analysis, Scoping reviews, Mixed methods reviews, etc) are classified by the journal as Original research and must be submitted as such. Authors are advised to keep a broad readership in mind and to write their article for the non-expert. It is important to avoid jargon. Specialised terminology and references to organisations or practices that are specific to one country need to be explained. Clear writing and an attractive presentation are essential Analysis articles should have an introduction and a conclusion segment, with the main body of the article divided into thematic headings. Authors should not use abbreviations in the headings, nor any of the traditional headings used in research papers (i.e. methods, results/findings, and discussion). Authors should complete a summary box with four to five single sentence bullet points of key messages.
Word count: up to 3000 Unstructured abstract: up to 250 words Summary box: see above Tables/illustrations: up to 5 References: up to 50 Article Processing Charge GBP 3245

Practice

Practice papers describe the experience of addressing challenges, including the evaluation of field experience specific to a community, sub-national or national setting. We look for an engaging style, a clearly articulated problem, sufficient contextual detail and insight to help address similar problems elsewhere, and a worthwhile conclusion. We encourage policy makers and implementers to publish in this category, using data from programs which were not set up as research, but from which they have learned and gain much insight that can be useful elsewhere. Authors are advised to keep a broad readership in mind and to write their article for the non-expert. It is important to avoid jargon. Specialised terminology and references to organisations or practices that are specific to one country need to be explained. Clear writing and an attractive presentation are essential. Practice articles should have an introduction and a conclusion segment, with the main body of the article divided into thematic headings. Authors should not use abbreviations in the headings, nor any of the traditional headings used in research papers (i.e. methods, results/findings, and discussion).
Word count: up to 3000 Unstructured abstract: up to 250 words Summary box: see above Tables/illustrations: up to 5 References: up to 50 Article Processing Charge GBP 3245

Editorial

Editorials are usually commissioned or written by BMJ Global Health Editors and Editorial Board members. Commissioned editorials critically discuss original research papers highlighting important issues and identifying areas where more information is needed. However, we are happy to consider unsolicited editorials on any relevant topic. Editorials may be peer reviewed and an invitation to submit will not guarantee acceptance.
Word count: up to 1500 Tables/illustrations: 2 References: up to 15 references Article Processing Charge GBP 1622

Commentary

Commentaries are highly readable and compelling opinion based essays addressing issues of broad concern in global health, particularly issues related to policy decisions globally or in specific countries. The best commentary pieces make a single, strong, novel, and well-argued point. They are also often topical, insightful, and attention grabbing. Commentaries may also be written in response to articles previously published in BMJ Global Health. Commentaries may be peer reviewed. Authors are advised to keep a broad readership in mind and to write their article for the non-expert. It is important to avoid jargon. Specialised terminology and references to organisations or practices that are specific to one country need to be explained. Clear writing and an attractive presentation are essential. Authors may choose to use headings in the article, and when they do, the commentary should have an introduction and a conclusion segment, with the main body of the article divided into thematic headings. Authors should not use abbreviations in the headings. Authors should complete a summary box with three to four single sentence bullet points of key messages.
Word count: up to 1500 Summary box: see above Tables/illustrations: 2 References: up to 15 references Article Processing Charge: GBP 1622

Supplements

The BMJ Publishing Group journals are willing to consider publishing supplements to regular issues. Supplement proposals may be made at the request of:
  • The journal editor, an editorial board member or a learned society may wish to organise a meeting, sponsorship may be sought and the proceedings published as a supplement.
  • The journal editor, editorial board member or learned society may wish to commission a supplement on a particular theme or topic. Again, sponsorship may be sought.
  • The BMJPG itself may have proposals for supplements where sponsorship may be necessary.
  • A sponsoring organisation, often a pharmaceutical company or a charitable foundation, that wishes to arrange a meeting, the proceedings of which will be published as a supplement. In all cases, it is vital that the journal's integrity, independence and academic reputation is not compromised in any way.
For further information on criteria that must be fulfilled, download the supplements guidelines. When contacting us regarding a potential supplement, please include as much of the information below as possible:
  • Journal in which you would like the supplement published
  • Title of supplement and/or meeting on which it is based
  • Date of meeting on which it is based
  • Proposed table of contents with provisional article titles and proposed authors
  • An indication of whether authors have agreed to participate
  • Sponsor information including any relevant deadlines
  • An indication of the expected length of each paper Guest Editor proposals if appropriate