About Reproductive Health

What is Reproductive Health?

Reproductive Health is an open access, peer-reviewed online journal focusing on all aspects of human reproduction.

Reproductive health is defined as a state of physical, mental, and social well-being in all matters relating to the reproductive system, at all stages of life. Good reproductive health implies that people are able to have a satisfying and safe sex life, the capability to reproduce and the freedom to decide if, when, and how often to do so. Men and women should be informed about and have access to safe, effective, affordable, and acceptable methods of family planning of their choice, and the right to appropriate health-care services that enable women to safely go through pregnancy and childbirth.

The challenge of the field is to evaluate current promising interventions rigorously, address emerging issues such as synthesizing ever-increasing research findings, and develop innovative dissemination and communication strategies.

The journal invites submissions on research in reproductive health, including social and gender issues, sexual health, country and population specific issues, assessment of service provision, education and training. We specifically invite colleagues from low- and middle-income countries to submit their research findings for publication, sharing their results with others in the field by using the Open Access model.

Many articles are rejected by journals not only due to 'non-valuable' content, but also due to lack of space, which is easily understandable considering the amount of manuscripts submitted. Space doesn't need to be a consideration for Reproductive Health. Our aim is to provide a platform, which offers open access for users, helps authors to share their knowledge with a wider audience, and sustains a rapid process for submissions resulting in high quality publications. We further aim to contribute towards reducing the inequity in publications from low- and middle-income countries. Our audience is global and we intend to share research results in reproductive health from all parts of the world.

Reproductive Health is the official journal of the Geneva Foundation for Medical Education and Research (GFMER), a WHO collaborating centre in education and research in human reproduction. Reproductive Health is also affiliated to the International Association for Maternal and Neonatal Health (IAMANEH).

Content overview

Reproductive Health considers the following types of articles:

• Research: we welcome reports of primary research on interventions, risk factors, screening tests, prevalence and incidence as well as systematic reviews of such research. For the latter, the words 'Systematic review' should appear in the title.
• Case reports: reports of clinical cases that can be educational, describe a diagnostic or therapeutic dilemma, suggest an association, or present an important adverse reaction.
• Commentaries: short, focused articles of opinions on any subject within the journal's scope. They focus on specific issues and are about 800 words.
• Reviews: comprehensive, authoritative descriptions of any of the following subjects: population issues in reproductive health, quality of reproductive health care, methodological/ethical issues in reproductive health research, gender/sexual health issues, reports of clinical guidelines and their evaluations in reproductive health, country specific issues (for example from the point of view of developing countries). This includes description of the development of health care settings, resources, unmet needs and implications and identified constraints as well as ongoing and planned governmental policies.
• Study protocols: description of proposed or ongoing research, providing a detailed account of the hypothesis, rationale, and methodology of the study.

Peer review policies

• Peer review in Reproductive Health is designed to ensure that the research published is 'good science'. The peer review process will be open.
• Manuscripts that span a wide range of scientific interests are considered, but only if results and conclusions are scientifically justified and not misleading.
• Submitted manuscripts will be reviewed by at least two external experts identified by the Editorial Board. The peer reviewers will assess the manuscript for scientific content, actuality and relevance of the topic, as well as for presentation and clarity of writing. Generally, there will be 2 revisions allowed per article.
• Peer reviewers will have the following options for each article:
  • accept without revision
  • accept after minor revisions
  • neither accept nor reject until author(s) make revisions and resubmit
  • reject because scientifically unsound

Edited by Regina Kulier and Jose Guilherme Cecatti, Reproductive Health is supported by an international Editorial Board.

Publishing in Reproductive Health

All articles will be listed in PubMed immediately upon acceptance (after peer review), and will be covered by PubMed Central, CAS and Embase.

Articles in Reproductive Health should be cited in the same way as articles in a traditional journal. However, because articles in this journal are not printed, they do not have page numbers. Instead, they have a unique article number.

The following citation:

Reprod Health 2004, 2:1

refers to article 1 from volume 2 of the journal.

As an online journal, Reproductive Health does not have issue numbers. Each volume corresponds to a calendar year.

To keep up to date with the latest articles from Reproductive Health, why not register to receive alerts? Registration also enables you to customise your subject areas of interest, store your searches, and submit your manuscripts.

Submission of manuscripts

Manuscripts should be submitted electronically to Reproductive Health using the online submission system. Full details of how to submit a manuscript are given in the instructions for authors.

General journal policies

Reproductive Health is published  by BioMed Central, an independent publisher committed to ensuring peer-reviewed biomedical research is Open Access. That means it is freely and universally accessible online, it is archived in at least one internationally recognised free access repository, and its authors retain copyright, allowing anyone to reproduce or disseminate articles, according to the BioMed Central copyright and licence agreement. Reproductive Health however, has taken this further by making all its content Open Access.

Reproductive Health's articles are archived in PubMed Central, the US National Library of Medicine's full-text repository of life science literature, and also in repositories at the University of Potsdam in Germany, at INIST in France and in e-Depot, the National Library of the Netherlands' digital archive of all electronic publications. The journal is also participating in the British Library's e-journals pilot project, and plans to deposit copies of all articles with the British Library.

BioMed Central is working closely with the Thomson Reuters (ISI) to ensure that citation analysis of articles published in Reproductive Health will be available.

Reproductive Health is able to deliver summaries of frequently updated content via Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds. These are accessible via the orange "XML" button at the top of the list of recent articles or the list of most accessed articles. For more information about RSS feeds see our publisher's website.

For further information about general policies please see the instructions for authors.