Editorial Policy

Policies / Editorial Policy

Editorial Policy & Process

How BJHMR is governed, the principle of editorial independence, and the path from submission to publication.

The British Journal of Healthcare & Medical Research (BJHMR; ISSN 2753-7919) is an international, peer-reviewed, fully open-access journal published by Scholar Publishing, United Kingdom, covering medicine, healthcare and the allied health sciences. This policy describes how the journal is governed and the principles that shape every editorial decision. As a COPE member guided by the ICMJE recommendations, BJHMR aligns its practice with the COPE Core Practices and the joint Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing.

Editorial independence

Editorial decisions rest on scholarly and clinical judgement alone. A manuscript is assessed on its originality, the soundness of its design and analysis, the strength of its evidence and its relevance to scope. Decisions are never shaped by an author’s nationality, institution, career stage or affiliation, nor by any commercial consideration, including the Article Processing Charge, which is levied only after an independent decision to accept. The Editor-in-Chief exercises full and final authority over content and the timing of publication, and the publisher does not intervene in the assessment of individual manuscripts.

Roles and responsibilities

The Editor-in-Chief carries ultimate responsibility for editorial decisions and standards; Editorial Board members advise on scope and handle submissions within their expertise; the Editorial Office administers the workflow and initial checks; reviewers provide independent, confidential expert assessment; and authors are accountable for the originality, accuracy, ethical conduct and integrity of their work.

The editorial process

1	Submission through the online system, with the required ethics, consent and registration statements and declarations.
2	Initial editorial check for scope, completeness, reporting-guideline compliance and originality, including similarity screening.
3	Editorial assessment, at which manuscripts that fall outside scope, below threshold or in breach of ethics may be declined without external review.
4	Peer review by at least two independent experts under a single-blind model.
5	Decision — accept, minor revisions, major revisions or reject — with further review of revised manuscripts where needed.
6	Acceptance and production — copy-editing, typesetting, assignment of a DOI and open-access publication; the Article Processing Charge falls due only at this stage. Accepted articles may be published Online First ahead of issue assignment (see Online First and Preprints).

Operations

BJHMR operates on an open-access model funded principally by Article Processing Charges payable only after acceptance; no fee is charged for submission, and the existence or payment of a charge has no bearing on decisions. Any advertising or marketing is honest, accurate and kept distinct from editorial content, and the journal does not guarantee acceptance or any outcome in exchange for payment. Ownership, preservation and the publisher’s responsibilities are described under About.