About the Journal

The International Journal of Maternal and Child Health (MCH) and AIDS (IJMA) is a multidisciplinary, global health, open-access journal. IJMA welcomes manuscripts on all areas of global maternal and child health, public health, health issues of men, women, families, and the science, practice, and policy of MCH and HIV/AIDS.

IJMA focuses on the social determinants of health and disease as well as on the disparities in the burden of communicable, non-communicable, and neglected tropical diseases affecting infants, children, women, adults, and families across the life span around the world.

IJMA is the only peer-reviewed journal in the world devoted exclusively to the study of the extant and evolving relationship between MCH and HIV/AIDS. 

IJMA is committed to the rapid dissemination of high-quality papers. The journal aims to provide authors with rapid feedback as soon as possible. Depending on the quality of the original submission, the number of revisions recommended, the journal's interest, and author-responsiveness, our goal is to publish accepted papers expeditiously. We provide free author support through our numerous products including manuscript templates with prompts on pertinent sections and contents.

Mission

Disseminate sound research, ensuring widest dissemination, and maximum impact.

Vision

To become the leading and authoritative source/voice for the dissemination of high-quality research and policy analyses by global health researchers on new and emerging issues about maternal, neonatal, and child health and HIV/AIDS globally, and to stimulate North-South dialogue in health disparities research, policy, and programs.

IJMA covers, but is not limited to, the following global health subject areas and topics:

• Life expectancy, cause-specific mortality, and human development;
• Maternal, infant, child, and youth mortality and morbidity;
• Determinants and consequences of childhood and adolescent obesity and sedentary behaviors;
• Substance use, smoking, alcohol, violence, and injury;
• Quality of life and mental health disparities affecting MCH and HIV/AIDS populations;
• Social, behavioral, and biological determinants of MCH and HIV/AIDS and well-being;
• Health disparities based on gender, race, ethnicity, immigrant status, social class, education, income disability status, etc.;
• Regional and/or country-specific studies;
• Family health, including changing dynamics of modern families;
• Human sexuality and human development;
• Neglected tropical diseases;
• Use of science, technology, and innovation to address health disparities;
• Technological innovations to address family health, MCH and HIV/AIDS;
• Cross-national research on MCH and HIV/AIDS issues across the world;
• Resilience among populations impacted by HIV/AIDS;
• Linkages between research results and national public policy formulation process.

All manuscripts submitted to IJMA will be subjected to peer-review and are therefore expected to be of high quality.

Manuscripts submitted for publication consideration must have the ability to make a contribution to the field of global maternal and child health. This contribution may be small but meaningful and forms the rubric of what our reviewers and editors look for during the review process. Prior to submitting their manuscripts, prospective authors are encouraged to always ask themselves: what is the small contribution that my manuscript contributes to the field? This contribution could be in research, practice, policy, or otherwise.

IJMA applies a very rigorous review process in determining which articles are accepted and eventually published. IJMA Editors understand the value of rapid dissemination of knowledge; however, the journal will not compromise the rigor of its review policy for the expediency of publication. We strive for a rapid review and subsequent publication of high-quality manuscripts.

Manuscript Review Process

Below is a summary of IJMA’s 5-step manuscript review and editorial process:

1. An author submits a manuscript,
2. The manuscript is assigned to an IJMA Editor or Editor-in-Chief,
3. The assigned IJMA Editor reviews the manuscript and makes an initial decision based on the quality of the manuscript and editorial priorities. The assigned editor will determine either to send the manuscript to peer-reviewers or reject the manuscript at that point,
4. For the manuscripts that are sent for peer reviewer, the Editor makes a decision based on editorial priorities, manuscript quality, reviewer recommendations, and perhaps a discussion with fellow editors. At this point, the decision is usually to request a revised manuscript, reject the manuscript, or provisionally accept the manuscript, and
5. The decision letter is sent to the author informing him/her of the decision in the above step.

Single Blind Review

Submitted manuscripts are usually reviewed by at least two expert peer-reviewers. Peer reviewers recommend to the Editor-in-Chief (EIC) whether a manuscript should be accepted, revised, or rejected. They also alert the EIC of any issues relating to author misconduct such as plagiarism and unethical behavior.

IJMA operates a single-blind review system. This means that the names of the reviewers are hidden from the author. With this type of peer-review, reviewer anonymity allows for impartial decisions free from influence by the author.

Double-Blind Reviews

IJMA Editors and Editorial Board members set the research agenda for the journal. Therefore, IJMA Editors and Editorial Board members regularly publish their work in the journal. To address the potential conflict arising from editors making decisions on their own manuscripts, IJMA employs the double-blind review in the review of manuscripts authored by its Editors and Editorial Board members.

To be published in the journal, a manuscript must receive a favorable review from at least two peer-reviewers. If a manuscript receives an even review by two reviewers, the Editor-in-Chief, Editor, or a senior member of the editorial board will make the final recommendation. Reviewers submit their reports on the manuscripts along with their recommendation of one of the following actions:

1. Accept submission,
2. Request minor revisions,
3. Request major revisions,
4. Revise and resubmit, or
5. Reject/decline submission.

After receiving and reviewing comments from all the external reviewers, the Editor-in-Chief makes the final decision, which may be one of the following:

1. Accept submission,
2. Accept after minor revisions,
3. Accept after major revisions, or
4. Reject submission.

If the Editor-in-Chief recommends “accept the submission,” the manuscript is accepted for publication.

If the Editor-in-Chief recommends, “accept after minor changes,” the authors are notified to prepare and submit a final copy of their manuscript with the required minor changes.

The Editor-in-Chief only reviews the revised manuscript after the minor changes have been made by the authors. Once the Editor-in-Chief is satisfied with the final manuscript, the manuscript will be accepted for publication and an acceptance email would be issued to the corresponding author.

IJMA publishes one volume and two issues per calendar year. More issues may be published. The journal operates a continuous publication model whereby accepted papers are published on a rolling basis, and published papers are serialized into two issues in one volume. Special Issues or journal supplements are included under the respective volume and issue in which they are published.

IJMA is an open-access (OA) journal. Open access publishing is the practice of providing unrestricted access via the Internet to peer-reviewed scholarly journal articles. Open access publishing is a new model for publishing scholarly journals. It provides immediate, worldwide, barrier-free access to the full text of all published articles. For readers in the developing world as well as those in developed countries, open access allows all interested readers to view, download, print, and redistribute any article without a subscription, enabling far greater distribution of an author’s work than the traditional subscription-based publishing model.

According to Wikipedia, the number of articles published using the OA model has increased from 19,500 articles published in 2000 to about 191, 850 articles in 2009. It is not surprising that many authors in a variety of fields including public health now realize the benefits that open access publishing can provide in terms of increasing the impact of their work. A number of leading research institutions in the world including the U.S. National Institutes of Health, the U.K. Medical Research Council, etc., have begun to encourage their researchers to publish in open-access journals.

Unrestricted and Unlimited Access

IJMA and the editorial board believe that the scientific community and the general public can unlimitedly and immediately access all content published in our journals for free as soon as it is published on the Internet. We believe that immediate, worldwide, barrier-free, open access to the full text of research articles is in the best interests of the scientific community. This means that IJMA does not have any income from selling subscriptions to print or online versions of the journal. IJMA is published by a U.S-based non-profit organization. 

Open Access License

IJMA applies CC-BY Creative Commons License (CCAL) to all works we publish. This license allows reusers to distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon the material in any medium or format, so long as attribution is given to the creator. The license allows for commercial use. With CC BY license, credit must be given to the creator. 

For more information about CCAL, and to read the human-readable summary or the full license legal code, please click here.

In an OA publishing model, the costs of publication of an article are borne by an author. Some of these are paid from the author's funding or by their organization in the form of Article Processing Charges (APCs). The APCs replace subscription charges in traditional publishing and allow publishers to make the full-text of every published article freely available to all interested readers. In addition, as an open-access journal, authors who publish in IJMA retain the copyright of their work, which is released under a “Creative Commons Attribution License,” enabling the unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction of an article in any medium, provided that the original work is properly cited.

To defray its editorial and production costs, IJMA must collect modest APCs from authors’ institutes or research funding bodies. Moreover, as a non-profit-publisher, our goal is to keep our open access publication charges at a minimum level just enough to defray the cost of production and maintenance of our servers and equipment. The APC includes costs for professional copyediting, immediate publication upon acceptance, and different formats of publication (PDF editions).

Author Fees Based on Location

• Developed countries (upper-middle and high-income economies): $500 (US Dollars)
• Developing and emerging countries (low-income and lower-middle-economies): $300 (US Dollars)

Note: The journal will charge an additional $99.00 US dollars article processing charge for every 0-500 words over the prescribed limit. An additional $59 will be charged for each additional table or figure over the prescribed limit. Our goal is to ensure that all submissions comply with the prescribed word limit so that the need for extra publication charges does not arise. We will review manuscripts and determine the costs beforehand. Any overage charges should be discussed and an amount agreed upon at the time of article submission. Authors will not be charged without their consent. Please contact the journal's editorial office for any questions about this: submissions@mchandaids.org.

Country Classification: To determine where your country falls, please visit the World Bank Country and Lending Groups here.

Waivers/Discounts: Discounts and waivers may be granted, especially for authors from developing countries. However, any discount or waivers should be discussed and an amount agreed upon at the time of article submission. For questions/clarifications about this, please contact the editorial office before submission: submissions@mchandaids.org.  

The journal publishes, without charge, selected articles invited by the Editors. Discounts are also offered to regular reviewers. In recognition of reviewers’ support, any reviewer that returns five full reviews, on time, will receive a 10% discount on APC for a paper for which they are the corresponding author if submitted within 6 months of completing the review. 

Once an article has been generally accepted and communicated to the author, he or she must make the payment within 10-15 calendar days.
Once an article has been published, no significant change should be made to the article. Grammatical errors and similar edits will be considered, but any changes related to the content of the article would violate the ethics of the peer-review processes. Accordingly, the journal will charge $199.00 US dollars for any significant changes needed to be made after the article has been published.

Options to Pay APCs

Following peer review, once a manuscript has received editorial acceptance, the APC becomes payable. Authors will receive a link to make payment for APCs through a secure link. IJMA accepts payment with major credit cards through one of our third-party payment processing services:

IJMA’s publisher, the Global Health and Education Projects (GHEP), depends on your donations to carry out its work and activities throughout the United States (US) and across the world. Please support the mission of the journal by making a donation.

Tax-Deductible Donations. GHEP is a 501 (c) (3) tax-exempt non-profit organization recognized as a public charity by the U.S. Internal Revenue Service. Our federal Employer Identification Number is: 45-2977882. Your donations are tax-deductible to the fullest extent of the law. You’ll get a receipt for your donation which you will need in filing your tax.

Please click here to make your tax-deductible donation.

We thank you so much for your kindness and donation.

IJMA is currently indexed and abstracted in the following databases: PMC, PubMed, DOAJ, U.S. Library of Congress, Google Scholar, & CNKI. The journal will continue to increase the discoverability of published papers by enlisting the journal into other indexing and abstracting databases.

Definition: Conflict of interest (COI) exists when there is a divergence between an individual’s private interests (competing interests) and his or her responsibilities to scientific and publishing activities such that a reasonable observer might perceive the individual’s behavior or judgment as motivated by considerations of the individual’s competing interests. COI in biomedical publishing affects everyone with a stake in research integrity including journals, research/academic institutions, funding agencies, the popular media, and members of the public.

Forms of COI: COI may exist in numerous forms including financial ties, academic commitments, personal relationships, political or religious beliefs, and institutional affiliations. In managing COI, IJMA abides by the policy statement of the World Association of Medical Editors (WAME). All authors will be required to declare their COI, if any, during the manuscript submission. Reviewers are asked to declare their COI after they accept to review a manuscript. Editors should also declare their COI during the handling of a manuscript. IJMA shall publish these declarations, or lack thereof, in the final publication.

Management of COI: The management of COI depends on disclosure because it is not possible to routinely monitor or investigate whether competing interests are present. COI disclosed by authors will be reviewed by the editorial leadership and appropriate action will be taken. As elucidated in our peer-review process, reviewers and Editors with COI will be excluded from the process of review of the manuscript that they present with COI. If competing interests surface from other sources after a manuscript is submitted or published, IJMA leadership will investigate allegations of COI, and depending on their nature, appropriate actions will be taken. If a manuscript has been published and COI surfaces later, the journal will publish the results of the investigation as a correction to the article and ask the author(s) to explain, in a published letter, why the COI was not revealed earlier during the submission and review process.