Peer-review is the system used to assess the quality of a manuscript before it is published. Independent researchers in the relevant research area assess submitted manuscripts for originality, validity and significance to help editors determine whether the manuscript should be published in their journal. You can read more about the peer-review process here.
Human Resources for Health now operates a transparent peer-review system, where, if the article is published, the reviewer reports are published online alongside the article under a Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 but the reviewer is not named.
The benefit of transparent peer review is that it increases transparency. In addition, published reports can serve an educational purpose in helping facilitate training and research into peer review.
Articles submitted via the Editorial Manager peer review system were published under an open peer-review system, where the reviewers' names are included on the peer-review reports. In addition, if the article was published, the named reports were published online alongside the article as part of a 'pre-publication history'.
Submitted manuscripts are generally reviewed by at least two external experts, where the reviewers disagree or further detail is required, additional reviews may be obtained. The Editor-in-Chief works with the Deputy and Associate Editors to make the final decision regarding acceptance or rejection of manuscripts.
All articles published in Human Resources for Health have a maximum word limit of 4,000 words regardless of article type, which excludes text in tables, figures and additional files. Authors are encouraged to avoid repeating unnecessarily information in the main article if it is present in any tables or figures. Authors of manuscripts needing longer word limits should send a pre-submission enquiry explaining this and obtain the Editor-in-Chief’s approval to submit. Manuscripts may be rejected or returned to the authors for revisions if they exceed the maximum word limit.