Focus and Scope

Welcome to the African Journal of Primary Health Care & Family Medicine.

The African Journal of Primary Health Care & Family Medicine (PHCFM) serves as a repository for cutting-edge, peer-reviewed research in all fields of primary health care and family medicine in a uniquely African context.

Encouraging scholarly exchange between family medicine and primary health care researchers and practitioners across Africa, PHCFM provides a contextual and holistic view of family medicine as practised across the continent. The journal is indispensable for primary health care practitioners, family medicine specialists and academics from both the developing and developed worlds, and offers an engaging insight into the growth of these disciplines from a distinctly African perspective.

PHCFM seeks to publish innovative research and clinical reviews in all aspects of primary health care and family medicine in the African context including, but not exclusive to:

• Family medicine
• Primary health care
• District health
• Rural health
• Health promotion
• Prevention of disease and disability
• Community oriented primary care
• Education and training of professionals and health workers in family medicine and primary health care

Section Policies

Editorials

This section aims to publish comment and opinion, and to explore new ideas within the focus and scope of the journal. Notes from the Editor will be published at regular intervals throughout the year. In addition, PHCFM will also publish invited Guest Editorials. Contributions should be less than 1000 words with generally no more than 10 references.

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Original Research

Original research articles should be between 3500 and 5000 words and inform readers of innovative research in a particular field within or related to the focus and scope of the journal, presented according to a clear and well-structured format. Research published in this section should add to the existing body of knowledge published in this field. 

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Scientific Letters

Scientific letters should be less than 1000 words and report preliminary results, pilot studies or research of a limited nature. They should include no more than one table or figure and no more than five references. It is not necessary to provide an abstract with scientific letters.

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Review Articles

Review articles should be less than 4000 words and provide a comprehensive review of important and current developments of a particular field within the focus and scope of the journal. The purpose must be to summarise current knowledge and to educate professionals and workers in the related fields. Review articles may be linked to Continuing Professional Education (CPD) Credits for health professional re-registration. An abstract of 300 words is necessary for this section but need not be structured.

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Correspondence

Correspondence should be less than 500 words and inform the reader of the author’s opinion on a particular aspect of primary health care or family medicine, or their reaction to a previously published paper. In the latter case, the author of the previously published paper will be asked to respond to the letter. This section encourages debate amongst authors and readers on topical issues of global importance to the fields of primary health care and family medicine. No abstract is required for this section.

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Book reviews

Book reviews should be between 500 and 1000 words. Books reviews are mostly invited but submissions to this section are also welcome. Please provide details of the book publisher, the book’s ISBN number, the price of the book in United States dollars and a 300dpi resolution image of the book cover. No abstract is needed for this section.

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Case studies

Case studies should be between 500 and 1000 words, and should document in depth the diagnosis and treatment of a patient or group of patients. Authors are required to provide an abstract with manuscripts in this section.

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Conference Report

Occasionally the journal will publish conference reports. Should you wish for the journal to publish proceedings from a conference you are organising, please contact the journal's Title Operations Coordinator. Conference reports should be no longer than 1000 words.

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Educational material

Education module or course content, or any material used in the education and training of students. Submissions must be less than 3500 words and free from copyright.

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Reviewer Acknowledgement

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Open Forum

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Conference Proceedings

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Publication Frequency

PHCFM publishes manuscripts on a rolling basis throughout the year, i.e. as soon as they are ready for publication. In this way, PHCFM aims to speed up the process of manuscript publication, from submission to a manuscript’s availability on the website.

Open Access Policy

This journal provides immediate open access to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge.

Archiving

This journal utilises the LOCKSS system to create a distributed archiving system among participating libraries and permits those libraries to create permanent archives of the journal for purposes of preservation and restoration. More...

Department of Higher Education & Training Approval (South Africa)

PHCFM has been approved by the South African Department of Higher Education & Training from 01 January 2010, for subsidy of research publications.

Additional Editorial Policies*

Human Research

All research involving human participants must have been approved by the authors' institutional review board or equivalent research ethics committee(s) and that the board must be named by the authors in the manuscript. For research involving human participants, informed consent must have been obtained (or the reason for lack of consent explained, e.g. the data were analyzed anonymously) and all clinical investigation must have been conducted according to the principles expressed in the Declaration of Helsinki. Authors should submit a statement or approved ethics clearance number from their ethics committee or institutional review board indicating the approval of the research. We also encourage authors to submit a sample of a patient consent form and may require submission of completed forms on particular occasions.

For studies involving humans categorized by race/ethnicity, age, disease/disabilities, religion, sex/gender, sexual orientation, or other socially constructed groupings, authors should, as much as possible,

• make explicit their methods of categorizing human populations;
• define categories in as much detail as the study protocol allows;
• justify their choices of definitions and categories, including for example whether any rules of human categorization were required by their funding agency;
• explain whether (and if so, how) they controlled for confounding variables such as socioeconomic status, nutrition, environmental exposures, etc.

In addition, outmoded terms and potentially stigmatizing labels should be changed to more current, acceptable terminology. Examples: "Caucasian" should be changed to "white" or "of [Western] European descent" (as appropriate); "cancer victims" should be changed to "people with cancer".

Animal Research

All animal work must have been conducted according to relevant national and international guidelines. We specifically require authors to include details of animal welfare and steps taken to ameliorate suffering in all work involving non-human primates.

Competing Interests

Authors are asked at submission to declare whether they have any financial, personal, or professional interests that could be construed to have influenced their paper. Reviewers are also asked to declare any interests that might interfere with their objective assessment of a manuscript. Any relevant competing interests of authors must be available to editors and reviewers during the review process and will be stated in published articles.

Scientific and Editorial Misconduct

Scientific misconduct is defined by the USA Office of Research Integrity as "fabrication, falsification, plagiarism, or other practices that seriously deviate from those that are commonly accepted within the academic community for proposing, conducting, or reporting research." In cases where there is a suspicion or allegation of scientific misconduct or fraudulent research in manuscripts submitted for review, PHCFM reserves the right to pass along these manuscripts to the author’s employer, sponsoring or funding institution or other appropriate authority for investigation. Although PHCFM recognizes its responsibility to ensure that the suspicion of misconduct has been addressed, we do not ourselves make such determinations.

Confidentiality

Editors and reviewers are requested to treat all submitted manuscripts in strict confidence.

Submission of Related Manuscripts

When submitting their article, all authors are asked to indicate that they have not submitted a related or duplicate manuscript for publication elsewhere. If related work has been submitted elsewhere, then a copy must be included with the article submitted to PHCFM. Reviewers will be asked to comment on the overlap between related submissions. The editors of PHCFM reserve the right to decline any manuscript judged to overlap significantly with previous publications.

* These policies were adapted with gratitude from PLoS One

Last update: 16 December 2009