INPAGE MENU
Overview
ISSN
2038-9922 (PRINT)
2038-9930 (ONLINE)
Focus and scope
The Journal of Public Health in Africa (JPHIA) is a peer-reviewed, academic journal that focuses on health issues in the African continent. The journal editors seek high quality original articles on public health related issues, reviews, comments and more. The aim of the journal is to move public health discourse from the background to the forefront. The success of Africa’s struggle against disease depends on public health approaches.
Sustainable Development Goals
The journal, in terms of its focus and scope, and, by extension, by the articles that are published in it, aims to respond to the following SDGs:
- Goal 2 – End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture: Food security and improved nutrition of people will contribute to greater public health outcomes. Research that contributes to this SDG should be able to inform policy on and practice in the provision of healthy and constant food supply, especially to young children and pregnant and breastfeeding women, across various regions as well as the maintenance of biodiversity and respect for indigenous knowledge systems around the nutrition provision value chain.
- Goal 3 – Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages: This SDG is at the heart of public health in Africa. Research that contributes to this SDG should be able to inform policy on and practice in all areas of public health, ranging from disease prevention, detection, and treatment to epidemic and pandemic preparedness and from improved measures against substance abuse and aid for those suffering it to reducing mortality and improved family planning.
- Goal 5 – Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls: Providing greater access to healthcare and related services than is being provided to women and girls. Research that contributes to this SDG should be able to inform policy on and practice in health-related areas where women and girls are left behind, for example, the provision of education around their bodies and the health rights that come with it, sanitary products, psychosocial support, and education and destigmatisation of stigmatised physical and mental conditions and states lived and experienced by women and girls in order to improve their public health outcomes.
- Goal 6 – Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all: Clean drinking water and proper sanitation are essential in the maintenance of public health, specifically when it comes to the spread of water-borne infections. Research that contributes to this SDG should be able to inform policy on and practice in the improved and equitable provision of sufficient clean drinking water as well as enough water for other uses that are conducive to clean and healthy environments.
- Goal 9 – Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and foster innovation: Developing and maintaining infrastructure for effective health services provision as well as public health education and messaging are essential in improving public health outcomes in Africa. Research that contributes to this SDG should be able to inform policy on and practice in the establishment and maintenance of infrastructure that can aid in public health service provision and public health education and messaging, for example, in the equitable provision of technologies that support such efforts.
- Goal 11 – Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable: More inclusive, safer, cleaner, and more resilient cities and settlements are contributors to improved public health outcomes. Research that contributes to this SDG should be able to inform policy on and practice in adequate and safe housing provision for all people as well as safe and the establishment of effective transport between areas.
- Goal 12 – Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns: Sustainable consumption and production patterns are crucial in the long-term maintenance of healthy populations. Research that contributes to this SDG should be able to inform policy on and practice in safer, sustainable production and improved waste management.
Historic data
In 2010, the journal was launched under the initiative of Professor Yusuf Abdu Misau, University of Bauchi, Nigeria with PAGEPress as its first publisher. In 2013 and 2015, the Federal Neuropsychiatric/Hospital at the University of Maiduguri in Nigeria, took over leadership of the journal. In 2016, PAGEPress purchased the journal. In 2017, JPHIA was included in the Web of Science (WoS) Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI) for the first time. In 2018, the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) signed an agreement with PAGEPress to make JPHIA its official journal. While PAGEPress continued to take responsibility for publishing, Africa CDC managed the journal's editorial oversight and peer review system. This initiative by Africa CDC aimed to contribute to increasing scientific knowledge and networking between Africa and the global community, ensure that African public health research is adequately and accurately reported by Africans, and encourage more African researchers to publish their research. Starting in 2019, the co-Editors-in-Chief of JPHIA have been Professor Nicaise Ndembi, the Institute of Human Virology in and the Senior Advisor for the Director General at Africa CDC, and Professor Vittorio Colizzi, University of Rome Tor Vergata, Italy and Evangelic University of Cameroon, Cameroon. See news item. In 2022, Africa CDC purchased JPHIA from PAGEPress. In 2023, JPHIA received its first Journal Impact Factor (JIF) from the WoS. As of December 2023, 12 issues, 180 articles, and two conference proceedings have been published in JPHIA. In 2024, JPHIA moved to an open access publisher based on the African continent, AOSIS in Durbanville, South Africa. Prof Nicaise Ndembi is the journal's Editor-in-Chief.
Publication frequency
The journal publishes one issue each year. Articles are published online when ready for publication and then printed in an end-of-year compilation. Additional issues may be published for special events (e.g. conferences) and when special themes are addressed.
Open access
This is an open access journal which means that all content is freely available without charge to the user or his/her institution. Users are allowed to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of the articles, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without asking prior permission from the publisher or the author. This is in accordance with the Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI) definition of open access. Learn more about the journal copyright, licensing and publishing rights.
Review process
The journal has a double-blinded peer review process. Manuscripts are initially examined by the editorial staff and are sent by the Editor-in-Chief to two expert independent reviewers, either directly or by a Section Editor. Read our full peer review process.
Membership
AOSIS is a member and/or subscribes to the standards and code of practices of several leading industry organisations. This includes the Directory of Open Access Journals, Ithenticate, Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association, CrossRef, Portico and the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). Learn more here.
DHET Accreditation
The journal is DHET accredited because it is listed on the following approved indexing services:
- Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)
Indexing Services
All articles published in the journal are included in:
- Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)
- Google Scholar
- Norwegian Register for Scientific Journals, Series and Publishers, Level 1
- PubMed Central
- Web of Science Other Coverage, Emerging Sources Citation Index, ESCI
We are working closely with relevant indexing services to ensure that articles published in the journal will be available in their databases when appropriate.
Archiving
The full text of the journal articles is deposited in the following archives to guarantee long-term preservation:
- AOSIS Library
- Portico
- SA ePublications,Sabinet
- South African Government Libraries
AOSIS is also a participant in the LOCKSS (Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe) initiative. LOCKSS will enable any library to maintain their own archive of content from AOSIS and other publishers, with minimal technical effort and using cheaply available hardware. The URL to the LOCKSS Publisher Manifest for the journal is, https://publichealthinafrica.org/index.php/jphia/gateway/lockss. Please inform us if you are using our manifest as we would like to add your name to the list above.
Journal Impact
A journal's Impact Factor was originally designed in 1963 as a tool for libraries to compare journals, and identify the most popular ones to subscribe to. It was never intended to measure the quality of journals, and definitely not the quality of individual articles.
The Impact Factor is a journal-level measurement reflecting the yearly average number of citations of recent articles published in that journal. It is frequently used as a proxy for the relative importance of a journal within its field; journals with higher Impact Factors are often deemed to be more important than those with lower ones. Therefore, the more often articles in the journal are cited, the higher its Impact Factor.
The Impact Factor is highly discipline-dependent due to the speed with which articles get cited in each field and the related citation practices. The percentage of total citations occurring in the first two years after publication varies highly amongst disciplines. Accordingly, one cannot compare journals across disciplines based on their relative Impact Factors.
We provide several citation-based measurements for each of our journals, if available. We caution our authors, readers and researchers that they should assess the quality of the content of individual articles, and not judge the quality of articles by the reputation of the journal in which they are published.
|
Citation-based measurement |
2022 |
|
Journal Impact Factor, based on Web of Science (formerly ISI) |
0.8 |
|
0.8 |
|
|
Source-Normalized Impact per Paper (SNIP), based on SCOPUS, Elsevier |
0.310 |
|
0.239 |
|
|
- |