About Environmental Research: Health

Environmental Research: Health™ (ERH) is a multidisciplinary, open access journal devoted to addressing important global challenges at the interface of the environment and public health in a way that bridges scientific progress and assessment with efforts relating to impact/future risks, resilience, mitigation, adaptation, security and solutions in the broadest sense. All research methodologies are encouraged comprehensively covering qualitative, quantitative, experimental, theoretical and applied approaches; exposure assessments; implementation studies; and policy analysis.

Particular topics of interest include (but are not limited to):

• Physical, chemical and environmental factors directly associated with public health;
• Environmental epidemiology;
• Environmental chemistry, microbiology and toxicology;
• Environmental and occupational health;
• Health and the natural environment (e.g., greenspace, vegetation, urban parks);
• Health and the built environment;
• Climate change and health;
• Infectious disease prevention and control;
• Computation and modelling of infectious diseases;
• Food safety and control;
• Water quality and disease;
• Air quality and disease;
• Hazardous materials and toxic substances management;
• Public health infrastructure;
• Public health impact assessment, systems management, mitigation and adaptation;
• Tools and methods to assess the health impacts of environmental conditions, such as air, water and soil quality and pollution;
• Emerging areas that examine the relationship between the environment and public health.

• Multidisciplinary scope: Uniquely bringing together all communities working on important challenges relating to environmental research and health at all scales and in all geographical settings.
• Open access: All articles are published under a CC BY licence, providing immediate and perpetual access, and ensuring the widest possible dissemination and visibility for authors and their work. IOP Publishing is currently covering all article publication charges so the journal is free for both authors and readers.
• High quality peer review: adopting the same high level of service as Environmental Research Letters (including Transparent Peer Review), all articles are rigorously peer reviewed by IOP Publishing’s global network of expert reviewers, supported by the journal’s diverse Editorial Board.
• Fast publication: We are committed to providing authors with a fast, professional service to ensure rapid first decision, acceptance and publication. Once accepted, your article will be accessible to readers within 24 hours (with a citable DOI).
• Pre-print friendly: Authors are encouraged to post on community pre-print platforms.
• Data and code: Research published in Environmental Research: Health can include citable datasets and programmable code.
• Society owned: IOP Publishing is a leading society publisher and profits generated are invested in the Institute of Physics, helping to support science research, education and outreach around the world.

Environmental Research: Health welcomes submissions of the following article types:

• Papers: Research articles of up to 10 000 words that report new research making a significant advance to the field.
• Research Letters: Concise high impact original research articles, not normally more than 4000 words, making a timely, novel, and significant contribution and deserving of rapid publication. Shorter research articles of between 1000 and 2000 words can also be considered for publication if they meet these criteria. Research letters which exceed 4000 words, excluding titles, abstract, figures, tables, captions, and references, can be considered. However, authors must ensure their articles are written as concisely as possible with the journal’s broad readership in mind. Any additional length over and above 4000 words must be justified, i.e. if shortening the article further would adversely affect the rigour or clarity. Longer or more technically detailed articles may not be considered.
• Reviews: Review articles are flexible length systematic reviews of important and topical environmental health issues. Whilst also accepting traditional reviews, the journal aims to lead the way by publishing more quantitative, meta-data driven reviews. Whilst most review articles are commissioned by the Editorial Board, we also consider unsolicited review proposals. A style guide for writing a systematic review for Environmental Research: Health is available.
• Perspectives: Commentary pieces, not more than 3000 words in length, exploring a contemporary topic from a personal standpoint, expressing the opinions and judgement of experts in the field. Ideally supported by rigorous analysis, and reflecting on the future direction of research, which may also include discussions of policy implications or recommendations.
• Comments and replies: Comment articles in ERH are critical technical comments made on a recently published research article in the journal. A comment article must pertain to the original ERH article, be timely, focused, factually-based, and of clear value to readers, be measured and professional in tone, provide a significant and useful addition to the scientific literature and on-going scholarly discussion (i.e. not simply identifying error(s) in the original published article) and be of interest, not only to specialists in the field, but to ERH’s broader readership. A comment article should be as succinct as possible, and, whilst the length can be flexible, a maximum length of three journal pages is suggested and may be imposed. Following review by the Editorial Board and/or reviewers, comment articles are forwarded to the author(s) of the article being commented upon, who then have the option of submitting an associated reply article. Both comment and reply articles can be subject to further review. Assessment of suitability against the above criteria, and the eventual publication of all comments and replies, will be at the discretion of the editors. Comment articles must be submitted within six months of the date of publication of the original article in ERH. Comment articles submitted after this date will not be considered for publication in the journal.

Environmental Research: Health has no subscription charges and the costs of publication are fully funded by article publication charges (APCs).

As part of our commitment to open science, IOP Publishing is covering the article publication charge (APC) for all articles published in the journal. The list prices shown below will not be charged if your article is accepted for publication.

*excluding VAT where applicable

**eligibility criteria can be found here

APCs only apply to articles accepted for publication; there are no submission charges.

There are no other charges for publishing in Environmental Research: Health.

Paying for open access

Various discounts, waivers and funding arrangements are available to support our authors. Visit our Paying for open access page for further details.

We work with our authors to help make their work as easy to discover as possible. Articles published in Environmental Research: Health will be available in relevant indexing services and databases when appropriate.