AJPH, first published in 1911, is the official Journal of the American Public Health Association, 800 I St., NW, Washington, DC 20001-3710; (202) 777-APHA(2742). APHA is a professional society founded in 1872 to represent all disciplines and specialties in public health.

Impact on Public Health

The 2007 impact factor of the Journal—a measure of the frequency with which an average article is cited each year in the 2 years after publication—is 3.612. The Journal ranks #2 of 70 titles in the Public, Environmental and Occupational Health category of the 2007 Thomson Reuters Journal Citation Reports(r)-Social Sciences Edition. It ranks #10 of 100 in the same category in the Science Edition.

Quality Peer Review

Customized by HighWire Press by HighWire Press of Stanford University, the Journal's electronic peer review tracking system is accessible to authors, reviewers, editors, and staff at http://submit.ajph.org. Access is also available via the Online Submission/Review link at http://www.ajph.org, the Journal's homepage. If you have the appropriate background for serving as a reviewer, we invite you to register.

Authors log on to this system and submit abstract, manuscript, and reference files; tables, figures, and photos; and supplementary material. Authors can save work in progress, proof and submit revisions, download and review proofs, check on status, update personal information, and review their past submission records. References can be checked via links to sources. Decisions are sent to authors via email.

Reviewers receive an email invitation to review a specific article that they may either accept or decline after viewing an abstract of the article. If they accept, they upload their comments for both the author and the editor. The review process is blinded: authors are not told the identities of the reviewers, and reviewers are not told the identities of authors. As the review period concludes, reviewers have access to each other's comments, thus providing valuable feedback. Reviewers also have access to an archive of their past papers and performance.

Reviewed papers usually receive careful scrutiny by 3 reviewers and additional assessment by the responsible associate editor, deputy editor, and editor-in-chief. Initial screening results in rejection of the majority of manuscripts within 2 weeks of submission. For those papers that are selected for review, the time to first decision is about 2 months. Overall time from submission to acceptance, which includes revisions by the authors, is about 4.6 months.

Final decisions were made on 2203 papers in 2008. Of these papers, 429 (19.5%) were accepted for publication. Another 1499 papers (68.0%) were rejected upon initial screening by the editors, 217 (9.9%) were rejected after peer review, and 58 (2.6%) were rejected with resubmission encouraged.

Unique Online Features

The online Journal is a delivery channel of special importance to those in the research, academic, student, and practice communities. It is the official version of the journal. Among key benefits for users are the cross-journal search capabilities and free hyperlinking from article references to full-text articles in more than 1212 other online journals that are hosted by HighWire Press, a division of Stanford University Libraries.

Other features include focused searches for related articles or articles by the same author; online letters to the editor; email alerts to new published content; a subject collections index; citation tracking and management; access to supplementary material; and a variety of help and feedback features to assist you in your searches.

Diverse Content

Authors from around the globe contribute to AJPH their original unpublished research, social science analyses, scholarly essays, critical commentaries, and letters to the editor. Department submissions include

• Government, Politics, and Law--public health arguments grounded in critical analysis
• Health Policy and Ethics Forum--debates on public health issues
• Field Action Reports--reports on practice-based programs and initiatives with potential to advance the public's health
• Framing Health Matters--articles featuring work in the social sciences and other disciplines
• Faces of Public Health and Going Public--profiles of outstanding leaders and examples of vital public health work
• Images of Public Health, Public Health Then and Now, and Voices From the Past--stories from public health history still relevant today
• Statistically Speaking--a forum offering highlights and guidance from the world of statistics.

Abstracting and Indexing

Publications that index or abstract articles from AJPH include the following: Ageline, Assia (Applied Social Science Index and Abstracts), Biological Abstracts, Chemical Abstracts, CINAHL, Criminal Justice Abstracts, EMBASE, EMCare, Environmental Abstracts, e-psyche, ETOH (Alcohol and Alcohol Problems Science Database), Excerpta Medica, Food Science and Technology, General Science Index, Grateful Med, Hospital Literature Index, Human Resources Abstracts, International Pharmaceutical Abstracts (IPA), Medline, Physical Education Index, Pollution Abstracts, Psychological Abstracts, PsychINFO, Safety Science Abstracts, Sage Family Studies Abstracts, Sage Human Resources Abstracts, Science Citation Index, SCOPUS, SIIC Data Bases, Social Work Research and Abstracts, and Statistical Reference Index (SRI)/LexisNexis.