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.

What's New in Manuscript Tracking for Authors and Reviewers?

In May 2002, on-line submission and peer review made its debut at the Journal. The Internet-based tracking system delivers faster peer review and more efficient production. Developed for the Journal by HighWire Press of Stanford Universities in Palo Alto, California, the system is accessible to authors, reviewers, editors, and staff at http://submit.ajph.org. If you have the appropriate background for serving as a reviewer, we invite you to register at the site.

Author benefits. Instead of submitting multiple print copies of an article, authors now log on to this system and upload 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 HighWire journals and MEDLINE. Decisions are sent to authors via email. For staff there are savings in filing, storage, postage, data entry, and mail time.

Reviewer benefits. Reviewers receive an email invitation that they may either accept or decline after viewing an abstract. If they accept, they upload their comments for both author and editor. As the review period concludes, they have accesss to each other's comments, thus providing valuable feedback. Editors are alerted to comments and are able to respond more quickly than in the past. Reviewers have access to an archive of their papers and past performance.

What's Special Online for Readers

AJPH Online is a unique delivery channel of special importance to those in the research, academic, student, and practice communities. Key benefits for users are the sophisticated cross-journal search capabilities and free hyperlinking from article references to full-text articles in more than 900 other online journals that are maintained by HighWire Press of Stanford University Libraries.

Other unique features await you on this site -- such as reference links to Medline, the APHA bookstore, and other resources; focused searches for related articles or articles by the same author; online letters to the editor; table-of-contents e-mail alerts; a subject collections index; citation tracking and management; and a variety of help and feedback features to assist you in your searches.

What's Interesting in Content?

Authors 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, is a new department that debuts in fall 2006.

A total of 1995 submissions were received by the Journal in 2005. Final decisions were made for 2021 papers last year; of these 1298 papers (64.2%) were rejected upon initial screening by the editors, 192 (9.5%) were rejected after peer review, 59 (2.9%) were rejected with resubmission encouraged, and 472 (23.4%) were accepted.

Who Reads AJPH?

APHA represents more than 70 public health professions. Journal readers are administrators and planners (21%), physicians (18%), educators and health information specialists (15%), epidemiologists (8%), nurses (6%), students (6%), scientists (5%), consultants (5%). Others include researchers, dietitians, and environmentalists. They work in a variety of health care settings--30% in educational institutions, 28% in health agencies, associations, or organizations, 7% in clinics, 6% in health care facilities, 6% in research organizations, 5% in consulting firms, and 4% in government agencies other than health.

The 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 3.566. The Journal ranks #2 of 63 in the Public, Environmental & Occupational Health category of the 2004 Thomson Scientific Journal Citation Reports(r)-Social Science Edition. It ranks #11 of 99 in the same category in the Science Edition.

Who Else Does It Reach?

Many publications representing various fields index or abstract articles from the Journal. These include the following: Ageline, Assia (Applied Social Science Index and Abstracts), Biological Abstracts, Chemical Abstracts, CINAHL, Criminal Justice Abstracts, 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, Medline, Physical Education Index, Pollution Abstracts, Psychological Abstracts, PsychINFO, Safety Science Abstracts, Sage Family Studies Abstracts, Science Citation Index, SIIC Data Bases, and Social Work Research and Abstracts.