The editorial board of The Union's online, open access journal, Public Health Action, is changing to represent a wider range of health expertise, with more editors from disease-endemic countries and from a wider group of organisations and backgrounds.
The editorial board of The Union's online, open access journal, Public Health Action (PHA), is changing to represent a wider range of health expertise, with more editors from disease-endemic countries and from a wider group of organisations and backgrounds.
This builds on the efforts of those who conceived, launched and nurtured the journal, in an effort to expand the range of diseases covered, its readership and its pool of contributing authors.
PHA aims to promote the vision of The Union, health solutions for the poor, by disseminating new knowledge on health systems and health services for vulnerable groups, with a priority on tuberculosis (TB), lung health, non-communicable diseases and related public health issues. Since its launch in 2011, papers have nearly always had a focus on TB and contributions have very often included Union coauthors, who have served as research mentors. The changes to the editorial board are hoped to extend the reach of the publication and attract authors from a wider range of disciplines and expertise.
The Union is also working to ensure PHA is indexed in key bibliographic databases to increase access to the journal and raise the credibility of published papers. In 2016, PHA was indexed with European PubMed Central, which led to a dramatic and sustained increase in the number of times PHA papers were accessed. Unfortunately, the recent application to index PHA on MEDLINE was unsuccessful, but the journal has made significant progress in its application since 2014.
These changes to PHA are in response to feedback from the recent MEDLINE application and are expected to support a more successful outcome at the next opportunity for submission in June 2019.