An increasing amount of traditional scientific journals are today migrating to the Open Access publishing model. International Journal of Qualitative Studies on Health and Well-being (QHW) started as such a traditional journal, published by Taylor & Francis with four issues per year but with access to the content only for subscribers. Generally university libraries, at least partly, paid for researchers’ access to scientific publications. However, because of the universities’ increasingly restricted budget, the libraries had to cut back on their collections and prioritize journals serving their researchers’ particular interests, omitting not-so-relevant publications. Unfortunately, therefore, the highest priority was seldom multidisciplinary journals, and even less so multidisciplinary journals with a focus on qualitative studies on health and well-being.
As from 2010, QHW has been published under an Open Access model by Co-Action Publishing. The journal is still a scientific peer-reviewed journal for rigorous qualitative methodology with significance for issues related to human health and well-being in a broad sense. The only thing that has changed is that the content is no longer hidden behind subscription walls. At the same time as Co-Action Publishing took over, all back volumes (2006–2009) were made freely accessible via the journal's Archive, which can be reached on the journal's dedicated website www.ijqhw.net, thus giving readers free access to all content published from the start.
QHW is now included in PubMed Central/PubMed, which has likely contributed to the increased interest in the journal. The journal is further covered by the foremost indexing services, e.g. MEDLINE, Scopus and PsycInfo. In the summer of 2012 we also expect to receive the journal's first official Impact Factor.
From January 2012, a moderate publication fee of €600 is charged upon acceptance of a manuscript, to be paid by the author's institution or funder. Generally, manuscripts should not exceed 10 typeset pages (A4), i.e. no more than 27–30 double-spaced pages with typeface 12, including the reference list. Longer papers incur a charge of €45 per page over 10. Short philosophical articles, i.e. no more than four pages long, incur a charge of €425. The publisher does waive the publication fee for authors from countries with poor financial means.
The procedure from submission to on-line publication is the following: First, all submissions are carefully read by the Chief Editor. If the manuscript is methodologically acceptable and the research question and result are interesting, one of the journal's editors will be assigned the paper: Lillemor Hallberg, Carina Berterö, Soly Erlandsson or Bente Martinsen. Then the manuscript will be sent for traditional peer-review by the responsible editor. Peer-reviewing is conducted as an honorary task by experienced colleagues in different parts of the world. Generally we use at least two reviewers who are especially experienced in the research field and methodological approach adopted in the study. As soon as the editor has received the reviewers’ comments, an editorial decision is taken. In this decision the reviewers as well as the editor's comments are weighed in. The decision can be one of the following: acceptance, acceptance after minor revision, revision and resubmission or rejection. An accepted manuscript is then sent for type-setting and—after 3–4weeks when the author is satisfied with the proof—published online.
The average time for copy-editing and type-setting of a manuscript is about 10 working days. The average time from acceptance to publication is 21 working days. During 2011, 56 peer-reviewed and accepted manuscripts were published, the rejection rate being 50%.
A big and increasing number of visitors to QHW's website have been observed. During 2011 the journal had more than 25,000 visits from people in 142 countries around the globe. The most frequent visitors were from Sweden, USA, United Kingdom, Norway, Canada and Denmark but quite many visits also came from Australia, India, the Philippines and Iran, to name but a few. Even more impressive was the number of downloads of full-text articles in 2011, which reached a total of 101,580 including through PubMed Central. Most of the articles were downloaded via QHW's website (OJS) but a considerable share was downloaded directly from PubMed Central where the journal is archived.
From January 2012, separate issues will no longer be published in the QHW. Instead, all articles accepted and published during the year will be placed under the 2012 volume of the journal, directly after they have been accepted, typeset and proofread. Thus, when readers click on the tab in the navigation bar marked “Current Volume”, what has been published so far in 2012 will appear directly.
International Journal of Qualitative Studies on Health and Well-being is well positioned to give your paper the very best exposure to fellow researchers, policy makers and the public.
Lillemor Hallberg
Chief Editor