About the Journal

Focus and Scope

The Nordic Journal of Health Economics publishes empirical and theoretical research within the field of Health Economics. We aim to focus broadly and invite contributions on health economic topics from researchers both inside and outside of the Nordic countries. Special, but not exclusive, attention is given to topics that are relevant to the Nordic setting and to Nordic research agendas.

We especially welcome contributions including the following topics:

1) Production of health and health care;

2) Demand for health and health care;

3) Financing of health care;

4) Measurement of health; health behaviors and policy interventions;

5) Efficiency and distributional aspects of health;

6) Health care system and organization;

7) Economic incentives in health care; and

8) Economics of social and long term health care.

In addition to original research papers, we also welcome reviews, shorter contributions, comments, and discussions on developments in Health Economics and health policy reforms.

Peer Review Process

NJHE applies a double-blind peer review process. Submitted manuscripts are first evaluated internally to check quality and that the manuscript is within the aims and scope of the journal. Submissions judged to be suitable for publication will be reviewed by typically two external reviewers in a double-blind peer-review process. Reviewers are asked to indicate whether they believe the manuscript should be published or not and motivate their answer, typically by leaving a number of comments. The reviewer can leave comments that will be seen only by the editor.

Based on the review reports, the editor makes a decision whether the manuscript should be rejected, accepted, or whether authors should be given the opportunity to revise the manuscript and submit a new version. Re-submitted manuscripts are evaluated by the editor, together with the author’s responses to comments from the previous review round. Depending on the type of changes required in the manuscript, the review process is often iterated. The same reviewers are typically used throughout the whole process. Only in special cases, such as for example in case of a major revise and resubmit and a reviewer from the previous round is not able to review the revised manuscript, new reviewers are invited.     

An editor is appointed to be responsible for a certain manuscript based on topic of the manuscript and editor expertise, workload and suitability regarding relationship with the authors. An editor is not appointed to be responsible for a manuscript written by a colleague at the same department or by a close colleague in any other way.  

 

Manuscripts submitted by editors and editorial board members

Manuscripts submitted by editors and editorial board members are essentially handled in the same way as other manuscripts, i.e. the manuscript is first screened by an editor and if judged suitable for the journal a double-blind review process with two external reviewers is applied. As for all manuscripts, the relationship between editor and author is taken into account when appointing an editor.   

 

Manuscripts commissioned by NJHE

Manuscripts commissioned by the journal, mainly invited manuscripts, follow a different review process. In these cases, one external reader is used. The external reader is requested to read the manuscript and, if relevant, provide some general and minor comments. This process is usually non-blind. 

Open Access Policy

This journal provides immediate open access to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge.

Publication Policy

NJHE publishes one regular issue per year. The regular issue is published in December. Before the next publication date, all articles are accessible online as soon as they are accepted for publication ("Early view of accepted manuscripts").  Special issues, containing articles of specific themes, are published irregularly.

Publication ethics and malpractice policy

NJHE’s publication ethics and malpractice policy builds on COPE’s (Committee on publication ethics) international standards for authors[1] and editors[2]. This means that, in order to publish in the journal,  NJHE expects authors to adhere to the, for the individual manuscript applicable and relevant parts of the standards for authors. In summary, these say that:

  • The research being reported should have been conducted in an ethical and responsible manner and should comply with all relevant legislation.
  • Researchers should present their results clearly, honestly, and without fabrication, falsification or inappropriate data manipulation.
  • Researchers should strive to describe their methods clearly and unambiguously so that their findings can be confirmed by others.
  • Researchers should adhere to publication requirements that submitted work is original, is not plagiarised, and has not been published elsewhere.
  • Authors should take collective responsibility for submitted and published work.
  • The authorship of research publications should accurately reflect individuals’ contributions to the work and its reporting.
  • Funding sources and relevant conflicts of interest should be disclosed.

The full statements can be found here.

Any deviation from these standards that comes to the editors’ knowledge will be dealt with accordingly, guided by COPE’s flowcharts (which can be found here).

When submitting a manuscript to NJHE, authors are, among other things, asked to state all (financial as well as non-financial) conflicts of interests, confirm that the work is not submitted to more than one publication for consideration at the same time and that it has not been published before, confirm that instructions to ensure a blind review have been followed, and asked to inform about whether the research has been subject to application to any ethics committee (or similar procedures).

Authors are fully responsible for the content of submitted research. However, editors also have a great responsibility and are accountable for what they publish, and they are in a unique position to indirectly foster responsible conduct of research through their policies and processes. NJHE editors agree with COPE’s international standards for editors2. Among other things, this means that editors make fair and unbiased decisions independent from commercial consideration and ensure a fair and appropriate peer review process, and that action is taken as soon as any suspected or alleged research and publication misconduct come to their knowledge. 

 

[1] Wager E & Kleinert S (2011). Responsible research publication: international standards for authors. A position statement developed at the 2nd World Conference on Research Integrity, Singapore, July 22-24, 2010. Chapter 50 in: Mayer T & Steneck N (eds) Promoting Research Integrity in a Global Environment. Imperial College Press / World Scientific Publishing, Singapore (pp 309-16). (ISBN 978-981-4340-97-7).

[2] Kleinert S & Wager E (2011). Responsible research publication: international standards for editors. A position statement developed at the 2nd World Conference on Research Integrity, Singapore, July 22-24, 2010. Chapter 51 in: Mayer T & Steneck N (eds) Promoting Research Integrity in a Global Environment. Imperial College Press / World Scientific Publishing, Singapore (pp 317-28). (ISBN 978-981-4340-97-7).