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About

Aims and scope

The Journal of Philosophy, Ethics, and Humanities in Medicine is positioned at the intersection of the humanities, social sciences, and medicine. We welcome submissions from scholars and practitioners that build interdisciplinary bridges and re-envision contributions across these disciplines. 

We seek to engage a more comprehensive understanding of health and wellness that purposefully aligns the wants and needs of patients and practitioners, and attends to the individual human condition and public health in ways that modern medicine has at times neglected. We invite approaches that:

  • recognize the dual nature of medicine as both an art and a science;
  • empower patients and caregivers;
  • reduce health-worker burnout;
  • engage fully with humanities and social science perspectives—and their values—to inform medical education and practice;
  • re-envision the integration of humanities and emerging technology in these settings.

Open access

All articles published by Philosophy, Ethics, and Humanities in Medicine are made freely and permanently accessible online immediately upon publication, without subscription charges or registration barriers. Further information about open access can be found here.

As authors of articles published in Philosophy, Ethics, and Humanities in Medicine you are the copyright holders of your article and have granted to any third party, in advance and in perpetuity, the right to use, reproduce or disseminate your article, according to the BMC license agreement.

For those of you who are US government employees or are prevented from being copyright holders for similar reasons, BMC can accommodate non-standard copyright lines. Please contact us if further information is needed.

Article processing charges (APC)

Authors who publish open access in Philosophy, Ethics, and Humanities in Medicine are required to pay an article processing charge (APC). The APC price will be determined from the date on which the article is accepted for publication.

The current APC, subject to VAT or local taxes where applicable, is: £1290.00/$1690.00/€1490.00

Visit our open access support portal and our Journal Pricing FAQs for further information.

Open access funding

Visit Springer Nature’s open access funding & support services for information about research funders and institutions that provide funding for APCs.

Springer Nature offers agreements that enable institutions to cover open access publishing costs. Learn more about our open access agreements to check your eligibility and discover whether this journal is included.

Springer Nature offers APC waivers and discounts for articles published in our fully open access journals whose corresponding authors are based in the world’s lowest income countries (see our APC waivers and discounts policy for further information). Requests for APC waivers and discounts from other authors will be considered on a case-by-case basis, and may be granted in cases of financial need (see our open access policies for journals for more information). All applications for discretionary APC waivers and discounts should be made at the point of manuscript submission; requests made during the review process or after acceptance are unable to be considered.

Indexing services

All articles published in Philosophy, Ethics, and Humanities in Medicine are included in:

  • Science Citation Index Expanded (SciSearch)
  • SCImago
  • SCOPUS
  • Journal Citation Reports/Science Edition
  • Social Science Citation Index
  • Journal Citation Reports/Social Sciences Edition
  • PsycINFO
  • Google Scholar
  • Academic OneFile
  • Arts & Humanities Citation Index
  • Current Abstracts
  • Current Contents / Social & Behavioral Sciences
  • Current Contents/Arts and Humanities
  • EBSCO Academic Search
  • EBSCO Biomedical Reference Collection
  • EBSCO CINAHL
  • EBSCO Health Policy Reference Center
  • EBSCO STM Source
  • EBSCO TOC Premier
  • OCLC
  • Summon by ProQuest
  • The Philosopher's Index

The full text of all articles is deposited in digital archives around the world to guarantee long-term digital preservation. You can also access all articles published by BioMed Central on SpringerLink.

Philosophy, Ethics, and Humanities in Medicine has been selected for indexing in Web of Science and is currently being tracked by Clarivate Analytics to determine its Impact Factor.

Peer-review policy

Peer-review is the system used to assess the quality of a manuscript before it is published. Independent researchers in the relevant research area assess submitted manuscripts for originality, validity and significance to help editors determine whether the manuscript should be published in their journal. You can read more about the peer-review process here.

Philosophy, Ethics, and Humanities in Medicine operates a double-blind peer-review system, where the reviewers do not know the names or affiliations of the authors and the reviewer reports provided to the authors are anonymous. The benefit of double-blind peer review is that it allows reviewers to judge the manuscript based on content alone, and they are not unconsciously biased by knowledge of who the authors are. As this journal operates a double-blind peer review system, please do  not include identifying information in your main manuscript as this must remain blinded. If sections of your manuscript such as ‘Authors’ contributions’ or ‘Competing interests’ contain identifying information please include these as a separate file and upload the file using the ‘Title Page’ option at the Attach Files step.

Submitted manuscripts will generally be reviewed by two to three experts who will be asked to evaluate whether the manuscript is scientifically sound and coherent, whether it duplicates already published work, and whether or not the manuscript is sufficiently clear for publication. Reviewers will also be asked to indicate how interesting and significant the research is. The Editors will reach a decision based on these reports and, where necessary, they will consult with members of the Editorial Board.

Editorial policies

All manuscripts submitted to Philosophy, Ethics, and Humanities in Medicine should adhere to BioMed Central's editorial policies.

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Citing articles in Philosophy, Ethics, and Humanities in Medicine

Articles in Philosophy, Ethics, and Humanities in Medicine  should be cited in the same way as articles in a traditional journal. Because articles are not printed, they do not have page numbers; instead, they are given a unique article number.

Article citations follow this format:

Authors: Title. Philos Ethics Humanit Med [year], [volume number]:[article number].

e.g. Roberts LD, Hassall DG, Winegar DA, Haselden JN, Nicholls AW, Griffin JL: Increased hepatic oxidative metabolism distinguishes the action of Peroxisome Proliferator-Activated Receptor delta from Peroxisome Proliferator-Activated Receptor gamma in the Ob/Ob mouse. Philos Ethics Humanit Med 2009, 1:115.

refers to article 115 from Volume 1 of the journal.

Appeals and complaints

Authors who wish to appeal a rejection or make a complaint should follow the procedure outlined in the BMC Editorial Policies.

Benefits of publishing with BMC

High visibility

Philosophy, Ethics, and Humanities in Medicine's open access policy allows maximum visibility of articles published in the journal as they are available to a wide, global audience. 

Speed of publication

Philosophy, Ethics, and Humanities in Medicine offers a fast publication schedule whilst maintaining rigorous peer review; all articles must be submitted online, and peer review is managed fully electronically (articles are distributed in PDF form, which is automatically generated from the submitted files). Articles will be published with their final citation after acceptance, in both fully browsable web form, and as a formatted PDF.

Flexibility

Online publication in Philosophy, Ethics, and Humanities in Medicine gives you the opportunity to publish large datasets, large numbers of color illustrations and moving pictures, to display data in a form that can be read directly by other software packages so as to allow readers to manipulate the data for themselves, and to create all relevant links (for example, to PubMed, to sequence and other databases, and to other articles).

Promotion and press coverage

Articles published in Philosophy, Ethics, and Humanities in Medicine are included in article alerts and regular email updates. Some may be highlighted on Philosophy, Ethics, and Humanities in Medicine’s pages and on the BMC homepage.

In addition, articles published in Philosophy, Ethics, and Humanities in Medicine may be promoted by press releases to the general or scientific press. These activities increase the exposure and number of accesses for articles published in Philosophy, Ethics, and Humanities in Medicine. A list of articles recently press-released by journals published by BMC is available here.

Copyright

As an author of an article published in Philosophy, Ethics, and Humanities in Medicine you retain the copyright of your article and you are free to reproduce and disseminate your work (for further details, see the BMC license agreement).

For further information about the advantages of publishing in a journal from BMC, please click here.

Annual Journal Metrics

  • 2022 Citation Impact
    1.9 - 2-year Impact Factor
    2.3 - 5-year Impact Factor
    0.999 - SNIP (Source Normalized Impact per Paper)
    0.683 - SJR (SCImago Journal Rank)

    2023 Speed
    47 days submission to first editorial decision for all manuscripts (Median)
    265 days submission to accept (Median)

    2023 Usage 
    396,923 downloads
    192 Altmetric mentions

This journal is indexed by

    • PubMed
    • MEDLINE
    • PubMed Central
    • SCOPUS
    • SCImago
    • Science Citation Index Expanded (SciSearch)
    • Journal Citation Reports/Science Edition
    • Social Science Citation Index
    • Journal Citation Reports/Social Sciences Edition
    • PsycINFO
    • Google Scholar
    • Academic OneFile
    • Arts & Humanities Citation Index
    • Current Abstracts
    • Current Contents / Social & Behavioral Sciences
    • Current Contents/Arts and Humanities
    • EBSCO Academic Search
    • EBSCO Biomedical Reference Collection
    • EBSCO CINAHL
    • EBSCO Health Policy Reference Center
    • EBSCO STM Source
    • EBSCO TOC Premier
    • OCLC
    • Summon by ProQuest
    • The Philosopher's Index

Need help with APC funding?

We offer a free open access support service to make it easier for you to discover and apply for article-processing charge (APC) funding.