Journal of Family Medicine · ISSN 2640-690X
About the journal
Journal of Family Medicine is a peer-reviewed, open access journal of general practice, published by Open Access Pub. It exists so that the questions generalists actually face have a scholarly record of their own.
This page describes what the journal is, whom it serves and who is accountable for its decisions. The subjects it publishes are set out in the aims and scope.
The journal
At a glance
The terms below govern everything the journal publishes. Each links to the page that states it in full.
- Title
- Journal of Family Medicine Abbreviated JFM. The same title is registered with the ISSN Portal and carried on every deposited article.
- ISSN
- 2640-690X
- Publisher
- Open Access Pub
- Access
- Open access Every article is free to read on publication, with no subscription, registration or embargo.
- License
- Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) Authors retain copyright. Readers may share and adapt the work, including commercially, with attribution. Copyright and license
- Peer review
- Single-blind by default; double-blind review is available on request. All submissions undergo initial editorial screening. Manuscripts that meet the journal’s scope and minimum requirements proceed to independent peer review.
- Identifiers
- A Crossref DOI is registered for each published article Registration creates a persistent citation link. It is a registration service, not a form of journal indexing. Indexing and preservation
- Charges
- An article processing charge applies after acceptance The current schedule and the terms that go with it are published in full. Article processing charges
Disciplinary role
Why a journal of family medicine
Most clinical literature is organized by organ, disease or procedure. Family medicine is organized by none of those. It is the discipline that meets a person before anyone has named what is wrong, that carries several conditions and several treatments at once, and that keeps doing so over years and within a household. Research that answers those questions is spread thinly across journals built around other specialties, and is read there by the wrong audience.
This journal gathers it in one place. It publishes work on generalist care and on the discipline itself — its education, its organization and the methods it uses to study its own practice — so that a generalist question can be asked, answered and cited among others of its kind.
Readers and authors
Whom the journal serves
Family physicians and general practitioners, primary care nurses and allied health professionals, educators and trainees in family medicine, health services researchers, and those responsible for primary care policy.
Submissions are welcome from every country and every model of health care. The journal’s published record already carries work from authors in Africa, Asia, Europe, North America and South America, on questions that range from antibiotic prescribing in a Kenyan county to the design of a primary care system for a small island state. A study conducted in a rural district hospital, a salaried practice or a national dataset is read on the same terms.
Accountability
Who is responsible for what
The journal is led by an Editor-in-Chief and an international editorial board. Every member is listed by name, with their affiliation, country and a profile page, on the editorial board page, and each submission is handled by an editor drawn from that board.
How decisions are reached
Editorial decisions are based on scope, scientific quality, methodological rigor, ethical compliance, reporting quality, and relevance to the journal. Manuscripts that proceed to external peer review are normally evaluated by two to three independent subject-matter experts, whose assessments inform the handling editor’s decision.
Independence
Editorial decisions remain independent of fees, memberships, optional services, and editorial or reviewer roles. Editors recuse themselves from decisions on their own submissions, which are handled independently, and reviewing confers no advantage in the review of a reviewer’s own work.
Research integrity
The journal’s standards for authorship, competing interests, consent and ethics approval, data availability, corrections and retractions are published in full, and apply to editors and reviewers as well as to authors. Editorial policies
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Working with the journal
Authors preparing a submission should read the aims and scope first to confirm fit, then the instructions for authors for the preparation requirements that apply to their manuscript. Researchers willing to review, and colleagues interested in editorial work, are welcome to make themselves known to the editorial office.
The editorial office can be reached at [email protected].
Aims and Scope Instructions for Authors Editorial Policies Article Processing Charges Editorial Board