International Journal of Infection Prevention · Aims and scope
Aims and Scope
What this journal publishes, the points along the chain of infection where that work applies, and how an author can judge a manuscript’s fit.
ISSN 2690-4837 DOI prefix 10.14302 CC BY 4.0 Open access Published since 2018
01 · Aims
What the journal sets out to do
The International Journal of Infection Prevention publishes peer-reviewed research on preventing infection: on the organisms and reservoirs that make infection possible, on the methods that detect it, on the measures that interrupt its transmission, on the means that protect people who are exposed, and on the programs and policies that carry all of these into practice.
Its aim is to hold that whole range in one place. Prevention is carried out at a particular point by someone responsible for it — a laboratory that identifies a resistant organism, a surgical team that changes a routine, an immunization program that closes a gap in coverage, a ministry that writes a standard. Each of those decisions rests on evidence produced at the other points, and that evidence travels further when it is published together than when it is divided among separate literatures.
The journal is international in the plain sense. It publishes prevention research from any country and any resource setting, and it asks authors to describe the setting closely enough that a reader elsewhere can judge what transfers. Articles appear in open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license and are registered with Crossref, so the work reaches the practitioners who need it and stays citable.
02 · Subject coverage
Where along the chain the work applies
The journal organizes its coverage around five connected areas of prevention: sources and resistance, detection, interruption of transmission, protection of exposed people, and programs and policy. This scope map brings together research on the chain of infection and the systems that support prevention. Work within or across these areas is welcome.
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POINT 01
Sources, reservoirs and resistance
What causes infection and where it persists, and the characteristics that make an organism harder to prevent.
- Bacterial, viral, fungal and parasitic agents of clinical or public-health importance
- Colonization, carriage and the transition from carriage to disease
- Antimicrobial resistance: mechanisms, emergence, selection and spread
- Molecular and genomic epidemiology, typing and outbreak strain attribution
- Environmental, water, food, animal and vector reservoirs
- Zoonotic transmission and One Health approaches at the human–animal interface
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POINT 02
Detection, surveillance and outbreak investigation
How an infection or a risk is recognized, counted and reported early enough for prevention to be possible.
- Surveillance system design, evaluation, coverage and data quality
- Case definitions, notification, reporting and the use of routine data
- Screening, admission testing and detection of asymptomatic carriage
- Outbreak detection, field investigation, contact tracing and response evaluation
- Diagnostic and laboratory methods, including point-of-care and molecular assays
- Diagnostic stewardship, test selection and interpretation in prevention decisions
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POINT 03
Interrupting transmission
The measures placed between a source and a susceptible person, and the conditions under which those measures hold.
- Hand hygiene, aseptic technique and safe injection practice
- Isolation, cohorting, patient placement and transmission-based precautions
- Personal protective equipment: selection, supply, training and observed use
- Environmental hygiene, cleaning, disinfection and sterilization technologies
- Medical device design, reprocessing and device-associated infection
- Surgical site infection prevention and perioperative practice
- Air, water and building safety in health-care and other occupied settings
- Water, sanitation and hygiene, food safety and vector control
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POINT 04
Protecting people who are exposed
Reducing the chance that an exposure becomes disease, and the groups for whom that margin is narrowest.
- Vaccine development, immunization strategy, coverage, acceptance, safety surveillance and program delivery
- Pre-exposure and post-exposure prophylaxis
- Antimicrobial stewardship, prescribing and the preservation of treatment options
- Host, nutritional and immune determinants of susceptibility
- Prevention in immunocompromised, maternal, neonatal, pediatric and older populations
- Occupational protection of health-care staff, laboratory workers and other exposed groups
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POINT 05
Programs, systems and policy
What makes a prevention measure happen, what keeps it in place once the study team has left, and what it costs.
- Infection prevention and control program organization, staffing and governance
- Implementation science, quality improvement and knowledge translation
- Behavior change, training, education and adherence in real conditions
- Economic evaluation and the resourcing of prevention
- Preparedness, outbreak response and health-system resilience
- Standards, regulation and equitable access to preventive measures
Work that sits between two of these points is squarely within the journal’s remit: a laboratory finding carried through to a change in practice, a surveillance signal followed into an outbreak response, a device evaluation taken as far as the reprocessing routine that will decide whether it works.
03 · Settings and disciplines
Where prevention happens, and who writes about it
Settings
- Hospitals, intensive care, surgical and specialist units
- Primary care, outpatient clinics and community health services
- Long-term care, rehabilitation and home care
- Dental, ophthalmic and other procedural practice
- Clinical, public-health and research laboratories
- Veterinary practice, livestock production and food systems
- Water supply, sanitation and the built environment
- Schools, workplaces, transport and other congregate settings
- District, national and international prevention programs
Disciplines
Contributions come from microbiologists and virologists, infectious-disease physicians and surgeons, infection prevention nurses and practitioners, epidemiologists, pharmacists, veterinarians, engineers and materials scientists, behavioral and social scientists, health economists, informaticians and public-health practitioners.
Each of those readers arrives with a different question, and the journal reads a manuscript on the terms of the discipline that produced it. A well-conducted study of reprocessing engineering, of vaccine acceptance, of a resistance mechanism or of a national standard is assessed as what it is, rather than against the conventions of a field it did not set out to address.
04 · Forms of work
Examples of research approaches
Subject eligibility and evidential standard are separate questions. A manuscript is in scope through its substantive infection-prevention question; its methods and claims are assessed against the standards appropriate to its design. Relevant fundamental, applied, theoretical, qualitative, replication and synthesis work can contribute. The examples below illustrate research approaches.
- Laboratory and mechanistic studies — characterization of organisms and resistance determinants, and evaluation of materials, devices and decontamination methods.
- Observational studies — cohort, case-control, cross-sectional, surveillance-based and ecological work on risk, incidence, transmission and carriage.
- Interventional studies — randomized trials and quasi-experimental evaluations of preventive measures, bundles and programs.
- Methodological and measurement studies — development and validation of surveillance definitions, sampling and diagnostic methods, and analytic approaches.
- Implementation and improvement evaluations — including interrupted time series and before-and-after designs reported with an adequate denominator.
- Modeling and economic analyses — transmission models, projections, and cost, cost-effectiveness and budget-impact studies of prevention.
- Descriptive clinical and field reports — outbreak descriptions and case reports that record something precisely enough for a reader to recognize it again.
- Reviews and evidence syntheses — including systematic reviews and meta-analyses conducted to a stated protocol.
A claim is read against the design that supports it: a description as a description, an association as an association, and an effectiveness claim against a design and analysis capable of supporting that claim. Reporting should describe the context, methods and limitations relevant to the work. Intervention evaluations should describe the practice assessed, any change introduced and the relevant comparison; reported rates and proportions should identify their denominators. Applicable ethical approvals, consent or authorized exemptions and waivers should be documented. For submission categories, preparation guidance and reporting guidelines, consult the instructions for authors.
05 · Fit
How to tell whether a manuscript belongs here
A manuscript fits when its question, analysis or synthesis substantively addresses preventing infection or understanding the organisms, transmission, susceptibility, methods or systems on which prevention depends.
Examples of that connection include the following. Fit is assessed through the contribution as a whole and its relevance to infection prevention.
- The study measures a preventive measure, bundle, program or policy.
- It measures an outcome that prevention is meant to change — incidence, colonization, transmission, exposure or resistance.
- It describes a source, reservoir or route that prevention would have to act on.
- It develops or validates a method by which any of those is detected, counted or judged.
- It examines how a prevention practice is carried out in real conditions, or what it costs.
- It describes or analyzes a clinical or field observation relevant to understanding infection risk or prevention in one or more of the areas above.
The prevention connection should be developed in the research question, analysis or interpretation, beyond a passing mention of infection. Authors who are uncertain are welcome to send a title and abstract to the editorial office before preparing a full submission; the journal’s purpose and editorial organization are described on the about page.
06 · Assessment
How fit and quality are decided
- Screening
- All submissions undergo initial editorial screening. Manuscripts that meet the journal’s scope and minimum requirements proceed to independent peer review.
- Review model
- Single-blind by default; double-blind review is available on request.
- Reviewers
- Manuscripts that proceed to external peer review are normally evaluated by at least two independent subject-matter experts.
- Decision criteria
- Editorial decisions are based on scope, scientific quality, methodological rigor, ethical compliance, reporting quality, and relevance to the journal.
- Independence
- Those decisions are reached independently of fees, memberships, optional services, and editorial or reviewing roles. Editors recuse themselves from decisions on their own submissions, which are handled independently.
07 · Submission
Where to send work that fits
Three routes are open to authors. Each reaches the same editorial office, and each is set out below with its destination.
- Primary route ManuscriptZone oap.manuscriptzone.net
- Alternative route Simple manuscript submission form openaccesspub.org/manuscript-submission-form
- Assisted route Editorial office [email protected]
Authors must use only one submission route for the same manuscript.