Aims & Scope

BCPHR — Aims and Scope

BCPHR publishes peer-reviewed scholarship that advances health equity and social justice through evidence-based public health research and commentary.

Mission

Our Mission

The mission of BCPHR is to improve health equity and social justice globally through the publication of public health content grounded in the thoughtful evaluation of evidence. BCPHR supports emerging and established investigators producing research in multiple formats: online publications, video, podcasts, ebooks, and more.

Aims

What We Publish

BCPHR seeks rigorous public health scholarship that advances six aims. Manuscripts that speak to one or more of these aims are within scope.

Spur substantive discussion of challenging public health issues

Foster cross-disciplinary collaboration

Integrate methods and ideas across disciplines

Investigate biological, psychosocial, and structural determinants of health

Translate knowledge into program and policy action

Advance health equity and social justice

Scope

Subject Areas Within Scope

BCPHR welcomes manuscripts on any of the following public health subject areas, examined through the lenses of social justice and health equity. The list is illustrative, not exhaustive.

Subject Areas

HIV care, prevention, and aging with HIV
LGBTQ health and gender-affirming care
Harm reduction and substance use
Maternal, child, and reproductive health
Mental and behavioral health
Health policy and health systems
Global, migrant, and refugee health
Environmental and climate health
Infectious disease and pandemic response
Chronic disease and aging
Social and structural determinants of health
Community-based participatory research
Health workforce and medical education
Reproductive justice and disability justice
Carceral health and decarceration

Readership

Who Reads BCPHR

BCPHR reaches an international audience of public health researchers, clinicians, policy makers, advocates, community-based practitioners, and students. Authors and readers span the United States, Canada, Mexico, the United Kingdom, Nigeria, the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, and beyond. The Journal averages over 40,000 readers annually and publishes approximately 40 items per year on a continuous basis.

BCPHR is a fully open-access journal (CC BY): all content is freely available without subscription, and authors retain copyright to their work.

Journal History

From HPHR to BCPHR

The Journal was founded in 2013 as the Harvard Public Health Review, a student-run publication at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. In 2021, the Journal left Harvard to publish independently as HPHR Journal through the Boston Congress of Public Health, retaining ISSN 2643-6450. In 2025, the Journal was renamed the Boston Congress of Public Health Review (BCPHR), receiving ISSN 3068-8558. Articles published prior to January 2025 remain available at bcphr.org; articles published in January 2025 and beyond are published at bcphreview.org.

Identifiers

Journal Identifiers

At a Glance

Current title: Boston Congress of Public Health Review (BCPHR)
Current ISSN: 3068-8558
Former title: HPHR Journal (formerly Harvard Public Health Review)
Former ISSN: 2643-6450 (archive at bcphr.org)
DOI prefix: 10.54111
Indexed in: JSTOR
Publisher: Boston Congress of Public Health, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit
Peer review: single-blind, two reviewers per manuscript
Frequency: continuous publication; expedited review windows in January, February, April, May, September, October, and December

BCPHR Aligns with the Following International Publishing Standards. (Click to Open)

COPE Core Practices ICMJE Recommendations WAME Policies Declaration of Helsinki Foundation for Biomedical Research EQUATOR Network 16 Principles of Transparency PIE-J (NISO RP-16-2013)

What is PIE-J? PIE-J stands for Presentation & Identification of E-Journals, a National Information Standards Organization Recommended Practice (NISO RP-16-2013). It defines how online journals should present title history, ISSN, publication dates, and edition numbering so that librarians, indexing services, and citation databases can unambiguously identify and cite content. BCPHR follows PIE-J for its edition-to-year crosswalk and article-level identifier consistency, as recommended by PubMed Central.