The Robert Koch Institute (RKI): main building in Berlin. more
Germany’s Public Health institute RKI monitors the population’s health and wellbeing. more
The Robert Koch Institute is the German government's central institution for the identification, surveillance and prevention of infectious diseases in the Portfolio of the German Ministry of Health. more
The Journal of Health Monitoring (JoHM) is an online journal that addresses important public health issues. The JoHM is published by the Robert Koch Institute as part of the Federal Health Reporting in Germany. The editors are supported by an independent editorial board.
The JoHM uses an open access format aimed at a broad (professional) public. The target groups primarily include stakeholders in health care, politics and research. Contributions to the Journal are presented in a way that is readily comprehensible.
The JoHM publishes original work, review articles, descriptive articles (such as project descriptions, conference proceedings, lecture abstracts) and guidelines. Published article types include Focus, Fact sheet, Concepts & Methods, Abstracts, Proceedings and Editorial.
Published articles mainly draw data from the nationwide health monitoring at the Robert Koch Institute. Other data sources include registry data, official statistics, routine data and other epidemiological studies. The JoHM publishes predominantly invited articles. In exceptional cases, manuscripts that were not invited may be published if the topic has been agreed upon with the editors prior to submission. Unsolicited manuscripts will not be accepted for publication.
Contributions published in the JoHM can be accessed free of charge on the Robert Koch Institute’s website and are made available in English and German. No article processing charges are levied on for contributions to the JoHM.
The Journal is published under the Creative Commons Attribution International license (CC BY 4.0). This license establishes the right to copy, distribute and modify a work as long as the original source has been credited appropriately.
The JoHM follows the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors’ (ICMJE) Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals, and the Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing, which were published by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), the World Association of Medical Editors (WAME) and the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA).
The JoHM’s Instructions for Authors are in accordance with the Robert Koch Institute’s Guidelines for Good Scientific Practice. In addition to the Instructions for Authors, authors must adhere to the Journal’s Editorial and Publishing Policies.
Please use gender-sensitive wording. Information that is displayed by sex should be placed in the following order: women, men and, if applicable, other gender categories or identities. Authors are encouraged to consider the SAGER (Sex and Gender Equity in Research) guidelines.
The results should be placed in an international context, wherever possible.
Percentages should be expressed to one decimal place. Please clearly describe statistically significant differences and refrain from stating risk measures (e.g. relative risks, odds ratios), confidence intervals and p-values in the text, which are already given in tables.
Figure and table titles should be short and descriptive and contain the number of participants by sex (for women, men and, if applicable, other gender categories or identities). Due to layout constraints, figures should not exceed a maximum of five categories/colour gradations. Please report confidence intervals in tables in a separate column and in parentheses. As an alternative to specifying p-values, significant results in tables can be placed in bold and explained in a footnote in the following manner: ‘Bold: significant (p<0.05)’. The source of all data used in figures and tables must be specified either by stating the actual source of the data, such as ‘KiGGS Wave 2 (2014-2017)’, or by providing a reference, such as ‘Meyer et al. 2022 [1]’. For the reproduction of figures or tables that have already been published elsewhere, the permission of the copyright holder must be obtained. Use footnotes to explain any abbreviations that are used in figures and tables. Figures and tables, including titles, sources and footnotes, should be inserted in the appropriate section of the manuscript.
Please do not use manual (only automatic) hyphenation or manual line breaks, even in tables. Also, figures and tables should be numbered manually, not automatically.
Further text sections, tables and methodological considerations may be published as an annex upon approval of the editor.
Focus articles should be no longer than 40,000 characters (including spaces) not including the abstract. Manuscripts should contain:
Focus articles are divided into the following numbered sections: 1. Introduction; 2. Methods; 3. Results; 4. Discussion. Please discuss the structure of Focus articles that are not original works based on data with the editors before submitting to the JoHM.Headings should use a maximum of two numbered levels (1., 1.1). Exceptions may be allowed with permission from the editor. The editor reserves the right to adapt abstract, keywords and key results to standard requirements.
Focus articles should contain up to six figures and/or tables. Maps can be included after consultation with the editors.
Fact sheets should be no longer than 10,000 characters (including spaces) not including the abstract. Manuscripts should contain:
Fact sheets evaluate a selected indicator, standardised by sex, age and socioeconomic status or education. Further or other forms of stratification (such as by federal state) may be allowed with permission from the editor. The editor reserves the right to adapt abstract, keywords and key results to standard requirements.
Fact sheets are divided into three non-numbered sections: Introduction; Indicator; Results and Discussion.
Fact sheets should contain a table and may contain a figure.
Logistic regression analyses can only be used in Fact sheets for the calculation of trends, not for relationship analyses. Confidence intervals and p-values should not be specified in the text.
The scope and structure of Editorials, Proceedings, Abstracts, and Concepts & Methods are to be agreed with the editors. The editor reserves the right to adapt abstract, keywords and key results to standard requirements.
In accordance with the standards of Good Epidemiologic Practice, evaluations of epidemiological data should undergo an independent cross-check before publication. It is the responsibility of the authors that this quality assurance is carried out.
Third party texts or data may not be presented in a way that creates the impression that they are the author’s own contribution (plagiarism). All sources must be appropriately referenced (this also applies to repeating sections verbatim, summarising text passages and/or paraphrasing). Word-for-word citations must be designated using single quotes.
The editors can provide text modules for invited contributions, for example descriptions of the study design of studies conducted by the Robert Koch Institute. These modules can all appear in various contributions at the same time and even in one (or more) issues of the Journal without being considered plagiarism.
Focus articles and Concepts & Methods may include up to 50 references; Fact sheets and Proceedings up to 20 references; Abstracts and Editorials up to five. Please use the ‘JHealthMonit’ citation style. Citation and literature examples as well as the EndNoteTM output style are available for download on the website under ‘Authors/Citation Style’.
All available works can be cited in the reference list including accepted manuscripts. Citation of unpublished research should be avoided. The description of unpublished results with a statement like "data not shown" is not accepted. All data referred to must be included in the manuscript or annex, or be accessible in a database specified in the "Data availability" section.
Please provide the names and institutions of all participating authors and a correspondence address. For data-based figures, provide an Excel file containing the data table, linked to the graph. For confidence intervals in figures, the Excel file must also include absolute values for the upper and lower limits of the confidence intervals. Tables can be created from the Word document and do not need to be submitted as an Excel file.
Please submit the manuscript to healthmonitoring@rki.de.
Scientific manuscripts are reviewed by two independent experts in a double-anonymous peer review process. When submitting a manuscript, authors are asked to provide the names of at least three possible reviewers to conduct the peer review. A detailed description of the review process can be found on the website under ‘Review/Peer Review’.
Research should be undertaken in a manner that is in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki as amended. Authors are requested to provide information about ethics, data protection and informed consent of study participants; this information will be published with the article.
If data or images are to be published that contain information relating to an identifiable natural person, the authors must provide proof to the editors that the persons concerned have given their consent.
The JoHM bases its definition of potential conflicts of interest on the Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals published by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE). All authors are required to complete the ICMJE Disclosure Form to declare relationships, activities and interests, and to indicate the source of their research funding.
The ICMJE form should be filled in electronically, saved, and sent by email to the corresponding author. All of the authors’ forms must be sent to the editors when submitting the manuscript. As an alternative, the contents can be transferred to the manuscript. Information provided about conflicts of interest will be published with the article. Further information can be found on the website under ‘Authors/Disclosure of Authors’ Conflicts of Interest’.
Information about funding including funding codes must be provided in the ICMJE Disclosure Form. The details provided about funding will be published with the article.
Contributions are mainly written, edited and reviewed in German. The final version of the manuscript is translated into English. However, the manuscript may also be submitted in English. It will then be edited and reviewed in English and the final version translated into German. Authors are requested to submit a list of translations of relevant terms with the manuscript. In general, the editorial team commissions a translation agency and the journal covers the costs of the translation. The translated manuscript is then reviewed by the authors before receiving final approval. The manuscript can also be translated by the authors themselves.
The JoHM implements the ICMJE’s recommendations on authorship (see the Ethical Policy and Malpractice Statement of the Journal of Health Monitoring). Based on the criteria, authors are required to include a statement of responsibility in the manuscript of original articles that specifies the contribution of every author. The statement will be published with the article. Persons who have made a substantial contribution but who do not meet the criteria for authorship can be named in the Acknowledgement section, provided they give their consent.
When submitting the manuscript, it must be stated if artificial intelligence (AI) was used in the collection and analysis of data or preparation of the manuscript, including images and graphical elements. The use of AI and the AI tools used must be described in an appropriate section of the paper. Authors are responsible for the accuracy, integrity, and originality of the article. Authorship by AI is not possible, and AI cannot be cited as an author.
By submitting the manuscript, the corresponding author, on behalf of all contributing authors, grants RKI the non-exclusive right to publish the manuscript under the terms of the Creative Commons License CC BY 4.0 and agrees to the terms of publication (see Assignment of Rights under "Related Links"). The contributing authors retain their copyrights and the unrestricted rights to publish or use the manuscript. Publication will only take place after acceptance of the manuscript by the editor; submitting the manuscript does not constitute a claim against the editor for publishing the manuscript.
Date: 14.03.2024
