Journal of Immunization · ISSN 2577-137X · Open Access Pub
About the Journal
The Journal of Immunization exists to give immunization research a single scholarly home: one peer-reviewed forum where the science of vaccines, the evidence for how well and how safely they work, and the programs and decisions that carry protection to populations are read together rather than apart.
It is an international, open access journal published by Open Access Pub. Its subject is immunization in full — vaccine science and development, evaluation and safety, population protection, delivery and access, confidence and uptake, and the policy decisions those bodies of evidence inform.
The scholarly case
Why immunization needs a forum of its own
Immunization is not a single discipline. A question about a new adjuvant belongs to immunology; a question about second-dose timeliness belongs to health-services research; a question about why a community declines an offered vaccine belongs to the social sciences. Each of those fields has its own journals, and work submitted to them is read by specialists in the method rather than in the subject.
The consequence is that evidence about one chain of protection is dispersed across literatures that rarely cite one another. An immunogenicity result and the coverage data that determine whether it ever reaches anyone are published in different places, assessed by different reviewers, and read by different people.
This journal is organized around the subject instead of the method. Manuscripts are assessed by specialists appropriate to their design, but they are gathered, edited and published as contributions to one question: how protection is produced, measured, delivered, accepted and governed.
A laboratory finding and a delivery finding are two halves of the same account of protection. This journal is where they are published side by side.
From science to implementation
Protection travels a long way from the bench
The journal follows that distance deliberately. Each stage below produces evidence of a different kind, assessed by different standards, and each one determines what the next can achieve.
Stage one
Science
Antigen and platform design, immune response and correlates of protection, and the development of new and improved immunizing agents.
Stage two
Evaluation
Immunogenicity, efficacy and effectiveness, schedules and doses, duration of protection, and continuing safety surveillance after licensure.
Stage three
Delivery
Programs, supply and cold chain, workforce and registries, financing, and the access conditions that decide who an offer actually reaches.
Stage four
Decision
Coverage and uptake, confidence and acceptance, program evaluation, and the recommendations and policy those findings inform.
Research at any stage is welcome on its own terms. The journal publishes a laboratory study without requiring it to demonstrate population effect, and an implementation study without requiring it to explain a mechanism. What it asks is that each report be clear about which stage it speaks to, and about the setting and sample its conclusions rest on.
Readers and contributors
Who the journal is for
- Researchers
- Immunologists, vaccinologists, epidemiologists, biostatisticians and modelers whose work concerns vaccines, immune protection or the populations that receive them.
- Clinicians
- Clinicians and clinical investigators conducting vaccine studies, and those whose practice raises questions about schedules, coverage or the populations in their care.
- Program and health-system staff
- People who run, finance, evaluate or supply immunization programs, and the implementation and health-services researchers who study that work.
- Social and behavioral scientists
- Researchers examining confidence, acceptance, decision making and communication, whose evidence bears on whether protection is taken up.
- Multidisciplinary teams
- Groups whose questions cross those boundaries, in any country and any income setting, including work carried out where immunization systems are under the most pressure.
Editorial responsibility
What the journal takes responsibility for
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01
Assessing the work on its own evidence
Editorial decisions are based on scope, scientific quality, methodological rigor, ethical compliance, reporting quality, and relevance to the journal. Decisions remain independent of fees, membership, editorial roles and paid services.
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02
Review by appropriate specialists
Single-blind by default; double-blind review is available on request. Manuscripts that proceed to external peer review are normally evaluated by at least two independent subject-matter experts.
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03
Keeping conclusions proportionate to evidence
Editors ask that findings be reported for the design, setting and sample that produced them. An association observed in one population is published as that, and the journal does not ask authors to overstate reach in order to be accepted.
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04
An open and durable record
Articles are published open access under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license, with authors retaining copyright. An article processing charge applies to accepted articles and is payable after acceptance; the current schedule is published on the journal's Article Processing Charges page.
Where to go next
Read the scope, the record and the policies
The Aims and Scope page states the journal's remit and the boundary it applies to submissions. The current issue and archive hold the published record, and the editorial policies set out the ethics, authorship and data expectations behind it.
Aims and Scope Current issue Archive Editorial policies Instructions for authors