About the HSDR journal

Health and Social Care Delivery Research (HSDR) publishes evidence to improve the quality, accessibility and organisation of health services and to enhance the strategic focus on research that matters to the NHS.

Professor Helen Snooks - Senior Journal Editor

View Editors

Health and Social Care Delivery Research (HSDR) was launched in 2013 and is indexed by Scopus, MEDLINE, Europe PMC, DOAJ, INAHTA, Ulrichsweb and NCBI Bookshelf. 

Remit

Research includes:

  • quality, access and organisation of health services
  • costs and outcomes
  • implementation

Publication criteria

Manuscripts are published in Health are Social Care Delivery Research if

  1. they have resulted from work for the NIHR Health and Social Care Delivery Research (HSDR) Programme or programmes which preceded the NIHR HSDR Programme, and
  2. they are of a sufficiently high scientific quality as assessed by the external reviewers and journal editors.

Research funded by the NIHR Service Delivery & Organisation (SDO) programme between 1999 and 2011, before it merged to form the HSDR programme, has been published as comprehensive, peer reviewed web publications, which are available from the individual HSDR research project pages.

The journal will only publish research findings from these research programmes, therefore speculative submissions are not considered and there are no article processing charges (APCs) or article submission charges for authors.

Publication frequency

The journal follows a continuous publication schedule, with manuscripts published as and when they are ready for publication.  

Publication process

Final manuscripts are delivered to the editorial office at the NIHR Evaluation, Trials and Studies Coordinating Centre (NETSCC) at the University of Southampton. We manage the editorial review process between the editors, reviewers and authors, ahead of sending the manuscript to the production house. We also co-ordinate the editorial boards, and manage the relationship with the production house. 

In preparing and submitting their HSDR manuscript, researchers are expected to follow the Information for authors guidance.

Publication ethics

We take an active role in the prevention of plagiarism, falsification of data, fabrication of results and other areas of ethical misconduct. The HSDR journal is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).  This is a UK-based charity, with over 7000 members worldwide from all academic fields.  COPE advises editors and publishers on how to handle cases of research and publication misconduct.

Plagiarism detection software is used to check all manuscripts submitted to Health and Social Care Delivery Research.  

Should there be concerns that a project suffered misconduct in research, publication, or professional behaviour, the case may be discussed in confidence with the editorial board, or referred to COPE or any other relevant authorities. 

We support the use of a declaration of transparency. For further information please see the Equator website: www.equator-network.org.

Please see our policies for more information about our requirements for authors. 

Our community of reviewers plays a vital part in maintaining and improving the quality of the journal. Reviewers are usually sourced from our database of experts, from author suggestions, or from peer-to-peer recommendations. Typically, for each manuscript, four reviewers are chosen for suitability by the editors, and will cover a variety of relevant areas in their reviews. HSDR has a system of single blind review, where authors do not know who has reviewed or edited their final manuscripts. Please see our be a reviewer page for more information.

Our production house is Newgen Publishing UK. We have a dedicated project management team at Newgen who are responsible for managing the production stage following editorial review. This involves copy-editing, typesetting and producing the electronic files of manuscripts. When manuscripts reach Newgen, they are copy-edited and proofread by professional writers and proof-readers who liaise directly with the manuscript authors and editors.

All manuscripts published in HSDR are open access. For further information please see the Journals Library open access statement.

The NIHR Journals Library is committed to maintaining the content it publishes and to alerting readers to changes if and when they occur.

Research

The HSDR programme funds nationally important research, and aims to produce rigorous and relevant evidence to improve the quality, access and organisation of health services.

The Programme supports many types of research, including: primary research, evidence synthesis and large-scale studies of national importance. View HSDR research projects.

For further information on the HSDR programme and its remit programme pages on the NIHR website.