About the HTA journal

Health Technology Assessment (HTA) publishes research information on the effectiveness, costs and broader impact of health technologies for those who use, manage and provide care in the NHS.

Professor Catriona McDaid - Senior Journal Editor

Dr Peter Davidson - Deputy Editor

View Editors

Launched in 1997, Health Technology Assessment (HTA) has an impact factor of 3.5 and is ranked 30th (out of 174 titles) in the 'Health Care Sciences & Services' category of the Clarivate 2022 Journal Citation Reports (Science Edition). It is also indexed by MEDLINE, CINAHL (EBSCO), EMBASE, NCBI Bookshelf, DOAJ, Europe PMC, the Cochrane Library, INAHTA, the British Nursing Index, Ulrichsweb, and the Clarivate Science Citation Index. 

HTA publishes research information on the effectiveness, costs and broader impact of health technologies for those who use, manage and provide care in the NHS.

The journal’s Technology Assessment Reports inform National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) guidance. HTA research is also an important source of evidence for National Screening Committee (NSC) policy decisions. 

Remit

Evaluations of health technologies, including interventions to:

  • promote health
  • prevent and treat disease
  • improve rehabilitation and long-term care

Publication criteria

Manuscripts are published in Health Technology Assessment if

  1. they have resulted from work for the NIHR Health Technology Assessment (HTA) Programme, and
  2. they are of a sufficiently high scientific quality as assessed by the external reviewers and journal editors.

The journal will only publish findings from NIHR-funded research, 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 HTA 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 HTA 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 Technology Assessment.  

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. HTA 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 HTA 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 HTA Programme is the largest of the NIHR programmes. It funds independent research about the effectiveness, costs and broader impact of healthcare treatments and tests for those who plan, provide or receive care in the NHS. The programme funds studies via a number of routes including commissioned and researcher-led workstreams. They may involve synthesising existing evidence, undertaking a trial, or other research to collect new data to answer a research problem.  View HTA research projects.

For further information on the HTA programme and its remit, please visit the programme pages on the NIHR website.