About the PGfAR journal

Programme Grants for Applied Research (PGfAR) publishes evidence aimed at improving health outcomes in England with practical application for the benefit of patients and the NHS in the relatively near future.

Professor Andrée le May - Senior Journal Editor

View Editors

Programme Grants for Applied Research (PGfAR) was launched in 2013 and is indexed by Europe PMC, NCBI Bookshelf, DOAJ, Ulrichsweb and SCOPUS. 

Remit

With particular emphasis on conditions causing significant disease burden, research includes:

  • the promotion of health
  • prevention of ill health
  • optimal disease management (including safety and quality).

Publication criteria

Reports are published in Programme Grants for Applied Research if

  1. they have resulted from work for the NIHR Programme Grants for Applied Research (PGfAR) 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 reports published as and when they are ready for publication.  

Publication process

Final reports 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 report to the production house. We also co-ordinate the editorial boards, and manage the relationship with the production house. 

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

The format of publications in the PGfAR journal has been developed and refined since the first issue in 2013 to better suit the nature and scope of the research funded by the programme:

2013: Launch of the PGfAR journal: reports published in a chaptered monograph format, in the same style as the other journal series in the NIHR Journals Library

2016: Development of the PGfAR Summary format: the programme of research is summarised in a synopsis, with links to Open Access published papers describing the detail of individual elements, with draft papers provided in the appendices where published papers are unavailable

2019: Refinement of the PGfAR Summary format: encouraging succinct and focused reporting with a word limit of 15,000 words for the synopsis linking to Open Access published papers. Draft papers are no longer included. Details of any part of the project not published are reported concisely in an appendix or within the body of the synopsis.

You will see the format of issues published in the PGfAR journal change over time to reflect these developments.

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 PGfAR 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 reports submitted to Programme Grants for Applied 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 report, four reviewers are chosen for suitability by the editors, and will cover a variety of relevant areas in their reviews. PGfAR has a system of single blind review, where authors do not know who has reviewed or edited their final reports. 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 reports. When reports reach Newgen, they are copy-edited and proofread by professional writers and proof-readers who liaise directly with the report authors and editors.

All reports published in PGfAR 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

PGfAR is a national response mode programme that aims to provide evidence to improve health outcomes in England through promotion of health, prevention of ill health, and optimal disease management (including safety and quality), with particular emphasis on conditions causing significant disease burden.

The programme will support:

  • Applied health research including health services research; public health research; behavioural research; economic evaluations; and modelling.
  • Delivering research findings that will have practical application for the benefit of patients, typiclly through improved health care or better health care delivery, within three to five years of a programme's end.
  • Balanced teams of leading researchers, from the NHS and academia working together, who can demonstrate an impressive track record of achievement in applied health research.

Individual programmes funded through a Programme Grant typically consist of an interrelated group of high quality projects focused on a coherent theme and hence require multidisciplinary approaches, including clinical, health economics, statistics, qualitative and behavioural sciences, to ensure that research objectives can be met. View PGfAR research projects.

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