Aims

Health Nexus aims to promote high-quality medical scholarship, strengthen the evidence base for healthcare decisions, and support responsible scientific communication across diverse areas of medicine and health research. Its principal objectives are to:

• Advance Medical Knowledge: Publish original and methodologically rigorous research in clinical medicine, biomedical sciences, TCM, and related health disciplines, contributing to a deeper understanding of disease, diagnosis, prevention, treatment, and healthcare delivery.
• Support Independent and Interdisciplinary Scholarship: Provide an inclusive scholarly platform for research within individual medical traditions while encouraging comparative, integrative, and interdisciplinary inquiry where supported by clear research questions and appropriate methods.
• Promote Clinical and Translational Research: Encourage research that connects fundamental scientific discoveries, clinical investigations, healthcare technologies, and evidence-based applications, with appropriate consideration of clinical relevance, patient safety, and research limitations.
• Strengthen Public Health and Sustainable Healthcare: Support scholarship addressing population health, disease prevention, healthcare accessibility, health equity, health systems, and the health-related dimensions of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.
• Encourage Methodological Innovation: Advance appropriate experimental, clinical, observational, computational, qualitative, quantitative, and mixed-methods approaches to medical research, including the critical evaluation of new diagnostic and therapeutic technologies.
• Uphold Research Integrity and Open Science: Promote ethical research conduct, transparent reporting, appropriate data availability, reproducibility, accurate citation practices, and responsible dissemination of scholarly findings.

Scope

Health Nexus welcomes scientifically rigorous and critically informed contributions across a broad range of medical and health-related research areas. Submissions may originate from individual disciplines or involve meaningful collaboration among different fields.

The journal's scope encompasses, but is not limited to, the following areas:

Article Types

Health Nexus considers the following categories of scholarly contributions. Each submission must satisfy the journal's general publication requirements and the specific standards applicable to its article type.

• Original Research Articles: Reports of original clinical, biomedical, experimental, epidemiological, or other empirical investigations.
• Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses: Comprehensive evidence syntheses conducted using transparent and reproducible methods.
• Narrative Reviews and Perspectives: Critical examinations of established research, theoretical developments, clinical practices, and emerging scientific issues.
• Clinical Case Reports: Detailed accounts of clinically significant cases or case series presenting meaningful diagnostic, therapeutic, or educational insights.
• Methodological and Theoretical Papers: Contributions developing or critically evaluating research methods, conceptual frameworks, analytical approaches, or theoretical models.
• Short Communications: Concise reports of focused findings, preliminary investigations, methodological advances, or scientifically relevant observations.
• Editorials and Commentaries: Evidence-informed scholarly discussions of research developments, medical controversies, clinical issues, or health policy, normally commissioned or approved by the Editorial Office.

For detailed manuscript categories, word limits, abstract requirements, and preparation instructions, please consult the journal's Article Types and Author Guidelines.

Editorial Standards

Health Nexus is committed to maintaining rigorous, transparent, and independent editorial evaluation. Manuscripts are assessed according to their scientific and scholarly merit, methodological appropriateness, originality, ethical compliance, and relevance to the journal's aims and scope.

• Scientific and Methodological Rigor: Research questions, study designs, data collection, analytical procedures, and conclusions must be appropriate and clearly reported. Claims must be supported by evidence proportionate to the research methods employed.
• Peer Review and Editorial Assessment: All manuscripts undergo initial editorial screening. Research submissions selected for external evaluation normally undergo double-blind peer review by at least two independent reviewers. Editorials and Commentaries may follow editorial assessment procedures appropriate to their article category.
• Research Reporting Standards: Authors must follow appropriate reporting guidelines, including CONSORT for randomized trials, PRISMA for systematic reviews, STROBE for observational studies, and CARE for clinical case reports, where applicable. Specialized reporting extensions should be followed when relevant.
• Research Ethics: Research involving human participants, animals, or identifiable clinical information must comply with applicable ethical approval, informed consent, privacy, and participant protection requirements. Clinical trials must meet relevant registration requirements.
• Data Transparency and Reproducibility: Authors must provide appropriate data availability information, accurately describe research procedures, and make supporting materials available where ethically and legally permissible.
• Publication Ethics and Research Integrity: Plagiarism, data fabrication, falsification, inappropriate authorship, redundant publication, and misleading representation of findings are unacceptable. Funding, competing interests, and relevant use of artificial intelligence must be disclosed in accordance with journal policies.
• Disciplinary Appropriateness: Theoretical, historical, clinical, experimental, and interdisciplinary research is evaluated using standards suited to its scholarly objectives and methods. Research within an individual medical tradition is not required to demonstrate integration with another medical system.
• Editorial Independence: Acceptance decisions are made on academic and scientific grounds. Reviewer recommendations inform editorial judgment but do not guarantee publication.

Further details are available in the journal's Peer Review Process and Author Guidelines.

Publication Policy

Health Nexus operates as an international, online, open-access scholarly journal. Its publication and editorial arrangements are governed by the journal's published policies.

• Publication Frequency: The journal is published annually.
• Open Access: Published articles are freely accessible online. The journal publishes under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence (CC BY 4.0), subject to applicable rights and licence conditions.
• Peer Review: Research manuscripts selected for external review follow the journal's double-blind peer review process. Initial editorial screening may result in rejection without external review.
• Article Processing Charges: Health Nexus has announced a transition from Diamond Open Access to an APC-supported publishing model beginning in 2027. The published APC schedule specifies a standard charge of USD 1,500 for applicable accepted articles, subject to the journal's waiver and discount provisions.
• Transitional APC Exemption: In accordance with the journal's announcement of March 6, 2026, manuscripts submitted before implementation of the 2027 APC policy remain covered by the existing Diamond Open Access arrangement and are exempt from APCs, including when editorial processing extends beyond the transition date.
• Editorial and Payment Independence: No fee is charged for manuscript submission or peer review. Applicable publication charges are assessed only after formal acceptance. Payment status and waiver requests do not determine editorial decisions.

Editorial Insight for Authors

Authors preparing manuscripts for Health Nexus are encouraged to consider the following principles. These recommendations are intended to improve scholarly clarity, research quality, and the presentation of scientific contributions. They do not replace the journal's formal editorial and peer review criteria.

• Establish a Clear Scholarly Contribution: Identify the specific research problem, its significance, and the contribution of the study to existing medical knowledge or healthcare practice.
• Demonstrate Methodological Suitability: Explain why the chosen research design, theoretical framework, analytical methods, or clinical procedures are appropriate for the study objectives.
• Present Evidence Proportionately: Distinguish observed findings from causal interpretations, theoretical explanations, and clinical recommendations. Avoid unsupported claims of treatment efficacy, safety, or diagnostic validity.
• Explain Interdisciplinary Integration Where Applicable: For studies integrating multiple medical traditions or academic disciplines, clarify how the different approaches contribute to the research question, methods, analysis, or interpretation. Independent disciplinary research is equally eligible when aligned with the journal's scope.
• Address Relevance and Limitations: Discuss the scientific, clinical, theoretical, or public health implications of the findings while acknowledging methodological limitations, uncertainty, and boundaries of generalizability.
• Maintain Reporting and Research Integrity: Follow applicable reporting guidelines, verify citations and supporting evidence, provide required declarations, and ensure transparent presentation of research procedures and results.