About

Focus and Scope

Since its inception in 2000 the International Journal of Integrated Care has documented the trends, developments and newest findings in the research, policy and practice of integrated care. As its subject matter has continuously evolved over the years, so have the articles we publish reflected the growing understanding of what integrated care is and what it isn’t. Some of the key learnings over the years have been that, while there are some common building blocks and elements, which are essential for integrated care, ultimately all frameworks and models need to be contextualized to local needs and resources. This contextualization should ideally happen with wide community and professional involvement.

Read the full Aims and Scope.

Publication Frequency

Continuous publishing and archived issues

To publish articles on a continuous basis means that they enter the current issue as soon as they are ready to publish. IJIC then archives its articles within 4 issues: Jan-March; April-June; July-Sept; Oct-Dec.

IJIC often publishes groups of papers related to a theme in Special Editions and also develops Conference Supplements to publish the abstracts from academic congresses. Special Editions normally run for a year and are archived as annual editions.

Open Access Policy

This journal provides immediate open access to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge. There is no embargo on the journal’s publications. Submission and acceptance dates, along with publication dates, are made available on the PDF format for each paper.

Authors of articles published remain the copyright holders and grant third parties the right to use, reproduce, and share the article according to the Creative Commons license agreement.

Authors are encouraged to publish their data in recommended repositories. For a list of generic and subject specific repositories that meet our peer review criteria, see here.

Archiving Policy

This journal utilizes the LOCKSS system to create a distributed archiving system among participating libraries and permits those libraries to create permanent archives of the journal for purposes of preservation and restoration.

Why publish in IJIC?

IJIC can offer you the expertise, experience and networks of a distinguished multidisciplinary group of researchers and policy analysts. We also offer authors the following advantages:

No time lost! - Online publishing allows IJIC to depart from the traditional journal structure of monthly or quarterly issues. Submissions are accepted at all times and are peer reviewed and published on a continuous basis.This means that your work doesn't lie on a shelf waiting for publication. The world can access your work rapidly.
Size! - Articles may be longer and contain more tables than would be permitted in a hard copy journal, although every article is evaluated on the ratio of number of words to news value.
Multi-media! - We welcome full-colour photos, audio material and video footage for illustrating the message and content of an article.
PubMed Central! - All articles published in the International Journal Of Integrated Care will appear in the database of PubMed Central and consequently in the PubMed search engine
Coverage in Web of Science (SSCI and SCI) and Scopus!

Facts and figures

The total number of full text views and downloads from PubMed Central during 2024 was 635,207.

In 2024 there were 242,000 visits to the IJIC website and 223,000 unique page views.

Indexing, Archiving and Dissemination

Ubiquity is committed to making content discoverable and accessible through indexing services. As such all content is archived around the world to ensure long-term availability.

Ubiquity supports open and transparent practices in scholarly research and is a signatory of The Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA), a global initiative to improve the ways in which researchers and the outputs of scholarly research are evaluated. In accordance with DORA, Ubiquity makes available a range of article and journal-level metrics to avoid over-reliance on any single assessment tool.

Our journals use OPERAS metrics - an open source platform that Ubiquity has helped develop as part of the HIRMEOS project, originating from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme. OPERAS metrics provides a comprehensive and transparent mechanism for collecting and aggregating article usage metrics.

Journal statistics (including submission numbers, the acceptance rate, and turnaround times) are provided and updated annually.

Evaluation and Impact

Journal Citation Indicator: 0.78 - 80/185 (2024)
Journal Impact Factor: 2.6 - 70/185 (2024)
Scopus CiteScore: 4.5 - 258/1497 Sociology and Political Science (2024)
Scimago H-index: 47 (2024)
Scimago Journal Rank (SJR): 0.1106 (2024)

Indexing and Discoverability

The journal is indexed by the following services:

Open Access

BASE search, Bielefeld Academic Search Engine
ChronosHub
CNKI
Dimensions
Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)
Electronic Journals Library (University of Regensburg)
Google scholar
MedExplorer
OAister
OpenAIRE
PubMed Central (included in The PMC Open Access Subset)
PubMed Central Europe
Social Policy and Practice

Subscription databases

Library catalogues

Additionally, the journal is registered with Open Policy Finder, and all article metadata and references are deposited with Crossref.

As the journal grows, additional indexes will be added. If the journal is not indexed by your preferred service, please contact us or alternatively by making an indexing request directly with the service.

Archiving

To ensure permanency of all publications, this journal also utilises CLOCKSS, and LOCKSS archiving systems to create permanent archives for the purposes of preservation and restoration.

In addition, the journal is available for harvesting via OAI-PMH.

Journal statistics

Core journal statistics for the 2024 volume (excluding conference issues):

Submissions received¹	232
Reviews requested²	773
Reviews received³	182
Total Rejections⁴	128
...of which, Desk rejects⁵	118
Acceptances⁶	87
Acceptance rate⁷	40.47%
Time from submission to publication⁸	194 days

Definitions
¹Number of new articles received by the journal
²Number of peer review invitation emails that were sent out
³Number of completed peer review reports received
⁴Total number of articles rejected (including desk rejects)
⁵Number of articles rejected prior to peer review
⁶Number of articles that received a 'Accept for publication' decision
⁷Number of acceptances, as a percentage, against the total number of final decisions
⁸'Mean' average from submission to publication for all publications in the volume

Annotation and post-publication comment

The journal platform permits readers to leave comments and in-browser annotations via hypothes.is. Readers will require a hypothes.is account to create annotations, and have the option to make these public or private. Comments may be moderated by the journal, however, if they are non-offensive and relevant to the publication subject, comments will remain online without edit.

Becoming a Reviewer

To be added to the list of peer reviewers for the International Journal of Integrated Care, please register as a user. The registration form will allow you to indicate your areas of expertise and institutional affiliations. Please include as much information as you can to allow editors to assign appropriate review tasks, should your services be needed.

Advertisement Policy

The journal only displays advertisements that are of relevance to its scope and will be of interest to the readership (e.g. upcoming conferences). All advertising space is provided free of charge and the editor and publisher have the right to decline or withdraw adverts at any point. Adverts will include a text heading to make it clear that they are adverts not related to the journal.

If you wish to propose a potential advert then please contact the editorial team. All advert images will have to be provided to the publisher.