"Revised terms of reference adopted in July 2001 by IUHPE Board of Trustees"
Reviews of Health Promotion and Education Online
I. Name
Reviews of Health Promotion and Education Online
II. Aim and purpose
The purpose and aim of the Reviews of Health Promotion and Education Online is to improve the quality of health promotion and health education by publishing regularly critical reviews of resources (printed, electronic, etc.) that are relevant for its development, implementation and evaluation. The journal will not publish new articles; all resources commented upon will have already been previously published or made available. Neither manuscripts nor articles can be submitted to the Board of Editors for publication. The reviewers will search for resources and propose them, along with a critique of their value according to a set of criteria, to a series editor, nominated by the Board of Editors. The reviews will be organised under a certain number of thematic series, aiming at providing the field with critical reviews useful to a variety of clienteles (field workers, academics, students, policy makers, etc.).
III. Character
The Reviews of Health Promotion and Education Online is an integral electronic journal. There will be no paper version.
IV. Ownership
The Reviews of Health Promotion and Education Online is the official electronic journal of the International Union for Health Promotion and Education (IUHPE).
V. Scope
The central element of the journal will thus be a set of series of reviews, provided by the reviewers and organised by themes, with monitored discussion forums allowing reactions and exchanges about the reviews from the readership. These series will have a global coverage, including contributions from all over the world.
VI. Target audience
All interested and involved in health promotion and its development who want to get updated with the latest quality resources. RHPEO will be presented as the global contribution of IUHPE and its members to the critical analysis of resources available in the field. It will also be connected the IUHPE website, considerably improving the profile of the IUHPE. As other initiatives already exist (like the current Cochrane and the forthcoming Campbell Collaborations for systematic reviews of published scientific work), the specificity of RHPEO, in line with IUHPE's role and mandate, will be to offer a global location where all types of resources (including but not limited to books, websites, printed or electronic scientific literature, movies, videos, etc.) useful to health promotion and health education practice are critically reviewed by experts from all over the world.
VII. Criteria for reviewing resources
The Board of Editors must make a list of criteria according to which the resources will be reviewed.
Criteria can be, but are not limited to the following:
- originality / new ideas / new approaches
- practicality / applicability
- scientific thoroughness
- potential impact
- consistency
- accessibility
- (global) importance
VIII. Board of Editors
The Board of Editors consists of six senior IUHPE-members. The first Board of Editors has been appointed by the Executive Committee of the IUHPE. The members of the following Boards of Editors will be appointed by the Executive Committee of the IUHPE on recommendation by the other members of the Board of Editors. The members are appointed for three years and may serve another term of three years. The members of the Board of Editors must have an international status and a professional overview of developments in health promotion and health education.
The Board of Editors is responsible for the regular publication of the Reviews of Health Promotion and Education Online. It is chaired by the Editor in Chief. When votes are equally divided in the Board of Editors, the Editor in Chief makes the final decision. The Board of Editors formulates a three year policy, which has to be accepted by the IUHPE Board of Trustees. Within the accepted policy, the Board of Editors is independent.
IX. Reviewers
The team of Reviewers is composed of approximately 30people (or so many as the Board of Editors decides) who agree to contribute regularly to one or several series of the Reviews. With the members of the Editorial Board, the reviewers are the only people that can take charge of a new series, upon approval by the Board of this series. A first set of about 25 reviewers is designated by each region of IUHPE, proportionally to the importance of the region in the global membership along the same lines than the relative number of seats each region has on the global Board of Trustees of IUHPE. Other reviewers, in numbers that they will decide, can be appointed directly by the Board to complement the reviewers designated by the IUHPE regions, in order notably to maintain an appropriate gender, geographic and content (academic vs practitioner, health education vs health promotion, etc.) balance. The Board of Editors appoints reviewers for a period of three years. Members can serve another term.
X. Subscription
The Reviews of Health Promotion and Education Online should be freely accessible to anybody interested in the world, and members of the IUHPE will be periodically informed in a privileged manner of the evolution of the journal.
XI. General Procedure
The Editorial Board decides on the beginning of a new series, which means that an editor of the series has committed him or herself to manage it for at least three years. The first series is titled "My five favourite resources in Health Promotion and Health Education" and is edited by editor in chief Michel O'Neill.
1. The reviewers commit themselves to write a piece for the original series as well as at least a piece in another series for each year of their mandate. The members of the Editorial Board can also contribute if they want to but their main role is about the general development of the Journal.
2. If they are interested, the reviewers or the members of the Editorial Board can propose a new series of reviews to be launched, provided that they are willing to facilitate it. Examples could be: my favourite resources on healthy public policies; my favourite resources on psychosocial theories of behaviour change; mes cinq ressources favorites en français; mis cinco recursos preferados en español; my favourite scientific paper of the last quarter, etc. etc.
Launching a new series implies that the person in charge:
- receives from the managing editor (who will have previously checked if the papers have been written according to the guidelines) the papers that were requested from a reviewer for his or her series and authorizes them to go online or not; if yes, the reviews are forwarded to the webmaster for posting; if not, an interaction with the reviewer to request changes is undertaken;
- receives reactions from discussants (anybody can be a discussant; rules on how to send a discussion item for posting will be included in the website) on the papers in his or her series, to be included in a discussion forum; forwards them to the webmaster for posting if they seem OK or interacts with the discussant of the posting if not;
- makes at least once a year an analytical contribution taking in account the series and its discussion groups in general (are there trends, publications that seem to be singled out quantitatively and or qualitatively, etc.)
XII. Language
The reviews will be written in one of the official languages of IUHPE: English, French or Spanish Other languages may be considered later on in the process if there is a series editor willing to take charge of a series in such languages
