About the Journal

The Utkarsh Journal of Health Sciences and Environment (UJHSE) is an international, peer-reviewed, Gold Open Access journal published quarterly by Utkarsh Research Network Pvt. Ltd., India. UJHSE publishes original, methodologically rigorous research at the intersection of medical sciences, public health, and environmental health, with particular emphasis on the environmental determinants of human health.

UJHSE serves a global audience of clinicians, public health practitioners, environmental scientists, policymakers, and educators. All articles are freely and permanently available online from the moment of publication under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license, ensuring unrestricted access for readers worldwide and full compliance with funder open-access mandates.

Mission Statement

To advance human health and environmental sustainability by publishing high-quality, evidence-based research that bridges medical, population, and environmental sciences — making findings accessible, actionable, and equitable across borders.

Aims

UJHSE seeks to:

1. Publish original, peer-reviewed research of international relevance across the spectrum of medical, public health, and environmental sciences, with a focus on studies that generate evidence to improve clinical care, population health, and environmental policy.
2. Champion interdisciplinary scholarship that connects clinical medicine with the social, behavioural, and environmental determinants of disease — the kind of integrative research increasingly needed in an era of climate change, urbanisation, and global health threats.
3. Translate evidence into practice by making findings useful to clinicians, public health professionals, regulators, and educators through clear writing, transparent methods, and structured reporting.
4. Lower barriers to scholarly publishing by maintaining a modest APC, offering fee waivers for authors from low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), and providing constructive editorial support to early-career researchers.
5. Uphold publication ethics in line with COPE, ICMJE, WAME, and the Declaration of Helsinki, with a transparent editorial workflow and strict conflict-of-interest disclosure.
6. Strengthen research capacity in the Global South by giving priority and visibility to research conducted in and for LMIC contexts, where the burden of disease is highest and the publication infrastructure is least developed.

Scope

UJHSE welcomes submissions across three broad, interconnected domains. Studies that explicitly address the interface between these domains — for example, the clinical impact of environmental exposures, or community interventions targeting climate-sensitive diseases — are particularly encouraged.

1. Medical & Clinical Sciences

• Internal medicine, surgery and surgical subspecialties, paediatrics, obstetrics & gynaecology
• Infectious diseases, antimicrobial resistance, vaccinology
• Non-communicable diseases — cardiovascular, oncology, endocrinology, respiratory, neurology
• Pathology, microbiology, pharmacology, clinical biochemistry
• Mental health, psychiatry, behavioural medicine
• Dentistry & oral health, nursing, physiotherapy and allied health sciences
• Medical education, simulation-based training, health professions pedagogy
• Traditional, complementary, and integrative medicine (with rigorous methodology)

2. Public Health & Health Systems

• Epidemiology, biostatistics, surveillance, outbreak investigation
• Maternal, child, adolescent, and reproductive health
• Nutrition, food safety, and lifestyle medicine
• Health policy, health financing, universal health coverage (UHC), health systems research
• Implementation science and quality improvement
• Global health, health equity, social determinants of health
• Health promotion, behaviour change, health literacy
• Digital health, telemedicine, mHealth, and AI in healthcare
• Disaster preparedness, humanitarian and emergency public health
• Health economics and cost-effectiveness analyses

3. Environmental & Planetary Health

• Environmental determinants of human disease
• Air, water, and soil pollution and their health consequences
• Climate change, heat stress, and climate-sensitive diseases
• Occupational health, safety, ergonomics, and industrial hygiene
• Toxicology and environmental exposure assessment
• Vector-borne and zoonotic diseases — One Health approaches
• WASH (water, sanitation, hygiene) and environmental sanitation
• Urban health, built environment, transport and active living
• Biodiversity, ecosystem services, and planetary health
• Environmental risk assessment and policy evaluation

What We Look For

Strong UJHSE submissions typically have:

• A clearly stated, important research question
• Methodology proportionate to the question, fully reported (CONSORT, STROBE, PRISMA, CARE, COREQ as appropriate)
• Honest, balanced discussion of limitations
• Implications for practice, policy, or further research
• Open data and code, where ethically possible

Out of Scope

To keep the journal focused, UJHSE generally does not consider:

• Purely basic-science or laboratory papers without a clear translational link to human or environmental health
• Single-patient case reports without a clear teaching point or a novel finding
• Veterinary studies without a One Health / human-health dimension
• Surveys with very small or non-representative samples and no clear contribution beyond local interest
• Manuscripts already published or under consideration elsewhere (in line with ICMJE)

Article Types

UJHSE considers the following submissions. Word counts exclude title page, abstract, references, tables, and figure legends.

Article type	Word limit	Notes
Original Research	up to 5,000	IMRAD structure; structured abstract (≤ 250 words); reporting guideline as appropriate
Systematic Review / Meta-Analysis	up to 8,000	PRISMA 2020 compliance required; PROSPERO registration recommended
Narrative / Scoping Review	up to 6,000	Clear search strategy; PRISMA-ScR for scoping reviews
Short Communication	up to 2,500	For pilot studies, novel methods, preliminary results
Case Report / Series	up to 3,000	CARE guideline; clear teaching point; written informed consent required
Perspective / Commentary	up to 2,000	Argument-driven opinion piece on a current issue
Editorial	up to 1,500	Usually by invitation
Letter to the Editor	up to 1,000	Response to a recent UJHSE article, or brief observation
Protocol	up to 4,000	SPIRIT (clinical trials) or PRISMA-P (systematic reviews)

Audience

UJHSE is read by, and written for:

• Clinicians and clinical researchers in primary, secondary, and tertiary care
• Public health practitioners, epidemiologists, and health-systems researchers
• Environmental health scientists, occupational health specialists, and policy analysts
• Faculty, postgraduate students, and PhD scholars in health and life sciences
• Policymakers, programme managers, and NGOs working on health and environment
• Funders, ethics committees, and the engaged public

Reporting Guidelines (EQUATOR — Mandatory)

The most commonly used guidelines on UJHSE are:

• CONSORT — randomised controlled trials
• STROBE — observational studies
• PRISMA 2020 — systematic reviews and meta-analyses
• CARE — case reports
• COREQ — qualitative research
• STARD — diagnostic accuracy
• SPIRIT — clinical trial protocols
• ARRIVE 2.0 — animal research
• CHEERS — health economic evaluations
• SQUIRE 2.0 — quality improvement

Find the right guideline for your study: use the official EQUATOR finder at equator-network.org/reporting-guidelines — it lets you filter by study design and topic. The full library is at equator-network.org/library.

The complete UJHSE matrix of study type → reporting guideline (with direct links) is available in the Author Guidelines, Section 2.5.

Editorial Standards & Independence

The Editor-in-Chief has full editorial independence. Editorial decisions are made on the basis of scholarly merit alone — not the author's nationality, gender, institutional affiliation, or ability to pay the APC. The publisher does not influence editorial decisions on individual manuscripts.

UJHSE adheres to the principles of COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics), the ICMJE Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals, and the WAME Code of Conduct. Manuscripts undergo double-blind peer review by at least two independent reviewers with relevant expertise.

Indexing & Abstracting

UJHSE is indexed and abstracted in the following databases:

• Google Scholar
• Crossref (DOI assignment for all published articles)
• DOAJ (Directory of Open Access Journals) — Applied
• PubMed Central — Planned
• Scopus — Planned

We are actively working toward inclusion in additional reputable indexing services and databases to maximize the visibility and impact of published research.

Digital Preservation & Archiving

UJHSE is committed to the long-term digital preservation and perpetual accessibility of all published content. The journal implements the following preservation strategies:

• LOCKSS Preservation Network — All content is preserved through the preservation network, which provides long-term archival access based on the LOCKSS (Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe) technology.
• Crossref DOI Registration — Every published article is assigned a Digital Object Identifier (DOI) through Crossref, ensuring persistent identification and linkage.
• Server-Level Backups — Regular automated backups of the journal database and all published files are maintained on secure servers.
• CLOCKSS — Application planned for inclusion in the CLOCKSS dark archive to provide additional preservation redundancy.

In the event that UJHSE ceases publication, all published content will remain accessible through the LOCKSS Preservation Network and Crossref metadata records in perpetuity.

Publication Frequency

UJHSE publishes on a quarterly basis, with four issues per calendar year:

• Issue 1: January–March
• Issue 2: April–June
• Issue 3: July–September
• Issue 4: October–December

Accepted articles are published online first with a DOI immediately upon completion of the production process, ahead of their assignment to a specific issue. This ensures rapid dissemination while maintaining a structured publication schedule.

ORCID Policy

UJHSE strongly encourages all submitting and co-authors to register for and provide their ORCID iD (Open Researcher and Contributor ID) at the time of manuscript submission.

ORCID provides a persistent digital identifier that distinguishes individual researchers and ensures proper attribution. ORCID iDs are displayed on published articles and linked through Crossref metadata.

Register for a free ORCID iD at https://orcid.org.

Journal Identifiers

Identifier	Value
Journal Title	Utkarsh Journal of Health Sciences and Environment
Abbreviation	UJHSE
ISSN (Online)	[Applied]
Publisher	Utkarsh Research Network
Country	India
Language	English
Frequency	Quarterly (4 issues/year)
Year of Establishment	2026
Access Model	Gold Open Access
APC	USD 300 / INR 10,000 + taxes
License	CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
Copyright	Journal / Publisher
Peer Review	Double-Blind
DOI Prefix	Crossref (pending assignment)
Platform	Modern open-access publishing platform
Preservation	LOCKSS-based
Ethics Standards	COPE, ICMJE, WAME, Declaration of Helsinki