Journal Achieves Its Highest Impact Factor
 
Health and Human Rights has achieved its highest ever Journal Impact Factor in this year’s index at 1.552. The publishers are delighted at this metric and proud that the journal is such an important platform for the promotion of human rights and health research and critique. A journal impact factor is an index calculated by Clarivate that reflects the yearly mean number of citations of articles published in the last two years, as indexed by Clarivate's Web of Science
 
In between its twice yearly issues (June and December), the Journal publishes papers-in-press, viewpoints, blogs, and student essays. This summer has seen a range of human rights issues addressed including the following contributions. Firstly, COVID-19 vaccines and global equity was addressed in a blog entitled “Johnson & Johnson, Vaccine Apartheid, and Human Rights” by A. Kayum Ahmed, Achal Prabhala, Julia Greenberg, Ames Dhai, and Usuf Chikte. The authors examined Johnson & Johnson’s decision to export COVID-19 vaccines manufactured in South Africa and India to Europe, ahead of supplying both countries or their respective continents, and argued this contradicts the company’s publicly declared commitment to widening access to health care and to human rights. A student essay by Aaron Chia explored whether compulsory COVID-19 vaccination is a violation of human rights and concluded “When considering the case law on the legality of interference with specific provisions of the ECHR, it seems possible that a compulsory COVID-19 vaccination can be enforced while still complying with human rights law.”

In a provocative and important viewpoint, two senior researchers based in Kenya are critical of high-income country (HIC) publishers who create barriers to publication by junior researchers from low and middle income countries (LMICs). But in addition to prohibitive publication fees, barriers also arise from what the authors describe as the unequal treatment of LMIC partners in research collaborations, and the power imbalance, which results in research priorities reflecting the interests of HIC, not the needs of LMICs. Full viewpoint by Adelaide M. Lusambili and Constance S. Shumba can be read here.
 
Health and Human Rights does not charge any publication fees unless authors can cover the costs with an Open Access grant. The forthcoming December issue, to be published on Human Rights Day (Dec. 10), has general papers and two special sections: "Ecological Justice and the Right to Health" and "Health Rights and the Urgency of the Climate Crisis."
 
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