About the Journal

Interamerican Journal of Health Sciences is the peer-reviewed scientific journal edited by the School of Medicine and Health Sciences of the Universidad Abierta Interamericana. The main objective of IJHS is to provide Health Professionals with comprehensive valued information and high-quality research related to biomedical sciences, clinical practice, and medical education. IJHS is published in different volumes a year, and the online edition is open access.

IJHS's mission is to produce, propagate, and preserve biomedical knowledge by the highest standards to improve patients outcomes and enhance medical education.

This journal prints original and unpublished contributions that meet the journal's current editorial standards.

The journal follows a continuous publication model, where articles, once accepted, are formatted and published in a single volume per year. For this reason, the call for submissions is permanently open.

Review process

All manuscripts will be subject to a preliminary review to determine whether the article is in alignment with the goals, editorial policies, and standards of the journal. 

When authors submit an article they must include a “Declaration of ethical aspects and conflicts of interest.”  In this declaration they are asked to make explicit whether they have published other works derived from the same research study and, in the case that they have, to describe the differences and similarities of each with respect to the article submitted to the journal.

Internet search tools are used to check the authors’ other works and to compare against the article title as well as fragments of the abstract, methodological section, and results, so as to detect possible likenesses.

If the article is deemed eligible, the authors will be notified and the original document will be sent to two peer reviewers and/or ad hoc reviewers for external review.

The reviewing function is to provide a critical reading of the article that is external to the journal and the researchers but nevertheless founded in the reviewers’ knowledge of the subject area.

This process will be carried out under the appropriate criteria of confidentiality, in which neither the reviewers nor the authors will have knowledge of the others' identities.

Based upon the opinions of these external reviewers, articles may be accepted for publication, rejected, or accepted conditionally subject to certain modifications considered necessary by the reviewers. In the event that modifications are requested, the authors should incorporate the suggested changes and resubmit their work in the period of time indicated to them for a second evaluation.

Open access policy

IJHS has an Open Access policy to scientific information, considering that scientific publications with or without funding should circulate on the Internet for free and without restrictions.
This journal is based on the principle of offering the public free access to research to aid a greater global exchange of knowledge adhering to those established in the BOAI (Budapest Open Access Initiative, 2002). The publication of articles in this journal is free, without any charge to the authors. Access to its contents is free and no embargo is applied to access them. Readers' access to the content of this magazine is free and is available in full on this site and without restrictions through a Creative Commons CC BY license that allows the content to be reused, always citing the original source.

  • Access to the contents published in IJHS is open and free, in full text, and without temporary embargoes.
  • IJHS does not charge for editorial processing of articles. All editing, publishing, and distribution costs are financed by the Universidad Abierta Interamericana.
  • IJHS does not retain the copyright so that authors can re-publish their work with the mere mention of the original source of publication.
  • The author can archive pre-print (ie pre-refereeing), and publisher's version/PDF.

Plagiarism Detection Policies

IJHS has a policy of collaboration of the editors, authors, and reviewers of this journal for the detection of plagiarism based on the "Principles of transparency and good practice in academic publications" of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).
All original articles submitted to this publication will be monitored through an online search and through specific software to detect plagiarism.

 Ethics policies

Policy regarding plagiarism, self-plagiarism, duplication, and segmentation

As is mentioned in the Publication Criteria, the policy of IJHS is to publish works that in addition to being original (that is, they are written by those who claim authorship) are also unpublished (they have not been published previously in any online or electronic source).

When authors submit an article they must include a “Declaration of ethical aspects and conflicts of interest.”  In this declaration they are asked to make explicit whether they have published other works derived from the same research study and, in the case that they have, to describe the differences and similarities of each with respect to the article submitted to the journal.

Internet search tools are used to check the authors’ other works and to compare against the article title as well as fragments of the abstract, methodological section and results, so as to detect possible likenesses.

 International recommendations

In analyzing problems specific to the editorial practice in scientific publications, different organisms at an international level have taken on the task of generating criteria, guidelines, and documents that can serve both editors and authors. Among them are:

Editors should make these practices known, therefore we invite researchers, authors, and reviewers to inform themselves of the international recommendations regarding publication ethics, to avoid mistakes made due to lack of knowledge.