Dictionary Thesaurus Word Dynamo Quotes Reference Translator Spanish

Emerging themes in epidemiology

Emerging Themes in Epidemiology (ETE)

is an online, Open Access, peer-reviewed, academic journal. ETE is managed by current doctoral students and recent PhD graduates in the UK and Canada, and is overseen by an international board of senior academics in the field of public health. The journal is based at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, is published by BioMed Central (BMC) and is currently one of only two fully Open Access academic journals dedicated to epidemiology.

History

The journal was conceived by co-founders and Deputy Editors, Clarence Tam and Ben Lopman at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. ETE is the result of the journal’s three guiding principles:

That more fundamental discussion is needed of the theoretical frameworks that underpin the field of epidemiology, as well as the methodological and practical challenges of conducting epidemiological research
That scientific knowledge, a public good that results mainly from publicly-funded research, should be made freely available through Open Access
That doctorate students should have an opportunity to contribute more directly to the scientific discourse by influencing what is published, while gaining experience in editing and publishing an academic journal

ETE was launched at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine on October 7, 2004.

Scope and content of ETE

ETE publishes articles related to any aspect of epidemiological research and practice, focusing on novel theoretical frameworks, methodological developments, causal inference and epistemology. Unlike other journals, ETE does not generally consider reports of primary research, but publishes discursive pieces that comment critically on epidemiologic research and practice.

ETE also publishes special collections of articles with the aim of bringing attention to emerging themes in public health. The journal was launched with a series of articles on the role of epidemiology in conflict settings, in collaboration with authors from a number of academic and public health institutions, and humanitarian organizations. Since then, ETE has published articles focusing on migration and health, and methods for health surveys in hard-to-reach populations.

The journal’s content is available free of charge on its website, in keeping with its Open Access policy.

Editorial board

ETE’s Editor-in-Chief is Peter Smith, Professor of Tropical Epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. The journal’s editorial board is composed of current and former doctorate students at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Imperial College London, the Health Protection Agency Centre for Infections, the Institute of Child Health (London); the Oxford Medical Research Programme (Thailand); and the Université de Montréal (Canada). The editorial board is overseen by a group of Associate Faculty Editors, senior faculty members at academic institutions in the United Kingdom, the United States and Brazil.

Although ETE is published by BioMed Central, it is one of the publisher’s independent journals; it is hosted online by the publisher, who provides the infrastructure and publishing facilities, but editorial board operates in complete independence and retains sole responsibility for the journal’s content.

Student involvement

ETE recognises the valuable contribution that students can make to the scientific community by contributing to current debates in epidemiology and through involvement in the peer review process. Doctoral student editors are responsible for the content of the journal, managing the peer review process and copy-editing of articles. In addition, ETE provides students with an opportunity to gain experience in peer review of articles, by actively selecting both established academics and doctoral students as peer reviewers.

Logo

ETE’s unusual logo consists of a rotationally-symmetric red pattern over a white background. The logo is a metaphor for the field of epidemiology. Epidemiology, a science that seeks to understand the distribution and causes of diseases in populations to inform public health interventions, involves the identification of patterns and relationships between diseases and risk factors that are often complex and not immediately apparent. Similarly, the logo’s pattern is at first visually challenging, but patterns emerge upon closer inspection. Contrary to initial impressions, the logo itself is a rotational duplication of the journal’s initials “ETE”. The white “F”s in the centre have been suggested to represent confounding, an epidemiological concept whereby an apparent association between two variables (commonly a disease and some putative risk factor) can lead to spurious inference of a causal relationship because of failure to account for a third, extraneous variable that is correlated with both factors.

Impact factor

In early 2007, BioMed Central published an unofficial two-year impact factor for ETE of 1.5. This figure was derived using the same methodology used by Thomson Scientific to calculate official impact factors for its listed journals and is an indication of the average number of times an article published in the journal in the previous two years has been cited.