Journal of Medical Humanities - What We Publish

• Scholarly Articles addressing health humanities topics as defined in the Aims and Scope. These submissions can be up to 10,000 words excluding references and abstract. Formatting typically follows humanities long-form scholarly genres, with an introduction, theoretical framing and brief literature review, discussion of the topic with (textual) evidence and argumentation, and a conclusion speaking to transdisciplinary health humanities concerns.
• Review Essays covering at least two and up to four recently published books on a topic of interest. These submissions can be up to 6,000 words excluding references and abstract. Authors should submit a query to the editor via email to confirm the journal’s interest in publishing a review essay on the identified books. Review essays should specifically address how the books in question contribute to health humanities scholarship and/or teaching.
• Educational Research Articles about Humanities in Health Professions Education or graduate or baccalaureate Health Humanities Programs. These submissions can be up to 7,500 words excluding references and abstract. Educational research articles should contribute to theory and/or methodology in health humanities education research or report on large-scale studies of the state of the field, rather than demonstrate a successful program or argue for the value of humanities in medical or health professions education. (Introducing innovative activities or curricula can be accomplished under Innovations in Health Humanities, described below.)
• Forum Essays are collections of 2-4 short pieces that address circulating “big questions” in the field (for example, what is the role of suffering in medical student experience?) or theoretical framings (for example, political economy and health humanities). Authors should submit a query to the editor via email to confirm the journal’s interest in the topic. Each forum essay can be up to 2,000 words and 10 references. The collection should be submitted as a single submission with one corresponding author and abstract.
• Short Takes: Innovations in Health Humanities are essays of up to 2,000 words excluding references that (1) describe innovations in health humanities education or (2) interpret artifacts, documents, or media, including visual arts, with the purpose of introducing them to the journal’s readership for teaching or research purposes. These essays need not provide a literature review or detailed description of research methods. They are meant to be rigorous but less formal scholarly interventions written in engaging prose with the intention of keeping readers up-to-date with developments in the field or emerging methods and ideas. Examples in this genre include descriptions of curricular innovations with brief comments about added value, reports on health humanities program development in global contexts, and descriptive interpretations of literary texts or films and their potential to contribute to research or teaching. Please provide an abstract of 150 to 250 words
• Creative Engagements include essays of up to 1,500 words or a series of photographs or other visual representations, including comics, that creatively engage with the field’s enduring and emerging questions. These submissions may have up to five references and do not need an abstract. This is a highly selective feature. Authors should clearly describe in their cover letter what makes their work innovative, distinct, and important to the field.
• Poetry that illuminates the primary foci of health humanities scholarship. For example, we seek poems that explore, critique, and/or record the experiences of illness, healing, embodiment, mortality, loss, disability, diversity, caregiving, health education, and medical practice.
• Brief Critical Reviews of books or media of interest to the journal’s readership. Reviews can be up to 1,200 words if they cover one work. Authors should send an email query to the Book Review editor, Tony Miksanek (tmiksanek@aol.com (this opens in a new tab)) if they intend to submit a review to confirm the journal’s interest in publishing the review.

Please note: our readers are trained in a variety of disciplines, so scholarship focused on narrow disciplinary arguments or which utilize field-specific jargon are not likely to be accepted for publication. Articles that are extremely technical are not likely to be of interest to JMH readers.

All submissions undergo two anonymous peer reviews, except book reviews and forum essays, both of which are reviewed by the editors.

Queries can be sent to Bernice L. Hausman, Editor-in-Chief, at bhausman1@pennstatehealth.psu.edu.