Aims and scope

Discover Social Science and Health is a fully open access, interdisciplinary journal that publishes papers at the intersection of the social and biomedical sciences. Papers should integrate, in both theory and measures, a social perspective (reflecting anthropology, criminology, economics, epidemiology, policy, sociology, etc) and a concern for health (mental and physical). Health, broadly construed, includes biological and other indicators of overall health, symptoms, diseases, diagnoses, treatments, treatment adherence, and related concerns. Drawing on diverse, sound methodologies, submissions may include reports of new empirical findings (including important null findings) and replications, reviews and perspectives that construe prior research and discuss future research agendas, methodological research (including the evaluation of measures, samples, and modeling strategies), and short or long commentaries on topics of wide interest. All submissions should include statements of significance with respect to health and future research. Discover Social Science and Health is an open access journal that supports the pre-registration of studies.    

Topics
Papers suitable for Discover Social Science and Health will include both social and biomedical theory and data. Illustrative examples of themes include race/ethnicity, sex/gender, socioeconomic, geographic, and other social disparities in health; migration and health; spatial distribution of risk factors and access to healthcare; health and social relationships; interactional processes in healthcare, treatments, and outcomes; life course patterns of health and treatment regimens; cross-national patterns in health and health policies; characteristics of communities and neighborhoods and health; social networks and treatment adherence; stigma and disease progression; methodological studies including psychometric properties of measures frequently used in health research; and commentary and analysis of key concepts, theories, and methods in studies of social science and biomedicine. The journal welcomes submissions that draw on biomarkers of health, genetically-informed and neuroimaging data, psychophysiological measures, and other forms of data that describe physical and mental health, access to health care, treatment, and related constructs.   

Content Types

Discover Social Science and Health welcomes full-length Research articles as well as Brief Communications of empirical findings, Reviews, Perspectives, Comments, Case Studies, Registered Reports, and Data Notes from across the full range of disciplines concerned with both social science and biomedicine. The journal also publishes guest-edited Topical Collections of relevance to all aspects of social science and biomedicine. For more information, please follow up with our journal publishing contact.