About the Journal of Women's Mental Health
A peer-reviewed, open-access journal published by Open Access Pub for research on mental health across women’s lives — clinical, epidemiological, health-services and qualitative, across the life course and across settings.
- Full titleJournal of Women's Mental Health
- AbbreviationJWMH
- PublisherOpen Access Pub
- AccessOpen access · CC BY 4.0
Definition
What the journal is
The Journal of Women's Mental Health (JWMH) is a peer-reviewed, open-access journal published by Open Access Pub. Its subject is how mental disorder and mental well-being present in women, how they are measured, how they are treated, and how care reaches the people who need it.
The journal considers research conducted in any country and at any scale — from single-service clinical studies through cohort and registry analyses to qualitative and mixed-methods work on how women experience care. Every article is open access from the day it is published, under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license, with authors retaining copyright.
The journal is one title in the Open Access Pub portfolio. Its editorial decisions are taken by its own editors, and the aims and scope page states in full what it considers and where its boundary sits.
Rationale
Why women’s mental health warrants focused scholarship
Research that reports on women is not, on its own, research about women’s mental health.
A journal named for a population has to answer one question before any other: why is this a field rather than a filter? The answer is not that women are understudied in general. It is that there are specific, well-described points at which sex, gender, reproductive stage or social position changes what is observed — and where a finding obtained without accounting for them does not transfer.
Risk for mood and anxiety presentations shifts around pregnancy, the postpartum period and the perimenopausal transition, and treatment decisions in those periods carry considerations that do not arise outside them. Presentation, referral and time to diagnosis differ by sex and by gender for several conditions. The prevalence and the form of interpersonal violence differ by gender, and so do the mental-health consequences that follow. Caregiving, income, employment, migration status and legal standing shape both the risk of mental disorder and the ability to reach care. Where services sit and how referral works determines which presentations are seen at all.
Each of those is a reason to study a question directly rather than to disaggregate it afterwards. That is the work this journal exists to publish.
Perspective
The journal’s scholarly perspective
The journal reads its subject at four levels of inquiry, across the whole life course. A manuscript is in scope when it works at any of them and treats the relevant dimension as part of the research question.
Sex and gender are not interchangeable. Sex-linked biology, gender as a social position, cultural expectation, structural inequality and differences in access to care are distinct explanations that often act together, and a study that conflates them cannot say which it has observed. The journal asks authors to name which they are examining, to report how the relevant characteristic was ascertained, and to state who was and was not included.
Women are also not one population. Risk, presentation, treatment response and access to care differ across age, reproductive stage, culture, income and setting, and a finding in one group is not a finding about all of them.
Within that frame the journal considers six territories: perinatal and reproductive psychiatry; hormonal and life-stage influences; trauma, adversity and their sequelae; social and structural determinants; access to and organization of care; and measurement, mechanisms and population patterns. Each is stated in full, with the study designs the journal considers, on the aims and scope page.
Readership
Who the journal is for
The journal is addressed to the people who generate this evidence and the people who act on it.
- Clinical and academic mental-health specialists
- Psychiatrists and clinical psychologists working with women across the life course, including perinatal and reproductive psychiatry services.
- Obstetric, midwifery, nursing and primary care
- The clinicians who most often see a mental-health presentation first, and whose services determine whether it is recognized and referred.
- Epidemiologists and health-services researchers
- Researchers working on prevalence, disparity, service design, referral and continuity, workforce, and the treatment gap across settings.
- Social, behavioral and measurement scientists
- Researchers examining mechanism, social determinants, and the development and cross-cultural validation of instruments.
- Public-health and policy readers
- Those who use this evidence to plan services, allocate resources or set policy, and who need to know what a study can and cannot support.
- Authors from any country
- Work from high-, middle- and low-income settings is considered on the same terms, and the journal reads setting as part of the finding rather than as a limitation.
Integrity
Research integrity and responsible publishing
This journal’s participants are people describing their own mental health, and often people who are pregnant, recently delivered, bereaved, or describing violence. The commitments below apply to every manuscript; the editorial policies state them in full.
- Ethics, consent and privacy
- Research with human participants reports the approving ethics committee and the consent procedure under which it was conducted. Mental-health information is treated as sensitive throughout: manuscripts remove detail by which a participant or a service user could be recognized, and case material is publishable only with documented consent for publication.
- Vulnerable and perinatal participants
- Where participants are pregnant, recently delivered, bereaved, detained, or recruited while receiving care, the manuscript describes the additional safeguards applied to recruitment, consent and withdrawal.
- Suicide, self-harm and trauma
- Research touching suicide or self-harm follows recognized safe-reporting practice: method and means detail is not published, and findings are reported without framing that could serve as instruction. Trauma-related work is reported without narrative detail that serves no analytic purpose.
- Reporting, registration and data
- Manuscripts follow the reporting guideline that matches the design. Interventional clinical trials must be registered in an accepted public trial registry at or before the first participant provides consent for enrollment. The registry name, registration number, and registration date must be reported in the manuscript. Every empirical research manuscript must include a data-availability statement.
- Interests, funding and independence
- Financial and non-financial interests and all funding sources are declared by authors, and by the editors and reviewers who handle the manuscript. Editorial decisions are independent of fees, membership, editorial roles, and any optional author service.
- Responsible interpretation
- Observational associations alone do not establish causation; causal analyses should state assumptions, address bias and report uncertainty and sensitivity analyses. Interpret findings within the design’s strengths and limitations, including the population and setting to which they apply.
- Correcting the record
- Errors in the published record are corrected in the public record, through a correction, an expression of concern, or a retraction linked to the original article.
Oversight
Editorial responsibility
All submissions undergo initial editorial screening. Manuscripts that meet the journal’s scope and minimum requirements proceed to independent peer review.
Peer review
Single-blind by default; double-blind review is available on request. Manuscripts that proceed to external peer review are normally evaluated by at least two independent subject-matter experts.
Decisions
Editorial decisions are based on scope, scientific quality, methodological rigor, ethical compliance, reporting quality, and relevance to the journal.
Independence
Editors recuse themselves from decisions on their own submissions, and those manuscripts are handled independently. Review speed is not sold, and no route through the journal can be purchased.
The board
Members are named with their roles and affiliations, and with an ORCID iD where one is recorded, on the editorial board page, which is the authoritative list. Reviewer and editor conduct, appeals and complaints are set out in the editorial policies.
Facts
Journal facts
The same values appear on every page of the journal that states them.
- Full title
- Journal of Women's Mental Health
- Abbreviation
- JWMH
- Publisher
- Open Access Pub
- Discipline
- Mental health in women — psychiatry, clinical and health psychology, epidemiology and health services
- Access
- Open access. Every article is free to read from the day it is published.
- License
- Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
- Copyright
- Retained by the authors
- Peer review
- Single-blind by default; double-blind review is available on request.
- Language
- English
- Publication model
- Articles are published in numbered issues within a volume; the archive is the authoritative list of what has been published.
- Funder deposit
- Eligible NIH-funded manuscripts may be deposited individually in PubMed Central through the NIH Manuscript Submission System (NIHMS).
- Preservation
- This journal’s content is committed to Portico, a not-for-profit digital-preservation archive run by ITHAKA (the organization behind JSTOR). As articles are deposited they enter Portico’s permanent archive, so the scholarly record stays available for the long term — even if a title one day ceases to publish.
- Charges
- An article processing charge applies after acceptance only; the amount and the withdrawal terms are stated on the article processing charges page.
Next
Where to go next
Each page below carries in full what this one summarizes.
- Aims and Scope The six territories in full, the study designs considered, and where the boundary sits.
- Editorial Board Every member, with role, affiliation and ORCID iD where recorded.
- Current Issue The issue in progress, and the latest research the journal has published.
- Archives The authoritative list of everything the journal has published.
- Editorial Policies Ethics, consent, integrity, corrections, appeals and complaints.
- Instructions for Authors What to prepare before submitting, and the reporting standards that apply.
The Journal of Women's Mental Health (JWMH) is published by Open Access Pub under CC BY 4.0. Submissions are accepted throughout the year — the submission page lists the approved routes. Contact the editorial office.