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DOI: 10.47368/ejhc.2020.001
2020, Vol. 1(1) 1–
6
CC BY 4.0
ISSN 2673-5903
ejhc.org
Editorial
A European Journal of Health
Communication in the Age of Open
Science
Thomas N. Friemel , Sarah Geber , Nico Pfiffner
Department of Communication and Media Research, University of Zurich, Switzerland
Julia van Weert , Gert-Jan de Bruijn
Amsterdam School of Communication Research, University of Amsterdam, Netherlands
Doreen Reifegerste
Department for Media and Communication Studies, University of Erfurt, Germany
A decade ago, health communication research in Europe was still considered an emerging field
(Schulz & Hartung, 2010). Today, in response to the assiduous efforts of European researchers
and scholars, we are proud to present the European Journal of Health Communication (EJHC). As
the first journal that is explicitly dedicated to European health communication research, EJHC can
be regarded as a further milestone in the establishment of our discipline in Europe. EJHC is based
on the principles of open science by making publications openly available without imposing any
charges on readers or authors and providing alternatives to the traditional review and publication
process. With this editorial, we want to introduce EJHC as a European journal, emphasise the
arguments for the set-up of EJHC as a platinum open access journal, illustrate our efforts to
improve academic publishing with various innovations, and present the people behind EJHC.
EJHC is a European Journal
The growing societal relevance of health is linked to an increasing academic effort to understand
the challenges and opportunities of communication theories and approaches to improve health
determinants and outcomes. The establishment of the field of health communication research in
Health Communication in the Age of Open Science Friemel et al.
European Journal of Health Communication 1(2020) 1-6 CC BY 4.0 2
Europe is evidenced by the foundation of the Health Communication Temporary Working Group
of the European Communication Research and Education Association (ECREA) in 2017, as well
as the increasing creation of specialised health communication departments and dedicated study
programmes at various European universities. However, notably, this development is thus far not
reflected in the publications of current journals on health communication. The origins of the
authors who publish in the two major journals of the field, Health Communication and Journal of
Health Communication, illustrate that European research still plays a marginal role.
Figure 1. Regional affiliations of the first authors of the articles published in Health
Communication and Journal of Health Communication from 2010 to 2019
Note. The graph is based on data gathered from Crossref and publicly available information on the websites of the
two journals. Only article-type publications are considered (e.g., no editorials, commentaries, etc.). All articles
published in volumes 15 to 24 of the Journal of Health Communication and 25 to 34 of Health Communication are
included (n = 2332). The regional affiliation is derived from the geographical location of the institution to which the
first author of an article belongs according to the information provided in the respective article.
Figure 1 demonstrates that over the last ten years, less than 10% of publications in both major
journals were first-authored by Europe-based researchers. In comparison, the publications of US-
based authors make up a share of more than 80% on average across this period. However, at the
same time, numbers provided by Health Communication on downloads of their published articles
(King, 2020) show that Europe accounted for more than one quarter (26%) of downloads (United
States and Canada 46%), demonstrating a far more active field of health communication research
in Europe than suggested by the publication share. The disproportional numbers can be regarded
as an indicator for the historic development of the European community. The diversity of European
languages and academic cultures resulted in a rich but loosely connected set of communities that
were interested in learning from the international discourse but published their research in their
respective languages. EJHC provides a platform to overcome these barriers and to intensify the
discourse among European researchers and regarding topics that are of special relevance to Europe
in general, to specific European countries, or to comparisons between Europe and other regions.
Health Communication in the Age of Open Science Friemel et al.
European Journal of Health Communication 1(2020) 1-6 CC BY 4.0 3
Rooted in the European community of health communication researchers, EJHC supports the
institutionalisation of the field across the continent and represents the international character of
health communication research given the cultural, political, economic, and academic diversity in
Europe. Of course, academics from outside Europe are more than welcome to participate in this
discourse and contribute to a better understanding of health-related challenges and potential coping
strategies.
EJHC is an Open Access Journal
Following the principles of open science, EJHC is a platinum open access journal. As such, it
makes publications openly available while charging neither the readers nor the authors. Academic
research is publicly funded, and both academic editors and reviewers work voluntarily. The article
processing charges (APC) that are imposed by the established international publishers are much
higher than their actual costs and result in ‘profit margins around 37%, larger than Apple and big
oil companies’ (Tennant, 2018). Given this high profitability, an increasing number of companies
are entering the field and founding journals with APC. With their focus on economic profitability,
these predatory journals refrain from the necessary review process, provide misleading
information regarding their institutional background, and thereby undermine the credibility of
academic research and publication (Grudniewicz et al., 2019). We believe that the public funding
of research and the voluntary work of editors and reviewers should be accessible free of charge
and should not result in the financial profit of private companies. Thanks to open source software
such as the Open Journal System (OJS), costs for electronic publishing have decreased to a
minimum, and many associations and universities increasingly provide support for new publishing
forms (Public Knowledge Project, 2020). Nevertheless, there are some costs remaining, and we
are very grateful to the universities, departments, and academic associations that support EJHC to
cover these costs (see below). Further sponsors are more than welcome to support this
transformation of academic publishing and are invited to contact the management team.
EJHC is an Innovative Journal
EJHC combines established standards of quality assurance with innovative approaches to cope
with the challenges and shortcomings of the traditional publication process, such as long
publication cycles and publication biases. Like most journals in communication research, all
articles submitted to EJHC undergo a rigorous double-blind peer review process. To ensure a
timely review and publication process, EJHC builds on a broad editorial structure (see below) and
an ‘online-only strategy’. This means that articles are published immediately in their final form
after acceptance. Since EJHC is an online-only journal, there is no need for online preprints
without volume, issue, or page numbers. All articles are published with a digital object identifier
(DOI) number and page numbers, enabling other researchers to refer to the content. Furthermore,
we encourage authors to publish additional materials in order to support transparency and
reproducibility.
Health Communication in the Age of Open Science Friemel et al.
European Journal of Health Communication 1(2020) 1-6 CC BY 4.0 4
In addition to the traditional review process and as a procedural innovation, EJHC provides the
opportunity to ‘pre-register’ original research before data collection. For this purpose, authors are
invited to submit a proposal for a scientific question, presenting the theoretical background,
hypotheses, and a detailed methods and analysis plan. The proposal will be reviewed, and if it is
evaluated positively, the study will receive an ‘in principle’ acceptance. After completion of the
study, authors submit the second part of their work presenting and discussing their results. Though
the second part will undergo a review round (to evaluate whether the results and discussion
sections meet the standards of the journal), the manuscript will be published regardless of whether
the hypotheses are supported. We see pre-registration as a useful tool to avoid bias against null
findings and to value such findings as a contribution to knowledge.
EJHC is a Community Effort
EJHC was officially announced on November 14, 2019, at the European Conference on Health
Communication in Zurich. It was during the organisation of this conference that the pressing need
for an outlet for the developing and growing European health communication community became
apparent. As part of the organising team, Thomas Friemel and Sarah Geber reached out to Doreen
Reifegerste and Julia van Weert as the co-chairs of the Thematic Working Group on Health
Communication of ECREA to set up the first management team. This management team includes
Thomas Friemel (University of Zurich), Doreen Reifegerste (University of Erfurt), and Julia van
Weert (University of Amsterdam) as editors-in-chief, Sarah Geber (University of Zurich) and Gert-
Jan de Bruijn (University of Amsterdam) as managing editors, and Nico Pfiffner (University of
Zurich) as editorial assistant.
Beside the management team, EJHC builds on a broad editorial structure encompassing the
associate editors and the editorial board. The associate editors play a crucial role in covering the
academic and cultural diversity of health communication in Europe. They are leading academics
from different European countries and cover with their expertise the whole range of subdisciplines
and issues. Namely and in alphabetical order, they are: Eva Baumann (Hanover University of
Music, Drama and Media), Kathleen Beullens (KU Leuven), Anne-Linda Camerini (Università
della Svizzera italiana), Gregor Petrič (University of Ljubljana), Constanze Rossmann (University
of Erfurt), Barbara Schouten (University of Amsterdam), and Tom van de Belt (Radboud
University). In addition, Petya Eckler (University of Strathclyde) supports EJHC as a language
editor. The high personal commitment of these people ensures a qualified, fair, and timely review
process that adheres to the highest academic standards. Furthermore, EJHC can count on 30
editorial board members who provide their services to the journal as reviewers in their areas of
expertise. As of today, our editorial board includes, in alphabetical order, the following colleagues:
Florian Arendt, University of Vienna, Austria
Sara Atanasova, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia
Cabral A. Bigman, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA
Nadine Bol, Tilburg University, Netherlands
Nicky Britten, University of Exeter, United Kingdom
Viorela Dan, LMU Munich, Germany
Health Communication in the Age of Open Science Friemel et al.
European Journal of Health Communication 1(2020) 1-6 CC BY 4.0 5
Lidia del Piccolo, University of Verona, Italy
Andreas Fahr, University of Fribourg, Switzerland
Matthias Hastall, TU Dortmund, Germany
Hanneke Hendriks, University of Amsterdam, Netherlands
Tanja Kamin, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia
Veronika Karnowski, LMU Munich, Germany
Laura König, University of Konstanz, Germany
Demi Krystallidou, KU Leuven, Belgium
Nanon Labrie, VU Amsterdam, Netherlands
Claudia Lampert, Hans-Bredow-Institute, Hamburg, Germany
Yvan Leanza, Université Laval, Canada
Nehama Lewis, University of Haifa, Israel
Elena Link, Hanover University of Music, Drama and Media, Germany
Jennifer Manganello, University at Albany, USA
Saar Mollen, University of Amsterdam, Netherlands
Hao Nguyen, University of Zurich, Switzerland
Serena Petrocchi, Università della Svizzera italiana, Switzerland
Stephen A. Rains, University of Arizona, USA
Sara Rubinelli, University of Lucerne, Switzerland
Markus Schäfer, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, Germany
Sebastian Scherr, Texas A&M University, USA
Eline Smit, University of Amsterdam, Netherlands
Rachel Smith, Pennsylvania State University, USA
Freya Sukalla, Leipzig University, Germany
As recently noted by Teresa L. Thompson, editor of Health Communication, the management of a
journal is a ‘community effort’ (Thompson, 2020); this particularly applies to the founding phase
of a journal. We, the management team, are all the more grateful for the support and positive
feedback we have received since the founding of the journal. We want to particularly thank the
main library of the University of Zurich that hosts and maintains the publishing platform. The team
of the library provided great support in developing the editorial infrastructure for EJHC.
As a platinum open access journal that is free of charge for readers and authors, EJHC relies on
sponsors. We are thankful for the financial support of the Department of Communication and
Media Research (IKMZ), the Amsterdam School of Communication Research (ASCoR), and the
Swiss Academy of Humanities and Social Sciences (SAGW).
Last but not least, we want to thank the community for its commitment to EJHC. This has been
impressively demonstrated in the form of high-quality submissions; qualified, detailed, and timely
reviews; and dedicated service to the journal in various forms. With this strong support, we are
looking forward to jointly developing EJHC and the European field of health communication
research in the coming years. In addition to the continuous publication of articles, this will be
conducted through special issues, such as one on the ‘social aspects of health communication’,
which will be published in the coming months.
Health Communication in the Age of Open Science Friemel et al.
European Journal of Health Communication 1(2020) 1-6 CC BY 4.0 6
References
Grudniewicz, A., Moher, D., Cobey, K. D., Bryson, G. L., Cukier, S., Allen, K., Ardern, C.,
Balcom, L., Barros, T., Berger, M., Ciro, J. B., Cugusi, L., Donaldson, M. R., Egger, M.,
Graham, I. D., Hodgkinson, M., Khan, K. M., Mabizela, M., Manca, A., . . . Lalu, M. M.
(2019). Predatory journals: No definition, no defence. Nature, 576(7786), 210–212.
King, A. J. (2020). Health Communication 2019 in review. Health Communication, 35(9), 1051–
1055. https://doi.org/10.1080/10410236.2020.1763045
Public Knowledge Project. (2020). Open Journal Systems (OJS). https://pkp.sfu.ca/ojs/
Schulz, P. J., & Hartung, U. (2010). Health communication research in Europe: An emerging
field. Health Communication, 25(6-7), 548–551.
https://doi.org/10.1080/10410236.2010.496720
Tennant, J. (2018, June 29). Elsevier are corrupting open science in Europe. The Guardian.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/political-science/2018/jun/29/elsevier-are-corrupting-
open-science-in-europe
Thompson, T. L. (2020). Health communication as a community effort. Health Communication,
35(9), 1061–1062. https://doi.org/10.1080/10410236.2020.1763043