Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
Health Sciences Quarterly – Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
Health Sciences Quarterly (Health Sci. Q.) is an international, double-anonymised peer-reviewed, open-access journal published by Holistence Publications. The journal publishes high-quality scholarly work in health sciences and related interdisciplinary fields. This FAQ page provides clear information for prospective authors, reviewers, readers, libraries, and indexing services.
1. General Information
Q1. What is the name of the journal and what fields does it cover?
The name of the journal is Health Sciences Quarterly, abbreviated as Health Sci. Q.. The journal publishes scholarly work in clinical medicine, public health, nursing, dentistry, pharmacy, health policy, health economics, healthcare management, medical education, bioethics, nutrition, medical technology, and related interdisciplinary areas of health sciences.
Q2. In which language does the journal accept manuscripts?
Health Sciences Quarterly accepts and publishes manuscripts only in English. All submitted manuscripts must include an English title, abstract, keywords, and full text.
Q3. What is the publication frequency?
Health Sciences Quarterly is published quarterly, with four issues per year. The journal publishes its regular issues at the end of January, April, July, and October. Articles are published within the relevant scheduled issue after peer review, acceptance, copyediting, typesetting, and proofreading processes are completed.
Q4. Why does the journal URL include the path /jsp?
Health Sciences Quarterly was formerly published under the title Journal of Scientific Perspectives, abbreviated as JSP. Following the title change, the journal continued publication under its current official title, Health Sciences Quarterly. The OJS URL path /jsp has been retained as a legacy technical path to preserve access to archived content, DOI links, indexing records, citation continuity, and existing article links. The current official title of the journal is Health Sciences Quarterly.
2. Article Submission and Fees
Q5. Do you have a deadline for article submissions?
No. Submissions are open throughout the year. Specific calls or deadlines may be announced for special issues or thematic sections on the “Announcements” page.
Q6. Does the journal charge any article submission, review, or publication fees?
Yes. Health Sciences Quarterly charges a one-time article submission fee of 150 USD only after preliminary editorial suitability assessment. No fee is requested at the initial submission stage.
This fee is not an acceptance fee or publication fee. It supports editorial and administrative processes, including preliminary editorial assessment, technical checks, similarity screening using iThenticate, editorial correspondence, peer-review coordination, DOI and metadata preparation, and journal management.
Apart from this 150 USD article submission fee, the journal does not charge any additional article processing charge (APC), acceptance fee, publication fee, page fee, colour fee, production fee, archiving fee, or post-acceptance fee.
Q7. Is the article submission fee related to manuscript acceptance?
No. The article submission fee is not related to manuscript acceptance and does not guarantee acceptance, external peer review, expedited processing, or publication. Editorial and peer-review decisions are made independently of payment and are based solely on academic merit, originality, methodological quality, ethical compliance, reviewer reports, and relevance to the journal’s aims and scope.
Q8. Is the article submission fee refundable?
The article submission fee is generally non-refundable once payment has been completed and editorial processing has begun. The fee is not refunded if the manuscript is later rejected, withdrawn by the authors, not revised within the required period, or declined after peer review.
Refund requests may be considered only in cases of duplicate payment, technical payment error, incorrect payment, or other administrative error confirmed by the journal or publisher.
Q9. Does the journal charge any other fees after submission?
No. Health Sciences Quarterly does not charge any additional fees after the article submission fee. There are no APCs, acceptance fees, publication fees, page fees, colour fees, production fees, archiving fees, or post-acceptance fees.
Q10. What is the copyright and licensing policy?
Authors retain the copyright of their published works. All published articles are distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0), which allows others to share and adapt the work, provided that proper credit is given to the author(s), the journal, and the original source.
3. Review Process
Q11. How does the review process work?
Health Sciences Quarterly uses a double-anonymised peer-review process to ensure impartial and transparent evaluation. The identities of authors and reviewers are concealed from each other throughout the review process.
The main steps of the process are:
- Technical and administrative check, including required files, anonymisation, author declarations, formatting, ethical documentation, and similarity screening.
- Initial editorial evaluation by the Editor-in-Chief or editorial office, including scope, originality, scientific quality, language quality, methodological suitability, and ethical compliance.
- Assignment to a relevant Section Editor when appropriate.
- External peer review by at least two independent reviewers who are experts in the relevant field.
- Editorial decision based on reviewer reports, scientific quality, originality, ethical compliance, and relevance to the journal scope.
- Revision process when required. Authors are expected to submit a revised manuscript together with a point-by-point response letter.
- Final editorial decision and production process.
- Publication in the relevant scheduled quarterly issue after acceptance and production.
Q12. What is the average review time?
The standard review period is approximately 30 days. Authors are usually given 21 days for minor revisions and 60 days for major revisions. These timelines may vary depending on reviewer availability, manuscript complexity, and the need for additional review rounds.
Q13. Can authors appeal an editorial decision?
Yes. Authors may appeal an editorial decision by submitting a written explanation to the Editor-in-Chief. The appeal should clearly state the reason for reconsideration, such as a possible misunderstanding, factual error, procedural concern, or overlooked information in the review process. Appeals are evaluated by the editorial team in accordance with the journal’s publication ethics policy.
Disagreement with reviewer comments alone is not sufficient grounds for appeal. The Editor-in-Chief may consult the Section Editor, additional reviewers, or members of the Editorial Board where necessary.
Q14. Are all article types externally peer reviewed?
Original Articles, Review Articles, Case Reports, and Study Protocols undergo external double-anonymised peer review where appropriate. Letters to the Editor may be evaluated by the editorial team and, when necessary, sent for external review. Errata are handled as correction notices for previously published articles and are not considered standard manuscript submissions.
4. Information for Authors
Q15. What article types does the journal consider?
Health Sciences Quarterly considers the following manuscript types:
- Original Article
- Review Article
- Case Report
- Study Protocol
- Letter to the Editor
Systematic reviews and meta-analyses may be submitted under the Review Article category where appropriate. Errata are published when necessary to correct errors in previously published articles and are handled in accordance with the journal’s corrections and publication ethics policies.
Q16. What files should authors upload during submission?
Authors are required to upload the following files during submission:
- Blinded Manuscript File: The main manuscript file must be fully anonymised and must not include author names, affiliations, ORCID iDs, e-mail addresses, acknowledgements, funding details, ethics committee names or approval numbers, institutional identifiers, project numbers, grant numbers, or any other information that may reveal the identity of the authors.
- Title Page / Cover Page: This file must include author information and all required declarations, including author contributions, conflict of interest statement, funding statement, ethics committee approval statement, informed consent statement, animal research ethics statement where applicable, clinical trial registration where applicable, data availability statement, acknowledgements, artificial intelligence use statement, originality and duplicate submission statement, permissions statement, and patient/participant privacy statement.
- Cover Letter: The cover letter should confirm that the manuscript is original, has not been published previously, is not under consideration elsewhere, complies with the journal’s ethical and publication policies, has been approved by all authors, and falls within the scope of the journal.
- Ethics Committee Approval Document: For studies involving human participants, patients, personal data, clinical interventions, biological material, surveys, interviews, observations, experimental procedures, animal subjects, or sensitive health data, the relevant ethics committee approval document must be uploaded as an additional file when required.
Authors are encouraged to use the HSQ Manuscript Submission Template Package, which includes templates for the Blinded Manuscript File, Title Page / Cover Page, and Cover Letter.
Q17. What should authors pay attention to before submission?
- The manuscript must be within the journal’s aims and scope.
- The full text must be written in clear academic English.
- The manuscript should follow the required structure for the selected manuscript type.
- The journal uses the Vancouver citation style in accordance with ICMJE recommendations.
- Manuscripts must be submitted in Microsoft Word format (.doc or .docx). PDF files may be uploaded only as supplementary files when necessary.
- The Blinded Manuscript File must not include author-identifying information.
- All required declarations must be provided in the Title Page / Cover Page.
- Ethics committee approval documents must be uploaded where required.
- All submissions are screened for similarity using iThenticate.
- Authors must ensure that the submitted manuscript is original and is not under consideration by another journal.
Q18. Is data sharing or code availability required?
Authors are encouraged to share datasets, supplementary materials, and analysis codes that support their findings in appropriate repositories whenever possible. If data cannot be shared due to ethical, legal, institutional, or privacy restrictions, authors should clearly state the reason in the Data Availability Statement.
Q19. What happens after acceptance?
Accepted manuscripts undergo copyediting, typesetting, formatting, metadata preparation, DOI registration, and proofreading. The corresponding author receives galley proofs for final checking. At this stage, only minor typographical, formatting, or production-related corrections are permitted. Major changes in content, data, analyses, results, conclusions, authorship, author order, funding information, or ethical declarations are not allowed at the proof stage unless approved by the Editor-in-Chief for exceptional reasons.
5. Publication and Access
Q20. When will my article be published?
Accepted articles are published in the relevant scheduled quarterly issue after the production and proofreading process is completed. Health Sciences Quarterly publishes four issues per year.
Q21. What is the open-access policy?
Health Sciences Quarterly is an open-access journal. All published content is made immediately and permanently available online without subscription barriers, paywalls, or embargo periods under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).
Q22. What should authors know about DOI, citation, and indexing?
- Each published article receives a unique DOI.
- Authors should cite articles using the official journal title, article title, volume, issue, page range or article number, year, and DOI.
- The journal’s abstracting, indexing, discovery platform, and catalogue information is provided on the “Abstracting & Indexing” page.
- The journal may be indexed, abstracted, listed, or discoverable through indexing services, databases, scholarly discovery platforms, and library catalogues.
- Authors may share their published articles on personal websites, institutional repositories, academic networks, and other open-access platforms with full citation and DOI information.
6. Ethical Rules and Publication Policy
Q23. What ethical principles does the journal follow?
Health Sciences Quarterly adheres to international standards of publication ethics and research integrity. The journal follows the principles of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and the recommendations of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) where applicable.
Key ethical principles include:
- Transparency and accountability in research and publishing.
- Disclosure of conflicts of interest.
- Accuracy, reliability, and integrity of research data and analyses.
- Avoidance of plagiarism, self-plagiarism, duplicate publication, redundant publication, inappropriate text recycling, data fabrication, data falsification, image manipulation, and citation manipulation.
- Clear and fair authorship attribution based on substantial scholarly contribution.
- Compliance with ethical standards for human and animal research.
- Protection of patient and participant privacy.
- Transparent disclosure of funding, author contributions, data availability, and artificial intelligence use.
Q24. What is the journal’s policy on artificial intelligence tools?
Authors must transparently disclose the use of AI-assisted tools in manuscript preparation, language editing, formatting, image generation, data analysis support, coding, or other research-related tasks. AI tools cannot be listed as authors. Authors remain fully responsible for the accuracy, originality, integrity, ethical compliance, and scientific content of all material submitted to the journal.
Q25. What happens to rejected manuscripts?
Rejected manuscripts are not reconsidered in the same form. However, authors may submit a substantially revised version as a new submission if the manuscript has been significantly improved and if the new submission complies with the journal’s aims, scope, ethical standards, and author guidelines.
Q26. How does the journal handle corrections and retractions?
Minor errors that do not affect the scientific validity of an article may be corrected through an erratum or corrigendum. Serious ethical problems, unreliable findings, plagiarism, data fabrication, data falsification, unethical research, duplicate publication, undisclosed conflicts of interest, or other forms of research misconduct may lead to retraction in accordance with COPE guidance.
7. Technical Support and Contact
Q27. What should I do if I experience a technical problem with the submission system?
For technical support, please contact the editorial office or publisher support team by e-mail. Please include the manuscript title, corresponding author name, a description of the problem, browser information, and a screenshot if possible.
Q28. Who can I contact for editorial or general inquiries?
Editorial and Publisher Contact Information:
- Editorial E-mail: hsq.editor@gmail.com
- Publisher E-mail: journals@holistence.com
- Address: Namık Kemal Mahallesi, Helvacıoğlu Sokak, Han Evleri 19-21/A, D:1, 17000 Çanakkale / Türkiye
- WhatsApp: +90 530 638 70 17
Health Sciences Quarterly is published by Holistence Publications. The journal upholds editorial independence, ethical rigour, transparency, open access, and scientific excellence as its core publishing principles.
