Designing the Future through Understanding the Past and the Present: Emerging Researchers Take on Regional Variation in Health Care

Early Career Researchers (ECRs) face many challenges in their career path to establishing themselves in their respective fields and being recognized by their peers. One of the greatest difficulties is publishing. The motto “publish or perish” is repeated like a mantra, putting immeasurable pressure on ECRs. Publications are vital not only for scientific communication but also instrumental for Ph.D. candidates and as a means of tracking the career’s development – researchers are evaluated based on the number and quality of their publications by funding bodies, universities, and research institutes. In spite of an increasing number of journals, finding the appropriate one to publish might be difficult.

In the field of variations in health care services, there are few specialized journals. “Research in Health Services and Regions” (RHSR) now attempts to close this gap.

RHSR welcomes ECRs to contribute papers to the collection “Designing the Future through Understanding the Past and the Present: Emerging Researchers Take on Regional Variation in Health Care.”

With this series, we want to acknowledge the research efforts of the ECRs by providing a publication platform and granting a prize. Through our peer-review process, we aim to provide valuable and constructive feedback, supporting the improvement of the manuscripts. Also, we want to stimulate the dialogue, positioning RHSR as a forum of exchange. Such knowledge exchange should also map the main topics of interest of ECRs and gain insight into how this field of research will develop in the near future.

Submission guidelines for this collection

- This is a call for Original Articles.

- The article should address one of our main themes: research on geographical variation of health care systems – variation may concern utilization, quality, costs, etc.; methods, best practices, policy papers. Read our aims and scope.

- Methods studies may both be based on quantitative or qualitative methods.

- The article must be previously unpublished.

- The article must be connected to the Master’s Degree, the Ph.D. Thesis or the Post-Doc work of the researcher.

- The main author should not have previously published more than three articles in peer-reviewed journals. The published articles must be disclosed in the author’s cover letter.

- Co-authorship is allowed.

- We will publish up to 10 peer-reviewed articles in the collection without any costs to the authors.

- The best published article, chosen by our Editors-in-Chief and Editorial Board Members, will receive a EUR 1000,- Prize from the ZI as well as a EUR 150,- e-book coupon from Springer Nature.

- Brief communications will be accepted for publishing, but will not be considered for the prize.

- Deadline for submission: 18 December 2023

About the journal

“Research in Health Services and Regions” is an e-only open access journal with a focus on variation in health care, published by Springer Nature. All publications in RHSR are open access, published under a Creative Commons license in which authors retain the copyright of their papers. The journal is sponsored by the Central Research Institute for Ambulatory Health Care in the Federal Republic of Germany (Zi), a not-for-profit tax-exempt research foundation devoted to research in support of universal access to health care. Zi covers the article processing charges, and no article processing charges or fees apply. All published papers are made freely and permanently accessible online, without subscription fees or registration barriers, providing immediate and equitable access to information.

For advice on articles categories we accept, please click here.

Submission can be made via Editorial Manager: https://www.editorialmanager.com/rhsr/default1.aspx

For further questions, please write an email to our Managing Editor Camila Gonzatto da Silva:cgonzattodasilva@zi.de

The peer review process for these articles is the same as the peer review process of the journal in general. Final decisions are made by the Editors-in-Chief.