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The Journal of Global HealthInternational Health JournalEvidence for health where it's hardest to deliver
Vol.
XXIV
No.
04
Year
2026
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Editorial Policy

Open Access & Licensing

Global Health Equipment Review·Field Series·Evidence Desk·Peer-reviewed in spirit · Educational

Field guidance is only useful if the people who need it can reach it. Our editorial assessments and field guides are published openly, with no paywall and no registration wall. This page sets out exactly what is freely available, how it may be reused, and how we keep the record durable.

Read the field guidesRead our editorial standards
Plate II
Fig. — field plate
Figure. Engraved reference plate — evaluating equipment on field resilience, not lab-bench ideals.
Our stance

Open by default, paywall by exception — and there is no exception

International Health publishes its field-equipment assessments, field guides, and explainers as open-access content. There is no subscription, no metered limit, and no account required to read any editorial guidance on this platform. A logistician comparing cold boxes from a low-bandwidth connection in the field should reach the same verdict, in full, as anyone else.

This is a deliberate choice about who the work is for. The readers most likely to act on a field-suitability judgment — program planners, procurement officers, outbreak responders in low-resource settings — are exactly the readers a paywall would shut out. So the guidance is free at the point of use, and we intend to keep it that way.

From the review desk

What is freely available

We are specific about this rather than gesturing at openness, so you know precisely what you can read and reuse.

  1. 01

    Field-equipment assessments

    Every graded review of cold-chain, diagnostic, outbreak-response, and WASH equipment is open in full — verdict, evidence basis, and reasoning — with no paywall on the field guidance itself.

  2. 02

    Field guides and explainers

    Category guidance, methodology explainers, and our global-health resources are freely readable. The intent is that a program can use them to plan procurement without a budget line for access.

  3. 03

    Policy and methodology pages

    Our editorial standards, peer-review policy, ethics statement, and corrections record are all open. The process behind a verdict should be as readable as the verdict.

  4. 04

    Corrections and version notes

    When an assessment is amended, the dated correction note and the reason are published alongside it — open to the same readers, never tucked behind access.

Plate II
Fig. — field plate
Figure. Engraved reference plate — evaluating equipment on field resilience, not lab-bench ideals.
Licensing

How our editorial content may be reused

We want field guidance to travel. Our original editorial assessments and guides are made available for reuse on Creative-Commons-style terms — broadly, you may share and adapt the content for any purpose, including in training materials and program documentation, provided you give appropriate attribution to International Health and link back to the source assessment, and provided you do not misrepresent a verdict or its limits in the process.

Two honest caveats. First, this licensing covers our own editorial text and analysis; it does not extend to third-party material we cite or quote, to manufacturer specifications, or to images and standards owned by others, which remain under their own terms. Second, attribution must preserve the assessment's stated basis and date — reusing a verdict while stripping the conditions and caveats that qualify it would misrepresent the work, and we ask that you do not.

How a verdict is reasoned
Review criteriaBy which we judge field gear
01Criterion
0
Paywalls on published field guidance
02Criterion
0
Registration walls to read an assessment
03Criterion
100%
Corrections published openly beside the original
Standards of the desk
Our field-equipment review method

How to reuse our guidance properly

We want field guidance to travel — and to travel without losing the conditions that make a verdict honest. Reusing our editorial content is straightforward if you follow these steps.

  1. 01Step

    Confirm it is our own editorial text

    The licence covers our original analysis, assessments, and guides. It does not extend to third-party material we cite, manufacturer specifications, or images and standards owned by others — those remain under their own terms. Check what you are reusing is ours before you rely on the licence.

  2. 02Step

    Attribute and link to the source

    Credit International Health and link back to the specific source assessment. Attribution is not a formality: it lets a reader of your material trace the verdict to its evidence basis and its date, which is the whole point of a citable record.

  3. 03Step

    Preserve the basis and the caveats

    Carry the assessment's stated conditions and date with the verdict. Reusing a grade while stripping the operating envelope, the evidence basis, or the limits that qualify it would misrepresent the work — a 72-hour hold-over figure means little without the pre-conditioning it assumes.

  4. 04Step

    Re-check against the current version

    Assessments are dated because equipment and supply chains change. Before you publish reused guidance, confirm you are citing the current version of record, and note the date you drew on so your own readers can do the same.

Method of review
Plate II
Fig. — field plate
Figure. Engraved reference plate — evaluating equipment on field resilience, not lab-bench ideals.
Durability of the record

Archiving and keeping the version of record reachable

Open access is hollow if a cited assessment disappears. We treat the published version of an assessment as a record to be preserved, not a transient page. Assessments are dated and retained; when one is superseded by a correction or a fresh evaluation, the earlier state is noted rather than erased, so a reference made to a verdict last year still resolves to a documented version.

Our aim is a stable, citable record consistent with good archiving practice for a publication of this kind. We are honest that this is a maintained editorial archive on infrastructure we operate, not a deposit in a formal long-term preservation scheme we do not claim membership of. If a link to an assessment ever fails to resolve, that is a fault to report under our corrections-and-retractions policy, and we will restore or redirect it.

Correspondence

Queries to the desk

04 entries on file
Q1.Is any of your field guidance behind a paywall?

No. Every editorial assessment, field guide, explainer, and policy page is open in full, with no subscription and no registration required to read it. The guidance is free at the point of use because the readers who most need it are the ones a paywall would exclude.

Q2.Can I reuse your assessments in my program's materials?

Yes, on Creative-Commons-style terms: you may share and adapt our original editorial text for any purpose, including training and program documentation, with attribution to International Health, a link to the source assessment, and without misrepresenting the verdict or its caveats. This covers our own analysis only — cited third-party material, manufacturer specifications, and others' images or standards remain under their own terms.

Q3.Do you charge contributors or reviewers any fee?

No. There are no article-processing charges, submission fees, or reviewer fees on this platform. We accept no payment, equipment, or placement in exchange for coverage or a verdict — the same independence firewall described in our editorial standards and publication-ethics statement.

Q4.How do you keep a cited assessment reachable over time?

Assessments are dated and retained as a maintained editorial archive; when one is superseded, the earlier state is noted rather than deleted, so an old reference still resolves to a documented version. We describe this honestly as an archive on infrastructure we operate, not membership of a formal preservation scheme. A broken link to an assessment is a fault to report, and we will restore or redirect it.

ArticleField Series

Open access in service of the wider record

Open access is not a standalone gesture — it is what makes the rest of our policy framework useful to the people it is for. A rubric-based verdict a program cannot reach helps no one; a correction tucked behind a paywall fails the reader who acted on the original. So the same openness applies across the platform: the assessments, the methodology pages, the peer-review and ethics policies, and every dated correction are all free at the point of use.

We are honest about the limits of what we provide. We describe our archive as a maintained editorial record on infrastructure we operate — not membership of a formal long-term preservation scheme, a publishing-ethics body, or an accreditation we do not hold. What we commit to is a stable, citable, openly-readable record kept reachable over time, consistent with good practice for a publication of this kind. If that ever fails — a broken link, a verdict you cannot reach — it is a fault to report under our corrections-and-retractions policy, and we will restore it.

End of section
From the editorial desk

Reusing our guidance, or can't reach an assessment?

If you are building our field guidance into program materials and want to confirm attribution, or a link to an assessment has stopped resolving, tell the editors. Keeping the open record usable is part of the work.

Contact the editorial team