Editorial Policies
Focus and Scope
JMIR Formative Research (JFR)publishes peer-reviewed, openly accessible research papers containing results from process evaluations, feasibility/pilot studies and other kinds of formative research and preliminary results. While the original focus was on the design of medical- and health-related research and technology innovations,JFRpublishes studies fromall areas of medical and health research.
Formative research is research that occurs before a program is designed and implemented, or while a program is being conducted. Formative research can help:
- define and understand populations in need of an intervention or public health program
- create programs that are specific to the needs of those populations
- ensure programs are acceptable and feasible to users before launching
- 提高用户和agencie之间的关系s/research groups
- demonstrate the feasibility, use, satisfaction with, or problems with a program before large-scale summative evaluation (looking at health outcomes)
Many funding agencies will expect some sort of pilot/feasibility/process evaluation before funding a larger study such as a Randomized Controlled Trial (RCT).
Formative research should be an integral part of developing or adapting programs, and should be used while the program is ongoing to help refine and improve program activities. Thus, formative evaluation can and should also occur in the form of a process evaluation alongside a summative evaluation such as an RCT.
This journal fills an important gap in the academic journals landscape, as it publishes sound and peer-reviewed formative research that is critical for investigators to apply for further funding, but that is usually not published in outcomes-focused medical journals aiming for impact and generalizability.
Summative evaluations of programs and apps/software that have undergone a thorough formative evaluation before launch have a better chance to be published in high-impact flagship journals; thus, we encourage authors to submit - as a first step - their formative evaluations inJFR(and their evaluation protocols inJMIR Research Protocols).
JMIR Formative Researchis indexed inPubMed,PubMed Central,DOAJ, andScopus, and theEmerging Sources Citation Index (Clarivate).
Section Policies
Formative Evaluation of Digital Health Interventions
 Open Submissions |
Indexed |
Peer Reviewed |
Formative Evaluation of Non-Ehealth Innovations
| Open Submissions |
Indexed |
Peer Reviewed |
Development and Evaluation of Research Methods, Instruments and Tools
| Open Submissions |
Indexed |
Peer Reviewed |
Pilot studies (ehealth)
| Open Submissions |
Indexed |
Peer Reviewed |
Pilot studies (non-ehealth)
| Open Submissions |
Indexed |
Peer Reviewed |
Connected Health Conference 2017
20% discount on the APF for presenters at the Boston Connected Health Conference
| Open Submissions |
Indexed |
Peer Reviewed |
Connected Health Conference 2018
$250 discount on the APF for presenters at the Boston Connected Health Conference.
| Open Submissions |
Indexed |
Peer Reviewed |
Reviews on Usage or other Formative Evaluation Metrics
| Open Submissions |
Indexed |
Peer Reviewed |
Theme Issue: Connected Health Conference 2019
20% discount on the APF for presenters at the 2019 Connected Health Conference
| Open Submissions |
Indexed |
Peer Reviewed |
Viewpoint
| Open Submissions |
Indexed |
Peer Reviewed |
Early Results from COVID-19 Studies
| Open Submissions |
Indexed |
Peer Reviewed |
Letters to the Editor
Editors
- Amaryllis Mavragani
- Amaryllis Mavragani
| Open Submissions |
Indexed |
 Peer Reviewed |
Corrigenda and Addenda
本节列出了所有实质性修改,广告ditions or changes made to articles and reviews subsequent to their first publication in the journal. Corrigenda are usually submitted by the corresponding author of the original article, or the section editor. Published papers are considered "final", thus JMIR makes corrections to published papers only in exceptional circumstances. Note that while we do not charge to correct errata that are the responsibility of the publisher, we charge a $190 fee for discretionary corrigenda and addenda (please submit a correction under that section, if it is the authors' responsibility/decision to correct or add information to a already published article).
| Open Submissions |
Indexed |
Peer Reviewed |
Discretionary Corrigenda*
For corrigenda that are discretionary and a result of author-oversight (e.g., corrections in the affiliation etc.) we charge a $190 processing fee to make changes in the original paper and publish an erratum. Please submit a correction statement (text similar to //www.mybigtv.com/2015/3/e76/) at //www.mybigtv.com/author/submit/1 under the section "Discretionary Corrigenda".
| Open Submissions |
Indexed |
Peer Reviewed |
Early Results in Infodemiology and Infoveillance
| Open Submissions |
Indexed |
Peer Reviewed |
Tutorial
A "how-to" paper on an important practical or research issue. We recommend to contact the editor to discuss suitability of a topic before submitting it. Submission of slides or audio/video files as supplementary files is strongly recommended.
| Open Submissions |
Indexed |
Peer Reviewed |
Editorial
| Open Submissions |
Indexed |
Peer Reviewed |
Peer Review Process
当我们收到一份手稿,主编and/or Assistant Editor and/or the Section Editor will first decide whether the manuscript meets the formal criteria specified in the Instructions for Authors and whether it fits within the scope of the journal. When in doubt, the editor will consult other members of the Editorial Board. Manuscripts are then assigned to a section editor, who sends it to 2-4 external experts for peer review. Authors are required to suggest at least 2 peer-reviewers (who do not have an conflict of interest) during the submission process. JMIR reviewers will not stay anonymous their names will be revealed and stated below the article in the event that the manuscript will be published. Authors and reviewers should not directly contact each other to enter into disputes on manuscripts or reviews. We acknowledge the need of our authors to communicate their findings rapidly. We therefore aim to be extremely fast (but still thorough and rigorous) in our peer-review process.
Publication Frequency
JMIR Formative Research (JFR) publishes articles "continuously". All articles (peer reviewed and copyedited) are posted online as soon as they are approved for publication and then collected into monthly issues.
Open Access Policy
All journals published by JMIR Publications provide immediate open access to their content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge and accelerates research. Copyright is retained by the authors, and articles can be freely used and distributed by others. Articles are distributed under the terms of theCreative Commons Attribution Licensewhich permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work, first published by JMIR Publications, is properly cited. The complete bibliographic information (authors, title, journal, volume/issue, and article ID), a link to the original publication (URL), and this copyright and license information (“Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution cc-by 4.0”) must be included.
Please do not contact the publisher for “reprint permission” requests because, by default, this permission has already been given by authors (under the condition of attribution of the original source), and the publisher does NOT own the copyright for the material published. The authors retain the copyright, unless stated otherwise.
Editor-in-Chief
Amaryllis Mavragani, Scientific Editor (Acting)
编辑委员会
(Acting) Editor-in-Chief
Amaryllis Mavragani, PhDc
Scientific Editor, JMIR Publications (Canada) (ORCID)
Bio
Amaryllis has extensive knowledge of big data, public health surveillance, publishing, computer science, mathematics, and infodemiology. Her commitment to advancing JMIR’s mission of publishing high-quality, groundbreaking science lies in her skills in navigating the intersection of informatics research, digital health technologies, and STM publishing. Her research has covered topics ranging from foundational work in infodemiology to trends in analytical research of online data, to a broad range of big data studies related to COVID-19. Amaryllis’ PhD candidacy is at the University of Stirling.
编辑委员会Members/Section Editors
Join the Editorial Board
FAQ Article How to become an EB member
Nico Bruining, PhD
Thoraxcenter, Department of Cardiology, Erasmus MC, Rotterdam, The Netherlands (ORCID)
Bio
Dr. Bruining is currently the head of the Department of Clinical and Experimental Information (CEI) processing and holds the position of assistant professor at the Erasmus MC within the Thoraxcenter. The CEI was started in 1969, and since then, it has developed and worked with computer systems to collect a variety of available cardiothoracic data such as monitoring systems and, consequently, signal processing, imaging and image analyses, databases and data exchange. Recently, many of these topics are covered in the so-called eHealth. His personal background has mostly been within interventional cardiology and cardiovascular imaging.
Research Focus
Dr. Bruining currently focuses on cardiovascular imaging and eHealth within cardiology.
Kate Eddens, PhD, MPH
Assistant Professor, School of Public Health, Indiana University, USA (ORCID)
Bio
Dr. Eddens’ research agenda focuses on increasing the reach and effectiveness of health communication strategies to connect underserved populations to cancer prevention and control services and solutions by utilizing social network analysis, word- of-mouth communication and marketing, unique social service channels, and innovative technology. She is currently developing tablet-based network data collection and visualization software that optimizes opportunities for technology to transcend issues of literacy by adapting to the user and facilitating important network connections.
Research Focus
Dr. Eddens’ primary focus is in using egocentric social support and communication networks to understand how to reach people with effective information and persuade them to participate in cancer screening and prevention services. She is currently developing technology to facilitate this research and has found that showing people their social support and health communication networks has a powerful impact on how they perceive the amount of support they have in their lives. She is working towards building this as a clinical tool that can help guide the provision of social support services and resources throughout the cancer survivorship continuum as well. Other general areas of focus include social network analysis, technology development, using unique channels such as social services to reach people with cancer prevention and control information, health literacy, disparity and underserved populations, and health communication.
Jiban Khuntia, PhD
Associate Professor of Information Systems; Director, Health Administration, Research Consortium, Business School, University of Colorado (USA)
Bio
te Jiban Khuntia专门从事健康信息chnology and sustainability research areas. He advises the Health Administration Research Consortium. Khuntia's research examines how organizations leverage information technology (IT) to shape their strategies, workflows, and operations to be successful. His work has appeared in top journals.
Andre Kushniruk, BA, PhD
School of Health Information Science, University of Victoria, Canada (ORCID)
Research Focus
Andre Kushniruk’s research focuses on usability of health care information systems and technologies, methodologies, usability testing, technology-induced errors, HCI models, frameworks, and theories.
Bio
Andre Kushniruk conducts research in a number of areas including evaluation of the effects of technology, human-computer interaction and usability engineering in health care. His work is known internationally and he has published widely in the area of health informatics. He focuses on developing new methods for the evaluation of information technology and studying human-computer interaction in health care.
Christian Lovis MD, MPH, FACMI
教授和柴rman, Division of Medical Information Sciences, University Hospitals of Geneva (HUG), University of Geneva (UNIGE), Switzerland (ORCID)
Research Focus
Christian Lovis’ work is mostly driven by using digitalization of data, information, and knowledge. His team’s research focuses on three major fields: (1) clinical information systems: design and architecture, sustainability, and impacts; (2) data and knowledge-driven science: natural language processing, knowledge representation, semantics and interoperability, context awareness, advanced analytics, predictive, and decision support; and (3) human factors: advanced interactions, augmented reality, conversational, qualitative and quantitative evaluation, and ergonomics. Christian’s own research is led by the desire to use medical information sciences to improve health, well-being, and knowledge in life sciences, with an MD thesis centered on natural language processing and large datasets to support physician’s work. This is a theme that he has continued all through his career, to the big data and artificial intelligence era, to address the challenge of real-time usable integration of multisource, multimodal data with persistent semantics.
Bio
洛维斯基督教Informa临床教授tics at the University of Geneva and leads the Division of Medical Information Sciences at the Geneva University Hospitals. He is a medical doctor board certified in Internal Medicine with emphasis on Emergency Medicine and holds a Master's in Public Health from the University of Washington, WA. In parallel to medicine, he studied Medical Informatics at the University of Geneva under the supervision of Prof Jean-Raoul Scherrer. Christian developed and deployed the clinical information system at the university hospitals of Geneva, a consortium of all public in- and out-patient facilities of Geneva State, Switzerland. Christian is the author of more than 150 peer-reviewed papers in the field of Medical Informatics. He has occupied several positions in Medical Informatics organizations, such Chair of the IMIA WG on Health Information Systems (HIS), President of the Swiss Medical Informatics, President of the European Federation of Medical Informatics, Vice-Chair of the Board of Directors of HIMSS. Christian is a Fellow of the American College of Medical Informatics and a founding member of the International Academy of Health Sciences Informatics. He has been heavily involved in the development and enforcement of the Swiss Federal Law for the Shared Patient Record.
John F Pearson, MD
Assistant Professor, Department of Anesthesthesiology, University of Utah School of Medicine, USA (ORCID)
Bio
Dr. Pearson is currently pursuing a fellowship in Clinical Informatics at BIDMC to gain in-depth training in digital health tools with the goal of integrating patient-generated data into clinical decision making. To that end, he is the co-PI of a clinical trial that is aimed at the gamification of post-operative incentive spirometry to reduce pulmonary complications after surgery. He specializes in techniques such as digital phenotyping and geospatial analysis of smartphone-generated data, and hope to operationalize digital health tools in the perioperative care setting.
Caroline R Richardson, MD
Associate Chair of Research, Max and Buena Lichter Research Professor of Family Medicine; Co-Director, University of Michigan National Clinical Scholars Program; Department of Family Medicine, University of Michigan Medical School (ORCID)
Bio
Dr. Richardson is a physical activity and diabetes prevention researcher who emphasizes the importance of using low-cost and scalable approaches to promoting physical activity. She develops and tests behavioral internet-mediated interventions to increase physical activity, decrease weight, and prevent diabetes. Focusing on components of web-based interventions that are interactive and individually tailored, Dr. Richardson builds interventions that are more than just static informational websites. They incorporate objective monitoring of physical activity, individually tailored feedback and motivational messaging, and online social support to motivate and engage users. Automated, gradually incrementing and individually tailored step-count goals are assigned to participants based on program progress as they build up their endurance. Dr. Richardson was the Director of the Veterans Administration Diabetes Quality Improvement Initiative (QUERI) and conducted a multi-site implementation study of the Diabetes Prevention Program for veterans.
Dr. Richardson currently serves as Associate Chair for Research Programs in the Department of Family Medicine. She currently serves as a member of the Institute for Health Policy and Innovation's Institute Leadership Team (ILT). In addition, she leads education and scholarship initiatives as Chair of the IHPI education committee and co-director of the IHPI Clinician Scholars Program (NCSP).
Travis Sanchez, PhD, MPH
Rollins School of Public Health, Emory University, USA (ORCID)
Research Focus
Travis Sanchez's research interests include: disease surveillance evaluation, HIV/AIDS prevention, infectious disease, public health practice and sexual health/behavior
Bio
Dr. Sanchez received a Doctorate of Veterinary Medicine from the University of Georgia in 1994. After a veterinary internship at North Carolina State University, Dr. Sanchez practiced as an emergency veterinarian in the Metro Atlanta area until he returned to the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University and received his Master of Public Health degree in International Health and Epidemiology in 2000. Dr. Sanchez began his public health career working for the Georgia Division of Public Health in the notifiable diseases epidemiology section and coordinated the state’s district epidemiologist program. He came to CDC in 2001 and worked for the Surveillance Branch in the Division of HIV/AIDS Prevention and later for the newly created Behavioral and Clinical Surveillance Branch (BCSB) as a project officer for the National HIV Behavioral Surveillance System. In 2005, he became BCSB’s Associate Chief for Science and served for extended periods as an Acting Team Leader and the Acting Branch Chief for BCSB. Dr. Sanchez participated in CDC’s IETA program in Vietnam in 2005 and worked closely with CDC’s Associate Director for Science in 2007 during a training detail. From 2008-2009 he was the Chief of the Epidemiology and Strategic Information Branch of the CDC-South Africa Office. From 2009-2011, Dr. Sanchez served as the Associate Chief for Science in the HIV Epidemiology Branch at CDC. In 2011 he took an associate professor appointment with the Rollins School of Public Health in the Department of Epidemiology.
Gillian Strudwick, RN, PhD
Campbell Family Mental Health Research Institute, Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, Canada
Bio
The overall goal of Dr. Strudwick's research program is to identify how health information technologies can be effectively utilized to support and improve human health, particularly in the area of mental health. Her research focuses on three areas: improving the adoption and use of health information technologies by health professionals; identifying how patients can obtain benefits through the use of health information technologies; and contributing to the improved recognition and use of clinical data standards embedded within common health information technologies.
John Torous, MD
Harvard Medical School, USA (ORCID)
Bio
John Torous, MD, is co-director of the digital psychiatry program at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, a Harvard Medical School-affiliated teaching hospital, where he also serves as a staff psychiatrist and clinical informatics fellow. He has a background in electrical engineering and computer sciences and received an undergraduate degree in the field from UC Berkeley before attending medical school at UC San Diego. He completed his psychiatry residency at Harvard. Dr. Torous is active in investigating the potential of mobile mental health technologies for psychiatry, developing smartphone tools for clinical research, leading clinical studies of smartphone apps for diverse mental illnesses, and publishing on the research, ethical, and patient perspectives of digital psychiatry. He serves as editor-in-chief for of JMIR Mental Health, currently leads the American Psychiatric Association’s work group on the evaluation of smartphone apps, and co-chairs the Massachusetts Psychiatric Society's Health Information Technology Committee. He is an assistant editor for The Harvard Review of Psychiatry and section editor for The Asian Journal of Psychiatry as well as Psychiatric Times.
Jing Wang, PhD, MPH, RN, FAAN
Dean and Professor, Florida State University College of Nursing, Tallahassee, FL, USA(ORCID)
Bio
Wang's research uses mobile and connected technology to support seniors aging in place and to optimize behavioral lifestyle interventions and improve patient-centered outcomes in type 2 diabetes and obesity, especially among the underserved communities. Through interprofessional collaborations, her research also spans patient safety, usability evaluation on electronic health record systems, and health promotion in Mexican-American and Asian-American populations.
Research Focus
Aging in place, mobile health, connected health, telehealth, diabetes education, lifestyle interventions, living lab, self-regulation, behavior change, usability evaluation, clinical decision support, interprofessional education, patient-generated health data, patient reported outcomes.
Susan Woods, MD, MPH
President, Society for Participatory Medicine
Bio
Sue has broad healthcare experience spanning private and public sectors. Board certified in general internal medicine and health informatics. Sue is a design thinker who is passionate about effective health care communication, clinician-patient partnership and using innovative digital tools that improve care and the patient experience. She served as Director of Patient Experience for the Connected Care Office at the Veterans Health Administration, developing web and mobile apps for patients and clinicians and leading a national effort on patient generated data. Sue received her MD at Oregon Health Sciences University and public health degree at the University of Washington. Her research focuses on consumer use of health technology, health information transparency and promoting virtual care delivery. She has served on Boards at the Society for Behavioral Medicine and the Society for Participatory Medicine. Sue promotes participatory care and services that engage people and families in their health and their health care. As the founder of HiTech HiTouch, LLC, she advocates for full patient access to health records (OpenNotes), telehealth and eHealth adoption, universal broadband access and digital inclusion.
Indexing and Impact Factor
JMIR Formative Research(JFR, ISSN 2561-326X) is indexed inPubMed,PubMed Central,DOAJ,Scopus, and theEmerging Sources Citation Index (Clarivate).
JFRis expected to receive a Journal Impact Factor™ in 2023 (see announcement). Clarivate recentlyannouncedthat the next release of the Journal Citation Reports™ will include all Web of Science Core Collection™ journals.
Open Submissions
Peer Reviewed