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Research Involvement and Engagement

Aims and scope

Research Involvement and Engagement is an interdisciplinary, health and social care journal focussing on patient and wider involvement and engagement in research, at all stages. The journal is co-produced by all key stakeholders, including patients, academics, policy makers and service users.

Focussing on patient and public involvement and engagement in health and social care research, we welcome research articles, methodologies, protocols and commentaries, particularly those with patient authors. All submissions are peer-reviewed by patients and academics and are edited by a patient and an academic editor, who have equal weight in editorial decisions. We encourage submissions from anyone who is committed to delivering the patient or public voice in research.

A co-produced journal

Research Involvement and Engagement co-produces the journal, involving academics, policy makers, patients and service-users, with a unique governance structure. We welcome articles from anyone involved or engaged with research into supporting, encouraging or delivering the patient/public voice in research processes or structures

Research Involvement and Engagement is a Patients Included accredited journal. Full details on how we meet the Patients Included journal charter clauses can be found here.

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Public involvement in research from low-middle-income-countries

Guest Editors:

Raksha Pandya-Wood, PhD, Monash University, Malaysia
Aparna Mittal, MBA, PatientsEngage, India

Submission Status: Open until 31 July 2025

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Patient and Public Involvement and Engagement from the International Clinical Trial Methodology Conference 2024

Guest Editors:
Amanda Roberts, BSc, Rapid Eczema Trials, United Kingdom
Steven Blackburn, PhD, College of Medicine and Health, University of Birmingham, United Kingdom

Please, note that this Collection does not accept submissions from non-invited authors.

Submission Status: Open until 5 September 2025

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2024 Nature Awards for Inclusive Health Research: Collection for the Journal of Research Involvement and Engagement

Guest Editors:
Heidi Surridge, BA (Hons), MA, National Institute for Health and Care Research, United Kingdom
Akinlabi Kazeem Jimoh, BSc, MSc, Medical Physiology, MPH Health Promotion and Health Education, Nature Africa, Nigeria

Please, note that this Collection does not accept submissions from non-invited authors.

Submission Status: Open until 7 August 2025

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Instructions for Authors: Mandatory requirements for all submissions

• Plain English Summary must be included in addition to the Abstract for all article types. We welcome Abstracts that are also written in Plain English.

• GRIPP2 Form checklist is required for all research articles reporting patient and public involvement. It should be provided as an additional file, clearly labelled "GRIPP2",  and should be referenced in the text.


Please ensure that your manuscript meets the requirements above prior to submission, otherwise it will be returned to you for revision. For more information, please see our submission guidelines. Please also see the section about possible waivers of fees, if you wish to be considered for one.


Peer Review Process

Reviewer guidelines for Research Involvement and Engagement

All submissions to Research Involvement and Engagement are peer reviewed by patients and academics. Following feedback from our patient and wider reviewer community we have developed our reviewer guidelines to include details on how peer review works in the journal, links to training resources and example reviews, and points to consider when writing a review. We recommend all of our reviewers, both patients and academics, familiarize themselves with these guidelines.

Building the evidence base for the best public involvement in clinical trials

Editors-in-Chief Sophie Staniszewska and Richard Stephens highlight the importance of patient and public involvement in clinical trials in this blog for International Clinical Trials Day.

Article of the Month

The People’s Review protocol: planning an innovative study powered by the public

We published 14 papers in March, almost one every 48 hours, and we had five of them on our shortlist for Article of Month. In the end we chose this paper for three reasons. Firstly is a Protocol about Involvement in a wider research project, and we do not receive many Protocols at all. Secondly the wider research project is to involve the public in a systematic review online, which will not only promote the concept of involvement but offers the opportunity for members of the public to learn about the foundations of good research - what do we already know and how do we find out? Thirdly it proposes a methodology of learning by doing, in keeping with a Citizen Science approach, which for some of us may prove more useful than the training for involvement that is provided via webinars or workshops. So there is much to enjoy - enjoy!

Richard and Sophie

Apr 2025-AOM

Articles

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  1. Authors: Shelley M. Vanderhout, Catherine S. Birken, Peter Wong, Sarah Kelleher, Shannon Weir and Jonathon L. Maguire

    Content type: Commentary

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Peer review taxonomy

Research Involvement and Engagement and Springer Nature are participating in a pilot of STM's Working Group on Peer Review Taxonomy.

More publishers are adopting open peer review as an operating model. STM, the International Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers, has identified a need to promote the adoption of standard definitions and terminology in peer review practices across all publishers. An agreed peer review taxonomy will help make the peer review process for articles and journals more transparent and more comparable between different journals.

Taxonomy:

Identity transparency:

All identities visible

Reviewer interacts with:

Editor

Review information published:

Review reports, reviewer identities

We would welcome your feedback on the Peer Review Taxonomy Pilot - please fill out this short survey.

Thank you to our peer reviewers

The editors and staff of Research Involvement and Engagement would like to thank warmly the academic and patient reviewers whose comments have helped to shape the journal.

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Annual Journal Metrics

  • Citation Impact 2023
    Source Normalized Impact per Paper (SNIP): 1.371
    SCImago Journal Rank (SJR): 0.975

    Speed 2024
    Submission to first editorial decision (median days): 5
    Submission to acceptance (median days): 109

    Usage 2024
    Downloads: 713,048
    Altmetric mentions: 1,254

Research Involvement and Engagement

ISSN: 2056-7529

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