About the Journal

Focus and Scope

The Asia Pacific Family Medicine Journal publishes subject-specific articles focused on the needs of individual research communities across all spheres of family medicine, scientific medicine and public health. We make editorial decisions on the basis of the interest of a study or its likely impact. Studies must be scientifically valid; for research articles, this includes a scientifically sound research question, the use of suitable methods and analysis, and following community-agreed standards relevant to the research field.

Peer Review Process

All manuscripts submitted to APFM Journal undergo a screening and review process by the Editors to ensure that they follow the scope of the journal and have sufficient academic quality and novelty to interest APFM Journal readers. The article will then be sent to peer reviewers for a Double-Blind Peer Review Process.

Initial Screening.

Newly-submitted manuscripts will be filtered by the Chief Editor for compliance with the scope of the APFM Journal and basic stylistic and bibliographic requirements

Peer review

If the manuscript passes the initial screening stage, the manuscript will be assigned to the Section Editor, who will then send it to at least two experts in the relevant field to undergo a double-blind peer review. Manuscripts that fail to pass the initial screening will be rejected without further review.

First decision

Decisions on manuscripts that are peer-reviewed will be made after receiving at least two review reports. In cases where the reports differ significantly, the Section Editor will invite additional reviews before making a decision. At this stage, a manuscript can be rejected, requested to be revised (small or large), accepted as is, or (if significant changes to the language or content are recommended) recommended to be sent back for a second review process. If accepted, the manuscript will be returned to the author for formatting. The final decision to accept the manuscript will be made by the Editor in Chief based on recommendations from the Section Editor and following approval by the Editorial Board.

Revision stage

A manuscript that needs revision will be returned to the submitting author, who will have up to three weeks to format and revise the manuscript, which will then be reviewed by the Section Editor. The Section Editor will determine whether the changes are adequate and appropriate and whether the author has responded sufficiently. It not, then the cycle will be repeated with the manuscript returned to the submitting author for further revision.

Final decision

At this stage, the revised text will be accepted or rejected. This decision depends on whether the Section Editor believes the manuscript has been upgraded to a level suitable for publication. If the author has not made the necessary changes or has made it to a level below the APFM Journal standard, the manuscript will be rejected.

Publication Frequency

The Asia Pacific Family Medicine Journal is published four times a year in January, April, July, and October.

Open Access Policy

This journal provides immediate open access to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge.

Publication Ethics

A. Scientific Journal Manager

Duties and responsibilities:

  1. Determine the names of journals, members of the editorial board, the field of knowledge, and the accreditation process.
  2. Establish contracts in managing relationships between writers, editors, partners, and others.
  3. Maintain confidentiality of matters relating to authors, contributing researchers, editors, and reviewers.
  4. Comply with rules relating to intellectual property rights such as a copyright.
  5. Review the journal policy and relay it to authors, editorial boards, reviewers, and readers.
  6. Create a Code of Conduct for editors and reviewers.
  7. Publish the journal in a timely manner.
  8. Manage and seek funding sources to maintain the continuity of journal publication.
  9. Develop a network of cooperation and marketing journals.
  10. Provide aspects of legality and the process of licensing journal.

B. Editors

  1. Adjust the needs of the authors and readers of the journal.
  2. Enhance and guarantee the quality of journal publications through standardized processes.
  3. Prioritize freedom of opinion openly and objectively for authors, reviewers, and editorial board members and related parties to improve the quality of publications.
  4. Ensure the authors’ complete and appropriate academic track records
  5. Provide information to the audience if there is a correction, clarification, retraction, and apology.
  6. Determine and be liable for the style guide and the format of the articles.
  7. Evaluate the journal if there are findings such as double publication, plagiarism, fabrication of data, author member changes, stealth authors (as well as guest writers or presentations), conflicts of interest, ethical issues, alleged mistakes of reviewers, and/or complaints against editors.
  8. Review the effectiveness of publishing policies that affect the attitudes of authors and reviewers, as well as making improvements.
  9. Encourage a business that can reduce research and publication errors by informing researchers about the ethics of publications and requesting that the authors include an ethical clearance form approved by an appropriate Research Ethical Committee.
  10. Support the author to improve his/her paper until it is eligible to be published.

C. Reviewers

Reviewers play a very important role in the process of scientific publication and are required to have an honest, objective, unbiased, independent, critical nature in assessing papers, and upholding scientific truth. Criticism here intended in the grading of a written work must be in accordance with the field of expertise, other than being open to new things, respecting the confidentiality of the papers being assessed and not taking personal advantage in any form, also reviewers are expected to do the following:

  1. Conduct a timely review of the paper and relay the results for the consideration of the feasibility of publishing the paper to the editors.
  2. Adapt the process of review to the style guide based on scientific principles such as method of data collection, legality of the author, conclusions, and related aspects.
  3. Reviewing the written works that have been improved in accordance with the standards specified previously.

D. Authors

  1. Be responsible for the content of a paper including methods, analysis, discussion, conclusions and recommendations as well as citations and References.
  2. Explain the sources of research funding and those who assist in the research either directly or indirectly.
  3. Explain the limitations of the research that has been conducted.
  4. Respond to feedback from the reviewers in a professional and timely manner.
  5. Provide information to the editor if the recommendation is to revoke the paper.
  6. Maintain information about the results of the invention in the form of interviews or other media before obtaining clarity of publishing approval by the publisher.
  7. Provide information to editors on papers that are part of gradual research, multi-disciplinary research, and contain different perspectives.
  8. Submit a declaration that the submitted papers are original and have not been published or submitted to other publishers in any media or language.
  9. If there is an error in the paper, then the author is obliged to notify the publisher or editor.
  10. The inclusion of the author's name in the paper is sorted according to the contribution and approved by all members, and if there is a change then the author must seek approval from the other authors involved in the paper.
  11. Awarding acknowledgment in the paper is given to all parties who contribute non-substantively and who qualify on the basis of the authors’ discretion.
  12. Authors are required to obtain permission from special parties (possessing patents) for both materials and publications that are used in papers and give proper acknowledgment when and where appropriate.
  13. Referring to the work of others in the paper shall be properly cited.
  14. The author is not allowed to copy the bibliography if the author does not read the papers themselves.
  15. Authors are required to submit evidence of ethical approval from the appropriate Research Ethical Committee when requested by the editors or publisher including submission of logbook research or field notes.
  16. If there are comments or responses about the paper that have been published then the authors are encouraged to provide adequate responses.

E. Sponsorship

  1. The sponsor is not entitled to intervene in the content of the paper or the selection of scientific journals by the author.
  2. The sponsor may give permission to the author to use research data to be published, and if for some reason there is information that cannot be published then the sponsor is obliged to provide an explanation to the author.

Adapted from:

1. LIPI. 2014. Regulation of the Head of Indonesian Institute of Sciences No. 5 of 2014 on the Code of Ethics of Scientific Publications. Retrieved from http://jdih.lipi.go.id/?page=peraturan&act=search&id_peraturan_cat=68 on August 9, 2017

2. COPE. 2015. COPE Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors. Retrieved from https://publicationethics.org/files/u2/Best_Practice.pdf on August 9, 2017

Author Fees

This journal is FREE of Article Processing Charges.

  • Authors are not required to pay an Article Submission Fee as part of the submission process to contribute to review costs.
  • If a paper is accepted for publication, the author will not be asked to pay an Article Publication Fee.