About the Journal

Pediatrics & Nursology exists to strengthen the evidence base for the nursing care of children  from the neonatal intensive care unit to the school, the clinic and the home  while remaining open to nursing scholarship across the wider discipline.

Child health nursing generates a large volume of research, but comparatively little of it reaches the point of care in a form clinicians can act on. Our editorial priority is work that closes that gap: methodologically rigorous intervention studies, carefully conducted observational research, and reviews that resolve uncertainty rather than restate it. We are equally interested in studies reporting null or unexpected findings, provided the design and reporting are sound.

The journal is international in both scope and readership. We actively welcome submissions from settings that remain underrepresented in the child health literature, and we work with authors whose first language is not English to bring methodologically strong manuscripts to publishable standard. Editorial decisions rest on scientific merit, methodological soundness and relevance to nursing practice — never on the nationality, institutional affiliation, seniority or funding source of the authors.

Pediatrics & Nursology follows the Recommendations of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) and the Core Practices of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

Focus and Scope

The journal publishes across three areas, in the following order of editorial priority.

1. Paediatric and neonatal nursing — primary focus

The core of the journal. Research on the nursing care of newborns, infants, children and adolescents, and of their families.

• Neonatal nursing. Neonatal intensive care; care of the preterm and low-birth-weight infant; developmental and family-integrated care; breastfeeding and lactation support; non-pharmacological pain and comfort interventions; neonatal follow-up and long-term outcomes; ethical questions in newborn care.
• Infant and preschool child nursing. Growth and development; nutrition and feeding; immunisation; injury prevention; early childhood health promotion and disease prevention; parenting support.
• School-age child nursing. Chronic disease management and self-management; school health services; mental and behavioural health; treatment adherence; developmental and learning-related health needs.
• Adolescent health nursing. Physical, psychosocial and reproductive health; risk behaviour and prevention; chronic illness in adolescence; transition from paediatric to adult services.

Cross-cutting areas within child health nursing: family-centred and family-integrated care; symptom management in children, including pain, procedural distress, fatigue, nausea and sleep; children with complex, chronic or life-limiting conditions and paediatric palliative nursing; care of children with disabilities and of children who cannot self-report; paediatric emergency, acute and critical care nursing; paediatric mental health and psychosocial nursing; nursing education, simulation and workforce development in child health; leadership, management, patient safety and quality improvement in paediatric settings; digital health, telehealth and remote monitoring in child health; child health policy, equity and global child health.

2. Nursing science more broadly — secondary focus

The journal considers well-conducted research from all branches of nursing, including surgical nursing, internal medicine nursing, intensive care nursing, mental health nursing, public health and community nursing, geriatric nursing, oncology nursing, nursing education, and nursing management and leadership. Studies conducted in adult and older-adult populations are eligible in this category.

These manuscripts are assessed by the same methodological standards as paediatric work, but are accepted in smaller numbers so that the journal's paediatric identity is preserved. Midwifery and women's health research is considered where it bears on newborn, infant or child health outcomes.

3. Child-focused research from allied disciplines — limited acceptance

The journal also considers research on children and adolescents from disciplines beyond nursing, including paediatric medicine, child development, special education, child and adolescent psychology, nutrition and dietetics, and child health policy. Such manuscripts are accepted on a limited basis, and are expected to carry findings of clear relevance to those who care for children.

Outside our scope

• Clinical or laboratory research with no discernible implication for nursing care or child health
• Single case descriptions and case reports
• Manuscripts that do not report their methods in sufficient detail to permit appraisal

Article Types

• Original Research — quantitative, qualitative or mixed-methods studies
• Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses
• Scoping and Integrative Reviews
• Brief Reports — small but complete studies, pilot and feasibility work
• Study Protocols — for prospectively registered studies
• Quality Improvement Reports — reported in line with SQUIRE 2.0
• Editorials and Invited Commentaries
• Letters to the Editor — responses to material published in the journal

Peer Review Process

All submissions undergo double-anonymous peer review. The identities of authors and reviewers are not disclosed to one another at any stage.

Initial editorial assessment. Every manuscript is screened by the editorial office for scope, ethical compliance, completeness of reporting and textual similarity. Manuscripts that fall outside the journal's scope, or that do not meet minimum methodological and reporting standards, are declined at this stage without external review, normally within 10 days of submission. Desk rejection is not a judgement of the underlying work; it allows authors to submit elsewhere without delay.

External review. Manuscripts passing initial assessment are sent to at least two independent reviewers with relevant methodological and clinical expertise. Where a study relies on advanced statistical methods, an additional methodological or statistical review may be sought.

Decision. The handling editor makes a recommendation on the basis of the reviews; the final decision rests with the Editor-in-Chief. Reviewer comments are shared with authors in full. Authors are asked to respond to each point in a point-by-point letter with revisions marked.

Submissions from editors and editorial board members. Manuscripts authored by an editor or a member of the editorial board are handled by an independent editor with no involvement in the work. The authoring editor is excluded from the review process and from the editorial system record for that submission, and has no access to reviewer identities or to the decision before it is issued.

Reviewer recognition. Reviewers are acknowledged annually in the journal.

Indicative timelines. Initial editorial assessment and decision normally within 10 days of submission. From submission to publication takes 2 to 3 months on average.

Publication Frequency and Language

The journal operates a continuous publication model: accepted manuscripts are copy-edited, typeset and published online as soon as they are ready, and are assigned to the current volume and issue at that point. Two issues are compiled per calendar year. All articles are published in English.

Open Access, Copyright and Licensing

The journal provides immediate open access to its entire content, on the principle that unrestricted availability of research supports a greater global exchange of knowledge. No subscription or registration is required to read, download or print any article.

Authors retain copyright in their work. Articles are published under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence (CC BY 4.0), which permits others to share and adapt the work provided the original is properly cited.

Research Ethics and Reporting Standards

Ethical approval. All studies involving human participants must have been approved by an appropriately constituted research ethics committee and conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki. The name of the approving body, the approval number and the date must be stated in the manuscript.

Consent and assent. Given the journal's paediatric focus, manuscripts involving children must document informed consent from parents or legal guardians and, where developmentally appropriate, assent from the child. Any identifiable image, video or case description requires separate written consent for publication.

Trial registration. Clinical trials must be registered prospectively in a WHO-recognised registry or ClinicalTrials.gov before enrolment of the first participant. The registry name and identifier must appear in the abstract.

Reporting guidelines. Authors must follow the guideline appropriate to their design and submit the completed checklist: CONSORT (randomised trials), TIDieR (intervention description), STROBE (observational studies), PRISMA (systematic reviews), COREQ or SRQR (qualitative research), SQUIRE 2.0 (quality improvement), CHEERS (economic evaluation), STARD (diagnostic accuracy).

Authorship and contributorship. Authorship is determined by the four ICMJE criteria. Individual contributions are recorded using the CRediT taxonomy. Changes to the author list after submission require written agreement from all authors. Guest, gift and ghost authorship are grounds for rejection or retraction.

Conflicts of interest. All authors must declare financial and non-financial relationships relevant to the submitted work, using the ICMJE disclosure form. Editors and reviewers must recuse themselves where a competing interest exists.

Data availability. Every research article must include a data availability statement describing where the underlying data can be found and on what terms, or explaining why the data cannot be shared. Authors are encouraged to deposit de-identified datasets and analysis code in a recognised repository.

Publication Integrity

Screening. All submissions are screened for textual similarity before review and again before publication.

Corrections and retractions. Errors are addressed through correction notices, expressions of concern or retraction, following COPE flowcharts. Published articles are never removed; corrected versions are linked to the original and the publication record is preserved.

Allegations of misconduct. Concerns regarding plagiarism, data fabrication or falsification, image manipulation, duplicate submission or undisclosed conflicts are investigated in line with COPE guidance. The corresponding author's institution may be contacted where an allegation is substantiated.

Appeals and complaints. Authors may appeal an editorial decision by writing to the Editor-in-Chief with a substantive response to the points raised. Appeals are considered by an editor not involved in the original decision. Complaints about the conduct of the editorial process are acknowledged within 10 working days.

Preprints. Posting a manuscript to a recognised preprint server before or during review is permitted and does not constitute prior publication. Authors should disclose the preprint at submission.

An Invitation to Authors and Readers

We invite researchers, clinicians and educators working in child health nursing and related fields to submit their work. Rigorous studies, well-argued reviews and carefully reported improvement projects all have a place here. If you are uncertain whether your manuscript falls within our scope, a short pre-submission enquiry to the editorial office will receive a prompt reply.

We also welcome correspondence on published articles. Scholarly debate conducted in the open is one of the more reliable ways a journal earns its standing, and we would rather host that debate than avoid it.