Aims and scope

Implementation Science Communications, an official companion journal to Implementation Science, is a forum to publish research relevant to the systematic study of approaches to foster uptake of evidence based practices and policies that affect health care delivery and health outcomes, in clinical, organizational, or policy contexts.

Health related research constantly produces new findings but often these are not routinely used in practice. Implementation research is the scientific study of methods to promote the systematic uptake of effective clinical treatments, practices, organizational, and management interventions into routine practice, and hence to improve health. This also encompasses the de-implementation of interventions demonstrated to be of low or no clinical benefit and the study of influences on patient, healthcare professional, and organizational behavior in either healthcare or population settings. 

Scientific inquiry related to implementation of evidence based practice and policy is an inherently interdisciplinary research area. Implementation Science Communications will publish articles based on sound science using appropriate methods to produce valid and ideally generalizable answers to research questions. We focus on implementation intervention development, process evaluations, economic evaluations, and theory-based studies. We consider implementation to be on a continuum that ranges from planned implementation to evaluations of natural experiments to planned de-implementation of practices without clear evidence of benefit, and which may have evidence of harm. While we are interested in broadly applicable knowledge, we recognize that smaller studies, with limited generalizability or transferability, conducted with scientific principles, still inform the field. Our goal is to support publishing these smaller, more narrowly focused, articles. 

We welcome study protocols, but these will only be considered if the study has received ethics approval and been approved for funding through external peer review via an established funding body at a regional or national level in the respective country. We do not consider protocols for systematic reviews or protocols for studies that have begun data cleaning or analysis, considering the value of a protocol to be in in early or prospective publication. As a result, we will only consider protocol papers submitted within 12 months of the funding decision.