Publishing Team

Impact Health Publishing Group operates through a distributed publishing team that combines academic leadership, editorial oversight, and professional publishing support. The publishing model is deliberately structured to separate governance, editorial decision-making, ethical oversight, and publishing operations, supporting independence, transparency, and continuity.

While operating as a boutique scholarly publisher, the group draws on substantial academic and editorial experience and aligns its activities with internationally recognised standards for responsible and ethical publishing.

Publisher Director

Professor Aneel Bhangu: The Publisher Director holds overall responsibility for the governance and strategic stewardship of Impact Health Publishing Group, including policy development, ethical standards, and operational continuity. The role focuses on maintaining publishing standards across the portfolio while preserving clear separation from day-to-day editorial decision-making. The Publisher Director does not participate in or override individual manuscript decisions and supports editorial independence in accordance with recognised best practice.

Editorial leadership

Each journal published by Impact Health Publishing Group is led by an Editor-in-Chief with full responsibility for editorial decisions, peer-review oversight, and journal scope.

Editors-in-Chief

  • Professor Aneel Bhangu

  • Associate Professor Dmitri Nepogodiev

Collectively, the editorial leadership has authored more than 800 peer-reviewed scholarly publications and has extensive experience in peer review, editorial workflows, and editorial board service across international biomedical journals. In addition to their current roles, members of the editorial leadership have previously held editorial and peer-review responsibilities within established biomedical journals, contributing to manuscript assessment, reviewer coordination, and editorial decision-making processes. This prior experience informs the application of rigorous editorial standards and ethical guidance across the publishing programme. Editors-in-Chief operate in accordance with publisher policies on ethics, peer review, and conflicts of interest and are subject to the same oversight mechanisms as all editorial participants.

Ethics oversight

Ethics Lead

Associate Professor Dmitri Nepogodiev: Ethical oversight within the publishing group is supported by a designated Ethics Lead, who provides guidance on publication ethics, research integrity, and the handling of complex ethical issues. This function supports editors in applying ethical standards consistently and in alignment with recognised international guidance. Ethics oversight operates independently of individual editorial decisions and may involve consultation with external academic advisors where appropriate.

Editorial advisory board

Impact Health Publishing Group is supported by an independent Editorial Advisory Board comprising senior academics with experience in clinical research and scholarly publishing. The advisory board provides guidance on editorial standards, ethical matters, and escalation of complex issues, while remaining independent of routine editorial decision-making.

Editorial Advisory Board

  • Associate Professor Alazar Berhe Aregawi, Hawassa University College of Medicine and Health Sciences, Hawassa, Ethiopia (ORCID: 0000-0001-5409-2586)

  • Dr Abdul Ghaffar, Medical College, Aga Khan University, Karachi, Pakistan (ORCID: 0000-0002-8629-4526)

  • Dr Francesco Pata, Department of Pharmacy, Health and Nutritional Sciences, University of Calabria, Rende, Italy (ORCID: 0000-0003-2634-1199)

  • Professor Andrew Beggs, Professor of Cancer Genetics & Surgery in the Institute of Cancer and Genomic Sciences at the University of Birmingham, UK. (ORCID: 0000-0003-0784-2967)

Publishing operations and production

Publishing operations are supported through a combination of in-house coordination and specialist external services to ensure reliability, consistency, and long-term sustainability.

Production management

Ms Prachi Singh: Production management encompasses coordination of copyediting, typesetting, and publication workflows, supporting accurate and timely dissemination of accepted articles.

Technical platform and publishing systems

Manuscript submission, peer review, editorial workflows, and publication processes are supported by an industry-standard scholarly publishing platform based on Open Journal Systems (OJS), developed by the Public Knowledge Project (PKP). OJS is a widely adopted open-source journal management system used by academic publishers, universities, and research organisations internationally. The publishing platform is professionally hosted and supported by a specialist external service provider with experience in the delivery and maintenance of open-access journal publishing infrastructure. Technical services are provided by OJS Services (https://ojs-services.com), ensuring platform stability, security, regular updates, and reliable system performance. The technical infrastructure supports consistent metadata management, integration with persistent identifier services, and alignment with recognised scholarly publishing standards. This approach enables reliable peer-review workflows, secure content management, and long-term operational continuity across the publishing programme.

Role separation and continuity

The publishing group maintains clear functional separation between governance, editorial leadership, ethical oversight, and publishing operations, even where individuals hold multiple roles. This structure ensures that editorial decisions are made independently and that ethical concerns can be reviewed objectively. The distributed team model supports continuity, accountability, and resilience, enabling the publishing group to operate sustainably while maintaining high editorial and ethical standards.