Open Access Pub · Peer-reviewed · Open access

International Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine

The journal publishes peer-reviewed research on how exposures met at work and in the wider environment reach human health, and on what prevents that harm.

Occupational and environmental medicine are treated as one field here because a single exposure regularly crosses the boundary between a workplace, a community, a clinic, and a population — and because the response that removes it usually has to cross the same boundary.

Short nameIJOE
ISSN2690-0904
PublisherOpen Access Pub
AccessOpen access; the Creative Commons Attribution License is stated on each article
IdentifiersArticles are registered with Crossref and receive a DOI

Where the journal sits

A field defined by the path from exposure to health

Occupational and environmental medicine draws on several adjacent disciplines, and the journal publishes across all of them. What holds the field together is a sequence rather than a technique: a setting produces an exposure, the exposure is characterized, its effect on health is established, and something is done to prevent it.

Work that belongs here can enter that sequence at any point.

Occupational medicine Health, safety and fitness for work across industries and forms of employment, including the organization of work itself.
Environmental medicine Health effects of exposures in air, water, soil, housing, and the built and natural environment.
Exposure science Industrial hygiene, personal and environmental monitoring, biomonitoring, and the methods and biomarkers that make measurement comparable.
Epidemiology and surveillance Distribution, determinants and trends of exposure-related disease and injury, and the registries and surveillance systems that follow them.
Prevention and population health Control measures, workplace and community prevention programs, and evaluation of what those measures achieve in practice.
Clinical assessment and management Diagnosis of occupational and environmental disease, exposure history, fitness for work, rehabilitation and return to work.
Policy and implementation Regulation, standards and implementation research where it materially concerns occupational or environmental health.

Exposure may be chemical, physical, biological, ergonomic, psychosocial or environmental. Mechanistic and laboratory work is welcome where it advances understanding of real human exposure, its assessment, or its prevention.

The test the journal applies is the connection to people: a study earns its place when its findings can be traced to human exposure, health, surveillance, prevention or care.

One question, two kinds of evidence

How the journal reads an exposure

Evidence about exposure arrives by more than one route, and the journal works across them. Two articles from its own record show the range.

01 Method

Describing what a person was exposed to

Before an exposure can be connected to health, it has to be described. One line of work in the journal asks how that description can span several contaminants acting at once instead of a single agent.

The Use of Metabolomic Tool in Assessing Environmental Exposure

Michele Polyana Rocha Mendes, Leiliane Coelho Andre

Mini Review · 6 October 2021 · Volume 1, Issue 3

02 Measurement

Testing what changed when a rule changed

The other line asks what happens in the world once a regulation takes effect, and settles it where people actually are — in this case by sampling the same 39 hospitality venues before and after a smoking ban.

Fine and Ultrafine Particle Pollution Before and After a Smoking ban in the Catering Industry in Vienna

Annika K. Sima, Anna-Lena M. Szettele, Manfred Neuberger

Research Article · 6 March 2021 · Volume 1, Issue 2

A method paper and a field measurement answer different halves of the same question. The journal publishes both, and the work that joins them.

Readership

Who the journal serves

Readers come to occupational and environmental medicine from clinical practice, from measurement, and from the systems that act on what measurement finds.

Occupational and environmental physicians
Occupational hygienists and exposure scientists
Epidemiologists and public-health researchers
Prevention, safety and ergonomics specialists
Clinicians who see exposure-related disease
Policy and implementation researchers
Investigators in adjacent fields whose work connects exposure to human health

Contribution

How authors approach the field

Contributions may be observational, analytical, methodological, clinical, surveillance-based, preventive, synthetic, or policy-oriented. A manuscript does not need field sampling, a clinical outcome, or experimental validation to belong here.

What the journal asks is that the evidence match the claim: a methods paper is assessed on its method, a population study on its design and analysis, a clinical report on the strength of the inference it draws about causation.

Editorial responsibility

What the journal accepts responsibility for

Scope is applied as a question about relevance to occupational and environmental health rather than as a list of permitted techniques, and the editors are responsible for holding that line consistently.

All submissions undergo initial editorial screening. Manuscripts that meet the journal's scope and minimum requirements proceed to independent peer review. Single-blind by default; double-blind review is available on request. Manuscripts that proceed to external peer review are normally evaluated by at least two independent subject-matter experts.

Editorial decisions are based on scope, scientific quality, methodological rigor, ethical compliance, reporting quality, and relevance to the journal. Decisions remain independent of fees, services, memberships, and editorial or reviewer roles.