About The Lancet medical journal

About the journal

The Lancet is an independent, international weekly general medical journal founded in 1823 by Thomas Wakley. Since its first issue (October 5, 1823), the journal has strived to make science widely available so that medicine can serve, and transform society, and positively impact the lives of people. The Lancet is committed to applying scientific knowledge to improve health and advance human progress. In our weekly issues, and online first content, we publish some of the best science from the best scientists worldwide, providing an unparalleled global reach and impact on health.

The Lancet has grown from a 19th century pamphlet to a high impact, international journal. The Lancet is proud to have published papers that have made a crucial contribution to science and human health. View a selection of our research landmarks from more than 10 000 published issues.

Information for Authors

The Lancet is an international general medical journal and invites submissions of any original contribution that advances or illuminates medical science or practice, or that educates or entertains the journal’s readers. We publish research Articles, randomised controlled trials, meta-analyses, Reviews, Seminars, Personal Views, Comments, Correspondence, and additional Perspectives and World Reports. For more information on the types of papers and manuscript requirements please read the Guidelines for Authors.

The journal is indexed in MEDLINE/PubMed, Scopus, and in the Journal Citation Reports™. The Lancet journals are signatories of the Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals issued by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE Recommendations) and to the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) code of conduct for editors. We follow COPE's guidelines.

Publishing excellence

As trusted sources of information, the Lancet journals set extremely high standards for publishing, and we are committed to ensuring that our editorial processes meet our standards of excellence. From acceptance of your paper through to publication and beyond, our in-house teams of professional Editors, Assistant Editor, Illustrators, Production Editors, and Marketing and Communications experts can provide personal attention and guidance to strengthen the accuracy, accessibility, timeliness, and impact of your research.

Swift+ and Fast-track publication

We understand the pressure authors face to have their voices heard first, and we are committed to publishing important papers fast. All randomised controlled trials are eligible for Swift+, our fastest route to publication. Our editors will provide a decision within 10 working days; if sent for review this will include full peer review. If accepted, publication online will occur within another 10 working days (10+10).

For research papers, which will usually be randomised controlled trials, judged eligible for consideration by the journal’s staff will be peer-reviewed within 72 h and, if accepted, published within 4 weeks of receipt.

Open access and funding

All Lancet journals are committed to support authors in making their research publicly and freely available. Submissions of research articles with certain funders will be offered the option of either a "gold" open access or a "green" open access solution. Read about the Lancet hybrid journals’ Open Access policy.

In order to cover the costs of reviewing, copy editing, layout, and online hosting and archiving, the journal charges an article processing fee of US$5000 upon acceptance of submitted research articles that choose the “gold” open access option.

Authors whose main funder is located either in group A or B countries of the Health Inter Network Access to Research Initiative (HINARI) or in a country with a low UNDP human development index will be exempt from payment. For authors with no formal funding, the country of origin of the majority of authors' institutions will be taken as the source country. If there is no majority country, the corresponding author's country will be so designated. Read about the Lancet family of journals’ collaboration with Research4Life to ensure universal access to medical research.

The editorial decision to accept is taken well before any request is made as to the ability to pay. Payments are processed by a department unconnected to The Lancet’s editorial department.

Richard Horton FRCP FRCPCH FMedSci

Richard Horton is Editor-in-Chief of The Lancet. He was born in London and is half Norwegian. He qualified in physiology and medicine with honours from the University of Birmingham in 1986. He joined The Lancet in 1990, moving to New York as North American Editor in 1993. Richard was the first President of the World Association of Medical Editors and he is a Past-President of the US Council of Science Editors. He is an honorary professor at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, University College London, and the University of Oslo. He has received honorary doctorates in medicine from the University of Birmingham, UK, and the Universities of Gothenburg and Umea in Sweden. In 2016, he was appointed to the High-Level Working Group for the Health and Human Rights of Women, Children, and Adolescents. In 2016, he also chaired the Expert Group for the High Level Commission on Health Employment and Economic Growth, convened by Presidents Hollande of France and Zuma of South Africa. From 2011 to 2015, he was co-chair of the UN's independent Expert Review Group on Information and Accountability for Women's and Children's Health. Richard received the Edinburgh Medal in 2007 and the Dean’s Medal from Johns Hopkins School of Public Health in 2009. In 2016, he was awarded an Honorary Fellowship by the British Pharmacological Society. He has written two reports for the Royal College of Physicians of London: Doctors in Society (2005) and Innovating for Health (2009). He wrote Health Wars (2003) about contemporary issues in medicine and health, and he has written for The New York Review of Books and the TLS. He has a strong interest in global health and medicine’s contribution to our wider culture. He now works to develop the idea of planetary health – the health of human civilizations and the ecosystems on which they depend. In 2011, he was elected a Foreign Associate of the US Institute of Medicine. In 2015, he received the Friendship Award from the Government of China. In 2016, he received the Andrija Stamper medal from the Association of Schools of Public Health in the European region and in 2017, he was awarded the Edwin Chadwick Medal for outstanding contributions to the advancement of public health.

Astrid James

Astrid qualified in medicine from University College London (UCL) in 1986, after an intercalated BSc in history of medicine in 1983, also from UCL. After 5 years working in the NHS in London, Cardiff, and Winchester, including vocational training in general practice, Astrid joined Medical Tribune as a medical adviser, and then Medical Action Communications as a medical writer. Astrid joined The Lancet in 1993, and has been Deputy Editor since 2001.

Contact: [email protected]

Naomi Lee

Naomi Lee is a Senior Executive Editor at The Lancet. She heads the research section of the journal, leading the development and implementation of the research strategy for The Lancet, and advising on the research content of the other journals in the Lancet family of journals. Naomi handles peer review and commissioning across a broad range of subjects including her specialist areas of surgery, digital medicine/AI, and medical technology. She is also a vice chair for the ITU/WHO Focus Group on Artificial Intelligence for Health.

Naomi joined The Lancet in 2014 and was previously an Executive Editor where alongside editorial work she led on digital transformation of the Lancet group, delivering a responsive website. Previously she studied medicine at Cambridge University and King’s College London, before training in surgery, specialising in urology and working for almost 10 years in the UK. She has completed fellowships in Argentina and Mexico. She has also studied data science at University College London.

Contact: [email protected]

Rebecca Cooney, North America Executive Editor, New York

Rebecca received her PhD in psychology from Stanford University in 2007 and trained as a post-doctoral fellow in child and adolescent psychiatry at Columbia University. Prior to joining The Lancet family in 2012, she worked as an associate and assistant editor at The Annals of New York Academy of Sciences.

Contact: [email protected]

Helena Wang, Asia Executive Editor, Beijing

Helena obtained a Bachelor of Medicine and a Master of Medicine in Pathology and Pathophysiology from Tongji Medical College of Huazhong University of Science and Technology in 2000 and 2003 respectively. In 2010, she joined in The Lancet as Asia Editor, and became Asia Executive Editor in 2016. Helena is also a Council Member of COPE (Committee of Publishing Ethics).

Contact: [email protected]

Jocalyn Clark

Jocalyn is an Executive Editor at The Lancet. Previously Jocalyn was an Assistant Editor at The BMJ (2002–07), Senior Editor at PLOS Medicine (2008–13), and Executive Editor of Journal of Health, Population, and Nutrition and icddr,b in Dhaka, Bangladesh (2013–16). Since 2006, Jocalyn has been an adjunct Assistant Professor of Medicine at the University of Toronto, Canada. In 2013 she held an academic residency at the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center for her writing project on the medicalisation of global health and in 2014 was named among the Top 100 women leaders in global health. Jocalyn is an elected fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh and the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences.

Contact: [email protected]

Tamara Lucas

Tamara studied Anthropology at University College London, followed by a Master’s Degree at London’s Royal College of Art. After several years spent working as a curator of ethnography and Indigenous art in the UK and Australia, Tamara moved into publishing, joining Elsevier in 2007, followed by The Lancet in 2013. Tamara is particularly interested in climate change, and food systems and nutrition.

Contact: [email protected]

Jessamy Bagenal

Jessamy gained her medical degree at University College London and intercalated in medical anthropology. She trained as a general and breast surgeon in the NHS, winning awards such as The Margaret Whitt award for clinical excellence from The Royal College of Surgeons of England and sitting on national committees. In 2014, Jessamy co-founded a medical education company that now partners with the Royal Society of Medicine to provide courses to health-care professionals. In 2015 she won a National Medical Director’s fellowship with the Faculty of Medical Leadership and Management gaining exposure to governmental and arms-length health-care organisations. Jessamy worked as a clinical editor for the British Medical Journal (BMJ) across their research and education teams and in 2017 was also appointed Editor-in-Chief of BMJ Open Quality. Jessamy joined The Lancet as a Senior Editor in 2018. She continues to be a specialist advisor to the CQC and mentor for the Faculty of Medical Leadership and Management and The Girl’s Network.

Contact: [email protected]

Jonathan Pimm

Jonathan obtained his undergraduate degree in medicine from Barts and the London School of Medicine and Dentistry, University of London. He has an MD in molecular genetics from UCL, and an MSc in public health, from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. He also has a Master’s degree from the University of Edinburgh where he completed his training in psychiatry. Prior to joining The Lancet in 2018, he worked as an NHS consultant in general adult psychiatry and an honorary senior clinical lecturer based at Barts and the London School of Medicine and Dentistry. Jonathan gained experience in publishing as an editor of a psychiatric journal, and as a reporter on a provincial daily newspaper. He is an elected fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists.

Contact: [email protected]

Miriam Sabin

Miriam is a Senior Editor at The Lancet, based in New York City since March, 2020. Miriam also is the Lancet family of journal’s Preprints editor. Prior to that, Miriam lived for 12 years in Geneva, Switzerland where she worked most recently as the Accountability Manager at the Partnership for Maternal, Newborn & Child Health, hosted by the World Health Organization in Geneva. Miriam has also held positions in the WHO HIV Department, UNAIDS and the Global Fund and served as a member of the Bulletin of the World Health Organization’s editorial board. Prior to Geneva, Miriam was a “Disease Detective” in the US CDC Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS) (class of 2004) and was a Senior Research Scientist Officer in the Division of Viral Hepatitis and in the Division of Global HIV/AIDS. Miriam has worked in Tunisia, Bangladesh, Denmark and Brazil and holds a PhD from the University of Georgia where she specialized in the epidemiology of refugee mental health and posttraumatic stress disorder. She has a Master of Science in Social Work with a minor in Research from Columbia University, and a Bachelor of Arts in English from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Contact: [email protected]

Liz Zuccala

Liz is originally from Australia where she completed a Bachelor of Arts in history and a Bachelor of Science in genetics at the University of Melbourne, and a PhD in malaria at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research. Liz was an Associate Editor at Nature Reviews Disease Primers before joining The Lancet as a Senior Editor in 2016, The Lancet HIV as Acting Deputy Editor in 2018, and re-joining The Lancet in 2019.

Ombudsman

Our ombudsman can: investigate delays in handling submitted manuscripts; discourtesy; failure to follow outlined procedures; failure to take reasonable account of representations to us by authors and readers; and challenges to the publishing ethics of the journal. If you have concerns about any of the above, please first contact an editor or the editorial inbox [email protected]; an editor will then respond to you (often, an editor can respond satisfactorily). If you remain dissatisfied with our response, please contact Malcolm Molyneux ([email protected])

Read more about the ombudsman and see our ombudsman's reports.

31 October 2020

Volume 396, Issue 10260

About The Lancet

About the journal

Reputation and impact

Information for Authors

Manuscript submission

Publishing excellence

Swift+ and Fast-track publication

Open access and funding

About the Editorial team

Editor-in-Chief

Richard Horton FRCP FRCPCH FMedSci

Deputy Editor

Astrid James

Senior Executive Editors

Pam Das

Sabine Kleinert

Naomi Lee

Duc Le

Stuart Spencer

International Executive Editors

Rebecca Cooney, North America Executive Editor, New York

Helena Wang, Asia Executive Editor, Beijing

Executive Editors

Jocalyn Clark

Helen Frankish

Tamara Lucas

Joanna Palmer

Senior Editors

Jessamy Bagenal

Sean Cleghorn

Josefine Gibson

Rebekka Park

Jonathan Pimm

Miriam Sabin

Vania Coelho Wisdom

Liz Zuccala

Ombudsman

International Advisory Board

The Lancet United States of Health Blog

The Lancet Group’s Diversity Pledge and No All-Male Panel Policy