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About us

Eurosurveillance is a European peer-reviewed scientific journal devoted to the epidemiology, surveillance, prevention and control of communicable diseases, with a focus on such topics that are of relevance to Europe. It is a weekly online journal, with 50 issues per year published on Thursdays, and features short rapid communications, longer in-depth research articles, surveillance and outbreak reports, reviews and perspective papers. Timely publication of short authoritative papers on ongoing outbreaks or other relevant public health events is one of the major assets of the journal. Under special circumstances when current events need to be urgently communicated to readers for rapid public health action, e-alerts can be released outside of the regular publishing schedule. Topical compilations of selected articles and special issues may also be made available in pdf format.

• Editorial team
• Open access and Indexing
• HONcode and COPE
• Funding
• Metrics
• Scope and content
• Language

Editorial team

Editor-in-chief
Dr Ines Steffens MD, MPH and DTM&PH
Declaration of Interest

Senior editor
Kathrin Hagmaier, PhD Declaration of Interest

Scientific editors
Karen Wilson, PhD Declaration of Interest
Megan Osler, PhD Declaration of Interest
Elina Tast-Lahti, DVM, PhD Declaration of Interest

Assistant editor
Alina Buzdugan, BA

Layout
Dragos Platon

Technical support
ECDC ICT services

Contact the editorial team at:
[email protected]

Open access and Indexing

The entire content is open access, free of charge for both readers and authors. All articles are indexed in the PubMed/MEDLINE, PubMed Central (PMC), Scopus, EMBASE, EBSCO and Science Central databases. Eurosurveillance is listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) as green open access. 

Eurosurveillance allows pre- and postprint archiving. It is listed in the Sherpa/Romeo database as a journal that allows pre- and post-print archiving. It thus complies with the open access standards required by international and national funders such as the European Commission (FP7 and Horizon 2020), the World Health Organization, the World Bank and the Wellcome Trust. Preprints are versions of a manuscript deposited on a public server that have not yet been formally peer-reviewed at a scholarly journal.

Long articles (before 2008 Eurosurveillance monthly release) have been indexed by MEDLINE since January 2001, while rapid communications (before 2008 Eurosurveillance weekly release) have been indexed by MEDLINE since January 2005.

The Index Medicus abbreviation for Eurosurveillance is Euro Surveill.

ISSN numbers

The online content and special compilations of Eurosurveillance are assigned separate ISSNs.

Online content: ISSN 1560-7917

Special compilations: ISSN 1025-496X

HON certification

From January 2010 to 2021, Eurosurveillance was accredited by the Health on the Net (HON) Foundation as adhering to the HON code of conduct (HONcode), until the foundation ceased to exist in 2022. HON was a non-governmental, non-profit organisation with the purpose of supporting users to identify sound, reliable and trustworthy health information on the Internet since 1995.

COPE Membership

Eurosurveillance is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). Membership indicates that the journal intends to follow the highest standards of publication ethics and to apply COPE principles of publication ethics outlined in COPE's Core Practices.

Funding

Eurosurveillance was founded in 1995 when a first pilot issue was published. The journal was jointly funded until March 2007 by the European Commission, the Institut de Veille Sanitaire (InVS, now Santé publique France) in Paris, France and the Health Protection Agency (HPA, now Public Health England) in London, United Kingdom. Eurosurveillance is a registered trademark of the European Union (EU).

Since March 2007, Eurosurveillance has been published by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) in Stockholm, Sweden. ECDC funds this journal with its own resources; Eurosurveillance does not have any other sources of funding.

The publisher grants editorial independence to the editorial team. The views expressed in the journal are those of the authors and may not necessarily comply with ECDC policy. As a non-profit publication, the journal has no financial conflicts of interest.

Metrics

The journal has been selected for coverage by Thomson Reuters and is indexed and abstracted in the Science Citation Index Expanded and in the Journal Citation Reports/Science Edition beginning with volume 14(1) 2009. The most recent impact factor, for the year 2023, is 9.9 (InCites Journal Citation Reports, Clarivate analytics, 2024). This places Eurosurveillance at rank 6 among the 132 journals in the category Infectious Diseases. The Scopus CiteScore of 32.7 in 2023 ranks Eurosurveillance third among 665 in the category Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health, and equally among the top 10 in the other categories where the journal is listed: #6/344 Infectious Diseases; #1/29 Immunology and Microbiology (miscellaneous); #2/65 Virology; #4/182 Microbiology; #4/140 Microbiology (medical); #5/148 Epidemiology. Google scholar metrics note an h-index of 102 and an h5-median of 191 for our journal which ranks Eurosurveillance third in Epidemiology and eighth in Communicable Diseases. The h-index calculated in the SCImago Journal Rank (SJR) is 131 and falls under the top 10.

In 2023, we received 760 submissions from 66 countries worldwide and published 57 peer-reviewed rapid communications and 139 peer-reviewed regular articles, as well as 16 editorials and letters. The acceptance rate was 27%. All articles since 1995 are available on the Eurosurveillance website.

Scope of the journal

Eurosurveillance aims to be the authoritative and representative public health voice of the communicable disease community in Europe and beyond. Our main focus is on Europe, and authors from other parts of the world are encouraged to submit articles, provided that they add value to a European audience.

Our main objectives are to:

• provide facts and guidance for health professionals and decision-makers to facilitate the implementation of effective prevention and control measures;
  
• support the preparedness and response to health threats in Europe through the rapid dissemination of high-quality authoritative scientific information on relevant outbreaks or emergency situations;
  
• provide a European-specific platform for health professionals to share scientific findings in infectious disease epidemiology, prevention and control;
  
• disseminate surveillance data on communicable diseases and publish analyses and interpretations of these data;
  
• offer, where possible, assistance to authors from all European Union countries in improving the impact and quality of national information on communicable diseases.
  

All Eurosurveillance content undergoes a rigorous peer review by independent reviewers to guarantee unbiased selection based on scientific quality.

The information provided on this site is not intended to replace direct patient-health professional relationships.

Topics and contents

We publish preliminary outbreak reports and alerts in the form of rapid communications, as well as in-depth analyses of outbreaks and epidemiological disease patterns based on surveillance data and scientific studies. We also cover practices, policies and guidance regarding communicable disease prevention and control, major developments in the field of diagnostics, immunisation, drug resistance and therapy, and summaries of reports from national institutions/organisations. Letters to the editor provide a platform for scientific debate on articles published recently in Eurosurveillance.

Most articles in Eurosurveillance concern infectious disease events and trends in Europe, but we also report events from other parts of the world, particularly regarding emerging communicable diseases or developments of importance to Europe. In specific circumstances, Eurosurveillance may cover other potential threats to the health of European citizens.

More information on the article categories and formats can be found in the For authors section.

Target readership

Eurosurveillance is primarily aimed at all those concerned with communicable disease epidemiology, prevention and control in Europe and beyond. In addition to public health professionals and decision-makers at all levels, medical practitioners, microbiologists, veterinarians and scientists in the field of communicable diseases and members of the relevant health organisations, the journal may also be of interest to professionals from other related fields such as pharmacists, behavioural scientists, anthropologists and scientific journalists.

Languages

Eurosurveillance is published in English. In the Archives, some full articles and abstracts published before 2008 are also available in French, Spanish, Italian or Portuguese.

How to cite Eurosurveillance articles

Eurosurveillance articles should be cited as indicated at the top of the web version of the articles, using the electronic page number. The page numbers in printed compilations and pdf files should not be cited. Correct citations with electronic page numbers can be found at the top of each article on the website and also in the pdf versions.

An example of a correct citation is:

Scheutz F, Møller Nielsen E, Frimodt-Møller J, Boisen N, Morabito S, Tozzoli R, Nataro JP, Caprioli A. Characteristics of the enteroaggregative Shiga toxin/verotoxin-producing Escherichia coli O104:H4 strain causing the outbreak of haemolytic uraemic syndrome in Germany, May to June 2011. Euro Surveill. 2011;16(24):19889.

The Eurosurveillance way

We are a small enthusiastic editorial team and enjoy personalised contact with our authors. We provide a high level of editorial support and see it as a service to our readers and authors to ensure that each published article is as correct and readable as possible within the constraints of time and resources. After acceptance, during the editing process we work extensively to finalise the manuscript in close collaboration with the authors.

Details of our evaluation and peer review process are described in our For authors pages

Become a reviewer

If you think you could help us to peer-review articles, please register on our online submission system and provide as much detail as possible about your areas of expertise.