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 Member States in improving the impact and quality of national information on communicable diseases.

All articles in Eurosurveillance are indexed by PubMed/MEDLINE, Scopus, EMBASE and EBSCO and undergo a rigorous peer review by independent reviewers to guarantee unbiased selection based on scientific quality.

We are a small enthusiastic editorial team and enjoy the unbureaucratic contact with our authors and reviewers from whom we often receive positive feedback. 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. In the majority of cases, we do not finally accept a manuscript before editing is complete, because the editing process itself may bring up points that have gone unnoticed before.

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

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 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 and scientific journalists.

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 exchange of information. On occasion we also publish short news pieces on current public health developments.

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 of particular importance to the European region.

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.

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

The ECDC grants editorial freedom to the editorial team of Eurosurveillance (http://www.eurosurveillance.eu/ViewArticle.aspx?ArticleId=19564). The views expressed in the journal are those of the authors and may not necessarily comply with views and policy of ECDC.

Eurosurveillance follows guidelines on editorial independence produced by the World Association of Medical Editors (http://www.wame.org/wamestmt.htm#independence) and the code on good publication practice produced by the Committee on Publication Ethics (http://www.publicationethics.org.uk/guidelines/).

In January 2010, Eurosurveillance was accredited by the Health on the Net (HON) Foundation (http://www.hon.ch) as adhering to the HON code of conduct (HONcode). HON is a non-governmental, non-profit organisation with the purpose of supporting users to identify sound, reliable and trustworthy health information on the Internet.

Eurosurveillance follows the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors(ICMJE) Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals.

Information collected, such as the email addresses of our subscribers, will be stored only for the purposes of processing of the manuscript and will never be used for commercial (or advertising) purposes or passed on to any third party, unless required by law.

Our data protection notice can be found here (Data protection notice).

Except where otherwise stated, reproduction of documents/information/articles for personal use (i.e. for educational purposes, research, private study or internal circulation within an organisation) or for further non-commercial dissemination to end users is authorised subject to the condition that appropriate acknowledgement is given to the source.

Reproduction for commercial purposes is subject to the conclusion of a licence agreement with ECDC. Applications should be addressed in writing to the Eurosurveillance editorial team (eurosurveillance@ecdc.europa.eu).

When submitting an article, authors are requested to send a signed agreement with authors for each article, signed by the corresponding author on behalf of all authors. It should be scanned and sent to the Eurosurveillance office as part of the submission process using our online submission system.

We, as many other journals and institutions, use a tool (iThenticate) to routinely check incoming submissions for overlap with published material. We then make a case-by-case decision on whether the similarities represent a reason for us not to accept the paper for publication. If we identify overlap of an extent that we consider critical, we inform the authors of this and attach the similarity report, which in our opinion is a useful tool that can help the authors to improve their manuscript. We emphasise here that this measure does not imply that the material was not correctly acknowledged and that it should not be mistaken for an accusation of fraud. However, even if cited correctly, verbatim copies of full sentences or paragraphs from published material can constitute a breach of copyright, for which we as a journal can be held responsible. Our policy follows the opinion of the committee on publication ethics (COPE).

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.

Eurosurveillance articles should be cited as indicated at the top of the web version of the articles, using the electronic page number. Although part of the online content appears in print, the page numbers in print 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 and the print 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):pii=19889.

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.

If you have any questions about Eurosurveillance, please contact our editorial team at eurosurveillance@ecdc.europa.eu

The online and print formats of Eurosurveillance are assigned separate ISSNs.
Online content: ISSN 1560-7917
Print compilation: ISSN 1025-496X