About the Journal
The Weekly Epidemiological Surveillance Report (WESR) is a public health bulletin owned and published by the Division of Epidemiology, Department of Disease Control, Ministry of Public Health, Thailand. Since 1969, the Division has been preparing disease surveillance reports, and since 1982, it has been publishing epidemiological information through the WESR. It has been disseminated to the relevant government organizations, public health professionals, publics, and international health agencies. The primary goal of the WESR is to disseminate essential public health findings, correct misinformation, and publish academic articles on disease surveillance, prevention and control, and potential public health threats. Furthermore, the WESR provides an overview of the public health situation at both local and national levels in a timely and objective manner.
Policy and scope of publication
The WESR publishes articles on surveillance, prevention, and control measures of communicable diseases, non-communicable diseases, and occupational and environmental diseases. It also publishes original research articles, case reports, and outbreak investigation reports. Furthermore, the WESR provides guidelines for relevant agencies to support the timely and effective implementation of disease surveillance systems and disease/health threats prevention and control programs.
Vision
WESR publish high quality reports of epidemiological situation, knowledges, guidelines for public health surveillance, investigation and disease control on a timely basis.
Mission
To provide reliable, timely, and accessible epidemiological and public health information that health practitioners can apply for disease prevention and control.
Goal
The WESR aims to protect and improve the health of Thai people by accurately presenting the public health situation to government organizations and public health at all levels. This enables them to take scientifically informed actions.
Language
The WESR publishes articles in Thai and English languages.
Publication Frequency
WESR is published monthly and is online on a monthly. Each issue contains 9-12 articles.
Fees
The WESR provides online service and free of charge. Additionally, no fees are charged to authors for submitting, publishing, or distributing articles.
Type of articles
The Weekly Epidemiological Surveillance Report (WESR) classifies published articles into five main categories.
1. Original article
a. Outbreak investigation
b. Public health program evaluation and surveillance evaluation
c. Epidemiological study
d. Case report
e. Disease prevention and control-related research study
2. Weekly summary report of disease outbreaks/health threat verifications
3. Summary report of epidemiological surveillance activities
4. Disease/Health Threat Situational Report
5. Other Article Types: Editorial Note/Note from the field/Health Alert Reports/Guidelines for disease surveillance, investigation and control/Review article
WESR is published on a basis comprising 2-3 original articles, weekly summary report of disease outbreak/health threat verifications published 4-5 articles, summary report of epidemiological surveillance activities published 2-3 articles, disease/health threat situational report published 1-2 articles, and other article types are available on a case-by-case basis.
Review process
Primary review
After submission, the manuscripts will undergo an initial review by the assistant editor including a plagiarism check by publication ethics (Please see the details of plagiarism on the Publication Ethics page). Manuscripts that do not adhere to the correct format, contain unacceptable language or formatting, or have incomplete documents will be returned to the author for corrections before being forwarded for peer review.
Peer-review process
Category 1: Original Articles are written by independent authors. The manuscripts that passed the initial screening by associate editor will be forwarded to the editor for quality assessment before proceeding to identify suitable reviewers. Each article must undergo evaluation by at least two qualified experts in the relevant academic field, and they will come from organizations unrelated to the author's organization. When submitting the manuscripts to these reviewers, the names and affiliations of the authors are kept confidential. This process follows a double-blind peer review, where the qualified individuals and authors remain unaware of each other's identities, and reviewed by the Editor-in-Chief before the article are published.
The articles of types 2-5 are provided by personnel from the Division of Epidemiology and other technical divisions, Department of Disease Control, Thailand. The articles will be reviewed and edited (Single peer review) by an expert of the unit/team, including the WATCH team, the Intelligence and Non-Communicable Diseases Surveillance Development Unit, Communicable Disease Surveillance Unit, and the Epidemiological Investigation System Development and Network Unit. Finally, the Editor-in-Chief will also review and provide approval before publication.
Publication process
Copyright
- All articles, content, images, and materials published in WESR are copyrighted by the journal. Any reproduction, distribution, or use of the content must include proper citation and attribution to the original work.
- Permission to reproduce or use content outside of personal or educational use must be obtained from WESR.
- All in WESR are Open Access articles under the CC BY 4.0 license.
