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Breastfeeding and disability/chronic ill health

Edited by:
Sally Dowling: University of Bristol, UK
Tanya Cassidy: Maynooth University, Ireland
Emma Douglass: University of the West of England, UK
Submission Status: Open until 31 December 2023

Celebrating World Breastfeeding Week

World Breastfeeding Week is celebrated every year from 1 to 7 August to encourage breastfeeding and improve the health of babies around the world.

We've collected our top content on breastfeeding across the BioMed Central portfolio. Check it out!

Articles

Editor's profile

Professor Lisa Amir (MBBS MMed PhD IBCLC) is a general practitioner and has been an International Board Certified Lactation Consultant since 1989. She works in breastfeeding medicine at The Royal Women's Hospital in Melbourne, Australia. She is a Principal Research Fellow at the Judith Lumley Centre, La Trobe University and is Founding Editor-in-Chief of the open access publication International Breastfeeding Journal.


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Announcing the launch of In Review

In Review

The International Breastfeeding Journal, in partnership with Research Square, is now offering In Review. Authors choosing this free optional service will be able to:

Share their work with fellow researchers to read, comment on, and cite even before publication

Showcase their work to funders and others with a citable DOI while it is still under review

Track their manuscript - including seeing when reviewers are invited, and when reports are received 

Aims and scope

Breastfeeding is recognized as an important public health issue with enormous social and economic implications. Infants who do not receive breast milk are likely to experience poorer health outcomes than breastfed infants; mothers who do not breastfeed increase their own health risks.

Publications on the topic of breastfeeding are wide ranging. Articles about breastfeeding are currently published journals focused on nursing, midwifery, paediatric, obstetric, family medicine, public health, immunology, physiology, sociology and many other topics. In addition, electronic publishing allows fast publication time for authors and Open Access ensures the journal is easily accessible to readers.

International Breastfeeding Journal encompasses all aspects of breastfeeding. The journal addresses the need for a high quality multi-disciplinary journal in the field.

In order to help women breastfeed successfully, there is a need to understand both the physiology of lactation and the social and cultural context within which breastfeeding occurs. The journal addresses all of these aspects, including identifying women who are at increased risk of not breastfeeding; the impediments to breastfeeding and the health effects of not breastfeeding for infants and their mothers; interventions to increase breastfeeding initiation and duration; and the management of breastfeeding problems.

Featured blog: How much would it cost to provide maternity leave to working mothers in Indonesia’s informal sector?

Research shows the amount of financing needed to provide maternity cash transfers to women working in Indonesia’s informal sector would be below 0.5% of the country’s 2018 nominal GDP. This is significantly lower than the current annual cost of not breastfeeding in Indonesia which is estimated at approximately 1% of the country’s 2018 nominal GDP.

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Blog: Breastfeeding in public

“Breastfeeding in Public”, a new series of articles from the International Breastfeeding Journal, aims to highlight the issues surrounding breastfeeding in public throughout the world. The series has been guest-edited by Petra Bueskens of the University of Melbourne, Sally Dowling of the University of the West of England and Fiona Giles of the Univer​​​​​​​sity of Sydney. In a recent conversation, Fiona Giles explained the inspiration behind the series, and why it is important to discuss the topic. The transcript has been edited for clarity.New Content Item

Public Health

At Springer Nature, we are committed to raising the quality of academic research across Public Health. Visit our dedicated page to view our highlighted journals and books from across our imprints, curated by our Editors.

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Annual Journal Metrics

  • 2022 Citation Impact
    3.5 - 2-year Impact Factor
    4.0 - 5-year Impact Factor
    1.715 - SNIP (Source Normalized Impact per Paper)
    0.990 - SJR (SCImago Journal Rank)

    2022 Speed
    8 days submission to first editorial decision for all manuscripts (Median)
    266 days submission to accept (Median)

    2022 Usage 
    1,212,077 downloads
    3,980 Altmetric mentions