About the Journal
Information for public health action
Founded in 2010, the Western Pacific Surveillance and Response journal (WPSAR) is an open access, peer-reviewed journal that publishes on all aspects of health security in response to public health events and emergencies in the Western Pacific Region. The journal is published by the World Health Organization Regional Office for the Western Pacific and has no article processing charges or subscription fees.
The objectives of WPSAR are:
- to provide a platform for people working in health security in the Western Pacific Region to share their scientific and operational findings;
- to publish a broad range of articles not limited to conventional research articles:
- to disseminate short reports on outbreak investigations;
- to publish analyses of surveillance data on communicable diseases;
- to encourage the publication of evaluations of new and existing surveillance systems;
- to promote the use of risk assessment for public health by facilitating risk assessment articles;
- to support prevention, preparedness, readiness, response and recovery to public health events and emergencies through the dissemination of lessons learnt from such events; and
- to build capacity in communicating epidemiological and operational findings in the Western Pacific Region through pre-submission assistance.
Scope
WPSAR covers all activities related to health security, including prevention, preparedness, surveillance, response and recovery activities for public health events and emergencies, with a focus on topics that are relevant to the Western Pacific Region. Public health events and emergencies include, but are not limited to, acute or ongoing communicable diseases, emerging infectious diseases, natural disasters, food safety, bioterrorism, and chemical and radiological events. Other health security topics may include health system infrastructure and governance, surveillance system monitoring and evaluation, emergency response operations, public health capacity-building and training, risk assessment and risk communications.
Why publish in WPSAR?
WPSAR is not limited to conventional research. It publishes a broad range of article types, including outbreak investigation reports, lessons from the field, analyses of surveillance data, evaluations of surveillance systems, risk assessments for public health events, and more. There are limited opportunities to publish these types of articles in other journals. WPSAR also accepts more traditional article types such as original research, brief reports, perspectives and case reports/case series.
WPSAR articles are indexed in: PubMed/MEDLINE, Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), Western Pacific Region Index Medicus (WPRIM/APAMED central), EBSCO, Elsevier and Google Scholar.
Data in these articles are freely available for unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction, as long as the original work is cited, under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 IGO licence. [https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/igo/]
Copyright notice
© World Health Organization (WHO) 2025. Some rights reserved.
The articles in this publication are published by the World Health Organization and contain contributions by individual authors. Copyright in the individual articles is vested in the authors. The articles are available under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 IGO license (CC BY 3.0 IGO http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/igo/legalcode), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. In any use of these articles, there should be no suggestion that WHO endorses any specific organization, products or services. The use of the WHO logo is not permitted.
Attribution
The World Health Organization does not necessarily own each component of the content contained within these articles and does not therefore warrant that the use of any third-party-owned individual component or part contained in the articles will not infringe on the rights of those third parties. The risk of claims resulting from such infringement rests solely with you. If you wish to re-use a component of the articles attributed to a third party, it is your responsibility to determine whether permission is needed for that re-use and to obtain permission from the copyright owner. Examples of components can include, but are not limited to, tables, figures or images.
Any mediation relating to disputes arising under this license shall be conducted in accordance with the WIPO Mediation Rules (www.wipo.int/amc/en/mediation/rules). Any inquiries should be addressed to publications@wpro.who.int.
License to publish
Western Pacific Surveillance and Response is an open access journal and requires each author of a contribution to grant the World Health Organization (the Publisher) a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free license under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution IGO License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/igo/legalcode) for the term of copyright and any extensions thereof. This includes to publish, re-publish, transmit, sell, distribute and otherwise use the article in the Journal, in whole or as a part. This is done by signing the WPSAR License to Publish form.
Disclaimer
The designations employed and the presentation of the information on this website do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of the World Health Organization concerning the legal status of any country, territory, city or area or of its authorities, or concerning the delimitation of its frontiers or boundaries.
The content and opinions expressed in each article published in Western Pacific Surveillance and Response are the sole responsibility of the authors, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the World Health Organization, the Editorial Team, or the institutions with which the authors are affiliated. Neither the World Health Organization nor any person acting on its behalf is responsible for the use that might be made of the information in this journal.
In any use of these articles, there should be no suggestion that the World Health Organization endorses any specific organization, products or services. The mention of specific companies or of certain manufacturers' products does not imply that they are endorsed or recommended by the World Health Organization in preference to others of a similar nature that are not mentioned. Errors and omissions excepted, the names of proprietary products are distinguished by initial capital letters.
Links to third-party websites
The World Health Organization does not warrant that the information contained on the website is complete and correct and shall not be liable whatsoever for any damages incurred as a result of its use.
