The Scholarship of Research
Research is more than its findings.
The science behind, around, and beyond research findings.
Most journals ask: What did you find?
The Scholarship of Research also asks: How did you get there — and what can research learn from it?
Research findings are one part of a broader scientific process. SOR examines the process through which research is conceptualised, designed, conducted, analysed, reported, interpreted, and translated.
SOR was created to publish the scientific work that shapes research itself: the ideas, methods, decisions, tools, debates, failures, replications, theories, and ethical questions that determine how knowledge is produced.
Why SOR?
Because important research knowledge is often left unpublished.
A methodological decision that changes a study. A protocol worth sharing before the results exist. A replication that challenges an established finding. A null result that matters. A new analytical approach. A conceptual framework. A failed method that teaches something. A question about how artificial intelligence is changing scientific reasoning.
These are not secondary products of research. They are research. SOR gives them a dedicated scientific home.
One question connects everything we publish
How can we produce better health and care research?
Better designed. Better analysed. Better interpreted. More transparent. More reproducible. More ethically responsible. More intellectually open.
What We Publish
If the main contribution of your manuscript improves, questions, explains, evaluates, or rethinks how research is done, it may belong in SOR.
How should research be conceived and designed?
Protocols, registered reports, study designs, methodological design papers, and prospective research programmes.How should phenomena be observed, measured and analysed?
Statistical, qualitative, mixed-methods, computational, psychometric, measurement, AI, machine-learning, and analytical innovations.How do theories and concepts shape what and how we investigate?
Theories, concepts, frameworks, models, conceptual analyses, and interdisciplinary theoretical development.What makes research responsible, meaningful and epistemically sound?
Research ethics, epistemology, philosophy of science, evidence, scientific responsibility, methodological assumptions, and the foundations of scientific knowledge.How can research be conducted, communicated, reproduced, shared and translated more effectively?
Research integrity, reproducibility, replication, re-analysis, preregistration, open methods, reporting, research culture, peer review, authorship, data sharing, and responsible research practice.How should scientific claims, methods and practices be questioned, discussed and advanced?
Perspectives, critical essays, methodological debates, point–counterpoint contributions, responses, research provocations, and critical scientific discussion.Could Your Paper Belong in SOR?
Ask yourself whether your manuscript makes a substantive contribution in at least one of the following ways:
→ Advances or critically evaluates research methods, study designs, analytical strategies, or measurement approaches.
→ Develops, refines, or critically examines theories, concepts, frameworks, models, research tools, software, or resources.
→ Contributes to replication, reproducibility, re-analysis, robustness, or the critical scrutiny of existing evidence, methods, analyses, or conclusions.
→ Examines how research is designed, conducted, reported, evaluated, published, or used, contributing to meta-research, research integrity, or open science.
→ Addresses ethical, epistemological, philosophical, or technological questions concerning how scientific knowledge is produced, evaluated, and used.
→ Offers transferable methodological lessons, insights from null or negative findings, critical perspectives, or scholarly debate that can improve research practice or understanding.
If yes, we want to read it.
What SOR Is Not
SOR is not another general health sciences journal. A conventional clinical, observational, qualitative, or intervention study is considered when its main scholarly contribution goes beyond the substantive finding and advances methodology, measurement, theory, concepts, analytics, ethics, epistemology, philosophy of research, reproducibility, open science, or research practice.
Independent expert evaluation for standard peer-reviewed submissions.
No submission fees and no article processing charges.
Articles are published individually as soon as production is complete.
Health sciences meet methodology, statistics, social sciences, philosophy, engineering, data science, and AI.
The Scholarship of Research
Your findings matter. So does everything that made them possible.
If your work can help researchers design better studies, use better methods, question assumptions, interpret evidence more responsibly, or rethink how science is produced, SOR is a place for that work.