Welcome to Implementation Science

Implementation research is the scientific study of methods to promote the systematic uptake of research findings and other evidence-based practices into routine practice, and, hence, to improve the quality and effectiveness of health services and care. This relatively new field includes the study of influences on healthcare professional and organisational behaviour. Implementation Science will encompass all aspects of research in this field, in clinical, community and policy contexts. This online journal will provide a unique platform for this type of research and will publish a broad range of articles – study protocols, debate, theoretical and conceptual articles, rigorous evaluations of the process of change, and articles on methodology and rigorously developed tools – that will enhance the development and refinement of implementation research. No one discipline, research design, or paradigm will be favoured. Implementation Science looks forward to receiving manuscripts that facilitate the continued development of the field, and contribute to healthcare policy and practice. Implementation Science Research continually produces new findings that can contribute to effective and efficient healthcare. However, such research cannot change outcomes unless health services and healthcare professionals adopt the findings into practice. Uneven uptake of research findings – and thus inappropriate care – occurs across settings, specialities and countries [1-3]. Implementation research is the scientific study of methods to promote the systematic uptake of research findings and other evidence-based practices into routine practice, and, hence, to improve the quality and effectiveness of health services. It includes the study of influences on healthcare professional and organisational behaviour. Why a new journal? Recent years have seen the rapid and continuing development of "implementation science", but this has not been accompanied by any dedicated journals. This has hampered the field in three ways. Firstly, implementation research articles are scattered across a wide range of journals, including clinical, public health, health services, and healthcare quality/safety journals. As a result, articles are often difficult to locate, and the breadth of the field is not easily understood. Implementation Science will provide a flagship home for this specialized area of research. Secondly, publication to date has usually been restricted to the final reporting of studies with little or no opportunity to describe the important contextual, developmental Published: 22 February 2006 Implementation Science 2006, 1:1 doi:10.1186/1748-5908-1-1 Received: 03 February 2006 Accepted: 22 February 2006 This article is available from: http://www.implementationscience.com/content/1/1/1 © 2006 Eccles and Mittman; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.