Focus and Scope

Salus Juris: Journal of Health Law & Bioethics publishes peer-reviewed scholarly research examining the intersection of health law, bioethics, healthcare systems, and health governance. A manuscript is considered within the journal's scope when it demonstrates a clear and substantive relationship between legal or ethical dimensions and healthcare systems, health services, public health, healthcare institutions, health professionals, patients, or health-related technologies. The journal welcomes empirical, analytical, doctrinal, comparative, and interdisciplinary studies that contribute to a deeper understanding of how legal, ethical, institutional, and technological frameworks influence the delivery, regulation, governance, and protection of health services.

1. Health Law & Regulatory Mechanisms

Examines legal and regulatory frameworks governing healthcare systems, health facilities, healthcare professionals, pharmaceuticals, medical devices, and health services. Topics include health legislation, licensing and accreditation, professional regulation, healthcare standards, regulatory compliance, hospital regulations, healthcare policies, and the legal responsibilities of healthcare institutions and professionals. Studies focusing solely on general legal doctrine without a substantive connection to healthcare systems or health-related practice are outside the journal's scope.

2. Hospital Administration & Health Governance

Addresses the legal and institutional dimensions of healthcare organization and governance, particularly within hospitals and other healthcare facilities. Topics include hospital licensing and classification, clinical governance, accreditation systems such as KARS and JCI, quality management, patient safety, hospital bylaws, medical credentialing, standard operating procedures, corporate responsibility, institutional accountability, and healthcare quality governance. Manuscripts are expected to demonstrate how governance structures, policies, or institutional practices affect healthcare quality, patient safety, accountability, or legal compliance.

3. Bioethics & Clinical Ethics

Covers ethical and normative issues arising in healthcare, medicine, biomedical research, and clinical practice. Topics include informed consent, patient autonomy, confidentiality, end-of-life decisions, euthanasia, reproductive ethics, genetic engineering, human-subject research, allocation of healthcare resources, professional ethics, and emerging ethical challenges in clinical practice. Manuscripts should provide substantive ethical analysis and, where appropriate, demonstrate implications for healthcare practice, policy, regulation, or patient rights.

4. Pharmaceutical, Digital & Public Health Law

Encompasses legal, regulatory, ethical, and governance issues related to pharmaceuticals, medical devices, public health, and digital healthcare. Topics include pharmaceutical licensing and distribution, pharmacy practice, drug safety, medical device regulation, pandemic governance, environmental health, public health policy, electronic medical records, telemedicine, artificial intelligence in healthcare, health data protection, cybersecurity, digital consent, algorithmic accountability, and regulation of emerging health technologies. Purely technical, computational, pharmaceutical, or public-health studies without substantive legal, ethical, regulatory, or governance implications are outside the journal's scope.

Editorial Position. Salus Juris treats health law, bioethics, healthcare governance, and healthcare systems as interconnected dimensions of a broader healthcare environment. Submissions are evaluated based on the strength, specificity, and relevance of the relationship established between the research problem and its legal, ethical, institutional, regulatory, or healthcare-system dimensions. The journal prioritizes studies that advance understanding of how law, ethics, governance, institutions, technology, healthcare professionals, and patient rights interact within healthcare systems.

Desk-Rejection Clause. Manuscripts that do not demonstrate a substantive connection to health law, bioethics, healthcare governance, healthcare systems, or the legal and ethical dimensions of health services may be rejected at the editorial screening stage without external review. This includes, without limitation: purely doctrinal legal studies with no substantive connection to healthcare; purely clinical or medical studies without legal, ethical, regulatory, or governance implications; purely technical or computational studies without a substantive health-law, bioethics, data-governance, or healthcare-system dimension; purely administrative or management studies without a meaningful legal, ethical, regulatory, or governance component; purely philosophical or ethical discussions without a substantive connection to healthcare or biomedical practice; general public-health studies without relevant legal, ethical, regulatory, or governance dimensions; and general economic or financial studies without a substantive connection to healthcare financing, insurance, regulation, or patient rights. Authors are encouraged to explicitly identify in the manuscript's Introduction the relevant health-law, bioethical, regulatory, governance, or patient-rights dimension of their research and explain how it relates to the healthcare problem being investigated. Manuscripts that fail to establish a clear connection between the research question and the scope of Salus Juris: Journal of Health Law & Bioethics may be returned to the corresponding author prior to editorial assignment and may not proceed to external peer review until the scope relevance is adequately demonstrated.