This Week in PLoS Medicine: Call for papers; Distance to treatment; Delphi technique; malERA

This is a big publishing week for PLoS Medicine, with an editorial call for papers, two additional articles and a new collection of 12 papers relating to the Malaria Eradication Research Agenda (malERA).

Tikki Pang and Robert Terry from the WHO and the PLoS Medicine Editors issue a call for papers for a joint WHO/PLoS collection on the theme of the 2012 World Health Report, Research for Health. Read the collection page, which lists previously published PLoS articles in the eight specific areas that the 2012 World Health Report will focus on.

Using linked national data in a geographic information system, Sabine Gabrysch and colleagues investigate the effects of distance to care and level of care on women’s use of health facilities for delivery in rural Zambia.

Ian Sinha and colleagues advise that when using the Delphi process to develop core outcome sets for clinical trials, patients and clinicians must be involved, researchers and facilitators should avoid imposing their views on participants, and attrition of participants should be minimized.

Lastly, PLoS Medicine publishes a sponsored collection of 12 articles from the Malaria Eradication Research Agenda (malERA) initiative, which was funded by a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Over the course of two years, more than 250 experts from 36 countries participated in 20 malERA meetings around the world, producing a draft research and development agenda that is highlighted in the malERA Collection.

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