The Commonwealth Fund is a private foundation that supports independent research on health care issues and makes grants to improve health care practice and policy. It also has a lengthy history as a professional publisher, developing and publishing books, reports, and other material dating back to 1924.

The Fund produces more than 100 reports, issue briefs, and other professional and scholarly publications each year. The Fund no longer uses traditional printing and mailing to produce and disseminate its publications; all are posted on the Fund Web site and are available free of charge to any interested parties. These publications are written by Fund grantees, staff, and invited expert authors from the health policy community. In addition, Fund staff and grantees author dozens of articles published in the peer-reviewed literature each year.

The Fund employs a professional staff of editors who oversee the report development and production process. All Fund publications undergo an internal peer review and quality assurance process; a substantial number, including all staff-written reports, also undergo independent external peer review. This process, similar to that undertaken at major scientific journals, is designed to ensure that Fund publications are authoritative, credible, complete, balanced, timely, and based on appropriate data and evidence. Neither staff- nor grantee-written reports are guaranteed publication if they do not meet the Fund's quality standards.

Many of the Fund publications, such as journal articles and issue briefs, are indexed in PubMed, the National Library of Medicine's database of major biomedical publications. Commonwealth Fund reports are in the NLM Catalog. Unless otherwise noted, views expressed in Fund publications are those of the author(s) and not necessarily those of the Fund or its directors, officers, or staff.

The Fund maintains copyright to all staff-authored reports posted on the Fund Web site; Fund grantees retain copyright to their work but give the Fund permission to publish and disseminate it.. The Fund encourages the use of all of its publications, in whole or in part, for research, teaching, and other professional, non-commercial purposes, with appropriate citation and permission. For permissions requests, contact Amanda Jo Greep, Communications Associate, at ajg@cmwf.org.

Commonwealth Fund Communications Department

Barry Scholl

Senior Vice President, Communications and Publishing
bas@cmwf.org