Special Issue: Infectious Disease Outbreaks

Call for Papers: Special Issue on Emerging and Re-emerging Infectious Disease Outbreaks in North Africa

Emerging and Re-emerging Infectious Disease Outbreaks in North Africa: Virological, Mycological, and Bacteriological Perspectives

Special Issue of the Journal of Medical Sciences (JOMS), Volume 21, Issue 3 (2026)

Submission deadline	25 December 2026
Submissions open	1 October 2026
Final decisions	Within 21 days of submission, and by 15 January 2027 at the latest
Special issue completed	31 December 2026 (articles are published online continuously as soon as they are accepted)
Peer review	Fast-track double-blind review: final decision within 21 days of submission
Publication fees	None: no submission, processing or publication charges
Licence	Open access under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0; authors retain copyright

Early submission is encouraged. Manuscripts submitted by 10 December 2026 are expected to receive a final decision by 31 December 2026 and to appear in Volume 21, Issue 3 (2026). Manuscripts accepted after 28 December 2026 will be published in Volume 22, Issue 1 (2027) under this special issue's section heading. Every accepted article is published online with a Crossref DOI within 3 days of acceptance.

Submit to this Special Issue ➜
Fast-track review · Decision within 21 days · No fees

Background and rationale

Infectious disease outbreaks are occurring more often, spreading further, and causing more deaths than they did a decade ago. The Ebola disease outbreak caused by Bundibugyo virus in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda was declared a Public Health Emergency of International Concern by the World Health Organization on 17 May 2026. It is the latest reminder that a single zoonotic spillover can outrun containment within weeks. Hantavirus tells a quieter but related story: infections are appearing more often outside the regions where they were once considered rare, driven by shifting rodent ecology, land use and climate. Neither trend has stayed confined to where it began.

North Africa sits at the crossroads of these pressures. The region is in climatic transition, sees substantial cross-border population movement, and has public health systems that are still building their surveillance capacity. It is therefore a plausible site for the next unexpected outbreak. Yet outbreak data from the region remain thin in the international literature compared with sub-Saharan Africa, Asia or Europe. This special issue is intended to close that gap by providing a dedicated venue for rigorous, region-specific research on the viral, fungal and bacterial threats emerging across North African countries.

Aims and scope

The special issue will publish work on emerging and re-emerging infectious disease outbreaks, whether viral, fungal or bacterial, that has a demonstrated epidemiological or clinical link to North Africa. We welcome studies that:

document rising incidence;
characterise novel or under-reported pathogens;
evaluate surveillance and diagnostic capacity;
synthesise regional trends in outbreak preparedness and response.

Topics of interest

Topics include, but are not limited to:

Hantavirus and other rodent-borne viral infections in North Africa
Filovirus disease preparedness and cross-continental outbreak risk
Emerging respiratory viral pathogens and zoonotic spillover
Antimicrobial-resistant bacterial outbreaks (MDR/XDR organisms)
Invasive and opportunistic fungal infections with rising incidence
Vector-borne and climate-sensitive infectious diseases
Molecular epidemiology and genomic surveillance of outbreak pathogens
One Health approaches to outbreak detection and response
Public health system preparedness, diagnostic capacity, and gaps in North African settings
Case reports and case series of novel or unusual regional outbreaks

Article types

The special issue accepts the following article types:

Original Research Articles
Review Articles (systematic, scoping and narrative)
Short Communications
Case Reports and case series

The special issue will open with an Editorial by the Guest Editors. Each article type follows the requirements in the journal's Author Guidelines.

Why submit to this special issue

Topical relevance: the call comes at a time of intense global attention to outbreak-prone pathogens.
Dedicated regional focus: the issue addresses a documented gap in the international literature.
No fees and immediate open access: there are no charges at any stage, authors retain copyright, and articles are free to read and to reuse for non-commercial purposes under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.
Rapid peer review and continuous publication: special-issue manuscripts follow a fast-track schedule, with a final decision within 21 days of submission. Each accepted article is published online with a Crossref DOI within 3 days of acceptance, without waiting for the full issue.
Guest-edited visibility: the issue is guest-edited, and it will be promoted to regional and international infectious disease networks.

Editorial team for this special issue

Guest Editors

Prof. Israa M. S. Al-Kadmy
Mustansiriyah University, Baghdad, Iraq
Google Scholar

Prof. Dr. Manal Hadi Ghaffoori Kanaan
Department of Food Industry Technologies, Technical Institute of Suwaria, Middle Technical University, Baghdad, Iraq
Google Scholar

Prof. Khaled Ibrahim
Department of Microbiology, Libyan Biotechnology Research Center, Libya
PubMed

Dr. Fatimah Alqdeeri
Assistant Professor, Department of Microbiology, Faculty of Medicine, Sabratha University, Libya
Google Scholar

Dr. Nadia Sifennasr
Assistant Professor, Department of Microbiology, Faculty of Medicine, University of Tripoli, Libya
Google Scholar

Dr. Fawzia Shawesh
Department of Medical Laboratory, Faculty of Medical Technology, University of Zawia, Libya
Google Scholar

Dr. Abdelhakam Hassan Ibrahim Ali
Associate Professor of Molecular Microbiology; Dean, Faculty of Medical Laboratory Sciences, University of Al-Butana, Sudan
Google Scholar

Handling Editor

Dr. Elloulu Ben-Darif
Department of Microbiology, University of Tripoli, Libya
Google Scholar

Managing Editor (Special Issue)

Dr. Shamsi Saad Shamsi
Lecturer, Department of Research and Consultancy, Faculty of Medical Technology, Sebha University, Libya
ORCID · Google Scholar

Editorial process for this special issue

Special-issue manuscripts go through the same double-blind peer review and meet the same standards as regular submissions. Final decisions rest with the journal's Editor-in-Chief. Manuscripts authored by any member of the special-issue editorial team are handled independently by another editor, and that team member has no access to their review. The process follows the journal's Peer Review Policy and COPE guidance on guest-edited collections.

Fast-track peer review

To meet the special-issue schedule, manuscripts follow shortened target times: desk screening within 2 days, peer review within 10 days, an editorial decision within 1 day, author revision within 7 days, and final approval within 1 day. The review remains double-blind, with at least two independent reviewers, and the standards for acceptance are the same as for regular submissions. The speed comes from reviewers committed in advance by the Guest Editors, not from a lighter review. Authors must return revisions within 7 days to stay on the fast track.

How to submit

Prepare the manuscript according to the Author Guidelines.
Submit through the journal's online system at sebhau.edu.ly/journal/joms/about/submissions.
On the submission form, select the section "Special Issue: Emerging and Re-emerging Infectious Disease Outbreaks in North Africa".
In the cover letter, state that the manuscript is submitted to this special issue.

Copyright and licence

Authors retain copyright of their articles and grant JOMS the non-exclusive right of first publication. All articles in this special issue are published open access under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0). See the journal's Copyright and Licensing Policy.