SRHM 2025 Open Issue
Sexual and Reproductive Health Matters (SRHM) is welcoming submissions for the 2025 Open Issue. The annual Open Issue is a single issue containing articles across the breadth of topics relating to sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR).
See the 2024 Open Issue here
Our focus in 2024/2025
Today, as the field faces challenges that threaten to turn back progress in securing SRHR, we stand even stronger in our commitment to strengthen the role of evidence, to build alliances and to orient evidence towards action. SRHM is calling for submissions on all SRHR topics, particularly those which bring a rights focus to neglected and marginalised issues, as well as those whose lead authors are from the Global South. We hope that this year’s Open Issue will bring documentation and analysis of progressive examples of upholding SRHR, as well as addressing critical gaps in the field:
- Coalition building across the ICPD agenda and political obstruction of sexual and reproductive autonomy
As the SRHR community marks ICPD+30, we are calling for novel evidence situated in the current global contexts and local political environments to advance SRHR, particularly in the face of opposition to and erosion of the advances and rights gained since ICPD.
We have seen how political actions and regimes can support or obstruct sexual and reproductive autonomy and choice. With national elections held in countries covering around half of the world’s population in 2024, there is potential for significant impact on SRHR.
Furthermore, conflict, war, global emergencies and humanitarian crises are simultaneously devastating populations, human rights and health systems in many countries. The role of rights- and evidence-based knowledge in informing legal, policy and health system developments, as well as advocacy and coalition building, is particularly important in these contexts.
It is crucial to understand from local and regional perspectives what the priorities are in addressing challenges to sexual and reproductive autonomy within rapidly changing environments, and what forms of evidence may be needed and by whom. In the context of polarisation and division promoted by anti-SRHR actors, the role of effective coalitions will be vital. This may include what is working and not working well across topics, actors, populations and geographical locations, and the opportunities for coalescing around the promotion of rights across different agendas. Papers might also examine the opportunities and challenges for coalitions created through the use of social media and digital technologies.
SRHR in war and armed conflict
“Human rights violations, including SRHR violations, need immediate documentation and investigation. In many spaces, fear is stifling discussion of the situation in Palestine, and restricting opportunities to rigorously collect data and document SRHR violations, which may have contributed to the lack of submissions to SRHM. On such a historically charged topic, there will always be disagreements. But the world ostensibly comes together around human rights – a globally designed and agreed-upon set of rules for humanity. Where human rights, including SRHR, are violated, we must bear witness. Numerous public health organisations and advocates, including within the UN system, have spoken out on the health crisis at hand in Palestine, and the urgent need for continued pressure to end the violence.
For SRHM, egregious human rights violations and their associated SRH impacts cannot be left unaddressed. As a knowledge platform, it is our responsibility to share information on any situation where SRHR are impacted, to increase awareness of the issues and to highlight the need to uphold international human rights law as a critical tool for improving SRHR. We urge our community, readership and partners to continue to speak out on health and human rights violations, and to use this critical platform to highlight the often less-recognised implications for SRHR. The journal is committed to publishing a wide range of forms of evidence, including perspectives from those involved, service delivery accounts, rapid qualitative and quantitative research, critical analyses and testimonies. The current situation highlights the importance of multiple approaches to evidence generation to ensure the voices of the vulnerable are heard and counted – and that SRHR impacts are not ignored. We acknowledge the potential challenges in speaking out about these issues and we endeavour to work closely with authors to ensure that these voices can be safely heard; to this end, we encourage contact with the journal at [email protected].
The SRHR impacts of war and conflict on the people in Palestine are, of course, also relevant to people living in the many other settings of ongoing conflict across the globe where we see similar patterns of violence, including the use of rape and sexual violence as weapons of war, war crimes and crimes against humanity, including the destruction of health facilities, denial of humanitarian aid and other violations of SRH-related rights. There are too many active conflicts to name and yet we cannot ignore them. SRHR violations during conflict, including sexual violence as a tool of war, have devastating physical and mental health impacts and destroy the fabric of societies already under siege. As an SRHR community, we must continue to document the rights violations, to amplify the specific SRH harms being caused and to mobilise for action to ensure SRHR are protected, especially in times of crisis and for generations to come”.
Read more in the Editorial Sexual and reproductive health and rights in Palestine – securing spaces to speak out by Laura Ferguson and Sapna Desai.
Sexual Pleasure
“As curators and guest editors, what kind of creations and articles would we be thrilled and turned on to see in response to this unique pleasure collection? What articles would blow our minds, and would we read again and again, or even place by our bedside to read to our lovers? SRHM and SRHM have already begun some of this work by including diverse forms of knowledge – poetry and podcasts together with research articles and data analyses. By continuing to diversify the forms of knowledge creation – art, poetry, storytelling, personal accounts – a vibrant dialogue could be set up between the personal and the political. A central question of academic research could also be addressed: we love the array of qualitative data that add meaning to the quantitative, but also how do we move beyond this? How can we think about impact beyond the quantitative? Can we prompt ourselves to think about what reading a pleasure poem means for our sexual health?
Let us not speak generically about pleasure, but become more specific, more granular, more true-to-life. Enter the world of sex, dive into pleasure-seeking universes and individuals, and draw from the world of sex an understanding of politics, policy, community and rights, rather than fit sexuality into the currently available understandings of these domains. Flip the long-established expectations of what is credible, scientific and correct – and start an article with your lived experience, then take us on a journey to what this means in the world, then think how this experience might benefit more of us.
We would love to see research and articles on more provocative questions that do not simply adhere to existing political morality but, rather, use the world of pleasure to really tease complex concepts, to thicken the philosophical discourse. We imagine roundtable/symposium-style pieces and polemical reflections that broaden contexts.
Some questions we thought of when reading the existing pleasure-inclusive SRHM and SRHM content were:
♥ Who is the current discourse on consent really framed by or for – and is it more about protecting women than protecting their freedoms?
♥ Sexuality research has overlooked the positive experiences of women of colour, and focused on experiences of educated, industrialised, richer populations – we want to hear about the pleasure that women of colour experience outside of these populations and how the intersections of sexual identity, income and gender identity affect your sexual well-being
♥ We want to hear about sex purely for pleasure, sex between women, trans pleasures, sex outside the biomedical framing of SRHR interventions
♥ Why is the SRHR industry obsessed with bad sex, and how can we change this?
♥ What happens when you think about the best sex you ever had?
♥ How do class, caste and race determine the nature of your erotic life?
♥ Who defines community standards around sexuality or safe content?
♥ If porn is now considered sex education, how do we feel about it as feminists? Does that make us re-think porn or re-think sex education?
♥ What it is like to live in a sex-positive culture? What does “Pleasure Land” feel like?
♥ How can we reclaim cultural practices stigmatised by colonialism and use those to shape sexuality education and rights?
We look forward to getting to know you better, to understanding your multifaceted desires, your pleasures, what turns you on and makes you tick. When it feels good and why, telling us what is the most pleasurable sex you ever had and what it could feel like to live in a land where pleasure is possible and how that could lead to broader senses of pleasure, liberation and love.
Send in your love letters. Because Pleasure is Progress. Pleasure Matters”.
Read more in the Editorial Finding the cosmos of intimacies: where pleasurable safe sex dances with liberation by Anne Philpott and Paromita Vohra.
See the Special Collection on Sexual Pleasure
Submissions
We encourage rights-based submissions from across disciplines, and we welcome diversity and innovation in methodologies, approaches and perspectives. Full details of the wide range of article types that SRHM publishes can be found in our instructions for authors.
Please read the instructions for authors before submitting online. When prompted, please select the option indicating that your manuscript is a ‘non-themed issue paper’.
Article publishing charges, waivers and discounts
Accepted manuscripts are subject to article publishing charges (APCs) – full details can be found in the instructions for authors. APC discounts and waivers are available under certain circumstances and are managed by our publishing partner, Taylor & Francis. Details of their waiver policy are provided here.