Since 1977, CDI has published surveillance reports and peer-reviewed research papers on communicable disease in Australia.
It tracks decades of study into health through thousands of reports and articles covering topics from AIDS to zoonotic disease.
The Department of Health, Disability and Ageing has hosted the journal and its editorial team for many years. It is now moving to the Open Journal Systems platform (OJS), hosted by the interim Australian Centre for Disease Control (CDC).
CDI Editor, Christina Bareja, said the move had been a huge task.
‘It took more than 12 months for our editorial team to move 30 years of digitised research papers and associated metadata to the OJS,’ Ms Bareja said.
‘The team is now digitising and uploading original hard-copy articles from the first 20 years of the journal.
‘CDI is a valuable health resource. Our focus throughout its history has always been to shine a light on the epidemiology, surveillance, prevention and control of communicable disease in Australia and the near region.
‘As a peer-reviewed academic journal, it builds our knowledge base on these topics.
‘We will continue to publish research looking at everything – from new outbreaks to emerging traits and observations about age old diseases.’
The first article published in 1977, in the then National Microbiological Laboratory Reporting Service bulletin was titled Cases of interest, submitted by Fairfield Hospital. The article outlined a case of myocarditis in a 2-year-old boy with measles.
The most recent articles published by CDI include topics of the greatest public health importance for Australia today – from influenza and COVID-19 to antimicrobial resistance.
‘The OJS platform is completely free to access, and is more accessible, with great search functions and categorisation of our large back-catalogue,’ Ms Bareja said.
‘CDI ties the interim Australian CDC to one of the most extensive evidence-bases of academic and research work into communicable disease in Australia.
‘We encourage submissions from people active in all communicable disease disciplines across public health.
‘Since the launch of the Interim Australian CDC at the start of 2024, CDI has published more than 80 new articles – from dengue and chikungunya outbreaks in Timor–Leste to respiratory syncytial virus surveillance in Tasmania.’
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