Prepare and Submit Your Manuscript

IEEE J-BHI accepts a new type of papers, which describe a dataset

The official template of papers submitted to IEEE JBHI is available here

J-BHI publishes the latest advances and practical applications of biomedical and health informatics where information and communication technologies intersect with health, healthcare, life sciences and biomedicine. Manuscripts are normally submitted as regular papers, review papers or special issue papers. Communications articles are no longer published in J-BHI. For review papers, you must contact the Editor-in-Chief beforehand and prepare a review paper proposal which will be discussed on a case-by-case basis and assessed by the Editorial Office. The manuscript will be evaluated under the category it has been submitted (e.g., a regular paper will be accepted or rejected, but it cannot be re-categorised into a special issue once it is submitted). For studies involving human subjects, relevant institutional review board (IRB) approval must to be obtained and the paper must state explicitly the reference number of the IRB approval for the study. If the data are derived from a publicly available database, the original source and reference must be provided.

The articles in this journal are peer reviewed in accordance with the requirements set forth in the IEEE Publication Services and Products Board Operations Manual. Each published article is reviewed by a minimum of three independent reviewers for regular and special issue papers and five independent reviewers for review papers using an anonymous peer review process, where the identities of the reviewers are not known to the authors, but the reviewers know the identities of the authors. Articles will be screened for plagiarism during the submission stage and before acceptance.

IEEE Author Portal and Author Guide

All manuscripts are to be submitted through IEEE Author Portal.

Manuscript Style and Length

All submissions must be in IEEE single spaced, double column format with embedded figures and tables ‐ the format required of final printed copy. The manuscripts should be converted to PDF for upload to ScholarOne. Alternatively, ScholarOne can convert MS Word files to PDF, but please proof-read the converted manuscript to make sure it is correct. Templates can be found at the IEEE Author Center.

COPYRIGHT. By policy, IEEE owns the copyright to the technical contributions it publishes on behalf of the interests of the IEEE, its authors, and their employers; and to facilitate the appropriate reuse of this material by others. To comply with United States copyright law, authors are required to sign and submit a completed IEEE Copyright Form with the finalized manuscript prior to publication. This form, which is to be completed electronically, returns to authors and their employers’ full rights to reuse their material for their own purposes. The form is to be completed once the manuscript has been accepted for publication. Completion is done by logging-in on the ScholarOne website (https://mc. manuscriptcentral.com/jbhi-embs).

OPEN ACCESS. This publication is a hybrid journal, allowing either Traditional manuscript submission or Open Access (author pays) manuscript submission. Upon submission, if you choose to have your manuscript be an Open Access (OA) article, you commit to pay the discounted $2,345 OA fee if your manuscript is accepted for publication in order to enable unrestricted public access. Any other application charges (such as over-length page charge) will be billed separately once the manuscript formatting is complete but prior to the publication. If you would like your manuscript to be a Traditional submission, your article will be available to qualified subscribers and purchasers via IEEE Xplore. No OA payment is required for Traditional submission.

PAGE CHARGES. Review papers that exceed ten (10) pages incur mandatory page charges. Regular papers that exceed eight (8) pages will incur mandatory overlength page charges. For papers that are 8 pages or fewer: only voluntary page charges ($110/page); 9–10 pages: mandatory page charges ($250/page for pages 9 and 10); 11 pages and beyond: $350/page.

PAGE LIMIT. The page limit is 14 pages for regular paper and 16 pages for review papers including supplementary material. The page limit must be implemented in both original submissions and revised papers.

MANDATORY PAGE CHARGES. The author(s) or his/her/their company or institution will be billed for all pages according to the Page Charge policy. For regular papers, the rate for pages 9 and 10 is $250 per page, and the rate for page 11 and beyond is $350 per page. Payment of these charges is not negotiable or voluntary. Further, submission by the author of his/her manuscript to this publication signifies acceptance of the requirement to pay mandatory pages charges. The Publisher holds the right to withhold publication of the current submission or any future submissions from the author(s) if this charge is not honored. To avoid incurring mandatory page charges, the author(s) are strongly advised to practice economy in the original manuscript submission and restraint in preparation of the final manuscript following peer review.

OPEN RESEARCHER AND CONTRIBUTOR ID (ORCID). All IEEE journals require an Open Researcher and Contributor ID (ORCID) for all authors. ORCID is a persistent unique identifier for researchers and functions similarly to an article’s Digital Object Identifier (DOI). ORCIDs enable accurate attribution and improved discoverability of an author’s published work. The author will need a registered ORCID in order to submit a manuscript or review a proof in this journal.

Prospective authors of review papers are required to complete the review paper proposal form provided by the IEEE Journal of Biomedical and Health Informatics (J-BHI) Editorial Office, and to submit to J-BHI via email (fotiadis@uoi.gr). The proposal will be first reviewed by the Editor-in-Chief (EiC) Professor Dimitrios I. Fotiadis to assess the scope suitability, followed by quality evaluation led by Editorial Office. 

You can find the review paper proposal template here:

Download Proposals for a Review Paper (pdf)

Download Proposals for a Review Paper (doc)

(The papers must include details on the construction/development of the dataset, annotation, etc.
The papers might also include AI/ML/DL models for the use of the data (optional) and provide an e-mail address from where other researchers can ask for permission to use the dataset for research purposes and development/training/testing of models.)

Author Consent Form

An Author Consent form for manuscripts that have more than one author is also required to ensure that all the authors are aware that the paper is being submitted to the Journal. The consent form with a hand-written signature must be uploaded as a supporting document along with the manuscript submission. The IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society will apply sanctions against authors who are discovered to have made duplicate submissions to other journals. These sanctions are:

  1. immediate rejection of the manuscript in question;
  2. immediate return to the author and co-authors of any and all manuscripts currently under review;
  3. prohibition against the authors/co-authors of any new submissions to any of the Society’s journals for one calendar year from date of formal notification.

Download the J-BHI Author Consent Form.

Cover Letter

All submissions must include a cover letter in the text box when submitting via IEEE Author Portal. This letter is only sent to editors; response to reviews should be submitted as a supporting document when uploading the revised manuscript. The letter should state:

  • Innovation and significance of the work in relation to the scope of JBHI
  • Confirm that the manuscript is entirely original, has not been copyrighted, published, submitted, or accepted for publication elsewhere
  • For revision or resubmission, please state the original manuscript’s ID number
  • If preliminary work of your paper has appeared as a conference abstract or paper, please note J-BHI only allows submitting manuscript if it is a substantially extended version of the original conference paper. Such a submission is subject to the following requirements:
    1. the conference paper must be properly referenced;
    2. state clearly in the cover letter what are the significant improvements/changes made to the original paper. The authors should include a statement, often at the end of the introduction, such as “A preliminary version of this work has been reported [reference]” and cite it in reference. You also need to note that even if the paper is sufficiently different from the conference version, copyright issues may arise. If the conference paper was not published by IEEE, the authors have to obtain permission from the publisher of their conference paper to use copyrighted material for submission to J-BHI.

Title and Abstract

For manuscripts, an abstract of not more than 250 words is allowable. The abstract should indicate the objective of the study, methods, major results, conclusions, and one sentence significance to biomedical research. This will make the abstract, by itself, a useful tool for information retrieval. Please be ready with this information when logging in IEEE Author Portal. When submitting via IEEE Author Portal, the author will be asked to enter: the title, names and contact information for all authors (full mailing address, institutional affiliations, and e-mail), the abstract. The name of the Corresponding Author who will serve as the main point of contact for the manuscript during the review and publication processes is entered separately. The abstract should be without abbreviations, footnotes, references, or mathematical equations.

Figures and Tables

Figures and tables should appear embedded in the text. If necessary, they could be appended with or without captions separate. All the text and figures should be in one file. If the authors believe it helpful to include very high resolution figures with excessive file size, please include low resolution versions in the text and attach high resolution images separately. Separate instructions will be given for preparation of final versions of accepted manuscripts. As computer software gives great flexibility in the creation of figures, we expect that figures, when printed both in draft and final version, will be visibly clear and clearly annotated so that they communicate easily and precisely the information intended. See Electronic Guidelines below for further information.

References

References should appear in a separate reference section at the end of this paper with items referred to by numerals in square brackets. References must be complete in the IEEE style as follows:

  • Style for papers: Author(s), first initials followed by last name, title, periodical, volume, inclusive page numbers, month, year.
  • Style for books: Author(s), title, location, publisher, year, chapter, page numbers.

You can find an electronic style file for references in Preparation of Papers for IEEE Transactions and Journals.

Suggested Reviewers

Authors are encouraged to suggest 4 potential reviewers although they may not be requested to review the particular submission. Note these suggested reviewers must be fully independent (without any potential conflict of interest) of the work submitted and should be from a different institution to all the authors.

Copyright

It is the policy of the IEEE to own the copyright to the technical contributions it publishes on behalf of the interests of the IEEE, its authors, and their employers, and to facilitate the appropriate reuse of this material by others. To comply with the United States Copyright Law, authors are required to sign a digital version of the IEEE Copyright Form upon acceptance of the manuscript. Authors will automatically be redirected to the eCF (electronic Copyright Form) after they have submitted the final files. The eCF makes signing a publishing agreement easy. The form will determine which agreement meets your needs and enable you to complete it on-screen.

More information can be found at https://journals.ieeeauthorcenter.ieee.org/choose-a-publishing-agreement/about-the-ieee-copyright-form/. Questions can directed to copyrights@ieee.org.

IEEE Author Center

Author-created PDF preprints must be Xplore compliant in order to be posted. IEEE has released a series of digital tools (including IEEE PDF Checker) for authors to check their PDFs for Xplore compliance. These tools can be found at the IEEE Author Center.

Pre-Submission Professional Editing Services Available to IEEE Authors

IEEE Publishing Operations has partnered with one of our established vendors, SPi Publisher Services, to offer pre-submission professional editing services to IEEE authors. The SPi copy editors will edit for grammar, usage, organization, and clarity, querying potentially substantive revisions as necessary. An author can use the service, at their own expense, as often as desired. Cost estimates are available immediately online. Edited manuscripts will generally be returned to the author within two weeks of submission.

Refining the Use of English in Your Article

Communicate your work clearly. If you are not fully proficient in English, consider using an English language editing service before submitting your article. An expert editing service can help you refine the use of English in your article, so you can communicate your work more effectively.

The use of an editing service is paid for by the author. It does not guarantee acceptance in an IEEE publication.

IEEE authors are eligible for discounts at the following language editing services:

In the Ethics Statement document under the IEEE Author Ethics Guidelines section, the Definition of Authorship url should be changed to https://journals.ieeeauthorcenter.ieee.org/become-an-ieee-journal-author/publishing-ethics/ethical-requirements/#authorship

ETHICAL APPROVAL
 

When public datasets are utilized appropriate citations (or URLs) should also be provided for them, while in the case of other than public datasets information regarding their ethical approval (e.g. reference number) should be mentioned in the manuscript.

 

IEEE Author Ethics Guidelines

Any questions from authors about the peer review process should be directed to the Editor in Chief or the Editorial Office. Direct communication among the authors and Associate Editors or Guest Editors is NOT allowed.  For more information please visit the following link:

https://journals.ieeeauthorcenter.ieee.org/wp-content/uploads/IEEE-Author-Ethics-Guidelines.pdf

Note: It is not allowed to add new authors in any stage of the revision process and during the submission of the final files of accepted papers