IEEE REVIEWS IN BIOMEDICAL ENGINEERING (R-BME) publishes critical reviews of the state of the art and discussion of trends in the field of biomedical engineering, applied biophysics and clinical applications driven by technology.
The goal of the Methodological Reviews is to present a critical review of current and emerging methods, important to gaining a general understanding of methodologies in one area of biomedical engineering. These methodological reviews will be authored by the top experts in their fields. The most useful reviews are the ones that relate various methods conceptually, present validation among them according to accepted metrics, evaluate pros and cons and predict future directions. In principle, these papers will be up to 15 pages with at least 100 references and no more than 150 references. The target audience is academic, clinical and industrial researchers, as well as graduate students in the biomedical field. One example of a methodological review would be a review of “AI and ML methods for electrophysiological source imaging”.
The goal of Clinical Application Reviews is to present a critical review of methods applied to a current clinical problem, in which biomedical technology is playing a crucial role. The article should be written from an organ or system level or clinical perspective point of view, i.e. dealing with the physical properties and/or clinical issues and then covering the methods. These application reviews should preferably be authored by a team including biomedical engineer(s) and clinician(s). The most useful reviews will start by explaining the clinical problem, its variables and how one of several competing biomedical technologies are playing a role, their pros and cons, discussion of bottlenecks and what needs to be done to overcome them. In principle, these papers will be up to 15 pages with at least 100 references and no more than 150 references divided between clinical sciences and bioengineering. The writing style will be at the “Scientific American” level. The target audience is clinicians, academic and industrial researchers and graduate students. An example of this type of paper is “Multimodal brain imaging for the diagnosis of Alzheimer disease.”
Manuscript submissions are invited by the Editor-in-Chief (EiC) or contributed by interested authors. Unsolicited submissions will be prescreened by the EiC and/or editorial board members to evaluate quality and potential impact. If a submission is deemed not a fit to R-BME, the decision will be communicated to authors promptly without being sent out for external review. All manuscripts submitted to this journal must be previously unpublished and not be under consideration elsewhere. Manuscripts will ONLY be accepted in electronic format through Manuscript Central. Please go to the Manuscript Central website to find instructions for creating an account and electronically submitting your manuscript. Do not send original submissions or revisions directly to the Editor-in-Chief or Associate Editors. If you are unable to submit your manuscript electronically, please contact the Managing Editor at wendyye.rbme@ieee.org.
Manuscripts
For purposes of qualifying for peer review and consideration for publication, authors should sign an Author consent form, agree to a mandatory page charge for overlength manuscripts and prepare a manuscript according to the following guidelines:
- The manuscript should be submitted in a single spaced, double column IEEE format, with figures embedded. The manuscript should be converted to PDF for uploading to ScholarOne. Authors may use RBME Template to prepare manuscripts for submission. The initial submission should be, in principle, no longer than 15 formatted pages, with additional contents being placed in Supplementary Materials.
- The abstract must be no more than 200 words.
- References are particularly important in Review papers and will be subject to review. Authors should attempt to do an exhaustive search of the literature, and the norm will be to have a reference list of over 100 papers. The 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.
For papers of 3 or more authors, only list the first author followed by “et al.”.
- Style for books: Author(s), title, location, publisher, year, chapter, page numbers.
- Revised manuscripts must be submitted in a single-spaced, double-column format using 9 point type, with figures embedded, following IEEE Format. The submission of the final revised manuscript following IEEE format will serve as confirmation of the publication length of the manuscript at submission, and as indication for authors to pay overlength page charges.
As noted below, manuscripts that exceed the fifteen (15) published pages for Methodological Reviews or fifteen (15) published pages for Clinical Applications will incur payment of mandatory overlength page charges. Since changes recommended as a result of peer review may require additions to the manuscript, sometimes revisions may be slightly longer than 15 pages so it is strongly recommended that original submissions be within the 15 formatted pages.
Do not send original artwork until you are notified to do so, if and when your paper is accepted for publication.
- All manuscripts accepted for publication will REQUIRE the authors to make the final submission employing the style files. Please see the detailed guidelines at the IEEE Editorial Style Manual.
- Starting in 2024, no author photos and biographies will be published. Do not submit photos and biographies, and not count these in your page limit estimate.
Peer Review Process
All submissions will be reviewed by external peer reviewers if and after passing the screening process. Both technical quality and broader impact of the manuscripts will be considered during the review process. Only manuscripts receiving enthusiastic reviewer support will be further considered at each review round.
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 be directed to copyrights@ieee.org.
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 Transactions. Download the Author Consent Form.
Title and Abstract
During the login of an electronic submission in Manuscript central, the author will be asked to enter: the title, names and contact information for all authors (full mailing address, institutional affiliations, phone, fax, and e-mail), the abstract, and the TIPS category. 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. For manuscripts, an abstract of not more than 200 words is allowable. The abstract should indicate the scope of the paper, and summarize the authors’ conclusions. This will make the abstract, by itself, a useful tool for information retrieval. Please be ready with this information when logging into Manuscript Central.
Illustrations and Tables
Illustrations/tables should be worked into the text of a manuscript. However, due to production requirements, for the final submission, high resolution figures and tables must be submitted separately, in addition to the single-space, double column IEEE formatted manuscripts. In the printing process, illustrations/tables may be reduced to one-column or two-column width–as much as a 4:1 reduction from the original. In illustrations, all words (as distinct from mathematical symbols) should be in capital letters and in a type size that will reduce to a minimum of 9 points or 3/16 in. high in the final formatted version. Each figure and table should have a caption that is intelligible without requiring reference to the text. See Electronic Guidelines below for further information.
Computer-Generated Images
Computer-generated images should take the form of gray-scale or color images. Halftones produced by laser printers (300 dpi) generally are not of acceptable quality and are susceptible to moire patterns when resized and screened. To conserve space in the publication, most illustrations are reduced to single-column width. However, the quality of the published image is of paramount importance. Author guidance is sought on the image size necessary to discern the level of detail the author believes is required. Your final formatted manuscript will serve as a guidance for the final appearance of the published paper.
Page Charges
Upon acceptance of a manuscript for publication, the author(s) or his/her/their company or institution will be asked to pay a charge to cover part of the cost of publication of a paper that is below the page limit, as noted below. The page charge for up to 15 pages is voluntary.
The author(s) or his/her/their company or institution will be billed $250 per each page in excess of the first 15 published pages. These are MANDATORY charges and the author(s) will be held responsible for them. Payment of these charges is not negotiable or voluntary; the author(s) signifies acceptance of the requirement to pay mandatory page charges by submitting a single-spaced, double column IEEE formatted manuscript. 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 revised manuscript following peer review. Additional materials may be included as online supplementary materials after peer reviews.
Download the Page Charges Consent Form.
Open Access
This publication is a hybrid journal, allowing either traditional manuscript submission which is available to qualified subscribers or Open Access submission which is available to unrestricted public access. If you choose to publish Open Access, you commit to pay the $2,195 article processing fee. Any other application charges, such as overlength page charge above 15 pages, will be billed separately.
Author Posting Policy
Authors are free to post the accepted version of their article on their personal web sites or those of their employers. Authors are allowed to post versions of their articles on approved third-party servers that are operated by not-for-profit organizations. The IEEE policy for Author Posting of IEEE Copyrighted Papers Online can be found at https://www.ieee.org/publications/rights/author-posting-policy.html.