Manuscript Style
All submissions must be in the IEEE Format, as instructed in the Template Instructions. This template requires the same format as is needed for the final printed copy—double column, single spaced text with embedded figures and tables. The manuscripts should be prepared with either the MS WORD or the the LATEX template, and should be converted to PDF for upload to the IEEE Author Portal. Alternatively, the IEEE Author Portal can convert MS Word files to PDF. Please proofread the converted manuscript to make sure it is correct prior to submitting.
Cover Letter
All submissions must include a Cover Letter of less than 250 words, to be submitted in the text box when submitting your manuscript via the IEEE Author Portal. PLEASE NOTE: this letter is sent only to the editors. Responses to reviews should be submitted as a supporting document when uploading the revised manuscript file. .
- The cover letter must state clearly the work’s innovation and significance to biomedical research.
- It must confirm that this manuscript is entirely original, has not been copyrighted, published, submitted, or accepted for publication elsewhere.
- It must disclose if there are any prior conference proceedings papers related to this work, and include a statement on why you believe the prior conference papers represent substantially different works from the submission to TBME. Please upload prior or concurrent conference proceedings papers as supporting documents.
- If your paper is a resubmission of a previously rejected manuscript, you must clearly state the rejected manuscript’s ID number.
- Please note that we accept full papers, which have appeared in preliminary form as conference abstracts for consideration of publication. 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 such conference abstracts in reference. Note, however, that prior publication in an extensive conference paper may disqualify a manuscript for consideration for publication at TBME. We do not accept manuscripts which are similar to prior conference proceedings papers in key findings or with substantial overlap in text. Authors should check on copyright permissions if any figures were previously published in conference papers. Concurrent submission of a conference paper must be disclosed when submitting a manuscript to TBME for consideration for publication.
Title
The title should be concise and informative to broad readers while also attracting attention from potential readers.
Structured Abstract
We require a structured abstract (see the Template Instructions). It must be less than 250 words with the following subheads: objective, methods, results, conclusion, and significance.
The abstract should indicate the objective of the study, methods, results, conclusions, and a one–sentence statement of significance to biomedical research. This will make the abstract, by itself, a useful tool for information retrieval. Please be ready with this information when submitting to the IEEE Author Portal. If any of these is not clearly addressed, the manuscript may be returned without review.
Figures and Tables
These should appear embedded in the text. All the text, figures, and tables should be in one file with a size of less than 10 MB for review purposes. Separate instructions will be given for the preparation of a final version of each accepted manuscript. Computer software gives great flexibility in the creation of figures, and as such we expect that when printed, the figures will be legible and clearly annotated.This ensures that the figures and tables can communicate the intended information easily and precisely.
Ensuring Scientific Rigor
For the reported estimated quality metrics (e.g., SNR, AUC, ROC, F-score, Dice, mean accuracy, mean sensitivity, etc.) in your TBME submission, it is recommended to include at minimum the standard error of the estimated values.
Additionally, reporting confidence intervals (CIs) is especially important when quality metrics follow non-Gaussian or finite-domain distributions.
Finally, to maintain the highest level of scientific rigor, when comparing different methods, your submission should incorporate appropriate statistical hypothesis testing and report the test’s P-value.
Conclusion
Each TBME article must include a conclusion section that elaborates on the major findings and significance of the work, as well as its applications. This section should not exceed 300 words.
References
References cited in the IEEE style should appear in a separate reference section at the end of this paper with items referred to by numerals in square brackets: a. Style for papers: Author(s), first initials followed by last name, title, periodical, volume, inclusive page numbers, month, year. b. Style for books: Author(s), title, location, publisher, year, chapter, page numbers. Note that when there are 3 or more authors for a reference, only list the first author, e.g. “F. Author et al., …” References must be formatted in 8–point font size.
Biography
Beginning with the January 2018 issue, TBME will no longer include author biographies or author photographs.
Once the paper is accepted, final submission will be made through the IEEE Author Portal website, and should be made within 10 days from the acceptance. See separate instructions for how to submit final manuscripts, including electronic preprint versions.
Regular Paper
Eight (8) or fewer pages are expected for a regular manuscript. While a regular manuscript can have a maximum length of 12 pages, authors are required to pay overlength charges for pages exceeding the eight (8) published, as noted below. Since changes recommended as a result of peer review may require additions to the manuscript, it is strongly recommended that authors practice economy in preparing original submissions. Some technical details, such as mathematical derivations or additional results, may be included as online supplementary material.
Note: Authors must seek explicit permission from the Editor-in-Chief for submission of a manuscript exceeding 12 pages. Authors are strongly encouraged to suggest 4 potential reviewers, although they may not be requested to review the submission.
Review Paper
Review Paper
Review Papers are expected to be 15 pages or fewer and may not exceed a maximum length of 15 pages without explicit permission from the Editor-in-Chief. Overlength page charges for pages between 8 and 15 will be waived. However, overlength charges will apply for any pages beyond the 15th, as outlined below. Authors must obtain prior approval from the Editor-in-Chief before submitting a Review Paper that exceeds the 15-page limit.
Note: All proposals for review articles should be submitted directly via email to the Editor-in-Chief. Each proposal should include a tentative title, a list of authors with brief biographies, and a description (with references) no longer than 2 pages.
Letters
Letters are a 4-page version of regular papers with expedited publication if accepted. Longer letters are not permitted at all. Letters are reserved for exceptionally novel works and authors are strongly encouraged to submit regular papers. Given that the current TBME timeline from submission to decision is about 30 days, submission of a regular paper is encouraged.
Note: The resubmission of a previously rejected manuscript is discouraged, unless the decision letter states resubmission is an option.
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 their original submissions and again with the finalized manuscript prior to publication. This form returns to authors and their employers full rights to reuse their material for their own purposes. Electronic submission of the IEEE Copyright Form can be accomplished online. Instructions are available at: https://www.ieee.org/content/ieee-org/en/publications/rights/
Author Consent
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. 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.
This form can be found at TBME Forms.
Copyright Form and Author Consent Form
Upon acceptance, authors must submit the Copyright Form and Author Consent Form that can be found in TBME Forms.
Page Charges
Upon acceptance of a manuscript for publication, the author(s), their company, or their institution will be asked to pay a voluntary charge of $110 per page to cover part of the cost of publication of the eight pages, which comprise the standard manuscript length.
There is also a mandatory overlength page fee:
- @$250/page for the first two overlength pages and
- @$350/page for each of the remaining overlength pages.
Page limits:
- Regular paper – eight pages;
- Communication – three pages;
- Letter – four pages;
- Review paper – fifteen pages.
Please see the Page Charge form in TBME Forms for details.
The author(s) or their company or institution will be billed the mandatory page charges, and the author(s) will be held responsible for them. Payment of these charges is not negotiable or voluntary; the author(s) submission signifies their willingness and acceptance of the requirement to pay mandatory page 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. If it is necessary, additional materials may be included as online supplementary materials after peer reviews.
Open Access
Post-Acceptance Procedures
The Author Proof Login website is a tool for IEEE authors to keep track of, and provide input on, their articles throughout the production process.
Manuscript Submission
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 was reviewed by a minimum of two independent reviewers using a single-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 before acceptance.
All manuscripts must be submitted to IEEE Author Portal
Submissions of manuscripts are required to be in IEEE format. The file size for initial manuscript submission must be less than 20MB. Authors will need a registered ORCID in order to submit a manuscript or review a proof in this journal. Please refer to the Template Selector for more information.
Disclosure of Financial Support and Author- and Project-Related Conflicts of Interest
We require the full disclosure of financial support for the project as well as any financial and personal relationships of the author that could create even the appearance of bias in the published work. The following must appear in the acknowledgments section of the paper.
- The acknowledgments must disclose any agency or individual that provided financial support for the work, regardless of source. Examples include but are not limited to universities, governmental funding agencies, private foundations, and public and private companies.
- The acknowledgments must disclose any personal or financial or employment relationship between any author and the sources of financial support for the work. These requirements include financial interests of the author in any company that may be licensing, patenting, or using results from the published work at the time of or prior to the date of manuscript acceptance.
- The editors reserve the right to ask the authors of a study funded by an agency with a proprietary or financial interest in the outcome to include in the acknowledgments a statement regarding the integrity of the work. An example statement would be “The authors had full access to all of the data, devices, and materials used in this study and take complete responsibility for the integrity of the data and the accuracy of the data analysis and interpretation of outcomes.”
Protection of Human and Animal Subjects
Internationally recognized conventions exist for the protection of human subjects and standards for animal research.
- If the published work utilizes human subjects, authors must indicate whether the procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation (institutional and national) and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2000. If doubt exists whether the research was conducted in accordance with the Helsinki Declaration, the authors must explain the rationale for their approach, and demonstrate that an appropriate institutional review body explicitly approved the doubtful aspects of the study.
- If the published work utilizes animal subjects (including animal sources for in vitro research), authors must indicate whether the institutional and national guides for the care and use of laboratory animals were followed. The institutional committees that provide such oversight and/or the published guidelines must be acknowledged.
If and when a paper is accepted for publication, the authors must submit a properly executed IEEE Copyright Form, sign an author consent form, and agree to a mandatory page charge for overlength manuscripts. If you have any questions regarding IEEE copyrights, please contact IEEE Intellectual Property Rights Department at:
EMBS offers discounted Open Access publishing. See our FAQ on Open Access. The Open Access Copyright Form is not required if you do not select Open Access.
Post-Acceptance Procedure
You will see a copy of your accepted PDF when uploading your final material, which will be sent to IEEE production for comparison purposes to the final version. However, the final camera-ready copy mentioned above is still required. Throughout the production process, IEEE authors can keep track of and provide input on the Author Proof Login website.
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 also 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
Requesting Permission to Reuse TBME Published Figures or other IEEE materials: RightsLink is an automated permission service integrated within IEEE Xplore to provide users with quick and easy responses to their permission requests.
If you require assistance with RightsLink, please contact:
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For all other intellectual property rights inquiries, please write to: or call +1 (732) 562-3966
Information is available on the linked webpage for IEEE EMBS Membership and Subscriptions.