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Information for Area Editors and Authors Updated, January 2009 IEEE REVIEWS ON BIOMEDICAL ENGINEERING (R-BME) publishes critical reviews dealing with biomedical engineering, applied biophysics and clinical applications driven by technology. R-BME will be organized in three sections: In the Spotlight Section, Methodological Reviews and Clinical Application Reviews. In the SpotLight columns will be assigned to an area Editor Board appointed by a period of three years (see below). The goal of the Methodological Reviews is to present a critical review of current methods important in biomedical engineering, understood in its most general sense. These methodological reviews will be authored by the top experts in the biomedical engineering field. 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 comment on future directions. These papers will be 15 pages long with at least 100 references. The writing style will be at the level of the “biomedical engineering Ph.D. student”. The target audience is biomedical Ph.D. students, academicians, and design engineers in the industry. Example to illustrate the concept would be a review of “methods of gene expression data analysis”. The goal of Clinical Application Reviews is to present a critical review of methods applied to a current clinical problem, where biomedical technology is playing a crucial role. The article should be written from an organ/system’s physical modeling 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 biophysicists, biomedical engineers and a clinician. 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. These papers will by 20 page long, and will have at least 100 references, divided between clinical and bioengineering. The writing style will be at the “Scientific American” level. The target audience is clinicians, design engineers in the industry, and students/academicians belonging to IEEE but not in biomedical engineering. An example of this type of papers is “Multimodal brain imagery for the diagnostic of Alzheimer disease”. Reviews are invited by the Editor in Chief (EiC) or submitted by readers. Authors planning to submit Reviews are encouraged to submit a proposal to the EiC. The format of the proposal is no more than two pages presenting the rational for the importance and timeliness of the topic, with a section pointing out the expertise of the author or the team. In order to qualify for publication, these reviews must be previously unpublished and not be under consideration elsewhere. The Editor in Chief and the Associate Editor in charge will perform a quick review of the manuscript to evaluate the manuscript in terms of novelty, quality and appropriateness and reject the manuscript if obvious pitfalls exist. Manuscripts will ONLY be accepted in electronic format through Manuscript Central. Please go to the Manuscript Central website at or to the EMBS website to find instructions to create an account and electronically submit 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 contribution electronically, please contact the Editor-in-Chief at MANUSCRIPTS. For purposes of qualifying for peer review and consideration for publication, authors must submit a properly executed copyright form in favor of IEEE, sign an Author consent form, agree to a mandatory page charge for overlength manuscripts or color figures, and prepare a manuscript according to the following guidelines: 1a. The manuscript for Methodological Reviews, may not exceed 40 double-spaced pages (one full blank line between lines of type) using a font size of 11 points or larger, having a margin of at least 1" on all sides. The manuscripts including the figures, should be converted to postscript or PDF for upload to Manuscript Central. 1b. The manuscript for Clinical Reviews, may not exceed 55 double-spaced pages (one full blank line between lines of type) using a font size of 11 points or larger, having a margin of at least 1" on all sides. The manuscripts including the figures, should be converted to postscript or PDF for upload to Manuscript Central. 2. The abstract must be no more than 200 words for regular papers. 3. Figures should appear at the back of the text, one figure per page. A separate list of figure captions should be included, keyed to figure numbers marked on each illustration. 4. 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. Style for books: Author(s), title, location, publisher, year, chapter, page numbers. You can find an electronic style file for references at 5. If accepted, authors of regular papers are also requested to send biographies (no more than 100 words) and recent photographs. 6. Once the paper is accepted, one additional copy of the manuscript must be submitted to the Editor-in-Chief in single-spaced, double-column format using 9 point type, with figures embedded. The front page of the paper version must bear the signature of the corresponding author. The style file can be found at This copy will serve as confirmation of the publication length of the manuscript at submission. The signature signifies the author's confirmation that overlength page charges will be paid when billed. As noted below, manuscripts that exceed the fifteen (15) published pages for Methodological Reviews or twenty (20) published page 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, it is strongly recommended that authors practice economy in preparing original submissions. Exceptions to the 40-page (or 55 pages) double-spaced submission limit may be granted by the Editor-in-Chief only, and only under unusual circumstances. Do not send original artwork until you are notified to do so, if and when your paper is accepted for publication. 7. All manuscripts accepted for publication will REQUIRE the authors to make the final submission employing the style files. Please see the detailed guidelines at http://www.embs.org. IN THE SPOTLIGHT COLUMN. These columns are written by a group of Area Editors invited by the EiC. The goal of In the Spotlight is to provide yearly updates on important advances in the following biomedical areas shared with the EMB Conference:
PEER REVIEW PROCESS. With electronic submission of manuscripts and reviews the EMB society expects to reduce the time from submission to publication, and make the review process more transparent to the author by allowing electronic status checks of the review progress. Please read the Peer Review Process of the EMBS at this site or http://www.embs.org to find out about the calendar and details of the review. The IEEE EMB Society is studying the application of sanctions against authors who have plagiarized work or are discovered to have made duplicate submissions to other journals. 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, a copy of which appears in issues of the transactions, returns to authors and their employers full rights to reuse their material for their own purposes. See also http://www.ieee.org/about/documentation/copyright/cfrmlink.htm to obtain an electronic version of the copyright form. 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. You can find a copy of this form at this site. 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 author's conclusions. This will make the abstract, by itself, a useful tool for information retrieval. Please be ready with this information when logging in Manuscript Central. TIPS. All submissions must be classified by the author with the Engineering TIPS (Technical Interest Profiling System) selected from the list of TIPS published in the EMBS website http://www.embs.org The Engineering TIPS category must be entered during login to Manuscript Central. Only one Engineering TIPS category will be considered, and it should reflect the paper focus. ILLUSTRATIONS AND TABLES. Illustrations/tables may be worked into the text of a newly-submitted manuscript, or placed at the end of the manuscript. However, due to production requirements, for the final submission, illustrations/tables must be submitted separately, and not interwoven with the text. 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 printed version. Sharp, laser-printed illustrations are acceptable; however, illustrations produced on dot-matrix printers should be redrawn. Only the major grid lines on graphs should be indicated. Each figure and table should have a caption that is intelligible without requiring reference to the text. Table and illustration captions should also be typed in a separate list and appended to the manuscript. See Electronic Guidelines below for further information. COMPUTER-GENERATED IMAGES. If a manuscript includes computer-generated images, each copy of the submitted manuscript should include originals of these images. These should take the form of gray-scale images or color images. Printing of illustrations in color will be at the expense of the author. Halftones produced by laser printers (300 dpi) generally are not of acceptable quality and are susceptible to moire patterns when re-sized 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. Thus, for each image, please specify a suggested publication width. 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 of $110 per page to cover part of the cost of publication. Upon payment of these voluntary, the author will be entitled to 100 free, black-and-white reprints (without covers). MANDATORY PAGE CHARGES. The author(s) or his/her/their company or institution will be billed $250 per each page in excess of the first 10 or 15 published pages depending if the manuscript is a Methodological or Clinical Review. 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 willingness to pay by signing the single spaced copy of the manuscript upon requested by the Editor in Chief. Further, submission by the author of his/her manuscript to these transactions signifies 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. COLOR CHARGES. Color reproduction is expensive and all charges for color are the responsibility of the author. In deciding whether to have figures reproduced in color or in black-and white, the following estimates should be considered. There will be a charge of $125 for each figure; this charge may be subject to change without notification. In addition, there are printing preparation charges which may be ESTIMATED as follows: color reproductions on four or fewer pages of the manuscript: a total of approximately $1000; color reproductions on five pages through eight pages: a total of approximately $2100; color reproductions on nine through 12 pages: a total of approximately $3200, and so on. Payment of fees on color reproduction is not negotiable or voluntary, and the author's agreement to publish the manuscript in the transactions is considered acceptance of this requirement. ELECTRONIC GUIDELINES. Authors are requested to submit finalized manuscripts using the style files established by IEEE . Please consult the full guidelines in the website http://www.embs.org When submitting your finalized manuscript, it must be accompanied by three complete, paper copies of your manuscript that exactly match your electronic files. Send all materials to the Society's Publication Office at the address EMBS Publications
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