About Journal of Clinical Bioinformatics

This page includes information about the aims and scope of Journal of Clinical Bioinformatics, editorial policies, open access and article-processing charges, the peer review process and other information. For details of how to prepare and submit a manuscript through the online submission system, please see the instructions for authors.

Aims & scope

Journal of Clinical Bioinformatics is an open access, peer-reviewed online journal publishing original research on all aspects of the development of bioinformatics approaches, including tools, methodologies and data integration, for clinical and translational medicine.

JCBi aims to elucidate how biological and medical information can be applied to the development of personalized healthcare, medication and therapies. JCBi is a forum for the translation of bioinformatics and computational methods into clinical and medical applications, as well as the advancement of our understanding of the molecular and cellular mechanisms of diseases.

Topical areas include, but are not limited to:

•  the analysis of human data from high-throughput technologies
•  the combination of bioinformatics and medical informatics
•  the development of bioinformatics methodologies for clinical research, biomarker discovery and human databases.

All manuscripts will be peer reviewed by internationally recognized experts in the fields of clinical bioinformatics, bioinformatics and methodologies. Final decisions will be made by the Editors-in-Chief.

Open access

All articles published by Journal of Clinical Bioinformatics are made freely and permanently accessible online immediately upon publication, without subscription charges or registration barriers. Further information about open access can be found here.

Authors of articles published in Journal of Clinical Bioinformatics are the copyright holders of their articles and have granted to any third party, in advance and in perpetuity, the right to use, reproduce or disseminate the article, according to the BioMed Central copyright and license agreement.

Article-processing charges

Open access publishing is not without costs. Journal of Clinical Bioinformatics therefore levies an article-processing charge of £1290/$1980/€1520 for each article accepted for publication. We routinely waive charges for authors from low-income countries. Generally, if the submitting author's institution is a Member the cost of the article-processing charge is covered by the membership, and no further charge is payable. In the case of authors whose institutions are Supporter Members, however, a discounted article-processing charge is payable by the author. For further details, see our article-processing charge page. A limited number of waivers for article-processing charges are also available at the editors' discretion, and authors wishing to apply for these waivers should contact the editors.

Indexing services

All articles published in Journal of Clinical Bioinformatics are included in:

• CAS
• Google Scholar
• Index Copernicus

• PubMed
• PubMed Central
• Scopus

The full text of all research articles is deposited in digital archives including e-Depot (The Netherlands).

BioMed Central is working closely with Thomson Reuters (ISI) to ensure that citation analysis of articles published in Journal of Clinical Bioinformatics will be available.

Publication and peer review process

Content overview

Journal of Clinical Bioinformaticsconsiders the following types of articles:

• Research: reports of data from original research.
• Editorial: short articles written by the Editor(s)-in-Chief and selected members of the Editorial Board. These articles highlight new developments in the journal.
• Review: comprehensive, authoritative, descriptions of any subject within clinical bioinformatics. These articles are usually written by opinion leaders that have been invited by the Editorial Board.
• Database article: descriptions of a new database or a substantial improvement of an existing database.
• Methodology article: present a new experimental method, test or procedure. The method described may either be completely new, or may offer a better version of an existing method.
• Short report: brief reports of data from original research.
• Study protocol: describe proposed or ongoing research, providing a detailed account of the hypothesis, rationale, and methodology of the study.

Peer-review policies

Manuscripts will be reviewed by internationally recognized experts in the field of clinical bioinformatics, bioinformatics and methodologies, selected in part from our Editorial Board. The reports of at least two reviewers will be considered when deciding on acceptance or rejection of a manuscript; a further reviewer will be invited in cases where these reviewers disagree. Final decisions, however, rest with the Editors-in-Chief, who aim to provide an initial decision within six weeks.

Edited by Lance Liotta and Xiangdong Wang, Journal of Clinical Bioinformatics is supported by an expert Editorial Board.

Authors will be able to check the progress of their manuscript through the submission system at any time by logging into My Journal of Clinical Bioinformatics, a personalized section of the site.

Reprints

High-quality, bound reprints can be purchased for all articles published. Please see our reprints website for further information about ordering reprints.

Supplements

Journal of Clinical Bioinformatics will consider supplements based on proceedings (full articles or meeting abstracts), reviews or research. All articles submitted for publication in supplements are subject to peer review. Published supplements are fully searchable and freely accessible online and can also be produced in print. For further information, please contact us.

Editorial policies

All manuscripts submitted to Journal of Clinical Bioinformatics should adhere to BioMed Central's editorial policies.

Citing articles in Journal of Clinical Bioinformatics

Articles in Journal of Clinical Bioinformatics should be cited in the same way as articles in a traditional journal. Because articles are not printed, they do not have page numbers; instead, they are given a unique article number.

Article citations follow this format:

Authors: Title. J Clin Bioinformatics [year], [volume number]:[article number].

e.g. Roberts LD, Hassall DG, Winegar DA, Haselden JN, Nicholls AW, Griffin JL: Increased hepatic oxidative metabolism distinguishes the action of Peroxisome Proliferator-Activated Receptor delta from Peroxisome Proliferator-Activated Receptor gamma in the Ob/Ob mouse. J Clin Bioinformatics 2009, 1:115.

refers to article 115 from Volume 1 of the journal.

Why publish your article in Journal of Clinical Bioinformatics?

High visibility

Journal of Clinical Bioinformatics's open access policy allows maximum visibility of articles published in the journal as they are available to a wide, global audience. Articles that have been especially highly accessed are highlighted with a 'Highly accessed' graphic, which appears on the journal's contents pages and search results.

Speed of publication

Journal of Clinical Bioinformatics offers a fast publication schedule whilst maintaining rigorous peer review; all articles must be submitted online, and peer review is managed fully electronically (articles are distributed in PDF form, which is automatically generated from the submitted files). Articles are published with their final citation immediately upon acceptance in a provisional PDF form. The article will subsequently be published in both fully browsable web form, and as a formatted PDF; the article will then be available through Journal of Clinical Bioinformatics and BioMed Central.

Flexibility

Online publication in Journal of Clinical Bioinformatics gives authors the opportunity to publish large datasets, large numbers of color illustrations and moving pictures, to display data in a form that can be read directly by other software packages so as to allow readers to manipulate the data for themselves, and to create all relevant links (for example, to PubMed, to sequence and other databases, and to other papers).

Promotion and press coverage

Articles published in Journal of Clinical Bioinformatics are included in article alerts and regular email updates. Some may be included in abstract books mailed to academics and are highlighted on Journal of Clinical Bioinformatics's pages and on the BioMed Central homepage.

In addition, articles published in Journal of Clinical Bioinformatics may be promoted by press releases to the general or scientific press. These activities increase the exposure and number of accesses for articles published in Journal of Clinical Bioinformatics. A list of articles recently press-released by journals published by BioMed Central is available here.

Copyright

Authors of articles published in Journal of Clinical Bioinformatics retain the copyright of their articles and are free to reproduce and disseminate their work (for further details, see the BioMed Central copyright and license agreement).

For further information about the advantages of publishing in a journal from BioMed Central, please click here.