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1. Introduction
The Sri Lanka Journal of Bio-Medical Informatics (SLJBMI) is the official journal publication of the Health Informatics Society of Sri Lanka. It is the only academic publication in Sri Lanka which focuses on the emerging field of health informatics. This journal is the continuation of the SLJBMI, which was established in 2010 and was temporarily paused publishing since 8th June 2015. It is an open access and peer reviewed e-journal. The journal considers the articles related to the discipline of Health Informatics and related fields i.e. health informatics, medical informatics, digital health, public health informatics, clinical informatics, digital translational medicine, eHealth, big data in health, AI in health, computational medicine, new technologies in healthcare etc.
The journal accepts leading articles, original articles, short reports, case reports, leading articles, current practice articles, evidence-based practice articles, proof of concept articles, concept papers, personal view articles, review articles, picture stories, conference proceedings(abstracts & extended papers) and letters to the editor and replies. The articles submission process is exclusively limited to the online submission system accessed via the official website of the SLJBMI: https://sljbmi.sljol.info/
SLJBMI is committed to publish high-quality original research and other relevant publications that would contribute to the promotion of digital health and health informatics. It aspires to be the most prominent publishing spotlight related to health informatics in the region and to be the gathering platform of the renowned experts and enthusiasts of health information worldwide.
2. Registering as an author
To submit an article, the prospective authors must register under author role in the online platform. To register, use the link: https://sljbmi.sljol.info/.
3. How to submit an article
Ensure the compliance to general guidelines (section 5) and instructions on writing (section 4), before submitting your article.
All submissions must be made only through the electronic platform of the SLJBMI.
The manuscript can be submitted only once. The submission should be done by one of the original authors, who will be considered as the submitting author thenceforth.
The submitting author is required to accept the copyrights permissions through the electronic platform of the SLJBMI, along with the manuscript. Furthermore, any illustration, structure or table that has been published elsewhere must be declared as having relevant copyright permission.
The submitting author must confirm that the manuscript (in full, a part or any other version) has not been published previously or is not under consideration for publication elsewhere.
A successful electronic submission of a manuscript will be followed by a system-generated acknowledgement to the submitting author.
4. Instructions on Writing
4.1 Types of Articles
The articles that are eligible to be published, are described below;
4.1.1 Original Articles
Original articles should contain original work which has not been published elsewhere. Editors retain the right to shorten articles or make changes to conform to the style of the Journal and improve clarity. Each submission should have the original article and the abstract. The structure of the original article is preferred under the headings of;
Full original articles should be less than 5000 words.
The abstract should not exceed 300 words and must be structured wherever possible. Authors must provide minimum of five key words or phrases for the index, with their abstracts. The key words must be separated by semi-colons (;).
Abbreviations should be in parenthesis preceded by words in full before the first appearance.
4.1.2 Short reports
Short reports include brief reports of data from original research that authors believe will be interesting to many researchers, and that will likely stimulate further research in the field. Article length must not exceed 2500 words, including tables, illustrations and references. Authors should provide a few key words or phrases for the index. The key words must be separated by semi-colons (;)
4.1.3 Case reports
A case report is a specific instance of interesting phenomena. The goal of Case report is to make other researchers aware of the possibility that a specific phenomenon might occur. Article length must not exceed 2500 words, including tables, illustrations and references. Authors should provide a few key words or phrases for the index. The key words must be separated by semi-colons (;)
4.1.4 Leading Articles
These may be submitted by authors or solicited by the Editors. Leading articles are expert opinions on interesting topics or current advancements in health informatics. Comments or explanations of a current or past article may appear as a leading article. Authors should provide a few key words or phrases for the index.
4.1.5 Current Practice Articles and evidence-based practice articles
The Current Practice articles focus on descriptions of promising ideas with empirical data describing their implementation, along with formal research studies.
4.1.6 Proof of concept articles and concept papers
Proof of concept (PoC) is a realization of a certain method or idea in order to demonstrate its feasibility, or a demonstration in principle with the aim of verifying that some concept or theory has practical potential. Articles based on above concepts are considered by our journal as a Proof of concept article.
4.1.7 Personal view articles
Personal view articles reflect the author's personal experience or viewpoint relating to the topic which is likely to be of interest to the subject areas covered by the SLJBMI. Article should be written in first-person and may or may not include references.
4.1.8 Review articles
A review article captures the current state of understanding on a topic by surveying and summarizing previously published studies, rather than presenting facts gleaned through a new analysis. Articles may include but not limited to narrative, scoping, Cochrane and systematic reviews.
4.1.9 Picture stories
Picture stories are short, narrowly focused views of current interests based on a pictorial or graphical form. These may include a discussion based on a graphical or pictorial presentation that is recently published or relevant, and of sufficient interest to permit further explanation. The stories should fall within the scope of the journal.
4.1.10 Conference Proceedings (Extended Papers)
Extended papers presented at conferences will be published if the papers have not been published nor will be published elsewhere, prior to publication in SLJBMI.
4.2 Tables and illustrations
Tables, graphs and illustrations should be inserted into the text as it would appear on the final accepted article. They should not be presented separately. Tables must be cited in the main text in numerical order. Tables should be self-explanatory and the data they contain must not be duplicated in the text or figures. Tables should not be unduly long. Illustrations should be used only when data cannot be clearly expressed otherwise. Illustrations should be trimmed to remove all redundant areas. Computer graphics, illustrations and photographs will be accepted.
4.3 Nomenclature and measurements:
The authors are expected to adhere to the standardized nomenclature wherever necessary: The SI units should be used; if not exclusively, please provide the SI value in parentheses after each value. Generic names should be used for drugs and, if necessary, brand name may follow in brackets. Doses of drugs should be in metric units.
Species names should be italicized (e.g., Homo sapiens). The generic name of a species should be given in full, the first time as it appears in the text. The author authority for each species is desirable on its first mention.
Chemical formulae may not be used as abbreviations in the text.
4.4 Supporting Analysis
All supportive analysis on which the conclusions given in the publication must be made publicly available
4.5 Supplementary Data
Only directly relevant material should be included in the full text of manuscripts. Supporting materials and Appendices which are not essential for inclusion in the full text, but would nevertheless benefit the reader, can be published as online Supplementary Data. Supplementary Data should be submitted for review, in a separate file or files from the manuscript. Authors should make sure that all additional text, figures and tables are presented in a single file to minimize the number of files. Authors should ensure that the Supplementary Data is referred to in the main manuscript at an appropriate point in the text. It cannot be altered or replaced after the paper has been accepted for publication. For the purpose of long-term preservation of this information, we require supplementary material to be published and stored on our website at least for five years. It is acceptable for authors to post supplementary material on their own website in addition to this, but not in place of this.
4.6 Format of the Article
The text should be single spaced and in Times New Roman 12-point font size. The article should start with a Title Page containing the title of the article, author/s' names with all their medical and scientific degrees, current appointments, affiliations and an e-mail address. Authors should be listed one below the other. It should specify the type of the article, total number of words, tables, figures/ illustrations submitted. This page should include an e-mail address of the corresponding author along with a telephone number, fax number and postal address. The entire article should be of a single column, justified format. Please refer the template of the format here. It is recommended that you edit on the provided template and submit.
4.7 References
References should appear in the text as superscript in parentheses and numbered in order of appearance. They should be listed at the end of the article in the numerical order. They could have the names of up to six authors, followed by initials. If there are more than six authors, first six should be given followed by et al. The names should be followed by the title of the article, full name of the journal, year of publication, volume number in bold print and first and last pages of the quoted article. If a journal carries continuous pagination throughout a volume, issue numbers may be omitted. References for books should give the names of authors and editors, title, place of publication and publisher, followed by year of publication. Where more than one reference is cited, these should be separated by a comma. For sequences of consecutive numbers, give the first and last number of the sequence separated by a hyphen. Reference numbers in the text should be inserted immediately before punctuation (with no spacing).
Only papers published or in press should be included in the reference list. Personal communications or unpublished data must be cited in parentheses in the text with the name(s) of the source(s) and the year. Authors should request permission from the source to cite unpublished data.
ACCURACY OF REFERENCES IS THE RESPONSIBILITY OF THE AUTHOR/ AUTHORS.
Wherever possible, the Digital Object Identifier (DOI) for a reference should be included for each reference. This allows the article to be found more easily by readers on the Internet. For more information see the CrossRef website. To look up the DOI for your references, see the Simple Text Query facility on the CrossRef website. The CrossRef look-up will also provide the PubMed ID and the PubMedCentral ID and these should also be included (see the examples below).
All references that have Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) should have the DOIs inserted.
Some examples of typical references are provided below :-
Journal articles
PLEASE NOTE THAT ONLY THE VOLUME NUMBER SHOULD BE IN BOLD print. The year, issue number and pages are NOT in bold print.
More than six authors
Rose ME, Huerbin MB, Melick J, Marion DW, Palmer AM, Schiding JK, et al. Regulation of interstitial excitator concentrations after cortical contusion injury.Brain Res. 2002; 935(1-2): 40-6. doi:10.1016/S0006-8993(02)02445-9; PMid:12062471
Organization as author
Diabetes Prevention Program Research Group. Hypertension, insulin & proinsulin in participants with imp. tolerance. Hypertension. 2002; 40(5): 679-86.doi:10.1161/01.HYP.0000035706.28494.09; PMid:12411462; PMCid:2516377
Both personal authors and an organization as author
Vallancien G, Emberton M, Harving N, van Moorselaar RJ; Alf-One Study Group. Sexual dysfunction in 1,274 suffering from lower urinary tract symptoms. J Urol.2003; 169(6): 2257-61. doi:10.1097/01.ju.0000067940.76090.73; PMid:12771764
No author given
21st century heart solution may have a sting in the tail. BMJ. 2002; 325(7357): 184.doi:10.1136/bmj.325.7357.184
Volume with supplement
Geraud G, Spierings EL, Keywood C. Tolerability and safety of frovatriptan with short- and long-term use for migraine and in comparison with sumatriptan.Headache. 2002; 42 Suppl 2: S93-9. doi:10.1046/j.1526-4610.42.s2.7.x
Issue with supplement
Glauser TA. Integrating clinical trial data into clinical practice. Neurology. 2002;58(12 Suppl 7): S6-12.
Issue with part
Ahrar K, Madoff DC, Gupta S, Wallace MJ, Wright KC. Development of a large animal model for lun. Vasc Interv Radiol. 2002; 13(9 Pt 1): 923-8. doi:10.1016/S1051-0443(07)61776-X; PMid:12354827
Issue with no volume
Banit DM, Kaufer H, Hartford JM. Intraoperative frozen section analysis in revision total joint arthroplasty. Clinical Orthopaedics and related research 2002; (401): 230-8. doi:10.1097/00003086-200208000-00026
No volume or issue
Outreach: bringing HIV-positive individuals into care. HRSA Careaction. 2002 Jun: 1-6.
Pagination in Roman numerals
Chadwick R, Schuklenk U. The politics of ethical consensus finding. Bioethics. 2002; 16(2): iii-v. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8519.2002.00272.x; PMid:12083158
Type of article indicated as needed
Lofwall MR, Strain EC, Brooner RK, Kindbom KA, Bigelow GE. Characteristics of older methadone maintenance patients.[abstract]. Drug Alcohol Depend. 2002; 66 Suppl 1: S105.
Books and other monographs
Personal author(s)
Murray PR, Rosenthal KS, Pfaller MA. Medical microbiology. 4th ed. St. Louis: Mosby; 2002.
Editor(s ), compiler(s) as author(s)
Gilstrap LC 3rd, Cunningham FG, Van Dorsten JP, editors. Operative obstetrics. 2nd ed. New York: McGraw 2002.
Author(s) and editor(s)
Breedlove GK, Schorfheide AM. Adolescent pregnancy. 2nd ed. Wieczorek RR, editor. White Plains (NY): Education Services; 2001.
Organization(s) as author
Royal Adelaide Hospital; University of Adelaide, Department of Clinical Nursing. Compendium of nursing practice development, 1999-2000. Adelaide (Australia): Adelaide University; 2001.
Chapter in a book
Weinstein L, Swartz MN. Pathologic properties of invading microorganisms. In: Sodeman WA Jr, Sodeman WA, editors. Pathologic physiology of disease. Philadelphia: Saunders; 1974. p. 457-72.
Conference proceedings
Harnden P, Joffe JK, editors. Germ cell tumours V. Proceedings of the 5th Germ Cell Tumour Con Sep 13-15; Leeds, UK. New York: Springer; 2002.
Conference paper
Christensen S, Oppacher F. An analysis of Koza's computational effort statistic for gene tic programming. In: Lutton E, Miller J, Ryan C, Tettamanzi AG, editors. Genetic programming. EuroGP 2002: Proceedings of the Conference on Genetic Programming; 2002 Apr 3-5; Kinsdale, Ireland. Berlin: Springer; 2002. p. 182-91.
Scientific or technical report
Issued by funding/sponsoring agency:
Yen GG (Oklahoma State University, School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Stillwater, OK). Health vibration signatures. Final report. Arlington (VA): Air Force of Scientific Research (US), Air Force Research Laboratory; 2002 Feb. Report No.: AFRLSRBLTR020123. Contract No.: F496209810049.
Issued by performing agency
Russell ML, Goth-Goldstein R, Apte MG, Fisk WJ. Method for measuring the size distribution of airborne Rhin Berkeley (CA): Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Environmental Energy Technologies Division; 2002 No.: LBNL49574. Contract No. DEAC0376SF00098. Sponsored by the Department of Energy.
Dictionary and similar references
Dorland's illustrated medical dictionary. 29th ed. Philadelphia: W B Saunders; 2000. Filamin; p. 675.
Unpublished material
In press
Tian D, Araki H, Stahl E, Bergelson J, Kreitman M. Signature of balancing selection in Arabidopsis. Proc Natl A. In press 2002.
Electronic material
CD-ROM
Anderson SC, Poulsen KB. Anderson's electronic atlas of haematology [CD-ROM]. Philadelphia: Lippincott Will 2002.
Journal article on the Internet
Abood S. Quality improvement initiative in nursing homes: the ANA acts in an advisory role. Am J Nurs [seri Internet]. 2002 Jun [cited 2002 Aug 12]; 102(6): [about 3p.]. Available from: http://journals.lww.com/ajnonline/toc/2002/06000
Monograph on the Internet
Foley KM, Gelband H, editors. Improving palliative care for cancer [monograph on the Internet]. Washington Academy Press; 2001 [cited 2002 Jul 9]. Available from: http://www.nap.edu/books/0309074029/html/.
Homepage/Web site
Cancer-Pain.org [homepage on the Internet]. New York: Association of Cancer Online Resources, Inc.; c2001-2002 May 16; cited 2002 Jul 9].Available from:http://www.cancer-pain.org/. Accessed on 25-12-2009
Part of a homepage/Web site
American Medical Association [homepage on the Internet]. Chicago: The Association; c1995-2002 [updated cited 2002 Aug 12]. AMA Office of Group Practice Liaison; [about 2 screens].Available from:http://www.anassn.org/ama/pub/category/1736.html Accessed on 25-12-2009
5. General Guidelines
It must be stressed that these guidelines should be followed scrupulously.
Failure to do so may result in rejection of the article or "return to sender" for modification and re-submission.
Authors must submit a complete copy of the original manuscript prepared in word processing software.
For all online submissions, please provide a soft copy of the manuscript in a single digital file (preferably an MS Word or equivalent. SLJBMI will also accept text (.txt), or Rich Text Format (.rtf)). A PDF version of the above must also be included, embedded with all the figures / illustrations / tables / chemical structures etc.
While the entire manuscript is submitted as it should appear on SLJBMI, all figures/illustrations, if any must also be submitted as separate files in PDF, TIFF, BMP, GIF or JPEG.
It is advisable that the document files related to a manuscript submission should always have the name of the corresponding author as part of the file name, i.e. if author’s name is Fernando; "Fernando_manuscript1.doc" , "Fernando_manuscript_Figure 1", etc.
The language on the computer in which the manuscript is prepared must be set to "English (U.K.)”.
5.1 Criteria for authorship
Authors should meet one or more of the following criteria:
Every article that is submitted must be accompanied by a certified statement of details of the exact contribution made by each author. This should be submitted at the end of the manuscript. Please note that this is an essential requirement and is applicable when there are two or more authors.
A declaration certifying that the contents have not been published elsewhere and the paper is not being submitted elsewhere should be included along with the consent to publish in SLJBMI with signatures of all authors.
.2 Conflicts of Interest
At the point of submission, Sri Lanka Journal of Biomedical Informatics policy requires that all authors reveal any financial interests or connections, direct or indirect, or other situations that might raise the question of bias in the work reported or the conclusions, implications, or opinions stated - including pertinent commercial or other sources of funding for the individual author(s) or for the associated department(s) or organization(s), personal relationships, or direct academic competition.
The manuscript should acknowledge any potential conflict of interest and bring to the notice of the Editors any possible overlap with prior publications. Financial support for work, including equipment and drugs, should be listed.
5.3 Plagiarism
5.3.1 Types of Plagiarism
Scholarly manuscripts are written after thorough review of previously published articles. Thus, demarcating a clear boundary between legitimate representation and plagiarism can be difficult. However, the following important features can assist in identifying different kinds of plagiarized content.
These are:
If the manuscript is found to have plagiarized content, it will be returned to the authors by the Editor-in-Chief.
5.3.2 Plagiarism in Published Manuscripts:
Published manuscripts which are found to contain plagiarized text are retracted from the journal website after careful investigation and approval by the Editor-in-Chief of the journal. A ‘Retraction Note’ as well as a link to the original article is published on the electronic version of the plagiarized manuscript and an addendum with retraction notification in the SLJBMI.
5.4 Peer review mechanism
5.4.1 Aims of the peer review mechanism
The aim of the peer review mechanism is to provide constructive feedback to the authors to make the manuscripts publication ready. However, the reviewers will strongly review the writings for relevancy, appropriateness, quality of the study carried out, concordance to the guidelines, language used and novelty of the study. The reviewers will comment on the writing in order to mentor the authors for improvement in different facets of the manuscript, thereby increasing the likelihood of acceptance.
5.4.2 Peer review policy
SLJBMI is an international peer reviewed journal. All papers submitted to SLJBMI are subject to peer review by members of a carefully appointed review panel. The journal operates a conventional single-blind reviewing policy in which the reviewer’s name is always concealed from the submitting author. Each paper submitted, if considered suitable by the Editor, will be refereed by at least two anonymous reviewers.
5.4.3 Peer review cycle
Please see the flow chart of the peer review cycle and approximate timelines here. (Link)
5.4.4 Outcomes of the peer review
There could be 5 possible outcomes for each peer review engagement for a given paper. Depending on the number of submissions and the other policy decisions pertaining to a given volume of the journal, the outcome at which the articles will be rejected will be decided by the editorial committee.
5.4.5 Author response
The reviewed content and the comments will be passed to the authors after blinding. It is the responsibility of the authors to respond to the comments and reviewer decisions within the speculated time period. The revised versions will be sent for second review and editorial board will decide the final acceptance. Furthermore, if the author/s does/do not agree with reviewer comments, the editorial board should be informed giving clear reasons/evidence. In such cases, the board will decide further actions.
5.5 Copyrights
SLJBMI will not hold copyright of the articles published and the copyrights will remain with the respective authors. SLJBMI will not be responsible for the copyright infringements by authors on their submitted articles nor by third parties on material published on the journal. The authors grant the SLJBMI a license to publish the article and to identify itself as the original publisher. Articles in the SLJBMI are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-SA 4.0).
5.6 Ethical Considerations
SLJBMI will pay close attention to the following;
A statement of scrutiny by an acceptable Ethical Review Body should be included where necessary, with scanned documentary evidence of such approval, together with the Clinical Trials Registry Registration number should accompany the article where necessary.
If photographs of patients are used, the subjects should not be identifiable, or their pictures must be accompanied by written permission to use the photographs.
5.7 Acceptance for publication
The decision for acceptance will be informed officially to the authors vial e-mail, once the review mechanism is concluded. The author must submit the publication ready manuscript according to the format, incorporating the author details. Failure to do so before the deadline will be considered as non-compliance to the guidelines which may result in rejection for publication. All decisions taken by the editorial board will be considered as final, unless otherwise decided by the board.
As part of the submission process, authors are required to check off their submission's compliance with all of the following items, and submissions may be returned to authors that do not adhere to these guidelines.
The submission has not been previously published, nor is it before another journal for consideration (or an explanation has been provided in comments to the Editor).
The text adheres to the stylistic and bibliographic requirements outlined in the Author Guidelines
All references are inserted according to the requirements and URLs for the references have been provided where available.
Authors of articles published in the Journal of the SLJBMI retain the copyright of their articles. They are free to reproduce and disseminate their work. The source (SLJBMI) should be cited when articles published in the SLJBMI are reproduced or stored in a repository.
Articles in the SLJBMI are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-SA 4.0).
The names and email addresses entered in this journal site will be used exclusively for the stated purposes of this journal and will not be made available for any other purpose or to any other party.