Call for Papers: Special Issue of the Journal of Biomedical Informatics on Auditing of Terminologies

Guest Editors:
James Geller^1,2, Yehoshua Perl^1,2, Michael Halper^2,3, Ronald Cornet⁴

¹New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT)
²Structural Analysis of Biomedical Ontologies Center (SABOC) at NJIT   http://www.cis.njit.edu/~oohvr/SABOC/
³Kean University
⁴University of Amsterdam

Topic:

The subject of quality assurance for terminologies, also known as auditing, has recently received increased attention. For example, the last AMIA conference had a session devoted to this area, which is critical for applications that use terminologies. IHTSDO, the organization in charge of the SNOMED CT®  terminology,  has appointed a Chief Quality Officer and organized a standing Quality Assurance Committee. Papers addressing this topic have recently appeared in leading Biomedical Informatics journals, such as JBI and JAMIA. Auditing of terminologies is essential, because terminologies may form the basis of clinical decision-support systems, patient record management systems, health care administrative systems, etc. Any terminology errors could propagate to errors in these systems, which may result in severe negative outcomes for the involved patients.

The purpose of this special issue is to capture the state-of-the-art regarding the auditing of biomedical terminologies. Three kinds of papers are invited for this special issue: (1) Papers on original research on auditing of terminologies and on auditing tools, which report on recent, previously unpublished, advances; (2) Methodology review papers which collect, summarize and systematize the existing body of research in this area;  (3) Auditing experience papers by "auditors or editors of biomedical terminologies."  These papers will describe how auditing of leading biomedical terminologies is done in practice, but should relate that experience to the established methods and to innovations that were required in order to achieve operational goals.  The purpose of this last category of papers is to reveal practical methods, which often are not published, to a wider audience.  Their publication will round out the state-of-the-art description intended for this special issue.

Submission:

All papers will be rigorously reviewed following the standards of JBI.
An invitation to submit a paper does not guarantee its publication.
Guides for Authors are available directly from the homepage of the Journal of Biomedical Informatics:
  http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/622857/authorinstructions

Authors must submit their paper via the online submission system (EES) at   http://ees.elsevier.com/jbi/.  Authors can register and upload their text, tables, and figures as well as subsequent revisions through this website.  Please contact the Publishing Services Coordinator in the editorial office at jbi@elsevier.com for questions regarding this process. 

This special issue is registered under the title "Auditing Terminologies" in the EES system.  Authors submitting papers to this special issue should indicate so by selecting the “Auditing Terminologies” category at the time of submission.

Acceptance:

The final decision of acceptance is made by the Editor-in-Chief of the journal, in consultation with the Guest Editors.

Schedule:

Deadline for Submissions: June 15 (earlier submissions are encouraged).
Publication is planned for spring 2009.
Electronic publication is available as soon as final manuscripts are accepted.