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Types of contribution

The journal features original research contributions, tutorials on new methods, research area reviews and bibliographies, editorials, book reviews, and letters to the editor.

Submission of manuscripts

Authors are requested to submit their paper and figures online via the Elsevier Editorial System (EES): http://ees.elsevier.com/aiim. EES is a web-based submission and review system. Authors may submit manuscripts and track their progress through the system to publication. For technical submission problems, please contact Elsevier Author Support authorsupport@elsevier.com.

Preparation of manuscripts

1. Manuscripts should be written in English. Authors whose native language is not English are strongly advised to have their manuscripts checked by an English-speaking colleague prior to submission.

2. One complete electronic copy of the manuscript should be submitted, together with one set of files of the figures; authors should retain a backup copy of the manuscript.

3. Manuscripts in general should be organized in the following order:

•Title (should be clear, descriptive and not too long)

•Name(s) of author(s)

•Complete postal address(es) of affiliations

•Full telephone number, fax number and e-mail address of the corresponding author

•Present address(es) of author(s) if applicable

•Complete correspondence address to which the proofs should be sent

•Abstract

•Key words (indexing terms), normally 3 to 6 items

•Introduction

•Material studied, methods, techniques

•Results

•Discussion

•Conclusion

•Acknowledgements and any additional information concerning research grants, etc.

•References

•Tables

•Figure captions

4. In typing the manuscript, titles and subtitles should not be run within the text. They should be typed on a separate line, without indentation. Use lower-case lettertype.

5. SI units should be used.

6. If a special instruction to the copy editor or typesetter is written on the copy it should be encircled. The typesetter will then know that the enclosed matter is not to be set in type. When a typewritten character may have more than one meaning (e.g. the lower case letter l may be confused with the numeral 1), a note should be inserted in a circle in the margin to make the meaning clear to the typesetter. If Greek letters or uncommon symbols are used in the manuscript, they should be written very clearly, and if necessary a note such as "Greek lower-case chi" should be put in the margin and encircled.

7. Elsevier reserves the privilege of returning to the author for revision accepted manuscripts and illustrations which are not in the proper form given in this guide.

Important Notices

Authorship
All authors should have made substantial contributions to all of the following: (1) the conception and design of the study, or acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data, (2) drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content, (3) final approval of the version to be submitted.

Acknowledgements
All contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship as defined above should be listed in an acknowledgements section. Examples of those who might be acknowledged include a person who provided purely technical help, writing assistance, or a department chair who provided only general support. Authors should disclose whether they had any writing assistance and identify the entity that paid for this assistance.

Conflict of interest
At the end of the text, under a subheading "Conflict of interest statement" all authors must disclose any financial and personal relationships with other people or organisations that could inappropriately influence (bias) their work. Examples of potential conflicts of interest include employment, consultancies, stock ownership, honoraria, paid expert testimony, patent applications/registrations, and grants or other funding.

Role of the funding source
All sources of funding should be declared as an acknowledgement at the end of the text. Authors should declare the role of study sponsors, if any, in the study design, in the collection, analysis and interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript; and in the decision to submit the manuscript for publication. If the study sponsors had no such involvement, the authors should so state.

Randomised controlled trials
All randomised controlled trials submitted for publication in the journal should include a completed Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials (CONSORT) flow chart. Please refer to the CONSORT statement website at http://www.consort-statement.org for more information. The journal has adopted the proposal from the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) which require, as a condition of consideration for publication of clinical trials, registration in a public trials registry. Trials must register at or before the onset of patient enrolment. The clinical trial registration number should be included at the end of the abstract of the article. For this purpose, a clinical trial is defined as any research project that prospectively assigns human subjects to intervention or comparison groups to study the cause-and-effect relationship between a medical intervention and a health outcome. Studies designed for other purposes, such as to study pharmacokinetics or major toxicity (e.g. phase I trials) would be exempt. Further information can be found at www.icmje.org.

Ethics
Work on human beings that is submitted to the journal should comply with the principles laid down in the Declaration of Helsinki; Recommendations guiding physicians in biomedical research involving human subjects. Adopted by the 18th World Medical Assembly, Helsinki, Finland, June 1964, amended by the 29th World Medical Assembly, Tokyo, Japan, October 1975, the 35th World Medical Assembly, Venice, Italy, October 1983, and the 41st World Medical Assembly, Hong Kong, September 1989. The manuscript should contain a statement that the work has been approved by the appropriate ethical committees related to the institution(s) in which it was performed and that subjects gave informed consent to the work. Studies involving experiments with animals must state that their care was in accordance with institution guidelines.

Studies on patients or volunteers require ethics committee approval and informed consent which should be documented in your paper. Patients have a right to privacy. Therefore identifying information, including patients? images, names, initials, or hospital numbers, should not be included in videos, recordings, written descriptions, photographs, and pedigrees unless the information is essential for scientific purposes and you have obtained written informed consent for publication in print and electronic form from the patient (or parent, guardian or next of kin where applicable). If such consent is made subject to any conditions, Elsevier must be made aware of all such conditions. Written consents must be provided to Elsevier on request. Even where consent has been given, identifying details should be omitted if they are not essential. If identifying characteristics are altered to protect anonymity, such as in genetic pedigrees, authors should provide assurance that alterations do not distort scientific meaning and editors should so note. If such consent has not been obtained, personal details of patients included in any part of the paper and in any supplementary materials (including all illustrations and videos) must be removed before submission.

Authors in Japan please note: Upon request, Elsevier Japan will provide authors with a list of people who can check and improve the English of their paper (before submission). Please contact our Tokyo office: Elsevier Japan, 9-15, Higashi-Azabu 1-chome, Minato-ku, Tokyo 106-0044; Japan; Tel. (+81) 3-5561-5032; Fax: (+81)3-5561-5045; E-mail: info@elsevier.co.jp.

Summary

The summary should be clear, descriptive and not longer than 400 words. It should explicitly be structured according to Objective, Methods and Material, Results, and Conclusion (or similar, but along these lines). Sub-headings should be provided explicitly.

Tables

1. Authors should take notice of the limitations set by the size and lay-out of the journal. Large tables should be avoided. Reversing columns and rows will often reduce the dimensions of a table.

2. If many data are to be presented, an attempt should be made to divide them over two or more tables.

3. Drawn tables, from which prints need to be made, should not be folded.

4. Tables should be numbered according to their sequence in the text. The text should include references to all tables.

5. Each table should be typewritten on a separate page of the manuscript. Tables should never be included in the text.

6. Each table should have a brief and self-explanatory title.

7. Column headings should be brief, but sufficiently explanatory. Standard abbreviations of units of measurement should be added between parentheses.

8. Vertical lines should not be used to separate columns. Leave some extra space between the columns instead.

9.Any explanation essential to the understanding of the table should be given as a footnote at the bottom of the table.

Illustrations

1. All illustrations (line drawings and photographs) should be submitted separately, unmounted and not folded.

2. Illustrations should be numbered according to their sequence in the text. References should be made in the text to each illustration.

3. Each illustration should be identified on the reverse side (or - in the case of line drawings -on the lower front side) by its number and the name of the author. An indication of the top of the illustrations is required in any cases where doubt can arise.

4. Illustrations should be designed with the format of the page of the journal in mind. Illustrations should be of such a size as to allow a reduction of 50%.

5. Lettering should be in Indian ink or by printed labels. Make sure that the size of the lettering is big enough to allow a reduction of 50% without becoming illegible. The lettering should be in English. Use the same kind of lettering throughout and follow the style of the journal.

6. If a scale should be given, use bar scales on all illustrations instead of numerical scales that must be changed with reduction.

7. Each illustration should have a caption. The captions to all illustrations should be typed on a separate sheet of the manuscript.

8. Explanations should be given in the typewritten legend. Drawn text in the illustrations should be kept to a minimum.

9.Photographs are only acceptable if they have good contrast and intensity. Sharp and glossy copies are required. Reproductions of photographs already printed cannot be accepted.

10. Colour illustrations cannot usually be included, unless the cost of their reproduction is paid for by the author.

References

1. All publications cited in the text should be presented in a list references following the text of the manuscript.

2. References should be numbered according to their appearance in text (not alphabetically). In the text they should be referred to by bracketed numbers. The list of references must be typed on separate sheets, in the same format as the main text, and ordered consecutively, according to the following models:

For a paper in a collection:

[1] L.A. Zadeh, Is probability theory sufficient for dealing with uncertainty in AI: a negative view, in: L.N. Kanal and LF. Lemmer, eds., Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence (Elsevier, Amsterdam, 1986)103-116.

For a book:

[2] R. Kowalski, Logic for Problem Solving (North-Holland, New York, 1979).

For a journal article:

[3]D.E. Heckerman and E.H. Shortliffe, From certainty factors to belief networks, Artificial Intelligence in Medicine 4 (1992) 35-52.

For an unpublished paper:

[4] S.E. Fahlman, A system for representing and using real-world knowledge, MIT Technical Report AI-TR 450, Cambridge, NIA, 1977.

3. Abbreviate the titles of periodicals mentioned in the list of references according to the International List of Periodical Title Word Abbreviations.

4. In the case of publications in any language other than English,the original title is to be retained. However, the titles of publications in non-Latin alphabets should be transliterated, and a notation such as "(in Russian)" or "(in Greek, with English abstract)" should be added.

5. Work accepted for publication but not yet published should be referred to as "in press".

6. References concerning unpublished data and "personal communications" should not be cited in the reference list but may be mentioned in the text.

Formulae

1. Formulae should be typewritten, if possible. Leave ample space around the formulae.

2. Subscripts and superscripts should be clear.

3. Greek letters and other non-Latin or handwritten symbols should be explained in the margin where they are first used. Take special care to show clearly the difference between zero (0) and the letter O, and between one (1) and the letter l.

4. All mathematical symbols which are not typewritten should be listed separately.

5. Give the meaning of all symbols immediately after the equation in which they are first used.

6. For simple fractions use the solidus (/) instead of a horizontal line, e.g.I_p/2_m rather than I_p over 2_m.

7. Equations should be numbered serially at the right-hand side in parentheses. In general only equations explicitly referred to in the text need be numbered.

8. The use of fractional powers instead of root signs is recommended. Also powers of e are often more conveniently denoted by exp.

9. Levels of statistical significance which can be mentioned without further explanation are *P (less than) 0.05, ** P (less than) 0.01 and *** P (less than) 0.001.

10. In chemical formulae, valence of ions should be given as, e.g. Ca²⁺ and CO₃ ^2-, not as Ca⁺⁺ or CO₃ ^-.

11. Isotope numbers should precede the symbols, e.g. ¹⁸O.

Footnotes

1. Footnotes should only be used if absolutely essential. In most cases it should be possible to incorporate the information in normal text.

2. If used, they should be numbered in the text, indicated by superscript numbers, and kept as short as possible.

Copyright

Upon acceptance of an article, authors will be asked to sign a Journal Publishing Agreement (for more information on this and copyright see http://WWW.elsevier.com/authors). Acceptance of the agreement will ensure the widest possible dissemination of information. An e-mail (or letter) will be sent to the corresponding author confirming receipt of the manuscript together with a Journal Publishing Agreement form.

If excerpts from other copyrighted works are included, the author(s) must obtain written permission from the copyright owners and credit the source(s) in the article. Elsevier has preprinted forms for use by authors in these cases : contact Elsevier's Rights Department, Philadelphia, PA, USA: Tel. (+1) 215 238 7869; Fax (+1) 215 238 2239; e-mail healthpermissions@elsevier.com . Requests may also be completed online via the Elsevier homepage ( http://www.elsevier.com/locate/permissions).

Funding body agreements and policies

Elsevier has established agreements and developed policies to allow authors whose articles appear in journals published by Elsevier, to comply with potential manuscript archiving requirements as specified as conditions of their grant awards. To learn more about existing agreements and policies please visit http://www.elsevier.com/fundingbodies

Proofs

One set of page proofs in PDF format will be sent by e-mail to the corresponding author (if we do not have an e-mail address then paper proofs will be sent by post). Elsevier now sends PDF proofs which can be annotated; for this you will need to download Adobe Reader version 7 available free from http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html. Instructions on how to annotate PDF files will accompany the proofs. The exact system requirements are given at the Adobe site:
http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/acrrsystemreqs.html#70win. If you do not wish to use the PDF annotations function, you may list the corrections (including replies to the Query Form) and return to Elsevier in an e-mail. Please list your corrections quoting line number. If, for any reason, this is not possible, then mark the corrections and any other comments (including replies to the Query Form) on a printout of your proof and return by fax, or scan the pages and e-mail, or by post. Please use this proof only for checking the typesetting, editing, completeness and correctness of the text, tables and figures. Significant changes to the article as accepted for publication will only be considered at this stage with permission from the Editor. We will do everything possible to get your article published quickly and accurately. Therefore, it is important to ensure that all of your corrections are sent back to us in one communication: please check carefully before replying, as inclusion of any subsequent corrections cannot be guaranteed. Proofreading is solely your responsibility. Note that Elsevier may proceed with the publication of your article if no response is received.

Offprints

The corresponding author, at no cost, will be provided with a PDF file of the article via e-mail or, alternatively, 25 free paper offprints. The PDF file is a watermarked version of the published article and includes a cover sheet with the journal cover image and a disclaimer outlining the terms and conditions of use. Additional paper offprints can be ordered by the authors. An order form with prices will be sent to the corresponding author.

Artificial Intelligence in Medicine carries no page charges