Policies for The International Journal of Biostatistics
Contents
- Philosophy of The International Journal of Biostatistics
- Who Can Submit?
- General Submission Rules
- Formatting Requirements
- Copyright and Open Access Permissions
- Fees and Obligations
- Refunds and Guarantees
Philosophy of The International Journal of Biostatistics
The International Journal of Biostatistics seeks to publish original and innovative, peer-reviewed research on the application of statistics to problems in computational biology. For more information, please see The International Journal of Biostatistics Aims and Scope page.
Who Can Submit?
Anyone may submit an original article to be considered for publication in The International Journal of Biostatistics provided he or she owns the copyright to the work being submitted or is authorized by the copyright owner or owners to submit the article. Authors are the initial owners of the copyrights to their works (an exception in the non-academic world to this might exist if the authors have, as a condition of employment, agreed to transfer copyright to their employer).
General Submission Rules
Any original work on applications of statistics to problems in computational biology can be submitted (see also the Aims and Scope page for The International Journal of Biostatistics).
Submitted articles cannot have been previously published, nor be forthcoming in an archival journal or book (print or electronic). Please note: "publication" in a working-paper series does not constitute prior publication. In addition, by submitting material to The International Journal of Biostatistics, the author is stipulating that the material is not currently under review at another journal (electronic or print) and that he or she will not submit the material to another journal (electronic or print) until the completion of the editorial decision process at The International Journal of Biostatistics. If you have concerns about the submission terms for The International Journal of Biostatistics, please contact the editors.
Formatting Requirements
The International Journal of Biostatistics has no general rules about the formatting of articles upon initial submission. There are, however, rules governing the formatting of the final submission. See Final Manuscript Preparation Guidelines for bepress journals.
Although bepress can provide limited technical support, it is ultimately the responsibility of the author to produce an electronic version of the article as a high-quality PDF (Adobe's Portable Document Format) file, or a Microsoft Word, WordPerfect or RTF file that bepress can convert to a PDF file.
It is understood that the current state of technology of Adobe's Portable
Document Format (PDF) is such that there are no, and can be no, guarantees that
documents in PDF will work perfectly with all possible hardware and software
configurations that readers may have.
Copyright and Open Access Permissions
As further described in our submission agreement, in consideration for publication of the article, the authors assign to The Berkeley Electronic Press all copyright in the article, subject to the expansive personal-use exceptions described below.
Attribution and Usage Policies
Reproduction, posting, transmission or other distribution or use of the article or any material therein, in any medium as permitted by a personal-use exemption or by written agreement of The Berkeley Electronic Press, requires credit to The Berkeley Electronic Press as copyright holder (e.g., The Berkeley Electronic Press © 2009).
Personal-use Exceptions
The following uses are always permitted to the author(s) and do not require further permission from The Berkeley Electronic Press provided the author does not alter the format or content of the articles, including the copyright notification:
- Posting of the article on the author(s) personal website, provided that the website is non-commercial;
- Posting of the article on the internet as part of a non-commercial open access institutional repository or other non-commercial open access publication site affiliated with the author(s)'s place of employment (e.g., a Phrenology professor at the University of Southern North Dakota can have her article appear in the University of Southern North Dakota's Department of Phrenology online publication series);
- Authors are allowed to deposit their articles to PubMedCentral and UKPubMedCentral twelve months after publication, which satisfies the open access mandates of all major government and foundation research grants. Bepress deposits the content of some journals automatically on behalf of authors; see http://www.bepress.com/ijb/about.html to see if this applies in your case.
- Posting of the article on a non-commercial course website for a course being taught by the author at the university or college employing the author; and
- Storage and back-up of the article on the author's computer(s) and digital media (e.g., diskettes, back-up servers, Zip disks, etc.), provided that the article stored on these computers and media is not readily accessible by persons other than the author(s).
People seeking an exception, or who have questions about use, should contact The Berkeley Electronic Press at .
Full Open Access
Once an article is accepted, authors may pay a fee to ensure their article is provided on a fully open access basis. For such articles, full copyright will be retained by the author(s). For questions on this policy, please email: .General Terms and Conditions of Use
Users of the bepress website and/or software agree not to misuse the bepress service or software in any way.
The failure of bepress to exercise or enforce any right or provision in the policies or the Submission Agreement does not constitute a waiver of such right or provision. If any term of the Submission Agreement or these policies is found to be invalid, the parties nevertheless agree that the court should endeavor to give effect to the parties' intentions as reflected in the provision, and the other provisions of the Submission Agreement and these policies remain in full force and effect. These policies and the Submission Agreement constitute the entire agreement between bepress and the Author(s) regarding submission of the Article.
Your Refereeing Agreement
The Authors & Reviewers' Bank
The tradition in peer-review publication has always been that the "price" of having one's own work reviewed is that the author is expected to review the work of others. In essence, it was an informal credit relationship: I borrow reviews on my work and promise to repay by doing reviews of others' work. Unhappily, this casual credit relationship has broken down in many fields, which has resulted in long delays in the review process. To ameliorate this breakdown, The Berkeley Electronic Press has instituted a formal credit relationship in the form of the Authors & Reviewers' Bank (A&R Bank). When you submit an article to The International Journal of Biostatistics you can either borrow, by promising to do 2 reviews promptly and conscientiously, or you can pay now for your reviews by paying $200. Because the best intentions may sometimes be forgotten, we ask borrowing authors authority to charge their credit cards certain amounts if and ONLY IF they do not complete their "borrowed" reviews promptly (details below).
Rates:
The two units of exchange are money (US dollars) and reviews (i.e., a number of reviews to do or receive).
- What we request in exchange for speedy review of your initial submission: 2 reviews OR $200.
- Payment to you for promptly reviewing another author's submission: One review credit if you review an initial submission, or .5 review credits if you review a resubmitted paper.
- Debt repayment: Authors who borrow reviews promise to complete promptly the reviews necessary to pay back debts incurred. If a borrowing author fails to do so, she will be fined up to a maximum of $200 via her credit card. (Fines are $100 per defaulted review). Authors who borrow reviews on an Invited resubmission can be fined for defaulting on their review obligations.
Policy on Prompt Reviews
To be credited with a review (half a review in the case of an invited resubmission) in the A&R Bank, a reviewer must:
Submit his or her review within 21 days of agreeing to review it.
A reviewer will be reminded via email of the review deadline. The consequences for a late review depend on whether the reviewer is in debt to the A&R Bank or not. If he or she is, then the consequences are:
- His or her credit card is charged $100 and credited for one review in the A&R Bank after the fine is paid.
- The total amount that an author can forfeit due to default on obligations incurred from a single submission can never exceed $200.
If a reviewer is not in debt to the A&R Bank, then the current sanction is simply not crediting the reviewer with a review.
Who Incurs the Debt with a Multiple-Author Submission?
For example, if Professors Smith and Jones write a paper, which Professor Jones submits, then Professor Jones is responsible to bepress for the two reviews that will be required to repay the debt. She can, though, agree with Professor Smith that they divide the reviewing responsibility between them. The obligation remains Professor Jones's, however. If Professor Smith fails to honor his end of their private agreement, then Professor Jones must either do the reviews or lose the bond.
Further Details
Reviews are additive for any subsequent submissions. Consider an author who incurs a debt of n reviews after submitting (alternatively, resubmitting) her article. bepress will notify her periodically via email about her current review obligations and opportunities to fulfill them. Over a period of time she will be given opportunites to review. If she declines more than 4 opportunities in a row, she will be charged $100 and credited with one review.
Refunds and Guarantees
Debts are incurred at the A&R Bank at the moment of submission. There are no refunds or cancellation of debts if the author withdraws his or her paper from consideration; if his or her paper is rejected; if he or she is asked to revise and resubmit; or if he or she declines to revise and resubmit. If the paper does not reach the reviewing stage, the reviewing debt will be canceled and the author’s peer reviewing obligations will be waived.
The debt is also canceled in the event that an author does not receive an editorial decision within 10 weeks. The Berkeley Electronic Press system's great innovation is its fast turnaround from initial submission to an editorial decision. It is, thus, possible that an article can be published, in a peer-reviewed journal, just 10 weeks after it is submitted. Should The International Journal of Biostatistics fail to provide an editorial decision within 10 weeks, then the journal will refund the submission fee, if any, and any debts incurred at the A&R Bank for this submission will be forgiven.
Caveats:
There are conditions under which failure to satisfy the ten week turnaround from initial submission to an editorial decision does not result in submission fee refunds and cancellation of A&R Bank debt:
- If the author has failed to complete his or her submission. The guarantee applies only after the submission is complete.
- If the submission must be converted from another electronic format or scanned into a computer to produce an Adobe PDF file of sufficient quality for reviewers to review the submission. The guarantee applies to the period beginning after a quality PDF file is available for review.
- The editor in charge of the submitted article makes the final determination as to whether the submission is incomplete or there isn't a PDF file of sufficient quality.