Information for Authors

OPEN ACCESS OPTION FOR AUTHORS

Biostatistics publishes papers that develop innovative statistical methods with applications to the understanding of human health and disease, including basic biomedical sciences. Papers should focus on methods and applications. Introduction of original methodology should be grounded in substantive problems. Authors are encouraged to present extensive supporting material, such as software or data on the journal’s website as supplementary materials. The editors may also require authors to use the supplementary material feature for detailed descriptions of simulation studies or other technical material as a condition of acceptance of a paper.

Papers submitted for publication in Biostatistics should satisfy at least one of the following criteria:

• development of new stochastic models or statistical methodology clearly motivated by a substantive problem in health or biomedical sciences;
• innovative application of statistical methodology to address a substantive problem in health or biomedical sciences;
• critical review of an area of statistical methodology relevant to health or biomedical science applications, with a focus on practical utility;
• case studies based on important health or biomedical sciences data.

Biostatistics also publishes shorter communications of several kinds:

• Notes are short papers (generally one or two journal pages) on topics related to good biostatistical practice;
• Letters are communications relating directly to papers previously published in the journal, and would typically be published together with a brief response from the authors of the paper concerned;
• Software news items are announcements of new open source software implementations of methodology previously published in the journal.

Preparation and Submission of Manuscripts

The editors of Biostatistics are committed to minimizing the time from submission to publication of excellent papers so that new methodology can influence rapidly-developing substantive specialties.

Only submissions in English will be considered. The paper should be sent as a single PDF file attachment. Please do not send your paper in multiple files as they can lead to confusion during the review process. Please also send a separate cover letter, either as an email attachment or as part of the text in your submission email. If accepted for publication, the source files of the final version will be required, preferably in LaTeX or TeX; a LaTex template can be found here. Electronic figures can only be used if in TIF, PS or EPS format. These formats or the DVI derivatives should not be supplied for initial submission. For useful information on preparing your figures for publication, see http://dx.sheridan.com.

Please submit electronically to either Rosetta Lok or Mary Joy Argo, but not both. Please enter 'Biostatistics Submission' in the subject line of submission emails. Paper submission is also welcome, in which case four copies are required. These can be sent to:

Scott L. Zeger
Johns Hopkins University
Department of Biostatistics
615 N. Wolfe Street
Baltimore, MD 21205-2179
USA

OR

Peter J. Diggle
Department of Medicine
Lancaster University
Bailrigg
Lancaster LA1 4YF
UK

Authors of submitted papers are required to declare potential conflicts of interests by completing the conflict of interest form.

It is possible to submit Supplementary Data that is not printed in the journal but can be viewed online. Further information on this can be viewed here.

Format of Manuscript

Papers should be typewritten and double-spaced (i.e. 3 lines per 25 mm); text width should be set to 146 mm and page depth to 215 mm. Only one side of each page should be used. The title page should include the name, affiliation and address of each author and a short abstract. The author to whom proofs should be sent should be marked as the corresponding author, with email address and telephone and fax numbers supplied.

Each section, including the introduction, should be numbered. Equations should be numbered (e.g. (2.1), (2.2) etc., within section 2), on the right hand side of the page. Non-standard notation should be explained in the text. Footnotes should be avoided. A list of tables and figure captions should be appended to the manuscript. Diagrams should be suitable for direct reproduction without major reduction.

References

References should be listed at the end of the manuscript in the following referencing style: authors' surnames, authors' initials, year of publication in parentheses, title of paper, journal title in full, volume number, and page numbers. Publish ahead of print articles can also be cited, using the digital object identifier (doi). The reference list should be arranged in alphabetical order and cited within the text by the author and year. In the text, no more than two authors can be cited per references; if there are more than two authors, use and others. Examples of different types of references are given below.

Article
KENWARD, M. G., MOLENBERGHS, G. AND THIJS, H. (2003). Pattern-mixture models with proper time dependence. Biometrika 90, 53-71.

Book
PEPE, M. S. (2003). The Statistical Evaluation of Medical Tests for Classification and Prediction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Chapter in Book
THOMAS, D. C. AND GAUDERMAN, W. J. (1996). Gibbs sampling methods in genetics. In Gilks, W. R., Richardson, S. and Spiegelhalter, D. J. (eds), Markov Chain Monte Carlo in Practice. London: Chapman and Hall, pp. 238-257.

Conference Proceedings (not published in book form)
OLSHEN, A AND VENKATRAMAN, E. (2002). Change-point analysis of array-based comparative genomic hybridization data. ASA Proceedings of the Joint Statistical Meetings, 2530-2535.

Advance Access (online but not yet printed)
OGDEN, R. T. and TARPEY, T. (14 July 2005). Estimation in regression models with externally estimated parameters. Biostatistics doi:10.1093/biostatistics/kxi044.

Advance Access (online and printed)
BYTH, K. AND COX, D. R. (2005). On the relation between initial value and slope. Biostatistics 6, 395-403. First published on 14 April 2005, doi:10.1093/biostatistics/kxi017.

References to manuscripts in preparation, or submitted, but not yet accepted, can be cited in the text as (Author and Author, in preparation) and should NOT be included in the list of references.

Color

The journal recognizes the usefulness of color usage and can publish manuscripts containing color figures or illustrations. This facility is free of charge to authors if the use of color is considered by the co-editors to be necessary in adding substantial scientific clarification and impact to the paper. In other cases, there is a charge for publishing in colour (US$600 per color figure) and authors will be asked to defray the cost for publishing these figures.

Figures containing color should be submitted only if they are intended to be printed in color. Please note that it is possible to have color figures posted online as supplementary material but published in the journal in grayscale to control cost.

Language Editing

Particularly if English is not your first language, before submitting your manuscript you may wish to have it edited for language. This is not a mandatory step, but may help to ensure that the academic content of your paper is fully understood by journal editors and reviewers. Language editing does not guarantee that your manuscript will be accepted for publication. If you would like information about one such service please click here. There are other specialist language editing companies that offer similar services and you can also use any of these. Authors are liable for all costs associated with such services.

Copyright and Offprints

It is a condition of publication in the journal that authors grant an exclusive license to Oxford University Press. This ensures that requests from third parties to reproduce articles are handled efficiently and consistently and will also allow the article to be as widely disseminated as possible. As part of the license agreement, authors may use their own material in other publications provided that the journal is acknowledged as the original place of publication, and Oxford University Press is notified in writing and in advance. Download the copyright license.

Authors of papers published in the journal will be entitled to a URL which will allow free online access to their paper. This URL will be sent to the corresponding author and may be distributed to all coauthors. Offprints and copies of the issue in which the article appears may be purchased if ordered on the form sent to the corresponding author with the proofs.

Permissions for Illustrations and Figures

Permission to reproduce copyright material, for print and online publication in perpetuity, must be cleared and if necessary paid for by the author; this includes applications and payments to DACS, ARS, and similar licensing agencies where appropriate. Evidence in writing that such permissions have been secured from the rights-holder must be made available to the editors. It is also the author's responsibility to include acknowledgements as stipulated by the particular institutions. Oxford Journals can offer information and documentation to assist authors in securing print and online permissions: please see the Guidelines for Authors section. Information on permissions contacts for a number of main galleries and museums can also be provided. Should you require copies of this, please contact the editorial office of the journal in question or the Oxford Journals Rights department.

Funding

Details of all funding sources for the work in question should be given in a separate section entitled 'Funding'. This should appear before the 'Acknowledgements' section.

The following rules should be followed:

• The sentence should begin: ‘This work was supported by …’
• The full official funding agency name should be given, i.e. ‘National Institutes of Health’, not ‘NIH’ (full RIN-approved list of UK funding agencies) Grant numbers should be given in brackets as follows: ‘[grant number xxxx]’
• Multiple grant numbers should be separated by a comma as follows: ‘[grant numbers xxxx, yyyy]’
• Agencies should be separated by a semi-colon (plus ‘and’ before the last funding agency)
• Where individuals need to be specified for certain sources of funding the following text should be added after the relevant agency or grant number 'to [author initials]'.

An example is given here: ‘This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health [AA123456 to C.S., BB765432 to M.H.]; and the Alcohol & Education Research Council [hfygr667789].’

Advance Access

Biostatistics offers Advance Access online publication of articles with subscription-based access. Advance Access provides early official publication dates of accepted papers. See the Advance Access information page.

Author Self-Archiving/Public Access Policy from May 2005

For information about this journal's policy, please visit our Author Self-Archiving Policy page.

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