About

Aims and scope

Bioelectronic Medicine is an open-access journal that provides a necessary and specific publication platform for the growing field of Bioelectronic Medicine.

This field brings together material science, biochemistry, biophysics, molecular medicine, neuroscience, immunology, bioengineering, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, computer science, mathematics, artificial intelligence, and other basic and clinical disciplines. Bioelectronic Medicine promises to bring new insights into the diagnosis and treatment of diseases and conditions as varied as cancer, rheumatoid arthritis, inflammatory bowel disease, obesity, diabetes, asthma, paralysis, blindness, bleeding, ischemia, organ transplantation, cardiovascular disease, neurodegenerative diseases, and others.

Bioelectronic Medicine focuses on electrical signaling in the nervous system. Insights into the regulatory functions of the nervous system and technologies that record, stimulate, or block neural signaling to affect specific molecular mechanisms are the primary focus of the journal. The journal will also feature bioelectronic approaches for monitoring and controlling biological processes, for providing insights into host and pathogen physiology and disease pathogenesis, and for restoring musculoskeletal function and mobility and treating paralysis, and many other conditions. In addition, developments in prostheses, robotics, and other relevant areas will be featured. Innovative preclinical research and development as well as clinical trials assessing new diagnostic and treatment advances will be well represented. Bioelectronic Medicine also welcomes related topics including ethics, community impact, regulatory and legal implications, reimbursement, and patient feedback in order to embrace multidisciplinary input across fields of science, technology, and healthcare.

Criteria to consider for studies involving lnc-RNAs or micro-RNAs:

· The proposed function of the lnc-RNA or miRNA should be validated by gain and loss of function studies.

· Primary cells should be used whenever possible to confirm findings in cell lines.

· In depth investigation in the signaling pathway(s) regulated by the RNA species should be conducted.

· Insight into the regulation of the RNA species and how it relates to the pathologic state should be provided.

· If applicable: Details of initial screen used to identify RNA species involvement in pathway/disease (number of subjects, statistical tests employed, percent change from controls.

Open access

All articles published by Bioelectronic Medicine are made freely and permanently accessible online immediately upon publication, without subscription charges or registration barriers. Further information about open access can be found here.

As authors of articles published in Bioelectronic Medicine you are the copyright holders of your article and have granted to any third party, in advance and in perpetuity, the right to use, reproduce or disseminate your article, according to the BMC license agreement.

For those of you who are US government employees or are prevented from being copyright holders for similar reasons, BMC can accommodate non-standard copyright lines. Please contact us if further information is needed.

Benefits of publishing with BMC

High visibility

Bioelectronic Medicine's open access policy allows maximum visibility of articles published in the journal as they are available to a wide, global audience.

Speed of publication

Bioelectronic Medicine offers a fast publication schedule whilst maintaining rigorous peer review; all articles must be submitted online, and peer review is managed fully electronically (articles are distributed in PDF form, which is automatically generated from the submitted files). Articles will be published with their final citation after acceptance, in both fully browsable web form, and as a formatted PDF.

Flexibility

Online publication in Bioelectronic Medicine gives you the opportunity to publish large datasets, large numbers of color illustrations and moving pictures, to display data in a form that can be read directly by other software packages so as to allow readers to manipulate the data for themselves, and to create all relevant links (for example, to PubMed, to sequence and other databases, and to other articles).

Promotion and press coverage

Articles published in Bioelectronic Medicine are included in article alerts and regular email updates. Some may be highlighted on Bioelectronic Medicine’s pages and on the BMC homepage.

In addition, articles published in Bioelectronic Medicine may be promoted by press releases to the general or scientific press. These activities increase the exposure and number of accesses for articles published in Bioelectronic Medicine. A list of articles recently press-released by journals published by BMC is available here.

Copyright

As an author of an article published in Bioelectronic Medicine you retain the copyright of your article and you are free to reproduce and disseminate your work (for further details, see the BMC license agreement).

For further information about the advantages of publishing in a journal from BMC, please click here.

Article-processing charges

Open access publishing is not without costs. Bioelectronic Medicine therefore levies an article-processing charge of £1570.00/$2290.00/€1870.00 for each article accepted for publication, plus VAT or local taxes where applicable.

If the corresponding author's institution participates in our open access membership program, some or all of the publication cost may be covered (more details available on the membership page). We routinely waive charges for authors from low-income countries. For other countries, article-processing charge waivers or discounts are granted on a case-by-case basis to authors with insufficient funds. Authors can request a waiver or discount during the submission process. For further details, see our article-processing charge page.

BMC provides a free open access funding support service to help authors discover and apply for article processing charge funding. Visit our OA funding and policy support page to view our list of research funders and institutions that provide funding for APCs, and to learn more about our email support service.

A note to authors from the Feinstein Institutes: please do not submit a manuscript with a membership code, without being invited to do so by our editors. Feinstein authorship does not automatically warrant use of a membership code.

Indexing services

All articles published in Bioelectronic Medicine are included in:

DOAJ

The full text of all articles is deposited in digital archives around the world to guarantee long-term digital preservation. You can also access all articles published by BioMed Central on SpringerLink.

We are working closely with relevant indexing services including PubMed Central and Web of Science (Clarivate Analytics) to ensure that articles published in Bioelectronic Medicine will be available in their databases when appropriate.

Peer-review policy

Peer-review is the system used to assess the quality of a manuscript before it is published. Independent researchers in the relevant research area assess submitted manuscripts for originality, validity and significance to help editors determine whether the manuscript should be published in their journal. You can read more about the peer-review process here.

Bioelectronic Medicine operates a single-blind peer-review system, where the reviewers are aware of the names and affiliations of the authors, but the reviewer reports provided to authors are anonymous. Authors are allowed to suggest up to three potential reviewers in their cover letter, but they should not suggest recent collaborators (individuals they wrote with, within the last three years) or colleagues who work in the same institution as themselves (and they will not find out which reviewers were invited). A note for reviewers: if you wish to work on your review with a post-doc or colleague, this is allowed as long as you indicate this in the “Comment to Editor” field (when submitting your reviewer report).

The benefit of single-blind peer review is that it is the traditional model of peer review that many reviewers are comfortable with, and it facilitates a dispassionate critique of a manuscript.

Submitted manuscripts will generally be reviewed by two or more experts who will be asked to evaluate whether the manuscript is scientifically sound and coherent, whether it duplicates already published work, and whether or not the manuscript is sufficiently clear for publication. The Editors will reach a decision based on these reports and, where necessary, they will consult with members of the Editorial Board.

Editorial policies

All manuscripts submitted to Bioelectronic Medicine should adhere to BMC's editorial policies.

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Citing articles in Bioelectronic Medicine

Articles in Bioelectronic Medicine should be cited in the same way as articles in a traditional journal. Because articles are not printed, they do not have page numbers; instead, they are given a unique article number.

Article citations follow this format:

Authors: Title. Bioelectron Med [year], [volume number]:[article number].

e.g. Roberts LD, Hassall DG, Winegar DA, Haselden JN, Nicholls AW, Griffin JL: Increased hepatic oxidative metabolism distinguishes the action of Peroxisome Proliferator-Activated Receptor delta from Peroxisome Proliferator-Activated Receptor gamma in the Ob/Ob mouse. Bioelectron Med 2009, 1:115.

1:115 refers to article 115 from Volume 1 of the journal.

Appeals and complaints

If you wish to appeal a rejection or make a complaint you should, in the first instance, contact the Editor who will provide details of the journal's complaints procedure. For complaints that cannot be resolved with the Editor, the authors should contact the Publisher.

About Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research

Bioelectronic Medicine is published in partnership with The Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research. As the research arm of Northwell Health, the largest healthcare provider in New York, it is home to 50 research laboratories and to clinical research throughout dozens of hospitals and outpatient facilities. The Feinstein Institutes include 4,000 researchers and staff who are making breakthroughs in molecular medicine, genetics, oncology, brain research, mental health, autoimmunity, and bioelectronic medicine – a new field of science that has the potential to revolutionize medicine. For more information about how the Feinstein Institutes empower imagination and pioneers discovery, visit FeinsteinInstitute.org.