Instructions to Authors

Scope. The Journal of Innovative Optical Health Sciences (JIOHS) serves as an international forum for the publication of the latest developments in all areas of photonics in biology and medicine. JIOHS will consider for publication original papers in all disciplines of photonics in biology and medicine, including but not limited to: photonic therapeutics and diagnostics, optical clinical technologies and systems, tissue optics, lasertissue interaction and tissue engineering, biomedical spectroscopy, advanced microscopy and imaging, nanobiophotonics and optical molecular imaging, multimodal and hybrid biomedical imaging, micro/nanofabrication, medical microsystems, optical coherence tomography and photodynamic therapy.

Review articles are generally invited articles. The invitation could be from the Editor-in-Chief, members of the editorial board, guest editors or the journal office. Authors who would like to submit review articles should first contact the journal office at jiohs@mail.hust.edu.cn.

JIOHS Article-Processing Charge
The regular Article-Processing Charge is USD1500 per article. We are offering a 50% discount now, so you only need to pay USD750. Please see the FAQs here for more information.

Electronic Submissions. Manuscripts must be submitted online via Editorial Manager (EM), a fully web-based submission, peerreview, and tracking system, at http://www.editorialmanager.com/jiohs/login.asp

If you are submitting via this new system for the first time, you will first be required to register. From the account you create, you will be able to monitor your submission and make subsequent submissions.

Ethics Policies:

Studies involving animals and human subjects/material:

Research involving animals and human subjects, material, or datasets must have been approved by an appropriate ethics committee or review board. The manuscript must include a statement identifying the committee approving the experiments and provide any relevant details. This information can be provided in the Materials and Methods section of the manuscript. An example sentence could be: "The protocols and handling of the animals had been approved by [insert the name of the ethics committee]." Documentation to support the ethics committee approval should be made available to the Editor upon request.

Where human subjects or patients are involved, informed consent to participate in the study should also be obtained from participants. A statement describing such informed consent should be included in the manuscript. Evidence to support the informed consent should be made available by the corresponding author to the Editor on request. The privacy rights of human subjects must always be observed.

The Editor reserves the right to reject a manuscript if the above are not adhered to.

Conflict of interest:

Authors must disclose any potential conflicts of interest (professional and/or financial) at the end of the manuscript. Financial support including any grants or support from companies should be mentioned in the Acknowledgments section.

Please complete the Conflict of Interest Disclosure Form provided below and submit the form(s) together with the manuscript to the online submission system. Select the item type "Conflict of Interest Disclosure Form" before uploading the disclosure form(s).

» Conflict of Interest Disclosure Form

For other general ethics guidelines, please refer to the "Ethical policy for journals" webpage.

Refereeing Process

Refereeing:
All articles, including invited ones, will go through the same refereeing process. All articles are screened by the journal office first: articles not conforming to the journal style, and articles which are not suitable for publication in this journal, will be returned to the authors. All manuscripts submitted will be checked for plagiarism using the CrossCheck database. Then, the manuscript is assigned to a handling editor by the Editor-in-Chief. The handling editor will be in charge of sending the article out for peer review. Usually two referee reports are needed before a decision is made. The handling editor has the right to reject a paper. In the case that no suitable reviewers are found or invited reviewers have all declined to review the article, the manuscript may be returned to the authors.

Acceptance:
When the refereeing process is done, the handling editor will review the referee report(s) and make a recommendation to accept, revise (major and minor revision) or reject the paper based on the referee report(s). In the case of proposed acceptance of the paper, the handling editor will forward his/her recommendation to the Editor-in-Chief who will make a final decision and notify the authors of the decision.

Appealing:
If a paper is initially rejected, the author has the right to request another review by a different referee. It is also possible for the author to appeal against the decision. The appeal should be submitted to the original handling editor and a copy has to be submitted to the Editor-in-Chief. The final decision whether to accept the paper will be made by the Editor-in-Chief in consultation with the other Editors.

Preparation of manuscript:

The journal template is available in Latex and Word. Please download the template files from the links near the bottom of this webpage.

Abstract and Keywords. The abstract should be self-contained (contains no footnotes) and should not exceed 250 words. Select about three to five keywords that do not duplicate words in the title. Composite words can be selected and will be counted as one keyword. Do not abbreviate keywords.

SI (Standard International) units must be used in the text, tables, and figures of all manuscripts submitted to the Journal.

Equations. Displayed equations should be numbered consecutively, with the equation number flushed (i.e., right-justified) and enclosed in parentheses. Equations should be referred in the text as Eq. (x), where x is the equation number. In multiple-line equations, the number should be given on the last line. Please ensure that the equations are numbered correctly, without repetition, and that no important equations are omitted from the numbering scheme. Mathematical operation signs indicating continuity of the expression should be placed at the left hand of the second and succeeding lines. Use ?¨¢ rather than a centered dot, except for scalar products of vectors. The solidus (/) should be used instead of built-up fractions in running text. Use "exp" for complicated exponents.

Notation must be clear, legible and consistent with standard usage. Superscripts are usually set directly over subscripts.

Tables should be typed neatly, each on a separate sheet, with title above and any notes below. Explain all abbreviations. Tables should be numbered in the order of their appearance by Roman numerals. The units of measure must be indicated clearly in the column headings of the table. If the unit of measure is the same for all data in a table, it may be given in the table title or in a footnote to be printed directly below the table.

Illustrations. Authors must submit high quality (publication quality) illustrations. Upon acceptance of their papers, authors are strongly encouraged to send electronic graphics files to the Publisher.

The Requirements

• 600 dpi for line drawings (black and white).

• 300 dpi for halftones (gray scale). Do not convert from color images as they reproduce very poorly.

• 300 dpi for color images.

Captions should be set below figure, and sequentially numbered using Arabic numerals.

If a figure has been published previously, acknowledge its source and submit written permission signed by author and publisher concerned. The source must be included in the reference list. If permission fee is required, it must be paid for by the author. The authors are fully responsible as the publisher has no way of finding out just by checking the manuscript.

All photos, graphs, illustrations and diagrams are referred to as "figures" and the abbreviation "Fig." (or "Figs.") is used in the text. (Where the word "Figure" begins a sentence, it should be spelt in full.)

References. A complete list of references numbered consecutively in order of first appearance and indicated by superscript numerals in the text, should be provided. Reference should be made to the full list of authors rather than the first author followed by et al. Within tables, references should be designated by lower case Roman letter superscripts and given at the end of the table.

Examples

normal book (authors)
E. S. Koay, N. Walmsley, A Primer of Chemical Pathology, World Scientific Publishing, Singapore (1996).

chapter in a book (editors)
N. B. Slepecky, "Structure of the mammalian cochlea," Chap. 2 in The Cochlea, P. Dallos, A. N. Popper, R. R. Fay, Eds., pp. 45-129, Springer-Verlag, New York (1996).

edition
A. S. M. Lim, I. J. Constable, A Colour Atlas of Ophthalmology, 4th Edition, World Scientific Publishing, Singapore (2001).

journal article
A. Hildersheim, P. H. Levine, "Etiology of nasopharyngeal carconoma: A review," Epidemiol. Rev. 15, 466-485 (1996).

electronic resources
W. S. Rasband, ImageJ, U. S. National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland, USA, http://rsb.info.nih.gov/ij/ (1997-2006).

to be published
X. Xu, J. A. Spencer, K. K. Lin, E. I. Kudryavtseva, B. Andersen, "Characterization of mice expressing a dominant negative Clim in epithelial tissues," to be published.

Proofs. Proofs will be sent to the author (first named author if no corresponding author is identified of multi-authored papers). Corrections should be restricted to typesetting errors. No new material may be inserted in the text at the time of proof reading. Any queries should be answered in full.

Detailed instructions for preparation of manuscripts are available in:

• Latex-2e (readme / Download)

• Word (Download)

» Conflict of Interest Disclosure Form