The International Journal of Biostatistics

Manuscript Preparation Guidelines

This document provides authors with details on policy, copyediting, formatting, and layout requirements pertaining to final manuscript submission to this journal. All manuscripts must have correct formatting to be considered ready for publication. We also encourage the authors to implement a transparent format for the abstract and paper that lists the basic elements of the research question, so that the reader can understand immediately what statistical problem the paper is addressing. This includes defining precisely the statistical inference problem (data-generating experiment, the model, the parameter or hypothesis of interest), and proposed solution of this problem, making the unique contribution of the manuscript very clear. Priority is put on statistical inference problems within very big statistical models, or semi-parametric models.

The entire manuscript submission and review process is handled through an online system named ScholarOne. All manuscripts should be submitted to http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/dgijb

EDITORIAL POLICY
Unpublished material: Submission of a manuscript implies that the work described is not copyrighted, published or submitted elsewhere, except in abstract form. The corresponding author should ensure that all authors approve the manuscript before its submission.

Conflict of interest: When authors submit a manuscript, they are responsible for recognizing and disclosing financial and/or other conflicts of interest that might bias their work and/or could inappropriately influence his/her judgment. If no specified acknowledgement is given, the Publishers assume that no conflict of interest exists.

Copyright: Manuscripts are accepted on condition of transfer of copyright (for U.S. government employees: to the extent transferable) to The International Journal of Biostatistics. Once the manuscript is accepted, it may not be published elsewhere without the consent of the copyright holders.

COPYEDITING/LANGUAGE EDITING
The ScholarOne system has been designed to improve the scholarly publication process for authors. Among the many improvements we offer over traditional journals, the most significant is that we have dramatically shortened the period between the initial submission and the final publication of a peer-reviewed article. Much of this time savings is due to the innovative use of electronic publication. These innovations, however, require certain changes in the way authors need to prepare accepted manuscripts for electronic publication.

De Gruyter does provide a light copyedit of manuscripts for this journal, but remain responsible for being their own copyeditors and typesetters. This means that authors need to pay greater attention to the editing and look of their manuscripts than is typically required by print journals.

LANGUAGE EDITING
All manuscripts must be written in clear and concise English. If you have reasons to doubt your proficiency with respect to spelling, grammar, etc. (e.g., because English is not your native language), then you may wish to employ—at your expense—the services of a professional language editor.
Please get in touch with the Language Editors directly to discuss details.

• Alexandra Griswold
xan3210@cs.com
Areas of expertise: public policy, political science, education, economics, social sciences, humanities, ethics

• Cyndy Brown
browncyndy@yahoo.com
Areas of expertise: political science, social sciences, humanities, ethics

• Donna Reeder
Reeder Literary Services
Areas of expertise: political science, economics, mathematical economics, natural sciences, social sciences, technology, law, humanities, liberal arts, literary studies, health and medicine

• Dorothy Schepps
dschepps2@gmail.com
Areas of expertise: political science, emergency management, homeland security, community/land use planning, law, economics, cyber terrorism, and cyber security

• Jane Cotnoir
jane.cotnoir@gmail.com
Areas of expertise: Local government management, international crime and terrorism, emergency/disaster management, humanities, social science

• Patience Kramer
patience.kramer@att.net
Areas of expertise: Health and Medicine (CAM and drug policy and analysis), Economics and Business (with a focus on marketing)

• Steve Peter
speter@mac.com
Areas of expertise: LaTeX, Linguistics, economics, mathematics

CONTENT and STRUCTURE
• Manuscripts should be submitted as Word, docx, rtf, or LaTex files
• If your manuscript contains special characters, equations, etc. please make sure to also supply a PDF version as a reference file. This will be used to ensure any formatting issues introduced during the submission process can be corrected accurately.
• Write your article in English
• Use the following document structure:
1. Introduction (titling this section is optional)
2. Subsequent sections which include tables, references to figures and figure captions.
3. Appendices (if any).
4. References - Include a proper bibliography following the guidelines in the References section below.
5. For typesetting purposes, please upload figures as separate image files, as well as embedded in-text to facilitate the review process.. Please see the "Tables, Figures, and Graphs" section below for more detailed instructions regarding figure submission.

BOOK REVIEWS
• Book reviews must start with the citation of the book at the top of the first page.

LaTeX TEMPLATE
For authors working with LaTeX files, please see the related files and documentation at http://www.degruyter.com/staticfiles/pdfs/DeGruyter_LaTeX_template_package.zip, including a template for author use and instructions for working with the files.

IMPORTANT: ScholarOne will sometimes not accept PDFs generated directly from LaTeX files.  If you encounter this error, please ignore the “wait 20 minutes” message and take the following steps:
1) Open the PDF version of the manuscript
2) File>Save As>PDF
3) Ensure the File Type is Adobe PDF
4) Upload the new version of the PDF to ScholarOne
If these errors persist, please contact ScholarOne-Support@degruyter.com and someone will assist you as soon as possible.

FONTS
• Only use Unicode fonts (e.g. Times New Roman, Arial)

COLORED TEXT
• Set the font color to black for the majority of the text. De Gruyter encourages authors to take advantage of the ability to use color in the production of figures, maps, images, and graphs. However, you need to appreciate that this will cause some of your readers problems when they print the document on a black and white printer. For this reason, you are advised to avoid the use of colors in situations where their translation to black and white would render the material illegible or incomprehensible.

EMPHASIZED TEXT, TITLES, and FOREIGN TERMS
• To indicate text you wish to emphasize, use italics rather than underlining. The use of color to emphasize text is discouraged.
• Foreign terms should be set in italics rather than underlined.
• Titles of books, movies, etc., should be set in italics rather than underlined.
Abbreviations
The use of abbreviations and acronyms is permitted provided they are defined the first time they are used.

HEADINGS
Headings (e.g., title of sections) should be distinguished from the main body text:
• Clearly indicate the heading hierarchy.
• Be consistent in whether or not you use headline case, or you capitalize the first word and leave the rest in lower-case.

FOOTNOTES
• Footnotes must appear at the bottom of the page on which they are referenced rather than at the end of the paper.
• Excessively long footnotes are better handled in an appendix.

TABLES, FIGURES & GRAPHS
• General requirements: All illustrations must be of reproduction-ready quality and in EPS, TIF, or JPG format. They will be reduced in size to fit, whenever possible, the width of a single column. Lettering of all figures within the article should be uniform in style (preferably a sans serif typeface like Helvetica) and of sufficient size (ca. 8 pt.).Uppercase letters A, B, C, etc. should be used to identify parts of multi-part figures. Cite all figures in the text in numerical order. Indicate the approximate placement of each figure. Do not embed figures within the text body of the manuscript; submit figures in separate files. Only figures (graphs, line drawings, photographs, etc) should be labeled as ‘figures’, not tables or equations.
• Halftone figures (grayscale and color) should have a minimum resolution of 300 dpi and be of good contrast. Authors are welcome to submit color illustrations. De Gruyter is happy to offer color text and images in color free of charge to the author.
• Line drawings must be of reproduction-ready quality. Please note that faint shading may be lost upon reproduction. When drawing bar graphs, use patterning instead of grey scales. Lettering of all figures should be uniform in style. A resolution of 1200 dpi is recommended.
• Figure legends: Provide a short descriptive title and a legend to make each figure self-explanatory on separate pages. Explain all symbols used in the figures. Remember to use the same abbreviations as in the text body.
• Permissions: It is the authors’ responsibility to obtain permission to reproduce original or modified material that has been previously published. Any permissions fees are the responsibility of the author(s).
• Offprints: The electronic files of typeset articles in Adobe Acrobat PDF format are provided free of charge; corresponding authors receive notification that their article has been published online. Paper offprints can be ordered in addition; an offprint order form will accompany the page proofs and should be completed and returned with the corrected proofs immediately.
• For typesetting purposes, please upload figures as separate image files as well as embedded in-text to facilitate the review process. Please see the "Tables, Figures, and Graphs" section below for more detailed instructions regarding figure submission.
• Number tables consecutively using Arabic numerals. Tables should appear in the document near where they are referenced in the text. Provide a short descriptive title, column headings, and (if necessary) footnotes to make each table self-explanatory. Refer to tables in the text as Table 1, 2 etc. Use Table 1, etc. in the table legends.
• Tables must not be displayed as images.

MATHEMATICS and EQUATIONS
• Roman letters used in mathematical expressions as variables must be italicized. Roman letters used as part of multi-letter function names should not be italicized. Subscripts and superscripts must be a smaller font size than the main text.
• Type short mathematical expressions inline.
• Longer expressions must appear as display math, as must expressions using many different levels (e.g., such as fractions).
• For word-processed (.doc, .rtf, etc.), please ensure that Equations are typed or created with a plug-in, such as Word Formula Editor or MathType. Mathematical expressions must not be displayed as images.
• Important definitions or concepts can also be set off as display math.
• Number equations later referenced in the text sequentially.
• Insert a blank line before and after each equation.
• Number equations later referenced in the text on the right.
• When proofing your document, pay particular attention to the rendering of the mathematics, especially symbols and notation drawn from other-than-standard fonts.

REFERENCES
If using LaTeX, please use the reference tool addon. If word-processed, please use the Vancouver reference style.