CFP: JBI Special Issue on Standards in Practice

*** Apologies for multiple postings ***
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*CALL FOR PAPERS*
Journal of Biomedical Informatics
Special Issue on Standards in Practice
http://www.elsevier.com/locate/yjbin

*Letter of Intent Due (optional): April 15, 2011*
*Submission Deadline: August 1, 2011*

*"Translating Standards into Practice: Experiences and Lessons Learned in
Biomedicine and Health Care"*

The increased interest and need for systematic approaches to organize,
manage, and share data in biomedicine and health care has underscored the
importance of standards. There is accordingly a need for detailed,
experience-based discussions pertaining to the adoption and implementation
of various types of standards, whether for knowledge representation and
management, data integration and exchange, semantic interoperability, or
other uses.

The goal of this special issue of the Journal of Biomedical Informatics is
to provide a forum for describing advanced research and development in
translating standards into practice. Papers submitted to the special issue
should provide comprehensive descriptions of the methodologies employed and
challenges encountered during the process of implementing a specific
standard or set of standards in an operational setting. These experiences
and lessons learned should aim to provide readers with a framework that can
be generalized for adoption of standards in their settings. In addition to
original research papers, one or more methodological review papers will be
considered and submissions in this category are encouraged.

This special issue will not accept submissions that describe the development
of new standards. Given the breadth of existing standards and related
activities across domains from vocabularies (e.g., ICD, CPT, SNOMED CT,
LOINC, RxNorm, and GO) to information models (e.g., HL7 RIM and CDA, and
MIAME) to standards development organizations (e.g., ASTM, HL7, CEN, ISO,
DICOM, NCPDP, IHE, IHTSDO, HITSP, CDISC, and GSC), papers may focus on a
particular existing standard or cover a set of related standards.

Possible topics for research papers include, but are not limited to:
* Describing methods that have enabled existing standards to be implemented
and/or evaluated for applications such as Electronic Health Records, Data
Warehouses, Health Information Exchange, Decision Support, Quality
Reporting, or Clinical Research (using vendor based or homegrown solutions);
* Discussing methods that have enabled existing standards to be used for
improving data capture, integration, and/or sharing in various contexts
(e.g., Biology, Imaging, Medicine, Nursing, Public Health, Translational
Science, and Education); or,
* Providing methodological details (including empirical assessments) for
specific customizations of standards to meet local, regional, national, or
international needs (e.g., clinical and regulatory).

Potential methodological review topics may include:
* Comprehensive surveys of relevant standards to meet a particular
biomedical or health care need;
* Comparing and contrasting specific related standards; or,
* Providing an overview of reference resources for standards in biomedicine
and health care.

*Important Dates:*
April 15, 2011 Letter of Intent Due (optional)
August 1, 2011 Submission Deadline

*Peer-Review Process:*
All submitted papers will go through a rigorous peer-review process (with at
least two reviewers) that will include both programmatic relevance as well
as scientific quality. The acceptance process will focus on those papers
that address innovative methods for adopting and implementing standards in
biomedicine and health care. All submissions should follow the guidelines
for authors available at the Journal of Biomedical Informatics Web site (
http://www.elsevier.com/locate/yjbin). JBI's editorial policy is also
outlined on that page and will be strictly followed by special issue
reviewers.

*Submission Process:*
Optional letters of intent should be sent to liz.chen@uvm.edu by April 15th,
2011. This will assist in assessing the number of likely submissions and in
planning for the review process when papers are submitted. Authors must
submit their papers via the online Elsevier Editorial System (EES) at
http://ees.elsevier.com/jbi, no later than August 1st, 2011. Authors should
register and upload their text, tables, and figures as well as subsequent
revisions through this Web site, using the "Standards in Practice" paper
category. Potential authors may contact the Publishing Services Coordinator
in the journal's editorial office (jbi@elsevier.com) if questions arise
during the submission process.

*Guest Editors:*
Elizabeth S. Chen (University of Vermont)
Genevieve B. Melton (University of Minnesota)
Indra Neil Sarkar (University of Vermont)