Submissions

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About

The Journal of the Society for Clinical Data Management, is the society’s open access, peer-reviewed publication. The mission of JSCDM is to promote and publish scholarly work with direct relevance to the practice of Informatics and Data Science in clinical research. Articles of interest include reports of original research, review articles, design manuscripts, case studies, demonstration projects, education and professional development, and topic briefs including tutorials and perspectives.  

JSCDM fills a gap in the biomedical literature by publishing the science and operations behind data collection and use in clinical studies. The journal seeks articles describing the development, application, evaluation and improvement of methods and tools to be applied in the design, conduct and reporting of and sharing data and resources from clinical studies. 

The primary audience for JSCDM is the large community of professionals in industry and academe collecting, managing and using data in clinical studies. Additional readers include professionals in the broader clinical research community, those who are involved in the planning and conduct of clinical research including regulatory professionals, research sponsors, care providers and the general public, as well as researchers developing or evaluating methods for data handling and use in all stages of the clinical study lifecycle. JSCDM complies with International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICJME) recommendations to ensure rigorously produced content for readers. 

For more information, contact the JSCDM Chief Editor, Claudine Moore, CCDM or the Editorial Coordinator, Sara Gillespie, at the JSCDM Editorial Office: info@scdm.org

North America Office

Society for Clinical Data Management

1660 International Drive | Suite 600

McLean, VA 22102, USA

Tel:  +1-703-506-3260

Focus and Scope

Articles submitted to JSCDM should be scholarly and at the same time relevant to the practice, i.e., the management or use of data in the design, conduct or reporting of clinical studies. Review will be undertaken for articles conforming to a JSCDM article type, adhering to these submission guidelines, written in well-formed English grammar, and non-commercial in nature. Ultimately, readers must be able to make their own judgments regarding the applicability and quality of published information. It is therefore the policy of JSCDM that the methods employed to arrive at assertions in published work, the contributors to published work, and the relevant relationships and activities of all participants in the peer-review and publication process be completely and clearly articulated. 

JSCDM articles generally vary from 2 to 6 pages (~1000–4,000 words) in length depending upon the article type. Word counts exclude references, acknowledgements, conflict of interest statements, contributorship statements, funding statements, and the author’s affiliations. Authors planning to submit a longer article, should contact the editorial office. Length allowances can be made for articles of particular substance or relevance to the profession. Manuscripts may, where appropriate, include an acknowledgements section recognizing support not rising to the level of intellectual contribution required of authorship. 

JSCDM will consider the following types of articles. Guidelines for the content and format of each article type are listed below.

  • Original research 
  • Review articles
  • Design manuscripts
  • Education and professional development articles 
  • Consensus papers
  • Opinion papers
  • Letters to the Editor

The Journal will consider publication of letters to the editor as a mechanism for readers to submit comments, questions, dissenting opinion or criticisms about current events or published articles. Letters that are professional, factual, clearly written, and grammatically correct will be considered for publication. Letters debating or commenting on previously published articles are encouraged and will prompt an invitation from JSCDM to the author of the work subject to the commentary to respond.  Letters to the Editor will be published alongside other JSCDM articles under the “letter” article type but will not carry the peer-reviewed designation.

Submission Checklist

Manuscript Submission Process

All manuscripts to be considered for publication must be submitted through the JSCDM journal website. All accompanying materials are also to be submitted through the Journal Management System. Submissions are accepted on a rolling basis. The system will walk submitters through all of the material and information needed to submit a manuscript. Both pdf and MS Word file types are allowed for upload for the main manuscript text. The .jpg, .tif, or .gif file types should be used for high resolution figures. 

As much information as possible is captured as structured data during the submission. For example, manuscript title, authors, author affiliations and emails, Conflict of Interest disclosure, funding acknowledgement, and key words, are carried forward with the article through the review and if accepted, the publication and indexing processes. This rich metadata is published with the article and helps make the article more discoverable in the internet.  Therefore, please have the following information ready at the time of submission.

  1. Article title
  2. Author(s) name (first, MI, surname), degrees and/or nationally recognized professional certification designations
  3. Author ORCID (required for the first author only but recommended for all authors)
  4. Author affiliation with complete mailing address, telephone and fax numbers, and e-mail address
  5. Article Keywords (see the Keywords section for details) 
  6. Be prepared to mark a statement that the article has been read and approved by all authors. This is required for compliance with International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICJME) guidelines.  All authors will receive a confirmation email from the Journal Management System that the article has been submitted and will receive copies of all decision emails.
  7. Corresponding Authors are encouraged to include their social media links such as Linked-in, twitter, etc. We encourage links to published articles.
  8. A Conflict of Interest (COI) statement  is required for all authors. The COI form in the Journal Management System is completed by the corresponding author and requires listing interests of each author relevant to the manuscript, e.g., financial interests, funding or other sponsorship for the work described in the article, affiliation, financial, or intellectual property interest in with products or companies mentioned in the manuscript. Information disclosed on the conflict of interest form in the Journal Management System will be appended to all articles.  
  9. A Release from the corresponding author releasing copyright to SCDM. This form requires that the author has undergone any organizational legal or other review prior to submission for publication.
  10. Authors recommendations for reviewers and their email addresses
  11. The manuscript being submitted for review. The manuscript file must include references and all tables, listings and figures referenced in the text. 
  12. A statement of contributorship for each author. The following list is recommended: study design, study conduct, data collection, data management, data analysis, or contribution to manuscript drafts. Example statements of contributorship include, “John Doe led the study design and provided oversight for study conduct and analysis.”, “Jane Doe led the statistical analysis and contributed to manuscript drafts.” 
  13. Manuscripts reporting work funded directly by a grant, contract or corporate support require disclosure and recognition of the support in a funding statement. Grant or contract numbers are required for manuscripts receiving support from United States Federal funding source and authors are encouraged to follow federal reporting requirements for inclusion of manuscripts in PubMed Central (PMC). 

Supplemental materials including long listings, data collection forms, other study or documentation, or data offered by the authors to be publicly shared with the manuscript should be submitted as separate files. If accepted for publication, these materials will be listed on-line as supplemental material to the manuscript.

Article Keyword Guidelines:

Authors are requested to submit a set of keywords with each article to improve searchability and information retrieval. 

  • Provide between 3 to 6 keywords, inclusive. 
  • Choose keywords that represent the main subject matter of your article. 
  • At least one keyword from the SCDM controlled terminology  should be used. Additional keywords from the broader Biomedical domain from the Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) controlled vocabulary may also be used. 

Copyright Notice

SCDM publishes JSCDM content in an open access manner under a Attribution-Non-Commercial-ShareAlike (CC BY-NC-SA) license. This license lets others remix, adapt, and build upon the work non-commercially, as long as they credit SCDM and the author and license their new creations under the identical terms.  View License Deed| View Legal Code  

Peer Review

JSCDM follows an independent and rigorous external peer review process. Submissions are initially reviewed by the editorial office. Well-written submissions with acceptable disclosures meeting the manuscript preparation guidelines for authors  are assigned by the editorial office to an existing or guest Associate Editor with expertise pertinent to the manuscript. The assigned editorial board member or guest editor manages review of the manuscript. The editor managing the review identifies at least the minimum reviewers required to the article type with scholarly and operational expertise relevant to and sufficient for a rigorous review of the manuscript. The purpose of the review is to assess scholarly rigor and relevance to practice. Reviewers apply standard review rubrics appropriate to the article type and ultimately make recommendations regarding the suitability for publication in JSCDM. The Associate Editor compiles the review results and communicates the review summary, including an acceptance, request for revision or rejection and provide comments to the corresponding author. Editorial decisions are final.

JSCDM reviews are not blinded. Author name, affiliation, contact information, disclosures, acknowledgements, funding statements, and contributorship statements are available to reviewers. This information is not considered in the review rubrics used by reviewers. However, conflict of interest disclosures, acknowledgements, funding and contributorship statements are reviewed prior to peer review for adequacy by the Associate Editor managing the review. 

The identity of reviewers may be disclosed to the authors by the reviewers. All communication regarding submissions, review and publication will occur through the JSCDM journal management system and the Associate Editor managing the review or members of the JSCDM Editorial Office including SCDM staff, copy editors and type-setters.

Licences

The following licences are allowed:

  • CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
    Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use. NonCommercial — You may not use the material for commercial purposes. ShareAlike — If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you must distribute your contributions under the same license as the original.

Publication Fees

There are no costs to the authors for publication in JSCDM. Journal content is provided in an on-line and open access format as a service to the biomedical research community.

Independently from the authors and editorial process, the Society for Clinical Data Management accepts advertising in and sponsorship for JSCDM to off-set the cost of publication. For more information on sponsorship or advertising opportunities in JSCDM or other SCDM publications and events please visit the advertising section of the SCDM website .

Advertising will be considered by SCDM marketing staff and may be linked to relevant content or are displayed at random as agreed between SCDM and the advertiser. Advertisements are posted in specific areas of the Journal website and along-side but separate from the published content. JSCDM Editors are not involved in advertising sales.


Publication Cycle

Accepted articles are published in electronic format on line as soon as the production process is complete. This is called a rolling publication schedule. On a rolling publication schedule, accepted articles are published individually as soon as they have completed the publication process. 

Issues of the journal are compiled quarterly of articles published since the last issue. The publication schedule for quarterly issues is compilation of the issue as close as possible to the last business day of the quarter, e.g., Q1 March 31st, Q2 June 30th, Q3 Sept 30th, and Q4 December 31st.


Sections

Section or article type

Public Submissions

Peer Reviewed

Indexed

Original Research

Review Articles

SCDM Glossary

Design Manuscripts

Education and professional development

Consensus Papers

GCDMP©

Opinion Papers

Letter

SCDM Annual Conference Highlights