About Physics in Medicine & Biology

The novel and impactful development and application of theoretical, computational and experimental physics to medicine, physiology and biology. Main topics covered are:

• therapy physics (including ionizing and non-ionizing radiation)
• biomedical imaging (e.g. x-ray, magnetic resonance, ultrasound, optical and nuclear imaging)
• image-guided interventions
• image reconstruction and analysis (including kinetic modelling)
• artificial intelligence in biomedical physics and analysis
• nanoparticles in imaging and therapy
• radiobiology
• radiation protection and patient dose monitoring
• radiation dosimetry
• physics of biology, human health and disease

In addition to these well-established topics, we also strongly encourage authors to consider PMB for submission of manuscripts addressing new emerging areas not yet covered by the journal, as long as they align with its main mission to promote novel and impactful applications of rigorous, scientific physical methods to medicine, physiology and biology. Papers on physics but with no obvious medical or biological applications, or papers which are predominantly clinical or biological in their approach are not suitable for consideration.

• Rigorous and fair peer review: peer review is administered by the in-house editorial office with direct support from the Editorial Board. We aim for two reviewer reports on every article, ensuring quality and fairness.
• Fast: we are committed to providing you with a quick, professional service to ensure rapid first decision, acceptance and publication. We make a first decision on papers in an average of 35 days and accept articles in under 120 days. Once accepted, your article will be accessible to readers within 24 hours and will include a citable DOI.
• Transfer opportunities: as well as accepting direct submissions, the journal also offers you a quick and easy solution to transfer your manuscript from another IOP Publishing journal if it does not fit that journal’s scope or significance criteria. Articles are transferred along with peer review reports to save time and avoid duplication of work for reviewers.
• International Editorial Board: scientific leadership for Physics in Medicine & Biology is provided by an Editorial board of prominent researchers, with a diverse scientific and geographical distribution.
• Society owned: published by IOP Publishing, on behalf of IPEM, both of which are not-for-profit companies. Revenue generated by the journal is used by both organisations (IOP and IPEM) to promote and advance the understanding and dissemination of science in the UK and across the World.
• Article flexibility: there are no page limits or forced requirements for formatting submissions, and we publish any supplementary data at no extra charge. Let us know if you have any other requirements and we will be happy to help.

• Research Papers: reports of original scientific research, techniques and applications. Papers should not be more than 10 000 words long (excluding the abstract, figure captions and references) and should not comprise more than 12 figures.
• Letters: outstanding concise articles reporting important, timely new developments; not normally more than 3000 words (four journal pages). Letters should be deserving of priority review, and you are required to upload a justification statement along with your submission.
• Topical reviews: intended to summarize accepted practice and report on recent progress in selected areas, often invited by the Editorial Board. A topical review should discuss the current state of research in the field, and also include a general overview and an introduction with enough basic information to make the article interesting and informative for non-specialist scientists. Typically 12 000–18 000 words in length.
• Special issue papers: articles which will form a special collection of papers on a specific theme.
• Viewpoints: invited commentary articles, typically 1000 words, serving to either highlight the significance, impact and wider implications of recent research appearing in PMB, or to comment on significant research developments.
• Notes: brief descriptions of a single piece of apparatus or a technique developed for a specific purpose, a small but important experimental or theoretical point or a novel solution to a commonly encountered problem in medical physics; not normally more than 3500 words (six journal pages).
• Comments and replies: comments on, or criticisms of, work previously published in this journal. The original authors will be invited to submit a reply. Not normally more than 1800 words (three journal pages).

Structured abstracts

Physics in Medicine & Biology (PMB) has a structured format for abstracts of papers presenting new research findings. The abstract of your paper must be split into the following headings:

• Objective
• Approach
• Main results
• Significance

Papers rejected by other journals

In cases where authors genuinely think that their previously-rejected work deserves a second chance with a different journal, we request that the authors act on the original reviewers’ comments before submitting to PMB. Reviewers who have already seen a paper (for a different journal) will not be sympathetic if they find that their previous comments have been ignored.

The Editorial Board of PMB are also willing to consider articles submitted to highly regarded general scientific journals that have not been accepted for publication due to limited broad impact or priority. These articles may receive expedited processing and interested authors should ensure they meet the requirements set out in the article transfer policy from high impact journals.

NIH-funded papers in PubMed Central

NIH Public Access Policy requires that our North American authors make all papers arising from research funded by the NIH publicly available in PubMed Central no later than 12 months after online publication in the journal.

As part of IOP Publishing’s commitment to ensure that publishing in our journals is as simple and easy as possible, we will upload the final, accepted manuscripts for NIH-funded papers to PubMed Central automatically, unless an author requests otherwise. More information on this process can be found on our Publishing Support website.

Resources for reviewers

To help reviewers, the PMB Editorial Board has developed a series of resources focussed on peer review that we hope you will find useful.

We work with our authors to help make their work as easy to discover as possible. Physics in Medicine & Biology is currently included in the following abstracting and discovery services:

• ISI (Science Citation Index®, SciSearch®, ISI Alerting Services, Current Contents®/Physical, Chemical and Earth Sciences)
• PubMed/MEDLINE
• Scopus
• Inspec
• BIOSIS Previews®/Biological Abstracts®
• Chemical Abstracts Service
• Compendex
• EMBASE/Excerpta Medica
• INIS Atomindex (International Nuclear Information System)
• Meta
• NASA Astrophysics Data System
• PASCAL Database
• Sociedad Iberoamericano de Información Científica (SIIC)
• VINITI Abstracts Journal (Referativnyi Zhurnal)