Submission. Manuscripts should be submitted by e-mail
(bmsce@sismec.info) or on-line using the authors’ gateway (http://www.bmscej.com). The electronic version must be accompanied with a signed copyright transfer statement (see “Copyright” below). An e-mail address must be included for notification of receipt of manuscript. If the manuscript cannot be submitted on-line, please contact the Editorial Assistant of the Journal for further instructions.
All submitted manuscripts must be accompanied by a cover letter. This letter should disclose any financial interests the authors have in relation to the work, or any financial support provided by companies toward the completion of the work. The letter should also indicate whether the manuscript has been presented before to any professional association (both medical and statistical) and the place and year of presentation. Manuscripts submitted without this letter will not be reviewed.
Written permission from both senior author and publisher must be provided to the Editor in order to re-publish tables or illustrations copyrighted elsewhere. Submit this permission with the manuscript.
Papers are scheduled for publication in chronological order of acceptance, but manuscripts received in improper form require longer production time. Manuscripts are edited in accordance with the AMA Manual of Style, 9th edition (1998), and with the Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals: Writing and Editing for Biomedical Publications (updated Nov 2003; http://www.icmje.org).

Code of Ethics. If a study has involved any contact with human subjects or if it is otherwise appropriate, authors should state in their Materials and Methods section that their institution's review board has approved the study proposal, as well as the manner in which informed consent was obtained from subjects (if applicable). Authors should follow the principles outlined in the Declaration of Helsinki (52nd World Medical Assembly, World Medical Association: Ethical Principles for Medical Research Involving Human Subjects, Edinburgh, Scotland, October 2000).

File types. Preferred formats for the text and tables of your manuscript are .doc, .rtf, .ppt, .xls; LaTeX files may be submitted provided that an .eps or .pdf file is supplied in addition to the source files. Figures may be provided in .tiff or .eps format. Submit text, tables, and figure legends as a single file. Do not include illustrations in this file.

Manuscripts. Manuscripts must be submitted with margins of at least 25 mm (1 inch), double-spaced throughout, including abstract, references, tables, and legends, on A4 format sheets (21¥29.7 cm). Use a type size of 12 points. Begin each component on a new page in the following sequence: title page, abstract, text, acknowledgments, references, tables, and figure legends. Number pages consecutively in the upper right corner, beginning with the title page.
The author is responsible for all statements in the paper, as approved on the copyedited galley proofs. Alterations made by the author after the paper has been typeset are charged to the author.

Word count. When a manuscript is submitted, authors must provide a word count for both the abstract and the text. An abstract should not exceed 200 words. The maximum length of an article, exclusive of tables, figures, references, and abstract, should be 4,000 words. Editors can request that authors shorten their papers further. Lengthy, encyclopedic tables should be avoided.

General style. Spelling should follow the Oxford Dictionary.

Abbreviations. Use standard abbreviations given in the Uniform Requirements. Express all measurements in metric terms; if original measurements were made in another system, include these parenthetically. At its first appearance in the abstract and text, an abbreviated term should be written out in full, with the abbreviation in parentheses immediately following. Full stops should be used in lower case abbreviations (e.g., i.e.) but not for capitals (SAS, ANOVA). Abbreviations may be used in tables and figures if they are defined in the table footnotes and figure legends. Avoid excessive use of abbreviations solely to limit the word count.

Footnotes to text. Do not use footnotes to the text. Incorporate such material into the text (e.g. in parentheses).

Mathematical style. All vectors and matrices should be shown in bold type. Numbers below 10 should be written out in the text unless used in conjunction with units (e.g. three patients, 4 cm). Full points (not commas) should be used for decimals. For numbers less than one, a nought should be inserted before the decimal point. Use spaces (not commas) within numbers (e.g. 10 000, 0.125 275).
Equations can appear within the text or displayed. Whenever possible, mathematical equations should be written on a single line, as a / (a + b) and exp(x). With proper use of braces, brackets, parentheses, and exponents, even complicated expressions can be put into this form. However, any mathematical expression that contains a character taller than a line of type should be displayed and numbered as an equation. When referring to an equation in the text, use “equation 6” or “expression 6”, with a lowercase “e”. When preparing math, use italic type for variables and single letters, bold type for vectors, and regular type for short words such as “exp” or “lim”. Insert a space before and after any mathematical sign or symbol.
For multiplication, use a times sign in preference to an asterisk or centered dot.

Statistical notation. Note style for probability: p < 0.01, with a lowercase letter p. Avoid reporting an excessive number of digits beyond the decimal for estimates, especially when the estimate has a wide confidence interval. If p values are given, they should be reported to at most two digits beyond any leading zeros. They may alternatively be reported as less than some specified value (e.g., p < 0.05 or p < 0.001). Indicate whether p values are one sided or two sided.
To report means, standard deviations, and standard errors, use the following format: “mean (SD)” and “mean (SE)”. Do not use “±”.
In the text, all confidence intervals are expressed by using a colon and with a comma instead of a dash between values, for example, (95 percent confidence interval: 1.20, 1.90). In tables, place confidence intervals in a separate column without parentheses, for example, 1.20, 1.90.

Title page. Must include 1) a running title, worded to facilitate indexing; 2) an abbreviated form of the title to be used as a running head of not more than 50 letters and spaces; 3) authors’ full names (no initials of the first name) and no more than two academic degrees per author; 4) department(s) and institution(s) to which the work is attributed, with authors’ present affiliations and addresses, if different, separately noted; 5) statement of grant or other support; 6) name and address of author to whom reprint requests should be sent; 7) name, address, telephone and fax numbers, and e-mail address of corresponding author.

Summary. Must be less than 200 words and structured to include objectives, methods, results, and conclusions.

Key Words. Chosen as far as possible from both the National Library of Medicine medical subject headings and the Current Index of Statistics Keywords, are listed after the abstract. Their number should be between 3 and 6.

References. Double-spaced, are numbered consecutively in the order in which they are cited in the text. Reference numbers in the text are full-sized Arabic numerals in parentheses within the sentence. For three or more consecutive references cited all at once, use, for example, (1-4). Format other references as (4, 5, 12), with spaces between the reference numbers. Primary references should be used whenever possible. Authors are asked to limit the number of references cited to a maximum of 25 (or 50 in the case of review article). Use the style of references given in the Uniform Requirements or a current issue of the BioMedical Statistics and Clinical Epidemiology. Include the names of all authors and the inclusive page numbers of an article. The titles of journals should be abbreviated according to the List of Journals Indexed in Index Medicus (published by the National Library of Medicine). If a manuscript accepted but not yet published is included in the reference list, give the accepting journal’s name, followed by “in press”. Manuscripts still in review or not yet accepted formally should be cited within the text as “unpublished observations”. A reference to a personal communication is also placed in the text, accompanied by a date (year). Papers presented at scholarly meetings but not published are considered “unpublished observations”. Papers published only in abstract form are listed as references with “[Abstract]” after the title.
For articles printed in a language other than English, indicate the language in parentheses after the article title.

Tables. Should be on separate pages, numbered consecutively using Arabic numerals and headed by a concise title. Put explanatory matter in footnotes. Tables are adjuncts to the text and should not repeat material presented therein.

Illustrations. Should be in TIFF, EPS, JPEG, or PSD formats. Do not submit illustrations in Powerpoint. Do not submit native application formats. Journal-quality reproduction will require grayscale and color files at resolutions of at least 300 dpi. Bitmapped line art should be submitted at resolutions of at least 600 dpi. (These resolutions refer to the output size of the file.) Multi-part illustrations should be labeled (A, B, etc). Put legends (detailed explanations) to the photographs on a separate page in the manuscript. Number illustrations and figures using Arabic numerals sequentially in order of appearance. Color illustrations are accepted; cost estimates for color separations and printing are provided on an individual basis. Illustrations should enhance, not repeat, material presented in the manuscript and should be kept to a minimum.