TBioCAS Manuscript Submission Guide

TBioCAS publishes peer-reviewed manuscripts reporting original and transformative research at the intersection between the life sciences and circuits and systems engineering disciplines. TBioCAS particularly welcomes manuscripts covering the latest state-of-the-art advances or critical reviews of emerging directions in circuits and systems, broadly defined, with demonstrated biomedical applications in laboratory and/or clinical settings.  TBioCAS equally encourages contributions in other areas where these arise from direct synergy between circuits and systems and engineering in medicine and biology, such as circuits inspired by biology, or network approaches to systems biology.

Submissions without a demonstrated synergy between medicine/biology and circuits/systems are not appropriate to the scope of TBioCAS.  A sufficient but not necessary condition for a submission to be considered appropriate for peer review is whether it follows and references at least one existing line of contributions in TBioCAS, although we recognize that valuable and pertinent pioneering contributions may be outside of the domain currently represented in TBioCAS.  We strongly advise authors to carefully review the literature including past and present issues of TBioCAS (see below). All submitted manuscripts that fit the scope of TBioCAS are thoroughly reviewed by experts in the field invited by a reputed and committed editorial team. TBioCAS strives to make a first decision within 60 days of submission, and a final decision within 120 days of the original submission.  Fully formatted electronic versions of accepted manuscripts are immediately posted on-line and indexed through IEEExplore (“Early Access”) prior to publication in print.

A. Submission of a Paper:

All papers must be submitted electronically in PDF format:

  1.  Go to the TBioCAS IEEE Author Portal.

  2. You need to register if you are not already registered in the authors’ database. In this case, you will be asked to fill out a form with your name, address, e-mail address, etc. You will also be asked to provide a password.

  3. Follow the paper submission instructions on the web-page and submit your manuscript as a single PDF file.

  4. An acknowledgement e-mail will automatically be issued upon successful submission.

For Review Papers: Before writing a review paper, authors are asked to submit a proposal to the EiC office first. The EiC will then provide feedback before the authors actually submit the paper.

B. ORCID:

All IEEE journals require an Open Researcher and Contributor ID (ORCID) for all authors.  ORCIDs enable accurate attribution and improved discoverability of an author’s published work.  The author will need a registered ORCID in order to submit a manuscript or review a proof in this journal.

Follow these steps to link a ScholarOne account to a registered ORCID:

  1. Login to ScholarOne and click on your name in the top right corner of the screen.

  2. Click E-mail / Name in the dropdown menu.

  3. In the ORCID section at the top of the page, click the appropriate link to either register for a new ORCID or associate the account with an existing ORCID.

  4. A new page will open to create and/or validate your ORCID.  Once the validation is complete, the new page will close and you will return to ScholarOne.

  5. Save the changes to your ScholarOne user account.

  6. Authors who do not have an ORCID in their ScholarOne user account will be prompted to provide one during submission.

C. Style for Submission of Manuscript:

Manuscripts must follow the standard single-spaced, double-column IEEE TRANSACTIONS format, as specified here. Also press below button to find the style files and templates to guide the typesetting of the manuscript for submission.

Template for the Manuscript 

In addition:

  1. Provide an informative 100 to 250 word abstract, at the head of the manuscript, to appear with the paper; at least five keywords or index terms.

  2. Provide a footnote with affiliations of authors, including e-mail addresses, and acknowledgments of any financial support (see further instructions on disclosure of financial support below).

  3. Embed and properly reference all figures and tables in the manuscript.  Where possible, use vector graphics rather than pixel graphics for figures.

  4. If appropriate, provide an “Acknowledgments” section after the conclusion.  All personal financial and other interests by the authors must be acknowledged (see further instructions on disclosure of financial interest below).

  5. Make adequate and up-to-date reference to the literature, including latest TBCAS and other IEEE articles where pertinent.  All past and “Early Access” IEEE articles are fully searchable and accessible on-line through IEEExplore. References should appear in a separate bibliography at the end of the paper, and should be complete in IEEE style with items referred to by numerals in square brackets, e.g., [12].

  6. Manuscript Length: Papers published in TBCAS are meant to be no more than 9 pages in length in the two-column TRANSACTIONS format. A mandatory charge of $125 applies for each additional page.

  7. The TBioCAS IEEE Author Portal provides further instructions about file formats and submission procedures.

D. Relationship to conference and prior publications:

Papers submitted to TBCAS are expected to contain new results, ideas, or innovations that advance significantly the state-of-the-art. Submission is taken to manifest the fact that the contribution has not been submitted, accepted, published, or copyrighted elsewhere, with the exception of a previous conference publication under the following conditions.  TBCAS will consider expanded versions of previously published IEEE conference publications, provided the manuscripts contain at least 30% substantive new material.  Any figures which are copied from or similar to previous figures must make explicit reference to the conference publication with a citation in the figure caption. This policy applies to non-IEEE-published conference publications as well, with the additional requirement that the authors must secure all copyright permissions for duplicate figures.  If a figure is modified rather than duplicated, the original publication must be cited in the caption as “modified from …”

E. Disclosure of financial support and author and project-related conflicts of interest:

We require the full disclosure of financial support for the project as well as any financial and personal relationships of the author that could even create the appearance of bias in the published work. The following must appear In the acknowledgments section of the paper.

  1. The acknowledgments section of the author footnote (see above) must disclose any agency or individual that provided financial support for the work, regardless of source. Examples include but are not limited to universities, governmental funding agencies, private foundations, and public and private companies.

  2. The “Acknowledgments” section after the conclusion (see above) must disclose any personal or financial or employment relationship between any author and the sources of financial support for the work. These requirements include financial interests of the author in any company that may be licensing, patenting, or using results from the published work at the time of or prior to the date of manuscript acceptance.

  3. The editors reserve the right to ask the authors of a study funded by an agency with a proprietary or financial interest in the outcome to include in the acknowledgments a statement regarding the integrity of the work. An example statement is “The authors had full access to all of the data, devices, and materials used in this study and take complete responsibility for the integrity of the data and the accuracy of the data analysis and interpretation of outcomes.”

F. Guidelines for Submission of Graphics:

IEEE accepts PS, EPS, PDF, PNG, or TIF formats for graphics. Most graphics are published at one column width (3.5 inches or 21 picas wide) or two column width (7.16 inches or 43 picas wide).

IEEE accepts audio multimedia files in AIFF, AU, MIDI, MOV, MP3, RA, and WAV format. Video multimedia files may be in ASF, WMA, AVI, GIF, MPEG, or MOV format. Datasets are typically provided in compressed format in TAR.GZ, TAR.Z, HQX, SIT, or ZIP format.

For more information, please consult here.

G. Protection of human and animal subjects:

Internationally recognized conventions exist for the protection of human subjects and standards for animal research:

  1.  If the published work utilizes human subjects, authors must indicate whether the procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation (institutional and national) and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2000. If doubt exists whether the research was conducted in accordance with the Helsinki Declaration, the authors must explain the rationale for their approach, and demonstrate that an appropriate institutional review body explicitly approved the doubtful aspects of the study.

  2. If the published work utilizes animal subjects (including animal sources for in vitro research), authors must indicate whether the institutional and national guides for the care and use of laboratory animals was followed. The institutional committees that provide such oversight and/or the published guidelines must be acknowledged.

H. Page Charges:

After a manuscript has been accepted for publication, the author’s institution will be approached with a request to pay a charge of $110 per page to cover part of the cost of publication. If the page charge is honored, the author will receive 100 free reprints (without covers). If the voluntary page charge is not honored, IEEE will charge a mandatory page charge of $125 per page for each page in excess of 9 pages (including references and biographies). Color photos judged to be essential to demonstrate the results of a paper may be printed in color, but will incur extra cost on the author. Detailed instructions will accompany the page proofs.

I. Copyright:

It is the policy of the IEEE to own the copyright to the technical contributions it publishes. To comply with IEEE copyright policy, authors are required to sign an IEEE Copyright Form before publication. Authors will automatically be redirected to the eCF (electronic Copyright Form) after they have submitted the final files. The eCF makes signing a publishing agreement easy. The form will determine which agreement meets your needs and enable you to complete it on-screen.

J. Electronic Form of Final Manuscript:

For the final printed production of the manuscript, the authors will need to submit source files of the manuscript as explained on the submission web-page. Make sure your files are complete including: abstract, text, references, footnotes, biographies, photos and figure captions. The preferred main formats are TeX or LaTeX. LaTeX style files can be obtained here.

K. Publication of Final Materials:

The IEEE author digital toolbox contains tools and information to assist with article preparation and submission, the article proof review process, and ordering reprints.

L. Open Access Option:

This publication is a hybrid journal, allowing either Traditional manuscript submission or Open Access (author-pays OA) manuscript submission. Upon submission, if you choose to have your manuscript be an Open Access article, you commit to pay the OA fees as specified in Section N below (discounts may apply), if your manuscript is accepted for publication in order to enable unrestricted public access. Any other application charges (such as over-length page charge and/or charge for the use of color in the print format) will be billed separately once the manuscript formatting is complete but prior to the publication. If you would like your manuscript to be a Traditional submission, your article will be available to qualified subscribers and purchasers via IEEE Xplore. No OA payment is required for Traditional submission.

M. Special Issues:

Special issues of this TRANSACTIONS may be proposed to the Editor-in-Chief by any individual when a new, exciting, and/or timely subject area is identified.

N. Article Processing Charges (APCs):

The Article Processing Charges (APCs) only apply to those manuscripts for which the authors have chosen to publish as open access papers and are as follows:

  • APC for articles submitted in 2024: $2,495
  • APC for articles submitted in 2025: $2,645

The following discounts apply:

  • IEEE Members receive a 5% discount
  • IEEE Society Members receive a 20% discount
  • Discounts cannot be combined
  • Discounts do not apply to undergraduate and graduate students
  • Information about IEEE's Low and Lower-middle Income Country Program is available

Some institutions offer assistance for open access funding. Check our institutional partners list to see if yours is one.

Submit a Manuscript