Network Medicine is an open access, peer-reviewed journal focused on interdisciplinary approaches to exploiting the power of big data by applying network science and systems thinking to medicine. Network Medicine yields major breakthroughs towards mechanism-based re-definitions of diseases for high-precision diagnostics and treatments, proof-of-concept trials, confirmatory trials, pharmacoepidemiology.
e-ISSN: 2941-251X
Network Medicine is an open access, peer-reviewed journal focused on interdisciplinary approaches to exploiting the power of big data by applying network science and systems thinking to medicine. Network Medicine yields major breakthroughs towards mechanism-based re-definitions of diseases for high-precision diagnostics and treatments.
Network Medicine publishes high quality basic science, translational, and clinical research in the form of original research articles, comprehensive review articles, mini-reviews, rapid communications, brief reports, technology reports, hypothesis articles, perspectives, and letters to the editor. The Journal publishes under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY) license to ensure broad dissemination and participation. All articles submitted to Network Medicine are rapidly reviewed and published online within 2-3 weeks after acceptance. Network Medicine is fully NIH-, HHMI- and Wellcome Trust compliant.
Network Medicine coverage includes:
Audience: Biomedical researchers and cell biologists; multi-omics biotechnology researchers; network scientists; systems biologists; precision medicine (nutrigenomics, pharmacogenomics) scientists; bioinformaticians and computational biologists; clinicians, medical doctors, nurses, healthcare professionals; industry scientists (pharma, diagnostics); regulatory, government and policymakers; scholars in global health, among others.
Network Medicine e-ISSN: 2941-251X
Published by ScienceOpen GmbH, Berlin
Harald H.H.W. Schmidt, MD, PhD, PharmD, Professor of Pharmacology, Chairman Department of Pharmacology and Personalised Medicine, Maastricht University
Jan Baumbach, PhD, Professor and Director of the Institute for Computational Systems Biology, University of Hamburg, Germany
David B. Blumenthal, PhD, Professor of Biomedical Network Science, Department Artificial Intelligence in Biomedical Engineering, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg
Markus List, PhD, Big Data in BioMedicine, Chair of Experimental Bioinformatics, School of Life Sciences, Technical University of Munich, Germany
Albert-Laszlo Barabasi, PhD, Northeastern University, Boston, MA, USA
Joseph Loscalzo, MD, PhD, Harvard University, Boston, MA, USA
Paolo Parini, PhD, Professor/senior physician, Department of Laboratory Medicine, and Department of Medicine, Karolinska Institutet, and International and National Affairs Department, Karolinska University Hospital
Christina Kiel, PhD, Principal Investigator, UCD School of Medicine
Ana Casas, PhD, Jun.-Prof. Dr., Department of Pharmacology & Personalised Medicine, Faculty of Health, Medicine & Life Science, Maastricht University
Martin Schäfer, PhD, Junior group leader, IEO Research Istituto Europeo di Oncologia
Kristina Tammimies, PhD, Principal researcher, Karolinska Institute
Dominik Heider, PhD, Head of Department, Philipps-Universität Marburg
Emre Guney, PhD, CTO, Head of Discovery and Data Science, STALICLA
Silvia Regina Rogatto, PhD, Professor, University of Southern Denmark
Martina Kutmon, PhD, Assistant Professor, Maastricht University
Alejandro Rodríguez González, PhD, Full Professor, Principal Investigator of Medical Data Analytics Laboratory (MEDAL). Centro de Tecnologia Biomedica (CTB) & Escuela Técnica Superior de Ingenieros Informáticos (ETSIINF). Universidad Politécnica de Madrid. Spain.
Kimberly Glass, PhD, Assistant Professor, Channing Division of Network Medicine, Harvard Medical School, Boston MA, USA.
All manuscripts must be submitted online through the "Submit a manuscript" button on this website. First time users will have to register at this site and will need an ORCID ID. Registration is free but mandatory. Registered authors can keep track of their articles after logging into the site. If you experience any problems, please contact info@scienceopen.com.
A manuscript will be reviewed for possible publication with the understanding that it is being submitted to Network Medicine alone at that point in time and has not been published anywhere, simultaneously submitted, or already accepted for publication elsewhere. Manuscripts that have been previously posted as preprints in DrugRxiv, BioRxiv, MedRxiv, arXiv and related preprint repositories will be considered for publication. The journal expects that authors would authorize one of them to correspond with the journal for all matters related to the manuscript. All manuscripts received are duly acknowledged. On submission, editors review all submitted manuscripts initially for suitability. Manuscripts with insufficient originality, serious scientific or technical flaws, or lack of a significant message are rejected before proceeding with formal peer-review.
Manuscripts that have met basic requirements and are within the scope of Network Medicine will be sent to two or more expert reviewers for evaluation. Manuscripts may be returned to the authors for major or minor revision after a first round of peer review.
Manuscripts finally accepted for publication are copy edited for grammar, punctuation, print style, and format and are tagged in XML mark-up language. Page proofs are sent to the corresponding author as PDF for review and approval. The corresponding author is expected to return the corrected proofs within 5-7 working days. Articles will be finally published with a Crossref Digital Object Identifier (DOI) as part of the permanent scientific record. Articles may only be removed through a formal retraction.
Authorship Criteria
Authorship credit should be based only on substantial contributions to each of the three components mentioned below:
Participation solely in the acquisition of funding or the collection of data does not justify authorship. General supervision of the research group is not sufficient for authorship. Each contributor should have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for appropriate portions of the content of the manuscript.
Conflicts of Interest/ Competing Interests
All authors of must disclose any and all conflicts of interest they may have with publication of the manuscript or an institution or product that is mentioned in the manuscript and/or is important to the outcome of the study presented. Authors should also disclose conflict of interest with products that compete with those mentioned in their manuscript.
Manuscript requirements
Manuscripts may be written in any standard program including Word, GoogleDocs and LaTeX. You can find a LaTeX template here. Authors will upload a pdf for peer review. Upon submission of revised manuscripts authors will also be requested to describe the changes made in the Revision Notes section and to submit a pdf version with tracked changes. Only after final acceptance of a manuscript will the author be requested to submit Word or LaTeX files for typesetting.
There are no strict formatting requirements, but all manuscripts should follow the basic structure for reporting scientific research below. The manuscript should be submitted as a pdf file.
Structure
The manuscript should include: Title page (title, authors, affiliations, contact, abstract, keywords (up to 10), conflict of interest statement), acknowledgments (Funder); Main text (introduction, materials and methods, results, discussion, figures with captions, tables with captions), References.
There are no word limits for submissions but manuscripts should be concise and well-written.
Title Page This page should include
Methods section
Describe your experiment in as much detail as required for another researcher to reproduce your results. Use RRIDs (https://www.rrids.org/) to identify your research resources such as strains of organisms or antibodies. If a brand name is cited, supply the manufacturer's name and address (city and state/country).Follow all best practice reporting standards (e.g. the NIH, MDAR, and ARRIVE). If AI or machine learning was used provide an AIMe registry link (https://aime-registry.org). All submissions will undergo a scientific rigor check performed by SciScore( https://www.sciscore.com/) that analyses the methods section for compliance.
Use standardized nomenclature for species-specific gene and protein names (see Genecards, MGI Nomenclature page, HUGO Gene Nomenclature Committee, or equivalent resources).
Data and Code
Refer to the Network Medicine Data Policy. Whenever possible follow the follow the FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable) data principles. You are strongly encouraged make your materials, data, protocols, code and scripts, available to readers in a public repository upon publication with exceptions for legal, ethical or logistical reasons. If you do not have requirements or support to publish data in an institutional or subject specific repository, search the DataCite Repository Finder for appropriate repositories.Whenever possible data should be cited in the references section following the guidelines of the Joint Declaration of Data Citation Principles.
Tables
Figures
References
References should be complete with DOI numbers if possible. The Journal uses the “Vancouver” numbering style and same reference style as PLOS (for those working with Paperpile, Endnote or other reference management systems). Journal name abbreviations should be those found in the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) databases. Examples of the format are listed below.
Source | Format |
Published articles | Aubé J. Drug repurposing and the medicinal chemist. ACS Med Chem Lett. 2012;3: 442–444. doi:10.1021/ml300114c
Stalidzans E, Zanin M, Tieri P, et al. Mechanistic modeling and multiscale applications for precision medicine: Theory and practice. Network and Systems Medicine. 2020;3: 36–56. doi:10.1089/nsm.2020.0002
|
Books | Cavalla D. Drug repurposing. London: Royal Society of Chemistry; 2022. doi:10.1039/9781839163401
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Book chapters | Avram S, Curpan R, Oprea TI. Cheminformatics data mining and modeling for drug repurposing. In: Cavalla D, editor. Drug repurposing. London: Royal Society of Chemistry; 2022. pp. 129-146. doi:10.1039/9781839163401-00129
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Deposited articles (preprints, e-prints, or arXiv) | Pouromran F, Lin Y, Kamarthi S. Automatic pain recognition from Blood Volume Pulse (BVP) signal using machine learning techniques. arXiv:2303.10607 [Preprint]. 2023 [cited 2023 Feb 3]. doi:10.48550/arXiv.2303.10607 |
New media (blogs, web sites, or other written works) | Jasini K. Introducing the Drug Repurposing Research Collection by REPO4EU. 2023 Jan 24 [cited 24 March 2023]. In: ScienceOpen Blogs [Internet]. Berlin: ScienceOpen 2013. Available from: https://blog.scienceopen.com/2023/01/introducing-the-drug-repurposing-research-collection-by-repo4eu/ |
Masters' theses or doctoral dissertations | Sharma J. Drug repurposing & adverse event prediction through EHR knowledge graph completion. Master Thesis, Universität Freiburg. 2022. Available from: https://publica.fraunhofer.de/handle/publica/418000
Croset S. Drug repositioning and indication discovery using description logics. PhD Thesis, University of Cambridge. 2014. doi:10.17863/CAM.15985
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Databases and repositories (Figshare, arXiv) | Melamed R. Drug Indication Predictions; 2023 [cited 2023 Feb 3]. Database: figshare [Internet]. doi:10.6084/m9.figshare.21926400.v1
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Submission of a revised manuscript
The revised version of the manuscript should be submitted online in a manner similar to that used for submission of the manuscript for the first time. When submitting a revised manuscript, contributors are requested to include a point by point response to the reviewer comments and describe the changes made. In addition, they are expected to mark the changes as underlined or colored text in the article and submit this “Tracked changes” version along with their revised manuscript.
Publication schedule
The journal publishes articles on its website immediately on acceptance and follows a continuous publishing schedule.
Articles will be published Open Access under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC-BY 4.0 License) which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided that the work is properly cited.
This journal Network Medicine is generously funded through the European Project REPO4EU and there are currently no fees or article processing charges (APCs) associated with publishing in the journal.
By publishing in the journal authors are required to make research data available to editors and reviewers, and to readers. For all research data deposition in repositories is required. For all papers, the decision to publish will be affected by whether or not authors share their research data.
Required
Optional / Encouraged
Feature | Text |
Definition of research data | This policy applies to the research data that would be required to verify the results of research reported in articles published in the journal. Research data include data produced by the authors (“primary data”) and data from other sources that are analysed by authors in their study (“secondary data”). Research data includes any recorded factual material that are used to produce the results in digital and non-digital form. This includes tabular data, code, images, audio, documents, video, maps, raw and/or processed data. |
Definition of exceptions | Research data that are not required to verify the results reported in articles are not covered by this policy. This policy does not require public sharing of quantitative or qualitative data that could identify a research participant (“personal data”) unless participants have consented to data release. The policy also does not require public sharing of other sensitive data, such as the locations of endangered species. Personal or sensitive data must be shared in a secure or controlled access way, in agreement with the Editors. Methods for sharing sensitive or personal data include:
In these cases the procedures and conditions for accessing your research data must be included in your manuscript. |
Embargoes | Embargoes on data sharing are not permitted. |
Supplementary materials | Sharing research data as supplementary information files is not permitted. The journal will require authors to deposit these in an approved repository as a condition of publication. |
Data/Code repositories | Research data and code must be shared via data repositories. Please see https://repositoryfinder.datacite.org/ for help finding research data repositories. The journal will require authors to deposit these in an approved repository as a condition of publication. |
Data citation | The journal requires authors to cite any publicly available research data in their reference list, and will verify this as a condition of publication. References to datasets (data citations) must include a persistent identifier (such as a DOI). Citations of datasets, when they appear in the reference list, should include the minimum information recommended by DataCite and follow journal style. |
Data licensing | The journal encourages research data to be made available under open licences that permit reuse freely. The journal does not enforce particular licenses for research data, where research data are deposited in third party repositories. The publisher of the journal does not claim copyright in research data. |
Researcher/ author support | Questions about complying with this policy should be sent to info@scienceopen.com. |
Data availability statements | The journal requires authors to include in any articles that report results derived from research data to include a Data availability statement. The provision of a Data availability statement that is compatible with the journal’s research data policy will be verified as a condition of publication. Data availability statements must include information on where data supporting the results reported in the article can be found including, where applicable, hyperlinks to publicly archived datasets analysed or generated during the study. Where research data are not publicly available, a persistent link to a metadata record or landing page for the data should be provided. Any conditions for accessing the data must be stated in the manuscript. |
Data formats and standards | The journal encourages authors to share research data using data formats and standards recognised by their research community. Please see FAIRsharing.org for more information on established data sharing formats and standards. The journal prefers research data to be shared in open file formats – those that do not require proprietary software to access - where possible. For example, tabular data should be shared as CSV files rather than XLS files. |
Mandatory data sharing (all papers) | The journal requires that all research data that support articles published in the journal, except those covered by the “Definition of exceptions”, must be available in public repositories. |
Research data and peer review | Peer reviewers are encouraged to consider a manuscript’s Data Availability Statement (DAS), where applicable. They should consider if the authors have complied with the journal’s policy on the availability of research data, and whether reasonable effort has been made to make the data that support the findings of the study available for replication or reuse by other researchers. For the Data availability statement, reviewers should consider:
For the data files, where available, reviewers should consider:
|
Data Management Plans | The journal encourages authors to prepare Data Management Plans before conducting their research and encourages authors to make those plans available to editors, reviewers and readers who wish to assess them. |
Each manuscript submission will be undergo an automated check for scientific rigor performed by SciScore and will reviewed by a least two subject experts in a single-blind workflow. Manuscripts that have been previously posted as preprints may submit open reviews of the preprint for consideration by the editorial team. Reviewers have the option of posting their reviews publicly on the ScienceOpen platform after an article has been published.
All material presented must be acquired according to ethical standards and approved by legally appropriate ethical committee(s).
We encourage authors to be aware of standardised reporting guidelines when preparing their manuscripts:
In all cases of publication ethics the journal will refer to the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) guidelines: https://publicationethics.org/
Reporting research that involves human subjects or data requires a declaration that the investigations were carried out following the rules of the Declaration of Helsinki (https://www.wma.net/what-we-do/medical-ethics/declaration-of-helsinki/). Approval from the institutional review board (IRB) or other appropriate ethics committee must be obtained before undertaking the research to confirm the study meets national and international guidelines. A statement including the project identification code, date of approval, and name of the ethics committee or institutional review board must be included as ‘Institutional Review Board Statement’ article. For example: "All subjects gave their informed consent for inclusion before they participated in the study. The study was conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki, and the protocol was approved by the Ethics Committee of XXX (Project identification code)." The privacy rights of human subjects must always be observed.
Reporting research that involves animals required a statement that authors have the relevant approval for their study from an appropriate ethics committee and/or regulatory body before the work starts. The ethical statement provides editors, reviewers and readers with assurance that studies have received this ethical oversight. Authors are responsible for complying with regulations and guidelines relating to the use of animals for scientific purposes. Authors should ensure that they follow the ARRIVE guidelines for reporting animal research.
The manuscript should follow the Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals and aim for the inclusion of representative human populations (sex, age and ethnicity) according to those recommendations. The terms sex and gender should be used correctly. Additionally, when studies describe groups by race, ethnicity, gender, disability, disease, etc., explanation regarding why such categorization was needed should be clearly stated in the article.
Open Access Publishing Agreement
By submitting my manuscript to the journal Network Medicine published by REPO4EU (hereafter the ‘Publisher’) and managed by ScienceOpen, I herewith grant permission to the Publisher to publish my article upon editorial acceptance under the following publishing agreement.
I hereby confirm that this is my original work and that
And that the work
I understand that in granting this consent I am granting to the Publisher the Rights to publish under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 license the Contribution in the English language in digital form; moral rights will be retained by the original Author/s and copyright will be held by the Author.
I agree to this Publishing Agreement, consent to execution and delivery of the Publishing Agreement electronically and agree that confirming my consent electronically during the manuscript submission process with an electronic signature shall be given the same legal force as a handwritten signature.
Terms of Use
Retained Rights
The Author retains all proprietary rights in addition to copyright, such as patent rights in any process, procedure or article of manufacture described in the Contribution.
Author's Representations
The Author(s) certify that they have participated sufficiently in the intellectual content, conception and design of this work or the analysis and interpretation of the data (when applicable), as well as the writing of the manuscript, to take public responsibility for it and have agreed to have their name listed as a contributor. The Author(s) believe the manuscript represents valid work. Neither this manuscript nor one with substantially similar content under their authorship has been published or is being considered for publication elsewhere, with the exception of online posting as a preprint. If requested by the editors, the Author(s) will provide the data/information or will cooperate fully in obtaining and providing the data/information on which the manuscript is based, for examination by the editors or their assignees. Financial interests, direct or indirect, that exist or may be perceived to exist for individual contributors in connection with the content of this paper have been disclosed in a "Conflicts of Interest" statement in the manuscript. Sources of outside support of the project are named in the Acknowledgements section.
Use of Information
The Author(s) acknowledges that, during the term of this Agreement and thereafter (for as long as necessary), the Publisher and the Journal may process the Author’s personal data, including storing or transferring data outside of the country of the Contributor’s residence, in order to communicate with the Author(s) and that the Publisher has a legitimate interest in processing the Author(s)’ personal data. By entering into this Agreement, the Author(s) agree to the processing of personal data (and, where applicable, confirms that the Author has obtained the permission from all other authors to process their personal data). The Publisher and the Journal shall comply with all applicable laws, statutes and regulations relating to data protection and privacy and shall process such personal data.
Background image credit: | Background photo by Photoholgic on Unsplash |
ScienceOpen disciplines: | Medicine, Quantitative & Systems biology, Molecular medicine, Bioinformatics & Computational biology |
Keywords: | Systems Medicine, Systems Biology of Diseases, Patient networks, Mechanotyping, Disease mechanisms, Network enrichment, Network pathobiology, Systems immunology |
DOI: | 10.14293/S2199-1006.1.SOR-MED.CLROTMW.v1 |