SORRY FOR CROSS-POSTING

Dear Colleagues,



Due to the overwhelming interest in a recent Physiological Modelling focused special issue of Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A - to be published in October/November 2008 - we are planning to publish a second double-volume issue on Computational Biology: Tools & Applications, to address physiome-style data-based and application-orientated integrative research, aiming to illustrate the state of play and future directions in 'real data'-based biomathematical modelling.



The issue will be edited by Dr's Peter Kohl, David Gavaghan (both Oxford), and Peter Coveney (London). This issue will build on the first issue, which continued the STEP initiative, by highlighting the targets of the recently funded Virtual Physiological Human Network of Excellence (to be inaugurated in June of this year).



Herewith, we would like to invite expressions of interest from authors who would like to contribute.



Please note that the overall volume of the focused issue is limited (300 journal pages), and that we anticipate inviting no more than 30 papers. Thus, it is probable that not all expressions of interest can be taken through towards an invitation to submit a manuscript for peer-review.



Nonetheless, we would like to encourage all interested teams to register their proposals, to ensure that the focused issue will offer a valid reflection of the breadth and depth of VPH-related efforts. This will also allow us to gauge interest in this medium for communication, and perhaps allow us to continue the 'tradition' of annual focussed issues devoted to physiome-style research...



Regarding content - all papers are encouraged to combine:

- a review element with

- presentation of new data and/or concepts, and to

- conclude by forward-looking suggestions (please feel free to be provocative in this section).



The maximum length of manuscripts is eight thousand words strictly (in total, i.e. including figure legends and references), plus up to 6 Figures or Tables (colour figures are free in the on-line version of manuscripts, but they will incur a charge of £100 per figure in the printed version of the Journal)



All invited manuscripts will be subject to strict external peer-review, so invitations to submit a manuscript will not be equivalent to pre-acceptance of papers.



Timelines:



1) Expressions of interest, consisting of

- working title

- authors listing

- 1-page outline of content

- any special publication needs (i.e. larger allowance for text / figures / colour) with short explanation of why these may be required.



These must reach the Oxford office by e-mail to Katherine.Fletcher@dpag.ox.ac.uk) NO later than 2 June 2008.



2) Confirmations (invitations to submit) will reach corresponding authors by 30 June 2008 (this initial editorial review is to confirm suitability of topics for the focused issue, to identify / address potential overlap, and to highlight any areas for which additional contributions may need to be encouraged).



3) Submission of manuscripts is required by 5 September 2008.



4) Peer-review comments will be returned to authors in October 2008.



5) Revised manuscripts will be due within 4 weeks of receipt of reviewers comments, and in any case final revised manuscripts will be due to the publishers no later than 17 December 2008.



Note that submitting authors are responsible for obtaining reprint permissions for any copyrighted material; copies of these permissions need to be submitted with the final version of the manuscript.



Please note that these are absolute deadlines, as there is NO 'slack' built in to the timing.



The journal volumes are scheduled to appear in print in May 2009 (all papers will be available on-line by about March 2009).





Handling of manuscripts will be coordinated by Mrs Katherine Fletcher at Oxford. Please feel free to contact her

(Katherine.Fletcher@dpag.ox.ac.uk) with any questions.



For your information - please find attached the authors' instructions for Phil Trans.





On behalf of Dr's Coveney, Gavaghan and Kohl,




Katherine Fletcher

Research Administrator

Cardiac MEF Lab

Oxford, OX1 3PT, UK