Following a recently established tradition, Biometrical Journal will publish a special issue associated with the 39th Annual Conference of the International Society for Clinical Biostatistics (ISCB), this year held in Melbourne (Australia) in conjunction with the Statistical Society of Australia’s biennial Australian Statistical Conference (ASC). The theme for the Special Issue will be:

BIOSTATISTICS IN THE ERA OF DATA SCIENCE

This special issue aims to publish, with a rapid review time, high quality papers on cutting edge biostatistical methods presented (orally or as posters) at ISCB ASC 2018.  Although papers on any topic covered by the conference may be submitted to the special issue, papers in the following areas are particularly encouraged:

• Causal inference in epidemiology
• High-dimensional data and modern analytics 
• Recent advances in design and analysis of clinical trials
• Statistical methods for precision medicine 
• Statistical methods for routinely collected data & health services research

Papers that have not been presented at ISCB ASC 2018 may also be submitted if the authors believe that they fit into one of the themes above.

The review process will follow the general reviewing principles of Biometrical Journal and be handled by the Special Issue guest editors: Prof. John Carlin (Murdoch Children’s Research Institute & University of Melbourne, Chair of the Scientific Program Committee and coordinating SI-editor), A/Prof. Katherine Lee (Murdoch Children’s Research Institute & University of Melbourne, Chair of the Local Organising Committee), Prof. Chris Metcalfe (University of Bristol, member of the Scientific Program Committee), Prof. Julie Simpson (University of Melbourne, Member of the Local Organising Committee), Dr Jonathan Bartlett (University of Bath), Dr Margarita Moreno-Betancur (Murdoch Children’s Research Institute & University of Melbourne, Member of the Local Organising Committee) and Dr Jessica Kasza (Monash University, Member of the Local Organising Committee).

All papers must be submitted via the online submission system of Biometrical Journal:

To submit to the special issue login at MC (manuscript central), indicate at Step 1 that the submission is to a special issue and at Step 4 of the submission process enter “ISCB 2018” in the Special Issue Information field. 

Submitted manuscripts should comply with the instructions for authors of Biometrical Journal:

 
The original deadline for fully developed papers of 20 December 2018 has been extended to 14 January 2019. We expect that all papers will have received a first review by March 2019 and that the Special Issue should be complete by August 2019.

Please note that the Biometrical Journal is devoted to Reproducible Research; details can be found on its website. Authors who intend to submit programs (R language, Stata and SAS preferred, but others possible too), original data sets and details of simulations are asked to indicate this at submission. They should also upload “ready to run” material so that it can be examined during the review process for this Special Issue.

Deadline extended: because of the impending holiday season and because the submission website had not been set up as announced below (“Step 4”), the deadline for submission of papers for the Special Issue of Biometrical Journal related to the 2018 ISCB conference held in Melbourne in late August has been extended to Monday 14 January 2019. 
 
All other details remain as below: we look forward to receiving your submissions. (N.B. Any glitches with the submission webpage should be resolved within the next day.)