About the journal
About JMID
The Journal of Medical Informatics and Decision Making (JMID) publishes peer-reviewed, open-access research in medical and health informatics and healthcare decision science.
ISSN 2641-5526Crossref DOI prefix 10.14302Published by Open Access PubCC BY 4.0
01 · What JMID is
The Journal of Medical Informatics and Decision Making (JMID) publishes peer-reviewed, open-access research in medical and health informatics and healthcare decision science. It has been published by Open Access Pub since 2017 under ISSN 2641-5526. Clinical informatics is a major domain, not the boundary of the journal.
Medical informatics concerns the use of information science, data and computational methods in medicine and healthcare. Health informatics also includes population, consumer, research and health-system contexts. Healthcare decision science examines how choices are made, supported and evaluated.
JMID welcomes work on health information systems, data standards, knowledge representation, health-data methods, clinical NLP, imaging informatics, implementation and human factors. It also considers decision analysis, reasoning under uncertainty, shared decision making and patient decision aids, including non-digital approaches.
The journal's boundary is stated in full, with the research it welcomes and the work it does not consider, on the Aims & Scope page.
02 · Why the journal exists
JMID brings informatics and healthcare decision research into a shared scholarly forum. Its readership includes people who develop information methods and systems, evaluate their use, and study the choices made by patients, professionals and health services.
The consequence of the split is not only editorial. A prediction model reported without the provenance of its data, the definition of its outcome, or the decision it is meant to inform cannot be assessed, replicated or responsibly deployed, however strong its reported performance. An implementation evaluation that does not describe the system concretely enough to be recognized elsewhere cannot be learned from. The journal treats both halves as part of the same result.
What the journal is trying to make possible
Health data that can be used as clinical information
Work on definition, coding, quality, provenance and exchange, without which nothing downstream can be trusted.
Methods reported so that someone else can assess them
Baselines, calibration, external validation and stated limitations, in place of a single headline performance figure.
Systems evaluated where they are actually used
Adoption, usability, workflow fit and effects on care, described concretely enough to be recognized in another setting.
A published record that stays readable and citable
Open access without registration, a registered DOI that does not change, and corrections that stay attached to what they correct.
03 · Information and decisions
Decision science has independent standing in JMID. Studies of diagnostic reasoning, preferences, risk communication, utility and decision quality can fit without introducing new software. Informatics methods can also fit through a substantive contribution to health-information knowledge without claiming to change a clinical decision.
For studies addressing a decision, identify who makes it, what information and preferences it depends on, and what the study evaluates. The examples below illustrate decision-oriented research; they are not universal eligibility requirements.
| Decision | Information it draws on | What a study is expected to establish |
|---|---|---|
| Diagnosis | Presenting findings, results, images and prior records, and the coded history that places them in context. | The reference standard, the population the estimate applies to, and how the output changes what a clinician would otherwise do. |
| Prognosis and risk | Longitudinal record data, registry and administrative data, and the outcome definitions applied to them. | Calibration as well as discrimination, validation outside the development data, and the horizon and threshold at which the estimate is meant to be used. |
| Therapy and medication | Orders, dispensing and administration records, allergy and interaction data, and the terminology that links them. | How the recommendation reaches the prescriber, what it interrupts, and what it does to error, omission and alert burden. |
| Workflow and coordination | System event data, documentation, handover records, and the observed work as it is actually carried out. | Where the decision sits in the task, who else it depends on, and what the change costs the people doing the work. |
| Service and resource | Aggregated activity, capacity and population data, and the quality and safety measures derived from them. | The unit of decision, the data quality the conclusion rests on, and the limits of what aggregated data can support. |
Where machine learning fits
Machine learning appears throughout the table and is assessed as an informatics contribution rather than as an algorithm. What is examined is the clinical question, the provenance and quality of the data, the baselines and calibration reported, the validation performed, the decision the output is meant to inform, and the evidence of behavior in use. High discrimination on a retrospective dataset is a result, not a demonstration of clinical usefulness; clinical terminology in a title does not by itself place a method within scope; and a system that supports a decision is not a system that makes one.
04 · Who the journal is for
JMID serves medical and health informaticians, decision scientists, health-data researchers, clinicians, patients and patient-engagement researchers, public-health specialists, and teams studying health information systems and their implementation.
Manuscripts should make their informatics or healthcare decision-science contribution clear to this combined readership. Methodological, formal and conceptual work is assessed using evidence or reasoning appropriate to its claims; deployment and improved patient outcomes are not universal requirements.
05 · Responsible research on health data
Medical informatics is carried out on records about identifiable people, and it produces systems that classify them. The people described in the data are not the people who publish it, cannot review what is written about them, and carry the consequences if it is wrong. The journal's requirements follow from that asymmetry rather than from a compliance checklist.
A model's reported accuracy says nothing about whose data it was built on, who it fails, or what happens when its output reaches a clinic. Those are separate questions, and the journal asks them separately.
In practice that means research involving patient data carries documented ethics or IRB approval and, where applicable, consent; de-identification is described rather than asserted; data handling meets the governing regime for the setting the work was done in; and studies developing clinical decision support or AI-driven diagnostics address bias and fairness across demographic groups, interpretability, and the human oversight the system assumes once deployed. Empirical research carries a data-availability statement, and any use of AI tools in writing or analysis is disclosed.
These are principles; the requirements that implement them, including authorship, competing interests, trial registration, corrections and retractions, are set out on the Editorial Policies page.
06 · How the journal publishes
All submissions undergo initial editorial screening. Manuscripts that meet the journal's scope and minimum requirements proceed to independent peer review. Single-blind by default; double-blind review is available on request. Manuscripts that proceed to external peer review are normally evaluated by at least two independent subject-matter experts.
Editorial decisions are based on scope, scientific quality, methodological rigor, ethical compliance, reporting quality, and relevance to the journal. They are independent of any fee, service, membership or role.
Every article is published open access under CC BY 4.0, with copyright retained by the authors, and is free to read without registration or subscription. Registered articles carry a Crossref DOI that does not change. Corrections, expressions of concern and retractions are published as part of the record and stay linked to the article they concern. An article processing charge applies after acceptance and is independent of the editorial decision; the published rates and the terms attached to them are on the Article Processing Charges page.
Journal registration, DOI registration and scholarly discovery are separate from selective journal-level indexing, and the Indexing page states which of them applies to this journal and where each record can be checked.
07 · Editorial responsibility
The Editor-in-Chief is accountable for the journal's editorial direction and for the decisions taken in its name. Editorial board members provide the subject judgment those decisions rest on across clinical informatics, decision support, health information systems, data standards and health data science. The handling editor selects reviewers by expertise in those areas and screens them for competing interests before assignment.
Editors and reviewers declare competing interests and take no part in handling manuscripts for which impartiality could reasonably be questioned, including their own submissions; those manuscripts are handled independently. Peer reviewers evaluate manuscripts for validity, rigor and clarity, and reviewing confers no advantage in the review of a reviewer's own work.
The current board, with roles, countries and ORCID iDs where they have been supplied, is on the Editorial Board page.
08 · The journal record
- Title
- Journal of Medical Informatics and Decision Making
- Abbreviation
- JMID
- ISSN
- 2641-5526 (electronic) · ISSN Portal record
- Publisher
- Open Access Pub
- Subject
- Medical and health informatics; healthcare decision science
- Access
- Open access; free to read without registration or subscription
- License
- CC BY 4.0, with copyright retained by the authors
- DOI
- Crossref, under the prefix 10.14302
- Peer review
- Single-blind by default; double-blind review is available on request.
- Publishing since
- 2017
- Language
- English
Where to go next
JMID · Editorial office
Questions about the journal
Questions about scope, about a manuscript already in progress, or about the journal's policies can be sent to the editorial office at [email protected]. Authors preparing a submission should read the preparation requirements first.
Journal of Medical Informatics and Decision Making · ISSN 2641-5526 · Crossref DOI prefix 10.14302 · published open access by Open Access Pub under CC BY 4.0. Editorial decisions are independent of any fee, service, membership or role.