Fwd: Learning Health Systems Journal to Publish Peer-Reviewed Computable Knowledge

This seems to be a novel development in academic publishing. I'm not sure that any of us are ready to partake, but it seems worth knowing about.

FYI

- Ben

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Colleagues:

We are delighted to announce that Learning Health Systems is now accepting submissions of "Computable Knowledge" papers.  

A Computable Knowledge paper will, after successful peer review, be published online as a pdf describing a model or algorithm in human-readable form, and will also contain a link through which an encoded open-source executable version of the model can be downloaded and run.  We will publish Computable Knowledge papers exposing the developmental pathway of models that have not previously been published in any way, as well as shorter papers that reference an already-published model and provide access to a computable version of it. As part of the review, the Journal's Editorial Office will test the model using (non-PHI) data the authors must provide as part of their submission. Authors retain copyright/ownership of both the human-readable paper and the executable artifact.

Published models and algorithms can address health care, basic and translational research, public health, or health professions education domains. 

The initial implementation of this new publication type will be framed as a pilot project, during which time we will work closely with submitters to evolve scope, metadata standards, and review procedures.  Detailed instructions to authors for this pilot phase may be found here.

To the best of our knowledge, Learning Health Systems is the first biomedical journal formally publishing peer-reviewed software.  We are doing so with support of and guidance from our Editorial Board; the University of Michigan as the Journal's owner; and John Wiley and Sons, the Journal's publisher.  Learning Health Systems is currently indexed in Scopus, PubMed Central, the ACM Digital Library and other sources.

Publication of computable knowledge will be among the topics discussed at next month's second annual MCBK meeting at the Natcher Center on the NIH campus.  Advance registration for the meeting is open until July 5.

Feel free to share this announcement with your colleagues who will find it of potential interest.

Best wishes to all,

Chuck

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Charles P. Friedman, PhD

Chair, Department of Learning Health Sciences,

University of Michigan Medical School

Editor-in-Chief:  Learning Health Systems