About the Journal

JOURNAL AIMS and SCOPE

Blockchain in Healthcare Today (BHTY) is the world’s first peer reviewed journal that amplifies and disseminates distributed ledger technology research and innovations in the healthcare, information systems, clinical computing and network technologies and biomedical sciences sector. The preeminent gold open access international journal facilitates reporting, discussion and consensus building across a global multi-disciplinary ecosystem. The journal is published on a continuous basis to accelerate sharing rigorously vetted theoretical and experiential knowledge required for a growth sector. A world-class peer review board endeavors to offer rapid peer review and includes constructive commentary to strengthen work.

Editorial Focus:

  • USE CASES:  contact tracing,  supply chains and management, distributed data storage, security and privacy, cybersecurity, enterprise grade, discovery frameworks, roadmaps, key learnings from successful and unsuccessful experiences
  • SPECIAL REPORTS: public health impact, pandemic core challenges and opportunities with DLT, consensus statements, guidelines and recommendations from a task force or work group, technology adoption and market trends, regulatory healthcare compliance and the impact of relaxed policies. These manuscripts are neither reviews nor original reports of primary research. 
  • MODELS for TRUST: Zero knowledge proofs and data privacy, Secure multiparty computation and privacy preserving technology, consensus algorithms and data provenance, transactional data sharing and integrity.  
  • NEW BUSINESS MODELS: value based health economics, incentive models, cashless economy, internet of value, ecosystem structure and dynamics, scalability, sustainability, and disintermediation
  • HIT: Electronic Health Records, interoperability, medical devices, clinical trials, provenance,  Internet of Things (IoT), wearables, sensors, smart  homes and health environments
  • LEGAL, REGULATORY, GOVERNANCE and ETHICS: health policy, regulation, governance, consumer protection, ethical considerations for new technology, health insurance, fraud, liability, indemnification
  • EDUCATION: technology fundamentals, innovation management, managing digital transformation, workforce transformation

In addition, BHTY publishes a BLOG, where authors can share experiences and reflections including commentary, discussion and debate on any aspect of healthcare, policy, and technology around the globe. The submission should be approximately 1000 words.

Submission Categories

Authors around the globe are invited to submit manuscripts in the following categories:

  • Original Research
  • Proof of Concept//Pilots/Methodologies
  • Use Case
  • Production/Deployment
  • Narrative/Systematic Reviews/Meta-Analysis
  • Clinical Case Studies
  • Technical Briefs & Reports
  • Opinion/Perspective/Point of View
  • Letter to the Editor

For further details and descriptions, please visit Information for Authors & Editorial Policies at https://blockchainhealthcaretoday.com/index.php/journal/authors

Time Stamped Ledger of Record for Researchers 

BHTY is pleased to offer the first life science research portal for authors and global communities. The portal registers each original research article’s provenance on the blockchain for every author to create a permanent and immutable public record of their work on the blockchain for the scientific community.
 
The BHTY+ARTiFACTS portal provides custom dashboards so authors and research teams can:

  1. Transact smart contracts on the blockchain to secure the provenance of their research files and receive citations in real time
  2. Control access to their research materials
  3. Synchronize with their ORCID ID’s and works and many other capabilities and features

In addition, authors can include relevant software code and data in the peer review workflow by uploading it to BHTY’s Code Ocean computational reproducibility workflow. 

Authorship

BHTY follows guidelines for authorship recommended by the ICMJE. Please click this link to review and determine authorship criteria for your submission. Authors must meet all four criteria to be listed as authors. We ask you thoroughly familiarize yourself with the recommended guidelines. Thank you.

Publishing Schedule

BHTY is published on a continuous basis to reflect a dynamic marketplace. Continuous publishing means articles are published as they are accepted, or, on a rolling basis, to ensure accurate reflection of developments, trends, and the most current knowledge available, while providing a forum for developing shared work and consensus.

  • In 2020, BHTY manuscript Acceptance Rate was 42%.
  • The number of Days to Accept a final manuscript in 2020 was 43.

Open Access Policy

Articles are published immediately upon the final correction(s) of the master proof. All articles are assigned a DOI number (Digital Object Identifier). Authors retain full copyright (see below for copyright policy below).

All BHTY articles are open access and at no charge to readers. There are no paywalls.

Audience

Thousands of readers from over 118+ countries visit BHTY’s website.

Nearly 300,000 total reader engagements have been logged since launch in March 2018. 

BHTY's audience includes leadership from research, payer organizations, business, universities, consultants, entrepreneurs/startups, biopharma/device/pharmacy, government, policy, NGO, engineers, health information technologists, cybersecurity, auditors, computational engineers, computer scientists, data scientists, healthcare network users, public health, hospitals and innovation labs across the globe and invites all those with an interest in the latest knowledge on blockchain technology and DLT to its community.

Governing Body - Contact info@partnersindigitalhealth.com 

Editors-in-Chief

Bill Buchanan, OBE, Professor, School of Computing, Edinburgh Napier University; Fellow of the BCS, United Kingdom

John D. Halamka, MD, MS, President, Mayo Clinic Platform, USA

Associate Editor-in-Chief

Brian Ahier, Lead Health Technology Engineer, MITRE Corporation, USA
 
Journal Staff 
John Russo Jr., PharmD, Managing Editor, Blockchain in Healthcare Today, USA
j.russo@partnersindigitalhealth.com
 
BHTY editorial leadership is comprised of world-renowned experts bringing depth, breadth of knowledge, and curiosity to the journal. For a complete list of members and financial disclosures, please click this link.
 

The Managing Editor conducts plagiarism checks, ensures editorial and research writing standards, timely ethical peer review, scholarly guidelines and practices are adhered as ascribed by ICMJE, COPE and WAME. Editors-in-Chief and Associate Editors-in-Chief assess manuscript submission quality, technical, health innovation, education and market merits, while all editorial board members and reviewers may assess and provide rigorous double blind peer review and constructive feedback for authors. All members abide by publishing ethics guidelines ascribed by COPE to ensure the highest standards are adhered to.

Fees and Publishing Model 

BHTY’s Article Processing Charge (APC) is $850.00 USD, for original research articles, and $1050.00 USD for Special Reports, which are typically lengthier. The APC for students currently enrolled at an academic institution is $450.00 USD. 

Note: Beginning January 2022, the APC for original research will be $1650.00 USD for original research articles, $1500.00 USD for Special Reports and $800.00 USD for students. Please plan accordingly. Manuscripts submitted before January 1, 2022 will be invoiced at the lower 2021 rates. 

BHTY is pleased to offer authors the option of paying their APC with digital currency (Bitcoin). Contact the publisher for more information if you would like to use this payment method at t.cenaj@partnersindigitalhealth.com

What does the article-processing charge (APC) cover?
Costs are involved in every stage of the publication process, including software, platform hosting, copyediting, production, proofs, graphics, archiving on dedicated servers, time stamping article provenance on the distributed ledger and providing custom dashboards to authors, membership to appropriate scholarly publishing organizations such as STM, COPE, Altmetric, ScienceOpen and many others, management of database and lists, social media dissemination and writing, market research and journal amplification, coding for journal plugins and new features, and compensation for work performed and commissioned (this does not include peer review or board members).

We ask authors to pay an APC if their original research article is accepted for publication. Once published, authors can immediately post their article on non-commercial web sites, institutional repositories, or other free public servers. The APC only applies to original research published in BHTY.

Waiver policy

BHTY has a waiver policy for authors from lower-middle income countries as per the World Bank (click here for details). We give fair consideration to all submissions, and believe this should not be linked to the ability to pay.

Where limited funding is available to authors, BHTY can provide a complete or partial waiver to authors on request, AFTER, an article is accepted. We review papers based strictly on MERIT. The quality and contribution it makes to the sector supersedes the APC. We believe this is paramount for fair and open exchange. 

Archiving and Scholarly Practices

BHTY uses LOCKSS preservation, Portico, CrossRef and the PKP|PS Indexing service.

The journal is a formal member of COPE and adheres to ICMJE and WAME guidelines and practices. 

Indexing

BHTY is indexed in ScienceOpen, Index Copernicus, Unpaywall, NEBIS, Google Scholar and the Public Knowledge Project metadata harvester.

Author Self-Archiving

Authors are permitted and encouraged to post any version of their manuscript to personal or institutional websites, in repositories and similar, prior to and after publication (while providing the bibliographic details of that publication).

Memberships and Affiliations

Revenue Sources

BHTY revenue consists of advertising support for the journal, reprints, article publication fees, special editions, supplements, summits, advisory, roundtable proceedings, and custom projects.  The journal hosts the annual Converge2Xcelerate (#ConV2X) conference. Under no circumstance does commercial support impact the editorial decisions for journal manuscript review or acceptance.

Copyright and License Notice

Authors contributing to BHTY agree to publish their articles under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial 4.0 International License that allows reuse, subject only to the use being non-commercial, and to the article being fully attributed. Authors hold and retain copyright of their work, with first publication rights granted to Blockchain in Healthcare Today (BHTY). BHTY makes all open access articles freely available from the date of publication.

Diversity Commitment

Partners in Digital Health (PDH) is committed to supporting diversity, inclusion and egalitarianism across scientific and academic communication and in publishing practices.

This belief is reflected in our internal journal practices, editorial and peer review boards, in published content, journal and community outreach and ambassador chapters to demonstrate the portfolio’s integrity, trust and values to communities far and wide in tearing down any barriers and borders relating to knowledge, economics, age, race, gender, sexual orientation, geography and political views. The founder and publisher has stated repeatedly since the journal’s inception, “all are welcome to the table.” The journal maintains an objective, unbiased and fair balanced posture at all times. 

Priorities and actions include:

  • Manuscript submission and Authorship 
  • Peer reviewers
  • Editorial and Advisory Board Members
  • ConV2X Conference and Pitch Competition
  • Fees and business model
  • Ambassador chapters

We encourage all global citizens from all countries to learn, share and participate as equals. 

We continuously address equity and inclusion in our portfolio in these areas and others as needed, to ensure our ongoing commitment to global equality, diversity and inclusion.

Owned and managed by: Partners in Digital Health (PDH)

Partners in Digital Health (PDH), is a forward reaching communications company publishing the peer review journals Blockchain in Healthcare Today and Telehealth and Medicine Today, producer of the companion ConVerge2Xcelerate (#ConV2X) conference series, and Innovation Ignition Pitch Competition. The portfolio converges leading academics, pragmatic innovators, and practitioners around the globe to accelerate healthcare transformation and consensus building for a new market sector. PDH continuously pushes the boundaries of technology innovation in scholarly publication and ecosystem practices to bring trust, transparency, and truth to its audience.

Thec company was founded in 2015 and is privately owned and independently operated. Please see correspondence details below to contact the owner for inquiries.

Those with an interest in submitting a manuscript or obtaining further information are encouraged to do so. Send inquiries to the Managing Editor, John Russo, PharmD, at j.russo@partnersindigitalhealth.com or the Publisher, Tory Cenaj, at  t.cenaj@partnersindigitalhealth.com

For correspondence contact:

Partners in Digital Health
241 Hamilton Avenue, Suite 21
Stamford, CT 06902, USA
Attention: Tory Cenaj, Owner and Publisher