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Nuclear & Plasma Sciences Society

Publications

The Nuclear and Plasma Sciences Society (NPSS) has launched a new journal, the Transactions on Radiation and Plasma Medical Sciences (TRPMS). It is co-sponsored by the Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBS). The website for the journal can be found at TRPMS.

The scope of the IEEE TRPMS encompasses technology and application areas related to radiation- and plasma-based medical sciences. These areas include radiation detectors for medical and biological applications; imaging system design/optimization/performance; therapy-related system design/optimization/performance; radiation-application-based image reconstruction, data analysis and image processing; medical radiation therapy applications; clinical/preclinical evaluation of imaging and therapy systems, plasma applications in medicine and biology; and simulations for imaging and therapy applications. Educational material such as technical/clinical review papers covering the above subjects of interest is also included.

The objective of this journal is to create a unique publication related to the application of radiation and plasma sciences within the medical field. TRPMS aims at combining the larger and well established field of radiation medical applications with the upcoming plasma medical sciences domain, providing a unique venue for the publication of radiation- and plasma-based medical sciences. No such journal exists today either within IEEE or other publishers.

Both of the current NPSS publications, the IEEE Transactions on Nuclear Science (TNS) and the IEEE Transactions on Plasma Science (TPS), publish papers with medical sciences content. These two journals are general in scope and have very broad coverage; thus the medically related papers have typically not received as much visibility as we would like, nor are they indexed by PubMed. The intent is for that content to transition to the new journal TRPMS. We believe that the new journal will prove to be a much better venue for this work. Since we hope to have TRPMS indexed by PubMed as soon as possible, it will also provide much wider exposure within the medical community.

Thus beginning immediately, both TNS and TPS will no longer be accepting medically related manuscripts. We strongly encourage authors to submit such work to TRPMS instead at mc.manuscriptcentral.com/trpms . We believe that authors will find the review process to be as beneficial as that of TNS and TPS, and that publication of their work in this journal will be to their advantage over TNS, TPS, or other possible publication venues.

Questions about this journal may be directed to Dimitris Visvikis at Visvikis.Dimitris@univ-brest.fr.

Highlight Papers Made Freely Available

The Editor-in-Chief has selected papers that are likely to be of great interest to the community to be made freely available.

See the most recent E-Mail Blast for links to these papers (freely available for 90 days after the E-Mail Blast release).

IEEE Transactions on Radiation and Plasma Medical Sciences Best Paper Award

Description: The IEEE Transactions on Radiation and Plasma Medical Sciences Best Paper Award will be given annually to the paper deemed the best among those published in the IEEE Transactions on Radiation and Plasma Medical Sciences journal. The best paper will be selected in the spring.

Prize: The award will be a plaque, a certificate for each of the paper authors and a money prize. The money prize is $500 for each author, up to a maximum award of $1500; if the paper has more than 3 authors, the maximum award will be divided equally among all authors.

Funding: Funded by the IEEE Nuclear and Plasma Sciences Society.

Eligibility: The authors of all papers published in the Transactions on Radiation and Plasma Medical Sciences in the year 3 prior to the year of the award are eligible for consideration.  For example, to be considered for the award presented in 2019, a paper must have been published in 2016.

Basis for Judging: The primary consideration in determining the best paper will be its quantifiable usefulness to the community. The primary factor in this assessment will be the number of downloads of the paper from Xplore. Supplemental factors, which will be examined, are literature citations to the paper, quality, clarity of presentation, originality, significance, and contributions to the field. To minimize any risk that unethical manipulation could influence the winning paper selection, all of the factors mentioned (number of citations, quality, clarity of presentation, originality, significance, and contributions to the field) will be considered during final evaluation of the top-ranked paper to insure that is deserves to be selected as the award winner.

Presentation:  The award will be presented annually at the NPS Society conference most relevant to the topical area of the selected paper.

Frequency: One award presented annually.

Past Award Recipients:

2020: Paul Lecoq, Pushing the Limits in Time-of-Flight PET Imaging, IEEE Transactions on Radiation and Plasma Medical Sciences, vol. 1, no. 6, pp. 473-485, 2017

Journal Scope

The Transactions on Radiation and Plasma Medical Sciences is published bimonthly. The scope of TRPMS encompasses technology and application areas related to radiation and plasma based medical sciences. These areas include radiation detectors for medical and biological applications; imaging system design/ optimization/performance; therapy-related system design/optimization/performance; radiation-application-based image reconstruction, data analysis and image processing; medical radiation therapy applications; clinical/preclinical evaluation of imaging and therapy systems, plasma applications in medicine and biology; and simulations for imaging and therapy applications.

Manuscript Types and Content

Original Manuscripts For manuscripts to be considered for publication, they should report original contributions to the theories, experimental results, or applications of the fields listed above. The work should report new results, new applications, or new developments of interest and of general applicability. The manuscript must provide introductory material and context for the work. It must be clear what is new in the work, how it relates to other work in the field, and how it advances the state of the art. Related work must be referenced appropriately. A complete description of the work performed must be provided. Models should be verified by data or some other means. There must be an analysis of data which provides conclusions that are general beyond the specific devices or system studied. The information provided must be sufficient for others to make use of the approach, results, etc. so that the impact is not limited to the particular system or application used in the manuscript. Overall the work needs to be of an archival nature (e.g., not only test results on a part that will be obsolete in a couple of years, or analysis of a particular design without illustration of generally applicable principles, or description of the characteristics of a particular test facility, etc.)

Review articles Educational material such as technical/clinical review papers covering the subjects of interest as outlined in the journal scope above will be considered. Potential authors should contact the Editor in Chief prior to submission in order to discuss the relevance and interest of the subject. Review articles will undergo a standard review process.

Submission of a previously published conference paper The policy of TRPMS allows in principle the submission of manuscripts describing work previously presented at a conference only if the submitted paper is a substantially extended version of the originally published conference paper. This should be clearly noted in a cover letter to the Editor in Chief. The conference paper must be properly referenced in the text of the submitted manuscript and the inclusion of any material (figure, table), appearing in the published conference paper, should be accompanied by permission from the appropriate publisher (if the conference is not an IEEE one). The conference paper must be uploaded as a supporting document when submitting the manuscript.

Items to Address Before Submission

Reviewers of TRPMS manuscripts are requested to evaluate, at a minimum, the following items:

  1. Background and Context
  • Is the introductory and background material sufficient for someone not an expert in this area to understand the context and significance of this work?
  • Has related work been appropriately and adequately referenced?
  • Is it clear what is new in this work?
  1. Technical Quality
  • Is the relationship between this work and other work in the field adequately described?
  • Is it described how this work advances the state-of-the art?
  • Is the work relevant and accurate, free from errors, misconceptions, ambiguities?
  • Are interpretations/models supported by data?
  • Is the data analysis complete?
  • Does the work contain new results, new applications, or new developments of interest?
  • Is the work of general applicability, i.e. not limited to the particular system or application used in the manuscript?
  1. Clarity and Completeness
  • Are the conclusions significant and well-supported?
  • Is the work logically developed?
  • Is the presentation of data and/or modeling clear and easy to follow?
  • Is the discussion clear and unambiguous?
  • Is sufficient information provided for an expert reader to understand fully what was done, to repeat the experiment, or to duplicate the results presented?
  • Is enough detail presented to support the conclusions drawn?
  • Is the manuscript “complete”, i.e., not requiring extensive reference to other work to permit understanding?
  1. Presentation
  • Are the English grammar and usage satisfactory?
  • Is the manuscript loosely written or repetitious?
  • Does the manuscript restate established scientific or engineering principles instead of merely providing the appropriate reference to such principles?
  1. Figures and Tables
  • Are the figures and tables clearly labeled, legible, and with appropriate captions? Are the figures and tables relevant, and referred to in the text?
  • Do the tables and figures show reduced rather than raw data?
  • Is the number of figures and tables appropriate?
  1. Symbols, Acronyms, and Abbreviations
  • Are all non-standard abbreviations and acronyms identified at first use?
  • Does the manuscript use proper and consistent symbols and abbreviations?
  1. Length
  • Is the length of the manuscript appropriate for the amount and type of material presented?
  • Eight (8) pages is the maximum length of a “standard” manuscript. If the manuscript is longer than this, is that additional length necessary to develop and explain the material? If it is not, please suggest areas where material could be eliminated.
  1. Appropriateness
  • Is the work of an archival nature (e.g., not just test results on a part that will be obsolete in a couple of years, or analysis of a particular design without illustration of generally applicable principles, or description of the characteristics of a particular test facility, or an account of the existence and characteristics of a specific commercial product, etc.)
  • Is the work a good “fit” for the Transactions on on Radiation and Plasma Medical Sciences, and of interest to its readership?
  • Is this work overall appropriate for publication in the Transactions on on Radiation and Plasma Medical Sciences?

Manuscript Preparation

General information for authors on manuscript preparation is given at https://journals.ieeeauthorcenter.ieee.org/create-your-ieee-journal-article/. Note that manuscripts submitted for review should be in the 2-column journal format, according to the standard IEEE template for all Transactions available at this web site.

The authors should submit the complete paper that includes the text, figures and tables to the ScholarOne Manuscripts in one PDF file. Providing multimedia files or other documents as supporting material is optional and will be considered in the review process. Any such additional information should be uploaded as supporting documents on ScholarOne and will appear for the reviewers in the supplementary files tab. Any such supplementary material should be mentioned in the paper.

If the paper is accepted, such supplementary material will be made available in IEEE Explore Digital Library.

Submission Procedure

All manuscripts must be submitted to the TRPMS online peer review system at http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/trpms.

Instructions on the use of this web site are available at that URL. During the submission process, authors will be asked what type of manuscript they are submitting, i.e., what technical area the manuscript is associated with. These areas are:

  • Radiation imaging
  • Radiation treatment
  • Plasma medicine
  • Unsure/Other

If the submitting author is unsure which manuscript type best describes the manuscript, he/she should choose the “Other/Unsure” manuscript type. The Editor-in-Chief will then assess the suitability of the manuscript for TRPMS and assign it to the most appropriate category and senior editor. TRPMS will also occasionally publish special issues based upon manuscripts presented at a particular conference. A temporary Manuscript Type category will be created for a limited time for authors from those conferences to submit their work to the corresponding special issue.

Review Process

All submitted articles will go through a pre-screening before being sent out for review. Articles may be rejected without review for any of the following reasons:

  • The author(s) have not followed the IEEE guidelines for style.
  • The author(s) have obviously violated IEEE Policies.
  • The article is not comprehensible (in other words, so poorly written that it is unreadable).
  • The subject and contents of the article do not meet the scope of the journal or a specific issue.
  • The article does not meet minimum criteria for technical substance.

A manuscript may be rejected for insufficient technical substance (item #5 above) for any of the following reasons. Such a decision can be made by the Senior Editor with the concurrence of two other members of the Editorial Board.:

  • The manuscript obviously shows little or no advance over the state-of-the-art in the area.
  • The manuscript does not clearly show how it relates to other work in the field.
  • The manuscript does not provide enough information for others to make use of the approach reported in the manuscript.
  • The manuscript is a project report, not of general applicability and with little interest to readers outside of that particular project.
  • The manuscript is a progress report with little new since a previous publication.
  • Models presented are not validated by experimental data or by other means.
  • The paper does not draw conclusions from the data presented.

Once a submitted manuscript has passed the screening described above, it is assigned to reviewers who are experts in the field to assess, using as a minimum set of criteria the “Items for Authors to Address Before Submission” listed above.

Typically three reviewers are used to evaluate each manuscript; sometimes more may be used, but there will always be a minimum of two independent reviewers used for each manuscript. The reviewers’ comments will be transmitted to the authors, along with comments that may be made by the Associate Editor and/or Senior Editor regarding the manuscript, in the email transmittal of the decision made regarding the manuscript.

The Associate Editor makes a recommendation for the manuscript based upon the reviewers’ comments and his/her own assessment of the work. The Senior Editor makes a final decision based upon the Associate Editor’s recommendation, the reviewers’ comments, and his/her assessment of the manuscript. The decision can be to accept the manuscript, to request that the author(s) make minor revisions to the manuscript and submit the revision for further review, to request that the author(s) make major revisions to the manuscript and submit the revision for further review, or to reject the manuscript from further consideration for publication.

A revised manuscript submitted in response to the decision will go through additional review by at least the Associate Editor and Senior Editor, and also typically by the reviewers who did the review of the original manuscript if major revisions were required. The revised manuscript can receive any of the same four decisions described above.

Manuscripts which after this second review still require major revisions to reach publishable status will typically be rejected from further consideration. Thus it is advisable for authors to try to fully address all reviewers’ comments and concerns in their first revision of the manuscript. As part of that revision, authors must provide a detailed point-by-point response to each of the reviewers’ and Editors’ comments.

The articles in this journal are peer reviewed in accordance with the requirements set forth in the IEEE Publication Services and Products Board Operations Manual (https://pspb.ieee.org/images/files/files/opsmanual.pdf). Each published article is reviewed by a minimum of two independent reviewers using a single-blind peer review process, where the identities of the reviewers are not known to the authors, but the reviewers know the identities of the authors. Articles will be screened for plagiarism before acceptance.

Open Access

This publication is a hybrid journal, allowing either Traditional manuscript submission or Open Access (author-pays OA) manuscript submission. Upon acceptance, if you choose to have your manuscript be an OA article, you commit to pay a $2495 OA fee in order to enable unrestricted public access.

Any other application charges (such as charge for the use of color in the print format) will be billed separately once the manuscript formatting is complete but prior to the publication. If you would like your manuscript to be a Traditional submission, your article will be available to qualified subscribers and purchasers via IEEE Xplore. No OA payment is required for Traditional submission.

Help/Questions

Help/Questions about Web Submission: Questions about or help with problems using the submission web site http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/trpms should be directed to Alexandra Titta,  and/or the TRPMS Editor-in-Chief, Prof. Dimitris Visvikis Help/Questions about TRPMS Policy: Questions about TRPMS policies should be directed to the TRPMS Editor-in-Chief, Prof. Dimitris Visvikis

Editorial Board

Editor in chief :

  • Dimitris Visvikis

Senior editors :

  • Joel Karp (Radiation imaging section)
  • David Graves (Plasma medicine section)

Associate editors (Radiation imaging section)

  • Surti, Suleman
  • Metzler, Scott
  • Margaret E. DaubeWitherspoon
  • Vaska, Paul
  • El Fakhri, Georges
  • Ray Raylman
  • Mark Smith
  • Robert Miyaoka
  • Paul E. Kinahan
  • Craig Levin
  • Stefaan Vandenberghe
  • Michel Defrise
  • Marsden, Paul
  • Ziegler, Sibylle
  • Alberto del Guerra
  • Taiga Yamaya

Associate editors (Plasma medicine section)

  • Vittorio Colombo
  • Svetlana Ermolaeva
  • Satoshi Hamaguchi
  • Michael Keidar
  • Xin Pei Lu
  • Jennifer Shin
  • Endre Szili
  • Joao Sousa
  • Zdenko Machala
  • Deborah O’Connell
  • Ali Mesbah
  • Mounir Laroussi

 

Suggestions

TRPMS is continually looking for ways to improve its value to its authors, subscribers, reviewers, and readers. Suggestions for improvement are always welcomed, and should be directed to the TRPMS Editor-in-Chief, Prof. Dimitris Visvikis, at Visvikis.Dimitris@univ-brest.fr

Special Issues

Information on special issues can be found on the TRPMS website.

TRPMS Email Blast

Month-by-month highlights from the Transactions on Radiation and Plasma Medical Sciences.

2024

November 2024 TRPMS Blast Newsletter
September 2024 TRPMS Blast Newsletter
July 2024 TRPMS Blast Newsletter
May 2024 TRPMS Blast Newsletter
April 2024 TRPMS Blast Newsletter
February 2024 TRPMS Blast Newsletter
January 2024 TRPMS Blast Newsletter

2023

November 2023 TRPMS Blast Newsletter
September 2023 TRPMS Blast Newsletter
July 2023 TRPMS Blast Newsletter
May 2023 TRPMS Blast Newsletter
April 2023 TRPMS Blast Newsletter
March 2023 TRPMS Blast Newsletter
February 2023 TRPMS Blast Newsletter
January 2023 TRPMS Blast Newsletter

2022

November 2022 TRPMS Blast Newsletter
September 2022 TRPMS Blast Newsletter
July 2022 TRPMS Blast Newsletter
May 2022 TRPMS Blast Newsletter
April 2022 TRPMS Blast Newsletter
March 2022 TRPMS Blast Newsletter
February 2022 TRPMS Blast Newsletter
January 2022 TRPMS Blast Newsletter

2021

November 2021 TRPMS Blast Newsletter
September 2021 TRPMS Blast Newsletter
July 2021 TRPMS Blast Newsletter
May 2021 TRPMS Blast Newsletter
March 2021 TRPMS Blast Newsletter
January 2021 TRPMS Blast Newsletter

2020

November 2020 TRPMS Blast Newsletter
September 2020 TRPMS Blast Newsletter
July 2020 TRPMS Blast Newsletter
May 2020 TRPMS Blast Newsletter
March 2020 TRPMS Blast Newsletter
January 2020 TRPMS Blast Newsletter

2019

November 2019 TRPMS Blast Newsletter
September 2019 TRPMS Blast Newsletter
July 2019 TRPMS Blast Newsletter
May 2019 TRPMS Blast Newsletter
March 2019 TRPMS Blast Newsletter
January 2019 TRPMS Blast Newsletter

2018

November 2018 TRPMS Blast Newsletter
September 2018 TRPMS Blast Newsletter
July 2018 TRPMS Blast Newsletter
March 2018 TRPMS Blast Newsletter
January 2018 TRPMS Blast Newsletter

2017

November 2017 TRPMS Blast Newsletter
September 2017 TRPMS Blast Newsletter
July 2017 TRPMS Blast Newsletter
May 2017 TRPMS Blast Newsletter
March 2017 TRPMS Blast Newsletter
January 2017 TRPMS Blast Newsletter

Resources

On the TRPMS page on IEEE XPlore, authors will find TRPMS’ most recent bibliometrics, links to the all issues, early access articles, and popular articles, among other things.

IEEE Plagiarism Guidelines

It is the policy of the IEEE to own the copyright to the technical contributions it publishes on behalf of the interests of the IEEE, its authors and their employers, and to facilitate the appropriate reuse of this material by others. Full details are available at IEEE Copyright Policies.