Focus and Scope

ISMAI is the official peer-reviewed journal of the International Society of Medical AI, dedicated to advancing the safe, ethical, and evidence-based integration of artificial intelligence into clinical medicine and health systems. The journal serves clinicians, researchers, policymakers, regulators, ethicists, and technologists who are engaged in the development, evaluation, governance, and real-world implementation of medical AI.

The journal is organised into five core editorial sections, each reflecting a distinct domain of scholarship within medical artificial intelligence:

(1) Clinical Applications of Medical AI;

(2) Validation, Performance and Reproducibility;

(3) Implementation and Governance in Health Systems;

(4) Ethics and Philosophy of Medical AI; and

(5) Technical Development and Engineering of Medical AI.

Manuscripts are submitted to, and handled within, the most appropriate section under the oversight of a dedicated Associate Section Editor.

The mission of ISMAI is to provide a trusted academic forum where scientific innovation in artificial intelligence is examined through a clinical, ethical, and societal lens. The journal prioritises work that demonstrates clinical relevance, methodological rigour, transparency, and accountability, with a particular emphasis on patient safety, equity, and responsible use.

ISMAI welcomes original research articles, systematic and narrative reviews, implementation studies, methodological papers, policy analyses, and case-based reports addressing the design, validation, deployment, and oversight of AI systems in healthcare. In addition, the journal publishes invited editorials, expert perspectives, and society-authored position papers, guidelines, and consensus statements that contribute to standards development and informed decision-making in medical AI.

The scope of the journal includes, but is not limited to, clinical decision support, diagnostic and prognostic modelling, health system optimisation, regulatory and governance frameworks, ethical and legal considerations, bias and fairness, education and workforce implications, and public trust in AI-enabled healthcare. By integrating technical, clinical, ethical, and philosophical perspectives, ISMAI aims to bridge research, practice, and policy, supporting the responsible evolution of artificial intelligence in medicine.

Publication Frequency

The journal is published online using a continuous publication model. Articles are made available as soon as they are ready for publication, ensuring timely dissemination without unnecessary delay.

The journal also welcomes special collections of articles, which will be published within the same annual volume and highlighted on dedicated collection pages. See our special collections guidelines for more information.

Open Access Policy

This journal provides immediate open access to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge. There is no embargo on the journal’s publications. Submission and acceptance dates, along with publication dates, are made available on the PDF format for each paper.

Authors of articles published remain the copyright holders and grant third parties the right to use, reproduce, and share the article according to the Creative Commons license agreement.

Authors are encouraged to publish their data in recommended repositories. For a list of generic and subject-specific repositories that meet our peer review criteria, visit the Open Access Directory or datacite.org.

Indexing, Archiving and Dissemination

Ubiquity is committed to making content discoverable and accessible through indexing services. As such all content is archived via the PKP Preservation Network to ensure long-term availability.

Ubiquity supports open and transparent practices in scholarly research and is a signatory of The Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA), a global initiative to improve the ways in which researchers and the outputs of scholarly research are evaluated. In accordance with DORA, Ubiquity makes available a range of article and journal-level metrics to avoid over-reliance on any single assessment tool.

Our journals use OPERAS metrics - an open source platform that Ubiquity has helped develop as part of the HIRMEOS project, originating from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme. OPERAS metrics provides a comprehensive and transparent mechanism for collecting and aggregating article usage metrics.

Journal statistics (including submission numbers, the acceptance rate, and turnaround times) are provided and updated annually.

Indexing and Discoverability

The journal is indexed by the following services:

BDS Bibliographic Data Services
Chronos
CNKI
Dimensions
EBSCO (Host and Knowledge Base)
Ex Libris
Google Scholar
J-Gate
OCLC
OpenAIRE

Additionally, the journal is included in Jisc's Open Policy Finder, and all article metadata and references are deposited with Crossref.

As the journal grows, additional indexes will be added. If the journal is not indexed by your preferred service, please contact us or alternatively by making an indexing request directly with the service.

Archiving

To ensure permanency of all publications, this journal also utilises CLOCKSS, and LOCKSS archiving systems to create permanent archives for the purposes of preservation and restoration.

In addition, the journal is available for harvesting via OAI-PMH.

Annotation and post-publication comment

The journal platform permits readers to leave comments on the publication page. Readers need an account to leave comments. The journal platform also includes in-browser annotation and text highlighting options on full text formats via hypothes.is. Readers have the option to make these publicly available, available to a group, or private.

Advertisement Policy

The journal does not normally display adverts. On occasion, the editorial board may decide to display advertisements that are of relevance to its scope and will be of interest to the readership (e.g. upcoming conferences). All advertising space is provided free of charge and the editor and publisher have the right to decline or withdraw adverts at any point. Adverts will include a text heading to make it clear that they are adverts not related to the journal.

Journal Ownership

Ownership of the Journal title and all associated branding and intellectual property is held by the International Society of Medical AI (ISMAI). The journal website design and associated technical infrastructure to host the journal is retained by Ubiquity Press Ltd.

Journal of the International Society of Medical AI

Articles