General Guidelines

All review articles in INNOVATION are by invitation only to leaders in their respective fields. Each review offers a balanced account of emerging innovations and provides a detailed review of the most relevant recent literature and the outlook of future research.

Authors invited to submit an invited review should set the background for the review and then focus on recent findings. It is critical that authors give a balanced view of developments, especially in fields that are controversial. Authors are encouraged to discuss their contributions to the field, but they must not focus excessively on their own research. Speculation and debate are encouraged only if the author explicitly states where his or her own opinions are being stated.

Authors should begin with a brief, but detailed introduction outlining the timeliness, importance, and rationale behind your Invited Review. Use the body of the Review to discuss progress, limitations, and controversies (if applicable), along with valid evidence supporting each discussion. A final summary should serve as a guidepost for researchers looking for the most promising routes to contribute to the field.

Our audience includes clinicians, researchers, educators, marketers, policy makers and any individuals interested in biomedical innovation. Thus, authors must make articles accessible to a broad, diverse audience. Oversimplification and excessive use of jargon are discouraged, provided accuracy and completeness are not sacrificed. Glossary boxes to explain terms are strongly encouraged.

INNOVATION Invited Reviews must not include unpublished data, new hypotheses, formal mathematical models, or meta-analysis. On rare occasions, explicitly identified unpublished data may be presented, but only when necessary to add to published, valid data. Authors will be required to remove arguments based solely on unpublished data from the manuscript.