Website: www.jmir.org/2004call-cancer-online.htm

Guest Editor: Pam Whitten

The potential role of the Internet to provide cancer-related information and health services has led to mounting excitement and enthusiasm since deployment of the World Wide Web. Healthcare providers and patients are increasingly utilizing the Internet to educate themselves about prevention, treatment options, and upcoming innovations. Some cancer patients and providers are looking to the Internet as a source of care delivery as they seek online prescriptions or alternative medicine treatments.

The Journal of Medical Internet Research, a leading interdisciplinary eHealth journal, is happy to announce the publication of a special theme issue devoted to Online Cancer Services. The theme issue will be guest edited by Pamela Whitten, associate professor in the Department of Telecommunications at Michigan State University and Senior Research Fellow for Michigan State's Institute of Healthcare Studies, and supported by conference co-organizers and sponsor, such as Gary L Kreps, PhD, Chief, Health Communication and Informatics Research Branch, US National Cancer Institute.

The theme issue will contain the best presentations from the Online Cancer Services Conference, April 2-3, 2004 in Florida, sponsored by the US National Cancer Institute (www.msu.edu/~pwhitten/onlinecancer/index.html ).

Timeline and deadlines

• deadline for conference presenters: July 4, 2004.
• final deadline for non-conference presenters: August 4, 2004.
• papers to be published: September – December 2004.
• deadline for fast-tracked papers: November 1, 2004.

Invited presenters at this conference have agreed to (and are expected to) submit a full paper related to their presentation to JMIR. All contributions will be peer reviewed. As JMIR is an open access journal, authors publish their work under a creative commons license and keep the copyright. All articles will be freely accessible on the JMIR site and will be available in open access archives such as Pubmedcentral.gov. The articles will also be indexed in Medline, CINAHL, Information Science Abstracts, INSPEC (Institution of Electrical Engineers), Communication Abstracts, The Informed Librarian Online, LISA, and other databases and abstraction services.

The usual publication costs (APF: article processing fee) will be waived for conference presenters and for authors invited by the organizing committee or editor (covered by the NCI grant).

Researchers who were not at the Online Cancer Services Conference may also submit articles, but the usual APF to cover publishing costs (copyediting, typesetting) apply.

It is expected that most articles will be review or viewpoint-type papers, but original articles are also most welcome. Detailed instructions for authors can be found at www.jmir.org/instruction.htm .

Please use the web-based manuscript management system (www.jmir.org/ms/ ) to submit your paper online (select section "theme issue cancer online").