Journal profile · MATHEMATICAL & COMPUTATIONAL BIOLOGY
Journal of Biomedical Semantics
ISSN 2041-1480 · BioMed Central · ENGLAND · Founded 2010
Journal of Biomedical Semantics: CAS Zone 4 · Medicine (2025 upgraded edition); impact factor 2.63; fully open access; APC about USD 1,690; median 189 days to acceptance (47 articles, last 24 months); 20 articles in 2025; indexed in SCIE and Scopus.
Scope
Aims, scope and focus
Journal of Biomedical Semantics is published by BioMed Central and is in Zone 4 of Medicine in the CAS Journal Ranking (2025 upgraded edition). By OpenAlex counts of its recent articles, its largest topics are Biomedical Text Mining and Ontologies, Semantic Web and Ontologies and Bioinformatics and Genomic Networks, together about 57.9% of its articles. Its main subfields are Artificial Intelligence. (generated from OpenAlex topic counts and CAS ranking data)
Journal of Biomedical Semantics addresses issues of semantic enrichment and semantic processing in the biomedical and clinical domain. The scope of the journal covers two main areas: Infrastructure for biomedical semantics: focusing on semantic resources and repositories, ontology design, meta-data standards and management, resource description, knowledge representation and semantic frameworks, the Biomedical Semantic Web, and semantic interoperability. Semantic mining, annotation, and analysis: focusing on approaches and applications of semantic resources; and tools for investigation, reasoning, prediction, artificial intelligence modelling, and discoveries in biomedicine. The Journal of Biomedical Semantics operates a mandatory research data sharing policy and as such requires that all datasets on which the conclusions of the paper rely be available to reviewers and readers. Authors must deposit their datasets in publicly available repositories prior to peer review, or include them as supplementary information files with their manuscript. The data will be assessed and reviewed as part of the journal’s standard peer-review process and, if necessary, revisions suggested. Research data includes a wide range of types, including spreadsheets, images, textual extracts, archival documents, video or audio, interview notes or any specialist formats generated during research. A list of data where deposition is required, with the appropriate repositories, can be found on the Editorial Policies Page.
From the journal's Aims & Scope
Research area (LetPub): MATHEMATICAL & COMPUTATIONAL BIOLOGY
Editor-in-chief Robert HoehndorfPublisher website
Editorial board by country: none in mainland China; most named United States 8, United Kingdom 7, Germany 5, Japan 3, France 3 (46 members with a country) Editorial board ↗Publisher website ·
Main research topics OpenAlex counts of recent articles; shares are approximate
- Biomedical Text Mining and OntologiesBiochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology34%
- Semantic Web and OntologiesComputer Science14%
- Bioinformatics and Genomic NetworksBiochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology10%
- Topic ModelingComputer Science7%
- Scientific Computing and Data ManagementDecision Sciences3.8%
- Genomics and Rare DiseasesBiochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology3.6%
- Machine Learning in HealthcareComputer Science3.5%
- Electronic Health Records SystemsHealth Professions3.2%
Rankings & indexing
CAS ranking and database indexing
CAS Journal Ranking
CAS Journal Ranking, upgraded edition (March 2025)Medicine Zone 4
| Level | Category | Zone |
|---|---|---|
| Major | Medicine | Zone 4 |
| Minor | Mathematical & Computational Biology | Zone 4 |
Top journal: noReview journal: no
CAS Xinrui Journal Ranking (March 2026)Medicine Zone 4
| Level | Category | Zone |
|---|---|---|
| Major | Medicine | Zone 4 |
| Minor | Mathematical & Computational Biology | Zone 3 |
Top journal: noReview journal: not marked
CAS Journal Ranking, previous upgraded edition (December 2023)Engineering Zone 3
| Level | Category | Zone |
|---|---|---|
| Major | Engineering | Zone 3 |
| Minor | Mathematical & Computational Biology | Zone 4 |
Top journal: noReview journal: no
Database indexing
SCIEScopusDOAJLetPub
International journal early-warning lists: not listed in any editionLetPub
Indexing the journal's website claims
MEDLINECASDBLPPublisher website
Other: Google Scholar, ProQuest, Dimensions, CNKI, Baidu, Naver, OCLC, Portico, CLOCKSS
As the journal's website lists them, not checked against each database; for Web of Science editions the records above apply.
Editions, and major and minor categories, are shown separately and never merged into one zone; check which edition your institution uses before you submit or report.
Metrics
Impact metrics and publication volume
Impact
- Impact factor
- 2.63LetPub ·
- Impact factor (publisher) 2025
- 2.6Publisher website ·
- 5-year impact factor (publisher) 2025
- 2.6Publisher website ·
- CiteScore 2026-06
- 5.5LetPub ·
- SJR 2026-06
- 0.57LetPub ·
- SNIP 2026-06
- 1.09LetPub ·
- h-index
- 30LetPub ·
- h-index
- 59OpenAlex ·
- i10-index
- 377OpenAlex ·
- 2-year mean citedness
- 3.65OpenAlex ·
- Self-citation rate
- 0%LetPub ·
- Share of gold OA articles
- 100%LetPub ·
Volume
- Articles per year
- 20LetPub ·
- Downloads per year (publisher) 2025
- 474,700Publisher website ·
Articles by year OpenAlex count · 588 in total · the current year is incomplete
| Year | Articles | Open access | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 | 26 | 26 | 4 |
| 2025 | 20 | 20 | 72 |
| 2024 | 20 | 20 | 165 |
| 2023 | 21 | 21 | 226 |
| 2022 | 26 | 26 | 372 |
| 2021 | 22 | 22 | 342 |
Sources count differently and were observed at different times, so each source's own value is kept; "publisher" marks figures from the journal's website.
Review & acceptance
Review time and acceptance
Review time from article dates manuscript dates registered with Crossref · to
189 daysMedian, submission to acceptance · P25–P75 116 days – 233 days
- Acceptance to online
- median 20 days (47 articles)
- Submission to online
- median 228 days
- Sample
- 47 articles with submission and acceptance dates (49 in the window); the latest was accepted on
Only articles that were accepted and published are counted, not the time spent on rejected manuscripts, so this usually runs longer than a publisher's "time to first decision".
Other sources
- Average review time (community reports)
- about 30 weeksLetPub ·
- Submission to first decision
- 13 daysPublisher website ·
- Submission to publication (journal-reported)
- about 30 weeksDOAJ ·
- Peer review
- Single anonymous peer reviewDOAJ
Community reports come from authors' own submissions (confidence 0.5) and are not a promise from the journal; for publisher figures, the journal's own definitions apply.
Fees & open access
APC and open-access policy
Fully open accessDOAJ
Every article is open access; authors usually pay an article processing charge (APC).
| Source | APC | Fee waiver | License | Observed |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| DOAJ | EUR 1,440 / USD 1,690 / GBP 1,340 | Yes | CC BY, CC BY-NC-ND | |
| OpenAlex | USD 1,590 / EUR 1,340 / GBP 1,240 | — | — | |
| LetPub | GBP 1,190 / USD 1,490 / EUR 1,290 | Yes | — | |
| Publisher website | GBP 1,340 / USD 1,690 / EUR 1,440 | — | — |
The journal's website is authoritative for fees; sources were observed at different times and each keeps its own value, without averaging.
Submission
Article types and submission policies (journal website)
Article types accepted4
- databaseFormatting guidelines for specific article types can be found below. Database Research Review SoftwareLength not stated
- researchFormatting guidelines for specific article types can be found below. Database Research Review SoftwareLength not stated
- reviewFormatting guidelines for specific article types can be found below. Database Research Review SoftwareLength not stated
- softwareFormatting guidelines for specific article types can be found below. Database Research Review SoftwareLength not stated
Policy excerpts from the journal's websiteData availability, License & copyright, Open access, Peer review
- Data availability Formatting the 'Availability of data and materials' section of your manuscript
Mandatory research data sharing policy. Model summary
The following format for the 'Availability of data and materials section of your manuscript should be used:
Source ↗Publisher website ·- License & copyright Licensing and copyright
Open access under CC BY-NC-ND or CC BY licence. Model summary
Creative Commons licences Open access articles in Springer Nature journals are published under Creative Commons licences. These provide an industry-standard framework to support easy re-use of open access material. Under Creative Commons licences, authors retain copyright of their articles. Journal of Biomedical Semantics articles are published open access under a CC BY-NC-ND (Creative Commons Att…
Source ↗Publisher website ·- Open access Benefits of open access
Publishing open access (OA) offers a number of benefits, including greater reach and readership for your work: Cited more 1.6x more citations of OA articles than non-OA articles across all subjects Downloaded more 4x more downloads of OA articles than non-OA articles Greater impact 2.5x more Altmetric attention. OA articles attracted 1.9x more news mentions and 1.2x more policy mentions Open acces…
Source ↗Publisher website ·- Peer review Peer review policy
Peer review is the process used to evaluate the quality of a manuscript before publication. Independent researchers in the relevant field assess submitted manuscripts to check their validity and robustness. Their feedback guides editors in making publication decisions. Typically, two or more experts evaluate each manuscript based on three main criteria: scientific robustness: is the research metho…
Source ↗Publisher website ·
Excerpts are quoted from the journal's website; "model summary" lines are written by Workers AI and checked against the text. The journal's website is authoritative.
Profile
Publication details and official links
- Publisher
- BioMed Central
- Country or region
- ENGLAND
- Language
- English
- Founded
- 2010
- ISSN
- 2041-1480
- Official links
- Journal homepage ↗DOAJ
- Submission system ↗LetPub
- Author guidelines ↗LetPub
- Aims & Scope ↗LetPub
- Special issues ↗Publisher website
- APC information ↗DOAJ
- Fee waivers ↗DOAJ
- Open access statement ↗DOAJ
- License & copyright ↗DOAJ
- Peer review process ↗LetPub
- Editorial board ↗LetPub
- Plagiarism policy ↗DOAJ
FAQ
Frequently asked questions about Journal of Biomedical Semantics
What CAS zone is Journal of Biomedical Semantics in?
In the 2025 upgraded edition of the CAS Journal Ranking, Journal of Biomedical Semantics is in Zone 4 of Medicine, and in Zone 4 of the minor category Mathematical & Computational Biology. In the 2026 Xinrui edition it is in Zone 4 of Medicine. Zones from different editions, and from major and minor categories, are not interchangeable.
What is the impact factor of Journal of Biomedical Semantics?
The latest impact factor listed by LetPub is 2.63; CiteScore 5.5, h-index 59.
How long does peer review take at Journal of Biomedical Semantics?
Based on the dates recorded on 47 articles published between October 2024 and October 2026 (the last 24 months), the median time from submission to acceptance is 189 days (interquartile range 116–233 days); authors report an average review time of about 30 weeks. Article statistics cover accepted papers only, publisher figures follow the journal's own definitions, and community reports come from authors' own submissions; none is a promise from the journal.
Where are the editorial board members of Journal of Biomedical Semantics based?
Of the 46 board members whose country the journal's board page names, none are in mainland China; the countries named most often are United States (8), United Kingdom (7) and Germany (5). Counted from the institutions listed on the board page; for reference only.
Which databases index Journal of Biomedical Semantics?
According to LetPub and DOAJ records, Journal of Biomedical Semantics is indexed in SCIE, Scopus and DOAJ. The journal's website also lists MEDLINE, CAS and DBLP; that list has not been checked against each database.
Is Journal of Biomedical Semantics open access, and what is the APC?
Journal of Biomedical Semantics is a fully open-access journal. APC about USD 1,690.
Sources and updates
The facts on this page come from LetPub, OpenAlex, DOAJ, Publisher website; every figure is tagged with its source and the date it was observed, and conflicting values are kept per source. LetPub source page: view ↗ (archived 2026-08-25). Last updated: .