Scope

Our ability to collect quantitative data on the structure and function of living systems at many different spatio-temporal scales is expanding rapidly. Insights gained from these data are making it clear that physiological function arises from complex interactions both within (horizontal integration) and between (vertical integration) networks organized at different biological levels. Understanding how physiological function emerges from these network interactions is the next major frontier of biomedical science. However, because of the inherent complexity of living systems, qualitative thinking through the formulation of mental models is destined to fail. Instead, the development and analysis of computational models based directly on experimental data is necessary to achieve this understanding.

The Specialty welcomes the submission of original, computational modeling studies that provide novel insights into the nature of physiological function in both health and disease. Computational Physiology and Medicine is a forum for the publication of physiological system models, built on a strong foundation of experimental data, that demonstrate both reconstructive and predictive capabilities. We also welcome articles describing novel informatics technologies for managing and sharing experimental data on which models are based, technologies for managing and disseminating models, simulation results and model documentation, as well as articles describing novel mathematical and computational approaches that improve our ability to simulate physiological function.

The scope of the Specialty, regarding documentation and dissemination of modeling software, will evolve as new technologies emerge. We encourage that authors provide documented model source code to the community upon request. We accept models in any programming language; the documentation should be sufficiently clear, so users can understand how to adjust model parameters, perform simulations, and save simulation results; and the documentation should describe how to reproduce all simulation results presented in the paper.

Copyright Statement