EID Journal Home > Instructions to Authors & Style Guide > Mathematical Modeling Guidelines
Mathematical Modeling Guidelines
Editorial criteria for mathematical, economic, and statistical manuscripts
| Table. Editorial criteria for mathematical, economic, and
statistical papers |
|
| Criterion |
|
| Overall content |
- Must provide information that our audience (public health
officials) is likely to find of "immediate and practical" value.
|
- Must reflect the realities of public health.*
|
| Writing style |
- Should be written in a style most likely to appeal to
most of our intended audience.
|
- In the main text, equations should be kept to a minimum,
and those that are presented should preferably be written
out in words rather than mathematical notation.
|
- Mathematical, economic, and statistical jargon should be eliminated
or used sparingly.
- In the main text, and in diagrams and tables associated
with the main text, mathematical notations should be
kept to a minimum.
|
| Technical aspects |
- Where possible, mathematical, economic, and statistical
articles should include a simple schematic diagram outlining
the elements in the model(s) and how they are connected.
|
- Models should contain detailed sensitivity analyses.
Univariate (1 variable at a time) sensitivity analyses
are generally considered inadequate. One goal of sensitivity
analyses should be to define which inputs are, within
the model, relatively most important.
|
- All articles should contain sufficient description of
the methods to allow independent replication of results
by another researcher with suitable skills and interest.
|
- The use of online-only appendixes is encouraged as means
to provide technical details of methods used (e.g.,
equations in mathematical notation) and additional sets
of results.
|
- Figures should be as simple as possible. The use of
color should be kept to a minimum.
|
- It is insufficient to only report p values as evidence
of statistical significance. Authors must also report
some measure of dispersion (e.g., standard deviations,
confidence intervals).
|
|
| *Public health officials have to be practical. Purely conceptual
modeling papers, for example, are unlikely to be of immediate
and practical value to our intended audience. |
The opinions expressed by authors contributing to this journal do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the Public Health Service, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or the authors' affiliated institutions. Use of trade names is for identification only and does not imply endorsement by any of the groups named above.
This page posted January 29, 2009
This page last reviewed August 17, 2009