Mathematical Medicine and Biology A Journal of the IMA

About Mathematical Medicine and Biology A Journal of the IMA

Overview

Mathematical Medicine and Biology: A Journal of the IMA is a quarterly applied mathematics journal published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications. Its print ISSN is 1477-8599 and its online ISSN is 1477-8602, the pair shown on the JournalsWorld record. The journal publishes original articles with a significant mathematical content addressing topics in medicine and biology, and it particularly welcomes papers that use modern developments in applied mathematics — provided, crucially, that the biomedical relevance of the models is demonstrated clearly and that validation by comparison against experiment is given where the work allows it.

That editorial formula defines the journal's niche. Mathematical Medicine and Biology, often shortened to IMAMMB from its IMA lineage, is neither a general biology journal that tolerates a little modelling nor a pure mathematics journal that borrows biological vocabulary. It asks for both halves to be real: mathematics substantial enough to interest applied mathematicians, and a medical or biological problem framed carefully enough that a life scientist can see what the mathematics explains, predicts or makes measurable.

The journal is hybrid open access: the standard route is subscription publication, with an optional open access route, and Oxford's read and publish agreements may cover open access charges for authors at participating institutions. Volume numbering in the Oxford Academic listing reached volume 43 in 2026, continuing a run that began in 1984 under an earlier title.

History and Title Change

The journal began in 1984 as the IMA Journal of Mathematics Applied in Medicine and Biology. In 2003 it took its current name, Mathematical Medicine and Biology — which is why some listings date the journal from 1984 and others from 2003. Both dates are correct for different purposes: 1984 for the serial's coverage history, 2003 for the current title. Authors citing the older literature should use the title in force at the time of the article they cite, and librarians should link the two titles as a single continuing record.

The renaming reflected a maturing field. In the 1980s, mathematics applied in medicine and biology was a promising application area; by the 2000s, mathematical biology had its own methods, conferences and training programmes, spanning epidemiology, physiology, oncology, ecology and neuroscience. The shorter, subject-first title announced that the journal belonged to that established field while keeping its IMA identity in the subtitle, A Journal of the IMA.

Oxford University Press publishes the journal for the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications, the United Kingdom's learned and professional society for mathematics and its applications. That society ownership, combined with a university press publisher, gives the journal its characteristic governance: editorial decisions by working mathematicians, production and platform by Oxford Academic, and a best paper prize, described below, that signals what the community values.

Scope and Subject Coverage

Scope can be read from the journal's own statement and from the categories under which it is classified: applied mathematics, modelling and simulation, medicine, biochemistry genetics and molecular biology, immunology and microbiology, environmental science, pharmacology and neuroscience, all in their miscellaneous or interdisciplinary forms. In article terms, recurring territories include mathematical epidemiology and ecology, tumour growth and cancer treatment modelling, infectious disease dynamics including extensive COVID-19 work, cellular mechanics and interaction, physiological flows and transport, pattern formation, systems biology, pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics, and the differential equation, dynamical systems and statistical methods that support them.

Epidemiology illustrates the standard expected. A paper might formulate a compartmental, network, household-structured or agent-based model, analyse thresholds and stability, estimate parameters from data, and then say something usable about intervention — timing, targeting or coverage — while stating plainly what the model omits. Oncology papers similarly move between growth laws, treatment scheduling, resistance and spatial structure. Physiology papers model flows, pressures, transport and control in organs and tissues, often in close contact with medical measurement.

Papers exploiting modern applied mathematics are particularly welcome, in the journal's own framing. That includes new analytical methods, numerical schemes with genuine analysis behind them, uncertainty quantification, inverse problems and data assimilation, and multiscale methods that connect molecular, cellular, tissue and population levels. A routine application of a standard model to a new dataset, with no methodological or biological insight beyond the fit, is a harder case to make here than in a domain journal.

Editorial Board and Governance

Oxford Academic's journal page lists the current editors as Prof. Mohit Dalwadi, Prof. Bob Guy, Prof. John King, Prof. Anita Layton and Associate Prof. Kyle Wedgwood, supported by a wider editorial board. Older reference works name Oliver E. Jensen, John R. King and James P. Keener as editors-in-chief; that trio belongs to an earlier period and should not be copied into current submissions or correspondence. The discrepancy is a useful reminder to take board membership from the publisher's live page, not from encyclopaedia entries that age quietly. John King's presence across both listings reflects long service rather than an error.

The journal awards a Best Paper Prize of £1,000 every two years for the best paper published in the journal, with the winning paper promoted on the journal site. A prize of this kind is more than a pleasant extra: it tells authors which papers the editors regard as exemplary — typically work where mathematical depth and biomedical consequence are both unmistakable — and reading past winners is one of the fastest ways to calibrate a manuscript before submission.

As an IMA journal, Mathematical Medicine and Biology sits in a family of Oxford-published IMA titles in applied mathematics, numerical analysis, control and information, and related areas. Authors with a paper that is mathematically strong but whose application is not medical or biological should look to those sister titles rather than stretching this journal's scope; editors can sometimes suggest a transfer within the family when a manuscript is good but misplaced.

Peer Review and What Editors Look For

Submissions are made through Oxford Academic's submission site and assessed by editors and reviewers drawn from applied mathematics and the life sciences. Because the journal's promise is dual — significant mathematics, demonstrated biomedical relevance — review commonly tests both sides. A mathematically elegant paper whose biological problem is a pretext can fail on relevance; a biologically timely paper whose mathematics is routine, unchecked or misdescribed can fail on significance. The strongest submissions pre-empt both objections in their introductions and discussions.

Validation is the journal's recurring word. The journal strongly encourages comparison against experiment, and authors should treat that as a design requirement: identify the data, measurement or observation that disciplines the model, report goodness and failure honestly, and distinguish parameters measured, parameters fitted and parameters assumed. Where no direct validation exists, say so, explain what indirect evidence constrains the model, and avoid clinical or policy claims that the evidence cannot carry.

Presentation for a mixed audience is part of review in practice. Define biological terms for mathematicians and mathematical terms for biologists, keep notation stable, state model assumptions in one findable place, and include enough numerical detail — schemes, solvers, tolerances, code availability — for another group to reproduce the results. Papers that hide their assumptions in prose scattered across sections are returned for restructuring more often than authors expect.

Indexing, Metrics and Standing

Oxford Academic displayed a 2025 Impact Factor of 0.9 and a 2025 five-year Impact Factor of 1.0 on the journal page at the time of research. Earlier years were higher — a 2020 impact factor of 1.854 is widely recorded — and Scopus-based summaries give a CiteScore around 3, a Source Normalized Impact per Paper around 0.81, and SCImago quartiles predominantly at Q3 across its categories, with neuroscience in Q4 in some listings. The JournalsWorld record gives an H-index of 68, while more recent Scopus-derived listings give lower H-index values in the low fifties; the difference reflects database and date, not a dispute about the journal's identity, and any H-index quoted should carry its source and year.

These numbers place the journal as a respected specialist title rather than a high-volume citation leader, which matches its field. Mathematical biology papers are cited by both mathematicians and life scientists, often slowly and across long-lived models, and a quarterly journal publishing a selective set of papers will not accumulate citations at the rate of a large biomedical title. For authors, the relevant standing is reputational: publication here certifies that the work passed review by the mathematical biology community itself, under a society journal published by Oxford.

Indexing includes Scopus and the citation indexes covered by Oxford's standard journal arrangements, together with mathematics and life-science abstracting services relevant to its categories. Authors with institutional requirements tied to a specific index should verify the title and ISSN in that index at submission, since coverage lists are updated independently of the journal.

Open Access, Charges and Practicalities

The journal operates a hybrid model. Authors may publish under the standard subscription route, or choose open access under Oxford's licences, with charges that should be confirmed in the current author instructions; Oxford states that authors at institutions with a read and publish agreement may be able to publish open access using funds available through that agreement, and its site provides a checker for participating institutions. No charge figure is asserted in this profile because the applicable amount depends on licence, institution and year, and a figure copied from a secondary site could be wrong on the day it matters.

Oxford's self-archiving policy for the journal is recorded on the journal site, and authors should follow the version and embargo terms stated there for preprints and accepted manuscripts. Keep the agreement you sign, note which version you may deposit, and record the DOI as soon as it is assigned; mathematical biology papers circulate widely as preprints, and clear version labelling prevents the preprint and the published paper being mistaken for two different works.

Production with Oxford Academic includes structured proofs, figure checking and early online publication ahead of issue assignment in many cases. Because equations, symbols and special characters carry meaning in this field, proofreading must include mathematics line by line — a transposed subscript in a model equation is a substantive error, not a typographical one.

Author Guidance

Begin the paper by earning the interdisciplinary claim. One paragraph should give the medical or biological problem in terms a mathematician can respect, and one should give the mathematical idea in terms a biologist can follow. State contributions as a short, verifiable list: a new model, a new analysis of an existing model, a new method, a new comparison with data, or a new prediction. If the honest contribution is one of these, claim that one well rather than all five weakly.

In the body, separate model construction, analysis, numerics and biological interpretation so reviewers from each side can find their material. Include a parameter table with sources, a sensitivity discussion for the parameters that drive conclusions, and a limitations section that names the simplifications most likely to change the answer. Editors read limitations as a sign of maturity in modelling papers, not as an admission against interest.

Choose references that show you know both literatures. A paper that cites only mathematics will be suspected of biological naivety, and a paper that cites only clinical sources will be suspected of reinventing known models. Cite the journal itself where its earlier papers are genuinely relevant — not as flattery, but because continuity with the conversation the journal has hosted is evidence of fit.

How to Judge Fit Before You Submit

Choosing a venue for work in mathematical medicine and biology is rarely a matter of a single metric. For Mathematical Medicine and Biology: A Journal of the IMA, the first test is audience: will the readers who follow this journal recognise the problem, use the method, and cite the result in their own work? A paper that is technically strong but addressed to a different community often struggles in review, not because it lacks merit, but because reviewers are asked to judge contribution to a conversation they do not lead. Read at least one recent issue in full, note the balance between theory and application, the length and structure of typical articles, and how introductions frame a gap. That reading tells you more about fit than any ranking table.

A second test is timing and cost in the broad sense. Consider review duration, revision expectations, language editing needs, and any charges that apply to your article type or to open access options. Where a figure in this profile is described as not publicly disclosed, check the journal's own instructions on the day you submit, because charges, licences and timelines change and the version in force at submission is the one that governs your paper. A third test is discoverability: indexing, persistent identifiers, and archiving determine whether work in mathematical medicine and biology remains findable years later, which matters for applied mathematicians and life scientists.

Reading Metrics Responsibly

Metrics for Mathematical Medicine and Biology: A Journal of the IMA should be read as signals, not verdicts. Citation indicators summarise the past behaviour of a community; they do not predict the fate of an individual manuscript, and they are not comparable across fields with different citation cultures. A modest indicator in a small, specialised community can accompany rigorous review and loyal readership, while a higher indicator in a large field may reflect volume as much as influence. Use metrics to confirm that a journal is active and cited, then return to editorial quality, scope fit and review practice as the deciding factors.

Authors should also distinguish between journal-level and article-level evidence. A single highly cited paper lifts a journal average without lifting every paper in it, and a carefully placed paper in a focused venue can be read and used more than a similar paper placed where it is peripheral. For promotion and funding, explain placement in words — the community reached, the review undergone, and the access model chosen — rather than relying on a number alone. That explanation is more persuasive, and more honest, than any single score.

Preparing a Strong Submission

Strong submissions to Mathematical Medicine and Biology: A Journal of the IMA share a few habits. The title and abstract state the problem, the approach and the main finding or argument without exaggeration. The introduction earns its claim by showing, with precise references, what was known, what remained unresolved, and why the present work addresses that exact point. Methods or sources are described so that a competent reader could follow, check or reproduce the work. Results or arguments are presented in the order promised, and the discussion separates what the evidence shows from what it suggests.

Presentation matters because reviewers volunteer their time. Follow the journal's formatting, reference style and figure requirements from the first draft, keep terminology consistent, define abbreviations at first use, and have the manuscript read by someone outside the immediate project before submission. Where the work involves human participants, patients, animals or personal data, state approvals and consent clearly. Where data or materials can be shared, say where they can be found; where they cannot, explain why in plain terms.

What Happens After Submission

After submission, most manuscripts pass an initial editorial check for scope, completeness and basic standards before being sent to reviewers. A decision at this stage is about fit and readiness, not a judgement on the underlying research programme, and a prompt return allows authors to redirect the work without losing months. Papers sent for review typically receive reports that mix major points — about design, evidence or interpretation — with minor points about clarity and presentation. Treat revision as part of publication: respond to every point, indicate where changes were made, and explain respectfully where you have kept your original approach and why.

Acceptance is followed by production, which can include copy-editing, proof checking, licence or agreement forms, and assignment of a persistent identifier. Check proofs carefully, especially names, affiliations, numbers, equations, tables and references, because corrections after publication are slower and more public. Once published, help the work travel: deposit it where your licence and funder allow, link it from project and profile pages, and present it to the community the journal serves.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Mathematical Medicine and Biology: A Journal of the IMA peer reviewed? Yes. The journal describes a peer review process in its official information, summarised in the editorial section of this profile. Authors should confirm the current model in the instructions for authors before submitting.

How can I verify the journal's identity? Check the ISSN against the journal's own site and a recognised listing, check that submission links lead to the publisher's own system, and be cautious of unsolicited invitations that use a similar title but a different web address.

Does a journal-level metric guarantee citations? No. Citations depend on the paper, its topic, timing and visibility. Journal metrics describe a venue's recent past, not a promise for any individual article.

What should I do if information here differs from the journal site? Follow the journal's own site. Profiles are updated periodically, while editorial policies, charges and board membership can change between updates.