From the Editor

In this issue of the IFMBE News, I would like to draw your attention to the Federation's publications, in particular to the fact that the electronic version of our newsletter, the IFMBE News, has got an ISSN. Since the September issue of the News, the number appears on the cover page of the Newsletters. The ISSN increases the visibility of the newsletters and through that the activities of the Federation. That also means that the contributions published within the News will be much easier to track and refer to in other publications. Let me remind you what the ISSN stands for:

An International Standard Serial Number (ISSN) is issued to series. Serial is a publication in any medium, issued in successive parts, usually having numerical or chronological designations and intended to be continued indefinitely. The record for this serial is then added to the international ISSN register, enabling global access to the serial. The official site of the international ISSN network is: http://www.issn.org.

The Federation has now three publications that have an ISSN:

MEDICAL & BIOLOGICAL ENGINEERING & COMPUTING, the Federation's Journal,
IFMBE Proceedings Series
and the IFMBE News.

Since 2002, IFMBE is offering professional scientists and engineers free on-line access to its journal, Medical & Biological Engineering & Computing. The Journal covers a wide range of topics and is aimed at physical scientists and engineers working on medical, biological and cellular research and applications. The Journal has a respectable impact factor and a stable readership all over the world. The Federation is encouraging all members to make sure that they themselves and their collaborators receive a copy for their library.

I am very happy to announce that the free access to the on-line version of the Journal will continue throughout 2003. For all those who have not yet accessed the on-line journal, let me remind you how to do it: go to the IFMBE web site at: www.ifmbe.org and press "Free IFMBE JOURNAL registration". This link will take you to a registration form. After you fill out the form, you will receive a password via email that will allow you access to the journal at:

http://ioj.iee.org.uk/mbec.html

We hope that you will take advantage of the opportunity to access the many interesting papers in the journal. Feel free to pass this information to your colleagues and students; the subscription is free for all who register.

Each volume of the IFMBE Proceedings has the same ISSN Number:
ISSN 1680-0737 for printed Proceedings
ISSN 1727-1983 for Proceedings on CDs
which identifies it as part of the IFMBE Proceedings Series. The Federation has successfully published four volumes of Proceedings within the Series, the Proceedings of the World Congress in Sydney being the latest one and at the same time the first on a CD. At the latest meeting of the Administrative Council in Sydney it was decided that all regional IFMBE Conferences shall follow the standards of the Series and the Federation will also in future strongly support the conference organisers in reviewing the conference papers and in publicising of the conferences.

Additionally, the volume must also have an ISBN (International Standard Book Number), which identifies it as the unique Proceedings of the specific conference. We are looking forward to two IFMBE regional conferences in 2004: MEDICON 2004 in July in Ischia, Italy, and CLAEB 2004 in September in Joao Pessoa, Brazil.

Ratko Magjarevic
ratko.magjarevic@fer.hr