About the journal

Why JCAII exists

Thousands of clinical AI models have been developed and validated, but far fewer have been shown to improve care once deployed. The evidence that matters most to clinicians, managers and regulators is often missing: how a tool changed decisions and workflows, who it helped or harmed, what it cost, and how its performance held up over time.

JCAII is a home for that evidence. We are European-led and international in scope, and we publish negative and mixed results as readily as positive ones. An honest account of a deployment that did not work is as useful as a success story.

Aims and scope

We welcome original research, implementation reports, reviews and perspectives in four areas.

Implementation science

Deployment strategies, workflow integration, adoption and de-adoption, training, human factors, human–AI interaction, and the organisational conditions that decide whether AI tools are used well.

Real-world evaluation

Prospective and pragmatic studies, randomised and quasi-experimental evaluations, post-deployment monitoring, performance drift, and the clinical, operational and economic outcomes of AI in practice.

Governance and regulation

Institutional oversight and AI assurance, procurement, the EU AI Act, MDR and IVDR and their equivalents elsewhere, liability and accountability, and lifecycle management including model updates and decommissioning.

Equity and safety

Bias and fairness across populations and settings, patient safety and incident learning, transparency, patient and public perspectives, and trust.

What is usually out of scope

Studies that report only model development or retrospective accuracy, with no clinical evaluation and no clear route to use in care, are usually a better fit for technical venues. If you are unsure, send a pre-submission enquiry.

Who we publish for

• Clinicians and clinical leaders deciding whether and how to adopt AI tools
• Researchers in implementation science, health services research and medical AI
• Health system managers, procurement teams and digital health leads
• Regulators, health technology assessment bodies and policymakers
• Developers who want their tools to work in real clinical settings

Publishing model

JCAII is a gold open-access journal. Every article is free for anyone to read, download and reuse from the day it is published.

• Licence: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0)
• Copyright: retained by the authors
• Article processing charge: to be announced before the first articles are accepted

Read the full open access policy.

Peer review

All research articles are peer reviewed. Submissions are first assessed by the editors for scope and quality, then sent to at least two independent reviewers under a single-anonymised model, where reviewers know the authors’ identities but authors do not know the reviewers’. Where needed, a statistical or methods reviewer is added. See our peer review policy.

Editorial board

The board is being appointed now. Meet the editors.

Contact

For pre-submission enquiries, questions about the journal, or interest in joining the editorial board or reviewer pool, contact the editorial office.

Editorial office: email address to be announced