Instructions for Authors

ABOUT THE JOURNAL

Cancer Biology & Medicine is a peer-reviewed open-access journal sponsored by the Chinese Anti-cancer Association (CACA), which is the leading professional society of oncology in China.Published quarterly, the journal provides innovative and significant information on the biological basis of cancer, cancer microenvironment,translational cancer research, and all aspects of clinical cancer research.The journal also publishes significant perspectives on indigenous cancer types in China.The scope covers the following topics:

● Cancer genetics

● Cancer and stem cell biology

● Molecular and clinical immunology

● Cancer prevention and epidemiology

● Cancer biomarkers

● Radiation oncology

● Oncology clinical trials

● Mechanisms of drug sensitivity and resistance

● Targeted therapy and immunotherapy

● Multidisciplinary treatment and personalized medicine

The journal adheres to the Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals, issued by the International Committee for Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) and the guidelines of Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

MISSION

Cancer Biology & Medicine is dedicated to presenting cutting-edge and high quality articles on basic, clinical, and translational cancer research, in an effort to keep cancer researchers and clinicians updated with current knowledge of novel findings and recent advances in oncology throughout the world.

AUDIENCE

Cancer Biology & Medicine endeavors to appeal to a diverse audience engaged in cancer research and subspecialties in clinical oncology.Readers may include, but are not limited to, investigators, physicians, surgeons and nurses in cancer research areas, medical students, and other relevant health care professionals.

CONTENT CATEGORIES

Original Articles, Editorials, Reviews, Minireviews, Letters to the Editor, Clinical Guidelines, Meeting Highlights, Case Reports,UICC-China Spoke News, and Faculty 1000 Medicine Spotlight.

EDITORIAL POLICIES

Authorship and Contributorship

Authorship credit should be based on 1) substantial contributions to conception and design, acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data; 2) drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content; and 3) final approval of the version to be published.The corresponding author is required to ensure that authors are appropriately listed and provide information on the specific contributions each author has made to the article.The manuscript’s content and its submission for publication should be approved by all authors.Contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship should be listed in the Acknowledgments section.Please be aware that all communications during the submission and publishing process will be sent to the corresponding author.

Ethics Involving Humans and Animals

Experiments on human subjects should follow the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human research(institutional and national) and with the Helsinki Declaration(as revised in 2008).Animal experiments should abide by the institutional and national guide for the care and use of laboratory animals.Cancer Biology & Medicine requires a statement in the Materials and Methods section that the committee of Institutional Review Board has approved the experiments and confirmed that all procedures comply with the relevant ethical standards.

Conflict of Interest

Conflict of interest exists when an author (or the author’s institution), reviewer, or editor has any financial or personal relationships that may inappropriately influence (bias) his or her actions.Cancer Biology & Medicine requires all authors to disclose any relationship that might result in an actual,potential, or perceived conflict of interest about the manuscript submitted for review.Reviewers and editors should also disclose all relationships that may undermine the credibility of the publication process.

Exclusive Submission

Manuscripts are considered for review only if no part of the work has been previously published in print or electronically.Previous publication of an abstract in the proceedings of meetings does not preclude whole manuscript submission for publication, but full disclosure should be made.At submission, the corresponding author is responsible to attest that the manuscript, in whole or in part, is not under consideration, in press, or published in any other publication or electronic medium.

Copyright and Permissions

If a manuscript includes copyrighted materials of others, authors must obtain written permission from the copyright owners and indicate the sources in the article.The written permission should be simultaneously submitted with the manuscript.

Upon acceptance of a manuscript, authors are invited to transfer copyright to facilitate the dissemination of information to a maximum extent.Cancer Biology & Medicine will not publish a manuscript until the Copyright Transfer Form with all authors’signatures is returned.After copyright transfer, authors (or their employees and institutions) reserve the following rights.

● Reproducing the manuscript in whole or in part for teaching,lecture presentation, and communication in conferences.

● Including parts of the manuscript in subsequent articles or books, with acknowledgement of its original publication in Cancer Biology & Medicine.

● Posting the accepted version of the manuscript (revised according to peer reviewers’ opinions) on personal or institutional website, with a link to the final published version on the website of Cancer Biology & Medicine.

● Using the manuscript fully or in part in a doctoral thesis or dissertation.

For third parties who intend to use materials copyrighted in Cancer Biology & Medicine, please send request for permission to editior@cancerbiomed.org.

Peer Review

After initial review by the editor or sometimes by an editorial board member, manuscripts without sufficient priority for publication will be editorially rejected within 5-7 days.Those qualifying for peer review will be sent to at least two expert reviewers for unbiased, independent and critical assessment.Peer reviewers’identities are kept confidential, but authors’ information will be provided to the reviewers.The editors endeavor to reach decisions on these papers within four weeks from the original submission date.We allow authors one month for general revision and two months for major revision.Accepted papers will be published in print within four months of acceptance.

Embargo Policy

Scientific information in a manuscript which is under consideration or in press in Cancer Biology & Medicine may not be discussed with the media before publication.Preliminary reporting to public media, governmental agencies, or manufacturers should not jeopardize publication, and should be discussed with and approved by the editor in advance.

Responses to Scientific Misconduct

Cancer Biology & Medicine has an obligation to ensure that its published research is accurate and adheres to the highest ethical standard.In the cases of falsification, plagiarism, redundant or duplicate publication, the journal will send a letter of reprimand to the authors’ institution, publish a notice of misconduct and formally retract the published manuscript.The journal will remove further association with the involved authors and institutions.

Advance Online Publication

All accepted articles will be published online (www.cancerbiomed.org) before print as the final version after revision and editing, with a unique digital object identifier (DOI).

Open Access

All accepted articles will be archived as open access documents on www.cancerbiomed.org in their final published form, with no charge for authors.

MANUSCRIPT SUBMISSION

Presubmission Inquiries

Authors interested in getting rapid feedback on whether a manuscript is likely to be published in Cancer Biology & Medicine are envouraged to send inquiries via our online submission system (www.editorialmanager.com/cocr) or by e-mail (editor@cancerbiomed.org).The inquiries should at least include an abstract and significant figures and tables.A paper that is invited for submission after a presubmission inquiry is still subject to editorial review to assess for external peer review.

Online Submission

We encourage authors to submit manuscripts via our online submission and tracking system: www.editorialmanager.com/cocr.Please avoid sending your manuscript by e-mail attachment.Our online submission system will prompt you to upload the components of your manuscript (cover letter, text, figures,supplemental data, etc.) as separate files.Upon completion of this step, the website will build a composite PDF file of your entire manuscript.Authors are responsible to check the format of manuscript and quality of figures in the converted PDF file and approve the submission.

Cover Letter

Each submission must be accompanied by a cover letter, which should contain the following information:

● The title and a brief summary of the significant findings or points of the manuscript.

● A statement of exclusive submission and no plagiarism or other misconducts.

● A statement that the manuscript has been read and approved for submission by all the authors.

● The name, address, and telephone number of the corresponding author.

● Suggestions for appropriate reviewers and reviewer exclusions.

Status Inquiries

Authors can check the status of the submitted manuscripts at any time in the review process by accessing the system with their account and password.Please feel free to send status queries to the editor@cancerbiomed.org

Submission of Revisions

The revised version of manuscript should be submitted within two months after authors receive the reviewers comments.Please contact the editor if extra time is needed for revision.The journal generally allows only one round of revision.Except for the revisions, authors should upload a point-by-point response to the reviewers’ comments.Please do not upload revised manuscripts as new submissions.

MANUSCRIPT FORMATS

Original Article

Original Articles report significant new findings or important clinical experience in cancer area, which have valuable implications.The total word count should not exceed 5,000(including abstract, but excluding references, tables and figures), with no more than 8 figures and/or tables.Additional display items may be published online as Supplementary Information.

Editorial

Editorials are usually invited, commenting on the leading-edge discoveries in cancer research and significant advances on cancer diagnosis and treatment.Editorials are no more than 3,000 words in length (with a two-sentence abstract), with less than 10 references.

Review

Reviews discuss recent progress on topics of broad interest to cancer researchers or cancer care professionals.Reviews should not exceed 5,000 words in length, including abstract but excluding references, tables and figures.Solicited reviews will also be sent out for peer review.

Minireview

Minireviews are shorter reviews, usually based on recently published original studies.These manuscripts should not exceed 4,000 words, including abstract but excluding references, tables and figures.Solicited minireviews will also be sent out for peer review.

Letter to the Editor

Readers are encouraged to comment on articles published in Cancer Biology & Medicine, via Letters to the Editor.A Letter should clearly indicate the original source.Response to a Letter should reference the Letter in the first paragraphs and its title should include the Letter title.The word limit for letters is 500 maximum.Letters to the editor will not undergo peer review.

Case Report

Case Reports introduce new, rare or typical cancer cases.The features, diagnosis or treatment of these cases should have valuable implications and provide practical information for clinicians.A case report should include an abstract of no more than 100 words and three sections as follows: Introduction, Case Report, and Discussion.The word limit is 1,000 words including abstract, but excluding references, tables and figures.

Practice Guideline

Practice Guidelines introduce consensuses or clinical guidelines produced by international authoritative groups or societies about cancer.

Meeting Report

Meeting Highlights report essence of important cancer conferences or symposium all over the world, with a word limit of 3,000 words including abstract but excluding references, tables and figures.Such manuscripts should contain novel information and insightful views of the meeting and should be submitted within 3 months of the meeting date.

MANUSCRIPT PREPARATION

Authors should prepare their manuscripts according to the Unifo rm Requirements of Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals established by the ICMJE (http://www.icmje.org).The editors have the right to return manuscripts that are not in accordance with the journal’s policies and format requirements.Manuscripts must be written in concise and fluent English.It is suggested that authors have their manuscript reviewed by colleagues and/or by professional English language editing services before submission.

The manuscript of observational and experimental articles should include title page, abstract, introduction, materials and methods,results, discussion, acknowledgements, conflict of interest statement,references, figures, tables, and supplementary information.All pages of the manuscript should be numbered consecutively, beginning with the title page.

Title Page

TitleKey information should be included in the title, which enables electronic retrieval of the article both sensitive and specific.The title should not contain any abbreviations except for commonly used gene or protein acronyms.The total length of the title should not exceed 20 words.

Authors and AffiliationsMultiple first-authorships are acceptable and should be indicated.Multiple senior authors are also acceptable but only one should be designated as corresponding person for timely communication between authors and the journal.The name, mailing address, telephone and fax numbers, and e-mail address of the corresponding author should be indicated clearly.Numbers in superscript should be used to indicate the department, institution, city with postal code and country, for each author.

Author ContributionCancer Biology & Medicine requires a statement specifying the contributions of every author on the title page.

Source(s) of SupportAny support in the form of grants,equipment, drugs, or all of these should be claimed.

Running TitleA running title of no more than 10 words is required.

This should be a single paragraph of about 250 words, accurately reflecting the content of the article.Abbreviations and reference citation should be avoided in the abstract.The abstract should describe all key novel findings of the study.Structured abstracts(Objective, Methods, Results, and Conclusion) are preferred for original research articles.For articles on clinical trials, items identified by the CONSORT group should be provided and the trial registration number should be listed at the end of the abstract.

Authors should list keywords (up to five) which reflect the key information of the article.Medical Subject Headings (MeSH)should be used as a guide (http://www.nlm.nih.gov/mesh/meshhome.html).

Introduction

The Introduction section should provide the necessary background and the specific purpose of the research.Cite references to the most pertinent articles and avoid including data or conclusion of the study being reported.

Materials and Methods

Information about materials and methods should be brief and adequate so that all procedures can be repeated by others.Methods that have been well described in previous publications should be merely cited with appropriate references.Only new and substantially modified methods need detailed explanation.The generic name (s), dose (s), and administration route (s) of all drugs and chemicals should be precisely identified.

Describe statistical methods with enough details.Provide references for the statistical methods when possible and explain whether their data conform to the assumptions of the tests.The computer software used should be specified.Authors should be aware that statistical analysis and presentation is an essential part to review for all referees.

Manuscripts involving humans and animals must include a statement in this section that the research has been reviewed and approved by institutional ethical committee before conduction of research.For manuscripts involving human subjects, a statement that the informed consent was obtained from each subject is required.

Results

The results should be presented in logical sequence in the text,tables, and figures, accurately describing important findings of the study.Concisely summarize the data presented in tables and figures, avoiding excessive explanations.

Discussion

Accurately interpret the new and important findings of the study and discuss the results in a broader context.Avoid repeating materials already showed in the Introduction or the Results section.Pertinent data in previous publications should be appropriately discussed and cited.Discuss the limitations and implications of the study.Avoid drawing conclusions without adequate support by the data.

Acknowledgements

Contributions of non-authors should be acknowledged.The corresponding author is responsible to obtain the written permission from those mentioned in this section.The funding sources (if any) should be listed, with grant name and number.

Conflict of Interest

In this section, whether there is a Conflict of Interest should be stated.Authors must disclose the details of all conflicts if there are any.

Cancer Biology & Medicine requires the citation of original research articles wherever appropriate.Number the references in the order of their first mention.References should include only articles that are published or in press.Avoid citing abstracts, personal communication, or retracted articles.Authors are responsible for the accuracy of references and should ensure that the pertinent literatures are appropriately cited and comprehensively discussed.Please use the following style for references:

Article in a Journal:Anderson WF, Jatoi I, Tse J, Rosenberg PS.Male Breast Cancer: A Population-Based Comparison With Female Breast Cancer.J Clin Ocol 2010; 28: 232-239.

Article in a book:Gradishar W.Male breast cancer.In: Harris J,Lippman M, Morrow M, Osborne C, eds.Diseases of the breast.2nd ed.Philadelphia: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins; 2000: 661-667.

An entire book:Bruce A.Chabner, Dan L.Longo.Cancer Chemotherapy and Biotherapy: Principles and Practice.Philadelphia: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins; 2006.

Online first articles:Gregg W.Stone, Akiko Maehara,Bernhard Witzenbichler, et al.Intracoronary Abciximab and Aspiration Thrombectomy in Patients With Large Anterior Myocardial Infarction: The INFUSE-AMI Randomized Trial.JAMA.Published online first: March 25, 2012.DOI: 10.1001/jama.2012.421

Tables

Type tables on separate sheets and number them consecutively in Arabic numerals according to the order of their first mention in the text.Tables should be self-explanatory and include a brief descriptive title above.Column headings should be concise, with units of measurement in parentheses.Explain all abbreviations in footnotes and use the following symbols, in sequence: ?, ?, §, ?,etc.*, **, ***, etc.should be reserved for P values.

Figures

Figures should be labeled in consecutive Arabic numerals and presented in the order they are mentioned in the text.If reuse of a figure in previously publications is necessary, the author must provide the written permission from the copyright holder and indicate the original source in the legend.

The figures should be submitted as separate files, in TIF, EPS,JPEG, or GIF formats and should be sized at 127×173 mm(5×7 inches).High resolution is preferred.At least 300 dpi for color figures and 1,000 dpi for line figures are required.Photomicrographs should have internal scale markers.Symbols,arrows, or letters used in photomicrographs should contrast with the background.

Figure legends should be concise and comprehensive and be listed in a separate page.Ensure that legends and figures match up correctly.Indicate stains and magnifications and clearly explain symbols, arrows, abbreviations, and letters used in the legends.

Supplementary Information

Supplementary information may include additional tables, figures,or movies, which directly support the main conclusions of the article.Supplementary information will be peer-reviewed and posted online only due to restrictions of print space or file format.The printed article must be complete and self-contained without the supplementary information.Supplementary information should enhance, but not be essential to, a reader's understanding of the paper.

Submit supplementary information as a separate file through the submission system.Tables and figures should meet the requirements listed in the “Tables” and “Figures” parts mentioned above.Multimedia files in .mov, .avi, .mpg, .mp3, and .mp4 formats are acceptable.The file size should not exceed 10 MB.

PROOFS

Authors whose articles are accepted will receive an e-mail with their proof before publication.Authors should check the accuracy and the layout of the text, tables and figures.The PDF should be clearly annotated for necessary corrections and then returned via e-mail to editor@cancerbiomed.org by the date indicated.Major alterations which may delay the publication are not encouraged.

CHARGES

Sponsored by CACA and Tianjin Medical University Cancer Institute and Hospital, Cancer Biology & Medicine emphasizes on rapidly publishing leading-edge information on cancer and promoting its dissemination.In 2012, no fees will be charged for color figures, online/print publication, or Open Access.

OFFPRINTS

Offprint order forms will be sent with the proofs.Authors who request offprints should complete and return the forms to the editorial office before the journal is printed.Late orders submitted after the print publication may be subject to an increased price.

CONTACT INFORMATION

Mainland China

Tianjin Medical University Cancer Institute and Hospital,Huan-hu-xi Road, He-xi District, Tianjin 300060, China

Tel: 86-22-2352 2919

Fax: 86-22-2352 2919

E-mail: editor@cancerbiomed.org

Website: www.cancerbiomed.org

North America

Kai Fu, M.D., Ph.D., Associate Editor-in-Chief

Department of Pathology and Microbiology

University of Nebraska Medical Center

983135 Nebraska Medical Center, Omaha, NE 68198-3135,USA

Tel: 1-402-559-7526 or 1-402-559-3870

Fax: 1-402-559-6018

E-mail: editor-us@cancerbiomed.org