Cancer Plus

Focus and Scope

Cancer Plus is a new research journal that aims to provide a peer-reviewed, open access platform for researchers and practitioners to present novel and high-impact articles in the field of cancer research and clinical trials. This journal is a joint collaboration between Whioce Publishing Pte. Ltd. (Singapore) and the Chinese Academy of Sciences (China). Areas of interest for this journal include, but are not limited to, the following topics:

• Mechanisms of tumorigenesis
• Genetic alterations of cancer
• Epigenetics of cancer
• Cell signalling
• Cancer stem cells
• Cancer prevention
• Diagnosis 
• Cancer drugs / chemotherapy / therapeutic methods
• Clinical trials

Section Policies

Editorial

Solicited concise commentary highlighting prominent topics in the Journal issue. These are the official opinions of the editors of the journal or special issue. Editorials will be published in both online and printed versions of the journal.

This manuscript type typically has 3,500 words.

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Research Article

Scientific articles on original basic and applied research and/or analysis.
This manuscript type typically has 5 tables and figures in total, and approximately 40 references and 7,000 words (inclusive of reference list and abstract).

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Review Article

A summary highlighting recent developments and current/future trends of the field.
This manuscript type typically has 5 tables and figures in total, and approximately 70 references and 7,000 words (inclusive of reference list and abstract)

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Book Review

Book review provides an overview of new pubulications from the area of cancer. Brief summary, focus, argumentation and impact of the book should be provided.

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Case Report

Documents that summarize the execution and results of a clinical case. Submissions will be evaluated on a case-by-case basis and are usually solicited by the editors.

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Perspective Article

These are author's personal opinions on a subject/topic. Unlike Reviews, Perspective Articles may cover a more specific, narrow part of the field. However, these are still required to uphold the spirit of academia to be objective as well as aim to initiate or further discussions and novel experimental procedures in the field.
This manuscript type typically has 5 tables and figures in total, and approximately 70 references and 7,000 words (inclusive of reference list and abstract).

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Letters to the Editor

Comments from reader(s) about individual articles. These letters must be constructive and contribute to the development of individual articles published or the entire journal. Letters containing new ideas, supporting data or data criticizing the article may be subjected to peer-review (determined on a case-by-case basis by the journal's editorial team) and published in the online publication but not in the printed version. Authors should specify the intended recipient of the letters i.e. editor-in-chief or stating the specific author(s) name.
This manuscript type typically has 1,800 words (exclusive of reference list)

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Commentary

Unsolicited commentaries or analysis from reader(s) targeting specific published articles in the journal. Commentaries will be subjected to peer-review and may be published in both online and printed versions of the journal.
This manuscript type typically has 3,500 words.

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Position Paper

Submissions that reflect the official opinion of an organization (e.g. government bodies, funding agencies).
This manuscript type typically has 3,500 words.

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Peer Review Process

All manuscripts submitted to Cancer Plus will follow the following procedure:

• Initial submission is reviewed by in-house editors to ensure adherence to journal policies and for double-blind review.
• Editor-in-chief decides on the manuscript to be sent out for the review process and assigns the manuscript to one of the editors according to the particular topic.
• Editor assigns reviewers from inside the editorial board or outside depending on the topic.
• After evaluations by the reviewers have been received, the editor-in-chief makes one of the following recommendations: accept, minor revision, major revision, reject and resubmit, and reject.
• If the decision is a minor revision, the authors have 7 days to resubmit the revised manuscript.
• If the decision is a major revision, the authors have 14 days to resubmit the revised manuscript.
• Upon resubmission, the same procedure is applied as for the initial submission.
• Authors may appeal for a rejected submission. Appeal requests must be made in writing to cancer.editorial. office@whioce.com with detailed reasons for the appeal and point by point responses to the reviewers' remarks. Decisions on appeals are final without exception.
• For all manuscripts accepted for publication, the peer review process will be deemed to be completed. The manuscript will proceed to be copyedited, layout edited and proofread before being published online.

Note: You may suggest up to four academically qualified reviewers for consideration. Please insert the current contact details of the reviewer and state the reason(s) for a recommendation under the "Comments for the Editor" section. However, please take note that the Editorial Team strives to ensure the peer review process is fair and unbiased and hence, there is no guarantee that a recommended reviewer will be approached to perform the peer review.

Open Access Policy

This journal provides immediate open access to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge.

Publishing Ethics

Whioce Publishing requests all members involved in the journal publishing process to adhere to the Core Practices on publication ethics as stipulated by COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics).

The publisher strictly adheres to the guidelines and best practices, which include Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals from the International Committee of Medical Journals Editors (ICMJE) and the Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing developed by Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA) and World Association of Medical Editors (WAME).

All complaints submitted by the authors to the journal will be addressed promptly according to the procedure set out in the COPE flowchart on complaints. The complainant may direct all inquiries and correspondence to the publisher at editorial_office@whioce.com.

This Journal adopts a zero-tolerance policy concerning any academic misconducts and ethical violations in research and publication regardless of the severity of these issues. The violations include plagiarism, falsification of research, data fabrication, submitting manuscripts of others as one’s own, submission of same manuscript to different publication venues at the same time and breached intellectual property rights. In cases of suspected misconduct and ethical violation, a panel will be formed to investigate the allegation. If the allegation is supported by evidence, the submitted manuscript in question will be declined for consideration in the journal and all authors will be informed in this regard. A retraction initiated by authors or by the journal is required to take place if the paper has already been published, and the retraction will be made public. Authors of the work in question will receive the Panel’s Decision via email and all appeals regarding the decision will have to be made to the Publisher at editorial_office@whioce.com within 28 days of the decision date.

Statement of Informed Consent

Patients have a right to their privacy and it should not be violated without informed consent. Authors should protect their patients’ right to privacy by requesting oral or written consent from the patients or patient’s guardian to publish his/her data, including photographs and radiological images, prior to publication. To protect the patient’s anonymity, clinical photographs should be cropped appropriately (or eye bars can be utilised) to ensure that the patient is unrecognizable. Other details such as the race, ethnicity, religion or cultural background of a subject under study should be mentioned only when it is believed to have an impact on course of the disease and/or treatment discussed in the study. If changing the biographical details and/or identifying characteristics is done in order to protect anonymity, authors should provide assurance that the changes do not falsify the scientific meaning of a manuscript/report. The informed consent form/agreement should be included in as a supplementary document of a manuscript during submission. 

Human and Animal Rights Statement

Humans: When the submitted manuscript involves experiments performed on human subjects, including healthy volunteers, authors should adhere to the Declaration of Helsinki principles of 1975, as revised in 2000 and 2008 and indicate whether the procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the author's Institutional Review Board or Research Ethics Committee. Any possible adverse consequences of the work for ecosystems, populations or individual organisms must be weighed against the possible gains in knowledge and its practical applications.

Animals: When reporting experiments involving animals, authors should indicate whether relevant international, national, and/or institutional guidelines for the care and use of laboratory animals were conducted accordingly. For studies involving client-owned animals, author(s) must declare that they have obtained the oral or written informed client consent and adhere to a high standard (best practise) of veterinary care. 

Cancer Plus encourages authors submitting manuscripts that report a clinical trial, to submit relevant registration documents that bear the clinical trial registration number and name.

Editorial Policies

Authors should read the “Author Guidelines” before making a submission, and make sure that the manuscripts were written in accordance to the style and specifications of the journal’s policy.

All manuscripts submitted to Cancer Plus are subject to rigorous peer review. Prior to peer review process, the manuscripts will be screened for acceptable English language, novelty and relevance to the Focus and Scope of the journal.

Any manuscripts submitted to Cancer Plus will be treated as confidential materials. The manuscripts will not be disclosed to anyone except individuals such as editorial staff, reviewers and editors who participate in the initial screening, review, processing and preparation of the manuscript for publication (if accepted).

A manuscript would not be accepted if it has been published or is currently under consideration for publication in any other journals. The author will need to notify the editorial team if the data in their submission has been presented in conferences. After acceptance, the Publisher will have the right to edit the work for the original edition and for any revision.

Authorship

Authorship should be limited to people who have contributed substantially to the work. Examples of contributions include: designed research, performed research, contributed new reagents or analytic tools, analyzed data, wrote the paper.

For more information on submission’s format, please refer to the ‘Submissions’ link accessible from the ‘About’ button at the top row of this page.

The corresponding author should be clearly indicated for all manuscripts submitted. A maximum of two corresponding authors are allowed for the responsibilities associated. The corresponding author(s) is responsible for:

• Obtaining permission from all the authors mentioned in the manuscript
• Ensuring adherence to all editorial and submission policies and for any communications and actions that may be necessary after publication
• Including written permission from the authors of the work concerned for any mention of any unpublished material included in the manuscript, e.g. data from manuscripts-in-press, personal communication, or work in preparation. 

Changes to Authorship

The authors should carefully check the list and order of authors before submitting their manuscript. The Editorial Office considers the authorship list is definitive by the time the original submission is received.

Any addition, deletion or rearrangement of author names in the authorship list should be made only before the manuscript is accepted for publication. The corresponding author should provide the reasons for the change in authorship list and the proof of written confirmation from all authors (including the existing authors, author(s) to be added and/or removed) agreeing with such change, to the Editorial Office.

The requests for authorship changes need to be approved by the Editorial Office before any changes can be made.

Conflict of Interest

The author has to provide the authorization of no conflict with any financial body or funding agency that might influence the results or interpretation of their manuscript. All authors, members, reviewers and editors must disclose any association that poses a conflict of interest in connection with the manuscript. The corresponding author will be asked to sign a form behalf of all of the authors regarding potential conflicts of interest at the time of acceptance.

For authors:

While submitting, authors must list all competing interests relevant to this work, including but not limited to:

• Funding sources
• The role of sponsors in the work design, data collection, and results of the analysis.
• Whether the author is serving on the editorial board of this journal submitting to.

For editors and reviewers:

Editors and reviewers must declare any possible conflict of interests in connection with the manuscript, and if necessary, they must avoid the peer review process. When Editorial Board Members publish articles in the served journal, the editorial office will actively emphasize it so that the authors know that they recuse the potential peer review process.

Common reasons for editors and reviewers to be replaced include but are not limited to:

• The editor or reviewer works at the same organization as one of the authors.
• The editor or reviewer is one of the authors of this work.
• The editor or reviewer is on the avoidance list from the author(s).
• The editor or reviewer has a financial relationship or personal relationship with an author.

Plagiarism

The editorial team does not approve of any plagiarism attempts. iThenticate will be utilized at the editor’s discretion to verify the originality of submitted manuscripts. If plagiarism is detected during the review process the manuscript may be rejected pending the severity of plagiarism. Therefore, if a manuscript uses a text copied directly from another source, this text must be written in quotation marks and the original source must be cited.

Language

All articles must be written in English — preferably American English. SI units should be used. If you are not a native English speaker, you may want to utilize an external or Whioce Publishing’s optional professional language editing service before submitting the final version.

Whioce Publishing Pte. Ltd. offers its own professional editing services. By using this service, you can be sure that your English-language manuscript will be polished and ready for submission to your publication of choice at a very reasonable price. For further details about the Language Editing Services, please contact us at editorial_office@whioce.com. Please note that utilizing a language editing service is not a guarantee of acceptance.

Advertising Policy

All advertisements are subject to approval to the Publisher. Advertisements must comply with the relevant regulations in the country where the advertisements appears. For more inquiries, please send email to editorial_office@whioce.com.

Data Processing Policy

Authors are expected to have minimum amount of post-acquisition processing of data. In case of processing, alterations must be applied to the entire image (e.g., brightness, contrast, color balance). Any kind of alteration if being done has to be clearly stated in the figure legend and in Methods section.

Grouping of data (e.g., cropping of images of removal of lanes from gels and bolts) must be made apparent and should be explicitly indicated in the appropriate figure legends. Data comparisons should only be made from comparative experiments, and individual data should not be utilized across multiple figures. If inappropriate image/data manipulation is identified after publication, we reserve the right to ask for the original data and, if that is not satisfactory, to issue a correction or retract the paper, as appropriate.

Indexing & Archiving

Indexing 

Cancer Plus is indexed by Google Scholar, and aims to be indexed by world-recognized databases, for example, PubMed, Scopus and Science Citation Index (SCI). 

Frequently Asked Questions

1. How do I find out if my manuscript is within the scope of this journal?

   Answer: To establish whether your paper is suitable for this journal, please read Focus and Scope before submissions.

2. How do I submit my manuscript to this journal?

   Answer: Registration and login are required to submit manuscript online and to check the status of current submission.

3. What type of file format can be submitted?

   Answer: The submission file can be submitted in MS Word document file format.

4. Is there a word limit for submission to this journal?

   Answer: The length of the manuscript cannot be more than 8,000 words.

5. Do I need to enclose my submission with a cover letter?

   Answer: The cover letter is necessary for each submission. The cover letter should be uploaded as a separate file in Step 4 during the submission. The contents of the cover letter should include brief explanation of what was previously known, the conceptual advancement with the findings and its significance to broad readership. The cover letter will only be visible to the editor. Reviewers will not have access to the cover letter.

6. Is it essential to suggest reviewers for my manuscript?

   Answer: You can suggest 2 reviewers for your submission. However, the decision of whether to invite them lies with the Editor.

7. Is there any publication fee charged for papers published in this journal?

   Answer: Refer to the Publication Fees tab for more details.

Article Processing Charges (APC)

Cancer Plus is an Open Access Journal under Whioce Publishing. All articles published in Cancer Plus are accessible electronically from the journal website without commencing any kind of payment. In order to ensure contents are freely available and maintain publishing quality, Article Process Charges (APC) are applicable to all authors who wish to submit their articles to the journal to cover the cost incurred in processing the manuscripts. Such cost will cover the peer-review, copyediting, typesetting, publishing, content depositing and archiving processes. Those charges are applicable only to authors who have their manuscript successfully accepted after peer-review.

We encourage authors to publish their papers with us and don’t wish the cost of article processing fees to be a barrier especially to authors from the low and lower middle income countries/regions. A range of discounts or waivers are offered to authors who are unable to pay our publication processing fees. Authors can write in to apply for a waiver and requests will be considered on a case-by-case basis.

Authors based in these countries/regions listed below may apply to receive up to a 50%-100% waiver of the standard article processing fee; Waivers are subjected to approval.

If you are residing in one of the above mentioned countries and need to apply for a waiver, please email our editorial department (editorial_office@whioce.com) with the following information:

• Your name and institution with full address details
• Title of journal you wish to submit a manuscript to
• Reason for applying for a waiver
• Title of your paper
• Country of residence of all co-author

Copyright and License

The authors shall retain the copyright of their work but allow the Publisher to publish, copy, distribute, and convey the work.

All articles published by Cancer Plus are licensed under the Creative Commons International Licenses. Without any explicit request from the corresponding author during submission stage, a paper will be published under the  Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 International License. 

Publication Frequency

The publication frequency of Cancer Plus is quarterly.

Erratum & Withdrawal Policy

Erratum

All publisher-introduced changes are highlighted to the author at the proof stage and any errors are ideally identified by the author and corrected by the publisher before final publication. Any errors in published articles discovered by readers, authors, editors, etc., please contact the journal editor. Whioce will only instigate a corrigendum to a published article after receiving approval and instructions from the editor.

Withdrawal

If you decide to withdraw your manuscript after it has been accepted (but not yet published), a processing fee of USD 200 is chargeable upon withdrawal.

Disclaimer

• For authors: Once submitting a manuscript, it means that you have be aware of all publishing policies & ethics,  and will strictly abide by them.
• For reviewers: Once accepting the request to become a reviewer, it means that you must be aware of the peer review policies, and proactively disclose of all potential conflicts of interest, and guarantee that an article will be judged fairly and objectively. 
• For publisher: This journal  is not liable to the statements, perspectives, and opinions contained in the published articles. The appearance of advertisements in the journal shall not be construed as a warranty, endorsement, or approval of the products or services advertised and/or the safety thereof. This journal and the Publisher disclaim responsibility for any injury to persons or property resulting from any ideas or products referred to in the articles or advertisements.