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Author Guidelines

Types of submissions accepted

Cancer Plus accepts editorials, research articles, review articles,case reports, perspective articles, letters to the editor, commentaries,  and position papers. Please read this section further for the definition of each type and select the appropriate option in the submission system. Submissions exceeding the suggested requirements, such as total manuscript length, will still be processed for consideration and peer review. However, article processing charges will differ in exceptional cases (e.g. a raw text file exceeding 2MB). The article processing charge will then be determined on a case-by-case basis.

Editorial: Solicited concise commentary highlighting prominent topics in the Journal’s issue. These are the official opinions of the editors of the journal or its special issue. Editorials will be published in both online and printed versions of the journal. This manuscript type typically has 3,500 words.

Research Article: Scientific articles on original basic and applied research and/or analysis. This manuscript type typically has 7 tables and figures in total and has approximately 70 references and 8,000 words (inclusive of reference list and abstract).

Review Article: A summary highlighting recent developments and current/future trends of the field. This manuscript type typically has 7 tables and figures in total, with approximately 70 references and 8,000 words (inclusive of reference list and abstract).

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.

Perspective Article: These are the author’s personal opinion 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 of being objective as well as aiming to initiate or furthering discussions and novel experimental procedures in the field. Therefore, it will undergo peer review and be indexed if accepted. Accepted articles may be solicited or unsolicited. This manuscript type typically has 5 tables and figures in total, along with approximately 70 references and 7,000 words (inclusive of reference list and abstract).

Letters to the Editor: Comments from the 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 an 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. This manuscript type typically has 1,800 words (exclusive of reference list).

Commentary: Unsolicited commentaries or analysis from the 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.

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

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Initial Submission

Before submitting for publication, please check that your manuscript has been prepared in accordance with the step-by-step instructions for submitting a manuscript to our online submission system.

1. Cover Letter

The cover letter is an excellent opportunity to briefly discuss the importance of the submitted work and why it is appropriate for the journal. Please avoid repeating information that is already present in the abstract and introduction. The cover letter is used to provide confidential information e.g. conflicts of interest and to declare any related work that is in press or submitted elsewhere.

2. Manuscript Format

Your manuscript should be in MS Word. You are advised to download the template when preparing your submissions to this journal. All manuscripts must be written in clear, comprehensible English. Both British and American English are accepted, however it is the author's responsibility and discretion to ensure constant use of either throughout the entire manuscript. Usage of non-English words should be kept to a minimum and must be italicized, with the exception of “e.g.” and “i.e.”. Should the author submit a non-English manuscript (e.g. written in Mandarin Chinese), we would require the author to translate the manuscript prior to submission and submit both versions of the manuscript.

To facilitate the review process, we strongly encourage authors to incorporate the manuscript text and figures into a single Word file. Suitably high-resolution figures may be inserted within the text at appropriate positions. Each figure legend should be presented on the same page as its figure. Please number all lines in your Word document.

2.1 Title

Titles must be on two lines in print (approx. 75 characters, including spaces) and should avoid technical terms, abbreviations and active verbs.

2.2 Authors

Corresponding author(s) should be labelled with an asterisk (*). See Section 3 for more details.

2.3 Abstract

Provide a general introduction to the topic and a brief non-technical summary of your main results and their implication. For articles, the abstract contains a maximum of 300 words, unreferenced.

2.4 Main text

The main text should contain approximately 70 references (however subject to the type of article e.g. research article, review). Section headings should be used and subheadings may appear in "Results". In-text citations must be included wherever necessary, see Section 5 for more details.

2.5 Materials and methods

The Methods section should contain all elements necessary for interpretation and replication of the results. Methods should be written as concisely as possible and typically do not exceed 3,000 words but may be longer if necessary. Methods-only references do not count against your reference limit. Protocols and procedures for new methods must be included in detail for the reproducibility of the experiments. Informed consent should be obtained from patients or parents before the experiments start and should be mentioned in this section.

2.6 References

These may only contain citations and should list only one publication with each number. Include the title of the cited article or dataset. We encourage authors to use accepted reference management software e.g. EndNote and submit a complete library of references in the metadata section.

2.7 Acknowledgments (optional)

Keep acknowledgements brief and do not include thanks to anonymous referees or editors, or effusive comments. Grant or contribution numbers may be included.

2.8 Author contributions (optional)

It may include a statement that specifies the individual contributions of each co-author if possible.

2.9 Conflict of interest

All authors are required to provide authorized evidence of no-conflict with any funding body or persons that might influence the results or interpretation of their work. Examples of such activities could include personal or work-related relationships, events, etc. Authors who have nothing to declare are encouraged to add ‘No conflict of interest was reported by all authors' in this section. All authors, members, reviewers and editors must disclose any association that poses a conflict of interest in connection with the manuscript.

2.10 Tables

Each table should be accompanied by a short title sentence describing what the table shows. Further details can be included as footnotes to the table.

2.11 Figures

Authors should include all figures into the manuscript and submit it as one file. Figures include photographs, scanned images, graphs, charts and schematic diagrams. Figures submitted should avoid unnecessary decorative effects (e.g. 3D graphs), as well as should be minimally processed (e.g. changes in brightness and contrast applied uniformly for the entire figure). It should also be set against a white background. Please remember to label all figures (e.g. axis) and add captions below the figure, as required. These captions should be numbered (e.g. Figure 1, Figure 2) in boldface. 

  • Provide images in RGB colour and at 600 dpi or higher resolution
  • Use the same typeface for all figures. Use symbol font for Greek letters
  • Use distinct colours with comparable visibility and avoid the use of red and green for contrast. Recoloring primary data, such as fluorescence images, to colour-safe combinations such as green and magenta or other accessible colour palettes, is strongly encouraged. Use of the rainbow colour scale should be avoided.

Figure legends of <250 words each should begin with a brief title sentence for the whole figure and continue with a short statement of what is depicted in the figure, not the results (or data) of the experiment or the methods used. Legends should be detailed enough so that each figure and caption can, as far as possible, be understood in isolation from the main text.

The Editor-in-Chief and Publisher reserve the right to request from the author(s) the high-resolution files and unprocessed data and metadata files, should the need arise at any point after manuscript submission for reasons such as production, evaluation or other purposes. The file name should allow for ease in identifying the associated manuscript submitted.

2.12  Statistical information

The Methods section must include a statistics section where you describe the statistical tests used in the study. Please ensure that the error bars are clearly shown in the figures. For all statistics, provide the EXACT n values used to calculate the statistics. For representative results, report the number of times that the measurements were repeated. Where relevant, provide exact values for both significant and non-significant P values. 

2.13 Ethics and human subject data

Ethics information includes IACUC permit numbers and/or IRB name, if applicable. This information should be included in a subheading labelled 'Ethics statement' in the 'Methods' section of the manuscript file, in as much detail as possible. 

If you are reporting phase II or phase III randomized controlled trials, you must refer to the CONSORT statement for recommendation to facilitate the complete and transparent reporting of trial findings. Reports that do not conform to the CONSORT guidelines may need to be revised before peer-review. We encourage authors reporting prognostic studies with tumour markers to follow the REMARK reporting guidelines.

2.14 Funding

Authors should declare all financial and non-financial support that have the potential to be deemed as a source of competing interest in relations to their submitted manuscript in this section. Financial supports are generally in the form of grants, royalties, consulting fees and others. Examples of non-financial support could include the following: externally-supplied equipment/biological sources, writing assistance, administrative support, contributions from non-authors.

3. List of Authors

The names of authors must be spelt out rather than set in initials along with their affiliations. Authors should be listed according to the extent of their contribution, with the major contributor listed first. All corresponding authors should be identified with an asterisk. Affiliations should contain the following core information: department, institution, city, state, postal code, and country. For contact, email address of at least one corresponding author must be included. Please note that all authors must view and approve the final version of the manuscript before submitting. Corresponding authors should bear all responsibilities as listed below:

  1. Supervising the work
  2. Being responsible for all data, figures, and text
  3. Ensuring that authorship is granted appropriately to contributors
  4. Ensuring that all authors approve the content and submission of the paper
  5. Ensuring adherence to all editorial and submission policies
  6. Identifying and declaring conflicts of interest on behalf of all authors
  7. Communicating with the journal (before and after publication), being accountable for fulfilling requests for reagents and resources, and arbitrating decisions and disputes
  8. Identifying and disclosing related work by any co-authors under consideration elsewhere

4. Plagiarism

We strictly reject any form of plagiarism. iThenticate will be utilized to verify the originality of all submissions. If severe plagiarism is detected at any stage, the manuscript will be immediately rejected with or without notice. It is the author's responsibility to ensure proper use of citations and references.

5. In-text citations

Reference citations in the text should be numbered consecutively in superscript square brackets. Some examples:

  1. Negotiation research spans many disciplines[3,4].
  2. This result was later contradicted by Becker and Seligman[5].
  3. This effect has been widely studied[1–3,7].

Personal communications and unpublished works can only be used in the main text of the submission and are not to be placed in the Reference section. Authors are advised to limit such usage to the minimum. These should also be easily identifiable by stating the authors and year of such unpublished works or personal communications, and the word "Unpublished" in parenthesis.

E.g. (Smith J, 2000, Unpublished)

6. References

This section is compulsory and should be placed at the end of all manuscripts. Do not use footnotes or endnotes as a substitute for a reference list. The list of references should only include works that are cited in the text and that have been published or accepted for publication. Personal communications and unpublished works should be excluded from this section.

For the reference list, all authors must be stated. Authors being referenced are listed with their surname followed by their initials. All references should be numbered (e.g. 1, 2, 3) and sequenced according to the order they appear as the in-text citations. References should follow the following pattern: Author(s), followed by the year of publication, Title of Publication, abbreviated journal name in italics, volume number, issue number in parenthesis and lastly:page range. If the referred article has more than three authors, list only the first three authors and abbreviate the remaining authors as the italicized "et al." (meaning "and others"). If the DOI is available, please include it after the page range. Examples of references for different types of publications are as follows:

6.1 Journal

Journal article (print) with one to three authors:

Younger P, 2004, Using the Internet to Conduct a Literature Search. Nurs Stand, 19: 45–51.

Journal article (print) with more than three authors:

Gamelin F X, Baquet G, Berthoin S, et al., 2009, Effect of High Intensity Intermittent Training on Heart Rate Variability in Prepubescent Children. Eur J Appl Physiol, 105: 731–8.

Journal article (online) with one to three authors:

Jackson D, Firtko A and Edenborough M, 2007, Personal Resilience as a Strategy for Surviving and Thriving in the Face of Workplace Adversity: A Literature Review. J Adv Nurs, 60: 1–9. DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-2648.2007.04412.x.

Journal article (online) with more than three authors:

Hargreave M, Jensen A, Nielsen TSS, et al., 2015, Maternal Use of Fertility Drugs and Risk of Cancer in Children — A Nationwide Population-Based Cohort Study in Denmark. Int J Cancer, 136: 1931–9. DOI: 10.1002/ijc.29235.

6.2 Books

Books with one to three authors:

Schneider Z, Whitehead D and Elliott D, 2007, Nursing and Midwifery Research: Methods and Appraisal for Evidence-based Practice (3rd edn.). Marrickville, NSW: Elsevier Australia, Marrickville, pp.112–30.

Books with more than three authors:

Davis M, Charles L, Curry M J, et al., 2003, Challenging Spatial Norms. London: Routledge, pp.12–30.

Chapter or article in books:

Knowles MS (ed.), 1986, Independent study, In: Using Learning Contracts. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, pp.89–96.

6.3 Others

6.3.1 Proceedings of meetings and symposiums, conference papers:

Chang SS, Liaw L and Ruppenhofer J (eds.), 2000, Proceedings of the Twenty-fifth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, February 12–15, 1999: General Session and Parasession on Loan Word Phenomena. Berkeley: Berkeley Linguistics Society, pp.12–3.

6.3.2 Conference proceedings (from electronic database):

Wang T, Cook C and Derby B, 2009, Fabrication of a Glucose Biosensor by Piezoelectric Inkjet Printing. Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Sensor Technologies and Applications, 2009 (SENSORCOM-M’09), pp.82–5.

6.3.3 Online documents with author names:

Este J, Warren C, Connor L, et al., 2008, Life in the Clickstream: The Future of Journalism, Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance. Available from: http://www.alliance.org.au/documents/ foj_report_final.pdf. [Last accessed on 2009 May 27].

6.3.4 Online documents without author name:

Developing an Argument, n.d. Available from: http://web.princeton.edu/sites/writing/Writing_Center/WCWritingResources.htm. [Last accessed on 2009 March 30]

6.3.5 Theses/Dissertations:

Gale L, 2000, The Relationship between Leadership and Employee Empowerment for Successful Total Quality Management. thesis, Australasian Digital Thesis database, University of Western Sydney, pp.110–30.

6.3.6 Standards:

Standards Australia Online, 2006, Glass in Buildings: Selection and Installation, AS 1288-2006, amended 2008 January 31, SAI Global database. [Last accessed on 2009 May 19].

6.3.7 Government reports:

National Commission of Audit, 1996, Report to the Commonwealth Government, Australian Government Publishing Service, Canberra.

Government report (online):

Department of Health and Ageing, 2008, Ageing and Aged Care in Australia. Available from: http://www.health.gov.au/internet/main/publishing.nsf/Content/ageing. [Last accessed on 2008 November 10]

7. Appendix

This section is optional and is for all materials (e.g. advanced technical details) that has been excluded from the main text but remain essential to the readers in understanding the manuscripts. This section is not for supplementary figures. Authors are advised to refer to the section on Supplementary Figures for such submissions.

8. Nomenclature for genes and proteins

This journal aims to reach researchers all over the globe. Hence, for reviewers’ and readers’ ease in comprehension, authors are highly encouraged to use the appropriate gene and protein nomenclature. Authors may prefer to utilize resources such as http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/gene.

9. Supplementary information

This section is optional and contains all materials and figures that have been excluded from the entire manuscript. This information is relevant to the manuscript but remain non-essential to readers’ understanding of the manuscript’s main content. All supplementary information should be submitted as a separate file in Step 4 during submission. Please ensure the names of such files contain ‘suppl. info’. Videos may be included in this section.

 

 

Submission Preparation Checklist

As part of the submission process, authors are required to check off their submission's compliance with all of the following items, and submissions may be returned to authors that do not adhere to these guidelines.

  1. The submission has not been previously published, nor is it under consideration by another journal (or an explanation has been provided in Comments to the Editor).
  2. The submission file is in MS Word.
  3. Where available, URLs for the references have been provided.
  4. All illustrations, figures, and tables are placed within the text at the appropriate points, rather than at the end.
  5. The text adheres to the stylistic and bibliographic requirements outlined in the Author Guidelines, which is found in About the Journal.
  6. If submitting to a peer-reviewed section of the journal, the instructions in Ensuring a Blind Review have been followed.
 

Copyright Notice

Authors contributing to Cancer Plus agree to publish their articles under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 International License, allowing third parties to share their work (copy, distribute, transmit) and to adapt it, under the condition that the authors are given credit, that the work is not used for commercial purposes, and that in the event of reuse or distribution, the terms of this license are made clear. With this license, the authors hold the copyright without restrictions and are allowed to retain publishing rights without restrictions as long as the Whioce Publishing is the original publisher of the articles.

 

Privacy Statement

The names and email addresses entered in this journal site will be used exclusively for the stated purposes of this journal and will not be made available for any other purpose or to any other party.

 

Author Fees

This journal charges the following author fees.

Article Processing Charge: 500.00 (USD)
If this paper is accepted for publication, you will be asked to pay an Article Processing Charge to cover publications costs. For more information, please see APC.

If you do not have funds to pay such fees, you will have an opportunity to request a waiver. We do not want fees to prevent the publication of worthy work.