Author Guidelines

Cancer Science is fully open access since 2014!

Manuscripts accepted for publication will be published as open access articles, immediately free to read, download and share. Authors or their funder will be required to pay an Article Publication Charge upon acceptance. Please refer to the article publication charges page for more details including the JCA member discounts. For inquires, contact [email protected].

Average submission to first decision is 17 days.

Cancer Science is the official journal of the Japanese Cancer Association. Cancer Science publishes original articles, editorials, and letters to the editor, describing original research in the fields of basic, translational and clinical cancer research. The Journal also accepts reports and case reports. Reports are intended to present highly significant and timely findings. They are not intended simply to be short versions of original articles. Case reports should describe new findings that have a significant clinical impact on oncologists or that may alter the disease concept of a tumor. Case reports of the following contents will not be accepted for publication: description of a rare tumor or condition without new findings to be added to previous reports; combination of different tumors without new suggestive findings for oncological research; remarkable effect of already known treatments without suggestive data to explain the exceptional result. Review articles may also be published. The following subject categories are covered:

  • Basic and Clinical Immunology
  • Carcinogenesis
  • Cell, Molecular, and Stem Cell Biology
  • Clinical Research
  • Drug Discovery and Delivery
  • Epidemiology and Prevention
  • Genetics, Genomics, and Proteomics
  • Inflammation and Virology
  • Pathology

Cancer Science does not accept work that is funded in any part by tobacco industry sources (effective from 1 January 2017).

PRE-SUBMISSION RESOURCE


Article Preparation Support

Wiley Editing Services offers expert help with English Language Editing, as well as translation, manuscript formatting, figure illustration, figure formatting, and graphical abstract design – so you can submit your manuscript with confidence.
Also, check out our resources for Preparing Your Article for general guidance about writing and preparing your manuscript.

Optimising Your Article for Search Engines

Many students and researchers looking for information online will use search engines such as Google, Yahoo or similar. By optimising your article for search engines, you will increase the chance of someone finding it. This in turn will make it more likely to be viewed and/or cited in another work. We have compiled these guidelines to enable you to maximise the web-friendliness of the most public part of your article.

EDITORIAL REVIEW AND ACCEPTANCE

Peer review and Acceptance 
The acceptance criteria for all papers are the quality and originality of the research and its significance to our readership. This journal operates under a single-anonymized peer review model. Except where otherwise stated, manuscripts are peer reviewed by two anonymous reviewers, the Associate Editor, and the Editor. Final acceptance or rejection rests with the Editors, who reserve the right to refuse any material for publication.

In-house submissions, i.e. papers authored by Editors or Editorial Board members of the title, will be sent to Editors unaffiliated with the author or institution and monitored carefully to ensure there is no peer review bias.  Wiley's policy on the confidentiality of the review process is available here.

Authors may present names of potential reviewers and of reviewers whom they would prefer not to review the manuscript. The choice of reviewers remains the Editor's prerogative.
A manuscript requiring revision will be returned to the author by email, along with specific suggestions for revision. Authors should follow the instructions below to submit revised manuscripts:

  • The author should reply to the suggestions clearly in the “Author’s Response” section by indicating places where revisions have been made, and/or by stating reasons for disregarding other suggestions if they are thought to be unacceptable.
  • Modified parts should be highlighted using underline, colored font, the highlight function or track changes. The revised manuscript should then be resubmitted. Revised manuscripts should be returned to the Editorial Office within 2 months (minor revision) or 3 months (not acceptable in present form: major revision); otherwise they are considered to be new submissions and will be assigned a new date of receipt.

Manuscripts should be written so that they are intelligible to the professional reader who is not a specialist in the particular field. They should be written in a clear, concise, direct style. Where contributions are judged as acceptable for publication on the basis of scientific content, the Editor and the Publisher reserve the right to modify typescripts to eliminate ambiguity and repetition and to improve communication between author and reader. If extensive alterations are required, the manuscript will be returned to the author for revision.

This journal participates in Wiley’s Transfer Desk Assistant program.

Authorship 
Cancer Science follows the recommendations formulated by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors regarding criteria for authorship. Accordingly, each person listed as an author or coauthor for a submitted manuscript must meet all four criteria. An author or coauthor shall have:

   1. Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work, or acquisition, analysis or interpretation of data for the work; AND
   2. Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content; AND
   3. Final approval of the version to be published; AND
   4. Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

Meeting these criteria should provide each author with sufficient knowledge of and participation in the work that he or she can accept public responsibility for the report. Person who does not meet the above 4 criteria should be mentioned in the acknowledgment section. The corresponding author must state in the cover letter that all authors in the manuscript have met these criteria.

Author contributions section: To make author contributions transparent, all research articles should include an author contributions section. Please describe the contributions concisely and use initials to indicate author identity. We encourage you to use the CRediT taxonomy, which offers standardized descriptions of author contributions. An authors contributions section is not required for front-matter articles.

Corresponding author:  We prefer that each paper have a single corresponding author, however, we understand that, for some studies, multiple authors may bear the responsibilities of a corresponding author. If there is a particularly compelling reason for multiple corresponding authors, we ask that you explain your rationale and describe all corresponding authors’ specific contributions in the cover letter. 

Lead contact: You must designate only one corresponding author as the lead contact who is responsible for communicating with the journal.


Use of AI tools

Artificial Intelligence Generated Content (AIGC) tools—such as ChatGPT and others based on large language models (LLMs)—cannot be considered capable of initiating an original piece of research without direction by human authors. They also cannot be accountable for a published work or for research design, which is a generally held requirement of authorship (as discussed in the previous section), nor do they have legal standing or the ability to hold or assign copyright. Therefore—in accordance with COPE’s position statement on AI tools—these tools cannot fulfill the role of, nor be listed as, an author of an article. If an author has used this kind of tool to develop any portion of a manuscript, its use must be described, transparently and in detail, in the Methods or Acknowledgements section. The author is fully responsible for the accuracy of any information provided by the tool and for correctly referencing any supporting work on which that information depends. Tools that are used to improve spelling, grammar, and general editing are not included in the scope of these guidelines. The final decision about whether use of an AIGC tool is appropriate or permissible in the circumstances of a submitted manuscript or a published article lies with the journal’s editor or other party responsible for the publication’s editorial policy.



Plagiarism Detection
This journal uses iThenticate’s CrossCheck software to detect instances of overlapping and similar text in submitted manuscripts. 

Image Checking
Prior to acceptance of your manuscript in the Journal, all figures of your manuscript will undergo an integrity check. In case of any doubt, raw data will be requested. Acceptance and publication will only proceed on the condition that all final files comply with the journal integrity checks. In the event that any file does not comply with our integrity checks, you may be contacted to resolve any concerns raised by these checks.

Duplicate Publication and Scientific Fraud

In cases of suspected scientific misconduct (fabrication or falsification of data, double publication (including duplicate submission), or plagiarism), the journal will conduct a preliminary investigation. If scientific misconduct is found, the journal will contact the corresponding author’s institution and funding agencies. Cancer Science will not consider publication of any papers by the offending authors for a period of 1 year or longer depending on the circumstances of each case. Please also refer to the Editorial for the journal policy to plagiarism at: Plagiarism.


Reproduction of Copyright Material

If excerpts from copyrighted works owned by third parties are included, credit must be shown in the contribution. It is the author’s responsibility to also obtain written permission for reproduction from the copyright owners. For more information visit Wiley’s Copyright Terms & Conditions FAQ

Publishing copyright material in an Open Access paper.  If your re-use permission does not allow the material to be covered by an open access agreement, please state this clearly by supplying the following credit line alongside the material: 

Title of content 

Author, Original publication, year of original publication, by permission of [rights holder] 

This image/content is not covered by the terms of the Creative Commons licence of this publication. For permission to reuse, please contact the rights holder.


Corrections

Corrections to a manuscript are published at the sole discretion of the editors.
The Journal does not accept any changes of authorship after a manuscript is accepted for publication.

SUBMISSION OF MANUSCRIPTS

All articles submitted to the Journal must comply with these instructions. Failure to do so will result in return of the manuscript and possible delay in publication. Manuscripts can be submitted online. All pages should be numbered consecutively in the top right-hand corner, beginning with the title page.
For assistance, please contact the Editorial Office of Cancer Science at the address below:

Editorial Office of Cancer Science
c/o Wiley Publishing Japan K.K.
Nomura Fudosan Nishi Shinjuku Bldg. 8F
8-4-2 Nishi Shinjuku
Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo 160-0023 Japan
E-mail: [email protected]

PREPRINT POLICY

Cancer Science will consider for review articles previously available as preprints. Authors are requested to update any pre-publication versions with a link to the final published article. Authors may also post the final published version of the article immediately after publication. Allowing submission does not, of course, guarantee that an article will be sent out for review. Please read Wiley's Preprint policy. 

ORCID

As part of our commitment to supporting authors at every step pf the publishing process, the journal requires the submitting author (only) to provide an ORCID iD when submitting a manuscript. This takes around 2 minutes to complete. For more information.

COVERING LETTER

A submission template of a covering letter is available here.
A covering letter should be attached and the following information should be included:

  • A declaration that the paper is being submitted for consideration for publication in Cancer Science. The content has not been published or submitted for publication elsewhere except as a brief abstract in the proceedings of a scientific meeting or symposium.
  • All authors’ agreement: acknowledgment that all authors' meets the authorship criteria detailed in the Authorship section of this guideline and that all authors are in agreement with the content of the manuscript. In keeping with the latest guidelines of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors, each author's contribution to the paper is to be quantified.
  • If there are multiple corresponding authors, provide the rationale and describe all corresponding authors’ specific contributions.
  • Contact details at which the corresponding author (or the Lead contact) can be contacted, including mailing address, telephone and fax numbers, and an email address.
  • If tables or figures have been reproduced from another source, state that you obtained a written permission for reproduction from the copyright owners to reproduce the material.
  • The salient and novel findings of the paper in a concise paragraph.
  • The subject category that applies to the manuscript (please choose one only): Basic and Clinical Immunology; Carcinogenesis; Cell, Molecular, and Stem Cell Biology; Clinical Research; Drug Discovery and Delivery; Epidemiology and Prevention; Genetics, Genomics, and Proteomics; Inflammation and Virology; Pathology (effective from 1 November 2009).
  • If the word count of the manuscript inevitably exceeds the limit, authors must state the reason for it. Exceeding the word count limit may be allowed at the editors’ discretion.
  • For Case Reports, authors must state that consent for publication in print and electronically has been obtained from the patient or, if this is not possible, the next of kin.

 

AUTHOR MATERIAL ARCHIVE POLICY

Authors who require the return of any submitted material that is accepted for publication should inform the Editorial Office after acceptance. If no indication is given that author material should be returned, Wiley will dispose of all hardcopy and electronic material two months after publication.

CONFLICT OF INTEREST

All authors should declare all relevant and potential conflict of interest as “Conflict of Interest” between Funding information and Ethics statement sections. If any of the authors of a manuscript is a current Editor or Editorial Board Member of Cancer Science, please also declare this in your statement.  All authors will be required to complete a conflict of interest disclosure form as part of the initial manuscript submission process. The corresponding author is responsible for obtaining completed forms from all authors of the manuscript. Please check the Cancer Science Conflict of Interest Policy. The journal has adapted the ICMJE COI form and the example form is available here.　

Please be advised that for articles which are accepted after April 1, 2012, in any case that the conflict of interest related to the articles submitted are not properly disclosed, there might be possibilities of imposing a penalty.

ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS

Authors must state that the protocol for the research project has been approved by a suitably constituted Ethics Committee of the institution within which the work was undertaken and that it conforms to the provisions of the Declaration of Helsinki.
All investigations on human subjects must include a statement that the subject gave informed consent. Patient anonymity should be preserved. Photographs need to be cropped sufficiently to prevent human subjects being recognized (or an eye bar should be used).
Any experiments involving animals must be demonstrated to be ethically acceptable and where relevant conform to national guidelines for animal usage in research.

AUTHOR CONTRIBUTIONS

At submission of a manuscript, the corresponding author is required to indicate the contribution role and degree of contribution for each author using the CRediT Contributor Role Taxonomy. This information will be included in the publication as the author contribution statement. An example of an Authors’ Contribution statement using CRediT with degree of contribution as well as definitions of the 14 different CRediT roles can be found here. Cancer Science expects all authors to approve the final version of the manuscript submitted for publication. This author requirement can be confirmed by a contribution to either ‘Writing – Original Draft Preparation’ and/or ‘Writing – Review & Editing’.

DATA SHARING AND DATA ACCESSIBILITY

The Journal encourages authors to share the data and other artefacts supporting the results in the paper by archiving it in an appropriate public repository. Authors may provide a data availability statement, including a link to the repository they have used, in order that this statement can be published in their paper. Shared data should be cited. Please also review Wiley’s policy here.

CLINICAL TRIALS

Cancer Science requires that all clinical trials submitted for its consideration are registered in a publicly accessible database. Authors should include the name of the trial register and their clinical trial registration number in the ethics statement of the disclosure section.

STYLE OF THE MANUSCRIPT

Manuscripts should follow the style of the Vancouver agreement detailed in the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors’ revised ‘Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals: Writing and Editing for Biomedical Publication’.

Spelling. The Journal uses US spelling and authors should therefore follow the latest edition of the Merriam–Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary.

Units. All measurements must be given in SI or SI-derived units. Please go to the Bureau International des Poids et Mesures (BIPM) website for more information about SI units.

Abbreviations. Abbreviations used should be consistent with recommended international nomenclature. If there are few abbreviations used initially used the word in full, followed by the abbreviation in parentheses. Thereafter use the abbreviation only. If there are many non-standard abbreviations, a list of the abbreviations should be prepared. Click here for a list of Standard Abbreviations that can be used without definition.

Keywords. Five key words, for the purposes of indexing, should be supplied below the abstract, in alphabetical order, and should be taken from those recommended by the US National Library of Medicine's Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) browser list at http://www.nlm.nih.gov/mesh/meshhome.html.

Nomenclature. Names of chemical compounds should conform to the International Union for Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) nomenclature and biochemical terms to those of the International Union of Biochemistry (IUB). Chemical substances should be referred to by the generic name only. Drugs should be referred to by their generic names. If proprietary drugs have been used in the study, refer to these by their generic name, mentioning the proprietary name, and the name and location of the manufacturer, in parentheses. Names of enzymes should conform to the nomenclature recommended by IUB, the name to be followed by the enzyme number (EC) in parentheses.

Genetic nomenclature. 
Genetic nomenclature. Standard genetic nomenclature should be used. For further information, including relevant websites, authors should refer to the genetic nomenclature guide in Trends in Genetics (Elsevier Science, 1998).

Data deposit. Nucleotide sequences, molecular structures and other information essential to manuscripts should be deposited to public databases such as Genbank, EMBL, DDBJ, dbGAP, Uniprot and ProteinDataBank prior to the date of publication. The suggested wording for referring to accession-number information is: ‘These sequence data have been submitted to the DDBJ/EMBL/GenBank databases under accession number U12345.

PARTS OF THE MANUSCRIPT

Manuscripts parts should be presented in the following order: (i) title page, (ii) abstract, abbreviations, and clinical trial register and their clinical registration number at the end of abstract, (iii) text (including Introduction, Material and Methods, Results, Discussion), (iv) acknowledgments (if any), (v) funding information (if any); (vi) conflict of interest, (vii) ethics statement (if relevant); (viii) references, (ix) appendices (if any), (x) figure legends, (xi) a list of Supporting Information (if any; with codec used if they are videos), (xii) tables (each table complete with title and footnotes) and (xiii) figures. Footnotes to the text are not allowed and any such material should be incorporated into the text as parenthetical matter.

Word count

Papers should not exceed the number of words set for each article type. For Original Article, the title page, abstract, figure legends are included in the word count. For the other article types, the title page, abstract, references, figure legends are included in the word count.

  • Original article: up to 5000 words (excluding references), including an abstract of no more than 250 words. The number of tables and figures is not limited. A submission template of an original article is available here.
  • Review article: 4000-5000 words (including up to 80 references), including an abstract of no more than 250 words and 4–6 tables or figures in total. A submission template of a review article is available here.
  • Report: up to 2000 words (including up to 25 references), and up to 4 tables or figures in total, including an abstract of no more than 250 words. Results and Discussion sections (which may be combined) and Acknowledgements. It must contain highly significant and timely findings.
  • Case report: up to 2000 words (including up to 25 references), and up to 3 tables or figures in total. Abstract should be up to 100 words. In the covering letter and in the text of the manuscript, authors must state that consent for publication in print has been obtained from the patient or, if this is not possible, the next of kin.
  • Letter to the Editor: up to 1000 words (including 10 references), and up to 3 figures or tables in total.

File Format

  • Main document: Word.
  • Tables: Word is preferred (tables of image data and grouping of text boxes should be avoided.) Excel will be accepted.
  • Graphic figures: JPG/TIF/EPS (PDF is acceptable only for submission for ease of transmission during the review process.) Upon acceptance of the article, high-resolution figures (at least 300 d.p.i.) saved as .jpg or .tif files should be provided. Digital images supplied only as low-resolution files cannot be used.
  • Line figures: EPS/ Word/Excel.
  • Videos:QuickTime/ MPEG/AVI.

Please note that we cannot accept PowerPoint files. These files must be converted to one of the following file types: TIF/EPS/JPG (use maximum quality). Converting PowerPoint files frequently results in unexpected changes to the figures (e.g. missing or shifted text; shifted image elements). We recommend you not to create figures by PowerPoint. If you do try to convert from PowerPoint to one of these file types, be very careful to compare the final version to your original.

Title page

The title page should contain: (i) the title of the paper, (ii) the full names of the authors, (iii) the addresses of the institutions at which the work was carried out, (iv) the full postal and email address, plus facsimile and telephone numbers, of the author to whom correspondence about the manuscript should be sent. You must denote the corresponding author (or the Lead contact). The present address of any author, if different from that where the work was carried out, should be supplied in a footnote, (v) the precise word count of the manuscript (excluding references for Original Articles; including references for Review Articles, Reports, Case Reports, and Letters to the Editor), (vi) number of tables/figures, (vii) quantity of supporting information.
The title should be short (preferably less than 120 letters), informative and contain the major key words. Do not use unnecessary words such as 'Study of' or 'Results on', or abbreviations in the title.

Abstract

All articles must have an abstract that states in 250 words or fewer the purpose, basic procedures, main findings and principal conclusions of the study. Data such as the number of test subjects and controls, strains of animals or viruses, drug dosages and routes of administration, tumor yields and latent periods, length of observation period, and magnitude of activity should be included. The abstract should not contain abbreviations or references.

Text

Authors should use the following subheadings to divide the sections of their manuscript: Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results and Discussion.

Introduction. The introduction should mention the purpose of the investigation, its relation to other work in the field, and the reasons for undertaking the research. Brief reference to the most relevant papers is sufficient.

Materials and Methods. Description of methods should be brief, but with sufficient detail to enable others to reproduce the experiments. When published procedures are used, the appropriate references should be cited. Only new and significant modifications of previously published procedures require complete description. Names of products and manufacturers with their locations (city and state/country) should be given and sources of animals and tumors should always be indicated.

Results. The results should be described concisely. Tables and figures should be used only if they are indispensable for the comprehension of data.

Discussion. The results should be interpreted and related to existing knowledge in the field. Information already given in the introduction or results should not be repeated.

Acknowledgments

The contribution of colleagues or institutions should also be acknowledged. Personal thanks and thanks to anonymous reviewers are not appropriate.

Funding Information
The source of financial grants and other funding must be acknowledged.

Conflict of Interest

All authors should declare all relevant and potential conflict of interest as “Conflict of Interest” between Funding and Ethics Statement sections. If any of the authors of a manuscript is a current Editor or Editorial Board Member of Cancer Science, please also declare this in your statement.  Examples of the conflict of interest statement should be written using the following format: 

"A (author name) serves as a consultant to Z (entity name); B is Editor in Chief of Cancer Science. B’s spouse is chairman of Y; C received a research grant from X; D received lecture fees from V; E holds a patent on U; F has been reimbursed by T for attending several conferences; G is an editorial board member of Cancer Science. G received honoraria for writing promotional material for S; The study was designed under the responsibility of ABC Corporation, in conjunction with the steering committee; The study was funded by ABC Corporation/Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare, Japan (Grant No. XXXX); (Study drug) was donated/provided by ABC Corporation; ABC Corporation collected and analyzed the data and contributed to the interpretation of the study. All authors had full access to all of the data in the study and had final responsibility for the decision to submit for publication; H has no conflict of interest."

If there is no relationship relevant to the manuscript’s subject, indicate “The authors have no conflict of interest.”

Updated Ethics Statement
Authors must declare all information about ethics in this section including followings as appropriate:
 - Approval of the research protocol by an Institutional Reviewer Board.  If not applicable, please write N/A.
 - Informed Consent.  If not applicable, please write N/A.
 - Registry and the Registration No. of the study/trial.  If not applicable, please write N/A.
 - Animal Studies.  If not applicable, please write N/A.

References

All references should be numbered consecutively in order of appearance and should be as complete as possible. In text citations should cite references in consecutive order using Arabic superscript numerals. You may cite preprints such as bioRxiv, medRxiv, etc. in the reference list, where appropriate. 

Sample references follow:

Journal article (1–6 authors)
1. Hu P, Reuben DB. Effects of managed care on the length of time that elderly patients spend with physicians during ambulatory visits: National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey. Med Care. 2002;40(7):606-613. doi:10.1097/00005650-200207000-00007 

Journal article  (more than 6 authors)
2. Chenevix-Trench G, Spurdle AB, Gatei M, et  al. Dominant negative ATM mutations in breast cancer families. J Natl Cancer Inst. 2002;94(3):205-215.
Journal articles published ahead of issue (print or online) An online article that has not yet been published in an issue (therefore has no volume, issue or page numbers) can be cited by its Digital Object Identifier (DOI). The DOI will remain valid and allow an article to be tracked even after its allocation to an issue.

If the DOI is supplied for a journal reference, it should be retained.

Electronic Journal articles
3. Okumura H, Ishii H, Pichiorri F, et  al. Fragile gene product, Fhit, in oxidative and replicative stress responses. Cancer Sci. 2009;100:1145-1150. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1349-7006.2009.01168.x
4. Benz PJ, Soll J, Bölter B. Protein transport in organelles: the composition, function and regulation of the Tic complex in chloroplast protein import. FEBS J. 2009;276:1166-1176. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1742-4658.2009.06874.x

Journal article published online ahead of print
5. Chau NG, Haddad RI. Antiangiogenic agents in head and neck squamous cell carcinoma: tired of going solo. Cancer.  Published online ahead of print September 20, 2016. https://doi: 10.1002/cncr.30352. 

Book
6. Sherlock S, Dooley J. Diseases of the Liver and Biliary System. 9th ed. Blackwell Scientific Publications; 1993
Please note that journal title abbreviations should conform to the practices of Chemical Abstracts. 

Chapter in a Book
7. Phillips SJ, Whisnant JP. Hypertension and stroke. In: Laragh JH, Brenner BM, eds. Hypertension: Pathophysiology, Diagnosis, and Management. 2nd ed. New York, NY: Raven Press; 1995:465-478.

Published on the World Wide Web
7. Morse SS. Factors in the emergence of infectious diseases. Emerg Infect Dis [serial online]. 1995;1:457-460. http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/eid/index.htm. Accessed June 5, 1996.

Internet Document
8. American Cancer Society. Cancer Facts & Figures 2003. Accessed March 3, 2003. http://www.cancer.org/downloads/STT/CAFF2003PWSecured.pdf

Theses and dissertations
9. Knoll EG. Mental Evolution and the Science of Language: Darwin, Miiller, and Romanes on the Development of the Human Mind. Dissertation. Chicago, IL: Committee on the Conceptual Foundations of Science, University of Chicago; 1987. 

Preprints
10. Bloss CS, Wineinger NE, Peters M, et al. A prospective randomized trial examining health care utilization in individuals using multiple smartphone-enabled biosensors. bioRxiv. Preprint posted online October 28, 2015. doi:10.1101/029983

If the title of a paper is in English, French or German, it should be written in the original language. The present policy of Cancer Science is to reduce to a minimum citation of works which are not widely available to the international scientific community. However, if the title of an essential citation is in another language, such as Japanese or Russian, it should be translated into English, and the original language should be indicated in parentheses.

Appendices

These should be placed at the end of the paper, numbered in Roman numerals and referred to in the text. If written by a person other than the author of the main text, the writer’s name should be included below the title.

Tables

Tables should be self-contained and complement, but not duplicate, information contained in the text. Number tables consecutively in the text in Arabic numerals. Type tables on a separate sheet with the legend above. Legends should be concise but comprehensive – the table, legend and footnotes must be understandable without reference to the text. Vertical lines should not be used to separate columns. Column headings should be brief, with units of measurement in parentheses; all abbreviations must be defined in footnotes. Footnote symbols should be given as lowercase letters in alphabetical order. Statistical measures such as SD or SEM should be identified in the headings. Tables should be submitted in Microsoft Word or Excel. Image files and groupings of text boxes should be avoided.

Updated Figures

All illustrations (line drawings and photographs) are classified as figures. Figures should be cited in consecutive order in the text. Magnifications should be indicated using a scale bar on the illustration.　Font used within the figure should be no smaller than 6 point for legibility. Authors are encouraged to limit each figure to a maximum of six panels, although this is not a strict requirement. Panels for each figure should be used to present only the most essential and logically connected data. Other necessary data should be submitted as supporting information. Each panel of a multipart figure should be sized so that essential details are visible. Each figure should fit on a single page. For guidance, this journal’s maximum figure size is 6.5 x 8 in (16.5 x 20 cm) to allow for page margins and text.

Although authors are encouraged to send the highest-quality figures possible, for peer-review purposes, a wide variety of formats, sizes, and resolutions are accepted. Click here for the basic figure requirements for figures submitted with manuscripts for initial peer review, as well as the more detailed post-acceptance figure requirements.

Figure legends
Type figure legends on a separate sheet. Legends should be concise but comprehensive – the figure and its legend must be understandable without reference to the text. Include definitions of any symbols used and define/explain all abbreviations and units of measurement.

Supporting Information

Supporting Information can be a useful way for an author to include important but ancillary information with the online version of an article. Examples of Supporting Information include additional tables, data sets, figures, movie files, audio clips, 3D structures, and other related nonessential multimedia files. Supporting Information should be cited within the article text, and a descriptive legend should be included. It is published as supplied by the author, and a proof is not made available prior to publication; for these reasons, authors should provide any Supporting Information in the desired final format.

For further information on recommended file types and requirements for submission, please visit here

  • Supporting figures, tables and text must be numbered Fig. S1, Fig. S2, etc., Table S1, Table S2, etc. and Doc. S1, Doc S2, etc, respectively.
  • The availability of supporting information needs to be indicated in the main manuscript by a paragraph, to appear after the References, headed 'Supporting information' and providing titles of figures, tables and text.
  • An author's website cannot be used as supporting information.


LaTex Guidelines for Submission 

LaTex users must use the File Designation "Main Document" from the dropdown box. For reviewing purposes, you should upload to the journal's system (e.g. ScholarOne) a single .pdf that you have generated from your compiled source files. LaTex Template for Cancer Science is available here.

Should your manuscript reach revision stage, figures and tables must be provided as separate files. The main manuscript file can be submitted in LaTex (.tex) format. 

When submitting your revision, you must still upload a single .pdf that you have generated from your revised source files. You must use the File Designation "Main Document" from the dropdown box. In addition, you must upload your TeX source files. 

For all your source files you must use the File Designation "Supplemental Material not for review". Previous versions of uploaded documents must be deleted.  

If your manuscript is accepted for publication, we will use the files you upload to typeset your article within a totally digital workflow. 

LaTex Guidelines for Post-Acceptance: 

Please check that you have supplied the following files for typesetting post-acceptance:  

  • PDF of the finalized source manuscript files compiled without any errors. 
  • The LaTeX source code files (text, figure captions, and tables, preferably in a single file), BibTex files (if used), any associated packages/files along with all other files needed for compiling without any errors. This is particularly important if authors have used any LaTeX style or class files, bibliography files (.bbl, .bst. .blg) or packages apart from those used in the NJD LaTex Template class file.  
  • Electronic graphics files for the illustrations in Encapsulated PostScript (EPS), PDF or TIFF format. Authors are requested not to create figures using LaTeX codes. 

 Your main document file should include: 

  • A short informative title containing the major key words. The title should not contain abbreviations;  
  • The full names of the authors with institutional affiliations where the work was conducted, with a footnote for the author’s present address if different from where the work was conducted; 
  • Acknowledgments; 
  • Abstract structured (intro/methods/results/conclusion) or unstructured; 
  • Up to seven keywords; 
  • Practitioner Points (optional) Authors will need to provide no more than 3 ‘key points’, written with the practitioner in mind, that summarize the key messages of their paper to be published with their article;  
  • Main body: formatted as introduction, materials & methods, results, discussion, conclusion;  
  • References; 
  • Tables (each table complete with title and footnotes);  
  • Figure legends: At initial submission, figures can be included in the manuscript or can be submitted in separate files. Should your manuscript reach revision stage, figures and tables must be provided as separate files (see below). 


MANUSCRIPTS

Authors are required to provide electronic copies of their manuscripts to be submitted online. The following instructions should be adhered to:

  • Lines should be double-spaced.
  • Do not use the carriage return (Enter) at the end of lines within a paragraph.
  • Turn the hyphenation option off; include only those hyphens that are essential to the meaning.
  • Specify any special characters used to represent non-keyboard characters.
  • Take care not to use l (ell) for 1 (one), O (capital o) for 0 (zero) or ß (German esszett) for ß (Greek beta).
  • Use a tab, not spaces, to separate data points in tables. If you use a table editor function, ensure that each data point is contained within a unique cell (i.e. do not use carriage returns within cells).

 

 

POST-ACCEPTANCE

 

ARTICLE PUBLICATION CHARGE

All the manuscripts accepted for publication in Cancer Science will be published as open access articles, immediately free to read, download and share. You or your funder will be required to pay an Article Publication Charge on acceptance. Please refer to the article publication charges page for more details. Invited articles are free of any publication charges.

We will waive or discount charges for corresponding authors covered by the Research4Life Initiative (see the Wiley Open Access Waiver Country List). Authors of articles should be aware that publication of their manuscript cannot proceed without payment of the article publication charge. Authors are therefore requested to pay the article publication charge promptly i.e. within two weeks of receipt of the invoice.

OPEN ACCESS AGREEMENT (OAA)

If your paper is accepted, the author identified as the formal corresponding author for the paper will receive an email prompting them to login into Author Services; where via the Wiley Author Licensing Service (WALS) they will be able to complete the license agreement on behalf of all authors on the paper.

The following license agreements are available:
Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial (CC-BY-NC) license
Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-NoDerivs (CC-BY-NC-ND) license.

From 1st April 2013, RCUK or Wellcome trust funded authors will be directed to sign the open access agreement under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license in order to be funder compliant.

For more information on the terms and conditions of these licenses, please visit here.

PROOFS

Authors will receive an e-mail notification with a link and instructions for accessing HTML page proofs online. Page proofs should be carefully proofread for any copyediting or typesetting errors. Online guidelines are provided within the system. No special software is required, all common browsers are supported. Authors should also make sure that any renumbered tables, figures, or references match text citations and that figure legends correspond with text citations and actual figures. Proofs must be returned within 48 hours of receipt of the email. Return of proofs via e-mail is possible in the event that the online system cannot be used or accessed.

After online publication, further changes can only be made in the form of an Erratum, which will be hyperlinked to the article.

Submitting authors who will not be available to check their proofs should appoint someone to proofread their article. If the proof is not returned by the appointed date, it may be signed off on by the Editor or held over to the next issue.

COVER ART

Authors are invited to send in suggestions for colour images to be used as cover art for Cancer Science. The images should be visually exciting and should be relevant to any aspect of cancer research. Images should be uploaded in TIFF or EPS format at the highest possible resolution together with a brief description of the image provided.

EARLY VIEW

Cancer Science is covered by Wiley’s Early View service. Early View articles are complete full-text articles published online in advance of their publication in a printed issue. Articles are therefore available as soon as they are ready, rather than having to wait for the next scheduled print issue. Early View articles are complete and final. They have been fully reviewed, revised and edited for publication, and the authors’ final corrections have been incorporated. Because they are in final form, no changes can be made after online publication. The nature of Early View articles means that they do not yet have volume, issue or page numbers, so Early View articles cannot be cited in the traditional way. They are therefore given a Digital Object Identifier (DOI), which allows the article to be cited and tracked before it is allocated to an issue. After print publication, the DOI remains vaild and can continue to be used to cite and access the article. More information about DOIs can be found at http://www.doi.org/faq.html

OFFPRINTS

A minimum of 50 offprints will be provided upon request, at the author's expense. These paper offprints may be ordered online. Please visit here, fill in the necessary details and ensure that you type information in all of the required fields.

WILEY AUTHOR SERVICES

Authors of accepted papers will receive an invitation to sign up to Author Services that will enable them to track accepted articles through the production process. Authors can check the status of their articles online and choose to receive automated emails at key stages of production so they do not need to contact the production editor to check on progress. Visit Author Services for more details on online production tracking. This site also includes useful information such as copyright matters, ethics, electronic artwork guidelines, ways to optimize articles for search engines, FAQs and tips on article preparation, submission and more.


ARTICLE PROMOTION SUPPORT

Wiley Editing Services offers professional video, design, and writing services to create shareable video abstracts, infographics, conference posters, lay summaries, and research news stories for your research – so you can help your research get the attention it deserves. Please refer to the Author tips: Get read, shared & cited.


WILEY JOURNAL ONLINE

Visit the Cancer Science home page at http://wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/cas for more information. For submission guidelines and digital graphics standards visit here.

WILEY’S OPEN ACCESS JOURNAL, Cancer Medicine

This journal works together with Wiley’s Open Access Journal, Cancer Medicine, to enable rapid publication of good quality research that is unable to be accepted for publication by our journal. Authors will be offered the option of having the paper, along with any related peer reviews, automatically transferred for consideration by the Editor of Cancer Medicine. Authors will not need to reformat or rewrite their manuscript at this stage, and publication decisions will be made a short time after the transfer takes place. The Editor of Cancer Medicine will accept submissions that report well-conducted research which reaches the standard acceptable for publication. Accepted papers can be published rapidly, typically within 15 days of acceptance. Cancer Medicine is a Wiley Open Access journal and article publication fees apply. For more information please go to Cancer Medicine - Wiley Online Library.

WILEY’S OPEN ACCESS JOURNAL, Aging AND Cancer

This journal works together with Wiley’s Open Access Journal, Aging AND Cancer, to enable rapid publication of good quality research that is unable to be accepted for publication by our journal. Authors will be offered the option of having the paper, along with any related peer reviews, automatically transferred for consideration by the Editor of Aging AND Cancer. Authors will not need to reformat or rewrite their manuscript at this stage, and publication decisions will be made a short time after the transfer takes place. The Editor of Aging AND Cancer will accept submissions that report well-conducted research which reaches the standard acceptable for publication. Accepted papers can be published rapidly, typically within 15 days of acceptance. Aging AND Cancer is a Wiley Open Access journal and article publication fees apply. For more information please go to Aging AND Cancer - Wiley Online Library.

Last updated: 25 July 2025