About Infectious Agents and Cancer

What is Infectious Agents and Cancer?

Infectious Agents and Cancer is an open access, peer-reviewed online journal that encompasses all aspects of basic, clinical and translational research providing an insight into the association between chronic infections and cancer.

There are established links between specific chronic infections and cancer. Recent advances in genomic and proteomic technologies have accelerated the discovery of novel pathogens, cancer antigens and the molecular pathways involved in disease progression. Several new fields are developing very rapidly, in particular the application of immunogenomics and pharmacogenomics to fight specific cancers, targeting immuno-tolerated cellular/viral molecules by immuno and drug therapy. Infectious Agents and Cancer will cover all these areas of biomedical research and any other topics pertinent to the development of therapies for chronic infections and cancer. These include: profiling and activation of dendritic cells; reactivation of the immune system; breaking immune tolerance; modulation of the immune system by cytokines and drug delivery systems.

Content overview

Infectious Agents and Cancer considers the following types of articles:

• Research articles: reports of data from original research.
• Reviews: comprehensive, authoritative, descriptions of any subject within the journal's scope. Reviews can cover any topical themes such as basic science and clinical reviews, ethics, pro/con debates, equipment reviews and thematic series to highlight specific topics in the field. Reviews have an educational aim and are 2000-3000 words long.
• Commentaries: short, focused and opinionated articles on any subject within the journal's scope. These articles are usually related to a contemporary issue, such as recent research findings, and are about 800 words.
• Hypotheses: short articles presenting an untested original hypothesis backed solely by previously published results rather than any new evidence. They should outline significant progress in thinking that would also be testable, and be about 1500 words.
• Letters to the Editor: they can take three forms: a substantial re-analysis of a previously published article, or a substantial response to such a re-analysis from the authors of the original publication, or an article that may not cover 'standard research' but that may be relevant to readers.
• Meeting reports: a short description of a conference that the author has attended. It is usually best for the article to be published as soon after the meeting as possible, and should focus on the key developments presented and discussed at the meeting. These articles are usually commissioned but reports and suggestions may also be submitted for the editors' consideration.
• Methodology articles: present a new experimental method, test or procedure. The method described may either be completely new, or may offer a better version of an existing method. The article must describe a demonstrable advance on what is currently available. The method needs to have been well tested and ideally, but not necessarily, used in a way that proves its value.
• Short reports: brief reports of data from original research, usually about 1500 words.

Peer review policies

Manuscripts submitted to Infectious Agents and Cancer will undergo a preliminary evaluation by an Editor-in-Chief, who may reject it or assign it to the Managing Editor for review. The Managing Editor will then send the manuscript to at least two Editorial Board members or ad hoc external reviewers. It is expected that the review period will not exceed three weeks. Based on the reviews, the Editors-in-Chief will make the final decision to accept, accept following revisions, or reject the manuscript. Rejected works are permitted one additional round of re-submission. If the resubmitted work is declined again the decision is final.

Edited by Franco M. Buonaguro, George K. Lewis and Pier Giuseppe Pelicci, Infectious Agents and Cancer is supported by an international Editorial Board.

Publishing in Infectious Agents and Cancer

All articles will be listed in PubMed immediately upon acceptance (after peer review), and will be covered by PubMed Central, CAS, CABI and Scopus.

Articles in Infectious Agents and Cancer should be cited in the same way as articles in a traditional journal. However, because articles in this journal are not printed, they do not have page numbers. Instead, they have a unique article number.

The following citation:

Infect Agents Cancer 2004, 2:1

refers to article 1 from volume 2 of the journal.

As an online journal, Infectious Agents and Cancer does not have issue numbers. Each volume corresponds to a calendar year.

To keep up to date with the latest articles from Infectious Agents and Cancer, why not register to receive alerts? Registration also enables you to customise your subject areas of interest, store your searches, and submit your manuscripts.

Submission of manuscripts

Manuscripts should be submitted electronically to Infectious Agents and Cancer using the online submission system. Full details of how to submit a manuscript are given in the instructions for authors.

General journal policies

Infectious Agents and Cancer is published  by BioMed Central, an independent publisher committed to ensuring peer-reviewed biomedical research is Open Access. That means it is freely and universally accessible online, it is archived in at least one internationally recognised free access repository, and its authors retain copyright, allowing anyone to reproduce or disseminate articles, according to the BioMed Central copyright and licence agreement. Infectious Agents and Cancer however, has taken this further by making all its content Open Access.

Infectious Agents and Cancer's articles are archived in PubMed Central, the US National Library of Medicine's full-text repository of life science literature, and also in repositories at the University of Potsdam in Germany, at INIST in France and in e-Depot, the National Library of the Netherlands' digital archive of all electronic publications. The journal is also participating in the British Library's e-journals pilot project, and plans to deposit copies of all articles with the British Library.

BioMed Central is working closely with the Thomson Reuters (ISI) to ensure that citation analysis of articles published in Infectious Agents and Cancer will be available.

Infectious Agents and Cancer is able to deliver summaries of frequently updated content via Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds. These are accessible via the orange "XML" button at the top of the list of recent articles or the list of most accessed articles. For more information about RSS feeds see our publisher's website.

For further information about general policies please see the instructions for authors.