Aims and scope:

We live in a time when it is widely recognized that scientific collaborations across traditional disciplines can yield exponential gains through synergy. Cancer research is currently benefiting from advances in many fields, including biology (genomics and proteomics), physical chemistry (mass spectrometry and radio imaging), computer science and biostatistics (machine learning, artificial intelligence), and many others.

There exists a bewildering diversity of scientific journals in which new applications of these advances toward discovery in cancer research is reported. Leveraging these advances into new medicines and medical practices for the early detection, prevention and treatment of cancer is made difficult by the broad diffusion this literature. Bioinformatics and computational biology appear to play a central role at each nexus, in part because novel technologies lead to immense leaps in the amount and granularity of data from patients and patient samples.

A number of important journals exist that focus on a wide breadth of foci within bioinformatics. Medical informatics is a field nearly as wide that includes patient information systems and related critical components of information management in the information age.

Editorial standards and procedures:

Submissions, excluding editorials, letters to the editor and dedications, will be peer reviewed by two reviewers.  Reviewers are required to provide fair, balanced and constructive reports.  

Under our Fairness in Peer Review Policy authors may appeal against reviewers' recommendations which are ill-founded, unobjective or unfair.  Appeals are considered by the Editor in Chief or Associate Editor.

Papers are not sent to peer reviewers following submission of a revised manuscript. Editorial decisions on re-submitted papers are based on the author's response to the initial peer review report.

Indexing:

This journal is indexed by:

• CAS
• DOAJ
• EMBase
• Scopus
• Google Scholar

SPARC Europe Seal award winner:

This journal has been awarded a SPARC Europe Seal. The Seal is an initiative of SPARC Europe (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) and the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) which is awarded to journals applying a Creative Commons CC-BY copyright license and that make journal metadata accessible to DOAJ.  

Amongst other important services DOAJ makes metadata OAI-compliant.  This in turn enhances the visibility of papers and allows OAI-harvesters to include the details of journal articles in their services. We encourage readers to make use of this valuable resource.  The DOAJ search page is available here.

National Institutes of Health Public Access Policy compliant:

As of April 7 2008, the US NIH Public Access Policy requires that all peer reviewed articles resulting from research carried out with NIH funding be deposited in the Pubmed Central archive.

If you are an NIH employee or grantee Libertas Academica will ensure that you comply with the policy by depositing your paper at Pubmed Central on your behalf. 

Call for papers:

The Editor in Chief welcomes submissions.  Submissions of the following types are invited:

• Original research articles.
• Reviews: comprehensive, authoritative, descriptions of any subject within the journal's scope. They may cover basic science and clinical reviews, ethics, pro/con debates, and equipment reviews.
• Commentaries: focused and opinionated articles on any subject within the journal's scope. These articles are usually related to a contemporary issue.
• Hypotheses: articles that present an 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.
• Letters to the Editor: these can be either a re-analysis of a previously published article, or a response to such a re-analysis from the authors of the original publication.
• Methodology articles: these discuss a new experimental method, test or procedure. 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.
• Meeting reports: a report pertaining to activity at a meeting or conference Articles published in this journal are immediately available without delay upon publication and enjoy substantial visibility.

All submissions are subject to prompt, objective and fair peer review in compliance with our Fairness in Peer Review Policy.  Copyright in published articles remains with the author(s).  Authors are continually informed of the progress of their paper and our staff are friendly and responsive. 

One author recently wrote: "I would like to say that this is the most author-friendly editing process I have experienced in over 150 publications. Thank you most sincerely."

Criteria for publication: 

Publication is dependent on peer reviewers' judgement of papers.  Reviewers are asked to provide thoughtful and unbiased feedback to authors to ensure that the conclusions of papers are valid and manuscripts achieve reasonable standards of scholarliness and intelligibility. 

Previous work in the field must be acknowledged and papers should read without unreasonable difficulty.  Papers should fit comfortably within the scope of the journal.

Reviewers are asked to act in a fair, objective and constructive manner which maintains quality standards and helps authors to communicate their research.  They are instructed that in areas of genuinely novel research issues may be raised which cannot immediately be resolved and that absolutely rigorous validation of data may therefore not be possible. 

More information on the role of peer reviewers is available on the information for reviewers page.  Where authors consider that reviewers have made recommendations which are unreasonable, unobjective or ill-founded they may appeal them to the Editor in Chief or Associate Editor under our Fairness in Peer Review Policy.

Articles submitted to other journals:

We are willing to consider papers which have been peer reviewed by other journals but not accepted for publication. 

Protein and gene identification:

Proteins and genes should be uniquely identified to resolve the lack of clarity around many-to-many relationships for molecule identifiers and names.

Data and software availability:

If data analysis or software is essential to the paper it should be publicly available, or at least available upon request.

Prior to peer review of your paper we can:

• Have your paper's reference style revised to meet our requirements,
• Have your paper's English revised by specialist English-speaking technical editors.

After peer review of your paper we can:

• Have your paper revised in accordance with peer reviewer's recommendations and have a summary of responses to the reviewers created by our specialist external substantive editors,
• Provide bound reprints of your article in colour or black and white ,
• Provide online-early rapid publication if your paper prior to typesetting.

What other authors have said:

Libertas Academica actively requests, receives and acts upon feedback from authors, readers and editorial boards.  Here's what some recent authors have said about us:

"Within a couple of days the reviewers had been procured and the manuscript was out."

"The communication between your staff and me has been terrific.  Whenever progress is made with the manuscript, I receive notice.  Quite honestly, I've never had such complete communication with a journal."

"LA is different, and hopefully represents a kind of scientific publication machinery that removes the hurdles from free flow of scientific thought."

Article processing fees:

All submissions to this journal are subject to an article processing fee if they are accepted for publication.  Article processing fees are used to fund the processing of your paper and development of the journal.  Article processing fees are the only compulsory charge you will face and do not vary according to word count, page count, colour figures or any other factor.  There is no additional charge for the author(s) to make any use of their article and no charge to readers to access it.

Full fee waivers are available for authors working in undeveloped nations and partial discounts of 20-50% are available to authors in other nations.  Authors must be able to verifiably demonstrate their suitability for a discount or waiver.  Availability of waivers and discounts is subject to monthly availability and is given at the publisher's discretion.  Waivers and discounts must be applied for prior to submission.  Neither are available after submission.

Register as a peer reviewer:

Do you wish to register as a peer reviewer?  Or are you already a registered peer reviewer but you need to update your contact details?   To register or update your details visit the peer reviewer registration form. 

Applicants must be able to demonstrate at least five years of continuous experience in the journal's subject area including at least two in the previous 24 months.

Journal newsletter sent to subscribers in week 7, 2009. Register to receive future newsletters.

Peer reviewers are sought. Click here to apply or to update your details.

Journal newsletter sent on week 3, 2009