About Stem Cell Research & Therapy

This page includes information about the aims and scope of Stem Cell Research & Therapy, editorial policies, open access and article-processing charges, the peer-review process and other information. For details of how to prepare and submit a manuscript through the online submission system, please see the instructions for authors.

Aims and scope

Stem Cell Research & Therapy is the major forum for translational research into stem cell therapies. An international peer-reviewed journal, it publishes open access research articles of outstanding quality. Stem Cell Research & Therapy has a special emphasis on basic, translational, and clinical research into stem cell therapeutics, including animal models, and clinical trials.

Open access

All articles published by Stem Cell Research & Therapy are made freely and permanently accessible online immediately upon publication, without subscription charges or registration barriers. Further information about our open access policy is available on the BioMed Central Open Access Charter page.

Authors of articles published in Stem Cell Research & Therapy are the copyright holders of their articles and have granted to any third party, in advance and in perpetuity, the right to use, reproduce or disseminate the article, according to the BioMed Central copyright and license agreement.

Article-processing charges

Open access publishing is not without costs. Stem Cell Research & Therapy therefore levies an article-processing charge of £1125/$1735/€1340 for each article accepted for publication. We routinely waive charges for authors from low-income countries. Generally, if the submitting author's institution is a BioMed Central member the cost of the article-processing charge is covered by the membership, and no further charge is payable. In the case of authors whose institutions are supporter members of BioMed Central, however, a discounted article-processing charge is payable by the author. For further details, see our article-processing charge page.

Indexing services

Following publication in Stem Cell Research & Therapy, the full-text of each article is deposited immediately and permanently archived in PubMed Central, the US National Library of Medicine's full-text repository of life science literature, and also in repositories at INIST in France and in e-Depot, the National Library of the Netherlands' digital archive of electronic publications. Stem Cell Research & Therapy is included in PubMed and all major bibliographic databases. A complete list of indexing web services that include BioMed Central's journals can be found here.

BioMed Central is working closely with the Thomson Reuters (ISI) to ensure that citation analysis of articles published in Stem Cell Research & Therapy will be available.

Publication and peer-review process

Peer review

Authors will be able to check the progress of their paper through the submission system at any time by logging into My BioMed Central, a personalized section of the site.

Portability of peer-review

In order to support efficient and thorough peer review, where a manuscript is not accepted by Stem Cell Research & Therapy we aim to reduce the number of times a manuscript is reviewed, thereby speeding up the publication process and reducing the burden on peer reviewers. Therefore, please note that, if a manuscript is not accepted for publication in Stem Cell Research & Therapy and the authors choose to submit a revised version to another BioMed Central journal, we will pass the reviews on to the other journal's editors at the authors request. We will reveal the reviewers' names to the handling editor for editorial purposes unless reviewers let us know when they return their report that they do not wish us to share their report with another BioMed Central journal.

Copyediting and proofs

All articles published in Stem Cell Research & Therapy are copyedited before publication of the final version.

Research articles published in Stem Cell Research & Therapy are published immediately on acceptance in the form of a provisional PDF. Copyedited and fully formatted PDF and full-text (HTML) versions are made available shortly after that.

Edited versions will be sent by email and corrections should be returned within two working days. Please provide a typed list of corrections clearly indicating where the corrections should be made and please send this list by email.

The editing is designed only to correct such things as misused words, spelling errors, missing references or incomplete citation information.

Reprints

High-quality, bound reprints can be purchased for all articles published. Please see our reprints website for further information about ordering reprints, and to enquire about further details, including fees, please contact BioMed Central's reprint service.

Editorial policies

Any manuscripts, or substantial parts of it, submitted to the journal must not be under consideration by any other journal. In general, the manuscript should not have already been published in any journal or other citable form, although it may have been deposited on a preprint server. The journal is willing to consider peer-reviewing manuscripts that are translations of articles originally published in another language. In this case, the consent of the journal in which the article was originally published must be obtained and the fact that the article has already been published must be made clear on submission and stated in the abstract. Further information on duplicate/overlapping publications can be found here. Authors are required to ensure that no material submitted as part of a manuscript infringes existing copyrights, or the rights of a third party.

Correspondence concerning articles published in Stem Cell Research & Therapy is encouraged. A 'post a comment' feature is available on all articles published by Stem Cell Research & Therapy. Comments will be moderated by the editorial office (see our Comment policy for further information) and linked to the full-text version of the article, if suitable.

Editorial standards

BioMed Central is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and endorses the World Association of Medical Editors (WAME) Policy Statement on Geopolitical Intrusion on Editorial Decisions.

Ethical guidelines

Submission of a manuscript to Stem Cell Research & Therapy implies that all authors have read and agreed to its content, and that any experimental research that is reported in the manuscript has been performed with the approval of an appropriate ethics committee. Research carried out on humans must be in compliance with the Helsinki Declaration, and any experimental research on animals must follow internationally recognized guidelines. A statement to this effect must appear in the Methods section of the manuscript, including the name of the body that gave approval, with a reference number where appropriate. Informed consent must also be documented. Manuscripts may be rejected if the editorial office considers that the research has not been carried out within an ethical framework, e.g. if the severity of the experimental procedure is not justified by the value of the knowledge gained.

Stem Cell Research & Therapy's publisher, BioMed Central, has a legal responsibility to ensure that its journals do not publish material that infringes copyright, or that includes libellous or defamatory content. If, on review, your manuscript is perceived to contain potentially libellous content the journal Editors, with assistance from the publisher if required, will work with authors to ensure an appropriate outcome is reached.

For all articles that include information or clinical photographs relating to individual patients, written and signed consent from each patient to publish must also be made available if requested by the editorial staff.

The involvement of scientific (medical) writers or anyone else who assisted with the preparation of the manuscript content should be acknowledged, along with their source of funding, as described in the European Medical Writers Association (EMWA) guidelines on the role of medical writers in developing peer-reviewed publications. If medical writers are not listed among the authors, their role should be acknowledged explicitly.

Standards of reporting

Stem Cell Research & Therapy supports initiatives aimed at improving the reporting of biomedical research. We recommend authors refer to the MIBBI Portal for prescriptive checklists for reporting biological and biomedical research where applicable. Authors are requested to make use of these when drafting their manuscript and peer reviewers will also be asked to refer to these checklists when evaluating these studies.

Checklists have also been developed for a number of study designs, including randomized controlled trials (CONSORT), systematic reviews (PRISMA), meta-analyses of observational studies (MOOSE), diagnostic accuracy studies (STARD) and qualitative studies (RATS). We recommend authors refer to the EQUATOR network website for further information on the available reporting guidelines for health research. For authors of systematic reviews, a supplementary file, linked from the Methods section, should reproduce all details concerning the search strategy. For an example of how a search strategy should be presented, see the Cochrane Reviewers' Handbook.

Authors from pharmaceutical companies, or other commercial organizations that sponsor clinical trials, should adhere to the Good Publication Practice guidelines for pharmaceutical companies, which are designed to ensure that publications are produced in a responsible and ethical manner. The guidelines also apply to any companies or individuals that work on industry-sponsored publications, such as freelance writers, contract research organizations and communications companies.

Stem Cell Research & Therapy also supports initiatives to improve the perfomance and reporting of trials, part of which includes prospective registering and numbering of clinical trials. The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) has implemented the World Health Organisation (WHO) definition of clinical trials which states that a clinical trial is any research study that prospectively assigns human participants or groups of humans to one or more health-related interventions to evaluate the effects on health outcomes. This definition includes phase I to Phase IV trials.

Authors of protocols or reports of such clinical trials, where the primary purpose of the research is to understand the causes, development and effects of disease or to improve preventatative, diagnostic or therapeutic interventions, must register their trials prior to submission in a suitable publicly available registry. In addition to accepting registration in any of the five existing registries (http://www.icmje.org/faq.html), the ICMJE will accept registration of clinical trials in any of the primary registers that participate in the WHO International Clinical Trials Registry Platform.

The trial registration number should be included as the last line of the manuscript abstract.

Data and materials release

Submission of a manuscript to Stem Cell Research & Therapy implies that readily reproducible materials described in the manuscript, including all relevant raw data, will be freely available to any scientist wishing to use them for non-commercial purposes. Nucleic acid sequences, protein sequences, and atomic coordinates should be deposited in an appropriate database in time for the accession number to be included in the published article. In computational studies where the sequence information is unacceptable for inclusion in databases because of lack of experimental validation, the sequences must be published as an additional file with the article.

Any 'in press' articles cited within the references and necessary for the reviewers' assessment of the manuscript should be made available if requested by the editorial office.

Nucleotide sequences

Nucleotide sequences can be deposited with the DNA Data Bank of Japan (DDBJ), European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL/EBI) Nucleotide Sequence Database, or GenBank (National Center for Biotechnology Information).

Protein sequences

Protein sequences can be deposited with SwissProt or the Protein Information Resource (PIR).

The accession numbers of any nucleic acid sequences, protein sequences or atomic coordinates cited in the manuscript should be provided, in square brackets with the corresponding database name; for example, [EMBL:AB026295, EMBL:AC137000, DDBJ:AE000812, GenBank:U49845, PDB:1BFM, Swiss-Prot:Q96KQ7, PIR:S66116].

The databases for which we can provide direct links are: EMBL Nucleotide Sequence Database (EMBL), DNA Data Bank of Japan (DDBJ), GenBank at the NCBI (GenBank), Protein Data Bank (PDB), Protein Information Resource (PIR) and the Swiss-Prot Protein Database (Swiss-Prot).

Mass spectrometry

Mass spectrometry data should be supplied in the mzML format recommended by the HUPO Protein Standards Initiative Mass Spectrometry Standards Working Group guidelines (http://www.psidev.info/index.php?q=node/80). We also recommend that the data is deposited in the ProteomeExchange (http://proteomexchange.org/) though the PRIDE website (http://www.ebi.ac.uk/pride/).

Structures

Protein structures can be deposited with one of the members of the Worldwide Protein Data Bank. Nucleic Acids structures can be deposited with the Nucleic Acid Database at Rutgers. Crystal structures of organic compounds can be deposited with the Cambridge Crystallographic Data Centre.

Chemical structures and assays

Structures of chemical substances can be deposited with PubChem Substance. Bioactivity screens of chemical substances can be deposited with PubChem BioAssay.

Microarray data

Where appropriate, authors should adhere to the standards proposed by the Microarray Gene Expression Data Society and must deposit microarray data in MIAME-compliant format in one of the public repositories, such as ArrayExpress, Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) or the Center for Information Biology Gene Expression Database (CIBEX).

Computational modeling

We encourage authors to prepare models of biochemical reaction networks using the Systems Biology Markup Language and to deposit the model with the BioModels database, as well as submitting it as an additional file with the manuscript.

Plasmids

We encourage authors to deposit copies of their plasmids as DNA or bacterial stocks with Addgene, a non-profit repository, or PlasmID, the Plasmid Information Database at Harvard.

Appeals against rejection

If authors are not satisfied with the decision made on their manuscript, they should contact the Editorial Office with their appeal; additional advice on the manuscript will be sought where appropriate. Authors who have appealed against a rejection but remain concerned about the editorial process can refer their case to COPE.

Competing interests

Stem Cell Research & Therapy requires authors to declare any competing financial or other interest in relation to their work. All competing interests that are declared will be listed at the end of published articles. Where an author gives no competing interests, the listing will read 'The author(s) declare that they have no competing interests'.

Citing articles in Stem Cell Research & Therapy

Articles in Stem Cell Research & Therapy should be cited in the same way as articles in a traditional journal. Because articles are not printed, they do not have page numbers; instead, they are given a unique article number.

Article citations follow this format:

Authors: Title. Stem Cell Research & Therapy [year], [volume number]:[article number].

e.g. Roberts LD, Hassall DG, Winegar DA, Haselden JN, Nicholls AW, Griffin JL: Increased hepatic oxidative metabolism distinguishes the action of Peroxisome Proliferator-Activated Receptor delta from Peroxisome Proliferator-Activated Receptor gamma in the Ob/Ob mouse. Stem Cell Research & Therapy 2009. 1:115.

Why publish your article in Stem Cell Research & Therapy?

High visibility

Stem Cell Research & Therapy's open access policy allows maximum visibility of articles published in the journal as they are available to a wide, global audience. Articles that have been especially highly accessed are highlighted with a 'Highly accessed' graphic, which appears on the journal's contents pages and search results.

Speed of publication

Stem Cell Research & Therapy offers a fast publication schedule whilst maintaining rigorous peer review; all articles must be submitted online, and peer review is managed fully electronically (articles are distributed in PDF form, which is automatically generated from the submitted files). Articles are published with their final citation immediately upon acceptance in a provisional PDF form. The article will subsequently be published in both fully browseable web form, and as a formatted PDF; the article will then be available through Stem Cell Research & Therapy , BioMed Central and PubMed Central and will also be included in PubMed.

Flexibility

Online publication in Stem Cell Research & Therapy gives authors the opportunity to publish large datasets, large numbers of color illustrations and moving pictures, to display data in a form that can be read directly by other software packages so as to allow readers to manipulate the data for themselves, and to create all relevant links (for example, to PubMed, to sequence and other databases, and to other papers).

Promotion and press coverage

All articles published in Stem Cell Research & Therapy are included in article alerts and regular email updates. Some may be included in abstract books mailed to academics and are highlighted on Stem Cell Research & Therapy's pages and BioMed Central's homepage.

In addition, articles published in Stem Cell Research & Therapy may be promoted by press releases to the general or scientific press. These activities increase the exposure and number of accesses for articles published in Stem Cell Research & Therapy. A list of articles recently press-released by journals published by BioMed Central is available here.

Copyright

Authors of articles published in Stem Cell Research & Therapy retain the copyright of their articles and are free to reproduce and disseminate their work (for further details, see the BioMed Central copyright and license agreement).

For further information about the advantages of publishing in a journal published by BioMed Central, please click here.