ONCOLOGY Guide to Authors

ONCOLOGY is a monthly peer-reviewed journal that is indexed in MEDLINE/PubMed, ISI, SCOPUS, and Embase, among other A&I databases. The journal publishes articles relating to practice-management issues in the care of patients with neoplastic diseases. The journal is also sent free of charge to about 30,000 physicians and nurses, including medical, surgical, radiation, pediatric, and gynecologic oncologists, hematologists, and physicians who have declared a secondary specialty in one of these areas.

Articles focus on topics of particular relevance to current practice in clinical oncology. These topics may be either very broad or quite focused. Each article is reviewed by up to three peer reviewers who are asked to prepare a short commentary to be published with the article. The commentary might be entirely laudatory, highly critical, or more neutral. These commentaries serve to highlight areas of consensus or disagreement among professionals with expertise on the topic in question.

ONCOLOGY will not consider articles that are sponsored directly or indirectly by a commercial entity (eg, a pharmaceutical company or public relations firm).

ONCOLOGY does not accept unsolicited manuscripts; all review topics are determined by the Editors in Chief and Editorial Board, who are also responsible for selecting authors.

Author Instructions

Be Original: You have been chosen by the Editors in Chief to provide a comprehensive review of a timely topic that will be of great interest to thousands of your colleagues. Your role is to interpret and coalesce existing information in a novel way. Please include original figures and tables, interpretations, and viewpoints, and do not simply rely on previously published content. You were singled out to author the review because of your experience and perspective, so please make sure your review imparts these to readers.

Discuss Guidelines: Discuss Guidelines: Please discuss existing guidelines for treatment in your review, be they from the NCCN, ASCO, Federal, or other entities. Our audience has an interest in hearing how these guidelines impact treatment practices ranging from diagnosis to palliative care. Considerations regarding the impact of therapeutic guidelines can include: (1) the successful introduction of new findings into clinical practice; (2) need for the update / harmonization of existing guidelines; (3) the potential medical-legal consequences; (4) potential failure of generalized guidelines to account for individual patient risk factors and preferences.

Our goal as a journal is to offer truly rounded “perspectives” on current best practices in order to drive progress in treatment.

Discuss Cost vs Value: Please provide our audience with your perspective on the monetary costs of any specific new or existing treatments or technologies (where relevant), relative to the value that the treatment/technology has to patients.

Length and Specs: In general, manuscripts should be no longer than 3,500–4,000 words, not including references, tables, and figures). Manuscripts with only one or two table(s)/figure(s) can use the 4,000-word maximum; those with a number of tables and figures should be under 3,500 words. Please submit articles as Word documents. Figures should be of high resolution (at least 300 dpi) and can be submitted separately in JPG, PDF, TIF, EPS, or PPT format. Please include arrows pointing to the pathology or other areas of interest on clinical images or figures showing results of imaging studies.

Drugs: If a drug is not available generically and is marketed as no more than two trademarked or registered products, both generic and trade names should be given. Please cite the generic name followed by the trade name(s) in parentheses the first time a drug is mentioned. Thereafter, please use the generic name.

Title page: Please include the article title, the names of all authors, their academic degrees and professional designations and titles, and their primary affiliations, plus an email contact for future correspondence.

Abstract: Please include an abstract of 175 or fewer words that summarizes the main points of the article and the major conclusions, highlighting the importance of the subject matter in the context of current clinical practice.

Permissions: Permissions for print and online use must be provided at the time of manuscript submission for any previously published or copyrighted material.

References: A limit of 40 references is recommended. References should be numbered consecutively in the text using brackets; they should be formatted using Vancouver style, but with “et al” used after the third author when there are more than four authors.