Cancer Health Disparities (CHD) journal is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Authors should provide name, address and current email address of five potential expert reviewers. All articles submitted to the CHD journal are subjected to two-tier review using our online peer review system. The preliminary review is conducted by an editor to make sure article conforms to the requirements of journal and research area is appropriate for the CHD. The editor also ensures that article brings new scientific knowledge to the field. In the second stage of the review process, articles are assigned to expert reviewers from the field. Following feedback of reviewers, the editor makes the final decision on acceptance of the article.
Manuscript submitted by author -> Editor Preliminary review -> Expert Peer Reviewer -> Decision to Accept/Reject by Editor -> Submission of revised manuscript by author -> Article formatting and layout -> DOI assignment -> Publication on company of scientists website -> Archival of published articles
Types of articles
The goal of the Cancer Health Disparities (CHD) journal is to cover all aspects of disparities including social, cultural, behavioral, environmental, genetic and epigenetic determinants contributing to differences in cancer incidence, prevalence, death, survivorship, and burden of cancer that exist among different population around the world. The overall aim is to publish high quality, high impact and innovative research articles in all areas related to cancer health disparities.
CHD journal publishes case reports, multidisciplinary editorial, commentary, hypothesis, short and full length reviews, full length original clinical or basic science research articles and short articles of immediate scientific or clinical significance. These include disparities at the metabolic, molecular, genetic, epigenetic, physiological, clinical, diagnostic, prevention and therapeutic levels.
Manuscripts should consist of: Title, authors, affiliations, abstract, introduction, materials and methods, results, discussion, references, acknowledgments, and figure legends.
a) Title (150 characters)
The title should be concise and specific to the research topic.
b) Authors and Affiliations
Please provide each author's names (first name, middle initial and last name) and affiliations. The corresponding author should be identified using an asterisk (*).
c) Abstract (250 words)
The abstract should briefly capture the overall outcome of the research without going into details of methodologies. It should be written in one paragraph and should not include many abbreviations.
d) Introduction
The introduction should consist of brief background or literature review of the research performed and problems, controversies and probable hypothesis should be included. The introduction should conclude with main results of the research and how it adds knowledge to the field of research.
e) Materials and Methods
The materials and methods section should consist of details that provide enough information to other scientists to reproduce the research findings. Although details of new methods should be included, the well-established methods can be referenced to the previous reports.
f) Results
The results section should provide details of all of the experiments that are required to support the conclusions of the paper. There is no specific word limit for this section, but details of experiments that are peripheral to the main thrust of the article and that detract from the focus of the article should not be included. The section may be divided into subsections, each with a concise subheading. Large datasets, including raw data, should be submitted as supplemental files; these are published online alongside the accepted article. The results section should be written in past tense.
g) Discussion
The discussion should spell out the major conclusions and interpretations of the work including some explanation on the significance of these conclusions. How do the conclusions affect the existing assumptions and models in the field? How can future research build on these observations? What are the key experiments that must be done? The discussion should be concise and tightly argued. If warranted, the results and discussion may be combined into one section.
h) Acknowledgments
Individuals who contributed to the work, but do not fit the criteria for authors should be listed in the Acknowledgments, along with their contributions. You must also ensure that anyone named in the acknowledgments agrees to being so named. The Acknowledgments section is reserved for statements of gratitude or thanks. Details of the funding sources that have supported the work should be confined to the funding statement. Do not include them in the Acknowledgments.
i) References
It is the authors responsibility that the information in each reference is complete and accurate. All references must be listed alphabetically using last names consecutively and citations of references in text should be alphabetically arranged and identified using last name and year of publication in parenthesis (Reik, 2007; Wong et al., 2002). If you are using EndNote or Reference manager select Cell as journal style. All references should be cited within the text.
Bruniquel, D., and Schwartz, R.H. (2003). Selective, stable demethylation of the interleukin-2 gene enhances transcription by an active process. Nat. Immunol. 4, 235–240.
Kangaspeska, S., Stride, B., Metivier, R., Polycarpou-Schwarz, M., Ibberson, D., Carmouche, R.P., Benes, V., Gannon, F., and Reid, G. (2008). Transient cyclical methylation of promoter DNA. Nature 452, 112–115.
Wong, E., Yang, K., Kuraguchi, M., Werling, U., Avdievich, E., Fan, K., Fazzari, M., Jin, B., Brown, A.M., Lipkin, M., and Edelmann, W. (2002). Mbd4 inactivation increases Cright-arrowT transition mutations and promotes gastrointestinal tumor formation. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 99, 14937–14942.
j) Figures
CHD requires high resolution electronic images with a minimum resolution of 600 dpi for line drawings (black and white) and 300 dpi for color or greyscale figures. All figures should be submitted either as GIF, JPG, EPS or TIFF files. Authors need to provide high resolution images for all accepted manuscripts for final publication in CHD. Figures must be generated using software such as Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, etc. Figure legend should be self-sufficient to describe the main points for each figure to independently provide information about the figure. Each legend should have a title of no more than 15 words. We encourage authors to submit high quality color figures to be considered for cover of the journal.
k) Tables
All tables must be cell-based and avoid using picture elements and text boxes. All tables should have a concise title and table in Arabic numerals. Footnotes can be used to explain abbreviations.
We accept only online submissions. The only corresponding author should submit manuscripts using the online manuscript submission system. Please prepare your manuscript as one document with double spacing using a word-processing tool in Word (.doc, .docx, .rtf). You can also submit the complete manuscript as one PDF (.pdf) file. To obtain one PDF file, you may use manuscript file merger app located on the top right corner of your webpage. In either case, online submission of manuscript file (doc) and every other file (including figure and supplementary material, if any) is must. If you experience any technical difficulty, please contact us at admin@companyofscientists.com.
Cancer Health Disparities is an open access journal. The article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Please do not submit any graphics that have been previously copyrighted unless you have obtained written permission from the copyright holder to publish under the CCAL license.
Manuscript charges
There is no charge to submit a manuscript. CHD journal is fully Open Access, providing free access to all articles to readers worldwide. All manuscripts accepted for publication in CHD will be charged a publication fee of $1500 which is comparable to other journals publishing similar manuscripts. Discounts are available to non-profit organizations and authors from other countries.
The submission file is in OpenOffice, Microsoft Word, RTF, or WordPerfect document file format.
The text is double-spaced; uses a 12-point font; employs italics, rather than underlining. A manuscript is one file and all illustrations, figures, and tables are placed within the text at the appropriate points, rather than at the end.
The text and references adhere to the bibliographic requirements outlined in the Author Guidelines.
Editorial evaluation: Immediately upon submission, the editor undertakes a thorough reading of the manuscript with respect to the content, data quality and overall presentation of the manuscript. In case of serious flaws with data presentation or writing, the manuscript is returned to the authors at this stage. Editors handle the manuscript and oversee the review process of the manuscripts assigned to them. If the editor finds the manuscript worth considering, S/he sends its out for external peer review. Very rarely, an exceptional manuscript may be accepted at this stage itself, but in consultation with other editors.
We follow the peer review policy to ensure that the content published is scientifically sound and unbiased. We follow the same policy as followed by scientific journals world-wide. The journal employs a blinded review policy so that the data is critically reviewed.
The peer review policy consists of the following steps: 1) Editorial evaluation 2) External peer review
Special issues: Guest editors oversee the review process in consultation with the editor-in-chief.
External peer review: At least two anonymous reviewers are selected who have expertise in relevant subject areas. The reviewers are chosen who do not have a conflict of interest which can affect their recommendations.
Double blind review: We follow double-blind reviewing process. The reviewers and the authors remain anonymous to each other all through the review process.
Selection of referees: The referees are generally related to the subject of the manuscript under consideration. For this we encourage the authors to register them for reviewing the manuscript submitted to the journal.
Referee reports: The referees are requested to provide a summary of the manuscript, and comment on originality of the idea, soundness of the methods used, quality of data, presentation of the manuscript, writing standard and novelty. Referees are free to provide language corrections in the form of edited manuscript, but this is optional. Simple recommendation to accept or reject without scientific comments is not considered for evaluation of the manuscript and the manuscript is not sent to such a referee for further evaluation.
Length of peer review process: We request the reviewers to provide their comments as soon as possible. Generally, 21 days are given to provide comments; however, sometimes this may exceed, leading to delays in decision making. In an endeavor to save precious time to the authors, we try to have the referees reports as early as possible. With this, we also request all reviewers to provide their comments as early as they would expect their papers to be reviewed by somebody else.
Final report and decision: In the light of the reviewers' comments, the editor again reads the manuscript and decides. The decision is taken by the associated editors in consultation with the editor-in-chief. In case of conflicting views, advice from the editorial board members is sought. If the manuscript is rejected, the authors cannot submit a revision; however, if a revision is suggested, the authors are encouraged to appropriately revise the manuscript and re-submit. Upon re-submission, the editor would decide if the manuscript is to be re-reviewed or could be accepted at this stage.
Research ethics and integrity:
Research ethics and integrity is our collective responsibility, which all authors, reviewers, and editors need to adopt and implement. Follow the link to learn about the different types of behavior. These behaviors include beyond "fabrication, falsification and plagiarism" that impact research integrity, where these practices occur and what you can do to follow and to adhere responsible conduct of research.
We strive to ensure the highest standards of publication ethics assuring that the articles are peer-reviewed before acceptance or rejection, provide high quality original content for the advancement of science and benefits the scientific community and general public at large.
i) Assessment of articles: All submissions are subjected to in house review by the editors, followed by external peer-review by experts in the field. The identity of the peer-reviewers remains anonymous to the authors. Occasionally, advice may be sought outside the peer-review experts to reach a consensus regarding publication of an article.
ii) Plagiarism: According to the journal's policy, all sources of information have to be duly acknowledged. Figures, Tables and data cannot be used from any other publication without prior permission from the publishers/authors as the case may be. In case plagiarism is detected, the article is either rejected or retracted.
iii) Duplicate or redundant submission: We consider only original content for publication. Data published previously in English or any other language in any form will not be considered for publication, except those on a preprint server, institutional repository, conference or in a thesis.
Manuscripts under consideration of publication are not allowed to be submitted elsewhere. In case of a duplicate submission or submission to more than one journal, appropriate sanctions will be implied.
Authors are not allowed to re-use their own data, figures, or copied text without prior permission of the publisher. In any case, similar content has to be appropriately referenced and also described how it differs from their previous publications/data.
Salami slicing (inappropriate division of collective data from one study) into more than one publication may result in rejection of one or both the manuscripts. In case of duplicate submission/publication of data, the article would be retracted and the authors may face sanctions.
iv) Biased Citation: Authors found to specifically and advertently using the citations from their own work or from a particular journal would face sanctions. Authors, editors, reviewers and publishers are not allowed to favor citations of particular articles or journals to increase their own citations.
v) Fabrication and falsification: Duplicate/seemingly duplicate and similar data must be screened very carefully to identify the originality and similarity before submission. For any intentional or unintentional duplication or fabrication of data, authors would be responsible and may attract appropriate sanctions apart from rejection of their published manuscripts.
vi) Authorship and acknowledgements: All listed authors must have made a significant scientific contribution for inclusion in the list of authors. This is solely the responsibility of the corresponding author to ensure that all authors have made significant contribution amounting to deserving authorship. Author contributions at the end of the articles are must and should be detailed to specify the contribution of each author. All authors and the editors/journal must approve changes in the authors in the first and subsequent revisions. All others who have contributed but enough to become authors must be acknowledged in the manuscript. Submissions by only the corresponding authors are allowed and the whole responsibility of he originality, data accuracy, accuracy of the references and authors' contributions lies with the corresponding authors of the article.
vii) Conflicts of interest: Conflicts of interest or competing interests come into picture when issues other than the core objective of unbiased research come into play at any stage during the planning, execution, writing or publication of the study. All authors are required to declare any conflict or competing interest in the manuscript. In case of declaration of no conflict of interest, authors are assumed to have conducted the study fairly without bias of any nature in conducting, interpreting the results or writing of the manuscript.
All peer reviewers are required to state their conflict of interest before accepting to review the manuscript. In case there are factors that can affect the decision regarding acceptance or rejection of a manuscript, they must be declared by the reviewers.
While the conflicts of interest do not always stop work from being published or prevent someone from being involved in the review process; however, they must be declared. A clear declaration of all possible conflicts whether they actually had an influence or not allows others to make informed decisions about the work and its review process.
The following conflicts are most likely to affect the publication and its scientific value: i) Financial funding and other payments, goods and services received or expected by the authors relating to the subject of the work or from an organization with an interest in the outcome of the work ii) Affiliations, being employed by, on the advisory board for, or a member of an organization with an interest in the outcome of the work iii) Intellectual property patents or trademarks owned by someone or their organization iv) Personal, friends, family, relationships, and other close personal connections v) Ideology, beliefs, or activism, for example, political or religious, relevant to the work vi) Academic competitors or someone whose work is critiqued.
Conflicts related to authors: Authors must declare if i) Funding agency could have an influence on the publication ii) If the work was influenced by a specific interest in the outcome of the work iii) Affiliation with an organization with a vested interest iv) Were employed or paid by the funder v) The funders had influence on planning, execution or analysis of data or the decision to publish.
Conflicts related to reviewers: Reviewers must declare the following if applicable i) Have a recent publication or current submission with any author ii) Share or recently shared an affiliation with any author iii) Collaborate or recently collaborated with any author iv) Have a close personal connection to any author v) Have a financial interest in the subject of the work vi) Feel unable to be objective.
Conflict related to editors: Editors must declare conflict of interests in the following manner i) Have a recent publication or current submission with any author ii) Share or recently shared an affiliation with any author iii) Collaborate or recently collaborated with any author iv) Have a close personal connection to any author v) Have a financial interest in the subject of the work vi) Feel unable to be objective in their assessment vii) Have not be able to ensure a fair peer review viii) Have been biased in their decision-making ix) Have reasons that can affect the decision to publish x) The authors have previously discussed their work with the editors.
Process for handling cases requiring corrections, retractions, and editorial expressions of concern.
i) Investigations: Suspected cases of violations of publications ethics policy will be judged by the research integrity team constituted by the chief editor of the journal, and the case may be referred to external peers in case it becomes impossible to arrive at a neutral decision by the editors. We may ask authors to provide all raw data, laboratory records or any other evidence to support their data and arrive at a conclusion in case of disputes.
ii) Corrigendum and retractions: According to the decision taken by the research integrity team, a corrigendum may be published in the journal or if the errors are substantial or the breach of conduct is serious, the article may be retracted. The decision of the journal in such cases will be final, irrespective of the agreement of the authors. A notice in this regard will be published on the website of the journal and an explanation from the authors may also be published. All authors will be asked to agree to the content of the notice.
iii) Sanctions: In case it becomes evident that the authors have breached ethics policies in scientific publications, the following may be applied as the case may be i) Rejection of the manuscript and any other manuscripts submitted by the author(s) ii) Not allowing submission for 1-3 years iii) Prohibition from acting as an editor or reviewer.
Informed consent policy
All authors should ensure that in studies that involve humans, the identity of the subject(s) should be protected to the possible extent unless the information is essential for scientific purpose and the subject, and their nonessential identifying details should be omitted. Authors whose studies involve human subject research are asked to follow Helsinki Declaration or the relevant governmental regulation.
Identifying details include but not restricted to name, subject/patient number, photographs/images, or any such information by which a subject can be identified. Any manuscripts that include image, or any other material relating to an individual person, written informed consent for the publication must be obtained from that person. The consent must be provided for publication of their details under the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0. The manuscript must include a statement that written informed consent for publication was obtained and a copy of the consent must be presented to the journal when asked.
For research based on human subjects or animal research, authors are asked to provide the name of the local ethics committee that approved the study (or confirmation that such approval is not needed) and/or to state how the study conforms to recognized standards (e.g. declaration of Helsinki or US Federal Policy for the Protection of Human Subjects or humane treatment of animals). We return any manuscripts describing studies not meeting acceptable criteria.
Advertising policy: We do not advertise products on our website.
Backup and content preservation: We are committed to provide complete and reliable backup in case the journal ceases to publish. The published content is regularly backed up for safety by third party hosting server and locally. The content published will be accessible on the journal's website with the same domain name, irrespective of its status in the future.
Management: The management responsibility of the journal lies with the publisher. In case of an issue with the publishing, you may reach the management at admin@coscip.com.