European Journal of Cancer

The European Journal of Cancer (EJC) is an international comprehensive oncology journal which publishes original research, editorial comments, review articles and news on basic and preclinical research, translational oncology, clinical oncology (medical, paediatric, radiation, surgical), and on cancer epidemiology and prevention.

The EJC will consider manuscripts prepared according to the guidelines adopted by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), 'Uniform requirements for manuscripts submitted to biomedical journals', which is available as a PDF from http://www.icmje.org. Authors are advised to read these guidelines.

All original research manuscripts submitted to the EJC will be evaluated by the journal's Editors. Some manuscripts may be rejected outright following this evaluation. Those manuscripts which are judged as being eligible for consideration by the Editors will be subject to peer-review.

Submission of an article implies that the work described has not been published previously (except in the form of an abstract or as part of a published lecture or academic thesis), that it is not under consideration for publication elsewhere, that its publication is approved by all authors and tacitly or explicitly by the responsible authorities where the work was carried out, and that, if accepted, it will not be published elsewhere in the same form, in English or in any other language, without the written consent of the Publisher.

The EJC will consider the following types of manuscript for publication:

Editorial comments: Editorial comments are generally invited by the EJC's Editorial Team. They are 1,500 words in length with no abstract or keywords.
Original research articles: Original research articles have a limit of 2,500 words and no more than 40 references. Authors are asked to provide a structured abstract of no more than 250 words and a list of keywords.
Review articles: Review articles have a limit of 3,000 words with an unlimited number of references. Authors are asked to provide an unstructured abstract of no more than 250 words and a list of keywords.
Short Communications: Short Communications have a limit of 2,000 words. An abstract of no more than 250 words and a list of keywords should also be provided.
Letters to the Editor: Letters to the Editor which comment directly on work that has previously been published in the EJC will be considered. Letters have a limit of 1,000 words and should be structured as a Letter, without an abstract or keywords. The author of the paper on which the Letter is commenting will be contacted and invited to respond.

Submitting a Manuscript

Manuscripts and the accompanying Author Form should be submitted online at http://www.ees.elsevier.com/ejc and the instructions on the site should be closely followed. Authors may submit manuscripts and track their progress to final decision. Reviewers can download manuscripts and submit their reports to the Editors.

The full contact details for the Editorial Office are shown below:

European Journal of Cancer
Elsevier Ltd
The Boulevard, Langford Lane
Oxford OX5 1GB
UK
Tel : +44 (0)1865 843282
Fax : +44 (0)1865 843977
Email : ejcancer@elsevier.com

In a covering letter, please identify the person responsible for editorial correspondence (address, telephone and fax numbers and e-mail address). Authors are asked to suggest up to 5 reviewers. These suggestions may not always be used by the Editors. Receipt of all contributions is acknowledged immediately, with a reference number for enquiries.

Author Form: The corresponding author must submit a completed Author Form with their submission. The form enables the corresponding author to record the contribution of each author and confirms whether ethical approval for the study has been sought, whether funding for the study was provided and whether there are any conflicts of interest. It must be signed by the corresponding author and uploaded to EES with the manuscript.

Acknowledgements: All contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship as defined by the ICMJE should be listed in an acknowledgements section. Examples of those who might be acknowledged include a person who provided purely technical help, writing assistance, or a department chair who provided only general support. Authors should disclose whether they had any writing assistance and identify the entity that paid for this assistance.

Randomised Controlled Trials: All randomised controlled trials submitted for publication in the EJC should include a completed Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials (CONSORT) flow chart. Please refer to the CONSORT statement website at http://www.consort-statement.org for more information. The EJC has adopted the proposal from the ICMJE which requires, as a condition of consideration for publication of clinical trials, registration in a public trials registry. Trials must register at or before the onset of patient enrolment. The clinical trial registration number should be included at the end of the abstract of the article. For this purpose, a clinical trial is defined as any research project that prospectively assigns human subjects to intervention or comparison groups to study the cause-and-effect relationship between a medical intervention and a health outcome. Studies designed for other purposes, such as to study pharmacokinetics or major toxicity (e.g. phase I trials) would be exempt. Further information can be found at www.icmje.org.

Ethics: Work on human beings that is submitted to the EJC should comply with the principles laid down in the Declaration of Helsinki; Recommendations guiding physicians in biomedical research involving human subjects, adopted by the 18th World Medical Assembly, Helsinki, Finland, June 1964, amended by the 29th World Medical Assembly, Tokyo, Japan, October 1975, the 35th World Medical Assembly, Venice, Italy, October 1983, and the 41st World Medical Assembly, Hong Kong, September 1989. The manuscript should contain a statement that the work has been approved by the appropriate ethical committees related to the institution(s) in which it was performed and that subjects gave informed consent to the work. Studies involving experiments with animals must state that their care was in accordance with institution guidelines. Patients' and volunteers' names, initials, and hospital numbers should not be used.

Conflicts of Interest: All authors must disclose any financial and personal relationships with other people or organisations that could inappropriately influence (bias) their work. Examples of potential conflicts of interest include employment, consultancies, stock ownership, honoraria, paid expert testimony, patent applications/registrations, and grants or other funding. This is to be uploaded to EES.

Role of the Funding Source: All sources of funding should be declared as an acknowledgement at the end of the text. Authors should declare the role of study sponsors, if any, in the study design, in the collection, analysis and interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript; and in the decision to submit the manuscript for publication. If the study sponsors had no such involvement, the authors should so state.

Microarray Data: The data should be made available to our readers/reviewers through a MIAME compliant online database or at least a website address.

Biomarkers: Submissions which report biomarkers must comply with the REMARK Guidelines (McShane L, Altman DG, Sauerbrei W, Taube SE, Gion M, Clark GM for the Statistics Subcommittee of the NCI-EORTC Working Group on Cancer diagnostics. REporting recommendations for tumor MARKer prognostic studies (REMARK), Eur J Cancer, 2005, 41, 1690-1696.)

Format: Please write your text in good English with double line-spacing. Original research manuscripts should be no more than 2,500 words in length, with a maximum of 40 references, and review articles should be no more than 3,000 words in length, with an unlimited number of references. Abstracts should not exceed 250 words in length. Manuscripts may be altered to meet the EJC's style.

Manuscripts containing research data generally follow the order: Introduction, Patients (or Materials) and Methods, Results, and Discussion.

Title page. The title page should include a concise but informative title; the authors' names; the department/institution and an address for each author, with a symbol to link authors and their addresses; the name, address, fax and telephone numbers and e-mail address of the author to whom correspondence should be addressed; details of sources of support in the form of grants, equipment, and drugs.

Abstract. The second page should start with the abstract, which should be up to maximum of 250 words and must include the aim of the study, a brief summary of the methods, results and a concluding statement.

Keywords: Include up to 10 key words from the Medical Subject Headings from Index Medicus

Text: This should start on the third page and should be divided into the following sections: Introduction, Patients (or Materials) and Methods, Results, and Discussion.

References. References should be listed on a new page. They should be consecutively in superscript in the text. 'Unpublished data' and 'Personal communications' are not allowed. As an alternative, say in the text, for example, '(data not shown)' or '(Dr F.G. Tomlin, Karolinska Institute)'. Accepted but unpublished papers (but not submitted manuscripts) can be referenced as 'in press'.

The format of references should be that of the Vancouver guidelines.
Include:
The names of all the authors when six or fewer, followed by their initials. Otherwise list only the first three and add et al
The title of the article or chapter
The journal name abbreviated as in Index Medicus, the year and volume, and the first and last pages
For a book, the names of any editors (as for authors), the city and name of the publisher, and the year and pages Examples for an article in a journal (1) or book (2) or for a book (3) would be:
1. Jiang FN, Liu DJ, Neyndorff H, Chester M, Jiang S-Y, Luy JG. Photodynamic killing of human squamous cell carcinoma cells using a monoclonal antibody-photosensitizer conjugate. J Natl Cancer Inst 1991;83:1218-25.
2. Gullick WJ, Venter DJ. The c-erbB2 and its expression in human tumours. In Waxman J, Sikora K, editors. The molecular biology of cancer. Oxford: Blackwell Scientific Publications; 1989: p.38-53.
3. Lumley JSP, Green CJ, Lear P, Angell-James JE, Essentials of Experimental Surgery. London: Butterworths; 1990.

Figure Captions, Tables, Figures and Schemes: Present these, in this order, at the end of the article. They are described in more detail below. High-resolution graphics files must always be provided separate from the main text file (see Preparation of illustrations).

Footnotes. Footnotes should be used sparingly. Number them consecutively throughout the article, using superscript Arabic numbers. Many word processors build footnotes into the text, and this feature may be used. Should this not be the case, indicate the position of footnotes in the text and present the footnotes themselves on a separate sheet at the end of the article. Do not include footnotes in the Reference list.

Table Footnotes. Indicate each footnote in a table with a superscript lowercase letter.

Tables. Number tables consecutively in accordance with their appearance in the text. Place footnotes to tables below the table body and indicate them with superscript lowercase letters. Avoid vertical rules. Be sparing in the use of tables and ensure that the data presented in tables do not duplicate results described elsewhere in the article.

Nomenclature and Units. Follow internationally accepted rules and conventions: use the international system of units (SI). If other quantities are mentioned, give their equivalent in SI.

Preparation of Electronic Illustrations.
• Make sure you use uniform lettering and sizing of your original artwork.
• Save text in illustrations as "graphics" or enclose the font.
• Only use the following fonts in your illustrations: Arial, Courier, Helvetica, Times, Symbol.
• Number the illustrations according to their sequence in the text.
• Use a logical naming convention for your artwork files.
• Provide all illustrations as separate files and as hardcopy printouts on separate sheets.
• Provide captions to illustrations separately.
• Produce images near to the desired size of the printed version.

A detailed guide on electronic artwork is available on our website: http://authors.elsevier.com/artwork. You are urged to visit this site; some excerpts from the detailed information are given here.

Formats. Regardless of the application used, when your electronic artwork is finalised, please "save as" or convert the images to one of the following formats (Note the resolution requirements for line drawings, halftones, and line/halftone combinations given below.):
EPS: Vector drawings. Embed the font or save the text as "graphics".
TIFF: Colour or greyscale photographs (halftones): always use a minimum of 300 dpi.
TIFF: Bitmapped line drawings: use a minimum of 1000 dpi.
TIFF: Combinations bitmapped line/half-tone (colour or greyscale): a minimum of 500 dpi is required.
JPEG, DOC, XLS or PPT: If your electronic artwork is created in any of these Microsoft Office applications please supply "as is".

Please do not:
• Supply embedded graphics in your word processor (spreadsheet, presentation) document;
• Supply files that are optimised for screen use (like GIF, BMP, PICT, WPG); the resolution is too low;
• Supply files that are too low in resolution;
• Submit graphics that are disproportionately large for the content.

If, together with your accepted article, you submit usable colour figures then Elsevier will ensure, at no additional charge, that these figures will appear in colour on the Web (e.g., ScienceDirect and other sites) in addition to colour reproduction in print.

Captions. Ensure that each illustration has a caption. Supply captions separately, not attached to the figure. A caption should comprise a brief title (not on the figure itself) and a description of the illustration. Keep text in the illustrations themselves to a minimum but explain all symbols and abbreviations used.

Line Drawings. The lettering and symbols, as well as other details, should have proportionate dimensions, so as not to become illegible or unclear after possible reduction; in general, the figures should be designed for a reduction factor of two to three. The degree of reduction will be determined by the Publisher. Illustrations will not be enlarged. Consider the page format of the journal when designing the illustrations. Do not use any type of shading on computer-generated illustrations.

Photographs (halftones). Remove non-essential areas of a photograph. Do not mount photographs unless they form part of a composite figure. Where necessary, insert a scale bar in the illustration (not below it), as opposed to giving a magnification factor in the caption. Note that photocopies of photographs are not acceptable.

Revised Manuscripts: Authors who have been asked to revise their manuscript by the Editors should submit a file which clearly shows the changes that have been made via the 'track changes' function or text highlighting, and a clean copy of the revised manuscript (i.e. a file which contains the changes without any highlighting). Authors are requested not to upload a copy of the original manuscript.

Preparation of Supplementary Data: Elsevier accepts electronic supplementary material to support and enhance your scientific research. Supplementary files offer the author additional possibilities to publish supporting applications, movies, animation sequences, high-resolution images, background datasets, sound clips and more. Supplementary files supplied will be published online alongside the electronic version of your article in Elsevier Web products, including ScienceDirect: http://www.sciencedirect.com. In order to ensure that your submitted material is directly usable, please ensure that data is provided in one of our recommended file formats. Authors should submit the material in electronic format together with the article and supply a concise and descriptive caption for each file. For more detailed instructions please visit our artwork instruction pages at the Author Gateway at http://authors.elsevier.com/artwork.

Special Subject Repositories: Elsevier has established agreements and developed policies to allow authors who publish in Elsevier journals to comply with potential manuscript archiving requirements as specified as conditions of their grant awards. To learn more about existing agreements and policies please visit http://www.elsevier.com/fundingbodies.

Sponsored Articles: The EJC now offers authors the option to sponsor non-subscriber access to individual articles. The access sponsorship contribution fee per article is $3,000. This contribution is necessary to offset publishing costs – from managing article submission and peer review, to typesetting, tagging and indexing of articles, hosting articles on dedicated servers, supporting sales and marketing costs to ensure global dissemination via ScienceDirect, and permanently preserving the published journal article. The sponsorship fee excludes taxes and other potential author fees such as colour charges which are additional.

Authors can specify that they would like to select this option after receiving notification that their article has been accepted for publication, but not before. This eliminates a potential conflict of interest by ensuring that the journal does not have a financial incentive to accept an article for publication.

Copyright: Upon acceptance of an article, authors will be asked to transfer copyright (for more information on copyright see http://authors.elsevier.com). This transfer will ensure the widest possible dissemination of information. A letter will be sent to the corresponding author confirming receipt of the manuscript. A form facilitating transfer of copyright will be provided.

If excerpts from other copyrighted works are included, the author(s) must obtain written permission from the copyright owners and credit the source(s) in the article. Elsevier has preprinted forms for use by Authors in these cases: contact Elsevier's Rights Department, Oxford UK: e-mail: permissions@elsevier.com. Requests may also be completed on-line via the Elsevier homepage (http://www.elsevier.com/locate/permissions).

Proofs: One set of page proofs in PDF format will be sent by e-mail to the corresponding author (if we do not have an e-mail address then paper proofs will be sent by post). Elsevier now sends PDF proofs which can be annotated; for this you will need to download Adobe Reader version 7 available free from http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html. Instructions on how to annotate PDF files will accompany the proofs. The exact system requirements are given at the Adobe site: http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/acrrsystemreqs.html#70win.

If you do not wish to use the PDF annotations function, you may list the corrections (including replies to the Query Form) and return to Elsevier in an e-mail. Please list your corrections quoting line number. If, for any reason, this is not possible, then mark the corrections and any other comments (including replies to the Query Form) on a printout of your proof and return by fax, or scan the pages and e-mail, or by post.

Please use this proof only for checking the typesetting, editing, completeness and correctness of the text, tables and figures. Significant changes to the article as accepted for publication will only be considered at this stage with permission from the Editor. We will do everything possible to get your article published quickly and accurately. Therefore, it is important to ensure that all of your corrections are sent back to us in one communication: please check carefully before replying, as inclusion of any subsequent corrections cannot be guaranteed. Proofreading is solely your responsibility. Note that Elsevier may proceed with the publication of your article if no response is received.

Offprints: The corresponding author, at no cost, will be provided with a PDF file of the article via e-mail. The PDF file is a watermarked version of the published article and includes a cover sheet with the journal cover image and a disclaimer outlining the terms and conditions of use. Additional paper offprints can be ordered by the authors. An order form with prices will be sent to the corresponding author.