Guide to Authors

To download our complete Guide to Authors, please click here

Cell Death & Disease and Springer Nature are pleased to share detailed online Author Tutorials - including interactive quizzes - which cover the following topics:

  • Writing a journal manuscript
  • Submitting a journal and peer review
  • Writing in English
  • Open Access

You can also watch a brief video giving an overview of the tutorials here.

Peer Review Terminology

Cell Death & Disease and Springer Nature are participating in a pilot of NISO/STM's Working Group on Peer Review Terminology.

The National Information Standards Organization (NISO) and STM, the International Association of Scientific, Technology and Medical Publishers have recognized a need to identify and standardize definitions and terminology in peer review practices in order to help align nomenclature as more publishers use open peer review models.

A peer review terminology that is used across publishers will help make the peer review process for articles and journals more transparent, and will enable the community to better assess and compare peer review practices between different journals.

The following summary describes the peer review process for this journal:

  • Identity transparency: Single anonymized
  • Reviewer interacts with: Associate Editor
  • Review information published: None

The full terminology is detailed here.

We would welcome feedback on the Peer Review Terminology Pilot. Please can you take the time to complete this short survey.

 

Article Type Specifications

Article: An Article is a substantial, in-depth, novel research study of interest to the readership of the journal. The structure an Article should follow is detailed below. Specifications: Unstructured abstract, max. 300 words; main body of text (excluding abstract, tables/figures, and references) not to exceed 3,500 words; max. 6-8 tables or figures; max. 80 references.

Review Article: A Review Article is an authoritative, balanced survey of recent developments in a research field.  Review Articles are regularly commissioned; however, pre-submission enquiries are also welcome. Please contact the editorial office. Specifications: Unstructured abstract, max. 300 words; main body of text (excluding abstract, tables/figures, and references) not to exceed 5,000 words; minimum of 4 tables or figures; max. 150 references.

Perspective: Perspectives are shorter than reviews and provide an opinion-driven perspective on a particular research topic or field of interest to the CDDis readership. Authors should present a (provocative) view that can be supported by data and literature with the goal of sparking debate and stimulating future research avenues. Specifications: Unstructured abstract, max. 300 words; main body of text (tables/figures, and references) not to exceed 2,500 words; max. 2 tables or figures; max. 100 references.

Editorial: Specifications: No abstract; main body of text (tables/figures, and references) not to exceed 1,200 words; max. 1 table or figure; max. 15 references.

Comment: Specifications: No abstract; main body of text (tables/figures, and references) not to exceed 1,200 words; max. 1 table; max. 15 references.

Meeting Report: Specifications: No abstract; main body of text (tables/figures, and references) not to exceed 1,200 words; max. 1 table or figure; no references.

Tumour size

In accordance with Publisher policy, authors of submissions reporting experiments on live vertebrates and/or higher invertebrates must identify in their manuscript the ethics committee/Institutional Review Board that approved the study. They must also include a statement confirming that all experiments were performed in accordance with the approved protocol and other relevant guidelines and regulations.

In relation to tumour size, authors must provide:

(i) a statement describing the maximal tumour size/burden permitted by their ethics committee/IRB;
(ii) a statement confirming that the maximal tumour size/burden was not exceeded; in instances where it has been exceeded, justification should be provided. 

Authors must include source data for any figures that describe tumour growth when complying with the journal’s data availability policy.

The Editor will take account of animal welfare issues and reserves the right to reject a manuscript, especially if the research involves protocols that are inconsistent with commonly accepted norms of animal research. In rare cases, the Editor may contact the ethics committee or Institution for further information.

Preparation of Articles

House Style: Authors should adhere to the following formatting guidelines

  • Text should be double spaced with a wide margin.
  • All pages and lines are to be numbered.
  • Do not make rules thinner than 1pt (0.36mm).
  • Use a coarse hatching pattern rather than shading for tints in graphs.
  • Colour should be distinct when being used as an identifying tool.
  • Spaces, not commas should be used to separate thousands.
  • At first mention of a manufacturer, the town (and state if USA) and country should be provided.
  • Statistical methods: For normally distributed data, mean (SD) is the preferred summary statistic. Relative risks should be expressed as odds ratios with 95% confidence interval. To compare two methods for measuring a variable the method of Bland & Altman (1986, Lancet 1, 307–310) should be used; for this, calculation of P only is not appropriate.
  • Units: Use metric units (SI units) as fully as possible. Preferably give measurements of energy in kiloJoules or MegaJoules with kilocalories in parentheses (1 kcal = 4.186kJ). Use % throughout.
  • Abbreviations: On first using an abbreviation place it in parentheses after the full item. Very common abbreviations such as FFA, RNA, need not be defined. Note these abbreviations: gram g; litre l; milligram mg; kilogram kg; kilojoule kJ; megajoule MJ; weight wt; seconds s; minutes min; hours h. Do not add ‘s’ for plural units.  Terms used less than four times should not be abbreviated.

Cover Letter: Authors should provide a cover letter that includes the affiliation and contact information for the corresponding author. Authors should briefly discuss the importance of the work and explain why it is considered appropriate for the diverse readership of the journal.  The cover letter should confirm the material is original research, has not been previously published and has not been submitted for publication elsewhere while under consideration. If the manuscript has been previously considered for publication in another journal, please include the previous reviewer comments, to help expedite the decision by the Editorial team. Please also include a Competing Interests statement - see Editorial Policies for more details.

Reproducibility Checklist: Cell Death & Disease requires authors of original research papers that are sent for external review to include in their manuscripts relevant details about several elements of experimental and analytical design. This initiative aims to improve the transparency of reporting and the reproducibility of published results, focusing on elements of methodological information that are frequently poorly reported. Authors being asked to resubmit a manuscript will be asked to confirm that these elements are included by filling out a reproducibility checklist that will be made available to the editor and reviewers.

Title Page: The title page should contain:

  • Title of the paper - brief, informative, of 150 characters or less and should not make a statement or conclusion
  • Running title – should convey the essential message of the paper in no more than 50 characters.  Should not contain any abbreviations
  • Full names of all the authors and their affiliations, together with e-mail address of the corresponding author. If authors regard it as essential to indicate that two or more co-authors are equal in status, they may be identified by an asterisk symbol with the caption ‘These authors contributed equally to this work’ immediately under the address list.

Large Language Models (LLMs), such as ChatGPT, do not currently satisfy our authorship criteria. Notably an attribution of authorship carries with it accountability for the work, which cannot be effectively applied to LLMs. Use of an LLM should be properly documented in the Methods section (and if a Methods section is not available, in a suitable alternative part) of the manuscript.

Abstract:  Original Articles must be prepared with an abstract that summarises the essential features of the paper in a logical and concise sequence.

Bullet Points (Reviews only): Reviews must include a list of “FACTS” (a list of 3 to 5 bullet points highlighting the major queries, debatable facts, that should/could become a major subject of research in the near future). See for example the CDD review in the September 2011 issue (Melino et al. p63 is a suppressor of tumorigenesis and metastasis interacting with mutant p53. Cell Death Differ. 2011 Sep; 18(9):1487-99. doi: 10.1038/cdd2011.81).

Introduction: The Introduction should assume that the reader is knowledgeable in the field and should therefore be as brief as possible but can include a short historical review where desirable.

Materials/Subjects and Methods:  This section should contain sufficient detail, so that all experimental procedures can be reproduced, and include references. Methods, however, that have been published in detail elsewhere should not be described in detail. Authors should provide the name of the manufacturer and their location for any specifically named medical equipment and instruments, and all drugs should be identified by their pharmaceutical names, and by their trade name if relevant.

Results:  The Results section should briefly present the experimental data in text, tables or figures. Tables and figures should not be described extensively in the text.

Discussion:  The Discussion should focus on the interpretation and the significance of the findings with concise objective comments that describe their relation to other work in the area. It should not repeat information in the results. The final paragraph should highlight the main conclusion(s), and provide some indication of the direction future research should take.

Conflict of Interest:  Authors must declare whether or not there are any competing financial interests in relation to the work described. This information must be included at this stage and will be published as part of the paper, but should also be noted in the cover letter. Please see the Competing Interests definition in the Editorial Policies section for detailed information.

Availability of Data and Materials: We strongly encourage that all datasets on which the conclusions of the paper rely should be available to readers. We encourage authors to ensure that their datasets are either deposited in publicly available repositories (where available and appropriate) or presented in the main manuscript or additional supporting files whenever possible. Where one does not exist, the information must be made available to referees at submission and to readers promptly upon request. Any restrictions on material availability or other relevant information must be disclosed in the manuscript’s Methods section and should include details of how materials and information may be obtained. Please see the journal’s guidelines on Research Data policy here.

Acknowledgements: These should be brief, and should include sources of support including sponsorship (e.g. university, charity, commercial organisation) and sources of material (e.g. novel drugs) not available commercially.

References: Only papers directly related to the article should be cited. Exhaustive lists should be avoided. References should follow the Vancouver format. In the text they should appear as numbers starting at one and at the end of the paper they should be listed (double-spaced) in numerical order corresponding to the order of citation in the text. Where a reference is to appear next to a number in the text, for example following an equation, chemical formula or biological acronym, citations should be written as (ref. X) and not as superscript. Example “detectable levels of endogenous Bcl-2 (ref. 3), as confirmed by western blot”.

All authors should be listed for papers with up to six authors; for papers with more than six authors, the first six only should be listed, followed by et al. Abbreviations for titles of medical periodicals should conform to those used in the latest edition of Index Medicus. The first and last page numbers for each reference should be provided. Abstracts and letters must be identified as such. Papers in press may be included in the list of references. Personal communications can be allocated a number and included in the list of references in the usual way or simply referred to in the text; the authors may choose which method to use. In either case authors must obtain permission from the individual concerned to quote his/her unpublished work.

Examples:

Journal article:
Nguyen D, Soygur B, Peng S, Malki S, Hu G & Laird DJ. Apoptosis in the fetal testis eliminates developmentally defective germ cell clones. Nat Cell Biol 22, 1423-1435 (2020)

Journal article, e-pub ahead of print:
Basar, MA, Beck DB & Werner A. Deubiquitylases in developmental ubiquitin signaling and congenital diseases. Cell Death Differ (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41418-020-00697-5

Complete book:
Atkinson K, Champlin R, Ritz J, Fibbe W, Ljungman P, Brenner MK (eds). Clinical Bone Marrow and Blood Stem Cell Transplantation. 3rd edn. (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2004).

Chapter in book:
Coccia PF. Hematopoietic cell transplantation for osteopetrosis. In: Blume KG, Forman SJ, Appelbaum FR (eds). Thomas' Hematopoietic Cell Transplantation. 3rd edn. (Blackwell Publishing Ltd, Malden, 2004) pp 1443–1454.

Abstract:
Syrjala KL, Abrams JR, Storer B, Heiman JR. Prospective risk factors for five-year sexuality late effects in men and women after haematopoietic cell transplantation. Abstracts of the 32nd Annual Meeting of the European Group for Blood and Marrow Transplantation. Bone Marrow Transplant 37, O107 (2006).

Website:
Kassambara A. rstatix: pipe-friendly framework for basic statistical tests. 2020. https://rpkgs.datanovia.com/rstatix/.

Preprint:
Babichev SA, Ries J & Lvovsky AI. Quantum scissors: teleportation of single-mode optical states by means of a nonlocal single photon. Preprint at http://arXiv.org/quant-ph/0208066 (2002).

Tables:  Tables should only be used to present essential data; they should not duplicate what is written in the text. All tables must be editable, ideally presented in Excel.  Each must be uploaded as a separate workbook with a title or caption and be clearly labelled, sequentially. Please make sure each table is cited within the text and in the correct order, e.g. (Table 3).  Please save the files with extensions .xls / .xlsx / .ods / or .doc or .docx. Please ensure that you provide a 'flat' file, with single values in each cell with no macros or links to other workbooks or worksheets and no calculations or functions.

Figures:  Figures should only be uploaded as .png or .tiff files in CMYK format with a minimum resolution of 300 dpi. Figures must not be uploaded as pdf files or any other file type. Figures and images should be labelled sequentially and cited in the text. Figures should not be embedded within the text but rather uploaded as separate files. The use of three-dimensional histograms is strongly discouraged unless the addition of the third dimension is important for conveying the results. Composite figures containing more than three individual figures will count as two figures. All parts of a figure should be grouped together.  Where possible large figures and tables should be included as supplementary material. See Figure Preparation Dos and Don’ts in the Guide to Authors PDF.

Additional guidelines for submitting artwork can be found by downloading our Artwork Guidelines (but please note, only figures submitted in TIFF or PNG formats are acceptable). Using the above guidelines, please submit production quality artwork with your initial online submission. If you have followed the above guidelines, we will not require the artwork to be resubmitted following the peer-review process, if your paper is accepted for publication.

Graphs, Histograms and Statistics: Plotting individual data points is preferred to just showing means, especially where N<10. If error bars are shown, they must be described in the figure legend. Axes on graphs should extend to zero, except for log axes. Statistical analyses (including error bars and p values) should only be shown for independently repeated experiments, and must not be shown for replicates of a single experiment. The number of times an experiment was repeated (N) must be stated in the legend.

Figure Legends:  These should be brief and specific, and should appear on a separate manuscript page after the References section. Where the data is presented in a statistical format, N should be indicated and the type of error bars defined in the legend.  

Supplementary Information
Supplementary information is material directly relevant to the conclusion of an article that cannot be included in the printed version owing to space or format constraints. The article must be complete and self-explanatory without the Supplementary Information, which is posted on the journal's website and linked to the article. Supplementary Information may consist of data files, graphics, movies or extensive tables. Please see our Artwork Guidelines for information on accepted file types.

Authors should submit supplementary information files in the FINAL format as they are not edited, typeset or changed, and will appear online exactly as submitted. When submitting Supplementary Information, authors are required to: 

  • Include a text summary (no more than 50 words) to describe the contents of each file.
  • Identify the types of files (file formats) submitted.

Please note: We do not allow the resupplying of Supplementary Information files for style reasons after a paper has been exported in production, unless there is a serious error that affects the science and, if by not replacing, it would lead to a formal correction once the paper has been published. In these cases we would make an exception and replace the file, however there are very few instances where a Supplementary Information file would be corrected post publication.

Original western blots
For manuscripts that include western blots, authors are required to provide the full length uncropped original western blots used in their manuscript, as part of their original submission. Full length western blots should be uploaded as a single Supplementary File, should be clearly cited in the main text, and will be published if your article is accepted for publication.

Subject Ontology 
Upon submission authors will be asked to select a series of subject terms relevant to the topic of their manuscript from our subject ontology. Providing these terms will ensure your article is more discoverable and will appear on appropriate subject specific pages on nature.com, in addition to the journal’s own pages.  Your article should be indexed with at least one, and up to four unique subject terms that describe the key subjects and concepts in your manuscript.  Click here for help with this.