For Referees

On this page: About the journal | Criteria for publication | The review process | Selecting referees | Upon receiving a manuscript to referee | Confidentiality | Writing the report | Editing referee reports | Timing | Conflicts of interest | Publication policy and ethical considerations

About the journal

Cellular & Molecular Immunology is a bimonthly journal from the Chinese Society of Immunology and the University of Science and Technology of China. Covering both basic immunology research and clinical applications, Cellular & Molecular Immunology provides the latest information and advancements in our understanding of the immunological response of the host, both in vitro and in vivo.

The journal publishes Research Articles, Reviews, Minireviews and Brief Reports in all areas of cellular and molecular immunology, including but not limited to:

• clinical immunology
• comparative immunology
• immunobiology
• immunogenetics
• immunological techniques
• immunopathology
• immunopharmacology
• infection immunology
• neuroimmunology
• transplantation immunology
• tumor immunology
• veterinary immunology

As China's first English-language immunology journal, Cellular & Molecular Immunology is designed to serve both the Chinese and international communities as a vehicle to rapidly disseminate the latest studies in this field. The journal welcomes submissions that explore novel ideas or un- or contra-orthodox approaches, as long as they are underpinned by conventional scientific practice and present falsifiable hypotheses that are tested with empirical methods and evidence.

Manuscripts must provide evidence that can be critically evaluated, and where applicable:

• define disorders and clinical symptoms by standard clinical terms (e.g. allergy, asthma, lupus, etc.)
• deem results 'significant' only using standard statistical methods in biological effects/outcomes studies
• use consistent and defined amounts and mixtures of herbal formulas, or use purified monomer extracts.

Terms that may be ambiguous to the broad audience of the journal should be clearly defined within the manuscript.

Criteria for publication

Cellular & Molecular Immunology receives many more submissions than it can publish each month. It is therefore important that manuscripts are critically evaluated for compliance with the following criteria:

• strong evidence for the conclusions that are drawn
• novelty (abstracts, meeting reports and www preprints are not considered to compromise novelty)
• broad biological significance
• importance to the specific field

The review process

All submitted manuscripts are assessed by the editor(s) for suitability for the review process. The views of an Editorial Board member may be sought for further input towards this decision.

Manuscripts that are sent for formal review typically go to more than one referee. Based on their advice, the editor decides to:

• accept the manuscript, with or without minor revision
• invite the authors to revise the manuscript to address specific concerns before a final decision is reached
• or reject the manuscript, typically on grounds of specialist interest, lack of novelty, insufficient conceptual advance or major technical and/or interpretational problems.

Referees may recommend a particular course of action in their confidential comments to the editor, but should bear in mind that the editors may have to make a decision based on conflicting advice. Furthermore, editorial decisions are not a matter of counting votes or numerical rank assessments, but rather are based on an evaluation of the strengths of the arguments raised by each referee and by the authors. The most useful referee reports, therefore, are those that set out clear, substantiated arguments and refrain from recommending a course of action in the comments directed to the authors.

Referees may, on occasion, be asked for further advice, particularly in cases where they disagree with one another, or where the authors believe that they have been misunderstood on points of fact. This kind of discussion is sometimes necessary to provide an effective and fair review process. We do understand, however, that referees are reluctant to be drawn into prolonged disputes, so we try to keep consultation to the minimum we judge necessary to come to a fair conclusion. In certain cases, additional referees or members of our Editorial Board may be consulted to resolve disputes, but this is avoided unless there is a specific issue on which further advice is required.

Selecting referees

Referee selection is critical to the review process, and our choice is based on many factors, including expertise, reputation, specific recommendations, and our previous experience with the referee. We avoid using referees who are chronically slow, sloppy, too harsh or too lenient. We invite referees and only on acceptance of the invitation will a referee have access to the full paper.

Upon receiving a manuscript to referee

To avoid unnecessary delays in processing manuscripts, please do the following immediately upon receipt of a manuscript for review:

• double-check the deadline to ensure that there have been no misunderstandings regarding timing, and contact the editorial office immediately if you anticipate any difficulties in meeting it
• read the editor's letter carefully and be sure to note any points specific to the manuscript that the editor may have requested your opinion on
• skim the manuscript and consider whether there might be a conflict of interest for you (with the authors, their institution, their funding sources) and whether you can judge the article impartially
• consider whether the topic seems to fit the scope of the journal and is likely to be of sufficient general interest for publication.

Confidentiality

Referees should treat the review process as being strictly confidential, and should keep the following guidelines in mind:

• manuscripts refereed for Cellular & Molecular Immunology should not be discussed with anyone not directly involved in the review process
• if colleagues are consulted, they should be identified to the editors
• if experts from outside the referee's own laboratory are consulted, referees should check with the editors beforehand to avoid involving anyone who may have been excluded by the editor
• referees should, as a rule, not disclose their identities to the authors or to other colleagues since they may be asked to comment on the criticisms of other referees and may then find it difficult to be objective. Should they feel strongly about making their identities known to the authors, they should do so via the editor. We strongly disapprove of any attempt by authors to determine the identities of referees or to confront them, and encourage referees to neither confirm nor deny any speculation in this regard.

Writing the report

The primary purpose of referee reports is to provide the editors with the information that they need to reach a decision, but they should also instruct the authors on how to strengthen their manuscript if revision is a possibility. Referees are asked to submit both confidential comments to the editor and those that can be directly transmitted to the authors. We recommend the following division of the report:

Comments for transmission to the authors

Referees are asked to maintain a positive and impartial, but critical, attitude in evaluating manuscripts. Criticisms should remain dispassionate; offensive language is not acceptable. As far as possible, a negative report should explain to the authors the weaknesses of their manuscript, so that they can understand the basis for a decision to ask for revision or to reject the manuscript.

The ideal report should include:

• an initial paragraph that summarizes the major findings and the referee's overall impressions, as well as highlighting major shortcomings of the manuscript.
• specific numbered comments, which may be broken down into major and minor criticisms if appropriate (numbering facilitates both the editor's evaluation of the manuscript and the authors' rebuttal to the report).

The report should answer the following questions:

• what are the major claims and how significant are they?
• are the claims novel and convincing?
• are the claims appropriately discussed in the context of earlier literature?
• who will be interested and why?
• does the paper stand out in some way from the others in its field?
• are there other experiments that would strengthen the paper?

For manuscripts that may merit further consideration, it is also helpful if referees can provide advice on the following points where appropriate:

• how the clarity of the writing might be improved (without necessarily going into specific details of spelling and grammar)
• how the manuscript might be shortened
• how to do the study justice without overselling the claims
• how to represent earlier literature more fairly
• how to improve the presentation of methodological detail so that the experiments can be reproduced
• the submission of supplementary data on the Cellular & Molecular Immunology website to enhance the presentation (depositing, for example, crystallographic information, source code for modelling studies, microarray data, detailed methods, mathematical derivations, long tables and movies).

This author report should not include a recommendation regarding publication, which is regarded as confidential information since the final decision regarding acceptance, revision or rejection rests with the editor.

Confidential evaluation

The manuscript should be rated, either on the form provided or in an e-mail, according to the following:

Additional confidential comments to the editor might include:

• a definite recommendation regarding publication
• an assessment of how much any suggested additional experiments would improve the manuscript, and of how difficult they would be to complete within a reasonable timeframe (1-2 months)
• in cases where the manuscript is unacceptable in its present form, an opinion about whether the study is sufficiently promising to encourage resubmission in the future.

Editing referee reports

As a matter of policy, we do not suppress referee reports. Comments intended for the authors are almost always transmitted. On rare occasions, however, we may edit a report where the referee has made an obvious factual mistake, or to remove offensive language or comments that reveal confidential information. We ask referees to avoid saying anything that may cause needless offence, but also expect authors to recognize that criticisms are not necessarily unfair.

Timing

Cellular & Molecular Immunology is committed to rapid editorial decisions and publication as efficiency in this process is a valuable service both to our authors and the scientific community as a whole. We therefore ask that referees respond promptly or inform us if they anticipate a significant delay. This allows us to keep the authors informed and, where necessary, find alternative referees.

Conflicts of interest

In order to ensure fairness in the referee process, we try to avoid referees who: have recent or ongoing collaborations with the authors, have commented on drafts of the manuscript, are in direct competition, have a history of dispute with the authors, or have a financial interest in the outcome. Because it is not possible for the editors to know of all possible biases, however, we ask referees to draw our attention to anything that might affect their report, including commercial interests, and to decline to referee in cases where they feel unable to be objective. We do not find it necessary to exclude referees who have reviewed a paper for another journal; the fact that two journals have independently identified a particular person as well qualified to referee a paper does not decrease the validity of her/his opinion in our view.

Publication policy and ethical considerations

In spite of our best efforts to identify breaches of publication policy or ethical conduct, such as plagiarism or author conflict of interest, the referees who are more familiar with the field are more likely to recognize such problems and should alert the editors to any potential problems in this regard.