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Description

JOURNAL e-ISSN: 2329-7042

CellR4 (Cellular Repair, Replacement, Regeneration & Reprogramming) is a multidisciplinary, open access, peer-reviewed, online journal that publishes solicited and unsolicited articles related to the field of regenerative medicine, spanning from fundamental new discoveries in basic science to translational research (“bench-to-bedside”), methods and protocols, clinical trials, and identification of novel therapeutic targets. CellR4 also serves as a trusted and authoritative platform aimed to discuss challenges and opportunities on the path to development, delivery and clinical application of novel therapeutic options for a wide range of chronic degenerative diseases. Topics covered by the journal include, but are not limited to, cell-based therapies, organ replacement therapies, solid organ and cell transplantation, tissue engineering, cellular reprogramming mechanisms and technologies, and regenerative pharmacology.

CellR4 is also the Official Journal of The Cure Alliance and Fondazione Cure Alliance Onlus, two linked non-profit international organizations including scientists, researchers, physicians, patient advocates, innovators, business and philanthropy leaders, with the mission to promote collaborative efforts worldwide while addressing and working to resolve impediments and challenges on the path to developing cures for incurable diseases afflicting humankind. The main goal of The Cure Alliance is to help accelerate potential cures from bench to bedside.

Rather than publishing conventional complete online issues at fixed intervals, CellR4 has moved to a continuous publication model, with articles being published on an ongoing basis. Articles are posted online as soon as they have completed the production process in a fully citable form associated with a universal digital object identifier (DOI). At this time, articles are free to view and download for all.

Abstracting and indexing

DOAJ

EBSCO catalogue

CNKI

TrendMD

Google Scholar

Semantic Scholar

Publons

We remind that manuscripts published in CellR4 by authors funded by National Institutes of Health (NIH) are eligible for indexing in MEDLINE/PubMed. Articles published in CellR4 that have already received MEDLINE/PubMed indexing are listed here. If the article is accepted for publication and the work was supported by NIH, authors should insert the NIH grant number(s) in the Funding section of the manuscript. More Organizations that would give Authors the opportunity to have manuscripts indexed in PubMed are listed here.

Cover Letter

Authors who submit manuscripts to CellR4 must provide a supporting Cover Letter which briefly details the article relevance to the journal’s audience and how the article advances understanding of the field. The Cover Letter must include contact information [affiliation, postal address, e-mail address, telephone number] for all authors. Authors should indicate a Corresponding Author to whom correspondence will be sent if the manuscript is accepted for publication. In the Letter, authors must confirm that the manuscript has been submitted solely to this journal and is not published, in press, or submitted elsewhere (including preprint servers). Authors must confirm that all the research meets the ethical guidelines, including adherence to the legal requirements of the study country. Authors must confirm that the manuscript has been read and approved by all named authors and that there are no other persons who satisfied the criteria for authorship. Cover Letter must be signed by the Corresponding Author on behalf of all the other authors.

Article types

Brief Communications

Brief Communications are short manuscripts that have important and generally preliminary data on a specific issue.

Case Reports (with or without accompanying Literature Review)

Case Reports present a notable medical case or series of related cases of particular interest to the field of regenerative medicine. Case Reports can be accompanied by a Review of the literature on the specific topic covered in the manuscript.

Clinical Protocols

Clinical Protocols describe protocols referring to proposed or ongoing trials that have not completed participant recruitment at the time of submission.

Clinical Trials

Clinical Trials are articles related to phase 2/3 trials that have completed participant recruitment and data analysis at the time of submission. In such articles, authors must indicate the specific number or code referring to trial registration (e.g., ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier) and approval by the local Ethics Committees.

Commentaries and Perspective Articles

Commentaries and Perspective Articles are short articles that are similar to Editorials, although they provide a more detailed discussion on a specific topic.

Conference Proceedings

Conference proceedings consist of a collection of abstracts and/or posters that were presented at an association’s conference. These articles provide opportunities for researchers to present their research and gain insights from other researchers and colleagues in their field.

Editorials

Editorials are short articles that provide an insight into issues of topical importance to the journal’s target audience or researchers. The articles should provide an expert perspective on a topic of recent interest. This contribution is usually solicited by the Editors. If unsolicited, the authors are advised to contact the Editor-in-Chief (submission.cellr4@verduci.it) with an outline of the proposed review and CV of the authors.

Letters to the Editor

Letters to the Editor consists of comments on an article published in CellR4. Inclusion of Letters to the Editor in the journal is at the discretion of the Editor-in-Chief, and they may undergo external peer review. All Letters to the Editor will be subsequently sent to the author of the original article, who will have 60 days to provide a Reply to be published alongside the Letter.

Meta-analyses

Meta-analyses use statistical methods to combine data from multiple and systematically selected studies. These manuscripts should be based on a rigorous methodological and statistical approach described in detail in the methods section applied to a relevant basic or clinical issue. This contribution may also undergo statistical revision. Meta-Analyses should be conducted according to the recommendations of PRISMA (http://www.prisma-statement.org/).

Meeting Reports

Meeting Reports are synopses of meetings and symposia, usually shorter than six journal pages (22000 characters including spaces). Reports must be submitted within three weeks of the end of the meeting. Authors should contact the Editor-in-Chief (submission.cellr4@verduci.it) prior to submitting Meeting Reports.

Opinion Papers

Opinion Papers should be solicited by the Editor-in-Chief and deal with a controversial topic in either basic or clinical topic on which the author, a recognized expert in the field, is invited to express his/her personal views and interpretation.

Original Articles

Original Articles should present novel work that makes a significant impact within the aims and scope of the journal, and which provides an important advancement in reader’s knowledge or understanding. Supporting data or additional experimental details can be submitted as Supplementary Information. Original Articles may be recommended to be resubmitted as a Short Communications at the discretion of the Editors.

Systematic Reviews

Systematic Reviews should systematically include, appraise and summarize evidence on a specific topic. Systematic Reviews should be conducted according to the recommendations of PRISMA (http://www.prisma-statement.org/).

Reviews

Reviews are comprehensive or narrative appraisals of research in a particular field of current interest. Reviews highlight recent advances in research, current challenges and unmet needs. Authors are also encouraged to provide their perspective on current progress and future directions.

Standard Methods and Operating Procedures

Standard Methods and Operating Procedures articles provide an overview of a novel method, test or Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) related to the field of regenerative medicine. The method described may be either novel or could provide a demonstrable improvement of a pre-existing method.

Article length and word count. In most cases, we do not impose strict limits on word count or number of pages, tables, figures and references. However, the editorial recommendation is that authors write concisely. The main text should be no more than 6,000 words (not including Abstract, References and Figure legends). Articles should not contain more than 250 references.

Exceptions apply for the main text of Brief Communications (maximum length: 5,000 words with up to 30 references and 2 tables and/or figures), Editorials (maximum length: 10,000 words with up to 30 references and 2 tables and/or figures) and Opinion Papers (maximum length: 10,000 words with up to 30 references and 2 tables and/or figures). Letters are restricted to the discussion of papers already published in the journal, with a maximum of 1,000 words, one table or figure and up to 20 references.

Manuscript Submission 

Authors must submit manuscripts that are not published, in press, or submitted to other scientific journals, books or other venues that could be considered formal publication (including preprints). The correspondence for each article will be received by the Corresponding Author. The submission procedure requires a declaration of personal interests and funding interests of all authors; these details should also be included in the manuscript (see below).

Preprint policy. Please note that CellR4 does not accept submission of manuscripts that have previously been made available online as a preprint on a preprint server or on the authors’ own website.

Authorship and Copyright

All authors should have made substantial contributions to all of the following:

• Research conception and design
• Acquisition, analysis and interpretation of data
• Manuscript drafting and supervision
• Revision and final approval of the version of the manuscript to be submitted

All authors must approve all the submitted versions of the manuscript.

Changes to authorship. Authors should consider carefully the list and order of authors before submitting their manuscript and provide the definitive list of authors at the time of the first submission. Any deletion, addition or rearrangement of author names in the authorship list can be made only before the manuscript has been accepted and only if approved by the Editor-in-Chief. To request this change, the Editor-in-Chief must receive a letter from the Corresponding Author (at submission.cellr4@verduci.it) specifying the reason for the change in author list, along with a written confirmation letter from all authors that they agree with the removal, addition or rearrangement. In the case of removal or addition of authors, this includes confirmation from the author being removed or added.

Copyright Transfer Agreement (CTA). Authors are required to sign a Copyright Transfer Agreement (click here to download the Copyright Transfer Agreement in PDF) for all papers accepted for publication in CellR4. Signing the CTA is mandatory for the manuscript publication and manuscripts will not be processed by the Publisher for production until the Editorial Office has received a signed CTA form. After submission, authors cannot submit their manuscript to other journals. After acceptance, the Publisher retains the rights and becomes the owner of the paper. The CTA form must be signed by all the authors (by hand or electronically) and can be sent via email (submission.cellr4@verduci.it) or uploaded to Publishing Manager during the submission procedure. The Editors retain the usual right to modify the editorial style and the length of a manuscript (major changes will be discussed with the Corresponding Author) and to decide the date of publication.

Authors who wish to publish in our journal must comply with the guidelines on Good Publication Practice as reported in COPE and Council of Science Editors. These guidelines aim to ensure that articles are published in a responsible and ethical manner.

Third-party permission

Authors who wish to use copyrighted third-party content (defined as any material within the manuscript which is not author’s original work) must obtain permission from the copyright holder (usually the original publisher). Third-party content may consist of figures, photos, illustrations, and may be found in several places such as, but not limited to, websites, print and online books and articles, theses, annual reports, conference material, etc. Once obtained, documents certifying the permission to use third-party content should be sent to submission.cellr4@verduci.it for archiving purposes.

Manuscript Preparation Guidelines

Title page, Abstract and Keywords

Title. Full title should be concise and informative. Abbreviations and formulae should not be included in the title. The title should be no more than 180 characters (including spaces).

Running head. A running head (short title) should be supplied and should not exceed 50 characters (including spaces).

Author names and affiliations. Title page must include given name(s) and family name(s) of each author, along with authors’ affiliations below the names. Indicate all affiliations with a lowercase superscript letter immediately after the author’s name and in front of the corresponding affiliation. Provide the full postal address of each affiliation, including the country name and the email address of each author. Please note that CellR4 takes a neutral position with respect to territorial claims in institutional affiliations.

Corresponding Author. Authors must indicate who will handle correspondence at all stages of refereeing, publication and post-publication. Ensure that Corresponding Author title(s) and credentials, degree(s) (e.g., MD, Ph.D), affiliation(s) and postal and email addresses are given and that contact details are kept up to date by the Corresponding Author.

Abstract. Each manuscript must begin with a structured abstract that summarizes the results obtained and the conclusions drawn. Abstract should be self-contained and not exceed 270 words. Abstract is not required for Commentaries, Perspective Articles, Editorials, and Letters to the Editor. References must not be included in the abstract. Moreover, we discourage the use of abbreviations in the abstract.

Original Articles, Brief Communications, Case Reports, Systematic Reviews and Meta-analyses require a structured Abstract (not exceeding 270 words) organized into sections using the following subheadings in sequential order:

• OBJECTIVE
• MATERIALS AND METHODS (or PATIENTS AND METHODS)
• RESULTS
• CONCLUSIONS
• REFERENCES

The paper should then proceed conventionally, as follows: Introduction, Materials and Methods (or Patients and Methods), Results, Discussion, Conclusions, and References.

Graphical abstract. Even though a graphical abstract is optional, its use is encouraged as it draws more attention to the article. The graphical abstract aims to summarize the article contents in a pictorial form designed to capture the attention of a broad readership. Graphical abstracts should be submitted as a separate file in the online submission system (Publishing Manager). Authors should provide an image with a minimum of 531×1328 pixels (h×w). The image should be readable at a size of 5×13 cm using a regular screen resolution of 96 dpi. Preferred file formats include: .TIFF, .PMG, .JPG.

Keywords. Three to ten keywords should be supplied in alphabetical order immediately after the abstract. Authors should use American spelling and avoid general and plural terms as well as multiple concepts (e.g., avoid “and”, “of”). Only abbreviations firmly established in the field may be included in the keyword list. We recommend that the keywords are specific to the article. Keywords will be used for indexing purposes.

Main text

Main text of Original Articles, Brief Communications, Systematic Reviews and Meta-analyses should be organized into the following sections: Introduction, Materials and Methods (or Patients and Methods), Results, Discussion, Conclusions, References.

For articles that are not based on original data, the sections Materials and Methods (or Patients and Methods) and Results can be replaced with other subheadings at the authors’ discretion.

Commentaries and Perspective Articles, Editorials and Letters to the Editor do not require a structured organization of the main text. However, the use of Introduction section and additional subheadings is encouraged for Commentaries and Perspective Articles and for Editorials.

In the Materials and Methods section, authors should describe in detail the design, subjects, and methods for all studies. Sufficient details must be provided such that the study can be replicated by other researchers. Instruments used must be accompanied by their model name, city, state and country of manufacture in round brackets. The clone name and source of monoclonal antibodies should be reported. The statistical methods and statistical software program(s) used should be described.

Authors should provide the following sections immediately after the main text, in sequential order:

• Acknowledgements. Brief acknowledgements of subjects who have made genuine contributions to the article and who endorse the data and conclusions should be included. In this section, authors must include written permission to use any copyrighted text and/or illustrations. In this section, authors are required to disclose any source of financial support to their work and/or all relevant consultancies within 12 months prior to submission (for more details, visit the page “Policy, Licensing and COI”).
• Funding. In this section, authors must list any funding source and funding interests. For example: “This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health [grant numbers xxxxx, yyyyy]”.Example of declaration of funding interests: (i) This study was funded [in part or in full] by [insert name of funding organization], grant number [insert grant or another identification number]. (ii) The [writing or preparation] of this paper was funded in part by [insert name of funding organization]. (iii) Initial data analyses were undertaken by [name of individuals if not listed as Authors] who are employees of [name company] and received funding from [insert name of funding organization]. (iv) Writing support was provided by [insert name of individual(s)] of [name company] and funded by [insert name of funding organization].We remind that manuscripts published in CellR4 by authors funded by National Institutes of Health (NIH) are eligible for indexing in MEDLINE/PubMed. Articles published in CellR4 that have already received MEDLINE/PubMed indexing are listed here. If the article is accepted for publication and the work was supported by NIH, authors should insert the NIH grant number(s) in the Funding section of the manuscript.If the work was not supported by any source of funding, authors should use the following sentence “No funding is declared for this article”.

• Author contributions. For transparency purposes, we request a short paragraph indicating the individual contribution of each author for articles with more than one author (author names should not be abbreviated). This information includes substantial contributions to conception and design of the study, acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data; drafting the article or making critical revisions related to relevant intellectual content of the manuscript; supervision; validation and final approval of the version of the article to be published.
• ORCID. In this section, authors should include their ORCID ID, a unique and persistent author identifier to help distinguish their work from that of other researchers. ORCID ID should be supplied as follows: e.g., Ekaterine Berishvili: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7969-1937.
• Conflict of interest. All authors must disclose any personal and financial relationships with other people or organizations that could influence (bias) their work. Examples of potential competing interests include consultancies, employment, stock ownership, honoraria, paid expert testimony, patent applications and registrations, and grants or other funding. In this section, authors must disclose any potential conflict of interest. Example of authors’ declaration of personal interests: (i) [Name of individual] has served as a speaker, a consultant and an advisory board member for [names of organizations], and has received research funding from [names of organization]. (ii) [Name of individual] is an employee of [name of organization]. (iii) [Name of individual] owns stocks and shares in [name of organization]. (iv) [Name of individual] owns patent [patent identification and brief description].If authors do not have conflicts of interest to disclose, they should include the following sentence in this section: “The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest to disclose”.
• Data availability statement. CellR4 encourages authors to provide a statement of data availability in their articles containing original data. Data availability statement should be inserted in the manuscript after the “Conflict of interest” section. Data availability statements should include information on where data supporting the study results can be found, including, if applicable, hyperlinks to publicly archived datasets analyzed or generated during the study. Data availability statements can also indicate if data are available on request from the authors and where no data are available, if appropriate. Data availability statements can take one of the following forms (or a combination of more than one of the following forms):

1. The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are available in the repository [NAME], [PERSISTENT WEB LINK TO DATASETS]
2. The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are not publicly available due [REASON WHY DATA ARE NOT PUBLICLY AVAILABLE] but are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
3. Data sharing not applicable to this article as no datasets were generated or analyzed during the current study.
4. The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
5. All data generated or analyzed during this study are included in this published article [and/or its supplementary material].

References

References must be supplied at the end of each manuscript (immediately after the section “Conflict of interest”) andnumerically listed in the reference list in the order in which they were first used in the text. References must be numbered in the order in which they are first mentioned in the text, and should be identified in the text, tables and legends by Arabic numerals in superscript before punctuation. For example: “Brown adipose tissue (BAT) is a type of mammalian adipose tissue, located in several specific depots in the body¹.”.

When reporting the reference numbers in the text, authors must follow these rules: “1-2” must be written as “1,2”. Authors must insert “-” only in the presence of more than two consecutive numbers. For example: “1,2,3,4,5,6” must be written as “1-6”.

Reference numbers must follow a sequential order within the text and must be inserted before the punctuation: YES ¹². NO.¹²

For each reference, all authors have to be listed (do not use et al.), together with year without month of publication. Delete the number of the single issue after the volume number.

Name of the journal: write the international acronyms without any punctuation. Insert a space after semicolon and colon (INCORRECT: 2014;2014:907915; CORRECT: 2014; 2014: 907915). Moreover, initial and final pages must be entirely reported (INCORRECT: 135-46; CORRECT: 135-146).

In the references, authors must insert a space after semicolon and colon.

Examples:

• CORRECT: Garcia-Contreras M, Brooks RW, Boccuzzi L, Robbins PD, Ricordi C. Exosomes as biomarkers and therapeutic tools for type 1 diabetes mellitus. Eur Rev Med Pharmacol Sci 2017; 21: 2940-2956.
• INCORRECT: Garcia-Contreras M, Brooks RW, Boccuzzi L, Robbins PD, Ricordi C. Exosomes as biomarkers and therapeutic tools for type 1 diabetes mellitus. EurRevMedPharmacolSci 2017;21:2940-2956.

For each reference, authors must replace “and” with “,” (comma) before the last author’s name. Moreover, all authors’ names must be written with the same text size (only the first letter of the author name must be written in capital letter). For example:

(INCORRECT) Example 1: DA. Baidal, C. Ricordi, M. Garcia-Contreras, A. Sonnino, A. Fabbri. Combination high-dose omega-3 fatty acids and high-dose cholecalciferol in new onset type 1 diabetes: A potential role in preservation of beta-cell mass. Eur Rev Med Pharmacol Sci. 2016 Jul;20(15):3313-8.

(CORRECT) Example 1: Baidal DA, Ricordi C, Garcia-Contreras M, Sonnino A, Fabbri A. Combination high-dose omega-3 fatty acids and high-dose cholecalciferol in new onset type 1 diabetes: a potential role in preservation of beta-cell mass. Eur Rev Med Pharmacol Sci 2016; 20: 3313-3318.

(INCORRECT) Example 2: Gomez-Meade C.A., Lopez-Mitnik G. V., Messiah S. E., Garcia-Contreras M., Sanchez J. Vitamin D status in children and adolescents with type 1 diabetes in a sun-rich environment. CellR4 2016; 4 (5): e2140

(CORRECT) Example 2: Gomez-Meade CA, Lopez-Mitnik GV, Messiah SE, Garcia-Contreras M, Sanchez J. Vitamin D status in children and adolescents with type 1 diabetes in a sun-rich environment. CellR4 2016; 4: e2140.

Endnote’s template for CellR4 reference style can be downloaded here 

Web references. The full URL should be given and the date when the reference was last accessed. For example: “https://www.cellr4.org/ (accessed July 7, 2020)”. Any additional information, if known (e.g., author names, dates, reference to a source publication, etc.), should also be given. Web references should be included in the reference list.

Authors must check carefully the appropriateness of the references before submitting the manuscript.

Figures and Tables

Figures

Figures must be supplied as a separate file, with the figure number incorporated in the file name (e.g., Figure 1.jpg). Figures must not be embedded in the main text. Figures must be numbered consecutively in the text in Arabic numerals (e.g., Figure 1). CellR4 accepts high-resolution figures in the following formats: TIFF, EPS, JPG.

The figure resolution for various types of original figures, at their final size, should be as follows: Line art – Minimum 600 dpi, measuring preferably 13 by 18 cm and no more than 20 by 25 cm in size. Halftone (i.e., both B/W and Colour photographs) – Minimum 300 dpi, measuring preferably 13 by 18 cm and no more than 20 by 25 cm in size. Line and tone (line art and halftone combined) – Minimum 600 dpi, measuring preferably 13 by 18 cm and no more than 20 by 25 cm in size.

For line figures: lines should be solid, the text should be presented in a standard font and not blurred, and the overall illustration/image should be sharp and clear. Authors should avoid to use tints if possible; if they are essential to the understanding of the figure, try to make them coarse. As a reminder, if the electronic files are viewed at 400% on the computer screen and look blurred or pixelated then they are not of sufficient quality for printing.

There are no colour figure charges for this journal.

Figure legends must be included in the main text of the manuscript (immediately after the reference list), but not in the figure file. Figure legends should also include a list of abbreviations (if needed).

Tables

Tables and table legends should be provided as part of the article document and embedded in the main text (immediately after the figure legends). Tables should be self-contained and understandable without reference to the text, and they should not duplicate the information which is already included in the text. Tables must be numbered consecutively in the text in Arabic numerals (e.g., Table 1). Tables must be supplied in their original, editable format (preferably Microsoft Word). Our production team does not accept tables as images or illustrations (e.g., tables in .jpg, .tif or other image formats). All abbreviations included in the tables must be defined in footnotes. Tables and table footnotes can include references in Arabic numerals at the author’s discretion. Footnote symbols: †, ‡, §, ¶, should be used (in that order) and *, **, *** should be reserved for p-values. Statistical measures (such as SD or SEM) should be defined in the Table heading.

Supplementary Material

Supplementary material should be uploaded to Publishing Manager and supplied as a separate file in both the following formats: .doc/.docx and .pdf. The authors should use the prefix “Supplementary” for each supplementary document submitted (e.g., Supplementary Table 1, Supplementary Figure 1). Files larger than 10 MB should be sent directly via email to submission.cellr4@verduci.it.

Authors must submit supplementary material together with the article and supply a concise and descriptive caption for each supplementary file. If authors wish to make changes to supplementary material at any stage of the process, they should make sure to provide an updated file.

Nomenclature, Units and Abbreviations

All measurements should be expressed in SI units, except for hemoglobin (g/dL) and blood pressure (mmHg). Authors should specify if original results were expressed in other units of measurement and should use appropriate conversion factors. Standard abbreviations, without punctuation, are used. Units, Symbols and Abbreviations (1988) published by the Royal Society of Medicine, and SI: The International System of Units (1982) from HMSO both provide useful guides.

A space should be inserted between numbers and units of measurement (e.g., INCORRECT: 65mg/dL; CORRECT: 65 mg/dL). The term “versus” should be written in italics and small letters as follows: “vs.”. The “p” of p-value and the “t” of t-test must be written in italics and small letters. Authors must use full stops instead of commas for decimal numbers (e.g., (e.g., INCORRECT: 65,5; CORRECT: 65.5). – In the main text, “et al.” must be written as “et al” without punctuation, followed by the reference number.  The terms “in vivo” and “in vitro” must be written in italics and small letters.

Abbreviations, used sparingly, should follow the first full spelling, in round brackets. For example: mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs). However, the excessive use of abbreviations in the text is discouraged. Authors must not include an abbreviated term in the manuscript without writing the term in full the first time it appears in the text. A list of abbreviations at the beginning of the article is allowed only if this list contains a minimum of 8 abbreviations.

CellR4 does not accept publication of text referring to “data not shown” or “unpublished data”.

Gene Nomenclature

Sequence variants should be described in the text and tables using both DNA and protein designations whenever appropriate. Sequence variant nomenclature must follow the current HGVS guidelines; see http://varnomen.hgvs.org/, where examples of acceptable nomenclature are provided. Gene names must be written in italics.

Drug Names and Pharmaceutical industries

In general, the use of generic names should be preferred when authors refer to drugs. Brand names may be inserted in round brackets at the author’s discretion. Drug names are spelled out according to the European Pharmacopoeia, but the American spelling should be used after the first use of a drug name. Authors should insert town, state, and nation names when citing pharmaceutical or device industries.

Statistical methods

Statistical methods must be clearly described for original articles based on animal or human studies. The statistical methods and statistical software program(s) used should be described. Two-tailed significance tests should be used unless explicitly stated. Controls should be described as completely as experimental subjects. Measures of location should be accompanied by measures of variability (e.g., mean and confidence intervals) as well as conventional probability values. Clinical trial reports should include the description of the statistical power of the study.

Human studies, Ethical principles, and Informed consent

An Ethics Committee should have approved human studies. However, Editors reserve the right to reject papers in case of questionable matters. All authors should seek approval to conduct research from an independent local, regional or national review body (e.g., Ethics Committee, Institutional Review Board). If doubt exists whether the research was conducted in accordance with the Helsinki Declaration, the authors must explain the rationale for their approach and demonstrate that the local, regional or national review body explicitly approved the doubtful aspects of the study. Approval by a responsible review body does not preclude Editors from forming their own judgment whether the research conduct was ethically appropriate.

All research on humans must have approval from the IRB (Institutional Review Board) or from equivalent local Ethics Committees. Age and gender of all subjects should be provided in the main text or in the Supplementary Material.

Helsinki Declaration. When reporting experiments on human subjects, all investigators should ensure that the planning conduct and reporting of human research are in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation (institutional and national) and with the Declaration of Helsinki of 1975 (as revised in 2013).

Informed consent. Informed consent must be obtained for studies conducted on humans. A statement that informed consent was obtained from the study participants must also appear in the manuscript, as follows: “All subjects provided written informed consent for inclusion before they participated in the study.”.

Appropriate consents, permissions and releases must be obtained where authors wish to include case details or other personal information or images of patients and any other individual in their publication. This is to comply with all applicable laws and regulations concerning the privacy and/or security of personal information, including, but not limited to, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) (EU) 2016/679. Patients have the right to privacy that should not be violated without informed consent. Identifying information, including names, initials, or hospital numbers, should not be published in written descriptions, photographs, or pedigrees unless the information is essential for scientific purposes and the patient (or his/her parent or guardian) gives written informed consent for publication. Informed consent for this purpose requires that the patient visualizes the manuscript to be published. Authors should inform these patients whether any potential identifiable material might be available via the Internet as well as in print after publication.

Examples of ethics and informed consent statement:

1. Original article: “All subjects provided written informed consent for inclusion before they participated in the study. This study was conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki of 1975 (as revised in 2013), and the protocol was reviewed and approved by the Institutional Review Board (or Ethics Committee) of NAME OF THE INSTITUTE (project or protocol identification number XXX and date of approval).” OR “Ethical review and approval were waived for this study, due to REASON (please provide a detailed justification).”
2. Case report: “Written informed consent was provided by the patient (and/or his/her parents) for permission to receive therapy and to publish this case report.”

Please note that photographs of patients or research subjects should not be used unless the information is essential for scientific purposes and explicit permission has been given by the patient or research subject as part of the informed consent. Such photographs should be anonymized using boxes or dots or shades covering eyes and/or other identifying details. If identifying characteristics are altered to protect anonymity, authors should provide assurance that such alterations do not affect the scientific meaning. If consent has not been obtained, it is not sufficient to anonymize a photograph simply by using eye bars or blurring the face of the subject. Formal consents are not required for the use of entirely anonymized images from which the individual cannot be identified (e.g., X-rays, ultrasound images, computed tomography/magnetic resonance scans, etc.).

Animal studies and Ethical principles

An Ethics Committee should have approved animal studies. However, Editors reserve the right to reject papers in case of questionable matters. When reporting experiments on animals, authors must indicate whether institutional and national standards for the care and use of laboratory animals were followed. Appropriate IACUC (Institutional Animal Care and Use Committees) approval should be obtained and described. Animal species/strain, sex, and source (vendor name, location) should be indicated. We encourage the use of both male and female animals. The use of a single-sex should be scientifically justified.

Cell lines

The contamination or misidentification of cell lines negatively impacts the validity of research observations. Therefore, authors are required to describe the source of the cell line, as well as the method used for authentication, in the Materials and Methods section.

Clinical Trials

All clinical trials submitted for consideration of publication in CellR4 must be registered according to the ICMJE guidelines  (http://www.icmje.org/recommendations/browse/publishing-and-editorial-issues/clinical-trial-registration.html).

The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) defines a clinical trial 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 1 trials), are exempt.” (http://www.icmje.org/recommendations/browse/publishing-and-editorial-issues/clinical-trial-registration.htm).

For definitions and further information, please see the section found in the ICMJE Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals (http://www.icmje.org/about-icmje/faqs/icmje-recommendations). Please note, however, that unlike ICMJE, CellR4 does not require trials to be registered before the participant enrolment begins, although our journal strongly encourages this practice. When submitting your manuscript, please include the unique trial identification number and the name of the registry (e.g., ClinicalTrials.gov or ISRCTN Registry) in the Cover Letter, at the end of the Abstract and in the Materials and Methods section of the main text.

Article Processing Charges (APCs)

There are no submission and publication fees, color figure charges or Article Processing Charges (APC) for this journal.

Language and English Editing service

Authors should write their text in good English (American or British English use is accepted, but not a mixture of these). Authors who are non-native speakers and feel their English language manuscript may require editing to eliminate possible spelling or grammatical errors and to conform to correct scientific English may use the English Language Editing service available from Verduci Editore Author Services (submission.cellr4@verduci.it).

Submission Checklist for Authors

Authors can use this list to carry out a final check of their submission before they send it to the journal for review:

• Cover letter
• Title page, including Full title, Running head, Author names and affiliations, and Corresponding Author information
• Abstract
• Keywords
• Main text
• Acknowledgements
• Funding
• Author contributions
• ORCID
• Conflict of interest
• References
• Figure legends (figures must be supplied as a separate file, with the figure number incorporated in the file name: e.g., Figure 1.jpg)
• Tables (including table legends)

Document file formats for submission: Authors should submit their article as a unique word document (.doc, .docx) including all the aforementioned sections (except for figure files). Article pages should be numbered consecutively by inserting the page number (in Arabic numerals) at the bottom of each page. Authors must add continuous line numbering throughout the document in order to facilitate the review process and subsequent author revisions.

Peer review

CellR4 operates a single blind review process. All contributions will be initially evaluated by the Editor-in-Chief for suitability for the journal. Contributions deemed as suitable are subsequently sent to a minimum of two independent expert reviewers to assess the scientific quality of the manuscript. The journal usually recruits both internal and external reviewers for each article undergoing peer review. The Editor is responsible for the final decision regarding rejection or acceptance of articles. Editors are not responsible for decisions regarding rejection or acceptance of papers that they have written themselves or have been written by colleagues or family members or which relate to services or products in which the Editor has an interest. Such submissions will be subject to all of the journal’s usual procedures, with peer review usually handled by external reviewers and independently of the relevant Editors and their research groups.

As 2 up to 4 expert peer reviewers are recruited by the Editor, they are asked to complete and submit their review report via Publishing Manager within 21 days. By using Publishing Manager, reviewers can also save their progress and decide to submit the final review report at a later stage. For more details on the peer review process, visit the page “Policy, Licensing and COI”.

Revised submission

Authors must resubmit the revised version of their article as a unique word document (.doc, .docx). Article pages should be numbered consecutively by inserting the page number (in Arabic numerals) at the bottom of each page. Authors are also required to add continuous line numbering throughout the document to facilitate the review process.

Authors must revise their manuscript using a word processing program and mark the changes within the document by using red text or highlighting the revised text in yellow. Authors must not use the “Track Changes” option in Microsoft Office documents to highlight the changes made in the revised version of their manuscript.

The revised version of the article must always be accompanied by a word document containing the point-by-point response to reviewers’ comments.

Authors must resubmit the revised version of their article within 2 months after the receipt of the complete report from our peer reviewers. Articles that are not resubmitted within 2 months after the receipt of the complete reviewer reports will be deemed as rejected. However, authors can contact the Editorial Office at submission.cellr4@verduci.it if they need to request a deadline extension for the resubmission of the revised manuscript.

After acceptance: Galley Proofs

To ensure a fast publication process of the articles accepted for publication, we kindly ask authors to provide us with their proof corrections within three days. The Corresponding Author will receive an e-mail containing the galley proofs. The galley proofs can be downloaded as a PDF file. Authors can annotate and upload their edits on the PDF version or provide them in a separate word document. All instructions for proofing will be given in the e-mail that we send to authors. We discourage excessive changes made to the proofs by the authors (usually exceeding 300 characters).

Authors must check carefully the typesetting, editing, correctness and completeness of the text (including author names, affiliations and corresponding author information), figures and tables. At this stage, significant changes to the article as accepted for publication will only be considered with permission from the Editor. All corrections must be sent back to us at submission.cellr4@verduci.it in a unique communication. Authors must check the galley proofs carefully before replying, as inclusion of any subsequent corrections will not be allowed. Proofreading is solely authors’ responsibility. The Editorial Office will do everything possible to get accepted articles published quickly and accurately.

Publishing Schedule

Rather than publishing conventional complete online issues at fixed intervals, starting from January 2019 CellR4 has moved to a continuous publication model, with articles being published on an ongoing basis.

Electronic offprints 

Electronic offprints are sent, upon request, to the email address of the Corresponding Author of the manuscript. Therefore, Corresponding Author must ensure that his/her name, postal address and email address are clearly and correctly indicated in the title page of the manuscript.

Supplements

For further information on supplements please contact us at submission.cellr4@verduci.it.

Author inquiries

Author inquiries should be sent to submission.cellr4@verduci.it.

Preservation and Archiving

CellR4 is committed to ensuring the permanent availability, accessibility and preservation of scholarly research by upgrading digital file formats to comply with new technology standards. All our files and manuscripts are archived and preserved in CLOCKSS.