Submissions

Author Guidelines

Submissions to Acta Oncologica are done on the basis that:

• The work has not previously been published in any language or is under consideration in another journal
• Previous or parallel publication of part of the work is specified in the manuscript and in the cover letter
• All authors have read and approved the manuscript
• Relevant permission for the reproduction of images has been obtained
• Original data related to the manuscript should be retained and retrievable for a minimum of 10 years from the online publication date
• Author(s) agree to all terms in Acta Oncologica’s submission checklist upon submission
• Acta Oncologica conducts single-blinded peer review and requires evaluation by two independent experts, for more information please see: Editorial policy and review process

Authorship requirements and guidelines

All authors submitting contributions to Acta Oncologica should meet the authorship requirements and conform to the requirements of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals.

Acta Oncologica endorses the use of an appropriate reporting guideline when writing manuscripts. Please refer to the EQUATOR network (www.equator-network.org), which also gives general information on how to choose the correct guidelines. At a minimum, your article should report the content addressed by each item and provide the relevant checklist as supplementary information. Meeting these reporting requirements will improve the manuscript and facilitate/enhance the peer review process.

The journal welcomes articles in the following areas:

• Cancer Epidemiology
• Prevention and Early Detection
• Translational Oncology and Cancer Immunology
• Medical oncology and Precision Medicine
• Radiotherapy and Radiophysics
• Psychosocial oncology, Rehabilitation and Palliative Care

Article types

Acta Oncologica uses several different forms of articles, please see the information below.

Submissions

For submission, please use the Template

General

Submission of a manuscript should be accompanied by a cover letter that briefly explains the impact and novelty of the manuscript. Additional materials may be provided as supplementary materials without any cost.

A complete submission should contain:

  A. Cover letter
  B. Metadata/information regarding the manuscript
  C. Manuscript
  D. Supplemental material

Cover letter

• The cover letter should explicitly certify that the manuscript is not under consideration elsewhere and that no part of the work has been published elsewhere.
• If the manuscript is an invited manuscript or is linked to a symposia collection this should be highlighted.
• Author(s) may suggest up to five potential and impartial reviewers though reviewer selection is the responsibility of the journal’s editors.

Metadata/information regarding the manuscript

In connection with the submission of a manuscript, you are asked to provide some metadata/information in the publication system, such as information regarding all authors, keywords and supporting agencies. This is important in order to get correct information to PubMed, when/if the article is accepted.

Acta Oncologica allows up to 20 co-authors all of which should, according to the Vancouver guidelines, have made significant contributions to the study and the manuscript. If additional authors are relevant these can be listed in study group format.

Manuscript

The manuscript file should be divided into sections:

  A. Title page
  B. Abstract
  C. Introduction
  D. Patients/materials and methods
  E. Results
  F. Discussion and conclusions
  G. Acknowledgements
  H. Disclosure statements
  I. Data availability statement
  J. Ethics declarations & trial registry information
  K. Author contributions
  L. References
  M. Tables
  N. Figures/illustrations

A.       Title page

• The title should be informative, reflecting the content of the study and should preferably be expressive.
• Please include a word count of your manuscript on the title page, excluding word count associated with tables, references, figures, and all information held on the title page.
• Please include 4 -7 keywords, using the following link: Home - MeSH - NCBI)]
• Please include information regarding all authors, with the following information:
  • Authors should be listed with first name, middle initial(s), and last name with department affiliations.
  • Please also add ORCID identifiers.
  • A complete postal address to the corresponding author(s), with an institutional e-mail address, should be provided.
  • Shared authorship of a maximum of two authors is allowed.

B.       Abstract

• Abstracts should be provided for original articles, review articles and short reports.
• The abstract should not exceed 250 words.
• Abstracts should be structured into:

1. Background and purpose
2. Patients/material and methods
3. Results
4. Interpretation

• The provision of a graphical abstract is optional and encouraged. The image should have a maximum width of 525 pixels and should be provided as a separate file in the formats .jpg, .png, or .gif.

C.      Introduction

• The introduction should focus on the state of knowledge at the beginning of the study and should define the research gap.
• The aims and main hypothesis of the study should be stated clearly.

D.      Patients/materials and methods

• Study type should be defined with reference to the relevant EQUATOR
• The manuscript should be formatted accordingly and as a minimum, the relevant EQUATOR guideline checklist should be provided as supplementary information.
• Statistics should provide relevant information on software and analytical procedures and should whenever relevant refer to a data management plan.

E.        Results

• Results should be structured into a logical flow.
• Text and figures/tables should be complementary and not overlapping.
• Measures of variability should be provided and a limited number of decimals should be provided.

F.        Discussion and conclusion

• The discussion should critically discuss the findings, including data quality, and analytical limitations and should put the findings into perspective with reference to relevant literature.
• A section on strengths and limitations should be provided and the final section should present a study interpretation.

G.      Acknowledgement

• Relevant funding should be reported and technical support may be acknowledged.
• Please include agency grants:“ This work was supported by the [Funding Agency], [grant number].”

H.      Disclosure statement

• Any financial or non-financial interest that has arisen from the direct applications of your research should be reported.
• If there are no relevant competing interests to declare please state “The authors report there are no competing interests to declare.”

I.           Data availability statement

• Authors are required to provide a data availability statement that provides information on where data used for the paper can be found and how it can be accessed.
• If data cannot be made open, authors should state why in the data availability statement.
• If the data is open, please deposit the data in a recognized data repository prior to or at the time of submission and include the DOI, pre-reserved DOI, or other persistent identifier for the data set.

J.           Ethics declarations & trial registry information

• Please ensure that all research reported in submitted papers has been conducted in an ethical and responsible manner and is in full compliance with all relevant codes of experimentation and legislation.
• All original research papers involving humans, animals, plants, biological material, protected or non-public datasets, collections or sites, providing the approval number from the appropriate ethics committee or Institutional Review Board and that where relevant, informed consent has been obtained.
• For clinical studies, please provide trial registry identifiers/approval numbers in ClinicalTrials.gov.

K.        Authors contribution

Please include a short description of each author’s contribution.
Example:

“AA, BB, and CC designed this sub-study. AA and CC conducted the focus group interview, and they performed the qualitative analysis. BB, CC, and DD planned the quantitative analyses and SNB performed them. AA, EE and FF drafted the manuscript. All authors reviewed, edited and approved the final manuscript.”

L.         References

• The number of references should be limited to 50 (except for review articles).
• References should be consecutively numbered and referred to in the text by their number within brackets.
• When available, DOI numbers should be added to the references.
• If there are six or fewer authors, state all in the reference list. If there are more than six, state the first six and use et al. for additional authors.
  Example: Clausen CT, Hasle H, Holmqvist AS, Madanat-Harjuoja L, Tryggvadottir L, Wesenberg F et al. Hyperthyroidism as a late effect in childhood cancer survivors - an Adult Life after Childhood Cancer in Scandinavia (ALiCCS) study. Acta Oncol. 2018;26:1-5

For further details regarding references, see https://www.nlm.nih.gov/bsd/uniform_requirements.html#journals.

M.     Tables

• Tables should present new information rather than duplicating what is in the text.
• Readers should be able to interpret the table without reference to the text.
• Tables should be provided as editable files in the manuscript file.
• Do not submit tables as photographs.
• Supply a brief title for each table.
• Each column should have a short heading.
• Explanatory matters should be placed in notes under the table.

N.      Figures/illustrations

• Illustrations should be of high quality (1200 dpi for line art, 600 dpi for grayscale and 300 dpi for colour, at the correct size).
• Letters and numerals should be large enough to allow the reduction of illustrations to one column.
• Illustrations should preferably be provided in colour (CMYK colours).
• The use of symbols should be consistent between figures.
• Illustrations should be submitted as separate files (stating the figure number) in the formats EPS, PS, JPEG, GIF or tiff.
• Illustrations should also be included on the last page of the manuscript (including the figure legend).

Supplemental material

Supplemental material can be data, images, video or other relevant information that supports and is pertinent to the paper. Please submit all supplemental materials as one separate Word file.

Grammar and writing instructions

• Please use British or US spelling style consistently throughout your manuscript.
• Manuscripts are expected to have a high standard of English and should typically have undergone professional English review.
• Please select Times New Roman as the font, and 12pt as the font size.
• Abbreviations not generally accepted should be spelt out when first used in the text.
• Please use SI units (non-italicized) when relevant.