Editorial policy and review process

Manuscripts should be submitted as “original manuscript”, “review article”, “short report”, “letter to the editor”, “commentary” or “editorial”. Study protocols should be submitted before or shortly after study initiation in “short report” format. Please see further requirements per article type.

Author(s) may suggest up to five potential and impartial reviewers though reviewer selection is the responsibility of the journal’s editors.

Manuscripts undergo standardized and formal checks within the editorial office. Manuscripts that fall short of key requirements will be returned to the authors for corrections and completion.

After the formal check, manuscripts are transferred to the chief editor for a first evaluation. About 30-40% of manuscripts are desk rejected at this stage. Suitable manuscripts are forwarded to a co-editor with special expertise in the research area in question. Co-editors make an independent evaluation of whether the manuscript should be sent to external reviewers. Manuscripts in need of statistics review are sent to our statistics editor.

Acta Oncologica conducts single-blinded peer review and requires evaluation by two independent experts who are asked to highlight the manuscript's general and specific merits and shortcomings. The process is expected to take 4-8 weeks but may vary. Most manuscripts undergo one-three rounds of revision prior to acceptance.

Research articles, review articles and short reports are externally peer-reviewed, whereas decisions on letters, commentaries and editorials are made based on evaluation in the editorial team.

Based on the review, the editor then compiles a recommendation (accept/minor revision/major revision/reject), which is committed by the chief editor. The overall publishing responsibility rests with the journal's editor-in-chief, who has a qualified editorial board for support in various issues regarding the publication of individual manuscripts, the journal's development, etc.

In cases where a manuscript’s author is in some way associated with the editorial team, they will be handled by an impartial editor.

Accepted articles should be referred to as “Accepted for publication in Acta Oncologica” with the relevant date and DOI.

The journal accepts manuscripts that have previously been uploaded for review as preliminary versions, on personal websites, presented at conferences, or made available through other informal communication channels. However, authors must hold the copyright for the text in question. Authors are also encouraged, when available, to include links to previous versions of the article in the final version of the article published in the journal.

Duplicate publication, also called "redundant publication" or "dual publication", is not permitted. This refers to the publication of the same article in more than one journal or to the publication of a document that is substantially similar to one already published without reference to the original publication. In cases where "redundant publication" or "dual publication" is detected, the journal will follow the COPE guidelines in handling transgression. Acta Ontologica's editorial policies follow recommendations for principles of transparency and best practice from The Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), the Open Access Scholarly Publishing Association (OASPA), and the World Association of Medical Editors (WAME).