About Annals of Breast Surgery

Annals of Breast Surgery

Annals of Breast Surgery is an open-access, peer-reviewed online journal of breast surgery and breast diseases, published by AME Publishing Company in Hong Kong. Launched in September 2017, it provides current and practical information on the prevention, diagnosis and clinical investigations of breast diseases, and focuses on cutting-edge findings in breast cancer surgery and reconstruction techniques, neoadjuvant therapy, genetic susceptibility and prophylactic mastectomy. It carries the online ISSN 2616-2776, is abbreviated Ann Breast Surg and known as ABS, and its official site is abs.amegroups.org. It is indexed in the Emerging Sources Citation Index of Web of Science and in Scopus, and it received its first Journal Impact Factor, 0.9, for the year 2024. Published continuously from September 2017 to December 2019, it now follows a quarterly model with issues in March, June, September and December. Its founding editor-in-chief was Professor Jiong Wu of Shanghai, and its editors listed by Wolters Kluwer, which distributes the journal on its Ovid platform, are Kwok-Leung Cheung and Xi-ru Li.

Origins and launch in 2017

Annals of Breast Surgery was launched in September 2017 by AME Publishing Company. Its founding preface, "Welcome to Annals of Breast Surgery" (Ann Breast Surg 2017;1:1; DOI 10.21037/abs.2017.09.01), written by its first editor-in-chief, Jiong Wu of the Department of Breast Surgery and Key Laboratory of Breast Cancer in Shanghai, set out the founding idea: with an eye to establishing a contemporary academic exchange forum for all related areas of breast surgery, the journal would be an international, open-access, peer-reviewed online journal disseminating current and practical information about the prevention, diagnosis and clinical investigations of breast surgery. The preface presented ABS as an innovative journal with a distinct format that would open new avenues of research on breast cancer and serve the ultimate goal of benefiting patients. That combination — a Shanghai academic origin, an international publisher, and an explicitly patient-benefit mission — framed the journal from its first page.

Aims and scope

The journal provides current and practical information on prevention, diagnosis and clinical investigations of breast diseases. It focuses on cutting-edge findings in the field of breast cancer surgery and reconstruction technique, neoadjuvant therapy, genetic susceptibility and prophylactic mastectomy, including but not limited to multimodality therapy, biomarkers, imaging, biology, pathology, clinical trials, nursing and technical advances related to breast surgery. That scope describes the whole modern breast service: screening and prevention, imaging and pathology, the biology of breast cancer and its biomarkers, surgery in its curative, reconstructive and risk-reducing forms, systemic therapy given before or around surgery, inherited susceptibility and the decisions it forces, and the nursing and technical craft that support all of it. Wolters Kluwer's catalogue accordingly files the journal across internal medicine, obstetrics and gynaecology, oncology, plastic and reconstructive surgery, and surgery.

Article types and editorial approach

The journal accepts original articles and review articles, editorials and other types listed in its author instructions, with all submissions and peer review managed through the OJS electronic system, which the journal credits with ensuring rapid turnaround of manuscripts from submission to publication. Its pages in practice carry research, reviews and commissioned expert content, including specialist series on areas of breast practice. The journal positions itself for interdisciplinary dialogue: board members and contributors writing for AME about the journal have emphasised its breadth across basic science and clinical application, and its coverage of modern technologies, including artificial-intelligence-driven methods, in contemporary breast care. Case-level and technique-level material sits naturally alongside trials and biomarker studies in a journal whose founding promise was practical information for working breast clinicians.

Editorial leadership

The journal's founding editor-in-chief was Jiong Wu, of the Department of Breast Surgery and the Key Laboratory of Breast Cancer in Shanghai at Fudan University, who served as editor-in-chief from September 2017, as his founding preface records. Wolters Kluwer's current catalogue lists the journal's editors as Kwok-Leung Cheung and Xi-ru Li. Professor Kwok-Leung Cheung, of the School of Medicine at the University of Nottingham in the United Kingdom, is identified in AME's expert pages as editor-in-chief of ABS, and marking the journal's first impact factor he reflected on five years on its editorial board and the team's striving for excellence in the journal's performance. The leadership pattern — founded from one of China's leading breast-cancer centres, and led in its mature phase jointly by a British breast surgeon-academic and a Chinese colleague — mirrors the journal's intended readership and authorship on both sides of that exchange.

Publisher, distribution and publishing model

Annals of Breast Surgery is published by AME Publishing Company, with support from Wolters Kluwer, through which the journal's content is made available on Wolters Kluwer Health's Lippincott and Ovid platforms; Ovid's catalogue lists the journal on the OvidSP platform with semi-monthly updating of content. The journal is open access: its articles are freely available online under AME's open-access arrangements, with the publisher's exclusive licensing model described in its author guidance. Publication rhythm changed as the title settled: it published continuously from September 2017 to December 2019 and then adopted a quarterly model, with issues in March, June, September and December. The editorial office can be contacted at abs@amepc.org, and submissions are handled through the journal's OJS site.

Peer review and publication ethics

The journal uses double-blind peer review, in which authors and reviewers are anonymous to each other. With a stated commitment to openness and accountability, the editorial office decided to fully implement a transparent peer-review (TPR) process for all new submissions from 15 March 2023, under which review reports are published alongside articles. ABS is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and follows COPE's guidelines and the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors' recommendations for the conduct, reporting, editing and publication of scholarly work in medical journals; manuscripts must be the original work of their authors and must not be published previously or under consideration elsewhere. Since April 2020 the journal's peer review has been integrated with Publons under AME's partnership, allowing reviewers to have their contributions recognised. Its reviewer guidelines also address contemporary practice directly, requiring reviewers to keep manuscripts confidential and prohibiting the uploading of manuscripts to AI tools whose confidentiality cannot be assured, with disclosure expected where AI technology is used in a review.

Indexing and first impact factor

Annals of Breast Surgery is indexed and covered by Web of Science's Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI) and by Scopus. It received its first Journal Impact Factor, 0.9, for the year 2024 — a milestone the publisher announced with messages from the journal's editors and board members, one of whom described delight that ABS had obtained its first impact factor after years of work on the journal. A first impact factor matters for a journal of this age because many authors, especially in China, work within evaluation systems that require one; ESCI indexing followed by an impact factor converts a journal from a venue of convenience into a venue of record for breast-surgery research. Readers needing the current figure should consult the latest Journal Citation Reports, since impact factors are recalculated annually.

The specialty it serves

Breast surgery is a specialty that has been transformed within a professional lifetime: radical mastectomy gave way to breast-conserving surgery and sentinel-node biopsy; reconstruction became integral rather than optional; neoadjuvant therapy began to be used to downstage tumours and test drug response in vivo; genetic testing identified women for whom prophylactic mastectomy is a rational choice; and imaging, pathology and biomarker science — hormone receptors, HER2, genomic assays — came to decide treatment as much as anatomy does. A journal scoped as Annals of Breast Surgery is scoped, across surgery and reconstruction, neoadjuvant therapy, genetics, biomarkers, imaging, biology, pathology, trials and nursing, is scoped to that whole transformation, and its article mix is designed to let a breast surgeon follow fields that in larger general journals would be separated. Its founding home, the Key Laboratory of Breast Cancer in Shanghai, sits within one of the Chinese centres where much of the country's breast-cancer research volume is produced.

Readership and role

The journal addresses breast surgeons, surgical and medical oncologists, radiologists, pathologists, plastic and reconstructive surgeons, breast-care nurses and researchers in breast-cancer biology, in China and internationally. For Chinese authors, it offers a specialty journal edited in part from Shanghai, published in English and now carrying an impact factor, through which the very large Chinese clinical experience in breast disease can enter the international literature. For international readers, it offers open-access access to that experience, alongside British and other international editorial perspectives. Within AME's oncology and surgery lists, it is the dedicated breast title, complementing the publisher's translational breast-cancer research journal and its general surgical journals.

Practical information

Annals of Breast Surgery is published by AME Publishing Company, Hong Kong, China, with distribution support from Wolters Kluwer (Lippincott and Ovid platforms). Online ISSN: 2616-2776. Abbreviation: Ann Breast Surg (ABS). Launched: September 2017. Founding editor-in-chief: Jiong Wu; editors listed currently: Kwok-Leung Cheung and Xi-ru Li. Publication pattern: continuous from September 2017 to December 2019; quarterly (March, June, September, December) thereafter. The journal is open access and in English, uses double-blind peer review with transparent peer review for new submissions since March 2023, and is indexed in the Emerging Sources Citation Index and Scopus, with a first Journal Impact Factor of 0.9 (2024). Its official home is abs.amegroups.org and its editorial office email is abs@amepc.org. Current article categories and submission requirements are set out in the journal's author instructions on its own site.