About Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology

Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology

Overview and identity

Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology, abbreviated TRO and cited as Ther Radiol Oncol, is a peer-reviewed journal of radiation oncology published by AME Publishing Company of Hong Kong. It carries ISSN 2616-2768 and is published online at tro.amegroups.org, with its editorial office reachable at tro@amegroups.com. Bibliographic records place the publisher's country as China, and SCImago classifies the journal in the fields of oncology, radiological and ultrasound technology, and radiology, nuclear medicine and imaging.

The journal publishes papers describing original research, case reports and clinical investigations related to radiation oncology. It should not be confused with two similarly named titles: the Hong Kong Journal of Radiology, a diagnostic imaging and clinical oncology journal of the Hong Kong College of Radiologists, and Radiotherapy and Oncology, the long-established European Society for Radiotherapy and Oncology journal published in Europe. Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology is a separate title with its own ISSN, publisher and history, which its own author guidelines set out in a single distinctive sentence.

A lineage from 1994 and the Blue Journal

The journal's author guidelines state that Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology was launched in September 2017 and originated in 1994, and is known in the field as the Blue Journal. Those three facts together define its identity: the present AME-published journal dates from September 2017, but it presents itself as the continuation of a radiation-oncology journal tradition reaching back to 1994, and it carries the informal name by which that tradition is known among specialists in the field.

The 1994 origin and the Blue Journal name link TRO to the organised radiation-oncology community in Taiwan. Copyright lines on the journal's recent articles are held jointly by AME Publishing Company and the Taiwan Society for Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology, and the journal's scope statement is reproduced in community resources alongside that society. The journal therefore functions as an English-language international outlet rooted in a regional specialist community with more than three decades of history, relaunched in its current form in 2017.

Scope in radiation oncology

TRO's scope, as set out in its guidelines and reproduced in the preface to its boron neutron capture therapy special issue, covers advances on a worldwide basis in clinical radiotherapy and radiobiology, together with chemotherapy, immunotherapy, hyperthermia, tumour biology, experimental therapeutics and clinical oncology. In other words, the journal is concerned with radiation treatment itself, the biological basis of radiation response, and the combined-modality approaches in which radiotherapy is delivered alongside systemic treatment.

Beyond the core clinical subjects, the journal explicitly extends into the supporting disciplines of the specialty: medical physics, radiology, nursing care, education, technology, health information and health policy, in each case as they relate to radiology and oncology. That breadth is reflected in its SCImago subject categorisation, which places the journal not only in oncology and in radiology, nuclear medicine and imaging, but also in oncology nursing and in radiological and ultrasound technology, categories that recognise the multidisciplinary team on which modern radiotherapy depends.

Article types and reporting standards

The journal publishes original research articles, case reports and clinical investigations. Its author guidelines, most recently updated on 16 January 2026, require original articles to be prepared according to the EQUATOR Network's research reporting guidelines, with a reformatted reporting checklist submitted as supplementary material, and encourage authors to follow the SAGER guidelines for reporting sex and gender information in study design, data analysis, results and interpretation.

The guidelines also place TRO within the Research Resource Identification Initiative, a project aimed at clearly identifying the key research resources used in scientific experiments by means of Research Resource Identifiers. For clinical practice guidelines, the journal sets no fixed word limit but asks authors to use the most concise language possible. Submissions that do not conform to the instructions are returned to the corresponding author for technical revision at preliminary review, a screening step the guidelines state explicitly.

The boron neutron capture therapy connection

A distinctive and well-documented feature of the journal's recent publishing programme is its cooperation with the International Society for Neutron Capture Therapy (ISNCT). TRO worked with the society to publish the contributions of the Young Boron Neutron Capture Therapy Meeting held in 2022 as a special issue, enhancing the visibility of that meeting, and the journal's website has carried the publication of the Young BNCT Meeting Abstract Book as a further product of the cooperation.

The preface to that special issue, published in the journal in 2025 (Ther Radiol Oncol 2025;9:5, doi: 10.21037/tro-2025-01), restates the journal's own history and scope and records the society's background: the ISNCT, founded in 1983, is a multidisciplinary non-profit professional and educational association promoting the development of boron neutron capture therapy, and the Young BNCT Meeting brought together almost 100 contributions from young researchers across 14 oral sessions and 2 poster sessions. A niche, highly specialised therapy community choosing TRO as the home for its young researchers' meeting record is concrete evidence of the journal's standing in a particular corner of radiation oncology.

Indexing in Scopus and Embase

Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology is indexed in Scopus, with coverage recorded from 2019 to 2025, and journal directories also record coverage in Embase. Scopus-derived metrics compiled by SCImago give the journal an SJR of 0.230, a CiteScore of 0.7 for 2024 and an h-index of 6. Its best quartile ranking is Q3, achieved in radiological and ultrasound technology and in radiology, nuclear medicine and imaging, with oncology nursing also ranked Q3 and oncology ranked Q4 in SCImago's categorisation.

The journal itself announced its 2024 CiteScore of 0.7 with its category positions: 338 out of 415 journals in oncology, 18 out of 22 in oncology nursing, 55 out of 64 in radiological and ultrasound technology, and 277 out of 346 in radiology, nuclear medicine and imaging. Those are modest positions, and the journal reports them plainly; they document a small, specialist title that is fully inside the Scopus evaluation system, publishing regularly enough to sustain continuous coverage since 2019, two years after its relaunch.

Editorial practice and publication ethics

The journal's author guidelines state that TRO adheres to the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors' Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals, to the Committee on Publication Ethics' Code of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors, and to the policy of the World Association of Medical Editors, and that the author instruction itself was generated following those three sources. The current version of the instruction is dated 16 January 2026, showing that the guidelines are actively maintained.

Within that framework, the journal's stated requirements are specific rather than generic: EQUATOR reporting checklists matched to study type, SAGER-compliant reporting of sex and gender, Research Resource Identifiers for key experimental resources, and technical screening of submissions against the instructions before review. Together they describe a journal whose editorial office applies the standard apparatus of contemporary medical-journal quality control to the radiation-oncology manuscripts it receives.

Community features and continuing publication

TRO maintains the community features typical of the AME journal programme, including a Reviewer of the Month feature recognising its peer reviewers, recorded for 2025 on its website. It publishes into volume 9 in 2025, consistent with annual volumes since its September 2017 relaunch, and its contents continue to span the clinical and technical breadth set out in its scope, from treatment technique and planning questions to the specialist BNCT material produced with the International Society for Neutron Capture Therapy.

The journal's audience is the worldwide radiation-oncology community its scope statement addresses: radiation oncologists, medical physicists, radiobiologists, radiographers and technologists, and the nurses, educators and policy specialists whose work its scope explicitly includes. Its English-language, Hong Kong-published format carries the research of its originating Taiwanese specialist community, and of authors worldwide, into the Scopus-indexed international literature.

Assessment

Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology is best understood as a relaunched community journal. Its verified distinguishing facts are unusual among new medical titles: an origin claimed from 1994, an established informal name, the Blue Journal, a formal relaunch in September 2017 under AME Publishing Company, and a continuing association with the Taiwan Society for Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology visible on its own articles. Around that identity it has built a documented record: continuous Scopus coverage from 2019, a 2024 CiteScore of 0.7, a special-issue partnership with the International Society for Neutron Capture Therapy, and author guidelines maintained to January 2026 under ICMJE, COPE and WAME standards. For a directory of world news and specialist media, it represents the specialist end of medical publishing, where a small journal's value lies in serving a defined professional community rather than in citation scale.