About Cancer Bioscience

Cancer Bioscience

Cancer Bioscience is an English-language, open-access journal published in Beijing by KeAi Communications, with publishing services provided by Elsevier. The journal describes itself as a single-blind, peer-reviewed title devoted to the complex biological mechanisms involved in the initiation, progression and therapeutic response of cancer. Rather than covering clinical practice in general terms, it is positioned at the level of molecular and cellular oncology, asking how cancers begin, how they develop and spread, and how those biological processes can be turned into more effective treatments. Its stated purpose is to bridge fundamental research with clinical application in order to improve patient outcomes.

The journal is owned by Nexis Med, which retains copyright of the overall compiled journal and its compiled issues, while peer review is conducted under the responsibility of the editorial office of Dr Chen Jiayun. It publishes continuously through the year, so accepted articles appear as they are ready rather than waiting for a conventional issue cycle. As a newly launched KeAi title, it belongs to a wave of English-language journals created to give research originating in China, and cancer research internationally, a dedicated open-access home.

The publisher: KeAi Communications in Beijing

KeAi Communications Co., Ltd. is a Beijing-based joint venture co-founded by two major science, technology and medicine publishers: China Science Publishing & Media Ltd. (CSPM) and Elsevier. KeAi was repurposed as an open-access journal publishing service provider in 2013, and it has since developed a portfolio of more than 280 scholarly journals across scientific disciplines. It draws on the publishing and technology capabilities of its parent companies, including the ScienceDirect platform, the Editorial Manager submission system, data analytics and production services.

That parentage matters for a new journal such as Cancer Bioscience. Authors submit through an established Elsevier-supported workflow, submissions are screened automatically using iThenticate's CrossCheck to detect overlapping text, and published articles become immediately and permanently free for everyone to read and download. KeAi's model is explicitly community-driven: its journals are created in response to needs identified by researchers and partner institutions, and are intended to disseminate research from China and beyond to a global readership.

Aims: from carcinogenesis to therapeutic response

The aims and scope of Cancer Bioscience centre on three linked questions: how cancer is initiated, how it progresses, and how it responds to therapy. The journal aims to advance knowledge of the molecular signalling pathways that drive tumorigenesis, the interactions that take place within the tumour microenvironment, and the genetic and epigenetic alterations that contribute to cancer development and metastasis. Alongside that mechanistic work, it places significant emphasis on the evolving landscape of novel therapeutic strategies, including targeted therapies, immunotherapies and personalised medicine.

Contributions are expected to span the full distance from the cellular mechanisms of carcinogenesis to emerging fields such as precision oncology, immunotherapy and cancer metabolism. The journal states that it will address the latest advancements in cancer biology, emphasising both basic research and translational studies, and highlighting how laboratory discoveries translate into innovative therapeutic interventions. In other words, a purely descriptive study and a study that moves a finding towards treatment can both find a place, provided the biological mechanism is at the centre of the work.

Scope I: cancer biology, molecular oncology and the tumour microenvironment

The first group of focus areas concerns how tumours arise and behave. Under cancer biology, the journal covers the cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying carcinogenesis, tumour initiation and progression. Under molecular oncology, it investigates the genetic and epigenetic alterations that drive cancer, including oncogenes and tumour suppressor genes. Cancer genetics and epigenetics is listed as a focus area in its own right, covering the impact of genetic mutations, chromatin remodelling and non-coding RNAs on cancer biology and on response to therapy.

A second core theme is the tumour microenvironment: the complex interactions between cancer cells, immune cells, stromal cells and the extracellular matrix, and their impact on tumour behaviour. Closely related is cancer immunology, which explores the immune system's role in cancer progression and in response to therapy, including the potential of immunotherapies and checkpoint inhibitors. Cancer metabolism forms another distinct strand, investigating the altered metabolic pathways found in cancer cells and their therapeutic implications for targeted interventions, while work on cancer stem cells examines their role in tumour initiation, metastasis and resistance to current therapies.

Scope II: therapy, biomarkers and precision oncology

The translational half of the scope is organised around treatment and prediction. Targeted therapy and drug discovery covers the innovative development of small molecules, biologics and personalised medicine. Cancer biomarkers covers the identification and validation of biomarkers for cancer diagnosis, prognosis and treatment prediction — the tests that allow clinicians and researchers to tell which disease is present, how it is likely to behave, and which treatment it is likely to answer.

Precision oncology advances that logic to the level of the individual patient, promoting tailored treatment strategies based on genetic profiling and individualised therapeutic approaches. The journal groups these strands together under experimental and translational research, defined as bridging the gap between basic research and clinical applications to improve patient outcomes and accelerate therapeutic development. For readers, that structure signals that Cancer Bioscience is not a purely basic-science title: work that connects a mechanism to a drug candidate, a biomarker or a stratified treatment strategy sits squarely within its remit.

Article types and manuscript requirements

Cancer Bioscience publishes a wider range of formats than many new journals. Full-length research articles are complete reports of original research, including clinical and basic research, with a minimum of 6,000 words including abstract, references, figures and tables, a structured abstract of no more than 300 words divided into Background, Methods, Results and Conclusions, and a maximum of eight tables or figures at a minimum resolution of 300 dpi. Review articles are substantial overviews of recent advances in a field, also with a minimum of 6,000 words and an unstructured abstract of up to 300 words.

Practice guidelines present consensus-based statements of reporting standards or clinical practice guidelines providing evidence-based recommendations, at a minimum of 3,000 words excluding the abstract and references. Protocols describe the design and method of a study in order to disseminate ongoing work and promote transparency, at a minimum of 4,000 words with a structured abstract covering Background, Methods, Discussions and Trial registration. Data articles describe a dataset or collection of datasets, concentrating on metadata such as data collection, access and features rather than on analysis, again at a minimum of 4,000 words. Shorter formats include short communications of up to 1,500 words, commentaries of up to 1,500 words relating to an article published within the previous eight weeks, letters of up to 700 to 900 words with up to five references, and editorials of up to 1,000 words. Submissions require a cover letter, highlights, the manuscript and, where applicable, figure and supplementary files.

Peer review

The journal follows a single anonymized — single-blind — review process. A submission is first assessed by the editors for suitability; if it is deemed suitable, it is typically sent to a minimum of two reviewers for an independent expert assessment of its scientific quality, and the final decision on acceptance or rejection is taken by the editors. Manuscripts can be desk-rejected by the editorial office for reasons including being out of scope, ethical conflicts, high similarity to existing text, lack of originality, or flaws in research design or methods.

The guide for authors sets out safeguards for editorial independence. Editors are not involved in decisions about papers they have written themselves, papers written by family members or colleagues, or papers relating to products or services in which they have an interest; such submissions are handled independently. The same protection applies to submissions from the editor-in-chief, associate editors, guest editors and other board members, and to special-issue submissions where a guest editor has a conflict of interest with the authors. Authors must also follow Elsevier's publishing ethics policies, appoint a single corresponding author, disclose funding sources and competing interests, and provide an ORCID identifier if they wish, as the journal supports the use of ORCID iDs.

Open access, licensing and article publishing charges

All articles in Cancer Bioscience are published open access and are immediately and permanently free to read and download. To fund that model the journal normally levies an article publishing charge (APC), payable by authors or on their behalf by a research funder or institution. For the journal's launch period, however, the charge is waived: the author guide states that for all papers submitted before 31 December 2028 the APC will be waived, making it free to submit to the journal during that window.

Reuse is governed by Creative Commons licensing. The journal's open-access pages explain the licences under which articles appear, including Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs (CC BY-NC-ND), which allows users to distribute and copy an article and include it in a collective work for non-commercial purposes, provided they give appropriate credit with a link to the formal publication through its DOI, link to the licence, and do not alter or modify the article. Authors retain copyright alongside scholarly usage rights under the licensing agreement, while KeAi Communications and the journal owner are granted non-exclusive publishing and distribution rights. Authors who need to comply with a funder policy can apply for a CC BY licence after a manuscript is accepted.

Who the journal is for

The intended readership follows directly from the scope: molecular and cellular oncologists, cancer biologists, immunologists working on the tumour microenvironment, researchers in cancer metabolism and cancer stem cells, drug-discovery scientists developing small molecules and biologics, and translational researchers and clinicians working on biomarkers and precision oncology. For those groups, the journal offers a single venue that treats mechanism and translation as parts of the same conversation, rather than separating basic cancer biology from the therapeutic work that depends on it.

Its continuous publication schedule, open-access availability and launch-period APC waiver lower the practical barriers for early contributors, while its place in the KeAi portfolio gives a new title the production, platform and screening infrastructure of an established publisher. Researchers considering the journal should consult its official KeAi pages for the current editorial board, the definitive guide for authors and any changes to the waiver deadline before submitting.