About ExRNA

ExRNA

Overview and identity

ExRNA is a peer-reviewed, open-access journal devoted entirely to extracellular RNA. It carries ISSN 2398-0060 and publishes quarterly, with articles released online immediately upon acceptance. Its subject classification in bibliometric databases is biochemistry, genetics and molecular biology, and its country of publication is recorded as China. The journal's name is the standard abbreviation of its field: extracellular RNA is shortened throughout the research literature to exRNA, and the journal adopted that abbreviation as its entire title.

ExRNA should not be confused with other similarly themed titles in the same publishing programmes, including Non-coding RNA Research, a separate journal of non-coding RNA biology. ExRNA's defining feature is the extracellular setting: it is concerned with RNA found outside cells, in the extracellular environment, rather than with RNA inside the cell where it performs its conventional roles.

A journal with three publishers

The most unusual verified fact about ExRNA is its publishing history. The journal was published by BMC, BioMed Central, from 1 February 2019 to 31 December 2020. It then passed to AME Publishing Company of Hong Kong, which published it from 1 January 2021 to 30 September 2023. From 1 October 2023 it has been published by ELSP, based in Hong Kong, and it continues under ELSP into 2026, with recent articles carrying the ELSP DOI prefix 10.55092.

Each transition is visible in the journal's own record. Articles from the AME period appeared on the AME journal platform at exrna.amegroups.org, which carries the journal's volume 5 content from 2023, including an original article on in silico analysis of maize and wheat microRNAs as potential regulators of human gene expression, published on 27 September 2023, days before the transfer. Articles from the ELSP period carry the new publisher's DOI prefix, as with the 2026 review assigned doi 10.55092/exrna20260003. The journal's recorded candidate entry for this directory held no verified current homepage URL, a direct consequence of these moves, and none is stated in this profile.

The field the journal serves

Extracellular RNA is a young research field built on a once-surprising observation: RNA, long assumed to function only inside cells, is also present and active outside them, in blood and other bodily fluids and in the spaces between cells, where it can carry signals from cell to cell. The journal exists because that observation created a community of researchers who needed a dedicated venue, distinct from general molecular biology journals and from journals of the individual RNA classes.

The institutional affiliation recorded for the journal matches that origin story. ExRNA is affiliated with Nanjing University and with the Nanjing University Institute of Artificial Intelligence Biomedicine. Nanjing's School of Life Sciences is home to the research group of Chenyu Zhang, its dean, whose team reported detecting microRNA in serum and plasma in work beginning in 2007 and who has described extracellular RNA as the focus of his research since then, in a Nature partner interview given on behalf of the same Nanjing institutions that support the field's visibility. The journal's affiliation therefore anchors it to one of the founding centres of extracellular RNA research.

Scope: the RNA species of the extracellular environment

The journal's scope statement enumerates the RNA species it covers in the extracellular environment. They are microRNAs (miRNAs), the small regulatory RNAs whose presence in blood launched the field; small interfering RNAs (siRNAs); Piwi-interacting RNAs (piRNAs); long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs); and circular RNAs (circRNAs). The journal covers these species' biological functions, their potential as biomarkers, and their therapeutic applications.

Those three application areas give the scope its structure. Biological-function research asks what extracellular RNAs do: how they are selected, packaged, transported and taken up, and what signals they deliver between cells. Biomarker research asks whether the extracellular RNA profile of a blood or fluid sample can reveal disease, since RNA detectable without a tissue biopsy is an attractive diagnostic target. Therapeutic research asks whether extracellular RNAs, or the vesicles and carriers that transport them, can themselves be used as treatments or treatment vehicles.

Content in practice

The journal's published content shows that scope being applied across very different subjects. Its 2023 volume, the last produced under AME, included work on plant microRNAs from maize and wheat analysed in silico as potential regulators of human gene expression, and a letter to the editor on extracellular RNA biology in plants, questioning whether that area is controversial or merely unexplored. Plant-derived extracellular RNA and cross-kingdom regulation are thus inside the journal's remit, not only human clinical material.

Under ELSP, the journal's 2026 volume opened with a comprehensive review on extracellular vesicle-associated RNAs in inflammatory bowel disease, written by researchers from the Sir Run-Run Shaw Hospital at Zhejiang University School of Medicine with Zhejiang Chinese Medical University, and published as ExRNA 2026(1):0003. The review presented vesicle-associated RNAs as both non-invasive biomarkers and therapeutic targets in bowel disease management, a single article combining two of the three application areas in the journal's scope statement, and its appearance in the first issue of 2026 confirms the journal's continuing quarterly publication under its third publisher.

Indexing and metrics

ExRNA is indexed and covered by Scopus, with Scopus coverage recorded from 2019, the year of its launch under BMC. Bibliometric listings compiled from Scopus and SCImago data record an h-index of 16 for the journal, a 2025 impact metric of 0.64 and an SJR of 0.207. SciJournal's database records the journal's active years as 2019 to 2025 and its subject areas as biochemistry, genetics and molecular biology.

Those figures describe a small, highly specialised journal. An h-index of 16 accumulated since 2019 indicates a compact body of cited work rather than a large one, which is the expected profile for a title serving a single emerging field. The continuity of the metrics across the journal's changes of publisher is itself notable: the ISSN, the Scopus coverage and the citation record persisted while the publishing house changed twice, because indexing attaches to the journal's identity rather than to its publisher of the moment.

Publishing practice under ELSP

Under its current publisher, the journal's stated practices are documented in its ELSP-era journal information. Authors are expected to comply with the publication standards of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE). Plagiarism detection is performed at ELSP using the iThenticate Crossref Similarity Check tool, a web-based service used in the editorial process to identify potential text plagiarism.

The journal publishes quarterly, and articles are published online immediately upon acceptance rather than being held for an issue, a model that suits a small field in which rapid availability matters. The combination of quarterly issue organisation with continuous online release has been maintained across the journal's publishing history, and its 2026 articles, numbered sequentially within the volume, follow the same pattern under the ELSP DOI prefix.

Why a dedicated exRNA journal matters

Before dedicated venues existed, extracellular RNA research was scattered across journals of molecular biology, cell biology, oncology, diagnostics and vesicle science, because the field borrows methods from all of them. A journal whose entire scope is the extracellular environment of RNA gives that scattered community a common table of contents: the microRNA biomarker researcher, the circular RNA biologist and the plant extracellular RNA researcher publish in, and read, the same title.

The journal's affiliation with Nanjing University and its Institute of Artificial Intelligence Biomedicine reinforces that convening role, linking the title to an institution that both founded much of the field and works on its computational and biomedical applications. The later involvement of artificial-intelligence biomedicine in the affiliation also reflects where the field's methods are heading, towards large-scale profiling of extracellular RNA in biofluids and the computational analysis such profiling requires.

Assessment

ExRNA's verified record is that of a specialist journal that has survived an unusually unsettled publishing history without losing its identity. Launched under BMC in February 2019, transferred to AME Publishing Company at the start of 2021, and transferred again to ELSP in October 2023, it has maintained its ISSN 2398-0060, its Scopus coverage from 2019, its quarterly rhythm and its sharply defined scope across microRNAs, small interfering RNAs, Piwi-interacting RNAs, long non-coding RNAs and circular RNAs in the extracellular environment. Its h-index of 16 and its continuing publication into 2026, affiliated with Nanjing University, document a small journal holding a defined place in an emerging field. No verified current homepage is recorded for it in this directory's candidate record, and readers should reach it through its indexing records and DOI links, which resolve independently of which publisher currently operates its website.