Aims and scope
What this journal is for.
To publish rigorous work without charging anyone to read it or to write it, and to review it blind, so that a paper is judged on what it says rather than on who said it.
The Centre publishes original work in immunology, genetics and systems biology, and in the translational biomedicine that joins them. The journal is interested in mechanism: how an immune response is organised, how variation in a genome changes it, and how either is measured well enough to be believed.
Sections
Each section is handled by its own editor and reviewed by people who work in it. A paper that sits between two is sent to whichever can judge the claim being made.
- Immunology
- Innate and adaptive immunity, immune regulation, inflammation, immunopathology, and the assays by which any of it is measured.
- Genetics and Genomics
- Human and model-organism genetics, variant interpretation, functional genomics, epigenetics, and the statistical treatment of each.
- Systems and Computational Biology
- Network and multi-omic analysis, mathematical modelling of biological systems, and machine learning applied to biological data, where the method is open enough to be checked.
- Neuroimmunology
- The immune system at the nervous system: neuroinflammation, glial biology, the barriers between them, and neurodegenerative and neuropsychiatric disease where immunity is implicated.
- Translational and Clinical Biomedicine
- Work carrying a mechanism toward a patient: biomarkers, early-phase studies, clinical cohorts, and therapeutic development with a stated mechanism.
- Methods and Resources
- Protocols, reagents, datasets, software and benchmarks, published so that others can use them. A methods paper is reviewed on whether it works, not on whether it is novel.
What the journal publishes
- Research article
- A complete study with a result. No length limit is imposed; a paper is as long as its argument needs and no longer.
- Short report
- One finding, stated and supported. Up to roughly 2,500 words and four display items, reviewed to the same standard as a full paper.
- Review
- A field summarised by somebody working in it. The journal prefers reviews that take a position to reviews that list.
- Methods and resources
- A protocol, a reagent, a dataset, a piece of software or a benchmark. Reviewed on whether it works and whether somebody else could use it, never on novelty.
- Commentary
- A short piece on a paper the journal has published, or on a question the field is arguing about. Peer reviewed.
- Editorial
- Written by the journal, about the journal or about the field. Not peer reviewed, and signed.
- Column
- A signed piece commissioned by the editors. Edited, never peer reviewed, and labelled as such on its own page and in its metadata.
What it will not publish
- Work whose data cannot be shown to a reviewer who asks for it.
- A study of a mechanism with no mechanism in it, where an association is reported as a cause.
- Anything where the authorship does not match who did the work, which is A11 of the Centre's terms.
- Text generated by a language model and presented as the authors' own. Models may be used; using one is declared, and the authors remain answerable for every sentence.
- A paper already published elsewhere, or under consideration elsewhere at the same time.
What it costs
Reading costs nothing, to anybody, anywhere, for ever. There is no submission fee, no page or colour charge and no subscription. A member of CISBM publishes free. A corresponding author who is not a member pays a publication fee of £50, once, on acceptance, which is what the Centre charges for carrying a paper it has accepted into the record. Nobody is refused publication over money: the fee is waived on request where paying it would be the obstacle.
Every article is published under CC BY 4.0: anyone may read, copy and build on it, provided the authors are credited. Authors keep their copyright.