About Radiation Oncology

What is Radiation Oncology?

Radiation Oncology is an open access, peer-reviewed online journal that encompasses all aspects of research that impacts on the treatment of cancer using radiation. It publishes findings in molecular and cellular radiation biology, radiation physics, radiation technology, and clinical oncology.

Content overview

Radiation Oncology considers the following types of articles:

• Research: reports of data from original research.
• Reviews: comprehensive, authoritative, descriptions of any subject within the scope of the journal. These articles are usually written by opinion leaders that have been invited by the Editorial Board.
• Case reports: reports of clinical cases that can be educational, describe a diagnostic or therapeutic dilemma, suggest an association, or present an important adverse reaction. All case report articles should indicate that informed consent to publish the information was granted from the patients or their guardians.
• Commentaries: short, focused and opinionated articles on any subject within the scope of the journal. These articles are usually related to a contemporary issue, such as recent research findings, and are often written by opinion leaders.
• Methodology articles: present a new experimental method, test or procedure. The method described may either be completely new, or may offer a better version of an existing method.
• Short reports: brief reports of data from original research.
• Study protocols: describe proposed or ongoing research, providing a detailed account of the hypothesis, rationale, and methodology of the study.

Peer review policies

An appropriate Section Editor or the Editor-in-Chief initially evaluates the suitability of manuscripts submitted to Radiation Oncology. Those manuscripts deemed suitable will be assigned 3 peer reviewers. Once two concordant reviews are received, the Editor-in-Chief will make a decision. In problematic cases an expert Editorial Board member will reach a decision together with the Editor-in-Chief.

Edited by Claus Belka, Radiation Oncology is supported by an expert Editorial Board.

Publishing in Radiation Oncology

All articles are listed in PubMed immediately upon acceptance (after peer review), and are covered by PubMed Central, MEDLINE, Thomson Reuters (ISI), CAS, Scopus and Current Contents.

Articles in Radiation Oncology should be cited in the same way as articles in a traditional journal. However, because articles in this journal are not printed, they do not have page numbers. Instead, they have a unique article number.

The following citation:

Radiat Oncol 2004, 2:1

refers to article 1 from volume 2 of the journal.

As an online journal, Radiation Oncology does not have issue numbers. Each volume corresponds to a calendar year.

To keep up to date with the latest articles from Radiation Oncology, why not register to receive alerts? Registration also enables you to customise your subject areas of interest, store your searches, and submit your manuscripts.

Submission of manuscripts

Manuscripts should be submitted electronically to Radiation Oncology using the online submission system. Full details of how to submit a manuscript are given in the instructions for authors.

General journal policies

Radiation Oncology is published by BioMed Central, part of Springer Science+Business Media. BioMed Central is committed to ensuring peer-reviewed biomedical research is open access. That means it is freely and universally accessible online, it is archived in at least one internationally recognised free access repository, and its authors retain copyright, allowing anyone to reproduce or disseminate articles, according to the BioMed Central copyright and licence agreement. Radiation Oncology however, has taken this further by making all its content open access.

Radiation Oncology's articles are archived in PubMed Central, the US National Library of Medicine's full-text repository of life science literature, and also at INIST in France and in e-Depot, the National Library of the Netherlands' digital archive of all electronic publications. The journal is also participating in the British Library's e-journals pilot project, and plans to deposit copies of all articles with the British Library.

Radiation Oncology is able to deliver summaries of frequently updated content via Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds. These are accessible via the orange "XML" button at the top of the list of recent articles or the list of most accessed articles. For more information about RSS feeds see our publisher's website.

For further information about general policies please see the instructions for authors.