Genome Integrity

Genome Integrity is a peer-reviewed, continuous, open access  journal.

Genome Integrity is an open access journal that publishes research on all aspects of genome integrity, the cellular processes underlying maintenance of genome stability, and the effects of instability.

The processes that regulate genome integrity maintenance include sensing, signalling and repair of DNA damage, processing of DNA damage in the context of chromatin and chromosomes, cell cycle checkpoint control and control of apoptosis. Effective maintenance of genome integrity is essential for normal cell division, tissue homeostasis, healthy organismal ageing and prevention of diseases such as cancer. A number of model systems including single cell organisms and various higher plant and animal species, as well as studies of human cells/tissues or patients are required to understand how genome integrity maintenance affects ageing and development of cancer.

Subjects covered in the journal

The journal is focused on understanding the processes that regulate the maintenance of genome integrity. Topics include, but are not limited to:

• induction of DNA damage
• sensing, signalling and repair of DNA damage
• processing of DNA damage in the context of chromatin and interphase chromosomes
• chromosome alterations
• telomere maintenance
• cell cycle regulation
• control of apoptosis
• effects of genotoxic stress including radiation and chemicals
• genome integrity and ageing
• genome integrity and cancer
• human genetic disorders
• radiation induced genome instability

Abstracting and Indexing Information

The journal is indexed with, or included in, the following:
PubMed Central, Scimago Journal Ranking, SCOPUS

Digital Archiving

ScienceOpen provides for long-term digital preservation through a partnership with CLOCKSS.

Editors-in-Chief

M Prakash HANDE, National University of Singapore

Editorial Board

Frederick Alt, Harvard Medical School, USA

Rhona Anderson, Brunel University, UK

Adayabalam S Balajee, Oak Ridge Institute of Science and Eduation, USA

Maria Blasco, Spanish National Cancer Research Centre (CNIO), Spain

Vilhelm Bohr, National Institute of Aging, USA

Fabrizio d’Adda di Fagagna, IFOM - The FIRC Institute of Molecular Oncology, Italy

Ronald DePinho, MD Aanderson Cancer Center, USA

Michael Fenech, Formerly with CSIRO, Australia

Anna Genesca, Autonomous University of Barcelona, Spain

David Gilley, South Dakota School of Mines and Technology, USA

David Gisselsson Nord, Lund University, Sweden

Elena Giulotto, Formerly with University of Pavia, Italy

Razqallah Hakem, Princess Margaret Cancer Centre and University of Toronto, Canada

Xiangwei He, Zhejiang University, China

Jan Hoeijmakers, Erasmus University, The Netherlands

George Iliakis, Institute of Medical Radiation Biology, Germany

Munira Kadhim, Oxford Brookes University, UK

Kum Kum Khanna, QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute, Australia

Tom Kirkwood, Newcastle University, UK

Han-Woong Lee, Yonsei University, South Korea

Wilner Martinez Lopez, Clemente Estable Biological Research Institute, Uruguay

Noel Lowndes, National University of Ireland Galway, Ireland

Peter McPherson, University of Toronto, Canada

Ciaran Morrison, National University of Ireland Galway, Ireland

Kalappagowda Muniyappa, Indian Institute of Science, India

Kyungjae Myung, IBS Center for Genomic Integrity  - Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology, South Korea

Robert Newbold, Brunel University, UK

Tej Pandita, Houston Methodist Research Institute/Baylor College of Medicine, USA

John Petrini, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, USA

Kevin Prise, Queen's University Belfast, UK

Roger Reddel, CMRI and University of Sydney, Australia

Kai Rothkamm, University Medical Centre Hamburg, Germany

Laure Sabatier, Atomic Energy and Alternative Energies Commission, France

Ralph Scully, Harvard Medical School, USA

Sagar Sengupta, National Institute of Immunology, India

Predrag Slijepcevic, Brunel University, UK

Keiji Suzuki, Nagasaki University, Japan

Dik van Gent, Erasmus University, The Netherlands

Andrej Wojcik, Stockholm University, Sweden

Submission of Manuscripts

All manuscripts must be submitted online through the "Submit a manuscript" button on this website. First time users will have to register at this site and will need an ORCID ID. Registration is free but mandatory. Registered authors can keep track of their articles after logging into the site. If you experience any problems, please contact info@scienceopen.com.
A manuscript will be reviewed for possible publication with the understanding that it is being submitted to Genome Integrity alone at that point in time and has not been published anywhere, simultaneously submitted, or already accepted for publication elsewhere. Manuscripts that have been previously posted as preprints in ScienceOpen, BioRxiv, MedRxiv, arXiv and related preprint repositories will be considered for publication. The journal expects that authors would authorize one of them to correspond with the journal for all matters related to the manuscript. All manuscripts received are duly acknowledged. On submission, editors review all submitted manuscripts initially for suitability. Manuscripts with insufficient originality, serious scientific or technical flaws, or lack of a significant message are rejected before proceeding with formal peer-review.
Manuscripts that have met basic requirements and are within the scope of Genome Integrity will be sent to two or more expert reviewers for evaluation. Manuscripts may be returned to the authors for major or minor revision after a first round of peer review.
Manuscripts finally accepted for publication are copy edited for grammar, punctuation, print style, and format and are tagged in XML mark-up language. Page proofs are sent to the corresponding author as PDF for review and approval. The corresponding author is expected to return the corrected proofs within 5-7 working days. Articles will be finally published with a Crossref Digital Object Identifier (DOI) as part of the permanent scientific record. Articles may only be removed through a formal retraction.

Authorship Criteria

Authorship credit should be based only on substantial contributions to each of the three components mentioned below: 

1. Concept and design of study or acquisition of data or analysis and interpretation of data;
2. Drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content; and
3. Final approval of the version to be published.

Participation solely in the acquisition of funding or the collection of data does not justify authorship. General supervision of the research group is not sufficient for authorship. Each contributor should have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for appropriate portions of the content of the manuscript.

Conflicts of Interest/ Competing Interests

All authors of must disclose any and all conflicts of interest they may have with publication of the manuscript or an institution or product that is mentioned in the manuscript and/or is important to the outcome of the study presented. Authors should also disclose conflict of interest with products that compete with those mentioned in their manuscript.

Manuscript requirements

Manuscripts may be written in any standard program including Word and LaTeX. Authors will upload a pdf for peer review. Upon submission of revised manuscripts authors will also be requested to describe the changes made in the Revision Notes section and to submit a pdf version with tracked changes. Only after final acceptance of a manuscript will the author be requested to submit Word or LaTeX files for typesetting.

There are no strict formatting requirements, but all manuscripts should follow the basic structure for reporting scientific research below. The manuscript should be submitted as a pdf file:

Structure

The manuscript should include: Title page (title, authors, affiliations, contact, abstract, keywords (up to 10), conflict of interest statement), acknowledgments (Funder); Main text (introduction, materials and methods, results, discussion, figures with captions, tables with captions), References.

There are no word limits for submissions but manuscripts should be concise and well-written.

Title Page This page should include

1. Article title
2. Type of manuscript (original article, case report, review article, Letter to editor, etc.) title of the manuscript, names and affiliations of all authors/ contributors.
3. Authors. The names and affiliations of all authors as well as the name, address, e-mail of the corresponding author, who is responsible for communicating with the other authors about revisions and final approval of the proofs.
4. Author contributions. A description of work done by each author.
5. Conflicts of Interest of each author/ contributor. A statement of financial or other relationships that might lead to a conflict of interest.
6. Data availability statement
7. Code availability statement
8. Acknowledgements, if any. One or more statements should specify 1) contributions that need acknowledging but do not justify authorship, such as general support by a departmental chair; 2) acknowledgments of technical help; and 3) acknowledgments of financial and material support, which should specify the nature of the support.
9. Registration number in case of a clinical trial and where it is registered (name of the registry and its URL)

Methods section

Describe your experiment in as much detail as required for another researcher to reproduce your results. Use RRIDs (https://www.rrids.org/) to identify your research resources such as strains of organisms or antibodies. If a brand name is cited, supply the manufacturer's name and address (city and state/country).Follow all best practice reporting standards (e.g. the NIH, MDAR, and ARRIVE). If AI or machine learning was used provide an AIMe registry link (https://aime-registry.org). All submissions will undergo a scientific rigor check performed by SciScore( https://www.sciscore.com/) that analyses the methods section for compliance.

Use standardized nomenclature for species-specific gene and protein names (see Genecards, MGI Nomenclature page, HUGO Gene Nomenclature Committee, or equivalent resources).

Data and Code

Refer to the Genome Integrity Data Policy. Whenever possible follow the follow the FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable) data principles. You are strongly encouraged make your materials, data, protocols, code and scripts, available to readers in a public repository upon publication with exceptions for legal, ethical or logistical reasons. If you do not have requirements or support to publish data in an institutional or subject specific repository, search the DataCite Repository Finder  for appropriate repositories.Whenever possible data should be cited in the references section following the guidelines of the Joint Declaration of Data Citation Principles.

Tables

• Tables should be black and white/greyscale only and formatted as simply as possible for best accessibility. See some guidelines here: https://www.w3.org/WAI/tutorials/tables/
• Tables should be self-explanatory and should not duplicate textual material.
• Number tables consecutively in the order of their first citation in the text and supply a brief title for each.
• Place explanatory matter in footnotes, not in the heading.
• Explain in footnotes all non-standard abbreviations that are used in each table.

Figures

• Figures should be numbered consecutively according to the order in which they have been first cited in the text.
• To support the visually impaired, this journal includes Alt Text (alternative text), a short piece of text tagged to your figure to describe for readers contents of the image. This text can be used by screen readers to make the object accessible to people that cannot read or see the object.  Add Alt Text using Microsoft Word tools or as a separate figure caption. Further information on Alt Text for images can be found here: https://www.w3.org/WAI/tutorials/images/.
• It is the responsibility of authors/ contributors to obtain permissions for reproducing any copyrighted material. A copy of the permission obtained must accompany the manuscript.
• High resolution images may be requested upon acceptance of the manuscript.

References

References should be complete with DOI numbers if possible. The Journal uses the same reference style as PLOS (for those working with Paperpile, Endnote or other reference management systems).
The commonly cited types of references are shown here, for other types of references please refer to ICMJE Guidelines (http://www.icmje.org or http://www.nlm.nih.gov/bsd/uniform_requirements.html). Journal name abbreviations should be those found in the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) databases. 

The Journal uses the reference style outlined by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), also referred to as the “Vancouver” style. Example formats are listed below. 

Submission of a revised manuscript 

The revised version of the manuscript should be submitted online in a manner similar to that used for submission of the manuscript for the first time. When submitting a revised manuscript, contributors are requested to include a point by point response to the reviewer comments and describe the changes made. In addition, they are expected to mark the changes as underlined or colored text in the article and submit this “Tracked changes” version along with their revised manuscript.

Publication schedule

The journal publishes articles on its website immediately on acceptance and follows a continuous publishing schedule.

Article processing charge:
The journal charges following processing fee upon acceptance:   USD 500 

Each manuscript submission will be undergo an automated check for plagiarism and will reviewed by a least two subject experts in a single-blind workflow. Manuscripts that have been previously posted as preprints may submit open reviews of the preprint for consideration by the editorial team. Reviewers have the option of posting their reviews publicly on the ScienceOpen platform after an article has been published. All public reviews will receive a Crossref peer-review DOI.

By publishing in the journal authors are required to make research data available to editors and reviewers, and to readers upon request. For some research data, deposition in repositories is required and this is encouraged for all research data. For some papers, the decision to publish will be affected by whether or not authors share their research data.

Required

• Data sharing via repositories for some research data
• Data availability statements
• Data sharing on request

Optional / Encouraged

• Data citation
• Data sharing via repositories for all research data
• Prepare and share Data Management Plans

All material presented must be acquired according to ethical standards and approved by legally appropriate ethical committee(s).

We encourage authors to be aware of standardised reporting guidelines when preparing their manuscripts:

• Case reports - CARE
• Diagnostic accuracy - STARD
• Observational studies - STROBE
• Randomized controlled trial - CONSORT
• Systematic reviews, meta-analyses - PRISMA
• Animal research / In vivo experiments - ARRIVE

In all cases of publication ethics the journal will refer to the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) guidelines: https://publicationethics.org/

Reporting research that involves human subjects or data requires a declaration that the investigations were carried out following the rules of the Declaration of Helsinki (https://www.wma.net/what-we-do/medical-ethics/declaration-of-helsinki/). Approval from the institutional review board (IRB) or other appropriate ethics committee must be obtained before undertaking the research to confirm the study meets national and international guidelines. A statement including the project identification code, date of approval, and name of the ethics committee or institutional review board must be included as ‘Institutional Review Board Statement’ article. For example: "All subjects gave their informed consent for inclusion before they participated in the study. The study was conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki, and the protocol was approved by the Ethics Committee of XXX (Project identification code)." The privacy rights of human subjects must always be observed.

Reporting research that involves animals required a statement that authors have the relevant approval for their study from an appropriate ethics committee and/or regulatory body before the work starts. The ethical statement provides editors, reviewers and readers with assurance that studies have received this ethical oversight. Authors are responsible for complying with regulations and guidelines relating to the use of animals for scientific purposes. Authors should ensure that they follow the ARRIVE guidelines for reporting animal research.

The manuscript should follow the Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals and aim for the inclusion of representative human populations (sex, age and ethnicity) according to those recommendations. The terms sex and gender should be used correctly. Additionally, when studies describe groups by race, ethnicity, gender, disability, disease, etc., explanation regarding why such categorization was needed should be clearly stated in the article.

Open Access Publishing Agreement

By submitting my manuscript to the journal Genome Integrity published by ScienceOpen (hereafter the ‘Publisher’), I herewith grant permission to the Publisher to publish my article upon editorial acceptance under the following publishing agreement.

I hereby confirm that this is my original work and that

• I own sole copyright in this work
• And/or I have obtained permission from all other Authors to execute this Agreement on their behalf if necessary

And that the work

• Has never been published before.

I understand that in granting this consent I am granting to the Publisher the Rights to publish under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 license the Contribution in the English language in digital form; moral rights will be retained by the original Author/s and copyright will be held by the Author.

I agree to this Publishing Agreement, consent to execution and delivery of the Publishing Agreement electronically and agree that confirming my consent electronically during the manuscript submission process with an electronic signature shall be given the same legal force as a handwritten signature.

Terms of Use

1. The Contribution will be made Open Access under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC-BY License) which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided that the Contribution is properly cited.
2. The Journal (and Publisher) reserves the right to require changes to the Contribution, including changes to the length of the Contribution, as a condition of its acceptance. The Journal (and Publisher) reserves the right, notwithstanding acceptance, not to publish the Contribution if for any reason such publication would in the reasonable judgment of the Journal (and Publisher), result in legal liability or violation of journal ethical practices. If the Journal (or Publisher) decides not to publish the Contribution, the Author is free to submit the Contribution to any other journal from any other publisher.
3. As above, the final Contribution will be made Open Access under the terms of the CC-BY license. Reproduction, posting, transmission or other distribution or use of the final Contribution in whole or in part in any medium by the Author as permitted by this Agreement requires a citation to the Journal suitable in form and content as follows: (Title of Contribution, Author, Journal Title and Volume/lssue, Digital Object Identifier (DOI), Date). Links to the final published Contribution should be provided following the guidance below on best practice.

Retained Rights

The Author retains all proprietary rights in addition to copyright, such as patent rights in any process, procedure or article of manufacture described in the Contribution.

Author's Representations

The Author(s) certify that they have participated sufficiently in the intellectual content, conception and design of this work or the analysis and interpretation of the data (when applicable), as well as the writing of the manuscript, to take public responsibility for it and have agreed to have their name listed as a contributor. The Author(s) believe the manuscript represents valid work. Neither this manuscript nor one with substantially similar content under their authorship has been published or is being considered for publication elsewhere, except as described in the covering letter. The Author(s) certify that all the data collected during the study is presented in this manuscript and no data from the study has been or will be published separately. If requested by the editors, the Author(s) will provide the data/information or will cooperate fully in obtaining and providing the data/information on which the manuscript is based, for examination by the editors or their assignees. Financial interests, direct or indirect, that exist or may be perceived to exist for individual contributors in connection with the content of this paper have been disclosed in the cover letter. Sources of outside support of the project are named in the cover letter.

Use of Information

The Author(s) acknowledges that, during the term of this Agreement and thereafter (for as long as necessary), the Publisher and the Journal may process the Author’s personal data, including storing or transferring data outside of the country of the Contributor’s residence, in order to communicate with the Author(s) and that the Publisher has a legitimate interest in processing the Author(s)’ personal data. By entering into this Agreement, the Author(s) agree to the processing of personal data (and, where applicable, confirms that the Author has obtained the permission from all other authors to process their personal data). The Publisher and the Journal shall comply with all applicable laws, statutes and regulations relating to data protection and privacy and shall process such personal data.

Open Access Publication and Creative Commons Licensing

This is an open access journal, and articles are distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). Users are allowed to share (copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format) and adapt (remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially), as long as the authors and the publisher are explicitly identified and properly acknowledged as the original source.

Article processing charge:
The journal charges following processing fee upon acceptance:   USD 500 

Editor
Dr M Prakash Hande
Department of Physiology,
Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine,
National University of Singapore,
Block MD9, 2 Medical Drive,
Singapore 117593

Email: phsmph@nus.edu.sg

Technical support
ScienceOpen at info@scienceopen.com or 
Dr. Stephanie Dawson at stephanie.dawson@scienceopen.com