Journal of Experimental and Clinical Cancer Research Submission Process

This page was built from JECCR aims and scope, Springer submission guidelines, Springer/BMC manuscript-preparation guidance, supporting-information guidance, fees and funding information, our JECCR target-fit guide, and Manusights pre-submission review patterns for translational oncology, tumor immunology, biomarker, omics, resistance, and clinical cancer manuscripts. Last reviewed: October 9, 2026.

Official source limitation: Springer and BMC pages can change portal wording, waiver/funding details, and article-preparation instructions. Before final upload, confirm the live JECCR submission guidelines, supporting-information page, fees/funding page, and any current Springer Nature submission-system prompts.

The process is deciding whether the manuscript is mature translational oncology, not only whether it is strong cancer biology.

The official source-backed sibling page records JECCR's core identity: significant advances in basic cancer research with a translational bridge from laboratory to clinic. It also records single-anonymous peer review, open-access publication, an APC of £3,190 GBP / $4,490 USD / €3,790 EUR, and a published median of 3 days from submission to first decision. The process page turns those facts into an upload-to-decision workflow.

Editors and reviewers are usually asking:

• Does the title and abstract state the translational oncology consequence early?
• Does the mechanism connect credibly to diagnosis, therapy, resistance, patient selection, prognosis, prevention, or clinical investigation?
• Are ethics approval, consent, animal approvals, biosafety, competing interests, funding, author contributions, and data availability complete?
• Do suggested reviewers have institutional email addresses or ORCID/Scopus-style identity signals?
• Can the data, code, patient cohort, omics repository, or clinical annotation support the claim?
• Is JECCR a better process owner than Molecular Cancer, Clinical Cancer Research, Cancer Research, Oncogene, BMC Cancer, or a disease-specific oncology journal?

This is why the process page is distinct from the target-fit page. The target-fit page tells you whether JECCR is the right target. This page tells you what the submitted package is tested against after the author chooses JECCR.

Do not open the Springer workflow until the paper can survive both technical checks and a translational-oncology editor's first read.

The package should make the bench-to-bedside bridge visible in the title, abstract, first figure, methods, declarations, data availability statement, and cover letter.

JECCR submissions go through the Springer Nature workflow linked from the journal's submission guidelines at https://link.springer.com/journal/13046/submission-guidelines. Use the current live link when you submit because Springer can change portal wording or handoff screens.

Before the final confirmation screen, check:

• authorship metadata and author contributions are complete;
• competing-interest / conflict of interest declarations are consistent with funding and licensing statements;
• human-subjects ethics, informed consent, animal protocols, biosafety, and clinical-trial registration are handled where relevant;
• data availability and code availability statements identify repositories, restrictions, and accession numbers;
• genomic, transcriptomic, proteomic, imaging, or clinical cohort datasets have appropriate repository or access explanations;
• reviewer suggestions include institutional emails where possible, or ORCID/Scopus-style identity signals;
• the abstract stays within the 350 words research-article limit and uses the required Background, Methods, Results, and Conclusions structure;
• 3 to 10 keywords represent the main content of the article;
• the cover letter explains the translational oncology bridge and any policy issues;
• APC/funding route, institutional agreement, waiver context, or funder support is understood before acceptance;
• supporting information is labeled so reviewers can find validation and provenance details quickly.

The portal route confirms the process intent, but declarations, reviewer identity, and data-access clarity decide whether the paper moves cleanly.

Initial Quality Check confirms whether the package can be handled by Springer and the journal office. Springer Nature describes this stage as checks on authorship, competing interests, ethics approval and plagiarism. Complete the other required declarations (patient consent, animal ethics, trial registration, data availability, funding, and author contributions) in the same pass so that nothing else delays the file.

For JECCR, these checks are part of the translational trust signal. Oncology papers often involve patient material, clinical annotation, genomic data, immune profiling, treatment-response claims, xenografts, organoids, patient-derived models, or regulated datasets. If the declarations are vague, the editor has to spend trust before evaluating the science.

Common avoidable friction:

• ethics approval or consent language does not match the methods;
• animal approvals or biosafety statements are missing where needed;
• data availability says "available on request" without explaining restricted clinical data;
• reviewer suggestions lack institutional email addresses or identity-verification details;
• the cover letter names translation but not the oncology decision that changes;
• APC/funding route is ignored until acceptance.

Editorial Triage is where the JECCR process separates mature translational oncology from strong but under-routed cancer biology.

Fast rejection usually means the translational bridge, evidence proportionality, or operations package failed before reviewer recruitment. A longer first round usually means the editor sees possible JECCR fit and is recruiting single-anonymous reviewers.

JECCR uses single-anonymous peer review, often called single-blind peer review in publisher comparisons. That means reviewers know the authors, while reviewer identities are not disclosed to authors. The practical consequence is that the paper must be robust to expert scrutiny of the science, institution-specific methods, data provenance, and translational claims without relying on anonymized file preparation.

The journal-specific peer-review feature to plan around is single-anonymous translational-oncology review plus explicit reviewer-suggestion identity signals. Springer/BMC supporting-information guidance asks for institutional email addresses where possible, or ORCID/Scopus-style details that help verify reviewer identity. For JECCR, that makes reviewer-suggestion quality part of the process package.

Reviewers usually test:

• whether the mechanism is real enough for the claimed clinical consequence;
• whether patient samples, cell lines, animal models, cohorts, and statistics match the conclusion;
• whether biomarker or omics findings change diagnosis, prognosis, treatment selection, resistance interpretation, or patient stratification;
• whether ethics, consent, data availability, and supporting files support the translational claim;
• whether the paper belongs at JECCR rather than Clinical Cancer Research, Molecular Cancer, Cancer Research, Oncogene, or a disease-specific journal;
• whether the revision can fix gaps without changing the study's center of gravity.

Major revisions often ask for stronger validation, clearer clinical annotation, more complete data access, additional mechanistic controls, sharper limitations, and better separation between promise and proof.

Final Decision turns editor synthesis and reviewer reports into reject, revise, accept, appeal path, or transfer possibility. For JECCR, a strong revision usually does more than add experiments. It clarifies the translational bridge, repairs declaration/data gaps, and makes the oncology decision value visible in the abstract, figures, methods, and response letter.

If the editor offers transfer or if review exposes a better target, treat that as a routing signal rather than only a loss. A narrower clinical validation story may be better at Clinical Cancer Research or a disease-specific oncology journal. A deeper molecular mechanism may be cleaner at Molecular Cancer, Cancer Research, or Oncogene. A broader but lower-bar translational package may fit BMC Cancer.

Springer Nature publishes four stages after submission and neither it nor the journal publishes stage-by-stage timings, so the table lists stages without dates.

Use these as context, not promises. A fast decision can be good or bad; the useful question is whether the package made the translational bridge and declarations easy to evaluate. A longer wait can mean reviewer recruitment for a manuscript that crosses basic cancer biology, clinical oncology, tumor immunology, omics, pharmacology, and biomarker expertise.

In our pre-submission review work with JECCR and adjacent translational oncology manuscripts, the same process risks appear before upload. Manusights submission analysis treats these as specific failure patterns: the abstract, first figure, methods, declarations, data availability statement, reviewer suggestions, and cover letter should all make the same translational oncology argument.

Translational bridge exists only as language. The manuscript mentions therapy, diagnosis, resistance, prognosis, or patient selection, but the evidence still behaves like basic cancer biology. In JECCR manuscripts we review, this often appears as a strong pathway figure followed by a discussion paragraph that makes the clinical leap. The repair is to connect the mechanism to patient-facing consequence earlier: title, abstract, Figure 1, model choice, validation cohort, statistics, and cover letter.

Check whether your JECCR translational bridge is evidence-backed →

Reviewer cannot verify the operational package. The science may be strong, but ethics, consent, data availability, reviewer identity, funding, or author contribution details are vague. For JECCR, this weakens trust because translational oncology claims depend on human material, model provenance, regulated datasets, and disclosure clarity.

Check whether your JECCR declarations package is review-ready →

Biomarker or omics result lacks decision value. The paper has heat maps, signatures, enrichment, spatial profiling, or public-cohort analysis, but it does not say what oncology decision changes. JECCR becomes stronger when the biomarker or omics layer changes diagnosis, prognosis, therapy selection, resistance interpretation, trial stratification, or mechanism-guided follow-up.

Check whether your JECCR biomarker story changes a decision →

Clinical claim outruns the validation layer. The title and abstract imply treatment or patient-selection relevance, but the evidence is still cell-line-only, animal-only, public-cohort-only, or underpowered. The fix is not always more hype or more figures. It is a cleaner statement of what the evidence proves now, what remains promise, and why JECCR is still the right target.

Check whether your JECCR claim is proportional to the evidence →

This page tells you where the JECCR process tests the package; the review tells you whether YOUR paper passes that process before upload. Paid Manusights reviews include a 60-day money-back guarantee, and we do not train models on submitted manuscripts.

Check whether your JECCR package is ready for the submission process →

JECCR is open access. The journal's fees page lists an APC of £3,190 GBP / $4,490 USD / €3,790 EUR, subject to VAT or local taxes and funding arrangements. Treat APC and funding as part of the submission process because institutional agreements, funder mandates, waivers, billing contacts, and license choices can slow production if handled late.

After acceptance, the process shifts from editorial evidence to production accuracy. Authors should keep final source files, figure originals, supplementary files, repository links, author approvals, funding information, and proof-response ownership ready. Production is not the right time to discover that a data accession, ethics statement, or figure source is inconsistent with the accepted manuscript.

• Journal of Experimental and Clinical Cancer Research target-fit page
• JECCR cover letter guide
• Rejected from Journal of Experimental and Clinical Cancer Research? Where to submit next
• How to avoid desk rejection at JECCR
• JECCR impact factor
• Annals of Oncology submission process

JECCR wants clinical and experimental cancer research to meet in one paper. Papers that do only one half get redirected. See where my abstract sits relative to JECCR.