Before submission, confirm that the work addresses a clear question within the journal’s scope, is ethically acceptable and can be evaluated from the methods, data and supporting materials provided.

Eligibility and author responsibilities

HNCBT considers original research, reviews, systematic reviews and meta-analyses, translational studies, methodological papers and selected perspectives. A manuscript must not be under consideration by another journal. All authors must approve the submission, meet the journal’s authorship criteria and accept responsibility for the work. Disclose related manuscripts, prior dissemination, preprints and any substantial overlap with earlier publications in the cover letter.

Clinical and experimental claims must match the strength of the evidence. State whether analyses were prespecified or exploratory, explain the choice of model or population and discuss limitations. Negative findings are welcome when the design and reporting permit a reliable interpretation.

Files for double-anonymous review

• Title page: article title, author names, affiliations and countries, corresponding author contact, available ORCID identifiers, funding, competing interests and author contributions.
• Anonymized manuscript: title, abstract, keywords, main text, references, tables and figure legends. Remove names, acknowledgments and identifying document properties; cite prior work neutrally. The maximum abstract length is 300 words. For Perspectives, the maximum is 150 words. The abstract in the submission metadata must match the manuscript.
• Supporting files: figures, supplementary methods and data, reporting checklists, protocols and other materials needed to assess the work.
• Cover letter: explain the contribution, article type, scope fit, related work and any issue requiring confidential editorial consideration.

Provide information necessary for ethical assessment even when an identifying detail is held on the separate title page. The Editorial Office may coordinate anonymization of ethics documentation or repository links; ethical approval and data provenance must remain available to the editor.

Scientific and ethical reporting

Original research should use an Introduction, Methods, Results and Discussion structure where appropriate. Report sampling, experimental units, independent replicates, exclusions, statistical methods and uncertainty. Human research requires the relevant ethics approval or documented exemption and consent information. Animal studies require ethical authorization and welfare reporting. Clinical trials must provide registration, a protocol and the applicable reporting checklist.

Cancer research must describe cell-line authentication, mycoplasma testing, reagent provenance, model validation and any image processing. Computational studies must explain data provenance, preprocessing, validation, software and safeguards against information leakage. Every research article must include a data availability statement. See Manuscript Preparation and Reporting Guidelines.

Declarations and revised manuscripts

Include ethics and consent statements, funding and sponsor roles, competing interests, author contributions, data and code availability, and disclosure of relevant AI use. Use “Not applicable” only with an explanation when the underlying requirement genuinely does not apply. A revised submission should contain a point-by-point response and identify changes; any requested raw data must be supplied through an appropriate confidential or controlled route.

Charges and publication rights

The standard APC is USD 350 per accepted article. Submission and peer review are free. Request any waiver or discount before accepting a payment arrangement. Authors retain copyright, and published articles use CC BY 4.0. Consult APCs, Copyright & Licensing and the Submission Checklist before completing your submission.

Annual issue and rolling publication

The journal publishes one annual issue, formally released on 15 December each year. Accepted articles are published online on a rolling basis after editorial acceptance, production and author proof checks. Authors do not have to wait until December for their completed article to appear online. Each article retains its online publication date when included in the annual issue.

The annual issue date is a publication schedule, not a submission deadline or a guarantee that a particular manuscript will be accepted or published by that date.

Editorial review targets

These are editorial service targets, not measured performance statistics or guaranteed deadlines. Reviewer availability, manuscript complexity, additional review and research-integrity checks may extend assessment. The revision target excludes the time authors spend preparing their response. A first decision may request revision or decline the manuscript; it is not necessarily an acceptance decision. The journal does not promise a fixed submission-to-acceptance interval.