OVERVIEW

Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hematopathology (JCEH)

Published on behalf of The Japanese Society of Lymphoma Research.
Online ISSN: 1880-9952

AIMS AND SCOPE

The Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hematopathology (JCEH) publishes Open Access, peer-reviewed articles describing laboratory and clinical investigations of the hematolymphoid system and related subject areas. JCEH invites submissions in a broad range of topics relevant to pathophysiology of the hematolymphoid system and hematological malignancies and their treatment including transplantation.

The journal publishes high-quality Original Articles, Review Articles, Case Reports, Short Communications, and Letters to the Editor, in English. The official journal of The Japanese Society of Lymphoma Research, JCEH is published online continuously and collated into issues four times per year. The broad international readership of JCEH includes researchers, clinicians and other interested parties.

ARTICLE TYPES / PREPARATION

Articles should be written in US English. For any information that is not mentioned in these guidelines, authors should refer to Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals, published by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE).

Articles should fit within the subject categories described below and meet the editorial standards described in these Instructions to Authors.

Biology and Immunology of Hematolymphoid Tissues

Reactive, Infectious, and Lymphoproliferative Disorders
Laboratory Methodologies and Technologies
Lymphomas and Lymphoid Leukemias
Myeloma/Plasmacytoma
Lymphoproliferative Disorders (Other Than Overt Neoplasms)
Myeloid Leukemia, Myelodysplastic Syndrome, and Myeloproliferative neoplasms
Histiocytic and Dendritic Cell Neoplasms

All article types should include the following elements unless otherwise specified:

Title Page: Title, full author names and affiliations, corresponding author’s contact information (address, email), 3–5 non-abbreviated keywords, and a running title (≤40 characters).
Acknowledgments
Disclosure of Author Contributions and Conflict-of-Interest Statements
References
Tables
Figure Legends

The corresponding author should take responsibility for the integrity of the work from inception to published article.

Required Documents for New Submissions

Cover Letter: Authors should introduce their work in a cover letter, addressing the aim of the study, its significant and novel findings, and its relationship to the present state of the field.

Submission Form: The journal requires the consent of all authors upon submission, which verifies their agreement with the manuscript’s content and presentation and their knowledge of its submission to JCEH. Each author should include his or her category of contribution and list any potential conflicts of interest in all versions of the article.

Letter of Permission: In cases where “personal communication” or “unpublished data” is cited in a manuscript, authors must obtain permission from the appropriate investigators to cite this material. In cases where previously published material is used in a manuscript, authors must obtain permission from the publisher to reproduce the material.

Article Type–Specific Guidelines

1. Original Articles

Original Articles present complete research reports in a concise but comprehensive manner.

Required Sections:

Title Page
Abstract (max 250 words)
Introduction
Materials and Methods
Results
Discussion
Plus all shared components listed above

2. Review Articles

Review Articles provide succinct and analytical updates on current scientific or clinical topics within the journal’s scope. All submissions undergo peer review, including invited reviews.

Required Sections:
– Title Page
– Abstract (max 250 words)
– Main Text (structured at authors’ discretion)
– Plus all shared components listed above.

3. Case Reports

Case Reports describe hematolymphoid diseases that offer novel clinical or pathological insights.

Required Sections:

Title Page
Abstract (max 250 words)
Introduction
Case Report
Discussion
Materials and Methods (optional; place between Introduction and Case Report if used)
Plus all shared components listed above

4. Short Communications

Short Communications describe pertinent and interesting observations or studies concerning hematolymphoid research that do not warrant publication as an Original Article.

Specifications:

Manuscript should not exceed 1,500 words
Title Page (with the heading “Short Communication”)
Concise main text; no formal structure required beyond shared components

5. Letters to the Editor

Letters may comment on published articles, raise controversial issues, report contradictory data, or share new but limited findings.

Specifications:

Manuscript should not exceed 800 words
Title Page must include the heading “Letter to the Editor”; no formal structure required beyond shared components
Editors may invite original authors to respond, with both letters published if warranted

Sponsorship and Funding/Financial Disclosure

The Acknowledgments section is an appropriate place to recognize co-workers, indicate funding sources, and disclose information about affiliations and potential conflicts of interest (for example, commercial affiliations, patent-licensing arrangements). Authors must state all their sources of funding and any other financial and personal relationships that might bias their work. If the research reported in the manuscript has received partial or complete funding from commercial sponsors, the authors must include a statement to that effect in the Acknowledgments.

The Editors reserve the right not to consider a manuscript if a sponsor has asserted control over the authors’ right to publish their research results.

Abbreviations

Abbreviations should appear in parentheses immediately after the first appearance of the full word or phrase. Use the abbreviations thereafter in the text.

Units of Measurement

The following abbreviations should be used for units of measurement: L, dL, mL, kg, g, mg, ng, pg, m, cm, mm, nm, M (molar), mM (millimolar), Gy, ℃, mon, hr, min, sec, msec.

Gene Nomenclature

All gene names should be formatted in italics. Only gene names should use italics, to distinguish them from gene products, gene segments, clusters, families, complexes, or groups. Authors should use only the official gene name, as assigned by the relevant gene nomenclature committee.

References

References are listed in a separate reference section immediately following the text. All references must be verified by the corresponding author who submits the manuscript to JCEH. Follow the style of the ICMJE’s Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals for reference format and Index Medicus for standard journal abbreviations (please see examples below). Number references sequentially in the order cited in the text. A reference cited only in a table or figure is numbered in the sequence established by the first mention in the text of the table or figure containing the reference.
Including AI-generated material as the primary source in the reference is not allowed.

Reference to a personal communication or to a manuscript categorized as in preparation or submitted for publication is discouraged. However, if such a reference is essential and refers to a written communication, the source is cited parenthetically in the text (not in the reference section) with the comment “unpublished data” or “personal communication.” Written permission from the source that is cited must be sent to the Editorial Office. Reference to a manuscript accepted but not yet published is listed in the reference section as “in press.” “In press” references must be updated by the authors as soon as publication data is available.

In the References section, provide the names of all authors in a reference when there are five or fewer; if there are six or more authors, list the first three, followed by “et al.”

Journal articles
Include the following information in this order: authors, article title and subtitle, journal abbreviation, year, volume number in Arabic numerals, inclusive pages. For example:
　Tomita S, Kikuti YY, Carreras J, et al. Genomic and immunohistochemical profiles of
　enteropathy-associated T-cell lymphoma in Japan. Mod Pathol. 2015; 28:1286-1296.
Books
Include the following information in this order: authors, book title, edition (if other than the first), volume (if more than one), city, publisher, pages, year. For example:
　Lennert K, Feller AC: Histopathology of Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphomas (Based on the
　Updated Kiel Classification). 2nd ed, Berlin, Springer-Verlag. 1981; pp. 1-44.
Book chapters
Include the following information in this order: authors of the chapter, title of the chapter, “In :”, editors/authors of the book (using “(eds)” to denote editors), title of the book, edition (if more than one), volume (if more than one), city, publisher, inclusive pages of the chapter, and year. For example:
　Stossel TP: The molecular basis of white blood cell motility. In : Stamatoyannopoulos G,
　Nienhuis AW, Majerus PW, Varmus H (eds): The Molecular Basis of Blood Diseases. 2nd
　ed, Philadelphia, Saunders. 1994; pp. 541- 562.

Figures

Authors should upload high-quality graphic data for figures. All color figures are reproduced in full color in the digital version of the journal at no cost to authors. Authors are requested to pay the cost of reproducing color figures in print. Authors are encouraged to use color when necessary to convey essential scientific information. For best reproduction, bright, clear colors with high contrast should be used. Dark colors against a dark background do not reproduce well; place color images against a white background wherever possible. Files must be in CMYK color space. All figures of accepted manuscripts should be in PPT, JPG or TIF format. The minimum requirement for resolution is 300 DPI/PPI. These resolutions refer to the output size of the file; if you anticipate that your images will be enlarged or reduced, resolutions should be adjusted accordingly.

Electronic Supplementary Material

Material that is not suitable for print publication, such as very long tables, database information, etc., may be published online as electronic supplementary material. The final decision to do so, however, lies with the Editors. Electronic supplementary material can be edited if authors prefer, but additional fee will be charged. Please submit camera-ready files for this material in any way by the journal before publication.

EDITORIAL PROCESS

All manuscripts are assessed initially by the Editors. A selection of manuscripts is then sent to experts in the field for peer review. The Editor makes a decision on a manuscript’s suitability for publication in JCEH based on their assessment of the manuscript and the reviewers’ reports. When a decision is reached, it is sent with the reviewers’ comments to the authors by email. Decision letters for manuscripts not sent for review are also sent by email.

Rejected Manuscripts

Manuscripts may be rejected based either on the considered opinions of the Editors or on the comments of reviewers. Manuscripts not reaching a sufficiently high level of priority or not fitting within the scope of the journal will be returned to authors without detailed comments. Only manuscripts of high priority will be considered for publication in the journal.

Revisions Requested

If the Editors and the reviewers respond positively to a manuscript and are interested in considering it further after additional work has been included, authors will be invited to resubmit a revised manuscript to JCEH. A decision letter containing the comments of the reviewers will be sent by email to the authors. We ask that revisions are made within 3 months.

Any questions concerning the requested changes/additional work should be addressed to the Editors by email before submission of the revised manuscript. Revised manuscripts may be returned to the original reviewers for reassessment. Therefore, the review process of the revised manuscript may take over a month in some cases. The Editors retain the right to reject a manuscript at any time if specific concerns of the Editors or reviewers have not been met or if the manuscript does not reach a sufficiently high level of priority.

Submission of Revised Manuscripts

If you have been invited to submit a revised manuscript, please submit it online via https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/jceh using the ID number and password that you received by email after initial submission.

Instructions can be found at the listed website. Enter your point-by-point responses to the reviewers separately in a Response File. Upload the revised manuscript with all changes underlined or marked. Please also re-upload all figures and tables.

POST-ACCEPTANCE AND TECHNICAL INFORMATION

Manuscripts that are accepted for publication are copyedited and typeset by the journal’s production team before publication online and in print. Manuscripts will be held by the Editorial Office if outstanding materials are required (final files for the accepted version of the manuscript and Conflict of Interest Form, if this has not been submitted previously). The post-acceptance production process does not start until the Article processing charge is paid (2024.1~). Usually, the production process takes about two months. But staff can publish a clean, PDF copy of the accepted manuscript with the authors’ request and the payment of the Early publication charge (see below) (2024.1~). All communication regarding accepted manuscripts is with the corresponding author.

Guidelines for Final Version of Accepted Manuscripts

The final versions of accepted manuscripts (text, tables and figures) should be uploaded to ScholarOne. After publication, changes or corrections can be made only in the form of an Erratum, which will be hyperlinked to the original article.

Text

Only Microsoft Word (DOCX files) may be used for the final manuscript files. Do not use desktop publishing software such as Aldus PageMaker or Quark X Press. If you prepared your manuscript with one of these programs, including EndNote, please export the text to a word processing format to prepare the final manuscript text file for the journal.

Proofs

An electronic proof of the typeset and copyedited version will be sent to the corresponding author for approval. This may take approximately 4 weeks after manuscript acceptance. Authors should check and return proofs within 48 hours via email. Only essential corrections to typesetting errors or omissions are accepted; excessive changes are not permitted at the proofing stage.

Reprints

If the corresponding author requires reprints of the articles, order forms for reprints are sent to the corresponding author and should be returned with the proofs. The order form must be returned with the proofs. Late orders may be charged at higher rates (orders will not be processed if received after the issue has gone to press). The cost of offprints is based on the number of pages in the printed article and the number of offprints ordered.

Publication Charges

There is no submission fee.

Article processing charge for publication of accepted articles is as follows:

Review articles, Original articles, Case reports, Short communications: 70,000 Japanese yen (JPY)/700 US dollars (USD) (plus VAT when applicable) for members:

for Japanese authors, when the first author is a member.
for overseas members, when the corresponding or the first author is a member.

Or 150,000 JPY/1500 USD (plus VAT when applicable) for non-members.
Letters to the Editor and Erratum: 40,000 Japanese yen (JPY)/400 US dollars (USD) (plus VAT when applicable) for both members and non-members.
Residents of Japan are levied any relevant taxes.
Early publication charge: 10,000 JPY/100 USD for both members and non-members.

Payment is made by PayPal (https://www.paypal.com).

The charges for members are applied only when the first author has a membership of JSLR at the ACCEPTANCE (2024.1~).

EDITORIAL POLICIES

JCEH supports and adheres to the guidelines and best practices of the Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals (http://www.icmje.org/icmje-recommendations.pdf), published by the International Committee of Medical Journals Editors (ICMJE), as well as the Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing (a joint statement by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), the World Association for Medical Editors (WAME) and the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA): (http://doaj.org/bestpractice).

Authorship

According to the ICMJE’s Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly work in Medical Journals, all authors listed in the manuscript must meet the following criteria of contribution:

Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the research or the acquisition and analysis of data
Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content
Final approval of the version to be published
Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

Contributors who do not meet the criteria above should not be listed as authors. Those who do not qualify for an authorship may be acknowledged in the Acknowledgements section of the manuscript. Examples of activities that do not qualify a contributor for authorship include: acquisition of funding; general supervision of a research group; general administrative support; or writing assistance, technical editing, language editing, or proofreading.

Use of Artificial Intelligence (AI)-Assisted Tools/Technologies Äb0

In consonance with the COPE’s position statement, WAME’s recommendations, and ICMJE’s Recommendation, JCEH does not allow artificial intelligence (AI)-assisted tools/technologies such as Large Language Models (LLMs), chatbots, or image creators to be listed as author or co-author. As described in the ICMJE, those tools cannot be responsible for the accuracy, integrity, and originality of the work, thus they do not meet the ICMJE’s criteria for authorship listed above. The authors (humans) are fully responsible for any materials of the submitted work, including the use of AI-assisted tools or technologies. AI should not be cited as an author. Authors (humans) are also responsible for plagiarism including in text and AI-produced images. Authors must disclose, upon submission and in the Methods (or similar section), any use of AI-assisted tools or technologies in the writing of a manuscript, production of images or graphical elements of the paper, or in the collection and analysis of data.

Redundant or Duplicate Publication

Manuscript submissions in any language that are under review elsewhere or have been published in another journal, including advanced publications (in press or published online ahead of print), are regarded as redundant or duplicate publications.

Abstracts or posters presented at scientific meetings are not considered previously published work, nor are Preprints (see Preprints section for more details).

Submission to the journal implies that the manuscript is original work. All information and contents that originate from other resources must be credited and cited, as per the guidance in the References section of these Instructions to Authors. Any manuscript with an unacceptable level of unoriginal material may be rejected or retracted at the Editors’ discretion.

Preprints

To support the wide dissemination of research, the journal encourages authors to post their research manuscripts on community-recognized preprint servers, either before or alongside submission to the journal. This policy applies only to the original version of a manuscript that describes primary research. Any version of a manuscript that has been revised in response to reviewers’ comments, accepted for publication or published in the journal should not be posted on a preprint server. Instead, forward links to the published manuscript may be posted on the preprint server.

Authors should retain copyright in their work when posting to a preprint server.

Scooping

When assessing the novelty of a manuscript submitted to the journal, the Editors will not be influenced by other manuscripts that are posted on community-recognized preprint servers after the date of submission to JCEH (or after the date of posting on a preprint server, if the manuscript is submitted to the journal within 4 months).

Image integrity

Authors may digitally manipulate or process images, but only if the adjustments are kept to a minimum, are applied to the entire image, meet community standards, and are clearly described in the manuscript. All images in a manuscript must accurately reflect the original data on which they are based. Authors must not move, remove, add or enhance individual parts of an image. The Editors reserve the right to request original, unprocessed images from the authors. Failure to provide requested images may result in a manuscript being rejected or retracted.

Reproducing Copyrighted Material

If a manuscript includes material that is not under the authors’ own copyright, the authors must obtain permission from the copyright holder(s) to reproduce it.

If a manuscript includes previously published material, the authors must obtain permission from the copyright owners and the publisher of the original work to reproduce it. The authors must cite the original work in their manuscript.

Copies of all reproduction permissions must be included with the manuscript when it is first submitted.

Conflicts of Interest

JCEH requires authors, reviewers and editors to disclose any potential conflict of interest related to articles submitted for publication. A conflict of interest exists when anyone has financial or personal relationships that could inappropriately influence (bias) his or her actions. The intent of the JSLTR conflict of interest disclosure policy is to provide authors, editors, and readers with all the facts necessary to make informed judgments about the content of JCEH.

Animal/Human Experimentation

Manuscripts that report on human subjects or materials of human origin must comply with the provisions of the Declaration of Helsinki (and its revisions). Authors must state in the manuscript that the study was approved by the relevant institutional or national review board (IRB). If approval from any IRB was not required, it must be explicitly stated in the manuscript.

Manuscripts that describe research involving human subjects must clearly state that written consent was obtained from all patients (or the parent or the legal guardian of the patient) to obtain and publish their information.

Data or information such as patient names, initials, hospital patient identification codes (patient IDs), specific dates, or any other information that may identify patients must not be presented in the manuscript.

Manuscripts that report data from animal experimentation must comply with institutional, national, or international guidelines, and must state in the Materials and Methods section the approval of the testing design by the affiliated institution’s animal care and use committee.

Availability of Data and Materials

Authors must disclose the source of publicly available data and materials, such as public repositories or commercial manufacturers, by including accession numbers or company details in their manuscript, as appropriate.

Authors may make their own data and materials available in Electronic Supplementary Material, or by linking from their manuscript to relevant community-recognized public databases or digital repositories. All data sets must be made available in full to the Editors and reviewers during the peer review process and must be made publicly available by the date of publication. Authors commit to preserving their data sets for at least three years from the date of publication in the journal.

The journal encourages authors to grant reasonable requests from colleagues to share any data, materials and experimental protocols described in their manuscript.

Clinical Trials

All clinical trials must be registered with a public trials registry before the time of first patient enrollment, in line with ICMJE policy. ICMJE defines clinical trials as any research project that prospectively assigns people or a group of people to an intervention, with or without concurrent comparison or control groups, to study the cause-and-effect relationship between a health-related intervention and a health outcome. Health-related interventions include but are not limited to those used to modify a biomedical or health-related outcome. Examples include drugs, surgical procedures, devices, behavioral treatments, educational programs, dietary interventions, quality improvement interventions, and process-of-care changes.

Authors are required to register all clinical trials in registries that are managed by a non-profit organization, are openly accessible to the public free of charge, have a mechanism to ensure the validity of the registration data, and are electronically searchable. Registration in any registry in the WHO International Clinical Trials Registry Platform (ICTRP: https://www.who.int/clinical-trials-registry-platform) or in ClinicalTrials.gov (http://clinicaltrials.gov/) is acceptable.

Reporting Guidelines

Authors are encouraged to follow published standard reporting guidelines for the relevant discipline of the study. They are:

CONSORT for randomized clinical trials (http://www.consort-statement.org/)
CARE for case reports (http://care-statement.org/)
STROBE for observational studies (http://strobe-statement.org/)
PRISMA for systematic reviews and meta-analyses (http://prisma-statement.org/)
STARD for studies of diagnostic accuracy (http://www.stard-statement.org/)

Otherwise, the Equator Network (http://www.equator-network.org/) has further reporting guidelines that should be consulted.

Misconduct and Breaches of Publication Ethics

All records and data presented in the manuscript must be accurate, without any fabrication, manipulation, or falsification. Any identified or suspected misconduct is subject to investigation by the Editorial Board of JCEH according to the guidelines recommended by COPE. If an investigation raises any valid concerns, the author will be contacted to address the issue. The Editor-in-Chief may decide to publish an Expression of Concern if suspicion is raised after an article has been published. If misconduct or a breach of publication ethics is established, regardless of the severity, then the journal reserves the right to retract the paper, publish a formal notice of misconduct, provide formal notice to an author’s institution, and/or not consider further submissions from the authors.

Long-term digital archiving

J-STAGE preserves its full digital library, including JCEH, with Portico in a dark archive (see https://www.portico.org/publishers/jstage/). In the event that the material becomes unavailable at J-STAGE, it will be released and made available by Portico.

Waiver policy

Waivers can be provided when the corresponding author is from a “Group A” Research4Life country or in cases of demonstrated financial hardship. In both cases, the journal will consider a pre-submission application for a waiver from any corresponding author to the Editor-in-Chief. Applications cannot be made after the peer review process has begun.

The ability of an author to pay the APC does not influence editorial decisions. To avoid any possibility of undue influence, Editors involved with the decision-making process for articles are not involved in any deliberations on waivers.

OPEN ACCESS AND COPYRIGHT

JCEH is an Open Access journal. Authors are required to assign the copyright in their articles to The Japanese Society of Lymphoma Research (JSLR). The JSLR then distributes the work under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike (CC BY-NC-SA) 4.0 International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/). Anyone may download, reuse, copy, reprint, distribute, or modify articles published in the journal for non-commercial purposes, as long as they cite the original authors and source properly and any distribution of derivative works is under the same license as the original. To use the journal’s material commercially, written permission from the JSLR is required.

ADVERTISING POLICY

To avoid potential conflicts of interest in editorial decision-making, JCEH does not accept advertising from pharmaceutical companies, device manufacturers, or any other commercial entities.

CONTACT INFORMATION

We invite enquiries to the Editorial Office at any time during the editorial process. For all matters concerning pre-submission, editorial policies and procedures, and general production matters, please contact the Editorial Office:

Professor Kennosuke Karube

Editor-in-Chief
Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hematopathology
Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine

Graduate School of Medicine Nagoya University

65 Tsurumai-cho, Showa-ku, Nagoya 466-8550, Japan
TEL: +81-52-744-2896
FAX: +81-52-744-2897

Email : karube@med.nagoya-u.ac.jp

EDITORIAL BOARD

EDITORIAL STAFF

Editor-in-Chief:	Kennosuke Karube (Nagoya University, Aichi, Japan)
Deputy editor-in-chief:	Mamiko Sakata(Tsukuba University, Tsukuba, Japan) Katsuyoshi Takata (Niigata University, Niigata, Japan)
Associate Editors:	Naoki Oishi (Yamanashi University, Yamanashi, Japan) Hidekazu Kayano (Saitama Medical University, Moro, Japan) Yoshihiro Komohara (Kumamoto University, Kumamoto, Japan) Yasuharu Sato (Okayama University, Okayama, Japan) Michihide Tokuhira (Saitama Medical Center, Saitama, Japan) Naoto Tomita (St.Marianna University School of Medicine, Kawasaki, Japan) Momoko Nishikori (Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan) Kana Miyazaki (Mie University, Tsu, Japan)
Editorial Office:	Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine Graduate School of Medicine Nagoya University 65 Tsurumai-cho, Showa-ku, Nagoya 466-8550, Japan TEL: +81-52-744-2896, FAX: +81-52-744-2897

EDITORIAL BOARD

Hiroshi Inagaki/Koji Izutsu/Kouichi Oshima/Seiichi Kato/Ritsuro Suzuki/Kengo Takeuchi
Kunihiro Tukasaki/Akihiro Tomita/Naoya Nakamura/Hirokazu Nagai/Momoko Nishikori
Hiroaki Miyoshi/Shuji Momose/Yoshinobu Maeda/Motoko Yamaguchi

INTERNATIONAL EDITORIAL BOARD

Frederick R. Appelbaum (USA) / James O. Armitage (USA) / John K. C. Chan (Hong Kong)
H. Joachim Deeg (USA) / Georges Delsol (France) / Michael Hummel (Germany)
Peter G. Isaacson (UK) / Elaine S. Jaffe (USA) / Ian K. McNiece (USA)
Sibrand Poppema (Netherlands) / Andreas Rosenwald (Germany) / Harald Stein (Germany)
Goerg Stingl (Austria) / Ih-Jen Su (Taiwan)