Life Sciences

Life Sciences is an international journal publishing articles that emphasize the molecular, cellular, and functional basis of therapy. The journal emphasizes the understanding of mechanism that is relevant to all aspects of human disease and translation to patients. All articles are rigorously reviewed.

The Journal favors publication of full-length papers where modern scientific technologies are used to explain molecular, cellular and physiological mechanisms. Articles that merely report observations are rarely accepted. Recommendations from the Declaration of Helsinki or NIH guidelines for care and use of laboratory animals must be adhered to. Articles should be written at a level accessible to readers who are non-specialists in the topic of the article themselves, but who are interested in the research. The Journal welcomes reviews on topics of wide interest to investigators in the life sciences. We particularly encourage submission of brief, focused reviews containing high-quality artwork and require the use of mechanistic summary diagrams.

Manuscripts should present novel preclinical findings addressing questions of biological significance to human disease. Studies that fail to do so may be rejected without review. Quantitative conclusions must be based on truly quantitative methods. Life Sciences does not publish work on the actions of biological extracts of unknown chemical composition. Compounds studied must be of known chemical structure and concentration. The study must be reproducible; materials used must be available to other researchers so they can repeat the experiment. Clinical studies may be considered if they expand understanding of mechanism, but the journal does not encourage clinical trial reports.

Four common reasons for rejection include: out of scope (the manuscript does not conform to the goal of identification of mechanisms related to therapy for human disease); too preliminary (manuscript is based on a limited amount of experimental data diminishing significance); lack of novelty (manuscript is well done but does not address a significant question); unidentified structure (actions of biological extracts of unknown chemical composition).