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Luis A. Diaz, Jr., MD, FAACR, Co-Editor-in-Chief of Cancer Discovery, discusses the scope of the journal during a Meet the Editor session at the AACR Annual Meeting 2022.The AACR’s scientific journals program provides a renowned and respected publication venue for discoveries that span the breadth of basic, translational, clinical, and epidemiological cancer research.
In 2000, Douglas Hanahan, PhD, FAACR, and Robert A. Weinberg, PhD, FAACR, published their seminal review titled “The Hallmarks of Cancer.” In the paper, the authors proposed a set of six functional capabilities acquired by human cells as they move into neoplastic growth states, which are critical to the cells’ ability to form malignant tumors. This list of required capabilities for cancerous cells was expanded to a total of eight in a 2011 update. Since that time, the “Hallmarks of Cancer” model has been widely accepted by the cancer research community as the definitive conceptual framework for understanding human tumorigenesis.
In January, Dr. Hanahan chose Cancer Discovery as the publication forum for his long-awaited update to the Hallmarks framework. In a new review article titled “Hallmarks of Cancer: New Dimensions,” Dr. Hanahan evaluated his enduring conceptual model and recommended an expansion, proposing four new prospective hallmarks and enabling characteristics for consideration.
The impact of this re-evaluation of the foundations of cancer development was felt throughout the cancer research community; the paper had been cited nearly 600 times through December. The article’s Altmetric Attention Score of 1,631 ranked in the top five per cent of all articles tracked by Altmetric, and it was the top-ranked article ever published in Cancer Discovery.
At the time of its launch in October 2021, the open-access, online-only Cancer Research Communications was intended to enhance the AACR scientific journals portfolio by providing a venue for rapid open publication of hypotheses, methods, results, data resources, and new knowledge in all the varied disciplines of cancer science and medicine.
Under the leadership of founding editors-in-chief Elaine R. Mardis, PhD, FAACR, and Lillian L. Siu, MD, FRCPC, the journal quickly achieved that goal, publishing its 100th article around the time of its one-year anniversary. Drs. Mardis and Siu reflected on the early success of the journal in an Editorial in which they issued a call for submissions in several emerging areas of research, including cancer health disparities; big data and artificial intelligence; and the role of exercise, diet, and environmental stressors on cancer outcomes.
As part of its commitment to circulating innovative cancer science to a global audience, the AACR migrated its online journals portfolio to the cutting-edge Silverchair platform in February. The flexible, feature-rich platform features an advanced article display and easier access to the PDF versions of articles. Interest in the online journals continued to increase, as journal article views increased nearly 20 per cent during 2022.
140
Total number of articles published in Cancer Research Communications in 2022.
81
Number of countries from which AACR journals received manuscript submissions in 2022.
35 days
Average turnaround time from submission to first decision across all AACR journals.
The AACR thanks its editors-in-chief for their hard work and stewardship of its scientific publishing program during 2022.
Riccardo Dalla-Favera, MD, FAACR
Columbia University
New York, New York
Kenneth C. Anderson, MD, FAACR
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
Boston, Massachusetts
Lewis C. Cantley, PhD, FAACR
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
Boston, Massachusetts
Luis A. Diaz, Jr., MD, FAACR
Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
New York, New York
Elizabeth A. Platz, ScD, MPH
Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins
Baltimore, Maryland
Robert D. Schreiber, PhD, FAACR
Washington University School of Medicine
St. Louis, Missouri
Philip D. Greenberg, MD, FAACR
Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center
Seattle, Washington
Raymond N. DuBois, MD, PhD, FAACR
Medical University of South Carolina
Charleston, South Carolina
Michael N. Pollak, MD
McGill University
Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Chi Van Dang, MD, PhD, FAACR
Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center
Baltimore, Maryland
Elaine R. Mardis, PhD, FAACR
Nationwide Children's Hospital
The Ohio State University
Columbus, Ohio
Lillian L. Siu, MD
Princess Margaret Cancer Centre
University of Toronto
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Keith T. Flaherty, MD
Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center
Boston, Massachusetts
Massimo Loda, MD
Sandra and Edward Meyer Cancer Center at Weill Cornell Medical College
New York, New York
Beverly A. Teicher, PhD
National Cancer Institute
Bethesda, Maryland
