The Journal recommends that authors follow the Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals formulated by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE).
Sage is committed to upholding the integrity of the academic record. We encourage authors to refer to the Committee on Publication Ethics’ International Standards for Authors and view the author responsibilities section on the Sage Journal Author Gateway.
We also encourage you to familiarize yourself with our Editorial Policies and our Publication Ethics Policies.
Sage Publishing disseminates high-quality research and engaged scholarship globally, and we are committed to diversity and inclusion in publishing. We encourage submissions and peer review from a diverse range of authors and reviewers from across all countries and backgrounds. Read our diversity, equity, and inclusion pledge.
Access: Open Access
APC: See article processing charge information below
Accepts preprints? Yes
Identity transparency: Single anonymized
Please note that this journal is online-only and does not offer print copies.
Stem Journal is an open access, peer-reviewed journal. All accepted articles are made freely available online immediately upon publication, are published under a Creative Commons license, and hosted online in perpetuity.
If, after peer review, your manuscript is accepted for publication, a one-time article processing charge (APC) is payable to cover the cost of publishing, paid by the funder, institution, or author. There is no charge for submitting a manuscript.
The article processing charge (APC) is $2100 .
The article processing charge (APC) is payable when a manuscript is accepted after peer review, before it is published. The APC is subject to taxes where applicable. Tax-exempt status can be indicated by providing appropriate registration numbers when payment is requested. Please see further details on tax-exempt status here.
For general information on open access at Sage please visit the Open Access page.
Authors may be eligible for discounts to their APC via open access agreements that Sage has with participating institutions. Discounts depend on the terms of the agreement, find out if your institution is participating by visiting Open Access Agreements at Sage. Eligibility is determined by the corresponding author’s affiliation at acceptance matching an agreement.
Your article may be eligible for a full or partial waiver due to our participation in initiatives to increase accessibility to publication across the international academic community. More information about discounts and eligibility.
Your article must be within the scope of the journal and be of sufficient quality. If not, it will not be reviewed. Please read the journal’s Aims and Scope to see if your article is appropriate.
The manuscript must be your original work, you must have the rights to the work, and you must have obtained and be able to supply all necessary permissions for the reproduction of any copyright works not owned by you, including figures, illustrations, tables, lengthy quotations, or other material previously published elsewhere.
Original Research Article
Research Articles should present novel work within the scope of the journal which represents an important advancement in knowledge or understanding. Research articles need to include an introduction, a well-reported methodology, results, and a discussion of the results in the context of the published literature.
There are no page or word limits for Research Reports but manuscripts over 10,000 words (Introduction through Discussion) should be approved by the Editor-in-Chief before submission.
Review Article:
Review articles of the following types are welcomed for submissions:
Seminal Reviews should be original, comprehensive, authoritative as well as influential by providing directions for further research. The reviews should be prepared as detailed below, omitting the "Introduction" through "Discussion," and include a "Conclusion" and "Future Perspectives." Ideally, the length of a "Seminal Review" should be more than 5000 words, including references; but the length is at the discretion of the author. The Editor-in-Chief or Reviews Editor can be consulted regarding reviews of unusual length.
Topical Reviews should provide a focused and balanced coverage on a topic of immediate relevance, interest, or importance. They should be prepared as Seminal Reviews; but should not exceed 5000 words, including references.
Comparative Reviews should compare the efficiency of different protocols on different cell lines (for pluripotent stem cell lines) or test several cell differentiation protocols for 1–2 cell lines only. They should be prepared as for Seminal Reviews.
Ethics Reviews should address ethical issues that alter progress in stem cell research, clinical applications, and policy. Ultimately, the aim is to highlight and target unresolved issues where failure to act or resolve disagreements leads to bottlenecks in productivity in research, policy, and clinical applications. The reviews should be prepared as detailed below, omitting “Introduction” through “Discussion”, and including a “Conclusion.” [See at the foot of this page further instructions for this type of review.]
Short Communication:
A short communication is an article of original scholarship of unusual interest of less than 1500 words ("Introduction" through "Discussion"). An abstract of 100 words or less should be included with no subdivision of the abstract into sections. References should be formatted as above. A total of three tables and/or figures are allowed. Submissions that exceed the word or figure/table limits will be considered a Research Report. Supplementary Material for Short Reports is limited to 500 words and 1 table or figure.
Hypotheses: A hypothesis article should be a balanced and insightful consideration of a topic with novel hypotheses well-presented and supported. The article should be prepared as a Research Report but without "Methods" or "Results" sections.
Book Reviews: Book reviews should be 750 words or less and without sections. While most reviews are commissioned, suggestions can be proposed to the Editor-in-Chief.
Letters to the Editor: Authors can submit comments of 1000 words or less concerning prior articles published in StemJournal or elsewhere to the Editor-in-Chief through the Editorial Office (stemjournal@iospress.com) for possible inclusion at our online site as a Letter to the Editor. Letters will be shared with the authors of the original article for possible response prior to posting. Alternatively, a Letter to the Editor-in-Chief can contain a short commentary, opinion or statement, shorter than would warrant an Opinion Piece or Commentary.
Opinions/Position Papers:
Opinion Papers provide readers with a snapshot update of a highly topical subject in which the author shares their perspective and thoughts on advances and critical issues in the field and speculates on potential outcomes and future developments. These articles are not intended to provide a comprehensive review of a subject area, rather the intention is to help foster debate and discussion around key areas of stem cell biology and stem cell therapy. Position Papers present an arguable opinion about an issue and can be supported by reasonable preponderance of empirical evidence.
• These articles should have a maximum of 1000 words (excluding the abstract and references) and should have an abstract and 3–5 key words
• Up to 4 figures or tables and 10 references may be included
• To include more words, figures, tables, and references, please get approval of one of the Editors-in-Chief or Senior Editors
• The format of the Title Page, Authorship, Abstract, Keywords, Figures, Tables, References, and Disclosures should follow that for Research Reports
Ethics Reviews:
The goal of an Ethics Review is to address ethical issues that alter progress in stem cell research, clinical applications, and policy. Ultimately the aim is to highlight and target unresolved issues where failure to act or resolve disagreements leads to bottlenecks in productivity in research, policy, and clinical applications. Ethics Review is slightly different from a StemJournal typical review in that that the topics and presentation are balanced but controversial so that they would likely elicit Ethics Responses. Ethics Responses from multiple disciplines and perspectives are encouraged. Whereas addressing controversial topics is encouraged, reviews should focus on constructively moving debates forward to accelerate progress.
Features of an effective an Ethics Review are as follows:
1. Clearly identify points of disagreement and agreement in the field noting where empirical data are lacking or present that could resolve disagreements.
2. Highlight current empirical findings that are relevant to resolving controversial topics in novel ways with productive cross disciplinary applications.
3. Identify novel applications from fields not typically related to stem cell research and therapeutic prospects which could enhance implementation and ethics.
The manuscripts should be consistent with the current standards for StemJournal. As with other StemJournal review articles, submissions should be authoritative and topical and provide comprehensive and balanced coverage of a timely and/or controversial issue. Reviews should be prepared as detailed above for a Research Report, omitting "Introduction" through "Discussion", and include a "Conclusion".
Ethics Responses:
The purpose of the Ethics Response is to engage interdisciplinary constructive interaction between the author(s) of the Ethics Review and an author who wishes to provide balance and perspective. Authors of an Ethics Response should provide substantive elaboration and references. There should be a title and the number of words can range between 750 to 1500, with no more than 10 citations (reference limit will be less strictly enforced).
The Ethics Review will be distributed and responses will be requested. Potential authors should give a brief synopsis of their response in no more than 4 sentences by the target proposal date. These proposals will be reviewed and if accepted they will be allowed to write an Ethics Response in time for that second deadline. Acceptance of a proposal is no guarantee that the Ethics Response is accepted. The format of the Ethics Responses will be the same as for a Commentary.
Protocols:
Protocols can be submitted for review or commissioned by any one of the Editors or Associate Editors. Submitted protocols will undergo peer review. Protocols, which are commissioned, will also undergo peer review and will only be published on acceptance.
- Introducton: Provide enough information to put your work into context. Be concise. Clearly address the following points:
• What information is already available?Do not include a comprehensive literature review of research related to the protocol but do cite relevant papers where (a version of) the protocol had been described previously. End the Introduction by clearly describing the suitability of the protocol for specific research.
- Materials and Preparation: This section should be tabulated, well-structured and detailed enough for others to be able to know what materials are required. For antibodies, make sure to include the sourcing of antibodies used accurately. You can use subheadings, such as “Equipment,” “Reagents,” “Andibodies,” etc. List any essential information underneath the subheading. Hazardous chemicals and reagents should be labeled as such, with an additional bracketed comment, such as: “(USE CAUTION)”. Make sure to include company or supplier name and location (city, state, country), web address and catalog number.
- Preparation: This section should be a bulleted list and start with describing any preparations necessary, such as preparation of any medium used or reagent, and should have clear subheadings, for example: "Neural Differentiation Medium," "Astrocyte Differentiation Medium," "Oligodendrocyte Differentiation Medium," etc. Present all components used in the preparation of the medium in tabular format, including the “Component,” “Final Concentration,” and “Amount,”
- Preparation of Media:
This is the major part of the protocol and must be a bulleted list, ideally with numbers in bold; do not follow the numbers with a period (full stop). Use the active tense rather than the passive tense, for example: "Pipette 20 ml of buffer A into the flask" (and not: "20 ml of buffer A are/were pipetted into the flask"). If the protocol naturally breaks into separate stages, then include subheadings and resume the numbered list. Include a “Timing” callout with each subheading and state how long the section will take to complete. Subheadings are particularly appropriate after steps in the protocol where the procedure can be stopped (pause point), i.e. when the experiment can be stopped and resumed at a later date. Any pause points should be indicated with the heading “Pause Point,” followed by a brief description of the options available, for example: "Can be left overnight at 4 °C or frozen for up to a month at –20 °C."
Highlight critical steps in the protocol that must be performed in a very precise manner, e.g., where the time and temperature of a step is crucial or the use of RNase free solutions is required, thus providing the user with hints to maximize the likelihood of success. Make these clear with the heading “Critical Step,” followed by a brief explanation.
Highlight any toxic or harmful chemicals that are used. Make these clear by preceding them with the wording “CAUTION” prior to their first mention and include brief details of the hazard and the appropriate handling information. Include diagrams and/or photographs of equipment set-up, where appropriate. If the protocol is complicated, you should consider including a flow diagram to demonstrate how the stages fit together. Movies of particularly complicated procedures can be submitted.
Where there are alternative routes to reach the next stage of the protocol, please give enough background so that the reader will be able to make an informed decision on the route to choose. Letters of the Latin alphabet [(A), (B), (C)] should be used to identify the different options, and Roman numerals [(i), (ii), etc.] should be used to break down the appropriate steps. These options cannot have subheadings.
Please state all centrifugation speeds in g and include the length of time and temperature of the centrifugation, for example: "Centrifuge at 14,000 g for 5 min, 4 °C."
Please include “Troubleshooting” callouts after steps where problems are encountered, that are subsequently mentioned in the Troubleshooting section.
- Timing: Please include a timeline showing the time each step takes. You can also group a series of steps together, for example: “Steps 1–3, 20 min; Steps 4+5, 1 h.” The timeline should be in the form of a bulleted list and follow each procedure. Always keep in mind the reproducibility of the steps.
- Expected Results: Comment on the expected results which can be regularly achieved with this protocol, and/or results that may be produced from other applications or experimental conditions than those used from the protocol.
- Troubleshooting: Include information on how to troubleshoot the most likely problems users will encounter with the protocol. Please provide this information in the form of a table with the columns: “Step”, “Problem”, “Possible Reason,” and “Solution”. The step number should be given where the problem is first observed (not where it occurred). The appropriate steps should also be flagged in the main text by adding “Troubleshooting” callouts. If troubleshooting text refers to only one or two steps, it can also be formatted as normal text with subheadings referring to the steps or sections that the information pertains to.
The journal endorses the ICMJE requirement that clinical trials are registered in a WHO-approved public trials registry at or before the time of first participant enrollment. However, consistent with the AllTrials campaign, retrospectively registered trials will be considered if the justification for late registration is acceptable. The trial registry name and URL, and registration number must be included at the end of the abstract.
If your research involves animals, you will be asked to confirm that you have carefully read and adhered to the ARRIVE guidelines.
The preferred format for your manuscript is Word. You do not need to follow a template, but please ensure your heading levels are clear, and the sections clearly defined.
Your article title, keywords, and abstract all contribute to its position in search engine results, directly affecting the number of people who see your work. For details of what you can do to influence this, visit How to help readers find your article online.
Your manuscript’s title should be concise, descriptive, unambiguous, accurate, and reflect the precise contents of the manuscript. A descriptive title that includes the topic of the manuscript makes an article more findable in the major indexing services.
• The full list of authors including names and affiliations of each
• The listed affiliation should be the institution where the research was conducted. If an author has moved to a new institution since completing the research, the new affiliation can be included in a note at the end of the manuscript – please indicate this on the title page.
• All persons eligible for authorship must be included at the time of submission (please see the authorship section for more information).
• Contact information for the corresponding author: name, institutional address, phone, email
Please include a structured abstract of 250 words between the title and main body of your manuscript that concisely states the purpose of the research, major findings, and conclusions. If your research includes clinical trials, the trial registry name and URL, and registration number must be included at the end of the abstract. Submissions that do not meet this requirement will not be considered.
Articles that are not research reports and which do not have a Methods or Results section should submit an unstructured abstract.
For clinical trials, the trial registry name and URL, and registration number must be included at the end of the abstract.
Please include a minimum of 5 keywords, listed after the abstract. Keywords should be as specific as possible to the research topic.
For guidance on the preparation of illustrations, pictures, and graphs in electronic format, please read Sage’s artwork guidelines.
Figures supplied in color will appear in color online.
Please ensure that you have obtained any necessary permission from copyright holders for reproducing any illustrations, tables, figures, or lengthy quotations previously published elsewhere. For further information including guidance on fair dealing for criticism and review, please see the Frequently Asked Questions page on the Sage Journal Author Gateway.
If you are including an Acknowledgements section, this will be published at the end of your article. The Acknowledgments section should include all contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship. Per ICMJE recommendations, it is best practice to obtain consent from non-author contributors who you are acknowledging in your manuscript.
Writing assistance and third party submissions: if you have received any writing or editing assistance from a third-party, for example a specialist communications company, this must be clearly stated in the Acknowledgements section and in the covering letter. Please see the Sage Author Gateway for what information to include in your Acknowledgements section. If your submission is being made on your behalf by someone who is not listed as an author, for example the third-party who provided writing/editing assistance, you must state this in the Acknowledgements and also in your covering letter. Please note that the journal editor reserves the right to not consider submissions made by a third party rather than by the author/s themselves.
You will be asked to list the contribution of each author as part of the submission process. Please include the Author Contributions heading within your submission after the Acknowledgements section. The information you give on submission will then show under the Author Contributions heading later at the proofing stage.
Please include a section with the heading ‘Statements and Declarations’ at the end of your submitted article, after the Acknowledgements section [and Author Contributions section if applicable] including each of the sub-headings listed below. If a declaration is not applicable to your submission, you must still include the heading and state ‘Not applicable’ underneath. Please note that you may be asked to justify why a declaration was not applicable to your submission by the Editorial Office.
Please include your ethics approval statements under this heading, even if you have already included ethics approval information in your methods section. If ethical approval was not required, you need to explicitly state this. You can find information on what to say in your ethical statements as well as example statements on our Publication ethics and research integrity policies page.
All papers reporting studies involving human participants, human data or human tissue must state that the relevant Ethics Committee or Institutional Review Board approved the study, or waived the requirement for approval, providing the full name and institution of the review committee in addition to the approval number. If applicable, please also include this information in the Methods section of your manuscript.
Please include any participant consent information under this heading and state whether informed consent to participate was written or verbal. If the requirement for informed consent to participate has been waived by the relevant Ethics Committee or Institutional Review Board (i.e. where it has been deemed that consent would be impossible or impracticable to obtain), please state this. If this is not applicable to your manuscript, please state ‘Not applicable’ in this section. More information and example statements can be found on our Publication ethics and research integrity policies page.
Submissions containing any data from an individual person (including individual details, images or videos) must include a statement confirming that informed consent for publication was provided by the participant(s) or a legally authorized representative. Non-essential identifying details should be omitted. Please do not submit the participant’s actual written informed consent with your article, as this in itself breaches the patient’s confidentiality. The Journal requests that you confirm to us, in writing, that you have obtained written informed consent to publish but the written consent itself should be held by the authors/investigators themselves, for example in a patient’s hospital record. The confirmatory letter may be uploaded with your submission as a separate file in addition to the statement confirming that consent to publish was obtained within the manuscript text. If this is not applicable to your manuscript, please state ‘Not applicable’ in this section.
The journal requires a declaration of conflicting interests from all authors so that a statement can be included in your article. For guidance on conflict of interest statements, see our policy on conflicting interest declarations and the ICMJE recommendations.
If no conflict exists, your statement should read: ‘The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article’.
All articles need to include a funding statement, under a separate heading, even if you did not receive funding. You’ll find guidance and examples on our Funding page.
The Journal is committed to facilitating openness, transparency and reproducibility of research, and has the following research data sharing policy. For more information, including FAQs please visit the Sage Research Data policy pages.
Subject to appropriate ethical and legal considerations, authors are encouraged to:
The journal follows the Sage Vancouver reference style. View the Sage Vancouver guidelines to ensure your manuscript conforms.
Every in-text citation must have a corresponding citation in the reference list and vice versa. Corresponding citations must have identical spelling and year.
Authors should update any references to preprints when a peer reviewed version is made available, to cite the published research. Citations to preprints are otherwise discouraged.
If you use EndNote to manage references, you can download the the Sage Vancouver EndNote output file
This Journal can host additional materials online (e.g. datasets, podcasts, videos, images etc.) alongside the full text of the article. Your supplemental material must be one of our accepted file types. For that list and more information please refer to our guidelines on submitting supplemental files.
Authors seeking assistance with English language editing, translation, or figure and manuscript formatting to fit the journal’s specifications should consider using Sage Author Services. Visit Sage Author Services for further information.
As part of the submission process you will need to confirm that this is your original work, that you have the rights in the work, that this is for first publication in this Journal, that it is not being considered for/has not already been published elsewhere, and that you have obtained and can supply all necessary permissions for the reproduction of any copyright works not owned by you.
Please see our guidelines on prior publication and note that the journal may accept submissions of manuscripts that have been posted on preprint servers.
The journal does not accept submissions of manuscripts that have been posted on preprint servers.
IMPORTANT: Please check whether you already have an account in Sage Track before trying to create a new one. If you have reviewed or authored for the journal in the past year it is likely that you will have had an account created. For further guidance on submitting your manuscript online please visit ScholarOne Online Help.
Manuscripts should only be submitted with the consent of all contributing authors. The individual responsible for submitting the manuscript should carefully check that all those whose work contributed to the manuscript are listed as authors.
Ensure you upload all relevant manuscript files, including any additional supplemental files (including reporting guidelines where relevant).
Please view our authorship policies, which includes information on criteria for authorship, who should be the corresponding author and more.
Please note that AI chatbots, for example ChatGPT, should not be listed as authors. For more information see the policy on Use of ChatGPT and generative AI tools.
The following summary describes the peer review process for this journal:
Identity transparency:Single-anonymized
Reviewer interacts with: Editor
Review information published: Review reports
Your manuscript will undergo an initial evaluation. If it does not conform to the requirements laid out in these guidelines, it will be returned to you for amendments prior to peer review. Manuscripts may be desk rejected without peer review at this point if they are out of scope for the journal or otherwise unsuitable.
After passing the initial evaluation, your manuscript will then be peer reviewed. You can log in at any time to check the status of your manuscript. We will notify you when a decision has been reached.
The journal operates a conventional single-anonymized reviewing policy in which the reviewer’s name is always concealed from the submitting author.
To ensure the integrity of the peer review process we assign reviewers and cannot accept author recommendations.
All manuscripts are reviewed as rapidly as possible, while maintaining rigor. Reviewers make comments to the author and recommendations to the Editor who then makes the final decision on all manuscripts, including those appearing in a special issue or special collection. The Editor or members of the Editorial Board may occasionally submit their own manuscripts for possible publication in the Journal. In these cases, the peer review process will be managed by alternative members of the Board and the submitting Editor/Board member will have no involvement in the decision-making process.
As a COPE member we engage with multiple forms of post-publication discussion in line with wider guidance from Sage: Commentaries, Critiques and Responses.
You can view our complaints and appeals policy here.
Read Sage's complete peer review policy.
The journal and Sage take issues of copyright infringement, plagiarism or other breaches of best practice in publication very seriously. Please read Sage's complete policy on plagiarism and the actions we may take.
After acceptance you will receive instructions via email inviting you to complete the Open Access process. This will include signing the appropriate Creative Commons license and, where applicable, paying the Article Processing Charge (APC) or assigning a bill payer. Once the APC has been processed, your article will be prepared for publication and can appear online within an average of 30 days. Please note that, where an APC is applicable, production work cannot be completed on your manuscript until payment has been received.
Before publication we require the author as the rights holder to sign a Journal Contributor’s Publishing Agreement. The journal publishes manuscripts under Creative Commons licenses. The standard license for the journal is Creative Commons by Attribution Non-Commercial (CC BY-NC), which allows others to re-use the work without permission as long as the work is properly referenced and the use is non-commercial. For more information, you are advised to visit Sage's OA licenses page. Alternative license arrangements are available at the author’s request (e.g. to meet particular funder mandates).
If your manuscript was posted on a preprint server prior to acceptance, you must include a link in your preprint to the final published version of your published article.
Your Sage Production Editor will keep you informed as to your article’s progress throughout the production process. Proofs will be made available to the corresponding author via our editing portal, Sage Edit, or by email, and should be returned promptly to avoid delaying publication. Authors are reminded to check their proofs carefully to confirm that all author information, including names, affiliations, sequence, and contact details are correct, and that Funding and Conflict of Interest statements, if any, are accurate. This is the final opportunity to make changes to your manuscript. Further corrections will not be possible after publication. Changes to the author list are not permitted at this stage.
One of the many benefits of publishing your research in an open access journal is the speed to publication. With no page count constraints, your article will be published online in a fully citable form with a DOI number as soon as it has completed the production process. At this time it will be completely free to view and download for all.
Publication is not the end of the process. Between us, we can ensure that your article is found, read, downloaded and cited as widely as possible. Many of the most effective tactics are those you can do quickly and easily to your network of contacts and peers. Visit the Promote Your Article page on the Sage Journal Author Gateway for numerous resources to help you promote your work.
The Sage Journal Author Gateway has some general advice on how to get published, plus links to further resources. Sage Author Services also offers authors a variety of ways to improve and enhance your article including English language editing, plagiarism detection, and video abstract and infographic preparation.
If you have any questions about publishing with Sage, please visit the Sage Journals Solutions Portal.
You can view our complaints and appeals procedure.
You can direct any questions to the journal’s editorial office:
Rasjel van der Holst
Managing Editor
E-mail: stemjournal@iospress.com