Instructions to Authors
Publishing in Genes & Development
SCOPE: Genes & Development publishes high-quality research papers of general interest and biological significance. Papers should contain results that provide a novel advance and/or well-elucidated new mechanistic insight into a significant biological question or provide novel insights into disease development and treatment of individuals or families gained by application of genomics, proteomics, metabolomics, and other approaches.
Genes & Development publishes three research manuscript formats: Research Papers, Research Communications and Resource/Methodology papers, in addition to commissioned Review and Outlook articles. For detailed manuscript preparation guidelines in each of the manuscript formats please refer to the link below on 'Manuscript Preparation'. If an author has a query regarding whether their work is appropriate for submission to Genes & Development, they are welcome to submit a Pre-Submission Inquiry with Title Page and Abstract to the Editor ([email protected]).
To ensure a rapid review process, all Research Papers and Research Communications are evaluated by the Editors, often in consultation with members of the Editorial Board. Articles deemed not suitable for publication in Genes & Development will be returned to the author without review. Other manuscripts will be sent for a full review to experts in the field and members of the Editorial Board. Publication time from acceptance of manuscript is between one and three months. For papers accepted subject to revision, only one revised version will be considered; it must be submitted within two months of the provisional acceptance.
Journal Policies
Submission Policies
The journal accepts submissions that present original research that has not been published previously. Submission to the journal implies that a paper is not being considered for another journal or book. Closely related papers that are in press elsewhere or that have been or will be submitted elsewhere must be included with the Genes & Development submission. In addition, Genes & Development journal policy does not allow submission of manuscripts with similar results and overlapping authors. Manuscripts must include a statement that all authors have approved the current version of the manuscript and have approved its submission to Genes & Development. In addition, authors are required to declare any conflicts of interest or competing financial interests. The relevant form appears on our online submission system and must be completed when submitting a manuscript (submit.genesdev.org).
Authorship Policy
Journal policy allows the listing of only one corresponding author during the submission and publication process; a maximum of two are allowed to be listed on the published manuscript. Further notes (regarding equal author contribution, etc.) may also be specified on the manuscript. All research articles must include an Author Contributions section (as a second paragraph in the Acknowledgments section) describing each author's contributions. Genes & Development follows the guidelines of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICJME) for authorship and contributorship designations.
Ethics Policy
Competing Interests—Authors are required to declare any competing interests that may be perceived as contributing to potential bias. Examples include funding for a research program or employment by, consulting for, or stocks/shares in an organization that could be financially affected by the publication of a paper, as well as patents or patent applications whose value may be affected by the publication of the paper. Authors are required to provide a statement listing any competing interests that is published alongside their article.
Protection of Human Subjects and Animals in Research—All work using human subjects and animals must be performed in accordance with the ethical standards of the relevant institutional and national committees for such matters and the WMS Declaration of Helsinki on ethical principles for medical research. For work using animals, authors are urged to follow the ARRIVE guidelines drawn up by NC3RS. Authors are required to provide details of the institutional review boards (IRBs) and any other relevant committees that approved all studies using human participants.
Informed Consent—It is the authors’ responsibility to inform patients about and obtain consent for the research performed and publication of the results. All non-essential identifying information should be omitted from the manuscript. Where identifying information, such as patients’ eyes, must be shown, authors must obtain written informed consent for publication from the patient or their legal guardian. The journal only allows inclusion of identifying images if it deems they are essential to support the conclusions of the paper. The authors must also obtain consent for any deposits of genomic and/or other potentially identifying data made in publicly accessible databases. Authors are required to provide a signed statement confirming that any necessary consents required by law have been received from all research participants/patients and archived.
Materials and Data Release Policy
As a condition for the publication of a paper in Genes & Development, authors are required to make all materials and protocols in their published work freely available to qualified researchers. Examples of materials include, but are not limited to, cell lines, plasmids, antibodies, reagents, and mouse strains. These materials must be made promptly available, and reasonable reimbursement to cover material packaging and shipping costs is appropriate. Authors are encouraged to deposit biological materials such as cell lines, plasmid constructs and genetically modified organisms in an established public repository. If materials are held in repositories or if a third-party distribution agreement is in place, then the distributor name and location should be included in the manuscript.
Genes & Development also requires that all data and supporting data sets from a publication be made available to the broader community from the date of publication. This should be done through publicly available databases, when available, or through the Genes & Development website. When using public databases, the entry name/ID or accession number must be referred to in the Materials and Methods section of the relevant paper. For further information on public databases and a list of resources please see the link below on 'Instructions Regarding Data Submission, Appropriate Nomenclature and Additional Resources'.
Plagiarism and Image Manipulation
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Authors must ensure that all relevant previously published work is properly acknowledged and cited at the appropriate point in the main text, with the correct bibliographic information given in the Reference list. Quotation marks (" "), with the appropriate citation and Reference, should be used where statements made in a previously published work are reproduced verbatim. The journal reserves the right to employ automated tools to identify any instances of plagiarism and to withdraw the article if detected.
Authors are also responsible for obtaining permission from the rights holder to adapt or reproduce material previously published elsewhere (typically, this would be the publisher or, in cases of Creative Commons license, the author) and for including any required permission statement alongside the citation.
Artwork
The journal will not accept artwork that is manipulated to hide, add, remove, merge, or otherwise change any of the original data. Adjustments to the brightness or contrast of artwork are acceptable, providing they are applied to the entire image and do not obscure any feature of the original. Tools that detect the manipulation of data may be utilized by the journal to ensure that original data have been preserved in the final image.
Use of Artificial Intelligence Tools and Large Language Models
Articles submitted to CSHL Press journals must be the authors’ own work. Authors are accountable for the accuracy, integrity, and originality of their work, including content generated by artificial intelligence (AI) tools, large language models (LLMs), and similar technologies. AI tools and LLMs do not meet the requirement for accountability, so they may not be listed as authors on any article published by CSHL Press journals. The use of AI tools or LLMs to generate article content should instead be fully documented in the Methods section of the manuscript. This includes reporting the AI tool or LLM and version used, with a complete description of how it was used. It is not necessary to acknowledge the use of AI-based grammar/spelling checkers or reference managers.
Any use of AI tools or LLMs must not breach Genes & Development’s plagiarism, image manipulation, or confidentiality policies. Ideas, data, words, or other material originated by investigators other than the authors’ must be presented with adequate citation and permissions and transparent referencing.
Open Access Option
All papers are freely available online in Genes & Development six months after publication, unless an author pays an Open Access surcharge of $3700 to make a paper freely available online immediately upon publication. Authors can select Open Access with either a Creative Commons CC-BY-NC License (Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International) or a CC-BY License (Attribution 4.0 International). Authors who choose Open Access may select one of the two CC licenses by completing the Open Access License to Publish form upon acceptance (available in the Author Area at submit.genesdev.org). Choosing Open Access will have no effect on acceptance and publication of submitted papers.
Preprint Servers
The journal only accepts papers that present original research that has not been published previously. Conference presentations or posting manuscripts on community preprint servers prior to submission to Genes & Development will not be considered prior publications. Authors are responsible for updating both the archived preprint with the journal reference (including DOI) and a link to the published article on the Genes & Development website upon publication.
Genes & Development offers scoop protection for submitted manuscripts from initial submission and throughout the peer review and revisions process. Papers that are published on the same topic in other peer reviewed journals or on preprint servers during this period will not be considered as cause for rejection when evaluating whether the paper presents a sufficient advance or novel insights. However, the manuscript may be rejected for other reasons.
Depositing in PubMed Central (PMC)
Genes & Development routinely deposits all final papers in PubMed Central on behalf of authors as each full issue is published.
All papers in Genes & Development are freely available in PMC six months after full-issue publication, thereby complying with mandates from a wide variety of funding institutions, including National Institutes of Health, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and members of UKPMC Funders Group, such as Wellcome Trust.
In addition, authors are invited to participate in the journal’s fee-based Open Access program, thereby eliminating the journal’s six-month embargo period. Open Access papers are freely available to both subscribers and nonsubscribers of the journal in PubMed Central upon full-issue upload.
