All manuscripts received are duly acknowledged. Upon submission, the Editorial Office will check the manuscript's conformity to technical quality and author guidelines, typically within one week. Manuscripts with insufficient conformity are returned to authors for revision. Manuscripts with insufficient originality, serious scientific or experimental flaws, or lack of interest to the readership of Genes & Diseases will be rejected by the Editor-in-Chief and/or Deputy Editor-in-Chief without further peer review. Manuscripts deemed suitable for publication are sent to the Executive Associate Editors. The Executive Associate Editors will make initial assessment and will serve as the managing editor, who in turn will appoint 2-3 editorial board members and/or external referees to complete peer reviews within 4 weeks. Based on the recommendations and comments made by peer reviewers, the Executive Associate Editor will make a formal recommendation to the Editor-in-Chief and/or Deputy Editor-in-Chief who will make the final decision within 1 week, in consultation with other editorial board members, if deemed necessary. The comments and recommendations (acceptance/ rejection/ minor revision/ major revision in manuscript) received from reviewers are conveyed to the corresponding author. If necessary, the author is required to provide a point by point response to reviewers' comments and submit a revised manuscript. This process will be repeated till reviewers and editors are satisfied with the revised manuscript. 

Manuscripts accepted for publication are copy edited for grammar, punctuation, print style, and format. Page proofs are sent to the corresponding author. The corresponding author is expected to return the corrected proofs within 48 hours. The whole process of submission of the manuscript, final decision, sending and receiving proofs is completed online. To achieve faster and greater dissemination of knowledge and information, the journal publishes articles online as 'Ahead of Print' immediately upon acceptance.

During submission, the contributor is requested to provide names of at least three qualified reviewers who have had experience in the subject of the submitted manuscript. The reviewers should not be affiliated with the same institutes as the contributor/s. However, the selection of these reviewers is at the sole discretion of the editor.

The corresponding author is responsible for ensuring that all appropriate contributors are listed as authors and that all authors have agreed to the manuscript's content and its submission to Genes & Diseases. In any case where we become aware of an authorship dispute, authorship must be approved in writing by all of the parties. Contributors should provide a description of contributions made by each of them towards the manuscript. Description should be divided in following categories, as applicable: concept and design, literature search, clinical studies, experimental studies, data acquisition, data analysis, statistical analysis, manuscript preparation, manuscript editing and manuscript review.

Please submit the names, institutional affiliations, and e-mail addresses of at least 3 potential external reviewers as well as a brief description of their expertise relevant to your manuscript. Suggested reviewers should be individuals qualified to evaluate the work you have submitted. The reviewers suggested may not be current, recent or extensive collaborators of yours, and must not be involved in the preparation of the manuscript. Reviewers must not be members of the same institution as the authors. Editorial Board members of Genes & Diseases should not be named as suggested reviewers.

Please note that the editor retains the sole right to decide whether or not the suggested reviewers are used. Failure to provide appropriate reviewer suggestions may result in your manuscript being returned to you without being reviewed. 

Authors may request exclusion of certain reviewers if competing interests are anticipated. However, no more than 3 such names should be given. Entire groups or institutions cannot be specified for exclusion.

For manuscripts reporting studies involving human subjects, statements identifying the committee approving the studies and confirming that informed consent was obtained from all subjects must appear in the Experimental Procedures section. All experiments on live vertebrates or higher invertebrates must be performed in accordance with relevant institutional and national guidelines and regulations. In the manuscript, a statement identifying the committee approving the experiments and confirming that all experiments conform to the relevant regulatory standards must be included in the Experimental Procedures section. The editors reserve the right to seek comments from reviewers or additional information from authors on any cases in which concerns arise.

All randomized controlled trials submitted for publication should include a complete Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials (CONSORT) flow chart (available at http://www.consort-statement.org). This Journal has adopted the proposal from the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) that requires, as a condition of consideration for publication of clinical trials, registration in a public trials registry. Purely observational studies (those in which the assignment of the medical intervention is not at the discretion of the investigator) do not require registration.

A signed statement of informed consent to publish (in print and online) patient descriptions, photographs and pedigrees should be obtained from all subjects (parents or legal guardians for minors) who can be identified (including by the subjects themselves) in such written descriptions, photographs or pedigrees. Such persons should be shown the manuscript before its submission. Omitting data or making data less specific to de-identify patients is acceptable, but altering or falsifying any such data is not acceptable.

You are requested to identify who provided financial support for the conduct of the research and/or preparation of the article and to briefly describe the role of the sponsor(s), if any, in study design; in the collection, analysis and interpretation of data; in the writing of the report; and in the decision to submit the article for publication. If the funding source(s) had no such involvement, it is recommended to state this.

Before the accepted manuscript is published in an online issue: requests to add or remove an author, or to rearrange the author names, must be sent to the Journal Manager from the corresponding author and must include: (a) the reason the name should be added or removed, or the author names rearranged and (b) written confirmation (email, fax, letter) from all authors that they agree with the addition, removal or rearrangement. In the case of addition or removal of authors, this includes confirmation from the author being added or removed. Requests that are not sent by the corresponding author will be forwarded by the Journal Manager to the corresponding author, who must follow the procedure as described above. Note that: (1) Journal Managers will inform the Journal Editors of any such requests and (2) publication of the accepted manuscript in an online issue is suspended until the authorship has been agreed upon. After the accepted manuscript is published in an online issue: any requests to add, delete, or rearrange author names in an article published in an online issue will follow the same policies as noted above and result in a corrigendum.

The following documents may be included:

• Conflict of Interest Statement.
• Copyright Transfer Agreement.
• Authorship Statement - All the authors' signatures must be included.
• External Reviewer Suggestions. You may use the form that follows this guide for authors. AND, where applicable.
• Ethics Statement. Articles covering human or animal experiments must be accompanied by a letter of approval from the relevant review committee or authorities.
• Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials (CONSORT) flow chart for randomized controlled trials submitted for publication.
• Articles where human subjects can be identified in descriptions, photographs or pedigrees must be accompanied by a signed statement of informed consent to publish (in print and online) the descriptions, photographs and pedigrees from each subject who can be identified.
• Where material has been reproduced from other copyrighted sources, the letter(s) of permission from the copyright holder(s) to use the copyrighted sources must be supplied.