AboutScience

AboutScience is an open access multidisciplinary publisher based in Milan (Italy) which receives no public or educational funding, focused on clinical medicine and healthcare in its broadest term, including digital innovation, health technology assessment, narrative medicine, patient engagement, public involvement and other topics of growing impact.

We consider, review and publish observations that are critical for the advancement of our knowledge and we offer equal opportunity for all authors to publish their research. We have implemented a rigorous peer-review process and apply strict ethical policies to ensure high quality contributions across diverse fields. We screen submitted contents with iThenticate to ensure originality and work with ReviewerCredits to provide our reviewers credits for their contribuiton.

We provide the highest editorial standards with a simplified and cost-effective submission process to ensure efficient dissemination of accepted content and partner with outstanding organizations to support our processes.

• Giulio Zuanetti, CEO AboutScience is owned and managed by Giulio Zuanetti, MD, a cardiologist by education and a long-time STM publisher, having worked in editorial and managerial positions for several international publishers, including Adis, WoltersKluwer, Springer and Wichtig.

• Lucia Steele, Publications Manager With over 20 years’ experience in STM publishing, her focus is on reviewing and strengthening policies and procedures, evaluating and deploying alternative solutions to improve efficiencies, liaising to journal editors, publishers and partners. Her long experience in scientific publishing makes her very attentive to editors’ and publishers’ needs, offering viable solutions to successfully publish new contents. She is in charge of the peer review process of AboutScience journal portfolio.

• Yvonne Campfens, Consultant Yvonne Campfens has more than 25 years of experience internationally in managing large-scale collaborative projects and strategy execution within academic publishing and related service sectors. In 2018, she started her own consultancy business, focussing on publishers, startups, investors, and other players in our changing value chain. She advises AboutScience in strengthening its journal portfolio and its positioning within the Open Access landscape.

• Giacomo Bellani, Consultant Giacomo Bellani, is a key advisory board member for clinical medicine for AboutScience. He is a professor of anesthesia and intensive care at the University of Milano, Bicocca. He combines his clinical and academic expertise with his drive for innovation in the field of peer review  and advises the company on the development of innovative content and article formatting.

General information

Open Access is a publication model by which research outputs are distributed online, free of cost or other access barriers.

Open Access publishing contributes to the maximum dissemination of contents providing access to anyone with an interest in your work and this translates into increased citation and impact. At the same time, it allows open access to innovative and often ground breaking information.

Authors who publish with AboutScience retain the copyright of their work and AboutScience protects the authors against misuse of their work, as they manage permissions for commercial use of the author’s published paper. Licensing is clearly embedded within each article, in all its formats (print, ePub and online).

Licensing models

We apply two main licensing models. Most articles are published under Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 4.0 International ( CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which allows users to read, print and download, Copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format, Translate (for private use only), Reuse portions or extracts from the  article in other works as long as the original source is fully quoted.

Articles receiving public funding are published under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license which allows users to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially.

Author's self archving and sharing policy

Authors may share their work following these indications.

The submitted version (Author Original Manuscript) before peer review, which an author can share freely, including social media or scholarly collaboration networks, personal websites or preprints servers intended for non-commercial use. Posting on a preprint server is not considered duplicate publication. If you post your submitted version anywhere, we ask you that, upon acceptance, you will provide an acknowledgment as follows:
“This article has been accepted for publication in [JOURNAL TITLE], published by AboutScience”. Please note that a DOI is available upon acceptance and we encourage you to use it.”

The accepted version (Accepted Manuscript) including revisions after peer review but before copyediting or typesetting by the publisher may be shared on any website, through social media channels or distributing electronic copies for personal, non-commercial use.
We recommend that after publication you add an acknowledgement to your post as follows:
“This is the accepted version of an article published by AboutScience in [JOURNAL TITLE] on [date of publication], DOI:[add article doi]”

The final published PDF (Version of Record) after copy-editing and typesetting, may be freely shared using the DOI and a link to the publisher’s own copy and a citation in a format similar to this:
“Author(s), article Title, Journal Title (Volume Number) pp. xx-xx. Copyright © 2023 (Copyright Holder). DOI: [DOI number]”

Publication fees

All manuscripts are submitted under Open Access terms. Upon acceptance, after peer review under the responsibility of the Section Editor, authors receive payment information for publication processing fees. Article processing fees cover all costs connected to publication and no additional charge will be due (e.g. extra page charge,  colour illustrations, or other).  Where applicable, article processing fees are subject to VAT.

Publication fees are based on article type and vary for each publication. For full information please visit each journal’s Publication Fees page:

• AboutOpen
• Drug Target Insights
• Giornale di Clinica Nefrologica e Dialisi
• Global & Regional Health Technology Assessment
• Journal of Circulating Biomarkers

Submitting to our journals

We have simplified our submission process and have chosen Open Journal System for supporting authors, reviewers and editors. Open Journal Systems (OJS) is a journal management and publishing system that has been developed by the Public Knowledge Project through its federally funded efforts to expand and improve access to research. It offers unique features and allows a seamless experience from submission to online publication and data sharing. OJS is also perfectly configured to allow crawling by search engines and it allows deposit of data to most indexing services relevant to the scientific community. Indexing services ensure that scholarly content is discoverable and accessible to the broadest possible audience. It is strategic for a journal’s content to be visible where researchers in the field are conducting their research, and this is achievable by targeting indexes favoured by scholars in a given area of study.

To receive assistance or if you have queries regarding our submission system contact us

Instructions to authors

We have made the submission process as easy as possible, but we still require authors to conform to the highest ethical standards. This is valuable to ensure the highest reliability of all contents we publish. Each one of our journals offers detailed instructions to authors: refer to the individual author menu for full information:

• AboutOpen
• Drug Target Insights
• Giornale di Clinica Nefrologica e Dialisi (GCND)
• Global & Regional Health Technology Assessment (GRHTA)
• Journal of Circulating Biomarkers

Artwork guidelines

Submitting high quality images with your manuscript enhances the readers’ experience, as well as offering a visual representation of your article. To help authors get the best of their artwork, review our Artwork Guidelines (pdf, 2MB).

Special article types

Some innovative article types may be suitable to report your research results in a dynamic way. Consider to submit an Explained image or a Video article: they both offer a novel approach to scientific literature, they are both indexable and citeable.

• Explained image
• Video article

Reviewing our journals

AboutScience is committed to a fair and transparent publication policy. The Editor in Chief and the Editorial boards of each  journal are primarily responsible for ensuring a fair review process at the end of which a final decision will be made and notified to the Authors. The Editor in Chiefs are also responsible to select and appoint new  members of the board. Editorial board members (including the Editor-in-Chief) do not process their own work:  submissions they make to the journal are assigned to independent editors and reviewers, who do not  have any conflict of interest with the manuscript and authors. The Publisher and the Editors are in agreement that commercial revenues will in no way influence Editorial decisions.

Our rewarding programme

AboutScience has joined ReviewerCredits, the most comprehensive platform to certify, measure and reward the activity of scientists as Peer Reviewers and as Conference Speakers.  This innovative collaboration represents  a crucial effort and a great step forward for a higher recognition of editorial activities, contributing to a comprehensive re-thinking and a global innovation of the academic editorial world.

Each review you will perform for AboutScience journals will be validated by the Editors, added to your personal certificate and entitle you to earn virtual credits which can be used to obtain benefits available in the ReviewerCredits virtual store. We encourage you to register as a reviewer on the ReviewCredits platform and claim reviews performed. This service is provided free of charge.

AboutOpen is an open access, peer-reviewed journal publishing real world evidence and other clinical studies, reviews and point of views, case series, and single clinical cases that contribute to increase our knowledge and experience in clinical medicine, pharmacy, healthcare technology and other healthcare related disciplines. Accepted articles span the full spectrum of medical science, pharma, biotech and healthcare technology and can be published either in English or in local languages with English abstract.  It considers for publication original contribution not previously published in any language or country and not under consideration for publication elsewhere and is addressed to researchers and health professionals of all levels, who will find openly accessible literature on their specialty, with no paywall and no registration.

This journal publishes new articles as soon as they are ready for publication (as customary now for scientific journals) and then collecting them in an issue, to guarantee rapid and efficient publication times and a content distribution to its indexing databases.

See Abstracting and Indexing here

Drug Target Insights (DTI) is an international, indexed, peer-reviewed, open access, online only journal, published once a year. It covers current developments in all areas of the field of clinical therapeutics and focusing on molecular drug targets which include disease-specific proteins, receptors, enzymes, and genes. The journal seeks to elucidate the impact of new therapeutic agents on patient acceptability, preference, satisfaction and quality of life. The journal welcomes unsolicited article proposals. All articles are listed on PubMed and are freely available via PubMed Central.

This journal publishes new articles as soon as they are ready for publication (online first, as customary now for scientific journals) and then collecteding them in an issue, to guarantee rapid and efficient publication times and a content distribution to its indexing databases.

See Abstracting and Indexing here.

Giornale di Clinica Nefrologica e Dialisi (GCND), formerly Giornale di Tecniche Nefrologiche e Dialitiche,  has been a point of reference for the Italian nephrology community for the last 30 years, addressing nephrologists and dialysis experts, dialysis and transplant nurses and dialysis technicians. With its vision of supporting a multi-professional approach to nephrology, GCND has established itself as a point of exchange with important national associations of operators (SIAN) and patients (AIRP, AIAF, ANED) with whom there is a constructive collaboration.

GCND is an indexed, peer-reviewed, open access, online only journal, published once a year. This journal publishes new articles as soon as they are ready for publication (early view, as customary now for scientific journals) and then collecteding them in an issue, to guarantee rapid and efficient publication times and a content distribution to its indexing databases.

GCND publishes editorials, reviews, original articles, short communications and letters, controversies and investigations related to nephrology. All contributions must be original, unpublished, and comply with the manuscript submission guidelines. Specific topics, such as cardionephrology, epidemiology and statistics, clinical management and social media, fundamentals of kidney transplantation, humanization of care, gender nephrology, narrative nephrology (in collaboration with ANED) further identify the multi-professional approach to this large medical field. Additionally, great importance is granted to to nephrology nursing (in collaboration with SIAN) and to specific contributions for polycistic kidney disease (in collaboration with AIRP) and Anderson-Fabry disease ( in collaboration with AIAF).

See Abstracting and Indexing here

Global Health & Technology Assessment (GRHTA) is an international, indexed, peer-reviewed, open access, online only journal, published once a year. It aims to promote health technology assessment and economic evaluation, enabling choices among alternative therapeutical paths or procedures with different clinical and economic outcomes. The Journal fosters a refined search of the relation between economic factors and decision-making in healthcare, based on the role of scientific and technological advancement in reaching higher healthcare standards and the intrinsic limitations within each market in allocating healthcare resources.

This journal publishes new articles as soon as they are ready for publication (as customary now for scientific journals) and then collecting them in an issue, to guarantee rapid and efficient publication times and a content distribution to its indexing databases.

See Abstracting and Indexing here.

Journal of Circulating Biomarkers is an international, peer-reviewed, open access, scientific, online only journal, published once a year. It focuses on all aspects of the rapidly growing field of circulating blood-based biomarkers and diagnostics using circulating protein and lipid markers, circulating tumor cells (CTC), circulating cell-free DNA (cfDNA) and extracellular vesicles, including exosomes, microvesicles, microparticles, ectosomes and apoptotic bodies. The journal publishes high-impact articles that deal with all fields related to circulating biomarkers and diagnostics, ranging from basic science to translational and clinical applications. Papers from a wide variety of disciplines are welcome; interdisciplinary studies are especially suitable for this journal. 

Included within the scope are a broad array of specialties including (but not limited to) cancer, immunology, neurology, metabolic diseases, cardiovascular medicine, regenerative medicine, nosology, physiology, pathology, technological applications in diagnostics, therapeutics, vaccine, drug delivery, regenerative medicine, drug development and clinical trials. The journal also hosts reviews, perspectives and news on specific topics.

All submitted articles considered suitable for Journal of Circulating Biomarkers are subjected to rigorous peer review to ensure the highest levels of quality. The review process is carried out as quickly as possible to minimize any delays in the online publication of articles.  This journal publishes new articles as soon as they are ready for publication (online first, as customary now for scientific journals) and then collecteding them in an issue, to guarantee rapid and efficient publication times and a content distribution to its indexing databases.

Submissions are encouraged from all institutions and on all topics related to circulation protein and lipid markers, CTC, cfDNA and extracellular vesicles, including: 

• technical development and clinical application of circulating protein and lipid markers
• technical advances in isolation, purification and characterization of CTC, cfDNA, exosomes and other extracellular vesicles
• clinical applications of CTCs, circulating cell free DNA and extracellular vesicles
• use of CTCs, cfDNA, exosomes and extracellular vesicles in diagnostics and companion diagnostics
• use of extracellular vesicles in therapeutics delivery, antigen presentation and vaccine development
• design and production of cell-derived vesicles and synthetic vesicles
• biogenesis of extracellular vesicles, both in eukaryotic and prokaryotic cells
• mechanisms of vesicle: cell interactions intercellular signaling
• intercellular traffic of proteins, nucleic acids and other macromolecules
• modulation of the extracellular matrix
• roles of extracellular vesicles in normal physiological processes, including differentiation, development, immunity, tissue repair, stem cell biology, etc.
• roles of extracellular vesicles in disease, including cancer, neurodegeneration, diabetes, chronic inflammatory diseases, cardiovascular diseases, infectious disease, ageing, etc.
• virology and bacteriology
• use of extracellular vesicles in association with other synthetic nanoparticle for different scopes

See Abstracting and Indexing here.