About

Aims and scope

The increasing realization that immune ageing and organismal ageing are intimately inter-related puts the immune system at centre-stage in our efforts to understand and manipulate the ageing process.

Immunity & Ageing provides a specific conduit for dissemination of new knowledge in this increasingly important arena. Published since 2004, the journal is a specialist open access journal dedicated to promulgating information on the impact of ageing on immune systems, the influence of aged immune systems on organismal well-being and longevity, age-associated diseases which have at least partly an immune etiology, and potential immune interventions to increase health span.

Immunity & Ageing welcomes submissions dealing with any aspect of ageing in human and model organisms that relates to immune function. Papers dealing with any aspect of ageing that does not include a substantial immunological element will not be considered.

Open access

All articles published by Immunity & Ageing are made freely and permanently accessible online immediately upon publication, without subscription charges or registration barriers. Further information about open access can be found here.

As authors of articles published in Immunity & Ageing you are the copyright holders of your article and have granted to any third party, in advance and in perpetuity, the right to use, reproduce or disseminate your article, according to the BMC license agreement.

For those of you who are US government employees or are prevented from being copyright holders for similar reasons, BMC can accommodate non-standard copyright lines. Please contact us if further information is needed.

Article-processing charges

Open-access publishing is not without costs. Immunity & Ageing therefore levies an article-processing charge of £2190.00/$2990.00/€2490.00 for each article accepted for publication, plus VAT or local taxes where applicable. The APC is determined at the date of acceptance.

If the corresponding author's institution participates in our open access membership program, some or all of the publication cost may be covered (more details available on the membership page). We routinely waive charges for authors from low-income countries. For other countries, article-processing charge waivers or discounts are granted on a case-by-case basis to authors with insufficient funds. Authors can request a waiver or discount during the submission process. For further details, see our article-processing charge page.

Visit Springer Nature’s open access funding & support services for information about research funders and institutions that provide funding for APCs.

Springer Nature offers agreements that enable institutions to cover open-access publishing costs. Learn more about our open access agreements to check your eligibility and discover whether this journal is included.

For more information on APCs please see our Journal Pricing FAQs

Indexing services

All articles published in Immunity & Ageing are included in:

Biological Abstracts
BIOSIS
CAS
Citebase
DOAJ
Embase
Google Scholar
Journal Citation Reports/Science Edition
OAIster
PubMed
PubMed Central
Science Citation Index Expanded
SCImago
Scopus
SOCOLAR
Zetoc

The full text of all articles is deposited in digital archives around the world to guarantee long-term digital preservation. You can also access all articles published by BioMed Central on SpringerLink.

Peer-review policy

Peer-review is the system used to assess the quality of a manuscript before it is published. Independent researchers in the relevant research area assess submitted manuscripts for originality, validity and significance to help editors determine whether the manuscript should be published in their journal. You can read more about the peer-review process here.

Immunity & Ageing operates using a single-blind peer-review system, where the reviewers are aware of the names and affiliations of the authors, but the reviewer reports provided to authors are anonymous.The benefit of single-blind peer review is that it is the traditional model of peer review that many reviewers are comfortable with, and it facilitates a dispassionate critique of a manuscript.

Edited by Graham Pawelec and Nan-ping Weng, Immunity & Ageing is supported by an expert Editorial Board. Manuscripts submitted to Immunity & Ageing will be assigned to the appropriate Editor. The Editor will oversee peer review of the manuscript by inviting at least two external referees, who will be asked to evaluate whether the manuscript is scientifically sound and coherent, whether it duplicates already published work, and whether or not the manuscript is sufficiently clear for publication.

Based on the referees' comments the Editor will then advise the Editor-in-Chiefs on a final decision on the manuscript.

Editorial policies

All manuscripts submitted to Immunity & Ageing should adhere to BioMed Central's editorial policies.

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Citing articles in Immunity & Ageing

Articles in Immunity & Ageing should be cited in the same way as articles in a traditional journal. Because articles are not printed, they do not have page numbers; instead, they are given a unique article number.

Article citations follow this format:

Authors: Title. Immun Ageing [year], [volume number]:[article number].

e.g. Roberts LD, Hassall DG, Winegar DA, Haselden JN, Nicholls AW, Griffin JL: Increased hepatic oxidative metabolism distinguishes the action of Peroxisome Proliferator-Activated Receptor delta from Peroxisome Proliferator-Activated Receptor gamma in the Ob/Ob mouse. Immun Ageing 2009, 1:115.

refers to article 115 from Volume 1 of the journal.

Appeals and complaints

Authors who wish to appeal a rejection or make a complaint should follow the procedure outlined in the BMC Editorial Policies .

Benefits of publishing with BMC

High visibility

Immunity & Ageing's open access policy allows maximum visibility of articles published in the journal as they are available to a wide, global audience.

Speed of publication

Immunity & Ageing offers a fast publication schedule whilst maintaining rigorous peer review; all articles must be submitted online, and peer review is managed fully electronically (articles are distributed in PDF form, which is automatically generated from the submitted files). Articles will be published with their final citation after acceptance, in both fully browsable web form, and as a formatted PDF.

Flexibility

Online publication in Immunity & Ageing gives you the opportunity to publish large datasets, large numbers of color illustrations and moving pictures, to display data in a form that can be read directly by other software packages so as to allow readers to manipulate the data for themselves, and to create all relevant links (for example, to PubMed, to sequence and other databases, and to other articles).

Promotion and press coverage

Articles published in Immunity & Ageing are included in article alerts and regular email updates. Some may be highlighted on Immunity & Ageing’s pages and on the BMC homepage.

In addition, articles published in Immunity & Ageing may be promoted by press releases to the general or scientific press. These activities increase the exposure and number of accesses for articles published in Immunity & Ageing. A list of articles recently press-released by journals published by BMC is available here.

Copyright

As an author of an article published in Immunity & Ageing you retain the copyright of your article and you are free to reproduce and disseminate your work (for further details, see the BMC license agreement).

For further information about the advantages of publishing in a journal from BMC, please click here.