About the journal
As of January 2024, Pathogens and Disease is a fully open access journal. This means that all previously published content is free to read from this date.
It also means that all submissions that get accepted for publication will be published open access and will therefore be subject to an Article Processing Charge (APC). See the Copyright and license including Open Access section of our Author Guidelines for more information.
At FEMS we are working hard to make publishing in our journals as financially accessible as possible. We want the barrier to entry to publishing in our journals to be around the quality and soundness of the science, rather than a financial barrier. This is why we are keeping one broad-scope journal free-to-publish; our APCs are set lower than many other quality journals in our field; and we have put in place generous discount and waiver policies; visit our Open Access FAQs page for more information.
Pathogens and Disease publishes outstanding primary research on hypothesis- and discovery-driven studies on pathogens, host-pathogen interactions, host response to infection and their molecular and cellular correlates. It covers all pathogens – eukaryotes, prokaryotes, and viruses – and includes zoonotic pathogens and experimental translational applications.
The journal was formerly published as FEMS Immunology & Medical Microbiology and FEMS Microbiology Immunology. Content for these titles can be found in the Pathogens and Disease archive.
Scope of the journal
Pathogens and Disease aims to publish outstanding primary research articles reporting on hypothesis- or discovery-driven studies that significantly advance our understanding of pathogens, their interactions with host cells and organisms as well as host responses to infections and their molecular, cellular, microbial and environmental correlates. Studies corresponding broadly to the fields of molecular pathogenesis, cellular microbiology, innate and adaptive immunity and studies of the systems biology (‘omics) of pathogens are welcome. Commentaries and Perspectives on matters related to articles published in Pathogens and Disease or Minireviews on topics of interest in infectious disease research are also welcome. Clinical studies, excluding clinical trials, and modelling studies (from in situ to in silico) that are relevant to the aforementioned fields will also be considered. Experimental translational applications in vaccine research, therapeutics, probiotics, pathogen typing or diagnostics are also considered, if they contribute a significant advancement in the field. Articles will be assigned to one of several sub-categories based on the dominant approach/topic of the study.
- Molecular Effectors of Pathogenesis (e.g., regulation, structure/function of effectors, host response factors, or systems biology)
- Molecular Pathogenesis (molecular and genetic correlates of pathogenesis)
- Cellular Pathogenesis (cellular correlates of pathogenesis)
- Microbial Communities in Infection and Disease (e.g., role of biofilms and microbiota in infection, co-infections)
- Host Responses to Infection (e.g., signalling, innate and adaptive immunity, inflammation, immunopathology)
- OneHealth (e.g., studies that document environmental, veterinary and/or community correlates of human infection and disease; emergence of microbial antibiotic resistance in humans and animals)
- 'Omics and Systems Biology (e.g., comparative pathogenomics, pathogen and host transcriptomics, proteomics, lipidomics, glycomics, metabolomics, immunomics, etc. and modelling thereof)
- Translational Research (e.g., experimental immunity to infection/disease in animal or other models, identification of host/pathogen targets for drug screening, susceptibility/resistance to experimental drugs, including probiotics, identification of host/pathogen biomarkers of infection or disease).
If you are unsure which Section is most appropriate for your manuscript, for example in the case of multidisciplinary studies, we recommend that you contact one of the Editors-In-Chief by email prior to submission.
Appropriate experts will referee the papers.
Journal metrics and highlights
2023 Journal Impact Factor: 2.7
Ranking 2021: 89/161 (Microbiology); 120/181 (Immunology); 67/132 (Infectious Diseases)
Source: Journal Impact Factor™, from Clarivate, 2024
2023 CiteScore: 7.4*
*About CiteScore: CiteScore is a simple and robust way of measuring the citation impact of peer-reviewed research in serial titles such as journals, book series, and conference proceedings. The 2023 CiteScore is based on the number of citations received to documents (articles, reviews, conference papers, book chapters, and data papers) by a journal over four years, divided by the number of the same document types indexed in Scopus and published in those same four years.
2023 downloads: Over 630,000
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