Instructions to Authors

Please note that the journal has been ONLINE ONLY since the 2018 January issue, when we ceased publication of the print issue altogether. There are now no supplementary charges for colour printing and we do not offer the option to purchase offprints of papers published in the journal. All authors continue to receive a free access link to their paper upon publication.

Open Access

International Immunology offers the option of publishing under either a standard licence or an open access licence. Please note that some funders require open access publication as a condition of funding. If you are unsure whether you are required to publish open access, please do clarify any such requirements with your funder or institution.

Should you wish to publish your article open access, you should select your choice of open access licence in our online system after your article has been accepted for publication. You will need to pay an open access charge to publish under an open access licence.

Details of the open access licences and open access charges. 

OUP has a growing number of Read and Publish agreements with institutions and consortia which provide funding for open access publishing. This means authors from participating institutions can publish open access, and the institution may pay the charge. Find out if your institution is participating.

JSI members are eligible for a 20% discount on the open access charge. Authors should enter their JSI member number when submitting their paper to benefit from the discount.

General Information

International Immunology publishes basic research and clinical studies from all areas of immunology and includes research conducted in laboratories throughout the world.

Areas that are covered include allergy, autoimmunity, chemical and structural immunology, clinical immunology, cytokines and chemokines, development of lymphoid organs, immunological methods, infection immunity, innate immunity and inflammation, lymphocyte and repertoire development, lymphocyte signalling, mucosal immunity, phylogeny of the immune system, regulation of immune responses, systems immunology, translational immunology, tumour immunity, and transplantation. Articles for the “immunological methods” category should include data comparing the new method with previous methods. Studies from related biological disciplines that have direct implications for immunology are also considered. 

The journal publishes only new material. Submission of a research paper will be taken to imply that it reports unpublished work (including unpublished work posted on pre-print servers) and that the work is not being considered for publication elsewhere. Relevant permission must be obtained for any 'personal communication' of unpublished work that is cited in this manuscript. Submission will, furthermore, be taken to imply that, if the paper is published, hybridomas, cell lines, gene clones, rDNA constructs, etc., used in the studies described therein will be made available to interested investigators for their use only in their own research.

International Immunology takes publication ethics very seriously. If misconduct is found or suspected after the manuscript is published, the journal will investigate the matter and this may result in the article subsequently being retracted.

There is no absolute restriction on length of manuscripts. International Immunology does not have page charges or (from January 2018) colour-figure charges; there are also no article-processing fees. Following publication, the corresponding author will be sent URL links providing free online access to their paper.

Types of Papers Accepted

The main part of each issue is devoted to original research papers, which should describe significant and original observations, especially those that provide mechanistic biological insights into the workings of the immune system.

We will consider clinical studies that provide novel insights into immunological diseases or progress in therapeutic manipulation of human immune responses. We will not, however, consider Case Reports.

We also include Short Communications, which should describe solid but straightforward findings that may provoke further more-comprehensive studies. These can have up to four figures and the "Results" and "Discussion" sections should be combined.

The journal also publishes Letters to the Editor-in-Chief and Author's Replies. The Letter should discuss an article recently published in International Immunology. Letters should discuss the data reported in the published research paper (i.e. methods and results), not the implications that come from them. The maximum word-count for Letters is 450 and there can be up to five references, including reference to the original article; figures can be included as supplementary data. The Letter will be sent to the authors of the original article, who can publish a Reply. If you are interested in commenting on a published paper in this way, please e-mail the Editor-in-Chief ([email protected]).

Reviewing Processes

It is the policy of the journal to represent the whole immunological community. The reviewing system has been devised for rapid response and fair processing by means of the large number of Associate Editors. All papers are assessed by at least two Associate Editors or referees. No paper is accepted unless it has been assessed by at least one Associate Editor or referee from outside the authors' institution(s). One of the Associate Editors will contact authors for revision, if necessary.

An Editorial Board Member or the Editor-in-Chief will make the final decision on each paper and will notify the author about its acceptance or rejection once the Associate Editor has made a recommendation.

When submitted articles do not meet our publishing criteria, the Editors of International Immunology may suggest submission to Antibody Therapeutics, which is an open access, peer-reviewed online journal that provides a forum for the publication of the latest advances and challenges in the discovery, research, development, manufacturing, and methodology of therapeutic antibodies for the global scientific community.​

Submission of Manuscripts

International Immunology processes submitted articles online. Please see the detailed instructions page. Please include a covering letter. Authors should keep copies of all material submitted.

Manuscripts, which should be written in English, are handled by one of the Associate Editors.

Format-free Submission

New manuscripts can be submitted in any journal format or layout but should be supplied in separate files (main text file and individual table and figure files). While there are no strict formatting requirements, all manuscripts must contain the essential elements needed to evaluate a manuscript: abstract, author affiliation, figures, tables, funder information, and references. Where applicable, ethical statements and/ or approvals should be included in the manuscript at initial submission. Whichever reference style used must be consistent throughout the manuscript. 

Authors will be informed of any formatting changes required according to the instructions below if the article is eventually accepted.

Preparation of Manuscripts

Prepare the main text and tables of your manuscript using a word processing program and save it as a .doc, .rtf or .ps file (not .pdf or .jpg). A wider range of formats can be used for Illustrations (see below).

Title pages must include the following: title (an accurate and concise description of the article's content, intelligible to non-specialists and avoiding jargon and non-standard abbreviations), full first name and surname of each contributor followed by the name, full postal address, e-mail address and fax/telephone numbers of one contributor (the Corresponding Author) who will deal with all correspondence including proofs and a running title not in excess of 50 characters. The total number of pages and figures being submitted should also be indicated on this page.

A maximum of five keywords not appearing in the title should be provided for use by indexing services.

Research papers should start with an ABSTRACT which will appear before the main body of the text. It should be written as one paragraph in complete sentences and should summarize the materials, methods, results, and major conclusions in 250 words or less in a form comprehensible to any immunologist and suitable for abstracting services. If references are used in an abstract, they must include the author(s), journal title, volume number, starting page, and year. Abbreviations should be avoided in abstracts where possible.

The main part of a research paper should start with a brief INTRODUCTION, which outlines the historical or logical origins of the study without repeating the abstract or summarizing the results, a section on METHODS, and one on RESULTS in which the observations are presented with minimal reference to earlier literature or to possible interpretations. These should be included in the final DISCUSSION section, which may usefully start with a brief summary of the major findings, but repetition of parts of the results section should be avoided.

Supplier names and locations (city and country) should be given for any reagents/equipment used.

In cases where it is helpful, please expand or explain any abbreviations, e.g. “…forkhead box P3 (FOXP3)” or “…the transcription factor FOXP3”, on first use in the Abstract and again in the main text. Generally, do not abbreviate single words (e.g. antibody, antigen, immunoglobulin, interferon, interleukin) unless they are parts of longer phrases or describe specific molecules (e.g. mAb, Ab–Ag complex; IgG, IFN-α, IL-1α). Specific T-helper cell subsets can be designated as Th1 cells, Tfh cells, etc.; regulatory T cells can be designated as Treg cells. Gene symbols (e.g. IL1A in humans or Il1a for mice) do not need to be defined but should be italicized; the protein product, interleukin 1α (IL-1α), should be in roman font. A useful resource for standardized gene symbols is the HUGO database [GeneNames].

Funding. Details of all funding sources for the work in question should be given in a separate section entitled 'Funding'. This should appear before the 'Acknowledgements' section.

The following rules should be followed:

• The sentence should begin: 'This work was supported by …'
• The full official funding agency name should be given, i.e. 'The National Cancer Institute at the National Institutes of Health' or simply 'National Institutes of Health' not 'NCI' (one of the 27 subinstitutions) or 'NCI at NIH' (full RIN-approved list of UK funding agencies).
• Grant numbers should be complete and accurate and provided in brackets as follows: '[grant number ABX CDXXXXXX]'.
• Multiple grant numbers should be separated by a comma as follows: '[grant numbers ABX CDXXXXXX, EFX GHXXXXXX]'.
• Agencies should be separated by a semi-colon (plus 'and' before the last funding agency).
• Where individuals need to be specified for certain sources of funding the following text should be added after the relevant agency or grant number 'to [author initials]'.

An example is given here: 'This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health [P50 CA098252 and CA118790 to R.B.S.R.] and the Alcohol & Education Research Council [HFY GR667789].

Graphical Abstracts

Authors are encouraged to submit a graphical abstract or video abstract as part of the article, in addition to the text abstract. The graphical/video abstract should clearly summarize the focus and findings of the article, and will be published as part of the article online and in the PDF. The graphical/video abstract should be submitted as a separate file, selecting the appropriate file-type designation in the journal’s online submission system. The file should be clearly named, e.g. graphical_abstract.tiff, video_abstract.mp4. See this page for guidance on appropriate file format and resolution for graphics and videos. Please ensure graphical abstracts are in landscape format. Note that graphical abstracts are optional and can be submitted either at initial submission stage, or when resubmitting the paper after revision.

Crossref Funding Data Registry

In order to meet your funding requirements authors are required to name their funding sources, or state if there are none, during the submission process. For further information on this process or to find out more about CHORUS, visit the CHORUS initiative.

Acknowledgements should follow the main text. This section can be used, for example, to thank individuals who have provided reagents, to thank “members of our laboratory for stimulating discussions”, to describe the contributions of individuals who are not listed as authors and to describe the specific contributions of the authors.

Tables should be numbered with Arabic numberals in the order that they appear in the text. Footnotes to tables should be included with the table. There should be an indication in the main text of the most appropriate placement of each table and illustration.

References

References are to be cited in the text by a number in parentheses and should be numbered in order of first appearance. An example is: “Mondelli and Pariante (1) have reported . . .”. Where there are more than two authors, the citation in the text should use the formulation 'et al.'. An example is: 'This observation has been reported by Walters et al. (2)'.

Please limit the number of references in research papers to approximately 50.

In the list of references, papers from journals should be listed thus:

1. Mondelli V and Pariante CM. What can neuroimmunology teach us about the symptoms of long-COVID? Oxf Open Immunol. 2021;2:iqab004.

If there are up to three authors of a paper, list all of them; if there are four or more authors, list just the first three, then “et al.”

2. Walters A, Keeton R, Labuschagné A, et al. TNFRp75-dependent immune regulation of alveolar macrophages and neutrophils during early Mycobacterium tuberculosis and Mycobacterium bovis BCG infection. Immunology 2021;162:220-234.

Please provide as many details as possible for 'in press' references, supplements and references to published meeting abstracts:

3. Kiniwa T and Moro K. Localization and site-specific cell—cell interactions of group 2 innate lymphoid cells. Int Immunol. 2021;33:in press.

http://doi:10.1093/intimm/dxab001

4. Herro R and Croft M. Shedding LIGHT and TL1A on fibrosis. J. Immunol. 2020;204(Issue 1 Suppl. 1):234.5.

5. Fangfang C, Lin H, and Tan H. Binding of CLIP to the PBR of MHC class I molecules in grass carp. Eur J Immunol. 2019;49(Suppl. 3):7, Abstract Number P0002.

6. Goldman JW, Piha-Paul A, Curti BD, et al. Safety and tolerability of MEDI0562 in combination with durvalumab or tremelimumab in patients with advanced solid tumors. 2020 ASCO Annual Meeting Proceedings, Developmental Therapeutics—Immunotherapy, May 29 2020: Abstract Number 3003.

Chapters from books, or whole books, should be listed in the following styles:

7. Klohe E and Pandey JP. Major Histocompatibility Complex. In Virella, G (ed.), Medical Immunology, 7th edn. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, 2020, 22-39.

8. Male DM, Peebles RS Jr, and Male V (eds). Immunology, 9th edn. Edinburgh, UK: Elsevier, 2021.

Websites should be listed in the following style:

9. Anonymous. Reproduction number (R) and growth rate (r) of the COVID-19 epidemic in the UK.

https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT01611558 (24 July 2023, date last accessed)

Articles posted on pre-print servers should be listed in the following style:

10. The REMAP-CAP Investigators; Gordon AC, Mouncey PR, Al-Beidh F, et al. Interleukin-6 receptor antagonists in critically ill patients with Covid-19—preliminary report. medRxiv https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.01.07.21249390, 9 January 2021, preprint: not peer reviewed.

If preparing your manuscript with EndNote, be sure to download the latest International Immunology EndNote reference style file (Intl Immunology.ens), which can be found on this page.

Illustrations

Each figure should be relevant to the text and figures should be presented in the order in which they are mentioned in the text.

Electronic files of figures accepted for publication must be saved at a resolution of at least 300 d.p.i. (86 mm single and 178 mm double column width) for colour and half-tone figures and 1200 d.p.i. for black and white line drawings. Prepare your figures using applications capable of generating high-resolution files. When naming your files, please use simple filenames and avoid special characters and spaces. If you are a Macintosh user, you must also type the three-letter extension at the end of the file name you choose (e.g. .doc, .rtf, .jpg, .gif, .tif, .ppt, .xls, .pdf, .eps, .mov). Lettering should be in proportion, ideally providing characters 2 mm high on the printed page. Figure parts should be labelled upper case A, B, etc., in the top left hand corner.

FACS data. Clearly identify the parameter for each axis, e.g. forward scatter, CD4, propidium iodide. Draw appropriate gates on the figures when pertinent.

Figure legends should explain each figure as fully as possible, referring the reader to the text only on rare occasions in order to avoid repeating in the legends material that must be included in the text. All abbreviations used in the figures should be explained in each legend where possible. When large numbers of abbreviations are necessary in the figures, the authors should include these in a separate list of abbreviations.

The legend should state what the figure depicts and specify the number of measurements summarized in each part; for example “the mean ± SEM from three independent experiments is shown”. Any “representative” figures should depict typical findings from single experiments; for example “one representative of three independent experiments, each with five subjects, is shown”.

Figure accessibility and alt text

Incorporating alt text (alternative text) when submitting your paper helps to foster inclusivity and accessibility. Good alt text ensures that individuals with visual impairments or those using screen readers can comprehend the content and context of your figures. The aim of alt text is to provide concise and informative descriptions of your figure so that all readers have access to the same level of information and understanding, and that all can engage with and benefit from the visual elements integral to scholarly content. Including alt text demonstrates a commitment to accessibility and enhances the overall impact and reach of your work.  

Alt text is applicable to all images, figures, illustrations, and photographs. 

Alt text is only accessible via e-reader and so it won’t appear as part of the typeset article. 

Detailed guidance on how to draft and submit alt text. 

Colour Figures

From January 2018 (Volume 30, Issue 1) International Immunology will be an online only journal, so we will no longer be offering authors the option to pay for colour printing. All figures submitted to the journal in colour will be published in colour online at no cost.

Supplementary Data

Supporting material that is not essential for inclusion in the full text of the manuscript, but would nevertheless benefit the reader, can be made available by the publisher as online as supplementary content, linked to the online manuscript. The material should not be essential to understanding the conclusions of the paper, but should contain data that is additional or complementary and directly relevant to the article content. Such information might include more detailed methods, extended data sets/data analysis, or additional figures. All text and figures must be provided in suitable electronic formats (instructions for the preparation of Supplementary Data). All material to be considered as Supplementary Data must be submitted at the same time as the main manuscript for peer review. It cannot be altered or replaced after the paper has been accepted for publication. Please indicate clearly the material intended as Supplementary.

Language Editing

If your first language is not English, you may wish to have your paper professionally edited. This will ensure that the academic content of your paper is fully understood by journal editors and reviewers. Language editing is optional and does not guarantee that your manuscript will be accepted for publication. Further information on this service. Several specialist language editing companies offer similar services and you can also use any of these. Authors are liable for all costs associated with such services.

Authorship

All authors listed on the manuscript should have contributed significantly to the experimental design, its implementation, or analysis and interpretation of the data. All authors should have been involved in the writing of the manuscript at draft and any revision stages, and have read and approved the final version. Anyone who made major contributions to the writing of the manuscript should be listed as an author (e.g. “ghost writing” is prohibited by the journal). Any other individuals who made less substantive contributions to the experiments or the writing of the manuscript should be listed in the acknowledgement section. Any change in authorship (including author order) after the initial manuscript submission must be approved in writing by all authors. Assurance that all authors of the paper have fulfilled these criteria for authorship should be given in the covering letter.

Copyright

Upon receipt of accepted manuscripts at Oxford Journals authors will be invited to complete an online copyright licence to publish form. The Corresponding Author will receive an email from [email protected] within 2-3 days which is an invitation to sign up for an account with SciPris, Oxford University Press’ author portal hosted by Aptara. If you ever have concerns about the legitimacy of a request, please do not hesitate to contact a customer services agent via the SciPris portal or directly via [email protected].

Author Self-Archiving/Public Access Policy

Authors are allowed to deposit un-refereed author versions of their paper in community pre-print servers such as bioRixv.org, provided that entries are updated, if appropriate, to acknowledge that the article has been accepted/published by International immunology. For more details of our self-archiving policy, please visit our Author Self-Archiving policy page. If the paper has been deposited in a pre-print server, the authors are requested to mention this in their Cover Letter. Authors should contact the editorial office if they are in any doubt prior to submission.

Conflict of Interest Policy

At the point of submission, International Immunology's policy requires that each author reveal any financial interests or connections, direct or indirect, or other situations that might raise the question of bias in the work reported or the conclusions, implications, or opinions stated - including pertinent commercial or other sources of funding for the individual author(s) or for the associated department(s) or organization(s), personal relationships, or direct academic competition. When considering whether you should declare a conflicting interest or connection please consider the conflict of interest test: Is there any arrangement that would embarrass you or any of your co-authors if it was to emerge after publication and you had not declared it?

As an integral part of the online submission process, Corresponding authors are required to confirm whether they or their co-authors have any potential Conflicts of Interest to declare, and to provide details of these. The form.

If the manuscript is published, Conflict of Interest information will be communicated in a statement in the published paper.

Duplicated Material

Submitted material, including all of the text and figures in research papers, must be original and not have been published, or submitted anywhere else, even if it was in a different language. To allow assessment of novelty, relevant previously published findings must be described.

Image Manipulation

Manipulation of data is generally unacceptable and any unavoidable modification of figures must be kept to a minimum and must be detailed in the figure legend and/or methods section. Each image must still accurately represent the original data. Any change must be applied to the whole image and to controls, and no features should be added, altered or moved. Data from separate experiments should never be merged into a single image.

Animal Welfare and Experiments on Human Tissue

The cover letter should state whether or not the manuscript contains experiments involving humans, live non-human vertebrates or live higher invertebrates. The “Methods” section must state that experiments involving human tissue accord with the ethical standards of the appropriate institutional and national committees and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975 (revised in 2008) and that care of animals was in accord with institution guidelines; if no such rules are in place, this must be stated. Where applicable, the dose and schedule of anesthetics and analgesics should be reported.
When preparing your manuscript, we recommend referring to the ARRIVE guidelines.

Availability of Data and Materials

Where ethically feasible, International Immunology strongly encourages authors to make all data and software code on which the conclusions of the paper rely available to readers. We suggest that data be presented in the main manuscript or additional supporting files, or deposited in a public repository whenever possible. For information on general repositories for all data types, and a list of recommended repositories by subject area, please see Choosing where to archive your data.

The names of repositories, links to these and accession numbers must be provided in the submitted manuscript.

For novel three-dimensional structures, the authors should upload atomic co-ordinates and related experimental data for peer-review, not publication. For example, the Protein Data Bank (PDB) validation report, the molecular coordinates and the X-ray data should be uploaded (as Supplemental Files) for X-ray crystallography studies. The 3-dimensional structures of biological macromolecules solved by electron microscopy should be submitted to, for example, the EM Data Bank (EMDB).

All of the original, unaltered, high resolution images and raw data that correspond to the figures and supplemental information in this manuscript should be saved and archived. Authors should be prepared to share this information with the Editors if queried in the future.

Data Citation

International Immunology supports the Force 11 Data Citation Principles and requires that all publicly available datasets be fully referenced in the reference list with an accession number or unique identifier such as a digital object identifier (DOI). Data citations should include the minimum information recommended by DataCite:

• [dataset]* Authors, Year, Title, Publisher (repository or archive name), Identifier

*The inclusion of the [dataset] tag at the beginning of the citation helps us to correctly identify and tag the citation. This tag will be removed from the citation published in the reference list.

Contact

If you experience any problems regarding your submission, please contact the editorial office:
Email: [email protected]
Tel: +81 6 6816 3387
Fax: +81 6 6816 3765