Aims and Scope

The Journal of Toxicological Sciences is a peer reviewed, open access journal dedicated to advancing knowledge and publishing original and innovative articles in toxicology. The journal covers a wide range of areas and topics: the mechanisms and significance of the toxicity of substances, such as drugs, food additives, food contaminants, environmental pollutants and natural products and their safety evaluation, experimental techniques, analytical methods and clinical toxicology. The journal provides authors and readers with appropriate peer review and timely publication while maintaining its rigorous standards. However, papers on the toxicities and effects of extracts and mixtures containing unidentified compounds cannot be accepted as a general rule.

The Journal of Toxicological Sciences is published by the Japanese Society of Toxicology and supported by the Japanese Society of Clinical Toxicology, and publishes six types of articles: Original Articles, Research Letters, Reviews, Minireviews, Invited Reviews, and Invited Original Articles.
The journal is published monthly online and read by a large international audience of researchers, clinicians, policy makers and others interested in toxicology.

Manuscript Types

The journal welcomes six manuscript types, all of which are subject to peer review.

Original Articles

Articles that contain new findings resulting from innovative research.

Research Letters

Short articles containing preliminary or more limited research results supported by less data than a regular paper, but of general or special interest. Manuscripts containing interesting findings without detailed discussion, research results of narrow scope or of a predominantly negative nature may also be suitable for publication as a Research Letter.

Reviews and Minireviews

Articles that review and encompass recent important scientific discoveries. Minireviews mainly describe recent research results from the authors’ own laboratories. Reviews are broader based and do not have a page limit.

Invited Reviews and Invited Original Articles

The editorial board may invite researchers who are experts in their field and have achieved interesting research results to write an Invited Review or an Invited Original Article. The review and original article are invited and refereed by the editor in charge. The editor in charge can appoint other reviewers if necessary. The author(s) will not be charged APC.

Manuscript Submission

Articles should be submitted via the online submission system at https://www3.e-kenkyu.com/jts-scied/. A single Microsoft Word or PDF file, which includes the tables and figures appended to the end of the manuscript, should be submitted. Separate files for the manuscript and for the figures are not permitted. If you are using the system for the first time, you must create an account before you can submit a manuscript.

If you encounter any problems with online submission, please contact the Editorial Office using the details found in the Contact section.

During the submission process, you will be required to select up to five categories that are appropriate to your manuscript. In addition, you must list them in order of relevance on the first page (title page). When submitting a clinical research paper, the authors should select “D15 Clinical Toxicology”.

Manuscript Preparation

Style

Type the manuscript single-spaced in an 11-point font using A4 size with upper, lower, left and right margins of 2 cm. Print sequential page numbers centrally at the bottom of the page, setting the title page as page one.

English standards

Manuscripts should be written in clear, grammatically correct English. If a manuscript is not clear due to poor English, it may be rejected without undergoing peer review.

Cover letter

Authors must submit a cover letter that includes the title of the manuscript and the contact details of the corresponding author. Authors should summarize the aims and outcomes of their work and how and why the manuscript is appropriate for publication.
Details of any relevant consent and/or ethics approvals and other such items must be included in the cover letter. In addition, any other relevant information that is required at the time of submission, such as applications for APC waivers, other ethics declarations and so forth, should be included in the cover letter.

Title page

Give the title, the names of the authors, the name and address (es) of the institution (s), the type of article, the running title (70 characters or less, including spaces), and the relevant subject categories (see above) on the first page (title page). Following these, give the name, institution, street address, phone number, e-mail address (required) of the corresponding author.

Title

The title should describe the content of the article briefly but clearly. A concise, descriptive title is important for search purposes by third-party services. Do not use the same main title with numbered minor titles, even for a series of papers by the same authors. Do not use abbreviations in the title, except those used generally in related fields.

Abstract and keywords

On the second page, provide an Abstract that is a single paragraph – without line breaks – of 250 words or less and 3-6 keywords. Subtitles, such as Methods or Results must not be used.

Main text

The main text should start from page 3 with an Introduction, followed by Materials and Methods, Results, Discussion, Acknowledgments, author declaration sections (Funding, Conflict of Interest Statement, Data Availability Statement, Author Contribution Statement, Ethics approval and consent to participate, Patient consent for publication), References, and Figure Legends. The Results and Discussion sections may be combined as Results and Discussion. Tables and Figures should be provided at the end of the manuscript.

Introduction

The Introduction should provide sufficient background information to allow the reader to understand the purpose of the investigation and its relationship with other research in related fields. It should not include an extensive review of the literature.

Materials and Methods

The description of the methods should be brief, but it must include sufficient detail to allow the experiments to be repeated. The manufacturer or supplier of chemicals, animals, microbial strains or equipment should be listed in parentheses when they are first mentioned, along with their location (city, country). If hazardous materials or dangerous procedures are used in the experiments and the precautions related to their handling are not widely recognized, it is recommended that the authors provide the necessary details.

Results

This section includes the results of the experiments. The Results and Discussion sections may be combined if this helps readers to understand and evaluate the study. Tables and figures, including photographs, can be used to present the experimental results (see below). Excessive explanations of the data presented in tables and figures should be avoided.

Discussion

The Conclusion or Discussion should concisely describe the authors’ interpretation of the results. Novel models or hypotheses may be proposed in this section only if they are suggested by the results obtained in the experiments. Descriptions of the experimental results should not be repeated in this section.

Acknowledgments

Authors may briefly acknowledge those who have assisted in the work or preparation of the manuscript, but who do not qualify for authorship (as defined in the Authorship section).

Funding

Authors should list all funding sources for their work in the Funding section. Where possible and for each grant, the receiving institution, the funding agency, the grant number, and the location (city and country) of the funding agency should be included.

Conflict of Interest Statement

Authors are required to declare any competing financial or other conflicts of interest in relation to the work described. Please see the ‘Author competing interests and conflicts of interest’ section for detailed information. If there are no declared interests, authors should include the following statement in this section of their manuscript: “The authors declare no competing interests.”

Data Availability Statement

Authors are encouraged to include a Data Availability Statement in manuscripts that report results from research data. Following Hrynaszkiewicz et al. (2020, http://doi.org/10.5334/dsj-2020-017), statements should include information on where the manuscript’s data can be found and (where applicable) directly link to the data. If research data are not publicly available, this should be stated in this section along with any conditions for accessing the data. In such cases, the recommended statement is as follows: “The data in this study are included in the article/supplementary materials. Contact the corresponding author(s) directly to request the underlying data.”

Author Contribution Statement

Authors are required to include an Author Contribution Statement that follows CRediT (Contributor Roles Taxonomy). Each author’s contribution should be described using one or more of the 14 CRediT categories. For example (where ‘Author’ is replaced by the actual author names):

Conceptualization: Author 1.
Funding acquisition: Author 1.
Investigation: Author 1, Author 2.
Supervision: Author 1.
Visualization: Author 3.
Writing – original draft: Author 1, Author 2, Author 3.
Writing – review & editing: Author 1, Author 2.

Ethics approval and consent to participate

Authors are required to declare that they have obtained and complied with relevant ethics approvals for any studies involving human or animal subjects. If such approval is not relevant or applicable to a submitted manuscript describing research that involves human or animal subjects, authors should include the statement “Not applicable” under this section heading.

Patient consent for publication

Authors are required to declare that they have obtained informed consents from participants for any relevant studies involving human subjects. If such consent is not relevant or applicable to a manuscript describing research that involves human subjects, authors should include the statement “Not applicable” under this section heading.

References

When citing references in the text, give the name of the authors and the year of publication in parentheses: e.g. (Smith, 1999) or (Jones and Cohen, 2003). If there are three or more authors give only the first author followed by et al., e.g. (Smith et al., 2004). If the same author(s) published more than one paper in the same year, use a, b etc to distinguish them: e.g. (Smith et al., 2004a, 2004b). Cited references should be listed as “References” at the end of the text in alphabetical order. Give the name of the author, the year of publication in parentheses, the article name, the journal abbreviation (please use the abbreviation specified by the journal (if any), or refer to Chemical Abstracts), the volume number, and inclusive pagination, in that order. For chapters in books, give the name of the author, the year of publication in parentheses, the title of the chapter, the name of the book, the name of the editor, the page (inclusive), and the name and city of the publisher, in that order. For books, give the name of the author, the year of publication in parentheses, the name of the book, and the name and city of the publisher, in that order.

Examples
Kennedy, M.L., Smith, J.K. and Jones, W.T. (2005): The pharmacokinetics of methylmercury in new-born rats. J. Toxicol. Sci., 30, 126-135.

Steel, J.M. and Whitney, M.C. (2003): The effect of diethylstilbestrol on the reproductive system in rat offspring. In: Toxicology of Diethylstilbestrol (Walton, W.H., ed.), pp. 551-564, Thomson Press, New York.

Tables

Tables should be numbered consecutively using Arabic numerals (Table 1, Table 2, etc.). Each table should have a title. Explanatory material and footnotes should be typed below the table and should be designated with superscript letters. Ensure that all numerical values in tables are associated with a unit of measurement (for example, at the top of the relevant column). Avoid detailed explanations of the experimental conditions used to obtain the data shown in tables; they should be included in other sections as relevant. Tables must not be images or vector files; rather, use the table-making software in MS Word.

Figures

Figures should be of sufficiently high resolution for direct reproduction for publication. Note that figures may include line drawings, photographs, diagrams and charts. Magnifications of photographs should be indicated in the legends and/or by scales included in the photographs. Illustrations must be self-explanatory and should be numbered consecutively with Arabic numerals (i.e., Fig. 1, Fig. 2, etc.). Each figure should have a short title. Figure legends should be grouped together and presented after the main text. Figure legends should include sufficient experimental details to make the figures intelligible; however, duplicating the descriptions provided in other sections should be avoided.

Supplemental materials

Supplementary tables and figures that are not included in the main text but are useful or helpful for understanding the data should be registered as “Supplemental materials” at our online submission system when submitted. The tables should be numbered consecutively using Arabic numerals (Table S1, Table S2, etc.). The figures also should be numbered as Fig. S1, Fig. S2, etc.; each figure should have a short title and figure legend.

Authors are encouraged to share their data including detailed experimental protocols, analytic methods, raw data, and other metadata related to the article, using “J-Stage Data” (see the section “J-STAGE Data” below. If the Editor requests these, the authors must submit them.

Abbreviations

Abbreviations: At first use, spell out the word followed by the abbreviation in parentheses. Use only that defined abbreviation thereafter.

Units

Units should be used as follows:
μm, mm, cm, m, μg, mg, g, kg, μL, mL, L, mmol, mol, μM, mM, M, ppm, mol/L, mg/mL, %, sec, min, hr, S.D., S.E., s.c., i.c., i.m., i.v. ,i.p., p.o., Bq, Sv, Gy, dpm, °C.

Accepted Manuscripts

Manuscripts that are accepted for publication are copyedited and typeset by the journal’s production team before publication. All communication regarding accepted manuscripts is with the corresponding author.

Proofs

Page proofs are sent to the corresponding author, who should check and return them within 1 week. Only essential corrections to typesetting errors or omissions are accepted; excessive changes are not permitted at the proofing stage.

Journal & Ethics Policies

The journal upholds the highest standards in scholarly publishing.

Before submitting a manuscript to the journal, authors must ensure that they have read and complied with the journal’s policies. The journal reserves the right to reject without review, or retract, any manuscript that the Editor believes may not comply with these policies.

The responsibilities of the journal’s authors, editors, reviewers and publisher regarding research and publication ethics are described in full below.

Submission to the journal implies that the manuscript has not previously been published (in part or in whole, in any language), is not in press, and is not under consideration for publication elsewhere.

Authors must inform the editors if any related manuscripts are under consideration, in press or published elsewhere. The availability of a manuscript on a publicly accessible preprint server does not constitute prior publication (see ‘Preprints’).

If authors choose to submit their manuscript elsewhere before a final decision has been made on its suitability for publication in the journal, they should first withdraw it from the journal.

Submission

The journal welcomes manuscript submissions from authors based anywhere in the world.

Submission of a manuscript to the journal implies that all authors: have approved it, warrant it is factual, have agreed to its submission, and have the right to publish it.

Originality

Submission to the journal implies that the manuscript is original work. The journal may use iThenticate’s plagiarism software to screen manuscripts for unoriginal material. By submitting a manuscript to the journal, authors agree to this screening. Any manuscript with an unacceptable level of unoriginal material may be rejected or retracted at the editors’ discretion.

Preprints

To support the wide dissemination of research, the journal encourages authors to post their research manuscripts on community-recognized preprint servers, either before or alongside submission to the journal. This policy applies only to the original version of a manuscript that describes primary research. Any version of a manuscript that has been revised in response to reviewers’ comments, accepted for publication or published in the journal should not be posted on a preprint server. Instead, forward links to the published manuscript may be posted on the preprint server.
Authors should retain copyright in their work when posting to a preprint server.

Scooping

When assessing the novelty of a manuscript submitted to the journal, the editors will not be influenced by other manuscripts that are posted on community-recognized preprint servers after the date of submission to the journal (or after the date on which the submitted manuscript was posted on a preprint server, if the manuscript is submitted to the journal within 4 months).

Authorship

Submission to the journal implies that all authors have seen and approved the author list. Any change to the author list after manuscript submission – such as the insertion or removal of an author, or a rearrangement of author order – must be approved by all authors and the editor.

Authors are encouraged to consider the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) Recommendations on ‘Defining the Role of Authors and Contributors’. The ICMJE recommends that authorship is based on four criteria: making a substantial contribution to the conception or design of the work, or the acquisition, analysis or interpretation of data for the work; drafting the manuscript or revising it critically for important intellectual content; approving the final version of the manuscript for publication; and agreeing to be held accountable for all aspects of the work. Any contributor who has met all four criteria should be an author on the manuscript. Contributors who do not meet all four criteria should not be authors of the manuscript but may be included in the Acknowledgments section instead.

Authors are required to include a statement that specifies the contribution of each author as per the Author Contribution Statement section.

Given that artificial intelligence (AI) tools such as large language models (LLMs) and various openly available services do not meet the requirements listed above, they cannot be listed as an author of a manuscript.

Data falsification, data fabrication and image integrity

Authors must not falsify or fabricate data. Authors may digitally manipulate or process images, but only if the adjustments are kept to a minimum, are applied to the entire image, meet community standards, and are clearly described in the manuscript. All images in a manuscript must accurately reflect the original data on which they are based. Authors must not move, remove, add or enhance individual parts of an image. The editors reserve the right to request original, unprocessed images from the authors. Failure to provide requested images may result in a manuscript being rejected or retracted.

Reproducing copyrighted material

If a manuscript includes material that is not under the authors’ own copyright, the authors must obtain permission from the copyright owner(s) to reproduce it.

If a manuscript includes previously published material, the authors must obtain permission from the copyright owners and the publisher of the original work to reproduce it. The authors must cite the original work in their manuscript.

Copies of all reproduction permissions must be included with the manuscript when it is first submitted to the journal.

Availability of data and materials

Authors must disclose the source of publicly available data and materials, such as public repositories or commercial manufacturers, by including accession numbers or company details in their manuscript, as appropriate.

Authors may make their own data and materials available as Supplementary Material or by linking to data hosted at J-STAGE Data (see next section). All data sets must be made available in full to the editors and reviewers during the peer review process, and consideration made for them to be made publicly available by the date of publication. Authors commit to preserving their data sets for at least three years from the date of publication in the journal.

The journal encourages authors to grant reasonable requests from colleagues to share any data, materials and experimental protocols described in their manuscript.

J-STAGE Data

The journal recommends that data and materials that form the basis of research papers be made public on J-STAGE Data, a data repository operated by the Japan Science and Technology Agency.

Unlike Supplementary materials, J-STAGE Data is assigned a separate DOI and is hosted independently of the linked paper. Therefore, it is possible to share and reuse the data under the conditions specified by the author, not just as supplementary data for the paper.

Authors who wish to have their data published in J-STAGE Data must submit their data to the editorial office using the online submission system (SciEd) along with their manuscripts. The manuscripts and data will undergo peer review. Once both the manuscript and data are accepted, the author is obligated to upload the data to J-STAGE Data. The login method for J-STAGE Data will be notified upon acceptance of the manuscript.

The data included in J-STAGE Data is published under the Creative Commons CC BY (4.0) International License, and the copyright belongs to the author.

Animal/human experimentation

Authors of manuscripts describing experiments involving humans or materials derived from humans must demonstrate that the work was carried out in accordance with the principles embodied in the Declaration of Helsinki, its revisions, and any guidelines approved by the authors’ institutions. Where relevant, the authors must include a statement in their manuscript that describes the procedures for obtaining informed consent from participants regarding participation in the research and publication of the research. Any data, figures or information must be sufficiently anonymized such that it is not possible to identify the participants. Further guidance is available from the Japanese Journal of Clinical Toxicology.

Authors of manuscripts describing experiments involving animals or materials derived from animals must demonstrate that the work was carried out in accordance with the guidelines approved by the authors’ institution(s).

Specimen collection

Manuscripts describing the collection of archaeological, geological, paleontological or wildlife specimens or samples should include detailed information on their provenance and collection methods. Authors must include a statement in their manuscript describing the relevant ethics guidelines, local laws and collection permits under which the research was conducted.

Clinical trial registration

The journal adheres to the ICMJE policy on Clinical Trials Registration, which recommends that all clinical trials are registered in a public trials registry at or before the time of first patient enrolment as a condition of consideration for publication. Manuscripts describing clinical trials must include the registration number of the trial and the name of the trial registry.

Reporting guidelines

The journal requires authors to follow the EQUATOR Network’s Reporting Guidelines for health research. Study types include, but are not limited to, randomized trials, observational studies, systematic reviews, case reports, qualitative research, diagnostic and prognostic studies, economic evaluations, animal pre-clinical studies and study protocols.

Use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools

As per the COPE position statement on Authorship and AI tools, authors must disclose and fully describe any use of generative or non-generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools (also known as large language models, or LLMs) in the Materials and Methods section. This includes, but is not limited to, using AI tools to collect or analyze data, produce or amend images or graphics used in the manuscript, or write all or part of the manuscript. Authors must describe which tools they used and how the tools were used. In general, the use of generative AI tools is allowed only where that use is an integral part of the research design or methods. Any other uses will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis by the editors. In all cases, authors remain responsible for all the content of their submitted manuscript.

Authors should be aware that there are ongoing concerns about the copyright status of any AI-generated content. Authors must adhere to the instructions in the ‘Reproducing copyrighted material’ section of this document and comply with relevant statutory and other copyright laws.

It is acceptable to use non-generative AI tools to improve the readability of a manuscript, such as through spelling and grammar checking.

Reviewers and editors must not upload unpublished manuscripts to any AI tool or service. Doing so would breach privacy and confidentiality provisions, as described elsewhere in this document. There are also potential copyright issues if unpublished material is uploaded to a third-party service.

Author competing interests and conflicts of interest

In the interests of transparency, the journal requires all authors to declare any competing or conflicts of interest in relation to their submitted manuscript. A conflict of interest exists when there are actual, perceived or potential circumstances that could influence an author’s ability to conduct or report research impartially. Potential conflicts include (but are not limited to) competing commercial or financial interests, commercial affiliations, consulting roles, or ownership of stock or equity.

Authors should list all funding sources for their work in the Acknowledgments section of their manuscript.

Confidentiality

The journal maintains the confidentiality of all unpublished manuscripts. By submitting a manuscript to the journal, the authors warrant that they will keep all correspondence about their manuscript (from the Editorial Office, editors and reviewers) strictly confidential.

Self-archiving (Green Open Access) policy

Self-archiving, also known as Green Open Access, enables authors to deposit a copy of their manuscript in an online repository. For works published in the journal under a CC BY 4.0 license, authors (or others) can upload any or all versions of a manuscript to an institutional repository immediately after publication in the journal, as long as the conditions of the license, and other copyright requirements described elsewhere in this document, are complied with. A link from the repository article page to the article’s DOI must be included.

Long-term digital archiving

J-STAGE preserves its full digital library, including the journal, with Portico in a dark archive (see https://www.portico.org/publishers/jstage/). In the event that the material becomes unavailable at J-STAGE, it will be released and made available by Portico.

Advertising policy

The journal does not accept advertising on its article pages, the journal’s website, or elsewhere.

Peer Review Process

Editorial and peer review process

The journal uses double anonymized peer review. When a manuscript is submitted to the journal, it is assigned to the Editor-in-Chief, who performs initial screening. Manuscripts that do not fit the journal’s scope or are not deemed suitable for publication are rejected without review. The Editor-in-Chief allocates each of the remaining manuscripts to an Associate Editor, who handles peer review. The Associate Editor selects two or more appropriate reviewers to provide their assessment of the manuscript. The deadline for submission of the reviewers’ reports is two weeks.

Once the reviewers’ reports have been received, the Associate Editor determines whether the manuscript requires revision. Authors who are asked to revise their manuscript must do so within two weeks, otherwise it may be treated as a new submission. The Associate Editor may send revised manuscripts to peer reviewers for their feedback or may use his or her own judgment to assess how closely the authors have followed the comments on the original manuscript. The Associate Editor then makes a final decision on the manuscript’s suitability for publication in the journal.

The Editor-in-Chief acts as an arbitrator when necessary.

Reviewer selection, timing and suggestions

Reviewers are selected based on their expertise in the field, reputation, recommendation by others, and/or previous experience as peer reviewers for the journal.

Reviewers are asked to submit their first review within two weeks of accepting the invitation to review. Reviewers who anticipate any delays should inform the Editorial Office as soon as possible.

When submitting a manuscript to the journal, authors may suggest reviewers that they would like included in or excluded from the peer review process. The Editor may consider these suggestions but is under no obligation to follow them. The selection, invitation and assignment of peer reviewers is at the Editor’s sole discretion.

Reviewer reports

It is the journal’s policy to transmit reviewers’ comments to the authors in their original form. However, the journal reserves the right to edit reviewers’ comments, without consulting the reviewers, if they contain offensive language, confidential information or recommendations for publication.

Acceptance criteria

If a manuscript satisfies the journal’s requirements and represents a significant contribution to the published literature, the Editor may recommend acceptance for publication in the journal.

• within the subject area of the journal’s scope
• novel and original
• descriptions of technically rigorous research
• of high interest to the journal’s audience
• important additions to the field.

If a manuscript does not meet the journal’s requirements for acceptance or revision, the Editor may recommend rejection.

Editorial independence

The Japanese Society of Toxicology (the “Society”) has granted the journal’s Editorial Board complete and sole responsibility for all editorial decisions. The Society will not become involved in editorial decisions, except in cases of a fundamental breakdown of process.

Editorial decisions are based only on a manuscript’s scientific merit and are kept completely separate from the journal’s other interests. The authors’ ability to pay any publication charges has no bearing on whether a manuscript is accepted for publication in the journal.

Appeals

Authors who believe that an editorial decision has been made in error may lodge an appeal with the Editorial Office. Appeals are only considered if the authors provide detailed evidence of a misunderstanding or mistake by a reviewer or editor. Appeals are considered carefully by the Editor-in-Chief, whose decision is final. The guidelines of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) are followed where relevant.

Confidentiality in peer review

The journal maintains the confidentiality of all unpublished manuscripts. Editors and reviewers will not:

1. disclose a reviewer’s identity unless the reviewer makes a reasonable request for such disclosure
2. discuss the manuscript or its contents with anyone not directly involved with the manuscript or its peer review
3. use any data or information from the manuscript in their own work or publications
4. use information obtained from the peer review process to provide an advantage to themselves or anyone else, or to disadvantage any individual or organization
5. share or upload the content of the manuscript to any AI tool or public platform.

In addition, reviewers will not reveal their identity to any of the authors of the manuscript or involve anyone else in the review (for example, a post-doc or PhD student) without first receiving permission from the Editor.

Editor and reviewer conflicts of interest in peer review

A conflict of interest exists when there are actual, perceived or potential circumstances that could influence an editor or reviewer’s ability to act impartially when assessing a manuscript. Such circumstances include (but are not limited to) having a personal or professional relationship with an author, working on the same topic or in direct competition with an author, having a financial stake in the work or its publication, or having seen previous versions of the manuscript.

Reviewers and members of the journal’s Editorial Board undertake to declare any conflicts of interest when handling manuscripts. An editor or reviewer who declares a conflict of interest is unassigned from the manuscript in question and is replaced by a new editor or reviewer.

Editors try to avoid conflicts of interest when inviting reviewers, but it is not always possible to identify potential bias.

Errata and retractions

The journal recognizes the importance of maintaining the integrity of published literature.

A published article that contains an error may be corrected through the publication of an Erratum. Errata describe errors that significantly affect the scientific integrity of a publication, the reputation of the authors, or the journal itself. Authors who wish to correct a published article should contact the editor who handled their manuscript or the Editorial Office with full details of the error(s) and their requested changes. In cases where co-authors disagree over a correction, the Editor-in-Chief may consult the Editorial Board or external peer reviewers for advice. If an Erratum is published, any dissenting authors will be noted in the text.

A published article that contains invalid or unreliable results or conclusions, has been published elsewhere, or has infringed codes of conduct (covering research or publication ethics) may be retracted. Individuals who believe that a published article should be retracted are encouraged to contact the journal’s Editorial Office with full details of their concerns. The Editor-in-Chief will investigate further and contact the authors of the published article for their response. In cases where co-authors disagree over a retraction, the Editor-in-Chief may consult the Editorial Board or external peer reviewers for advice. If a Retraction is published, any dissenting authors will be noted in the text.

The decision to publish Errata or Retractions is at the sole discretion of the Editor-in-Chief.

Editors as authors in the journal

Any member of the journal’s Editorial Board, including the Editor-in-Chief, who is an author on a submitted manuscript is excluded from the peer review process. Within the journal’s online manuscript submission and tracking system, they will be able to see their manuscript as an author but not as an editor, thereby maintaining the confidentiality of peer review.

A manuscript authored by an editor of the journal is subject to the same high standards of peer review and editorial decision making as any manuscript considered by the journal.

Responding to potential ethical breaches

The journal will respond to allegations of ethical breaches by following its own policies and, where possible, the guidelines of COPE.

Copyright, Open Access and Fees

Copyright and licensing

On June 1, 2025 the journal will update its copyright policies and introduce open Creative Commons licensing. For manuscripts submitted from this date, authors retain copyright in their work and provide the Japanese Society of Toxicology a License to Publish their article under a Creative Commons license: CC BY 4.0 (Attribution 4.0 International). This license allows users to share and adapt an article, even commercially, as long as appropriate credit is given.

The copyright in articles submitted before June 1, 2025 belongs to the Society. Reuse of such articles requires permission, which can be obtained by contacting the Editorial Office per the details in the Contact section.

Some funding bodies require articles funded by them to be published under a specific Creative Commons license. Before submitting your work to the journal, check with the relevant funding bodies to ensure that you comply with any mandates.

Article processing charges

There are many costs associated with publishing scholarly journals, such as those of managing and undertaking peer review, copy editing, typesetting and online hosting. To cover these costs in the absence of journal subscriptions, authors (or their representatives) are asked to pay a publication fee. There are no submission fees.

Authors of accepted manuscripts will be invoiced for the APC before publication of their manuscript. The journal charges an APC of 1,000 USD or 140,000 JPY per article, depending on the corresponding author's country of residence. Authors residing in Japan will be billed in JPY, while those in other countries will be billed in USD.
Authors residing in Japan will also be subject to a 10% consumption tax.
There are no additional charges for color figures.

Waiver policy

Waivers are provided automatically when the corresponding author is from a ‘Group A’ Research4Life country. In cases of demonstrated financial hardship, the journal will consider a pre-submission application for a waiver from any corresponding author; these should be made to the Editorial Office at the details in the Contact section. Applications will not be considered after the peer review process has begun.

The ability of an author to pay the APC does not influence editorial decisions. To avoid any possibility of undue influence, Editors involved with the decision-making process for articles are not involved in any deliberations on waivers.

Contact

To contact the Editorial Office, please write to:

The Journal of Toxicological Sciences Editorial Office
Senkyo Co., Ltd.
2-4-2, Hinodemachi,
Miyagino-ku,
Sendai, Miyagi 983-0035,
JAPAN

Tel: +81-22-236-7161
Fax: +81-22-236-7163
jts-ed@jtoxsci.org

Updated: June 1, 2025