The American Society for Cell Biology (ASCB) is a non-profit scientific society founded in 1960 and headquartered in Bethesda, Maryland. Unlike the large commercial houses, ASCB publishes just two journals - but both are staples of their fields. Molecular Biology of the Cell (MBoC), established in 1989 as Cell Regulation, is the society's flagship venue for research across cell, molecular, and developmental biology. CBE-Life Sciences Education (LSE), launched in 2002 with support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, is a fully open-access journal for peer-reviewed research on life-sciences education from K-12 through graduate training.

Because ASCB is a society publisher, the economics are author-friendly in a specific way: publication charges offset costs rather than drive profit, ASCB members get discounted rates and guaranteed peer review at MBoC, and partial fee waivers are available to member authors without funding. This guide covers which journal fits your work, what publishing actually costs, the open-access routes, peer review, and how to submit.

• Molecular Biology of the Cell (MBoC) - an online-only journal publishing research on cell growth and division, cytoskeletal and nuclear processes, membrane trafficking and autophagy, organelle biology, quantitative and physical cell biology, signaling, stem cells and development, cancer biology, and cell biology of disease. Accepted manuscripts appear on MBoC In Press, freely accessible, as soon as one week after acceptance.
• CBE-Life Sciences Education (LSE) - a quarterly, fully open-access education research journal published in partnership with the Genetics Society of America and supported by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. All articles are free to read from day one.

A common misconception is that MBoC is a fully gold-OA journal - it is not. MBoC offers two routes, and LSE is free to read but charges a publication fee. Figures below are the published rates (MBoC as of January 1, 2026; LSE as of January 1, 2025); confirm on the journal's fees page before submitting.

Key points on the OA model:

• Green OA at no extra cost: MBoC authors may deposit the accepted manuscript in a repository immediately upon acceptance, without embargo, under a CC BY license - which satisfies most funder mandates without paying the OA-APC.
• MBoC In Press: unredacted accepted manuscripts are freely accessible immediately, and all content flows to PubMed Central.
• Waivers: ASCB will consider partial waivers of publication charges for member authors with no source of publication funding. Request the waiver before submitting, with a letter from your dean or department chair.
• No transformative agreements: as a small society publisher, ASCB does not run read-and-publish deals; fees are per article.

Both journals use single-anonymized peer review. At MBoC, the Editor-in-Chief assigns a Monitoring Editor (ME) with subject expertise; the ME first assesses suitability, then recruits at least two expert reviewers, who are asked to return reviews within two weeks. A reviewed editorial decision is generally provided within 30 days of submission, and out-of-scope manuscripts are declined quickly - typically within a week. MBoC publishes the Review History (reviews, decision letters, and rebuttals) alongside each Article or Brief Report, though authors may opt out. At LSE, an editorial board member guides each paper, and corresponding authors can usually expect an initial response within six weeks.

1. Pick the journal and format. MBoC accepts initial submissions in any reasonable journal format; Brief Reports must meet length limits (20,000 characters, five display items) from the outset.
2. Prepare the manuscript. Use the MBoC or LSE template on SciSpace; MBoC uses author-year citations in alphabetical order.
3. Submit online. MBoC uses the eJournalPress-based system at mbcpapers.org; LSE submissions go through cellbiologyeducation.org. ASCB absorbs LSE's submission charge.
4. Or transfer in. MBoC accepts direct transfers from bioRxiv, from Review Commons, and through the ASCB/RUP/COB manuscript transfer system shared with Rockefeller University Press and the Company of Biologists.
5. After acceptance. MBoC papers publish on MBoC In Press within about a week; the final version appears in an issue within three months.

ASCB is a COPE member, and all authors are bound by the ASCB Policy on Research Misconduct. MBoC's editorial board maintains a reproducibility checklist covering experimental design, analysis, and presentation, which authors confirm during submission. LSE requires IRB approval (or documented exemption) for human-subjects education research. Authors retain copyright at both journals under the License and Publishing Agreement, and fee-waiver decisions never influence editorial outcomes.