The European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) is Europe's leading professional society for medical oncology, founded in 1975 and headquartered in Lugano, Switzerland, with more than 50,000 members worldwide. Unlike large commercial houses, ESMO publishes a small, tightly focused family of five journals - all in oncology, all produced in partnership with Elsevier. The portfolio is anchored by Annals of Oncology (established 1990), one of the highest-impact clinical oncology journals in the world, and rounded out by four fully open-access titles: ESMO Open, ESMO Real World Data and Digital Oncology, ESMO Gastrointestinal Oncology, and Immuno-Oncology and Technology (IOTECH).

This guide covers which ESMO journal fits your paper, the open-access routes and APCs, peer review, submission mechanics, and publication ethics.

• Annals of Oncology - the official journal of ESMO (and, since 2008, of the Japanese Society of Medical Oncology). Established 1990; published by Oxford University Press and Springer before moving to Elsevier in 2019. Publishes major clinical trials, translational research, ESMO Clinical Practice Guidelines, and consensus statements. Hybrid model: subscription with a paid open-access option.
• ESMO Open - fully open-access since launch; ESMO's broad-scope cancer journal covering clinical, translational, and real-world research across tumour types.
• ESMO Real World Data and Digital Oncology - fully OA, launched 2023; real-world evidence, clinical informatics, algorithm-powered diagnostics, and decision-support systems.
• ESMO Gastrointestinal Oncology - fully OA, launched 2023; all aspects of GI cancer research and care.
• Immuno-Oncology and Technology (IOTECH) - fully OA; immunotherapy science and enabling technologies.

Four of the five ESMO journals are fully open access (Gold OA); Annals of Oncology is hybrid. Articles in the Gold OA titles are published under Creative Commons licences (CC BY-NC-ND is the DOAJ-listed default; check each journal's licence options at submission).

Green OA self-archiving follows Elsevier's standard sharing policy. Because the journals are published with Elsevier, authors at institutions with Elsevier transformative (read-and-publish) agreements may have APCs fully or partly covered - check the ESAC registry or ask your library. Waiver requests for authors in low- and middle-income countries run through Elsevier's waiver programme; confirm eligibility on the individual journal's page.

ESMO journals use single-anonymized (reviewers know the authors; authors don't know the reviewers) peer review, managed by academic editors who are practising oncologists and researchers. Annals of Oncology is highly selective, comparable to other top clinical journals; the Gold OA titles are selective within their scopes but offer a realistic route for solid clinical and translational work. Published turnaround statistics vary; DOAJ lists roughly 20 weeks from submission to publication for the newer OA titles.

1. Pick the journal using the decision table above - scope fit matters more than impact factor for a first-pass decision.
2. Read the Guide for Authors on the journal's Elsevier page; each title has its own formatting and reporting requirements (CONSORT for trials, STROBE for observational studies).
3. Prepare the manuscript - AMA/Vancouver-style referencing; you can start from the journal's template on SciSpace.
4. Submit via Editorial Manager, Elsevier's submission system used across the ESMO titles.
5. Respond to review - revisions and decisions are handled inside Editorial Manager, with status tracking throughout.

ESMO journals operate under COPE guidelines through Elsevier's publishing infrastructure. Clinical studies must document ethics approval, informed consent, and trial registration; conflict-of-interest disclosure follows ICMJE norms, which matter particularly in oncology given industry-sponsored trials. Retractions and corrections follow COPE procedures.

Publishing is one part of ESMO's scientific footprint. The society issues the widely used ESMO Clinical Practice Guidelines, runs the annual ESMO Congress (roughly 30,000 participants), and maintains the ESMO-MCBS (Magnitude of Clinical Benefit Scale) for grading cancer therapies. Papers in ESMO journals often feed directly into these guidelines - one reason Annals of Oncology carries the influence it does in clinical practice.