Publication Guide
Karger Publishers is one of the oldest names in medical publishing: founded by Samuel Karger in Berlin in 1890 and headquartered in Basel, Switzerland since the 1930s, it was run by the Karger family for four generations. The portfolio is deliberately focused - roughly 100 peer-reviewed journals covering nearly every clinical specialty, from neonatology and nephrology to hepatology, dermatology, ophthalmology, and psychosomatic medicine, plus a long-running book program.
The biggest recent change is ownership: in November 2025 Oxford University Press (OUP) agreed to acquire Karger, and the acquisition completed in December 2025. Karger journals continue publishing under the Karger name for now and are scheduled to move to the Oxford Academic platform in time for the 2027 subscription cycle. This guide covers the journal portfolio, open-access routes and APCs, peer review, and how submission works.
Which Karger journal fits your paper?
Karger's strength is depth in narrow clinical fields rather than breadth. Use the table below to find the right route for your manuscript.
| You're most likely to... | Choose this route |
|---|---|
| Have a clinical or translational study in a defined medical specialty | A long-established specialty title such as Neonatology, Nephron, Digestion, Dermatology, or Ophthalmologica - decades of field-specific readership and strong PubMed visibility. |
| Want a high-impact venue in psychosomatics or hepato-oncology | Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics (Karger's highest-impact title) or Liver Cancer (fully open access). |
| Have a solid case report | One of Karger's dedicated Case Reports in ... Gold OA titles (e.g., Case Reports in Oncology) - lower APCs and fast handling. |
| Need Gold OA to satisfy a funder mandate | One of the 30+ fully-OA Karger journals, or check whether your institution has a Karger read-and-publish agreement that covers the fee. |
| Prefer no publication fee at all | Most Karger subscription journals charge no mandatory fee for standard articles; hybrid OA remains optional. |
What Karger actually publishes
- ~100 peer-reviewed journals, all in medicine and the biomedical sciences - Karger does not publish outside health sciences.
- Established specialty titles, many over 50 years old: Neonatology (formerly Biology of the Neonate), Cerebrovascular Diseases, Digestion, Nephron, Dermatology, Ophthalmologica, Gerontology, Neuroendocrinology, and Acta Haematologica.
- Fully open-access titles including Liver Cancer, Kidney Diseases, and the Case Reports in ... family.
- Books and continuing-education resources, including long-running monograph series in clinical medicine.
Note: Cellular Physiology and Biochemistry, sometimes still listed as a Karger flagship, has not been a Karger journal since the end of 2018 - it moved to an independent publisher in 2019.
Open access at Karger
Karger offers three OA routes:
- Gold OA (fully-OA journals) - 30+ titles where every article is immediately free to read, typically under CC BY or CC BY-NC licenses.
- Hybrid OA (Author's Choice) - most Karger subscription journals let authors pay a fee to make an individual article open access.
- Green OA (self-archiving) - accepted manuscripts may be self-archived with a per-title embargo; check the journal page or Sherpa Romeo.
- Transformative agreements - Karger has read-and-publish deals with institutions and national consortia (including in Switzerland, Germany, and Australia via CAUL) that cover APCs for affiliated corresponding authors. Check Karger's transformative-agreements page or your library.
Waivers and discounts are available for authors from low-income countries and authors without funding - request them at submission, not after acceptance.
APCs - actual numbers
Karger prices in CHF with USD/EUR equivalents and revises fees annually, so always confirm on the journal's own guidelines page. Representative 2026 figures:
| Title / tier | APC (approx., USD) | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Liver Cancer (Gold OA) | ~$4,120 (CHF 3,630) | Brief reports/letters ~$2,460 |
| Established hybrid specialty titles | ~4,500 | Author's Choice hybrid fee; varies by journal |
| Case Reports in ... family | ~2,500 | Lower fees for case reports |
| Subscription route | $0 | No mandatory APC for standard articles in most subscription titles |
Peer review process
- Default model: single-anonymized peer review across the portfolio; individual journals state their exact model in the author guidelines.
- Ethics: Karger is a member of COPE, OASPA, and STM, and handles integrity cases under COPE guidelines.
- Turnaround: varies by title; clinical specialty journals typically reach a first decision in one to three months.
How to submit
- Pick the journal. Browse the portfolio at karger.com and match scope, audience, and OA requirements.
- Read the journal's guidelines page. Each title lists manuscript types, word limits, and fees.
- Prepare your manuscript. Karger journals use Vancouver-style numbered references; SciSpace templates handle the formatting.
- Submit via Karger's ChronosHub-powered submission platform. Authors log in with MyKarger credentials; peer review runs through an integrated Manuscript Manager workflow. (Older references to Editorial Manager are out of date.)
- Track and pay. The same platform handles status tracking, licensing, APC payment, and institutional-agreement matching.
Ethics and integrity
Karger follows COPE guidance on authorship, corrections, and retractions, participates in OASPA and STM, and applies standard clinical-research requirements: ethics-committee approval, trial registration for clinical trials, patient-consent statements, and disclosure of conflicts of interest. Under OUP ownership these policies continue, with platform and licensing operations progressively aligning with Oxford Academic through 2027.
