Asian Journal of Andrology is an international peer-reviewed open access journal. It is the official journal of the Asian Society of Andrology, and is sponsored by the Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica at the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Shanghai Jiao Tong University. With a focus on new basic and clinical (including modern, traditional and epidemiological) research on andrology, primary research papers are complemented by Reviews, Opinions, Commentaries, Research Highlights and Letter to the Editors.

• Editor-in-Chief: Jin-Song Li
• Recent Impact factor: 2.862
• Fast publication times - typically 90 days from submission to online
• 6 issues per year

Fields of particular interest to the journal include, but are not limited to:

• Sperm biology: cellular and molecular mechanisms
• Male reproductive system: structure and function
• Hormonal regulation of male reproduction
• Male infertility: etiology, pathogenesis, diagnosis, treatment and prevention
• Semen analysis & sperm functional assays
• Sperm selection & quality and ART outcomes
• Male sexual dysfunction
• Male puberty development
• Male ageing
• Prostate diseases
• Operational andrology
• HIV & male reproductive tract infection
• Male contraception
• Environmental, lifestyle, genetic factors and male health
• Male reproductive toxicology
• Male sexual and reproductive health

All articles published by Asian Journal of Andrology are made freely and permanently accessible online immediately upon publication, without subscription charges. However, open access publishing is not without costs. For the article-processing charge, please see our instructions for authors.

All articles published in Asian Journal of Andrology are included in:

• Chemical Abstracts
• EMBASE/Excerpta Medica
• Index Medicus
• MEDLINE
• PubMed
• Current Contents/Clinical Medicine
• Research Alert
• ISI
• IndexCopernicus
• CSA - Life Sciences
• BIOSIS
• CAB Abstracts
• CAB Health
• PASCAL
• SCI

Original Article
Studies that are of high scientific quality and that are of interest to the diverse readership of the journal. Manuscripts should include abstract and appropriate experimental details to support the conclusions. Original Articles should be no more than 5000 words and should not normally include more than six display items (tables and/or figures). Manuscripts should include the following sections, each starting a new page: title, abstract and keywords, text (introduction, materials and methods, results and discussion), references, tables and figure captions.

Review
Review articles are in principle solicited by the editorial board, however, we also welcome timely, unsolicited Review Articles. Authors with proposals for Reviews should present information concerning the proposed content and authors of their Review to the editors prior to submission. Reviews have a word limit of 5000 words including abstract but excluding references, tables and figures.
Review Articles survey recent developments in a topical area of andrological research. Systematic reviews (and meta-analyses, whenever appropriate) are most interesting. These are reviews that systematically find, select, critique, and synthesize evidence relevant to well defined questions about diagnosis, therapy, and prognosis. Manuscripts reporting systematic review and meta-analysis should comply with the PRISMA statement.

Opinion
These may be submitted or invited by the editorial board. The editorial office should be communicated prior to submission to obtain approval for unsolicited work. Opinion pieces are stand alone and discuss an important and contemporary element of andrological care. They should highlight current problems with andrological care and identify potential solutions.
Word count limit is 1000 (excluding references and legends), 2 figures or tables and 10 references. They do not contain primary research data, although they may present ‘sociological’ data (funding trends, demographics, bibliographic data, scientific and social development, etc.). The form of the Opinion piece has no abstract. The main report is unstructured and should lead the reader from the concept through completion and a conclusion of the work. In all other respects, the directions for full papers should be followed.

Commentary
These are commentaries on current topics or on papers published elsewhere in the issue. All Commentaries are solicited by the editors and should not be submitted without prior approval. The editorial should include a link to the related manuscript with a phrase such as "Within this issue of Asian Journal of Andrology, Williams et al..." The Commentary should briefly review the findings, highlight good and bad points of the work and set the place of this work within the scientific community. The most interesting Commentaries are opinionated but balanced. Word count limit is 1000 and 10 references are allowed. We kindly ask that the number of authors be limited to no more than 3.The authors are given the right of a brief (less than 500 words) reply to most Commentaries.

Research Highlight
Research Highlights are published by AJA in order to provide our readership with a ‘digest’ of the best and most interesting primary research papers that are being published in the field of andrology on all topics that relate to men’s health. These pieces are by invitation only and present short updates on any new progress in andrology. They should be no more than 1000 words and a maximum of 10 references.

Letter to the Editor
Letters to the Editor are considered for publication (subject to editing and abridgment) provided they do not contain material that has been submitted or published elsewhere. They do not contain an abstract, and keywords, and there is no obligation to divide the text into sections. In all other respects, the directions for full papers should be followed. The text, not including references, tables, figures or legends must not exceed 1000 words. No more than 10 references and either one table or one figure are allowed.
Please note that AJA considers three types of Letter to the Editor.
Letters to the Editor about case study
Since 2009, AJA had no “Case Report” any more. Authors who wish to report their case study in clinic please submit it as a Letter to the Editor.
Letters to the Editor about original research
Original research that reports interesting findings but does not fulfill the criteria for full research papers (eg short experimental reports limited by sample size or duration, novel hypotheses or commentaries) may be submitted as a Letter to the Editor. Experimental details are not required, but a general outline of experimental methods and results should be included.
Letters to the Editor about commentary and opinion
Unsolicited commentaries on papers published either in AJA or in other journals, unsolicited perspective and opinion on andrology care of unusual urgency, significance and interest, whose subjects may be useful and informative to the scientific community, can be submitted as a Letter to the Editor.

An additional Chinese language abstract should be provided if possible. It should be submitted named “Abstract in Chinese” when you submit manuscript filed.

Any manuscript or substantial parts of it, submitted to the journal must not be under consideration by any other journal. In general, the manuscript should not have already been published in any journal or other citable form, although it may have been deposited on a preprint server. Authors are required to ensure that no material submitted as part of a manuscript infringes existing copyrights, or the rights of a third party.

Editorial standards
AJA is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and endorses the World Association of Medical Editors (WAME) Policy Statement on Geopolitical Intrusion on Editorial Decisions.

Ethical guidelines
Submission of a manuscript to Asian Journal of Andrology implies that all authors have read and agreed to its content, and that any experimental research that is reported in the manuscript has been performed with the approval of an appropriate ethics committee. Research carried out on humans must be in compliance with the Helsinki Declaration, and any experimental research on animals must follow internationally recognized guidelines. A statement to this effect must appear in the Methods section of the manuscript, including the name of the body which gave approval, with a reference number where appropriate. Informed consent must also be documented. Manuscripts may be rejected if the editorial office considers that the research has not been carried out within an ethical framework, e.g. if the severity of the experimental procedure is not justified by the value of the knowledge gained.
For all articles that include information or clinical photographs relating to individual patients, written and signed consent from each patient to publish must also be made available if requested by the editorial staff.
The involvement of scientific (medical) writers or anyone else who assisted with the preparation of the manuscript content should be acknowledged, along with their source of funding。If medical writers are not listed among the authors, their role should be acknowledged explicitly.

Standards of reporting
Asian Journal of Andrology supports initiatives aimed at improving the reporting of biomedical research.
For authors of systematic reviews, an additional file, linked from the Methods section, should reproduce all details concerning the search strategy. For an example of how a search strategy should be presented, see the Cochrane Reviewers' Handbook.
Standardised gene nomenclature should be used throughout. Human gene symbols and names can be found in the HUGO Gene Nomenclature Committee (HGNC) database and any enquiries, or requests for new gene symbols, should be directed via email to hgnc@genenames.org. Nomenclature committees for other species are listed at http://www.genenames.org/about/faq#otherspecies. For mutation nomenclature please use the guidelines suggested by the Human Genome Variation Society.

Competing interests
Asian Journal of Andrology requires authors to declare any competing financial or other interest in relation to their work. All competing interests that are declared will be listed at the end of published articles. Where an author gives no competing interests, the listing will read 'The author(s) declare that they have no competing interests'.

Plagiarism detection
CrossCheck is available to the editors of Asian Journal of Andrology to detect instances of overlapping and similar text in submitted manuscripts. CrossCheck is a multi-publisher initiative allowing screening of published and submitted content for originality.

Print Journal Subscription
For assistance with your print subscription, please contact us.

Reprints
High-quality, bound reprints can be purchased for all articles published. Please see our reprints website for further information about ordering reprints.

Supplements
Asian Journal of Andrology will consider supplements based on proceedings (full articles or meeting abstracts), reviews or research. All articles submitted for publication in supplements are subject to peer review. Published supplements are fully searchable and freely accessible online and can also be produced in print. For further information, please contact us.

High visibility
Asian Journal of Andrology's open access policy allows maximum visibility of articles published in the journal as they are available to a wide, global audience. Articles that have been especially highly accessed are highlighted with a 'Highly accessed' graphic, which appears on the journal's contents pages and search results.

Speed of publication
Asian Journal of Andrology offers a fast publication schedule whilst maintaining rigorous peer review; all articles must be submitted online, and peer review is managed fully electronically. Authors will be able to check the progress of their manuscript through the submission system at any time by logging into My Asian Journal of Andrology. Articles are published with their final citation immediately upon acceptance in a provisional PDF form. The article will subsequently be published in both fully browsable web form, and as a formatted PDF; the article will then be available through Asian Journal of Andrology.

Flexibility
Online publication in Asian Journal of Andrology gives authors the opportunity to publish large datasets, large numbers of color illustrations and moving pictures, to display data in a form that can be read directly by other software packages so as to allow readers to manipulate the data for themselves.

Promotion and press coverage
Articles published in Asian Journal of Andrology are included in article alerts and regular email updates. All articles will be included in printed issues mailed to academics and are highlighted on Asian Journal of Andrology's pages and the high quality articles may be selected into the “Editor’s Choice” section.
In addition, articles published in Asian Journal of Andrology may be promoted by press releases to the general or scientific press. These activities increase the exposure and number of accesses for articles published in Asian Journal of Andrology.

Copyright
The entire contents of the Asian Journal of Andrology are protected under China and international copyrights. Authors grant SIMM and SJTU an exclusive license to publish, in return for which they can re-use their papers in their future printed work. AJA provides details of the policy and a sample form here. Article published under the Creative Commons Attribution‐NonCommercial‐Share Alike 3.0 license. This allows readers to alter, transform, or build upon the article and then distribute the resulting work under the same or similar license to this one. The work must be attributed back to the original author and commercial use is not permitted. Ownership of copyright remains with the Authors, and provided that, when reproducing the Contribution or extracts from it, they acknowledge first and reference publication in the Journal.