Advanced Gut & Microbiome Research

About Advanced Gut & Microbiome Research

Advanced Gut & Microbiome Research: Journal Profile

Advanced Gut & Microbiome Research, abbreviated AGMR, is a fully open-access, peer-reviewed journal launched in 2022 to publish work at the meeting point of gastroenterology and microbiology. Its own summary of its mission is compact: it publishes original research and review articles covering all aspects of fundamental and applied research on gastroenterology, microbiology and their interactions. That third element, the interactions, is the journal's reason for existing. The human gut is inhabited by a dense microbial community whose composition and activity influence digestion, immunity, metabolism and even signalling to the nervous system, and the past two decades of sequencing-led research have turned that relationship into one of the most active territories in biomedical science. AGMR was created as a dedicated venue for that territory, rather than as a general gastroenterology title or a general microbiology title with an occasional gut paper.

The journal's ownership and publishing arrangement is distinctive and worth understanding before submitting. The journal is owned by Hangzhou Aimeida BioTech Co., Ltd., a Chinese biotechnology company, whose copyright line appears on the journal's Wiley pages. It was launched through a publishing partnership announced in April 2022 between that company and Hindawi, described at the time as Hindawi's first partnership journal with a Chinese partner, under which Hindawi would run peer-review administration, production, online publication, marketing and development while ownership remained with the Chinese partner. The journal is now presented and published on Wiley Online Library, with Wiley recorded as publisher in the Directory of Open Access Journals, and its articles carry DOIs in the 10.1155 sequence, a legacy of the Hindawi platform visible in references such as 10.1155/agm3. Authors citing the journal will meet both names, Wiley as the current publisher of record and the Hindawi-era DOI prefix, and should not treat them as evidence of two different journals.

At a Glance

History and Publishing Partnership

The journal's history begins with the partnership announcement of 12 April 2022. Hangzhou Aimeida BioTech and Hindawi announced that the latter would publish and develop a fully open-access journal, Advanced Gut & Microbiome Research, led by an editorial board drawn from active members of its research community. Submissions had opened the previous month, in March 2022. The announcement set out the division of labour clearly: the journal would remain under the ownership of the Chinese partner, while the publishing partner handled peer-review administration, production and online publication on its open-source platform, together with day-to-day correspondence with the editorial team and all marketing, promotion and development. It also recorded an important financial arrangement for the launch period: the article processing charges were to be covered by Hangzhou Aimeida BioTech during the first stage of the collaboration.

Two features of that launch deserve emphasis. First, the journal was presented as a partnership of a type the publisher had not previously entered into with a Chinese partner, making AGMR an early example of a model in which a specialist company owns a journal and contracts an established open-access publisher to operate it. Second, the leadership was announced jointly by the owner and publisher: Prof Wei Chen, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, as Honorary Editor-in-Chief, and Prof Zongxin Ling as Editor-in-Chief. Prof Ling's affiliation, the First Affiliated Hospital of Zhejiang University in China, is the affiliation shown on the journal's current Wiley pages, which continue to name him as editor. Continuity of editorship from launch to the present platform is a stabilising fact for a young journal, and authors can verify it directly on the journal home page.

The move onto Wiley Online Library changed the journal's presentation, submission route and metrics display, but not its identity: same title, same online ISSN 2755-1652, same editor and the same open-access model, with the archive carried across so that articles from 2022 onward sit together. Annual volume numbering follows the model common to the platform, with content organised by year, and recent articles in the archive include work published through 2025 and 2026. When a reference gives a year and an article identifier rather than conventional page numbers, that is the normal citation form for this journal and not a sign of an incomplete reference.

Aims, Scope and Subject Coverage

The registered subject classification places the journal in two Library of Congress territories at once: diseases of the digestive system and gastroenterology on the medical side, and microbiology on the science side. Its registered keywords, microbiome, microbiota, microbiology, gastroenterology and precision nutrition, map the same ground. The editorial scope, as announced at launch, covers research articles, reviews, short communications and commentaries on all aspects of gastroenterology and microbiology and their interactions, spanning fundamental and applied work. Reading the recent archive shows what that means in practice.

The gut microbiome in health and disease

The core of the journal is the composition, diversity and function of the gut microbial community, and the consequences when that community is disturbed, a state usually described as dysbiosis. Recent published work includes a comparative analysis of how diet and age modulate the human gut microbiome using 16S rRNA sequencing, and a synthesis of the intersection between the gut microbiome, the human genome, diet and epigenetics, examining how host genetic variants shape the commensal community and how microbial metabolites can be beneficial or harmful. Studies of this kind, which combine sequencing data with clinical or dietary variables, are the journal's home territory, and authors should frame submissions so that the microbial evidence and the gut-health question are both explicit, rather than presenting a general microbiome survey with a digestive disease mentioned only in passing.

Mechanisms: immunity, inflammation and signalling

A second strand is mechanistic. Recent content includes a narrative review of neuroimmune mechanisms linking inflammation and psychological symptoms in irritable bowel syndrome, and laboratory and translational studies connecting gut dysbiosis and inflammatory markers to systemic conditions such as type 2 diabetes, including analyses of plasma branched-chain amino acids alongside dysbiosis and inflammation measures. Network pharmacology work on traditional formulations used for intestinal flora disorder, tracing candidate active components to immune and inflammatory signalling pathways, has also appeared. The pattern is of a journal willing to publish across the translational chain, from molecular mechanism to clinical association, provided the gut-microbe relationship remains the organising question.

Applied and comparative microbiome research

The applied side of the scope reaches beyond human medicine. The archive includes work on how ploidy influences stress effects on the gut microbiome of rainbow trout, and studies of plant-associated microbial communities as reservoirs of stress-resilient probiotics, alongside human-focused work on probiotic and nutritional interventions and on precision nutrition, one of the journal's registered keywords. This breadth is deliberate in the stated scope, which speaks of fundamental and applied research without restricting the host to humans. Authors in animal, aquaculture, agricultural and food microbiology should nevertheless demonstrate the relevance of their system to gut and microbiome science as the journal defines it, because the editorial frame remains gastroenterology and its microbial interactions.

Article types

The journal publishes original research articles and review articles as its main forms, with short communications and commentaries included in the launch scope. Special issues form part of the journal's structure on its current platform, with open special issues listed alongside the standard archive, a route through which guest-edited collections on focused themes are developed. Authors considering a special issue proposal or submission should read the platform's special issue guidance, and should apply the same tests of editorial fit and peer review as for a regular submission.

Editorial Leadership

The Editor-in-Chief is Prof Zongxin Ling of the First Affiliated Hospital of Zhejiang University, China, as shown on the journal's current publisher pages and announced at launch. At launch, Prof Wei Chen, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, was named Honorary Editor-in-Chief alongside him, and the two commented jointly on the journal's creation, presenting it as a community-led title whose editorial board members are active researchers in the field. The full editorial board is published on the journal's editorial board page on Wiley Online Library, which is the authoritative list; this profile does not reproduce it in full because board composition changes as a young journal grows, and an out-of-date board list in a directory profile would mislead authors about conflicts of interest and expertise coverage.

For a prospective author, the leadership structure signals two things. The journal's academic centre of gravity is in China, anchored in a major university hospital with a strong microbiome research programme, while its publishing infrastructure is international. That pairing matches the archive, which draws authors from many countries while retaining a visible strength in Chinese microbiome research groups. Authors should also note the ownership structure when reading the journal's policies: the owner is a biotechnology company, the publisher of record is Wiley, and the academic decisions rest with the editor and board. Those three roles are distinct, and questions about editorial matters, production matters and commercial matters belong with different parties.

Peer Review, Metrics and Speed

DOAJ records the journal's review model as single anonymous peer review, meaning that reviewers know the authors' identities while remaining anonymous themselves, and records that the journal checks submissions for plagiarism, with its author guidelines carrying the relevant requirements. The author guidelines and ethical guidelines are published on the journal's Wiley pages, and authors should treat them as binding: microbiome research raises recurring ethical and methodological questions, including human-subject approvals for clinical sampling, animal ethics for comparative work, data availability for sequencing datasets and accurate reporting of bioinformatic methods, all of which a careful author will address in the manuscript rather than at proof stage.

The publisher displays two headline journal metrics on the journal home page: an acceptance rate of 50 percent and a median of 25 days from submission to first decision. DOAJ separately records an average of eleven weeks from submission to publication. These figures describe the journal's recent aggregate performance as reported by those sources; they are not promises for an individual manuscript, and they will be updated by the publisher over time. Taken together, they portray a journal operating at the faster end of biomedical publishing while still rejecting about half of what it receives, which is useful context for authors weighing AGMR against slower society titles or against broad-scope mega-journals where the gut-microbiome fit would be less exact.

Publication Model, Licence and Charges

AGMR is fully open access and has been since it began publishing in 2022. DOAJ records that articles are published under a CC BY licence, the most permissive of the standard Creative Commons forms, allowing reuse and adaptation with attribution, including for commercial purposes, and records that authors retain unrestricted copyright and publishing rights. Articles are digitally preserved in Portico and CLOCKSS, the two archive services named in the directory record, and each article carries a DOI as its permanent identifier. Those arrangements together satisfy the requirements that most research funders place on open-access publication, although authors should always check their own funder's specific conditions.

On charges, DOAJ records that the journal has no article processing charge. That position is consistent with the journal's launch arrangement, under which the owner covered processing charges during the first stage of the collaboration. Because sponsorship arrangements of this kind are, by their nature, time-limited and revisable, authors should confirm the current charge position on the journal's open-access page at the moment of submission rather than relying solely on any directory, including this profile. If a charge is introduced or a sponsorship window closes, the publisher's own page is where the change will appear first, and the financial commitment an author makes should rest on that check.

Indexing and Discoverability

The journal is listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals, under ISSN 2755-1652, with its record fully reviewed in March 2026 according to the directory's administrative data, and it has an OpenAlex source record showing publication from 2022. Its articles are published on Wiley Online Library, which provides its own search, alerting and citation tools, including email alerts and RSS feeds for new and most-cited content, and its content is preserved in Portico and CLOCKSS as noted above. No statement about Scopus or Web of Science coverage is made in this profile, because coverage in those databases was not verified from their operators' own source lists during preparation. For a journal founded in 2022, indexing is still developing, and authors whose institutions require a specific database should verify the position directly in that database before submitting, and keep evidence of the check, rather than assuming that presence on a major publisher's platform implies inclusion in every index that platform feeds.

Who Should Publish Here, and Who Should Read It

The journal's clearest fit is work whose central question is the interaction itself: how gut microbes affect a digestive or systemic condition, how a disease, drug, diet or intervention reshapes the gut community, or how microbial mechanisms can be turned into diagnostics, probiotics, nutritional strategies or therapies. Gastroenterologists, microbiologists, immunologists, nutrition researchers, bioinformaticians working on microbiome data, and translational teams spanning clinic and laboratory are its natural authors and readers. The published archive's range, from human sequencing studies and diabetes biomarker work to fish gut microbiology under stress and plant endophytes as probiotic reservoirs, shows that the editors interpret the interaction broadly across hosts and methods.

Work that fits less well includes purely clinical gastroenterology with no microbial component, purely environmental microbiology with no gut connection, and single-centre descriptive surveys that neither test a mechanism nor add a comparison the field lacks. Authors with such manuscripts will generally serve their work better elsewhere. For readers, the journal functions as a concentrated feed on gut-microbiome science: because every article is open access under a permissive licence, it is particularly usable in teaching, in journal clubs in low-resource settings, and in interdisciplinary teams where not every member has subscription access to the clinical literature.

Frequently Asked Questions

When was Advanced Gut & Microbiome Research founded?

It was launched in 2022. Submissions opened in March 2022, and the publishing partnership between its owner, Hangzhou Aimeida BioTech Co., Ltd., and Hindawi was announced in April 2022. It is now published on Wiley Online Library, with Wiley as publisher of record in DOAJ.

Who is the Editor-in-Chief?

Prof Zongxin Ling of the First Affiliated Hospital, Zhejiang University, China. Prof Wei Chen was named Honorary Editor-in-Chief at launch.

Does the journal charge an article processing charge?

DOAJ records no article processing charge, consistent with the launch arrangement under which the owner covered charges during the first stage. Confirm the current position on the journal's open-access page before submitting, because sponsorship arrangements can change.

What licence do articles carry?

CC BY, as recorded by DOAJ, with authors retaining unrestricted copyright.

How fast is the journal?

The publisher reports a median of 25 days from submission to first decision and a 50 percent acceptance rate, and DOAJ records an average of eleven weeks from submission to publication. Individual manuscripts vary.

Sources and Verification Note

This profile is based on the journal's pages on Wiley Online Library, including its journal home, overview and metrics display; its Directory of Open Access Journals record for ISSN 2755-1652; the April 2022 launch announcement describing the partnership between Hangzhou Aimeida BioTech Co., Ltd. and Hindawi; and the OpenAlex source record. Charge and indexing information is stated only as recorded by those sources and should be rechecked at submission, as described above.