Aging Cell

About Aging Cell

Aging Cell: Journal Profile

Aging Cell is an open-access journal of geroscience — the biology of aging — published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd together with The Anatomical Society, whose journal it is. Wiley's journal homepage describes it in one precise sentence: it is an open-access geroscience journal publishing research addressing the biology of aging, welcoming work that reports the mechanistic, molecular and cellular aspects of the aging process, as well as the links between aging and age-related disease. Founded in 2002, it has grown with its field. When the journal began, the molecular biology of aging was a small specialism; two decades later, with genomics, proteomics and other high-throughput technologies transforming what can be measured, the biology of aging has become one of the most active areas in the life sciences, and Aging Cell is one of the field's defining venues.

This profile is anchored to the Journals World record for the journal (post 1776, slug aging-cell). The record's stored summary names the publisher as Wiley-Blackwell Publishing Ltd, gives coverage from 2002, and classifies the journal at Q1 in Aging and in Cell Biology, with an SJR of 2.881 and an h-index of 191 for SCImago 2025. Those details were checked for this profile against Wiley's official journal homepage, the journal's record in the Directory of Open Access Journals, Crossref's journal record for its online ISSN, and aggregator summaries of its SCImago standing. Wiley is a publishing operation whose imprint names have changed over time — Wiley-Blackwell in the stored record, John Wiley & Sons Ltd on the current homepage — and that difference is a branding history, not a conflict. Anything that could not be verified from a source actually consulted is described here as not published or not publicly disclosed.

Quick Facts

History and the Rise of Geroscience

Aging Cell began publishing in 2002. Its founding proposition, still visible in the way the Anatomical Society describes the journal, was that the biology of aging deserved a dedicated, high-quality journal: one aiming to publish novel and exciting science addressing fundamental issues in the molecular biology of aging, welcoming all areas of aging biology and a wide range of experimental approaches. The society's description of the journal's moment remains apt — rapid developments in genomics, proteomics and other high-throughput technologies, and the combined analytical powers of genetics, biochemistry and cell biology, were producing new information about the basic mechanisms of biological aging at increasing speed, and the journal was built to receive the results of those programmes.

The journal's ownership is part of its character. Aging Cell is a journal of The Anatomical Society, one of the United Kingdom's long-established learned societies for the anatomical sciences, and it is published with Wiley. Society ownership has practical consequences that authors notice: the journal's identity is set by a scientific community rather than solely by a publisher's portfolio logic, its editorial leadership is drawn from the field, and its surplus supports a society rather than leaving the discipline entirely. The Anatomical Society's own page for the journal describes it as peer-reviewed and open access, gives its scope in the journal's classic terms, and lists the areas it covers — a list worth reading in full, because it remains a fair map of the journal's content.

A second historical transition deserves care, because directory records often garble it. The journal was founded in 2002 as a subscription-era title, and DOAJ records its open-access start year as 2014. Readers should understand that combination correctly: it is the date from which DOAJ records the journal as operating as an open-access publication, not the journal's founding date. The journal today is fully open access, with the charge, licence and preservation arrangements set out below. Back content published under earlier arrangements is encountered under the terms that applied to it, which is normal for a journal of this age that has changed access model mid-life.

Aims and Scope in Detail

Wiley's current statement of scope is deliberately focused: mechanistic, molecular and cellular aspects of the aging process, and the links between aging and age-related disease. The Anatomical Society's fuller account of the journal's coverage gives the working detail, listing the areas the journal covers as genes and functional genomics; cell proliferation, senescence and death; signaling and gene expression; stem cells and aging; cell stress and damage; integrative physiology; biodemography and comparative studies; and new theories of aging and longevity. Read together with the scope frameworks the journal has used for authors — which elaborate the same territory as genetics and functional genomics, including gene variants affecting longevity and gene manipulation; mechanisms linking age-associated changes with phenotypes and physiology, including hormonal, immune and inflammatory systems; replicative senescence, apoptosis, telomere biology and chronological cellular aging; free-radical influences, defence and damage; stem-cell generation, migration, homeostasis and niche interactions; outcomes of aging at organismal, cellular and molecular levels; and population and cross-species comparative studies — the result is a clear map of a journal that is broad within biology and disciplined about its centre.

That centre is mechanism. Aging Cell is not primarily a journal of clinical geriatrics, of social gerontology, or of demographic description: DOAJ classifies it under the Library of Congress heading Geriatrics, and its keywords there are ageing, longevity, lifespan, apoptosis and gerontology, but its own scope statements put molecular and cellular mechanism first, with disease links welcomed where the biology is worked out. A clinical observation without a mechanistic account, or a population association without a biological follow-through, will usually fit better elsewhere. Conversely, work in model organisms — the worms, flies, fish and mice on which aging biology has been built — sits squarely in scope, including studies of interventions intended to extend lifespan or healthspan, provided the evidence supports the claim being made.

Recent content illustrates the living scope. Wiley's homepage for the journal, when checked for this profile, highlighted among its prominent papers a 2023 research article reporting that rilmenidine extends lifespan and healthspan in the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans through a nischarin I1-imidazoline receptor — a drug-repurposing longevity study in a classic model organism — and recent 2026 articles on flavonoid senotherapeutics identified by phenotypic drug discovery, which reduced senescence and improved healthspan markers in aged and progeroid mice, and on endothelial TLR4 signalling at the crossroads of vascular senescence and targeted senotherapeutics. Senescence, senotherapeutics, healthspan interventions, model-organism longevity genetics and age-related disease mechanisms: that is the journal's centre of gravity, in its own current showcase.

Editorial Leadership and Process

Wiley's journal homepage names three Co-Editors-in-Chief: Alexei Maklakov, Joanne Ryan and Ming Xu. That current publisher listing is the source used here. An older page from The Anatomical Society names a different scholar as editor-in-chief, in material that also carries a 2019 impact factor; the two listings reflect different points in time rather than a genuine ambiguity, and the publisher's current homepage listing is the one readers should rely on. The episode is worth one line in this profile because it shows why editor names in static directories decay: editorships rotate, and only the journal's own current pages can be trusted for who holds the role now.

The journal is peer reviewed. DOAJ describes its review process in unspecific terms — its record lists the process as unspecified peer review, while pointing to the journal's author pages on the Wiley platform for the governing details — so this profile does not dress that record up into a claim about single- or double-anonymous review; the review model in its precise form is not publicly disclosed in the DOAJ record consulted, and authors who need it should read the journal's current author guidelines. DOAJ does record that the journal operates plagiarism detection and uses DOIs as its persistent identifier scheme, both standard for a Wiley society title.

Two publisher-reported workflow numbers are more informative than most journals provide. Wiley reports a median of 10 days from submission to first decision, and an acceptance rate of 20%. Read together, they describe a journal that decides quickly at the first step — consistent with active editorial triage — and accepts one manuscript in five overall. DOAJ separately records a publication time of 8 weeks. None of these figures is a promise for an individual paper: a median first decision of 10 days tells authors they will not wait months for an initial answer, and a 20% acceptance rate tells them the bar is real but not at the extreme end of selectivity occupied by general-science flagships. Authors whose work is declined should note the practical implication — in a field with several strong specialist venues, a fast decision is a service, allowing the work to move on without a long delay.

Open Access, Charges and Licensing

Aging Cell is fully open access and listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals, whose record for the journal's online ISSN was consulted in full for this profile. DOAJ records a maximum article processing charge of USD 3,790, GBP 2,360 or EUR 3,040, with no other charges, and links to the journal's own open-access information page on the Wiley platform for the governing terms. Authors should confirm the charge applicable to their article type at submission, since DOAJ maxima and publisher schedules are both revised from time to time; but the DOAJ figure gives a reliable order of magnitude for budgeting, and it is materially lower than the charges recorded for some other journals in this batch.

DOAJ records a waiver policy for the journal, linked to Wiley's waivers and discounts information for open-access authors. It also records the licence as CC BY and, importantly, records that the author retains copyright — a combination that satisfies the open-access conditions of most research funders without further negotiation. Preservation is recorded as CLOCKSS, PubMed Central and Portico, so the journal's content has the standard triple protection of commercial platform archiving, the United States National Library of Medicine's open archive, and an independent dark archive. For a journal whose articles are meant to be read for decades — and aging research is cumulative in exactly that way — that preservation position is part of the value of publishing there.

Metrics and Standing

Wiley's journal homepage reports three headline metrics for Aging Cell: a CiteScore of 11.4, a Journal Impact Factor of 7.7, and the workflow figures already discussed — a 20% acceptance rate and a 10-day median to first decision. Publisher homepages display the metrics the publisher most wants authors to see, which is a reason to read them rather than a reason to discount them: these are the figures Wiley is prepared to stand behind on the journal's own front door. A trade directory's report on the journal agrees that its latest Journal Impact Factor is 7.7, updated in June 2026, and records the same CiteScore of 11.4 with Scopus coverage from 2002 — a welcome piece of agreement between a publisher claim and an independent compilation, which this profile notes as such.

The SCImago position in this site's record places the journal at Q1 in both Aging and Cell Biology for 2025, with an SJR of 2.881 and an h-index of 191, coverage from 2002, and 407 documents with 6,170 citations across the latest three-year reporting window. An aggregator summary of the same SCImago data independently confirms the SJR of 2.881 and the h-index of 191 for 2025, while noting that the h-index was also 191 in 2024 — stability at a high level, characteristic of a journal whose cited back catalogue is deep. The same aggregator presents a 2025 impact factor figure slightly different from Wiley's 7.7. That small discrepancy is reported here rather than resolved, because it cannot be resolved from the sources in hand: impact factors are issued by Clarivate's Journal Citation Reports, and third parties occasionally carry preliminary, mislabelled or differently rounded values. The figure to quote is the publisher's 7.7, attributed to Wiley, with the understanding that the Journal Citation Reports release for the relevant year is authoritative.

What the metrics together say about the journal is coherent. Aging Cell is the leading specialist venue in its niche by ranking — Q1 in Aging, with a CiteScore in double figures — while sitting below the general life-science flagships in raw impact factor, as every specialist journal does. For an author, the relevant comparison is not with a multidisciplinary journal but with the other venues their intended readers actually follow, and by that test the journal's combination of field leadership, open access, a CC BY licence with author copyright retention, and fast first decisions is a strong package.

Who Should Submit, and Who Should Read

Aging Cell suits researchers working on the molecular and cellular mechanisms of aging: senescence and cell death, stress and damage pathways, signaling and gene expression in aging, stem-cell aging, the genetics and functional genomics of longevity, integrative physiology of the aging organism, comparative and biodemographic studies of aging, and interventions — pharmacological, dietary or genetic — that credibly extend healthspan or lifespan in model systems. It also suits work linking those mechanisms to age-related disease, which is where much of geroscience's clinical promise lies. It is a less natural home for purely clinical geriatric studies, for social and policy gerontology, and for descriptive demographic work without a biological mechanism; such work will generally be better served by the field's clinical and social-science titles.

As a reading venue, the journal is essential for anyone working in geroscience and valuable well beyond it: cell biologists meet aging here as a system in which their pathways play out over time; disease researchers find mechanism-level accounts of why age is the largest risk factor for the conditions they study; and translational researchers can watch the senotherapeutics and healthspan literature develop in a venue that requires biological rigour. Its open-access model means none of that reading depends on a subscription, which widens its practical audience to clinicians, students and interested readers outside research institutions.

Verification Notes

The identity of this record was checked in three ways. Crossref's journal record for the online ISSN 1474-9726 returns the title Aging Cell. Wiley's journal homepage confirms the print and online ISSNs (1474-9718 and 1474-9726), the society relationship, the editors-in-chief, the journal's self-description and its headline metrics. DOAJ's record for the same ISSN confirms the title, the print ISSN, the publisher Wiley with country United Kingdom, the owning institution The Anatomical Society, the open-access start year of 2014, the APC, the CC BY licence, author copyright retention, the waiver policy and the preservation services. The stored publisher name in the Journals World record, Wiley-Blackwell Publishing Ltd, is the publisher's historic imprint name for this list and is consistent with the current John Wiley & Sons Ltd presentation; no stored ISSN, country or category in the record conflicts with the official sources. No twin or duplicate record for this title or slug was found on Journals World when checked by slug in both the posts and journals endpoints; the single matching record is this one.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the ISSNs of Aging Cell? The print ISSN is 1474-9718 and the online ISSN is 1474-9726, both listed on Wiley's journal homepage and confirmed in the journal's DOAJ record.

Is Aging Cell open access? Yes, fully. It is listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals, which records its open-access start year as 2014 — the journal itself was founded in 2002 — and its content is preserved in CLOCKSS, PubMed Central and Portico.

How much does it charge? DOAJ records a maximum article processing charge of USD 3,790 (GBP 2,360 / EUR 3,040) and no other charges, with a waiver policy in place. Confirm the current amount on the journal's open-access page before submitting.

What licence does it use, and who keeps copyright? Articles are published under CC BY, and DOAJ records that the author retains copyright.

What is its impact factor? Wiley reports a Journal Impact Factor of 7.7 on the journal homepage, alongside a CiteScore of 11.4. An aggregator's slightly different 2025 figure could not be reconciled from the sources consulted; the publisher's figure is the one quoted here.

What are its chances and speed? Wiley reports a 20% acceptance rate and a median of 10 days from submission to first decision. DOAJ records a publication time of 8 weeks.

Who are its editors? The Co-Editors-in-Chief named on Wiley's journal homepage are Alexei Maklakov, Joanne Ryan and Ming Xu. An older society page names a predecessor; editorships rotate, so the publisher's current homepage is authoritative.

What does it publish? Mechanistic, molecular and cellular research on the biology of aging — senescence, stress and damage, signaling, stem cells, longevity genetics, integrative physiology, comparative aging, and the links between aging and age-related disease, including healthspan interventions in model organisms.