Guide for Authors

Manuscript preparation template

Manuscript preparation template

 

Conflict of Interest Statement Form

COI statement Form

 

Cover letter form



 

Submission Declaration

Submission of an article implies that the work described has not been published previously (except in the form of an abstract or as part of a published lecture or academic thesis), that it is not under consideration for publication elsewhere, that its publication is approved by all authors and tacitly or explicitly by the responsible authorities where the work was carried out.

 

File Formats

Prepare the text in Microsoft Word (2003). Set the page size to have 2.5 cm margins on all sides. The font size should be no smaller than 12 points. Type every portion of the manuscript double spaced, including References and figure legends, and number all pages in sequence, including the abstract, figure legends and tables. The last two items should be placed after the Reference section. Manuscript pages should have continuous line numbers.

The text of your manuscript (including title page, abstract, main text, references, and figure legends) followed by tables and figures should be in a single word file for initial submission. Each figure should be labeled with a figure number. Standard fonts, preferably Times New Roman, should be used for the generation of text and Arial or Helvetica for the figures. Use the Symbol font and the "Insert Symbol" option from the menu bar for introducing symbols in MS Word. Authors can upload their articles as MS Word, but it is also possible to submit an article in Adobe Acrobat PDF format. This format is acceptable for reviewing purposes only and if the paper is accepted, the authors then have to send the final version as source files including a separate Word file for text and graphic TIFF or JPEG files. Manuscripts that do not follow the "File Formats" and "Organization and Styles of Manuscripts" (below) are not suitable for editorial review or publication, and will be returned to the author.

 

Organization and Styles of Manuscripts

Manuscripts must be full-length original research reports that contain detailed descriptions of experimental work, with clear interpretation and discussion of the theoretical and experimental results and data. Articles should be structured under the section headings Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results, Discussion, Acknowledgment and References.

Authors should present their material with utmost clarity and conciseness and in a logical manner. Constant repetition of experimental procedures, information, and facts among sections should be avoided. The average length of a published Article should be approximately six printed page long including tables and figures.

The organization shown below should be followed (in the order given):

Title page:

Title of the paper

 

Author name(s)

 

Author affiliation (s)

address(es) of the institution (s) at which the work was performed

Name, postal and E-mail addresses, and phone and fax numbers of the corresponding author(s)

 

A brief running title (not to exceed 54 characters and spaces)

 

Note: Place an asterisk (*) after the name of the author to whom inquiries regarding the paper should be directed. The affiliation address for each author should be indicated by superscript Arabic numbers (1, 2, 3, etc).

 

Abstract

An Abstract of up to 200 words describing the purpose of the study, the methods, the results, and the conclusion should precede the main text.

 

Key words

A maximum of 6 keywords or phrases should be provided; preferably, these should be selected from the body of the text.

 

Introduction

The Introduction presents the purpose of the studies reported and their relationship to earlier work in the field. It should not be an extensive review of the literature. Use only those references required to provide the most salient background to allow the readers to understand and evaluate the purpose and results of the present study without referring to previous publications on the topic.

 

Materials and Methods

The Materials and Methods section should be brief but include sufficient technical information to allow the experiments to be repeated by a qualified reader. Only new methods should be described in detail. Cite previously published procedures in References.

 

Results

The Results section should include the rationale or design of the experiments as well as the results of the experiments. Results can be presented in figures, tables, and text. Reserve extensive discussion of the results for the discussion section.

 

Discussion

The Discussion section should focus on the interpretation of the results rather than a repetition of the Results section. *The Results and Discussion sections may be combined into one section when substantial redundancy cannot be avoided in two separate sections or if a long discussion is not warranted. Please notice this situation is rare and often asked for separating these two sections.

 

Acknowledgments

Place Acknowledgments, including information on the source of any financial support received for the work being published, before the References.

 

References          endnote style

The References section must include all relevant published works, and all listed references must be cited in the text. The only indication required in the text of a paper is a number, allocated in ascending sequence, and presented in the text either in brackets, or in superscript. If the same source is cited again later in the text, the same number is used once more. If multiple references are cited, use a hyphen to join an inclusive range of numbers thus: [2-5]. Use commas without spaces to separate non-inclusive numbers in a multiple citation thus: [2-5, 7, 10].

 Abbreviate journal names according to the PubMed Entrez Journals database (available at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/). 

Research article:

[1] Anand, A., Zhou, T., Trick, H.N., Gill, B.S., Bockus, W. and Muthukrishnan, S. 2003. Greenhouse and field testing of transgenic wheat plants stably expressing genes for thaumatin-like protein, chitinase and glucanase against Fusarium graminearum. J Exp Bot, 54:1101-1111.

[2] Herbers, K. and Sonnewald, U. 1999. Production of new/modified proteins in transgenic plants. Curr Opin Biotechnol, 10:163-168.

Book:

[3] Sambrook, J., Fritsch, E.F. and Maniatis, T. 1989. Molecular cloning: a laboratory manual, 2nd edn. Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, New York.

Thesis:

[4] Offringa, R. 1992. Gene targeting in plants using Agrobacterium. PhD Thesis, Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands.

In press:

References to papers accepted for publication but not yet published should show the journal name and, if known, the probable year of publication, and state "In press."

 

Note: The following types of references are not valid for listing in the References section:

unpublished data

personal communication

manuscripts in preparation or submitted

pamphlets

abstracts

patents

newsletters

material that has not been subjected to peer review.

 

Figure legends

Figure legends should contain a brief description of the experiments so that the figure can be understood without reference to the body of the text. However, the legend should not repeat Materials and Methods or contain interpretive statements.

 

Tables

Tables should be typewritten separately from the main text and in an appropriate font size to preferably fit each table on a separate page. Each table must be numbered with Arabic numerals (e.g., Table 1, Table 2) and include a title. Place footnotes to tables below the table body and indicate them with superscript lowercase letters (a, b, c, etc), not symbols.

 Do not use vertical rulings in the tables. Each column in a table must have a heading, and abbreviations, when necessary, should be defined in the footnotes.

 

Figures

Figures should be provided separately from the main text. Use Arabic numerals to number all figures (e.g., Figure 1, Figure 2) according to their sequence in the text. The figure number must appear well outside the boundaries of the image itself. Multipart figures should be numbered in uppercase and bold font letters (A, B, C, etc) without parenthesis, both on the figure itself and in the figure legends.

 

Note that figures may have to be reduced in size to fit the one-column (84 mm) or twocolumn (176 mm) space of the printed page, as determined by the journal designer. Original figures, especially line drawings, must therefore contain fonts and other detail that are large and clear enough to be legible even after a 50% reduction in size.

 

All figures should be created with applications that are capable of preparing high resolution TIFF or JPEG files acceptable for publication. All figures should be embedded at the end of text in a single Word or PDF file when you initially submit manuscript. If your paper is accepted, we will require submission of figures as separate TIFF or JPEG files at publication quality resolution. Blurred images will not be accepted. Diagrams and photographs submitted in electronic format must have a resolution of 300 dpi or higher. 

 

*For inserting a chart, the workbook must be embedded so it is editable by page designers. For more information download this tutorial.    How inserting a chart

 

Sequence Data Formats

 

Diagrams of nucleotide and amino acid sequences should be prepared in the most effective layout. The layout should be designed to fit the journal page economically, i.e. to fill either the full width of the page (176 mm) or a single column (84 mm). The height of the characters should be about 1.5-2 mm (or 6-8 point). For sequence data at full-page width with this size of type, a layout with 80-100 nucleotides per line is appropriate (or 60-70 if there are spaces between the codons). A single-column layout would ideally fit 50-60 nucleotides per line. If possible, lines of nucleic acid sequence should be subdivided into blocks of 10 or 20 nucleotides by spaces within the sequences or by marks above it. There should not be too much space between the lines of sequence. Use of the single-letter amino acid code is preferred.

 

Abbreviations and symbols

Explain all abbreviations in the text, figure and table legends when they first appear. Keep the number of abbreviations to a minimum. Do not explain abbreviations for units of measurement [3 mL, not 3 milliliters (mL)] or standard scientific symbols [Na, not sodium (Na)]. Abbreviate names of tests and procedures that are better known by their abbreviations than by the full name (ELISA test, PCR). Use abbreviations in figures and tables to save space, but they must be defined in the legend.

 

Units

The Systeme International (SI) (http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units) in metric units is used for units and abbreviations of units. Examples:

  s for second

  min for minute

  h for hour

  L for liter

  m for meter

  kDa for mass in kilodaltons

  5 mM rather than 5.10-3 M or 0.005