Guidelines for Journal Authors

Editorial Policy

When a manuscript is submitted, the Editors assume that no similar paper has been or will be submitted for publication elsewhere. Further, it is understood that all authors listed on a manuscript have agreed to its submission. Upon acceptance, authors must transfer copyright to Landes Bioscience. Download copyright transfer form.

Manuscripts should conform to the Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals (URMSBJ), which can be found in full at www.icmje.org. This is in addition to their need to conform to our general guidelines about layout etc. In particular, the attention of authors is drawn to the following conditions (which are extracted from the URMSBJ):

  • Authorship

    Authorship credit should be based on 1) substantial contributions to conception and design, or acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data; 2) drafting the article or reviewing/revising it critically for important intellectual content and 3) final approval of the version to the published. Each authors should meet all three of these criteria. Acquisition of funding, or general supervision of a research group, are not valid criteria for authorship. Individuals who have a lesser involvement should be thanked in the acknowledgements. If meeting these requirements causes problems for a particular manuscript, authors are encouraged to contact the Editor for advice on alternative ways in which other contributors can be listed.

  • Acknowledgment of funding

    Authors should list all sources of funding for the research described in a manuscript in the 'Acknowledgments' section.

  • Potential conflicts of interest

    Potential conflicts of interest exist when an author or reviewer has financial or personal interests in a publication that might, in principle, influence their scientific judgment. Financial interests include, but are not limited to, stock-holding, consultancy, paid expert testimony and honoraria; they also include any limitations on freedom to publish that are imposed on an author by an employer or funding agency. In order to encourage transparency without impeding publication, authors are required that to include a statement at the end of a manuscript that lists all potential financial interests or, if appropriate, that clearly states that there are none. Possible conflicts of interest of a personal nature should also be communicated to the Editor, who will discuss with the author whether these ought to be listed. Peer reviewers are also required to inform the Editor of any potential conflicts of interest, financial or otherwise.

  • Ethical statements

    If a study involves any ethical issues, which include patient confidentiality and treatment of animals, the paper must be accompanied by a statement to the effect that the authors complied with all of the legal requirements pertaining to the location(s) in which the work was done.

    Indicate whether the procedures were approved by the Ethics Committee of Human Experimentation in your country, or are in accordance with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975.

  • Corrections and retractions

    Authors are obliged to notify the Editor at once if they find that a published manuscript contains an error, plagiarism or fraudulent data. The journal will publish a correction, retraction or notice of concern at the earliest possible date: authors are encouraged to contact the Editor to discuss the most appropriate course of action. Duplicate or redundant publication: We publish only original manuscripts that are not also published or going to be published elsewhere.

    Duplicate publications, or redundant publications (re-packaging in different words of data already published by the same authors) will be rejected. If they are detected only after publication, the Editor reserves the right to publish a notice of the fact without requiring the authors' approval. Competing manuscripts on the same study, for example by collaborators who have split into rival teams after the data were gathered, are acceptable only under special circumstances: please contact the Editor for advice.

  • Plagiarism and other fraud

    If the Editor has reason to suspect that a manuscript is plagiarized or fraudulent, he reserves the right to bring his concerns to the authors' sponsoring institution and any other relevant bodies.

  • Limits to freedom of expression

    We are committed to academic freedom. It does, however, have to operate within the laws of the USA, where it is published. A liberal democracy that is committed to academic freedom, it does have certain legal restrictions on the publication of specific types of material (for example, defamation of character, incitement to racial hatred, material intended to aid terrorism etc). In the unlikely event that a manuscript contains material that contravenes these restrictions, the journal reserves the right to request that the material is removed from the manuscript or that the manuscript is withdrawn. In any case, the journal requires authors to take full legal responsibility for what they have written.

  • Availability of Materials and Data

    As a condition of publishing in any Landes Bioscience journal, authors should be able to provide any materials and/or protocols used in published experiments to other qualified researchers for their own use. Materials include (but are not limited to): cells, DNA, antibodies, reagents, organisms, mouse strains, and Drosophila strains. These should be made available in a timely manner and it is acceptable to request reasonable payment to cover the cost of maintenance and transport. If there are restrictions to availability, this should be made clear in the cover letter and in the Materials and Methods section of the Research Paper or Report.

    For materials such as mutant strains and cell lines, authors are encouraged to use established public repositories and provide relevant accession numbers wherever possible. Repositories include:

    Jackson Laboratory (mouse strains)

    Flybase

    MMRRC (Mutant Mouse Regional Resource Centers)

    UK Stem Cell Bank

    Papers reporting protein or DNA sequences and molecular structures should provide an accession number to any of the three major collaborative databases: DDBJ, EMBL or GenBank. It is only necessary to submit to one database as data are exchanged between DDBJ, EMBL and GenBank on a daily basis. The suggested wording for referring to accession-number information is: 'These sequence data have been submitted to the DDBJ/EMBL/GenBank databases under accession number U12345.'

Open Access Policy

Landes Bioscience recognizes that some authors prefer that their research be freely available to all potential readers upon publication, and that certain funding agencies (NIH, Wellcome Trust) request immediate open access of agency-funded research.

To address these requests, we provide the following options for our authors and readers:

  1. One year after publication. ALL papers will become open access to ALL users throughout the world after having been published online for one year.

  2. Immediately upon publication. Papers can be open access immediately upon publication. Authors may purchase open access of their paper at the proof stage and the paper will be made freely available at our website. If the paper is funded by a NIH or Wellcome Trust grant, we will deposit a PDF of the final manuscript with the NIH for download at PubMed Central. The fee for open access is $750. If the author's institution subscribes to the journal the fee is discounted to $500.

Peer Review

Each contribution is typically vetted by at least two expert reviewers who are either members of the Editorial Board or are recruited by Board members. Expedited reviews may be possible for papers that are submitted along with reviews from another journal as described above under "Editorial Policy."

For original articles or short reports, reviewers will be asked to comment on the following aspects of the submitted manuscripts:


  • significance to the field
  • study of data
  • quality of data
  • quality of controls
  • whether conclusions are justified
  • whether the effects are meaningful
  • whether the study is described clearly
  • comment on the novelty of the work

If the reviewers believe the paper is potentially acceptable but could be improved, specific suggestions will be made for improvement.

Final acceptance of all submitted manuscripts is a decision made by the Editors in consultation with the Editorial Board and reviewers. If a manuscript is believed to not meet the standards of the journal or is otherwise lacking in scientific rigor or contains major deficiencies, the reviewers will attempt to provide constructive criticism to assist the authors in ultimately improving their work for publication, here or elsewhere. Manuscripts not invited for resubmission will not be reconsidered.

If a manuscript receives favorable reviews but is not accepted outright following the initial review, it may be invited for reconsideration with the expectation that the authors will fully address the reviewer’s criticisms. Resubmitted manuscripts with major revisions will be sent back for peer review.

Accepted papers will be rapidly posted to the journal website as an E-publication (ahead of print).

Manuscript Submission

Online Manuscript Submission

Many of our journals at Landes Bioscience now utilize an online submission and tracking system, which is designed to provide a better, more efficient service to authors.

  • Authors can submit manuscripts online from anywhere in the world.
  • Authors can track their manuscript through the peer review process.
  • Author files are automatically converted into a PDF (Portable Document Format) file and submissions are acknowledged by email.
  • Editors and reviewers access the PDF files on the website.

Click the appropriate link for a journal's online submission website:

Copyright Transfer

A copyright transfer form must accompany all submissions. Please submit a completed copyright form to Attn: Journal Copyrights, Fax 512.637.6079

Non-Native Speakers of English

Authors who are not native speakers of English and submit manuscripts to international journals often receive negative comments from referees or editors about English-language usage. These problems can contribute to a decision to reject a paper. To help reduce the possibility of such problems, we strongly encourage such authors to take at least one or both of the following steps.
1. Have your manuscript reviewed for clarity by a colleague whose native language is English.
2. Use a service such as one of those listed below. An editor will improve the English to ensure that your meaning is clear and identify problems that require your review. Note that the use of such a service is at the author's own expense and risk and does not guarantee that the article will be accepted. Landes Bioscience accepts no responsibility for the interaction between the author and the service provider or for the quality of the work performed.

American Journal Experts

American Journal Experts (AJE) provides professional language editing services to authors around the globe who wish to publish in scientific, technical, medical and humanities journals. AJE employs expert editors with post-graduate training in a wide variety of fields who will check your manuscripts not only for terminology and language specific to your field but also for proper English usage, grammar, punctuation, spelling, verb tense, and phrasing. In addition, AJE's professional editors will make sure the text sounds natural and the sentences are well constructed. Receive a 10% discount: enter code 'Landes' into your account to receive your discount.

Bioedit English Language Editing

Bioedit Ltd, an online English editing company, offers unprecedented, high-quality English editing of biomedical texts destined for submission to peer-reviewed journals in the life sciences. The texts are edited by a large, expert team of native English-speaking editors with PhDs and years of experience in a broad range of disciplines in medicine and biology. First-time clients will receive a special 20% rebate if they are submitting their work to a Landes Bioscience journal.

Global BioEditing

Global BioEditing is a specialist service for the editing of English in biological documents. Our editing will not only make your manuscripts appear as though written by a native speaker of English but will also clarify your writing.

Inter-Biotec

Inter-Biotec also provides a free online writing course to help biomedical scientists whose first language is not English to write and publish their papers in English-language journals.

SPI Professional Editing Services

Write Science Right

Manuscript Preparation

All manuscripts should be in English. Please ensure that the manuscripts are well presented and that grammar, spelling and punctuation are checked.

Text should be prepared in MS Word, double-spaced, with page numbers throughout. Papers should be written as concisely as possible in clear, grammatically correct English. DO NOT EMBED GRAPHICS WITHIN YOUR MS WORD TEXT DOCUMENT.

Organize manuscripts in the following manner:

  1. Title page, including titles, author's names (first, MI, last) and affiliations
  2. 5-10 key words (for indexing purposes)
  3. Acknowledgments
  4. A list of abbreviations and acronyms used throughout the text
  5. An abstract, the primary goal of which is to make the general significance and conceptual advance of the work clearly accessible to a broad readership. (References should not be cited in the abstract.
  6. A running title of no more than 50 characters in length
  7. Text (length and organization depends upon type of paper)
  8. References
  9. Tables (with descriptive titles and legends)
  10. Figure legends

There are no word limits for papers published, however, accepted manuscripts are published with the understanding that the first four pages are free (not all journals applied). The author will pay a charge of $80 USD for additional pages (See Color and Page Charges).

If the journal in which your paper is to be published is indexed by PubMed/Medline, the citation of your article will be sent to PubMed within one week of acceptance so please ensure all information is correct.

References

References for review articles are limited to 150. For Research Papers, please limit references to 85. For Addenda, and Commentaries and Views, please limit references to 30.

Include in the reference list only those articles that have been published or are in press. Unpublished data or personal communications must be cited within the text.

Please only list six authors and then use et al. Do not list less then six authors with et al.

The list of references should be numbered consecutively according to the first time mentioned within the article. Cite only the number assigned to the reference:

Correct: according to Jones.1

Incorrect: according to Jones1.

Correct: noted by Smith et al.1

Incorrect: Smith et al (1).

When referring the reader to specific references as part of a sentence please state:

Correct: For a review see refs. 20-25.

Incorrect: For a review see 20-25

Journal References

The reference format is the same for all of our journals. You may download the output style for Cell Cycle from Endnotes.

Abbreviate journal names according to the style used in Index Medicus or a comparable source and omit punctuation after journal titles. Spell out foreign or less commonly known journal names.

[Author's last name] [Author's initials], [First six author's last names followed by their initials]. [Title of article with only the first word capitalized]. [Journal's standard abbreviated name] [Year]; [Volume (number)]:[Inclusive pages].

For Example:

  1. Hahn WC, Counter CM, Lundberg AS. Creation of human tumour cells with defined genetic elements. Nature 1999; 400:464-8.
  2. Fisher MJ, Virmani AK, Wu L, Aplenc R, Harper JC, Powell SM, et al. Nucleotide substitution in the ectodomain of trail receptor dr4 is associated with lung cancer and head and neck cancer. Clin Cancer Res 2001; 7:1688-97.

Book References

[Author's last name] [Author's initials], [Other authors' last names followed by initials]. [Chapter title]. In: [Editor's last name] [Editor's initials], ed(s). [Book Title]. [Number of edition]. [City]:[Publisher], [Year]:[Inclusive pages].

For Example:

  1. Ozoren N, El-Diery WS. Introduction to cancer genes and growth control. In: Ehrlic M, ed. DNA Alterations in Cancer: Genetic and Epigenetic Changes. Natick, MA: Eaton Publishing, 2000:3-43.

Text Files and Tables

Please save text and table files as Microsoft Word documents. Save tables in a file separate from text. Figure legends, however, should be at the end of the manuscript as text. Tables will be reformatted during production and therefore should only be minimally formatted in your text file.

Figures (Illustrations)

We require figures in electronic format. They should be provided as TIFF or Photoshop files (300 dpi or greater), EPS files, Powerpoint Files or PDF files. Compatible graphics programs are Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop and Microsoft Powerpoint. Any image processing should be explained clearly in the Materials and Methods section of your manuscript.

Figures should be as small and simple as is compatible with clarity. Figures must conform to the following guidelines or authors will be asked to revise them.

Guidelines for figure preparation:

  1. Please be sure to embed all fonts.
  2. Each figure should be assembled into one file that prints onto one 8 1/2 x 11 page. Do not include separate panels on multiple pages.
  3. Unnecessary figures and panels in figures should be avoided: data presented in small tables or histograms, for instance, can generally be stated briefly in the text instead. Avoid unnecessary complexity, coloring and excessive detail. Figures should not contain more than one panel unless the parts are logically connected. If this is the case, each panel should be sized so that the figure as a whole can be reduced by the same amount and reproduced on the printed page at the smallest size at which essential details are visible. For figures with multiple panels, the labels should be set in uppercase Helvetica or Arial letters and should not contain periods or parentheses.
  4. Lettering in figures (labelling of axes and so on) should be in lower-case type, with the first letter capitalized and no full stop.
  5. Units should have a single space between the number and the unit, and follow SI nomenclature or the nomenclature common to a particular field. Thousands should be separated by commas (1,000). Unusual units or abbreviations should be defined in the legend.
  6. Scale bars should be used rather than magnification factors.
  7. Amino-acid sequences should be printed in Courier (or other monospaced) font using the one-letter code in lines of 50 or 100 characters.
  8. Layering type directly over shaded or textured areas and using reversed type (white lettering on a colored background) should be avoided.
  9. Where possible, text, including keys to symbols, should be provided in the legend rather than on the figure itself.

Supplementary Files

Please provide supplementary material in the following formats:

  • Text: MS Word file
  • Table/Data: MS Word file or Excel file
  • Figures: Please provide figures in a MS Word file or in a PPT file, clearly labeled with figure legends below them.
  • Please provide ALL files also in one PDF file. Links to supplemental data will be included in the PDF of the published manuscript and in the online abstract.
  • Video Files: Video submissions for viewing online should be Audio Video Interleave (.avi), MPEG (.mpg), or Quick Time (.qt, .mov).
    1. AVI files can be displayed via Windows Media Player (http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/players.aspx); MPEG files can be displayed via Windows Media Player; Quick Time files require Quick Time software (free) from Apple (http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/index.html)
    2. Videos should be brief whenever possible (<2-5 minutes). Longer videos will require longer download times and may have difficulty playing online. Videos should be restricted to the most critical aspects of your research. A longer procedure can be restructured as several shorter videos and submitted in that form.
    3. It is advisable to compress files to use as little bandwidth as possible and to avoid overly long download times. Video files should be no larger than 5 megabytes. This is a suggested maximum. If files are larger please contact Kim Mitchell.
    4. A caption giving a brief overall description of the video content should be provided for each video.
    5. If your paper is accepted for publication you may wish to supply the editorial office with several different resolutions of your video files. This will allow viewers with slower connections to download a lower resolution version of your video.

Page and Color Charges

For original research papers the first four monochrome journal pages is free. Papers longer than four pages are published with the understanding that the author will pay a charge of $100 U.S. dollars for each additional page, including partial pages.

Publication of color images is free for the online version of the journal. Color images in the print edition carry a page charge of $340 US dollars for the first color page and $150 for each additional color page. If you prefer that color figures appear online only and in black and white for the print version, please make sure that the figure legends for each version of the figure are provided.

For guidance, a four page article with 3 figures (approx 9cmx9cm, =3.5" x 3.5") and 100 references would consist of approximately 1500-2000 words of text including figure legends.

Under exceptional circumstances, where there are no funds to cover page charges and articles cannot be reduced in size, authors may appeal directly to the Managing Editor for page charges to be waived. This appeal must be supported by a letter signed by finance official at the author's institution, confirming that no funds are available to cover page charges.

Page Proofs

Page proofs should be returned within two working days, preferably by email or fax. Corrections should be marked on the actual proof and provided in a numbered list. Lengthy additions should be avoided, but where necessary should be provided in a MS Word file with explicit instructions regarding placement.

Reprints

A reprint order form will be sent to the author prior to the issue going to press or you may download the form from our website. Prices may vary based on article length.

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