Guidelines for Authors

Communicative & Integrative Biology is an open access journal that is available exclusively online. All papers will be open access immediately upon publication and formatted journal articles will be uploaded to PubMed Central. Authors agree to pay an open access fee in order to publish in the journal:

Research Papers: $1000 | Reviews: $750 | Mini-Reviews and Article Addenda: $500

Landes Bioscience recognizes that some authors prefer that their research be freely available to all potential readers upon publication, and that certain funding agencies including, but not limited to, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, MRC, NIH, and The Wellcome Trust, require open access of agency-funded research within six months to one year of publication.

To address these requirements, we provide the following options for our authors:
(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. Authors may deposit a PDF of the final manuscript with PubMed Central or UK PubMed Central once the paper has been made freely availble at the journal's website.
(2) 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. Again, if the paper is funded by a NIH, MRC or Wellcome Trust grant, authors may deposit a PDF of the final manuscript with PubMed Central or UK PubMed Central. The fee for open access is $750.

NIH Manuscript Submission System for PubMed Central

UK PubMed Central Manuscript Submission System

Please note: Open Access fees are wavied for ALL ARTICLES for CIB for Volumes 1 and 2.

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, Brief Communication 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)

Bloomington Drosophila Stock Center at Indiana University (fly strains)

Drosophila Genomics Resource Center (DNA clones and cell lines)

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.'

Manuscript Submission

Pre-Submission Inquiries

Pre-submission inquiries are encouraged. These may include either an abstract or a full length manuscript as an email attachment (Microsoft Word). Pre-submission inquiries may be emailed to the Editor-in-Chief, František Baluška.

General Submission

Communicative & Integrative Biology utilizes 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 here to submit a manuscript to Communicative & Integrative Biology.

Copyright Transfer

All submissions must be accompanied by a completed copyright transfer form.
Email or fax to: Managing Editor, CIB, cib<at>landesbioscience.com, 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.

Have your manuscript reviewed for clarity by a colleague whose native language is English.

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. Visit their website for more information or to submit a document for their journal editing service.

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.

Editing of the same manuscript by up to three independent editors, including a subject-specific editor and a grammar expert.
Tremendous value with no hidden costs.
Express editing in less than 48 hours.
Secure and confidential.

First-time clients will receive a special 20% rebate if they are submitting their work to a Landes Bioscience journal.

Editage

Editage, a leading international English editing, writing, and publication service provider, offers multiple-level editing services that check for meaning, punctuation, grammar, sentence construction, logic, structure, and journal formatting. Editage is a preferred brand for nonnative English speakers in East Asia.

• Subject-matter expertise—editors from bioscience disciplines
• Fast turnaround times—24-hour delivery for emergencies
• 24/7 online system—manage accounts, track manuscripts, post requests
• 100% confidentiality
• Unlimited questions for editor
• ISO 9001:2000-certified editing processes
• Free journal formatting

To submit a manuscript, please visit the website in your choice of language:

Japanese | English |Traditional Chinese | Korean

Mention “Landes Bioscience” as “Reference” while submitting manuscript and receive a flat 10% discount.

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

Click here for more information or download the House Style Manual

Text Files and Tables

Please save text and table files as Microsoft Word documents, double-spaced, with page numbers throughout. Papers should be written as concisely as possible in clear, grammatical English and organized in the following manner:

Title page, including titles, author names, degrees and affilitation
All papers should include 5-10 key words for indexing purposes
A list of abbreviations and acronyms used throughout the text
An abstract (150-250 words; depends upon type of paper, see below)
A running title of no more than 50 characters in length
Text (length depends upon type of paper, see below).
References
Tables (with descriptive titles and legends) should be save as separate files from the text
Figure legends should be included at the end of the manuscript text.

Types of Papers

Research Papers should include the following sections:

Abstract: A single paragraph of fewer than 250 words. The primary goal of the abstract should be 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.
Introduction
Results: Present results in logical sequence in tables and illustrations. In the text, explain, emphasize or summarize the most important observations. Units of measurement should be expressed in accordance with Systeme International d’Unites (SI Units).
Discussion: Do not repeat in detail data given in the Results section. Emphasize the new and important aspects of the study. Relate observations to other relevant studies. On the basis of your findings (and the findings of others), discuss possible implications/conclusions. When stating a new hypothesis, clearly label it as such.
Materials and Methods
References. Maximum 85.
Tables: Tables should be numbered consecutively with Arabic numerals and include descriptive titles and legends.
Figure legends

Short Communications are aimed at publishing short, but important, breakthrough data not embedded within a complex story. The abstract should not be longer than 120 words. The paper should be structured as a research paper (see above) but without the headings and subheadings. Please limit text to 4500 words total and references to 50.

Review Articles should be recognized as scholarly by specialists in the field being covered, but should also be written with a view to inform readers who are not specialized in that particular field, and should therefore be presented using simple prose. Please avoid excessive jargon and technical detail. Prior to submission you may find it useful for a colleague from another discipline to read the review to ensure it is as accessible to as many readers as possible.

Reviews should capture the broad developments and implications of recent work. The opening paragraph should make clear the general thrust of the review and provide a clear sense of why the review is now particularly appropriate. The concluding paragraph shoud provide the reader with an idea of how the field may develop or future problems to be overcome, but should not summarize the article.Reviews should include an abstract of 150 words and no more than 150 references should be cited.

Article Addenda are essentially an auto-commentary. The Editorial Board will solicit authors of the most significant recent and forthcoming papers, published elsewhere, to provide a short summary with additional insights, new interpretations or speculation on the relevant topic. These manuscripts may include data or models, which due to space limitations were not included or discussed in the original paper. In other words, the authors may provide biased and uncensored points of views, complementing their article. Addenda will appear simultaneously, or very soon after, publication of the original paper.

Please include an abstract of 150-200 words. The typical length of an addendum will be approximately 500-1,000 words and may include up to 30 references. Authors are encouraged to include figures. The Open Access fee is waived for Article Addenda.

Meeting Reports. Authors are encouraged to email František Baluška with proposals for meeting reports. Please contact the meeting organizers to verify that reports will be permitted. Authors are encouraged to include figures. The Open Access Fee is waived for Meeting Reports.

Perspectives. Brief reports invited by Editor-in-cheif about new unexpected or breakthrough data and discoveries.

Commentaries may be short and focused opinion articles, commentaries on papers recently published in CIB or elsewhere, or commentaries on significant conceptual changes, important trends or new directions in the field.

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:

Please be sure to embed all fonts.
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.
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.
Lettering in figures (labelling of axes and so on) should be in lower-case type, with the first letter capitalized and no full stop.
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.
Scale bars should be used rather than magnification factors.
Amino-acid sequences should be printed in Courier (or other monospaced) font using the one-letter code in lines of 50 or 100 characters.
Layering type directly over shaded or textured areas and using reversed type (white lettering on a colored background) should be avoided.
Where possible, text, including keys to symbols, should be provided in the legend rather than on the figure itself.

DO NOT EMBED GRAPHICS WITHIN YOUR MICROSOFT WORD TEXT DOCUMENT.

References

Click here to view our reference format. 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.

The reference format for Communicative & Integrative Biology is the same as that for Cell Cycle. Click here to download this output style from EndNotes.

Supplementary Files

Click here for more information.

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 Microsoft Word file with explicit instructions regarding placement.

Publication Charges

Communicative & Integrative Biology is an open access journal that is available exclusively online. All papers will be open access immediately upon publication and formatted journal articles will be uploaded to PubMed Central. Authors agree to pay a mandatory open access fee in order to publish with CIB. The fees are as follows: Research Papers: $1000 | Reviews: $750 | Mini-Reviews and Article Addenda: $500

Under exceptional circumstances, when funds are not available, authors may appeal directly to the Editor-in-Chief (email František Baluška) for fees 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.

Reprints

Reprints may be ordered using the Publication Cost Form. A copy of this form will be sent to the author along with the page proofs or you may download it here.

Cover Image Submissions

Communicative & Integrative Biology publishes cover illustrations that are taken from articles in each issue, or that are designed to accompany an accepted article.

The cover illustration should be scientifically interesting and visually attractive. The illustration need not be a figure from the paper but should be closely related to the subject of the paper. If you are interested in submitting a figure for use as the cover of CIB please email a high-resolution version of your image, conforming to the specifications below, and an explanatory caption of 50-60 words to Kathryn Sauceda.

Communicative & Integrative Biology Cover Image Specifications

All potential cover images should be sized to fill the entire cover. 12'' high and 9'' wide should be the minimum size. Larger files are even better. Please remove all text, captions, etc. from the image. If you have variations of the image you may send additional files. Please send no more than 2 alternate versions.

Accepted formats and resolution:

.PSD (Native Photoshop: if graphics are built with layers, do not flatten), 300 dpi, CMYK at 100% size.
.TIF 300 dpi, CMYK at 100% size.
.JPG (highest quality) 300 dpi, CMYK at 100% size.
.EPS (scalable vector line art or native Illustrator or Freehand files)

Download PDF of the House Style Manual