期刊选题

1、投稿方式：在线投稿。

2、刊内网址：http://www.journalocs.org/

http://www.keaipublishing.com/OCSCI

投稿系统：

https://www.editorialmanager.com/ocsci/default.aspx

3、刊内邮箱：ocs@oilcrops.cn

4、刊内电话：027-86728520

5、出刊日期：季刊，逢季末月30日出版。

6、刊内微信公众号：油料科技前沿

2021年5月13日星期四

《中国油料作物学报（英文）》投稿系统使用方法

【官网信息】

OCS的Editorial Manager投稿系统使用方法

首先请打开OCS官方网站http://www.keaipublishing.com/OCSCI，点击右侧的Submite your paper，然后登录，如果在Elsvier的EM系统里没有用户名和密码请先注册一个。

EM 的投稿周期简要流程如下，New Submissions（新提交稿件），即新论文的投稿分为若干个小步骤：

o Article Type Selection（文章类型选择）

o Manuscript Data（论文搞件的元数据填写）

o Attach Files（论文搞件上传）

o Review Preferences（审稿建议）

o Additional Information（附加信息）

o Comments（论文评论）

· Article Type Selection - 论文类型的选择

· Article Type Selection 是选择投稿论文的类型，在列表中选择对应的类型即可。

Manuscript Data - 论文元信息填写

再接下来是 Manuscript Data - 论文元信息的填写，论文元信息主要指的是描述论文属性（property）的信息，有四个必填项。

Full Title、Abstract 分别填写投稿论文的标题和摘要，如下图所示：

Authors 填写投稿论文的所有作者信息，其中默认注册用户是通讯作者，也可以通过勾选 This is the corresponding author 标记哪个作者是通讯作者，  

Funding Information 项为设置是否为基金文章，如果没有基金支持，勾选「Funding information is not applicable / No funding was received」即可：

· Attach Files - 上传论文及附属文档

接下来单击「Browse…」上传按钮，即为上传论文的 Manuscript（论文）原件及其他附属文件。

Review Preferences - 推荐审稿人

Review Preferences 界面

再接下来就是 Review Preferences，主要功能是提交推荐的审稿人。

作为作者，自然找到的是那些自己熟悉的专家作为审稿人，但如果遇到非要填写推荐审稿人项而又没有自己熟悉的学者，那么捷径是直接在自己的参考文献里推荐几个作者出来。

· Additional Information - 附加信息

再接下来就是 Additional Information，该功能是为了让投稿者选择是否将论文中的涉及数据和材料存储在科技期刊所属的数据库中。

笔者一般选第二个 My manuscript has no associated data or the data will not be deposited。但是如果论文有附件材料的话就需要选择上传相关材料。

· Comments（声明）

再接下来就是 Comments，该步骤为填写声明，此处内容不作为论文的一部分。该项目可填可不填，视所投刊物的具体规定。

如果刊物设置该项为必填项，则主要的填写要点是介绍一下论文内容及创新点，另外就是作者承诺自己没有一稿多投。其模版如下：

Dear Editor:Here within enclosed is our paper for consideration to be published on 「***".

This study aims to ... our results show that, indicating that......The

authors claim that none of the material in the paper has been published

or is under consideration for publication elsewhere.Sincerely Yours

· Build PDF for approval - 自动生成 PDF

以上各个步骤完成后，最后点击界面右下角「Build PDF for Approval」即可确认生成 PDF 文件。在自动生成 PDF 文件后，系统会自动进行查重，系统会把投稿论文中所有雷同的文字全部标注出来，这和中国硕博学位论文查重差不多。笔者会把所有标红的文字都进行修改，然后重新 Attach Files。PS：即使是引用别人的原话，最好也不要照抄，而是通过自己的理解转述一遍。当所有步骤都呈绿色时，则文件及元数据上传完毕：

如有不符合投稿规定而存在没有完成呈红色的步骤时，则会导致不能进行论文稿件 PDF 的自动生成。会显示一个操作失败界面。

以上各步骤只是完成了投稿的一大部分，该篇所有的文件和信息都上传了，但该论文没有最终确认投稿，也就是说论文还没有正式提交给后台的编辑。 需要点击「Submissions Waiting for Author’s Approval (1)」，则有如下图界面：

在 Action 中点击 Approve Submission 后确定即可，最终论文投稿完成。

投完稿后，不需要实时惦记着投稿系统中该篇论文状态，因为每一个关键步骤包括编辑决定的通知和修改请求等，都会通过论文中填写的 Email 进行通知，所以只需要关注联络 Email 即可。

投稿常见问题：大多是因不熟悉如 EM 等这样的投稿系统，而导致自动生成 PDF 失败：自动生成 PDF 为停顿状态，有时甚至出现空白的界面。造成动生成 PDF 的原因比较多。

解决方法：

1、首先考虑到如 EM 的服务器是在国外，作者投稿所在网络的速度可能太慢；

其次，由于一些杀毒软件和防火墙设置等可能会阻止生成 PDF 文件，所以电脑系统或者浏览器需要进行重新安全设置；

2、由于 EM 需要扫描每个上传的文件，进行杀毒，那些被病毒感染的论文文档及其附件肯定会被系统删除了，确保上传的文件没有病毒也是很重要的。

3、如果刷新投稿系统的页面，重新操作，还是不能奏效，则请清空浏览器的缓。有时候因为系统升级，系统的一些文件也许会周期性的更改，但是浏览器的缓存内容并不改变。

4、实在不行可换成 Chrome 或者 Firefox 投稿试试，Chrome 和 Firefox 基于开放源代码软件所撰写，稳定性、速度、安全性及兼容性是很好的。

《中国油料作物学报（英文）》投稿指南

【官网信息】

Guide for Authors

INTRODUCTION

Types of paper

Contributions

falling into the following categories will be considered for

publication: Original research papers, reviews and short communications.

Please

ensure that you select the appropriate article type from the list of

options when making your submission. Authors contributing to special

issues should ensure that they select the special issue article type

from this list.

BEFORE YOU BEGIN

Ethics in publishing

Please see our information pages on Ethics in publishing and Ethical guidelines for journal publication.

Declaration of competing interest

All

authors must disclose any financial and personal relationships with

other people or organizations that could inappropriately influence

(bias) their work. Examples of potential conflicts of interest include

employment, consultancies, stock ownership, honoraria, paid expert

testimony, patent applications/registrations, and grants or other

funding. Authors should complete the declaration of competing interest

statement using this template and upload to the submission system at the

Attach/Upload Files step. Note: Please do not convert the .docx

template to another file type. Author signatures are not required. If

there are no interests to declare, please choose the first option in the

template. This statement will be published within the article if

accepted. More information.

Submission declaration and verification

Submission

of an article implies that the work described has not been published

previously (except in the form of an abstract, a published lecture or

academic thesis, see 'Multiple, redundant or concurrent publication' for

more information), 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, and that, if accepted, it will not be published elsewhere in the

same form, in English or in any other language, including electronically

without the written consent of the copyright-holder. To verify

originality, your article may be checked by the originality detection

service Crossref Similarity Check.

Changes to authorship

This policy concerns the addition, deletion, or rearrangement of author names in the authorship of accepted manuscripts:

Before

the accepted manuscript is published in an online issue: Requests to

add or remove an author, or to rearrange the author names, must be sent

to the Journal Manager from the corresponding author of the accepted

manuscript and must include: (a) the reason the name should be added or

removed, or the author names rearranged and (b) written confirmation

(e-mail, fax, letter) from all authors that they agree with the

addition, removal or rearrangement. In the case of addition or removal

of authors, this includes confirmation from the author being added or

removed. Requests that are not sent by the corresponding author will be

forwarded by the Journal Manager to the corresponding author, who must

follow the procedure as described above. Note that: (1) Journal Managers

will inform the Journal Editors of any such requests and (2)

publication of the accepted manuscript in an online issue is suspended

until authorship has been agreed.

After

the accepted manuscript is published in an online issue: Any requests

to add, delete, or rearrange author names in an article published in an

online issue will follow the same policies as noted above and result in a

corrigendum.

Copyright

Upon

acceptance of an article, authors will be asked to complete a 'Journal

Publishing Agreement'. Acceptance of the agreement will ensure the

widest possible dissemination of information. An e-mail will be sent to

the corresponding author with a 'Journal Publishing Agreement' form or a

link to the online version of this agreement.

If

excerpts from other copyrighted works are included, the author(s) must

obtain written permission from the copyright owners and credit the

source(s) in the article.

Author rights

As

an author you (or your employer or institution) have certain rights to

reuse your work. For more information on author rights please see

https://www.elsevier.com/copyright.

Role of the funding source

You

are requested to identify who provided financial support for the

conduct of the research and/or preparation of the article and to briefly

describe the role of the sponsor(s), if any, in study design; in the

collection, analysis and interpretation of data; in the writing of the

report; and in the decision to submit the article for publication. If

the funding source(s) had no such involvement then this should be

stated.

Open access

Every

peer-reviewed research article appearing in this journal will be

published open access. This means that the article is universally and

freely accessible via the internet in perpetuity, in an easily readable

format immediately after publication. The author does not have any

publication charges for open access. Oil Crops Research Institute

(OCRI), Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (OCRI-CAAS) will pay to

make the article open access. A CC user license manages the reuse of

the article (see https://www.elsevier.com/openaccesslicenses). All

articles will be published under the following license:

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs (CC BY-NC-ND)

For

non-commercial purposes, lets others distribute and copy the article,

and to include in a collective work (such as an anthology), as long as

they credit the author(s) and provided they do not alter or modify the

article.

Language (usage and editing services)

Please

write your text in good English (American or British usage is accepted,

but not a mixture of these). Authors who feel their English language

manuscript may require editing to eliminate possible grammatical or

spelling errors and to conform to correct scientific English may wish to

use the English Language Editing service available from Elsevier's

Author Services.

Submission

Submission

to this journal proceeds totally online. Use the following guidelines

to prepare your article. Via the homepage of this journal

(http://www.keaipublishing.com/ocsci) you will be guided stepwise

through the creation and uploading of the various files. The system

automatically converts source files to a single Adobe Acrobat PDF

version of the article, which is used in the peer-review process. Please

note that even though manuscript source files are converted to PDF at

submission for the review process, these source files are needed for

further processing after acceptance. All correspondence, including

notification of the Editor's decision and requests for revision, takes

place by e-mail and via the author's homepage, removing the need for a

hard-copy paper trail. If you are unable to provide an electronic

version, please contact the editorial office prior to submission

(E-mail: ocs@oilcrops.cn, Phone and Fax: 86 27-86728520).

Additional information

Tables

and figures may be presented with captions within the main body of the

manuscript; if so, figures should additionally be uploaded as high

resolution files.

PREPARATION

Peer review

This

journal operates a double anonymized review process. All contributions

are typically sent to a minimum of two independent expert reviewers to

assess the scientific quality of the paper. The Editor is responsible

for the final decision regarding acceptance or rejection of articles.

The Editor's decision is final. Editors are not involved in decisions

about papers which they have written themselves or have been written by

family members or colleagues or which relate to products or services in

which the editor has an interest. Any such submission is subject to all

of the journal's usual procedures, with peer review handled

independently of the relevant editor and their research groups. More

information on types of peer review.

Use of word processing software

It

is important that the file be saved in the native format of the word

processor used. The text should be in single-column format. Keep the

layout of the text as simple as possible. Most formatting codes will be

removed and replaced on processing the article. In particular, do not

use the word processor's options to justify text or to hyphenate words.

However, do use bold face, italics, subscripts, superscripts etc. When

preparing tables, if you are using a table grid, use only one grid for

each individual table and not a grid for each row. If no grid is used,

use tabs, not spaces, to align columns. The electronic text should be

prepared in a way very similar to that of conventional manuscripts (see

also the Guide to Publishing with Elsevier). Note that source files of

figures, tables and text graphics will be required whether or not you

embed your figures in the text. See also the section on Electronic

artwork.

To

avoid unnecessary errors you are strongly advised to use the

'spell-check' and 'grammar-check' functions of your word processor.

LaTeX

You

are recommended to use the Elsevier article class elsarticle.cls to

prepare your manuscript and BibTeX to generate your bibliography.

Our LaTeX site has detailed submission instructions, templates and other information.

Article structure

Form

Please

prepares your manuscript in the following order: Title page, Abstract,

Key words, Introduction, Materials and methods, Results, Discussion,

Acknowledgments, References, Tables, Figure legends and Figures. For

first submissions (i.e. not revised manuscripts), authors may

incorporate the manuscript text and figures into a single file. ONLY the

following file types can be uploaded for Article text: txt, doc, docx,

tex.

Headings and sub-headings

Except

for special names (e.g. ATP), capitalize only the first letter of

headings and subheadings. Headings and subheadings need to be defined in

Times New Roman, 12 point, bold.

Text

The

body text is in 12 point normal Times New Roman. New paragraphs will be

separated with a single empty line. The entire document should be 1.5

line-spaced and should contain page and line numbers in order to

facilitate the review process. Your manuscript should be written using

either LaTeX or MS-Word.

PLEASE NOTE: All manuscripts must include page and line numbers.

Introduction

State

the objectives of the work and provide an adequate background, avoiding

a detailed literature survey or a summary of the results.

Material and methods

Provide

sufficient details to allow the work to be reproduced by an independent

researcher. Methods that are already published should be summarized,

and indicated by a reference. If quoting directly from a previously

published method, use quotation marks and also cite the source. Any

modifications to existing methods should also be described.

Results

Results should be clear and concise.

Discussion

This

should explore the significance of the results of the work, not repeat

them. A combined Results and Discussion section is often appropriate.

Avoid extensive citations and discussion of published literature.

Appendices

If

there is more than one appendix, they should be identified as A, B,

etc. Formulae and equations in appendices should be given separate

numbering: Eq. (A.1), Eq. (A.2), etc.; in a subsequent appendix, Eq.

(B.1) and so on. Similarly for tables and figures: Table A.1; Fig. A.1,

etc.

Essential title page information

Title.

Concise and informative. Titles are often used in information-retrieval

systems. Avoid abbreviations and formulae where possible. Capitalize

only the first letter except for special names and in 16 point bold

Times New Roman font at the top of page. Abbreviations should be avoided

within the title. The maximum article title length is 20 words.

Author

names and affiliations. Where the family name may be ambiguous (e.g., a

double name), please indicate this clearly. Present the authors'

affiliation addresses (where the actual work was done) below the names.

Indicate all affiliations with a lower-case superscript letter

immediately after the author's name and in front of the appropriate

address. Provide the full postal address of each affiliation, including

the country name, and, if available, the e-mail address of each author.

Corresponding

author. Clearly indicate who will handle correspondence at all stages

of refereeing and publication, also post-publication. Ensure that

telephone and fax numbers (with country and area code) are provided in

addition to the e-mail address and the complete postal address. Contact

details must be kept up to date by the corresponding author.

Present/permanent

address. If an author has moved since the work described in the article

was done, or was visiting at the time, a "Present address" (or

"Permanent address") may be indicated as a footnote to that author's

name. The address at which the author actually did the work must be

retained as the main, affiliation address. Superscript Arabic numerals

are used for such footnotes.

Running title. A shortened version of the title for use as a running head (maximum 8 characters).

Word count. Number of words for the whole manuscript.

Keywords. 5-8 keywords for use in indexing.

Abstract

A

concise and factual abstract is required. The abstract should state

briefly the purpose of the research, the principal results and major

conclusions. An abstract is often presented separately from the article,

so it must be able to stand alone. For this reason, References should

be avoided, but if essential, then cite the author(s) and year(s). Also,

non-standard or uncommon abbreviations should be avoided, but if

essential they must be defined at their first mention in the abstract

itself.

Keywords

Authors are invited to submit less than 7 keywords associated with their paper.

Abbreviations

Define

abbreviations that are not standard in this field in a footnote to be

placed on the first page of the article. Such abbreviations that are

unavoidable in the abstract must be defined at their first mention

there, as well as in the footnote. Ensure consistency of abbreviations

throughout the article.

Acknowledgements

Collate

acknowledgements in a separate section at the end of the article before

the references and do not, therefore, include them on the title page,

as a footnote to the title or otherwise. List here those individuals who

provided help during the research (e.g., providing language help,

writing assistance or proof reading the article, etc.).

Nomenclature and units

Follow

internationally accepted rules and conventions: use the international

system of units (SI). If other quantities are mentioned, give their

equivalent in SI. Authors wishing to present a table of nomenclature

should do so on the second page of their manuscript.

Math formulae

Please

submit math equations as editable text and not as images. Present

simple formulae in line with normal text where possible and use the

solidus (/) instead of a horizontal line for small fractional terms,

e.g., X/Y. In principle, variables are to be presented in italics.

Powers of e are often more conveniently denoted by exp. Number

consecutively any equations that have to be displayed separately from

the text (if referred to explicitly in the text).

Footnotes

Footnotes

should be used sparingly. Number them consecutively throughout the

article. Many word processors can build footnotes into the text, and

this feature may be used. Otherwise, please indicate the position of

footnotes in the text and list the footnotes themselves separately at

the end of the article. Do not include footnotes in the Reference list.

Artwork

Electronic artwork

General points

• Make sure you use uniform lettering and sizing of your original artwork.

• Embed the used fonts if the application provides that option.

• Aim to use the following fonts in your illustrations: Arial, Courier, Times New Roman, Symbol, or use fonts that look similar.

• Number the illustrations according to their sequence in the text.

• Use a logical naming convention for your artwork files.

• Provide captions to illustrations separately.

• Size the illustrations close to the desired dimensions of the published version.

• Submit each illustration as a separate file.

• Ensure that color images are accessible to all, including those with impaired color vision.

A detailed guide on electronic artwork is available.

You are urged to visit this site; some excerpts from the detailed information are given here.

Formats

If

your electronic artwork is created in a Microsoft Office application

(Word, PowerPoint, Excel) then please supply 'as is' in the native

document format.

Regardless

of the application used other than Microsoft Office, when your

electronic artwork is finalized, please 'Save as' or convert the images

to one of the following formats (note the resolution requirements for

line drawings, halftones, and line/halftone combinations given below):

EPS (or PDF): Vector drawings, embed all used fonts.

TIFF (or JPEG): Color or grayscale photographs (halftones), keep to a minimum of 300 dpi.

TIFF (or JPEG): Bitmapped (pure black & white pixels) line drawings, keep to a minimum of 1000 dpi.

TIFF (or JPEG): Combinations bitmapped line/half-tone (color or grayscale), keep to a minimum of 500 dpi.

Please do not:

•

Supply files that are optimized for screen use (e.g., GIF, BMP, PICT,

WPG); these typically have a low number of pixels and limited set of

colors;

• Supply files that are too low in resolution;

• Submit graphics that are disproportionately large for the content.

Color artwork

Please

make sure that artwork files are in an acceptable format (TIFF (or

JPEG), EPS (or PDF), or MS Office files) and with the correct

resolution. If, together with your accepted article, you submit usable

color figures then Elsevier will ensure, at no additional charge, that

these figures will appear in color online (e.g., ScienceDirect and other

sites) regardless of whether or not these illustrations are reproduced

in color in the printed version. For color reproduction in print, you

will receive information regarding the costs from Elsevier after receipt

of your accepted article. Please indicate your preference for color: in

print or online only. Further information on the preparation of

electronic artwork.

Figure legends

Figure

legends are required to have the same font as the main text (12 point

normal Times New Roman, 1.5 line-spaced). Legends should be preceded by

the appropriate label, for example "Figure 1". It should be placed at

the end of the manuscript (for supplementary images you must include the

caption with figure, uploaded as a separate file). Figure legends

should be brief and should not contain methods. Please use only a single

paragraph for the legend. Figure panels are referred to by bold capital

letters in brackets: (A), (B), (C), (D), etc. Symbols indicted in the

figure must be identified in the legend text. Abbreviations and error

bars must also be defined. If figures are reprinted from another source,

permission to reprint is required.

Tables

Please

submit tables as editable text and not as images. Tables can be placed

either next to the relevant text in the article, or on separate page(s)

at the end. Number tables consecutively in accordance with their

appearance in the text and place any table notes below the table body.

Be sparing in the use of tables and ensure that the data presented in

them do not duplicate results described elsewhere in the article. Please

avoid using vertical rules and shading in table cells.

References

Citation in text

Please

ensure that every reference cited in the text is also present in the

reference list (and vice versa). Any references cited in the abstract

must be given in full. Unpublished results and personal communications

are not recommended in the reference list, but may be mentioned in the

text. If these references are included in the reference list they should

follow the standard reference style of the journal and should include a

substitution of the publication date with either 'Unpublished results'

or 'Personal communication'. Citation of a reference as 'in press'

implies that the item has been accepted for publication.

Web references

As

a minimum, the full URL should be given and the date when the reference

was last accessed. Any further information, if known (DOI, author

names, dates, reference to a source publication, etc.), should also be

given. Web references can be listed separately (e.g., after the

reference list) under a different heading if desired, or can be included

in the reference list.

References in a special issue

Please

ensure that the words 'this issue' are added to any references in the

list (and any citations in the text) to other articles in the same

Special Issue.

Reference management software

Most

Elsevier journals have their reference template available in many of

the most popular reference management software products. These include

all products that support Citation Style Language styles, such as

Mendeley. Using citation plug-ins from these products, authors only need

to select the appropriate journal template when preparing their

article, after which citations and bibliographies will be automatically

formatted in the journal's style. If no template is yet available for

this journal, please follow the format of the sample references and

citations as shown in this Guide. If you use reference management

software, please ensure that you remove all field codes before

submitting the electronic manuscript. More information on how to remove

field codes from different reference management software.

Reference style

Text: All citations in the text should refer to:

1. Single author: the author's name (without initials, unless there is ambiguity) and the year of publication;

2. Two authors: both authors' names and the year of publication;

3. Three or more authors: first author's name followed by "et al.," and the year of publication.

Citations

may be made directly (or parenthetically). Groups of references should

be listed first alphabetically, then chronologically.

Examples:

"as demonstrated (Allan, 1996a, 1996b, 1999; Allan and Jones, 1995; Max

et al., 2018). Kramer et al. (2000) have recently shown ...."

List:

References should be arranged first alphabetically and then further

sorted chronologically if necessary. List only first 10 authors and

followed by et al. More than one reference from the same author(s) in

the same year must be identified by the letters "a", "b", "c", etc.,

placed after the year of publication.

Examples:

Reference to a journal publication:

Van

der Geer, J., Hanraads, J.A.J., Lupton, R.A., 2000. The art of writing a

scientific article. J. Sci. Commun. 163, 51-59. doi:

10.1093/aob/mcq051.

Reference to a book:

Strunk Jr., W., White, E.B., 1979. The Elements of Style, third ed. Macmillan, New York.

Reference to a chapter in an edited book:

Mettam,

G.R., Adams, L.B., 1999. How to prepare an electronic version of your

article, in: Jones, B.S., Smith , R.Z. (Eds.), Introduction to the

Electronic Age. E-Publishing Inc., New York, pp. 281-304.

Journal abbreviations source

Journal names should be abbreviated according to

Index Medicus journal abbreviations: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/tsd/serials/lji.html;

List of title word abbreviations: http://www.issn.org/2-22661-LTWA-online.php;

CAS (Chemical Abstracts Service): http://www.cas.org/sent.html.

Supplementary material

OIL

CROP SCIENCE does not support pushing important results and information

into supplementary sections. However, data that are not of primary

importance to the text, or which cannot be included in the article

because it is too large or the current format does not permit it (such

as movies, raw data traces, power point presentations, etc.) can be

uploaded during the submission procedure and will be displayed along

with the published article.

The

Supplementary Material can be uploaded as Data Sheet (word, excel, csv,

cdx, fasta, pdf or zip files), Presentation (power point, pdf or zip

files), Supplementary Image (cdx, eps, jpeg, pdf, png or tif),

Supplementary Table (word, excel, csv or pdf), Audio (mp3, wav or wma)

or Video (avi, divx, flv, mov, mp4, mpeg, mpg or wmv).

Supplementary

material is not typeset. Please ensure that all information is clearly

presented, the appropriate caption is included in the file and not in

the manuscript, and that the style conforms to the rest of the article.

Cover letter

Cover

Letter is required to the Editor when you submit your manuscript. The

title of the manuscript, the article type must be indicated in the first

paragraph. You must also state that the manuscript has not been

submitted for publication elsewhere; any closely related works submitted

for consideration in other publications should be noted and you may be

asked to provide a copy. A short description of the significance of the

manuscript is essential as well. Cover Letter should frame the

question(s) you have addressed in your work in the context of the

current body of knowledge, providing evidence that the findings -whether

positive or negative - contribute to progress in your research

discipline. This will assist the Chief Editors to determine whether your

manuscript fits within the scope of a specialty as defined in its

mission statement. A detailed Cover Letter will also facilitate the

identification of the Editors and Reviewers most appropriate to evaluate

your work, ultimately expediting your manuscript's initial

consideration. Reviewers can also be recommend in the letter to help

Editors make choice.

Materials and data release policy

Authors

are required to agree and make all materials and protocols in their

published work freely available to qualified researchers. Authors are

encouraged to deposit biological materials such as cell lines, plasmid

constructs and genetically modified organisms in an established public

repository. If materials are held in repositories or if a third-party

distribution agreement is in place, then the distributor name and

location should be included in the manuscript.

Submission checklist

The

following list will be useful during the final checking of an article

prior to sending it to the journal for review. Please consult this Guide

for Authors for further details of any item.

Ensure that the following items are present:

Cover letter

One Author designated as corresponding Author:

E-mail address

Full postal address

Telephone and fax numbers

All necessary files have been uploaded

Keywords

All figure legends

All tables (including title, description, footnotes)

Further considerations

Manuscript has been "spellchecked" and "grammar-checked"

References are in the correct format for this journal

All references mentioned in the Reference list are cited in the text, and vice versa

Permission has been obtained for use of copyrighted material from other sources (including the Web)

Color

figures are clearly marked as being intended for color reproduction on

the Web (free of charge) and in print or to be reproduced in color on

the Web (free of charge) and in black-and-white in print

If only color on the Web is required, black and white versions of the figures are also supplied for printing purposes

Supplementary material

For any further information please visit our customer support site at http://support.elsevier.com.

AFTER ACCEPTANCE

Use of the Digital Object Identifier

The

Digital Object Identifier (DOI) may be used to cite and link to

electronic documents. The DOI consists of a unique alpha-numeric

character string which is assigned to a document by the publisher upon

the initial electronic publication. The assigned DOI never changes.

Therefore, it is an ideal medium for citing a document, particularly

'Articles in press' because they have not yet received their full

bibliographic information. The correct format for citing a DOI is shown

as follows (example taken from a document in the journal Physics Letters

B):

Proofs

One

set of page proofs (as PDF files) will be sent by e-mail to the

corresponding author (if we do not have an e-mail address then paper

proofs will be sent by post) or a link will be provided in the e-mail so

that authors can download the files themselves. To ensure a fast

publication process of the article, we kindly ask authors to provide us

with their proof corrections within two days. Elsevier now provides

authors with PDF proofs which can be annotated; for this you will need

to download the free Adobe Reader, version 9 (or higher). Instructions

on how to annotate PDF files will accompany the proofs (also given

online). The exact system requirements are given at the Adobe site.

If

you do not wish to use the PDF annotations function, you may list the

corrections (including replies to the Query Form) and return them to

Elsevier in an e-mail. Please list your corrections quoting line number.

If, for any reason, this is not possible, then mark the corrections and

any other comments (including replies to the Query Form) on a printout

of your proof and scan the pages and return via e-mail. Please use this

proof only for checking the typesetting, editing, completeness and

correctness of the text, tables and figures. Significant changes to the

article as accepted for publication will only be considered at this

stage with permission from the Editor. We will do everything possible to

get your article published quickly and accurately. It is important to

ensure that all corrections are sent back to us in one communication:

please check carefully before replying, as inclusion of any subsequent

corrections cannot be guaranteed. Proofreading is solely your

responsibility.

AUTHOR INQUIRIES

Visit

the Elsevier Support Center to find the answers you need. Here you will

find everything from Frequently Asked Questions to ways to get in

touch.

You can also check the status of your submitted article or find out when your accepted article will be published.