Submissions

Before you submit your manuscript it is very important to read and follow some instructions:

• Please review your title, keywords and abstract.
• Try to make sure that the manuscript doesn’t exceed 15 typewritten pages. Full-length papers should   be divided into sections (Abstract, Introduction, Materials and methods, Results, Discussion)
• If a report is being sent it should be approximately 1500 words or of equivalent space including figures and tables. These must be brief definitive reports and not preliminary findings. Most importantly it needs to be clear and easy to follow.
• Reviews will be published following invitation from editors or by the suggestion of authors.
• Special Issues may also be published. They generally contain selected contributions (invited lectures) from international conferences, or a collection of papers on a specific topic, and may be composed of review articles, research papers, and short notes. Guest Editors responsible for the organization of Special Issues will be invited by the Editors of the Journal, but may also be suggested by scientists who are willing to organize a special issue on a topic that deserves publication.
• Letters to the Editor and announcements of meetings and courses will be included at the discretion of the Editors and the Publisher.

Title Page: Title (concise but informative), author initials and last names, full institutional addresses of all authors, correspondence email for proofs.

Abstract: The abstract should be intelligible to the general reader without reference to the text. After a brief introduction of the topic, the summary presents the key points of the article and provides future directions where research could focus on in the near future. Reference citations should not be included in this section, unless urgently required, and non-standard abbreviations should not be included without explanations.

Sections: The headings of all sections, including introduction, results, discussions or summary must be numbered. Three levels of sectioning are allowed, e.g. 3, 3.1 and 3.1.1.

Footnotes should be avoided as these tend to disrupt the flow of the text. If absolutely necessary, they should be numbered consecutively. Footnotes to tables should be marked by lowercase letters.

Appendices should be labelled with capital letters: Appendix A, Appendix B etc. Equations, figures and tables should be numbered as (A1), Fig B5 or Table C6, respectively.

Figures should be labelled in consecutive Arabic numerals (1, 2, 3,). For the production of the accepted manuscript they should be submitted as separate files in *.pdf, *.ps, *.eps, *.jpg, *.png, *.tif, or *.gif format with a resolution of not less than 150-300 dpi. Composite figures containing multiple panels should be collected into one file before submission.

However, in case of figures in portrait orientation with a small aspect ratio, it is recommended that the authors provide all subfigures as individual files to allow a splitting. Photographs and images must be saved in *.jpg, *.png, *.tif, or *.gif format, ideally converted into high-quality *.pdf, with a resolution of not less than 150-300 dpi. Visual cues should appear on the figure itself, rather than verbal explanations in the legend (e.g. “dashed line” or “open green circles”).

Figure Legends: Each illustration should have a concise but descriptive legend. All symbols and abbreviations used in the figure must be defined, unless they are common abbreviations or have already been defined in the text. Figure legends should be included in the text file and not in the figure files.

Tables should appear on separate sheets after the references and numbered sequentially with Arabic numerals. For the production of the accepted manuscript they should be submitted as MS WORD or included in the LaTeX file. Tables submitted as PDF or image files cannot be processed. Tables should be self-explanatory and include a concise yet sufficiently descriptive caption. Horizontal lines should normally only appear above and below the table, and as a separator between the head and the main body of the table. Vertical lines must be avoided.

Supplementary Material: Authors have the opportunity to submit supplementary material with their manuscript such as data sets, movies, animations, etc. These files will be published online along with the article as *.zip archive (or single *.pdf file). The overall file size of a supplement is limited to 50 MB. Authors of larger supplements are kindly asked to submit their files to a reliable data repository and to insert a link in the manuscript. Ideally, this linkage is realized through DOIs (digital object identifier).

File Size: Authors are kindly asked to find the best balance between good quality of figures and submitted material on the one hand, and to keep the overall file size limited on the other hand. Individual figures should not exceed 5 MB, and the overall size of all submitted files excluding supplements should not exceed 30 MB.

Evaluation Criteria: While preparing their manuscript, authors are kindly requested to consider the manuscript evaluation criteria to meet the quality standards and to reduce the peer-review processing time.

References:

References must be listed in the numerical system (Vancouver). All references should be numbered sequentially [in square brackets] in the text and listed in the same numerical order in the reference section. The reference numbers must be finalized and the bibliography must be fully formatted before submission.

Journal titles are abbreviated (to decipher abbreviations see: PubMed Journals Database

• Only first words of article title and words that normally begin with a capital letter are capitalised.
• First 6 authors are listed; thereafter add an et al. after the sixth author.
• If the journal has continuous page numbering, you may omit month/issue number

Sample References

[1] Popkin BM. The Nutrition Transition in the Developing World.Dev Policy Rev 2003; 21(5-6): 581-97.

[2] Popkin BM. Global nutrition dynamics: the world is shifting rapidly toward a diet linked with noncommunicable diseases. Am J ClinNutr 2006; 84(2): 289-98.

Typical Chapter Reference:

[3] Thompson FE, Subar AF. Dietary assessment methodology. In: Coulston AM, Rock CL, Eds. Nutrition in the Prevention and Treatment of Disease. 2nd ed. San Diego: Academic Press 2001; pp. 3-300.

Book Reference:

[4] Winkelmann R. Econometric Analysis of Count Data, 4th ed. Springer: Heidelberg 2003.

Edited Book:

[5] Willmott P. An introduction to synchrotron radiation: Techniques and applications. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. 2011.

Conference Paper and Proceedings:

[7] Antoniou S, Pashalidis I. The Effect of Natural Organic Matter on the Solid Phase Stability and Solubility of Th(OH)4. In: González-Vila JM, editor. Proceedings to the 15th IHSS Meeting. Tenerife – Canary Islands 2010. Institute for Natural Resources and Agrobiology 2010; pp.157-60.

Journal Article on the Internet:

[8] Medicare Administration, Hospital Acquired Conditions. US government; [updated 2012 Oct 11; cited 2012 Nov 6]: Available from: https://data.medicare.gov/browse?tags=hospital+compare&page=2

Web site/Homepage:

[10] Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Growth Charts. http://www.cdc.gov/growthcharts. (accessed April 11, 2012).

Issue with Supplement:

[11] Morofuji Y, Matsuo T, Hayashi Y, Suyama K, Nagata I. Usefulness of intraoperative photodynamic diagnosis using 5-aminolevulinic acid for meningiomas with cranial invasion: Technical case report. Neurosurgery 2008; 62(3 Suppl 1): 102-104.

Issue with Part:

[13] Shekelle PG, MacLean CH, Morton SC, Wenger NS. Acove quality indicators. Ann Intern Med 2001; 135(8 Pt 2): 653-67.

Patent:

[14] Mitschker A, Moritz RJ, Nawrocki A. Chelated plant micronutrients. European Patent 1411037 A1 20040421. 2004.