Annals of Epidemiology is a peer reviewed, international journal devoted to epidemiologic research and methodological development. The journal emphasizes the application of epidemiologic methods to issues that affect the distribution and determinants of human illness in diverse contexts. Its primary focus is on chronic and acute conditions of diverse etiologies and of major importance to clinical medicine, public health, and health care delivery. Annals encourages the use of epidemiology in a multidisciplinary approach to understanding disease etiology. The Annals publishes Original articles, Brief Communications, Rapid Reports, Reviews, Commentaries, Editorials, Letters to the Editor, and Book Reviews.

The Annals follows the general instructions established by the "Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to a Biomedical Journal". Specific guidelines for the different types of manuscripts are as follows:

Original article: a new piece of work-- <=3000 words; structured abstract <=200 words (Purpose, Methods, Results, Conclusions); <=6 Tables, Figures, or other illustrative materials.

Brief Communication: a short Original Article--<=2000 words; structured abstract <=200 words (Purpose, Methods, Results, Conclusions), <=3 Tables, Figures, or other illustrative materials.

Rapid Reports: a new fact, method, observation for quick presentation----<=1000 words; no abstract; maximum of one table, figure, or other illustrative materials. Note that this is a new feature of the Annals beginning in 2007. These reports will be fully indexed and cited as publications by Index Medicus.

Study Method and Design: a methodologic, logistic, or design focus that may or may not contain results but that presents something of interest in the design itself; simple descriptions of newly established studies, without results or an issue of intrinsic interest, are discouraged—format the same as that for original articles.

Reviews and Commentaries: a descriptive, analytic or synthetic consideration of a topic or hypothesis; word limit is negotiable, but in general should be <= 5000 words; unstructured abstract <=200 words; illustrative materials as needed.

Editorials: generally invited, but may be author initiated after consultation with Editor; usually ∼1500 words directed to a paper in the same issue.

Letters to the Editor: a comment on a paper that has appeared recently in the Annals; generally ∼750 words; no abstract.

Book Reviews: generally invited; usually ∼1500 words or less.

These are guidelines, not stone tablets. Authors with special issues and concerns should contact the Editorial office. Authors are encouraged to include the name, address, phone/fax, and e-mail address of from one to three individuals they feel would provide an expert and careful review.

The Annals also publishes regular contributions from the American College of Epidemiology. Persons interested in contributing such materials—usually news and events of interest to epidemiologists—should contact the Editorial Office or the College directly.

Online submission (at http://ees.elsevier.com/aep/default.asp ) should be attempted. In the event of difficulties, manuscripts may be submitted by email or surface mail. For the latter, one paper copy and a CD-ROM with the word processing version will be required. Please contact the editorial office for special needs.

All editorial questions and correspondence should be addressed to:
Richard Rothenberg, MD, MPH, Editor-in-Chief
Annals of Epidemiology, Editorial Office
Georgia State University
Urban Life Bldg Rm 848
140 Decatur St.
Atlanta. GA 30303
e-mail address: rrothenberg@gsu.edu
telephone: 404-413-1146
fax: 404-413-1140

Editorial office's e-mail address: annalsofepidemiology@gsu.edu
Fedex address:
Urban Life Bldg Rm 848
140 Decatur St.
Atlanta, GA 30303

Articles contributed to the Annals of Epidemiology become the property of the publisher. Statements contained therein are the responsibility of the authors. Submission is a representation that neither the manuscript nor the data it contains have been previously published (except in abstract form) and are not currently under consideration for publication elsewhere. All manuscripts are subject to rigorous peer review.

Ethics. When reporting experiments on human subjects, indicate whether the procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation (institutional or regional) and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2004 (see http://www.wma.net/e/ethicsunit/helsinki.htm ). Do not use patients' names, initial, or hospital numbers, especially in illustrative material. The Methods section should indicate the manner in which informed consent was obtained. When reporting experiments on animals, indicate whether the institution's or a national research council's guide for, or any national law on, the care and use of laboratory animals was followed.

Conflict of Interest. Authors of research manuscripts must disclose affiliation(s) with any organization with a direct or indirect financial interest in the subject matter discussed in the manuscript (i.e., consultancies, employment, expert testimony, honoraria, stock, retainers, etc.) that may affect the reporting of the work submitted. If uncertain as to what might be considered a potential conflict of interest, authors should convey full disclosure. Information about potential conflict of interest will be made available to the reviewers and published with the manuscript at the discretion of the editor.

Authorship. As stated in the "Uniform Requirements", all authors must have made a substantial contribution to the submitted manuscript in all three of the following areas, (a) conception and design, or analysis and interpretation of the data; (b) drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content; and (c) approval of the final version. Conditions (a), (b), and (c) must all be met. Each author should have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for the content. Increasingly, multicenter trials are attributed to a corporate author. All members of the group who are named as authors must fully meet the above criteria for authorship. Group members who do not meet these criteria should be listed, with their permission, in the acknowledgments.

Copyright. The publisher reserves the copyright and renewal on all published material and such material may not be reproduced without written permission from the publisher. Upon acceptance of an article the authors will be asked to transfer the copyright to Elsevier, Inc. which will ensure the widest possible dissemination of information under U.S. laws. If the work was done while the author was an employee of the U.S. Government, please indicate in the cover letter, since federal research is not protected by the Copyright Act, and therefore no copyright can be transferred.

Open Access. This journal offers you the option of making your article freely available to all via the http://www.annalsofepidemiology.org and ScienceDirect platforms. To prevent any conflict of interest, you can only make this choice after receiving notification that your article has been accepted for publication. The fee of $3,000 excludes taxes and other potential author fees such as color charges. In some cases, institutions and funding bodies have entered into agreement with Elsevier to meet these fees on behalf of their authors. Details of these agreements are available at http://www.elsevier.com/fundingbodies. Authors of accepted articles, who wish to take advantage of this option, should complete and submit the order form (available at http://www.elsevier.com/locate/openaccessform.pdf). Whatever access option you choose, you retain many rights as an author, including the right to post a revised personal version of your article on your own website. More information can be found here: http://www.elsevier.com/authorsrights.

Manuscript Order. A cover letter should accompany the manuscript, addressing conflict of interest, authorship and nonduplication criteria. Please include suggestions of possible peer reviewers, as well. Submit entire manuscript on line in the following order: (1) title; (2) abstract; (3) list of abbreviations and acronyms; (4) text; (5) acknowledgments; (6) references; (7) legends; (8)tables; (9) figures. Number all pages in sequence, beginning with the title page as 1, abstract as 2, etc. Type entire manuscript using wide margins and double-spacing on 8½ X 11 white paper. In a cover letter indicate the single category the manuscript fits best (see above). Title page. Include the first and last names of each author, his/her highest academic degree, the department and institution from which the work originated as well as the name of the author responsible for correspondence and reprints. The title should be concise and informative. Supply an abbreviated running title on the title page of no more than 40 characters. List information about grants and those persons whose contributions do not justify authorship (i.e. technical support) in the acknowledgments. List word count, abstract word count, number of tables and figures.

Abstract and key words. An abstract of 200 or fewer words should contain the following clearly labeled elements: purpose, methods, results, and conclusions. Below the abstract 3 - 10 MeSH heading key words should be provided. Mesh headings may be found at http://www.nlm.nih.gov/mesh/meshhome.html . Editorials and Letters-to-the-Editor do not require abstracts.

List of abbreviations. Please list and define all abbreviations and acronyms used in the manuscript.

Text. The manuscript should be in English. The editorial office uses the AMA Manual of Style: A Guide for Authors and Editors, ed 10 (AMA-10). All submissions should be paginated, using page 1 for the title page.

References. Follow the general arrangements as given in the "Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to a Biomedical Journal." The journal uses the Vancouver style for references. Number references consecutively in the order in which they are first mentioned in the text. Cite references in text, tables and figures by arabic numerals in brackets (for example: text [2]. text [2, 3]). List all authors, but if the number exceeds six, list the first six followed by et al. Avoid using "abstracts," "unpublished observations" and "personal communications" as references. Papers accepted but not yet published may be included by stating the journal and adding "In Press." If such references are important to the understanding of the submitted manuscript, authors may include an electronic copy of the reference with their submission. The author is responsible for the accuracy of all references. References should be styled as follows:

Journals
[1] Paivio A, Jansen B, Becker LJ. Comparisons through the mind's eye. Cognition 1975;37(2):635-47.
[2] Yuen AWC. Lamotrigine: a review of antiepileptic efficacy. Epilepsia 1994;35(Suppl. 5):S33-6.
[8] VanDecar JC, Russo RM, James DE, Ambeh WB, Franke M. Aseismic continuation of the Lesser Antilles slab beneath northeastern Venezuela. J Geophys Res 2003;108:2043. doi:10.1029/2001JB000884.

Books
[9] Strunk Jr W, White EB. The elements of style. 3rd ed. New York: MacMillan; 1979 [chapter 4].
[10] College bound seniors. Princeton (NJ): College Board Publications; 1979.
[13] Chaddock TE. Gastric emptying of a nutritionally balanced liquid diet. In: Daniel EE, editor. Proceedings of the fourth international symposium on gastrointestinal motility. Vancouver (British Columbia, Canada): Mitchell Press; 1974, p. 83-92.

Article or Chapter in an Edited Book
[14] Adams MJ, Briscoe BE, Sinha SK. Interface friction and energy dissipation in soft solid processing applications. In: Dowson D, Taylor CM, Childs THC, Godet M, Dalmas G, editors. Dissipative processes in tribology. Dowson D, editor. Tirbology series, vol. 27. Amsterdam: Elsevier; 1994, p. 223-34.

Edited Book
[12] Letheridge S, Cannon CR, editors. Bilingual education: teaching English as a second language. New York: Praeger; 1980.

Article in Press
[33] Chassin MR, Kosecoff J, Soloman DH. How coronary angiography is used. JAMA, in press.

Website
[22] Health Care Financing Administration. 1996 statistics at a glance,http://www.hcfa.gov/stats/stathili.htm; 1996 [accessed 13.03.12].

Tables. Do not submit tables as photographs. Type each table on a separate sheet of paper with a brief descriptive title. Only horizontal rules are permissible. Explain all nonstandard abbreviations and other explanatory matter that are used in each table in the footnotes not in the heading. Identify statistical measures of variations such as standard deviation and standard error of the mean.

Figures. Submit figures embedded in the word processing document. Depending on the figures, special arrangements may be required to obtain a publishable version after acceptance. For details on the submission of artwork in electronic format, visit http://www.elsevier.com/locate/authorartwork .

Author Proofs and Reprints. The corresponding author will receive proofs, which must be read, corrected, and returned to the publisher within 48 hours of receipt. Corrections are limited to printer's errors. Reprints may be ordered prior to publication using the reprint order form that accompanies proofs.

Checklist for Authors

• appropriate cover letter signed by corresponding author
• title page with brief and informative title
• structured abstract (purpose, methods, results, and conclusion) followed by keywords
• properly formatted text, references, tables, and figures
• word count, abstract word count, number of tables and figures listed on the title page

Updated March 2012