Guide for authors

Guide for Authors
ONLINE SUBMISSION AND PEER REVIEW SYSTEM
European Journal of Radiology is a scientific peer-reviewed radiological journal which appears on a monthly basis. All manuscripts must be submitted on-line, via our web-based system with full online submission, review and status update capabilities. This is part of our ongoing efforts to improve the efficiency of our editorial procedures, and the quality and timeliness of publication. The system can be accessed at: http://ees.elsevier.com/ejr/
Prior to submitting your paper, please follow the instructions given below. Please note that you must have an e-mail address to use the system.
Please read the "Hints" for information on how to register, and review the "Tutorial for Authors". If you need any further help, please contact our Author Support Department authorsupport@elsevier.com.
EDITORIAL POLICY AND TYPES OF CONTRIBUTION
European Journal of Radiology is an international journal which acts as a medium for the exchange of information on the use of radiological and allied imaging and interventional techniques. This also includes information on socio-economics and departmental management. By means of a thematic approach and review and tutorial articles, European Journal of Radiology aims to be a forum for all those who are directly or indirectly involved with actual developments and trends in the various areas of radiology and medical imaging.
Annually three issues of European Journal of Radiology will have a thematic approach. Articles in these issues are generally commissioned along specific themes. The issues will be complemented with non-commissioned high quality original research articles which respond to actual developments in the field. Authors should note that all manuscripts are subject to peer review, and that an invitation to write an article does not automatically guarantee publication. Non-commissioned articles include:
• Original Research Articles (maximum 4,000 words)
• Review articles (maximum 4,000 words)
• Short Communications (maximum 1,500 words)
• Technical Notes (maximum 1,500 words)
• Please note that the European Journal of Radiology no longer routinely publishes case reports
PREPARATION OF THE MANUSCRIPT FOR ONLINESUBMISSION - GENERAL
We accept text files in most standard word-processing formats. Graphics should be high-resolution and the accepted formats are TIFF, EPS or PDF.
Please follow the instructions below for guidance on the style of the journal. Most formatting codes are removed or replaced when your article is prepared for publication so there is no need for you to use excessive layout styling. However, please do not use options such as automatic word breaking, justified layout, double columns or automatic paragraph numbering. Do use bold face, italic, subscripts, superscripts, etc., as appropriate. Please ensure that your manuscript is paginated, as this will help both editor and reviewers to process it promptly. An author responsible for corresponding with the Editor and Elsevier will need to be assigned.
Submission Declaration and Publication Ethics
Submission of an article implies that the work described has not been published previously, except in the form of an abstract or as part of a published lecture or academic thesis - for further details consult guidelines adopted by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors ("Uniform requirements for manuscripts submitted to biomedical journals", available as a PDF from http://www.icmje.org). Additionally, a submission implied that the work is not under consideration for publication elsewhere, that its publication is approved by all authors and 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, without the written consent of the copyright-holder. All listed authors must concur with the submission and have approved the final manuscript.
English Language Service
Please write your text in correct English. Authors who require information about language editing and copyediting services pre- and post-submission please visit http://webshop.elsevier.com/ for more information. Please note Elsevier neither endorses nor takes responsibility for any products, goods or services offered by outside vendors through our services or in any advertising.
Copyright Information
Upon acceptance of an article, authors will be asked to complete a 'Journal Publishing Agreement' (for more information on this and copyright see http://www.elsevier.com/copyright). Acceptance of the agreement will ensure the widest possible dissemination of information. An e-mail will be sent to the corresponding author confirming receipt of the manuscript together with a 'Journal Publishing Agreement' form or a link to the online version of this agreement.
Subscribers may reproduce tables of contents or prepare lists of articles including abstracts for internal circulation within their institutions. Permission of the Publisher is required for resale or distribution outside the institution and for all other derivative works, including compilations and translations (please consult http://www.elsevier.com/permissions). 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.
Ethical Policy
All studies must be conducted to a high ethical standard and must adhere to local regulations and standards for gaining scrutiny and approval.
The work described in your article must have been carried out in accordance with The Code of Ethics of the World Medical Association (Declaration of Helsinki) for experiments involving humans http://www.wma.net/en/30publications/10policies/b3/; EC Directive 86/609/EEC for animal experiments http://ec.europa.eu/environment/chemicals/lab_animals/legislation_en.htm. This must be stated at an appropriate point in the article.
For information on Ethics in Publishing and Ethical guidelines for journal publication see http://www.elsevier.com/authorethics and http://www.elsevier.com/ethicalguidelines.
The European Journal of Radiology is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (http://publicationethics.org).
Patient Consent
Studies on patients or volunteers require ethics committee approval and informed consent which should be documented in your paper.
Patients have a right to privacy. Therefore identifying information, including patients¿ images, names, initials, or hospital numbers, should not be included in videos, recordings, written descriptions, photographs, and pedigrees unless the information is essential for scientific purposes and you have obtained written informed consent for publication in print and electronic form from the patient (or parent, guardian or next of kin where applicable). If such consent is made subject to any conditions, Elsevier must be made aware of all such conditions.
Even in cases where consent has been given, identifying details should be omitted if they are not essential. If identifying characteristics are altered to protect anonymity, such as in genetic pedigrees, authors should provide assurance that alterations do not distort scientific meaning.
If such consent has not been obtained, personal details of patients included in any part of the paper and in any supplementary materials (including all illustrations and videos) must be removed before submission.
Trial or other study registration
European Journal of Radiology has adopted the proposal from the ICMJE which requires, as a condition of consideration for publication of clinical trials, registration in a public trials registry. Trials must register at or before the onset of patient enrolment. The clinical trial registration number should be included at the end of the abstract of the article. For this purpose, a clinical trial is defined as any research project that prospectively assigns human subjects to intervention or comparison groups to study the cause-and-effect relationship between a medical intervention and a health outcome. Studies designed for other purposes, such as to study pharmacokinetics or major toxicity (e.g. phase I trials) would be exempt. Further information can be found at http://www.icmje.org.
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 paper for publication. If the funding source(s) had no such involvement then this should be stated. Please see http://www.elsevier.com/funding.
Open Access
This journal offers authors two choices to publish their research;
1. Open Access
• Articles are freely available to both subscribers and the wider public with permitted reuse
• An Open Access publication fee is payable by authors or their research funder
2. Subscription
• Articles are made available to subscribers as well as developing countries and patient groups through our access programs (http://www.elsevier.com/access)
• No Open Access publication fee
All articles published Open Access will be immediately and permanently free for everyone to read and download. Permitted reuse is defined by your choice of one of the following Creative Commons user licenses:
Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-ShareAlike (CC BY-NC-SA): for non-commercial purposes, lets others distribute and copy the article, to create extracts, abstracts and other revised versions, adaptations or derivative works of or from an article (such as a translation), to include in a collective work (such as an anthology), to text and data mine the article, as long as they credit the author(s), do not represent the author as endorsing their adaptation of the article, do not modify the article in such a way as to damage the authors honor or reputation, and license their new adaptations or creations under identical terms (CC BY NC SA).
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.
Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY): available only for authors funded by organizations with which Elsevier has established an agreement. For a full list please see http://www.elsevier.com/fundingbodies
Elsevier has established agreements with funding bodies. This ensures authors can comply with funding body Open Access requirements, including specific user licenses, such as CC-BY. Some authors may also be reimbursed for associated publication fees. http://www.elsevier.com/fundingbodies
To provide Open Access, this journal has a publication fee which needs to be met by the authors or their research funders for each article published Open Access. Your publication choice will have no effect on the peer review process or acceptance of submitted articles. The Open Access publication fee for this journal is 2500 USD, excluding taxes.
Learn more about Elseviers pricing policy http://www.elsevier.com/openaccesspricing
Contributors and Acknowledgements
All authors should have made substantial contributions to all of the following: (1) the conception and design of the study, or acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data, (2) drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content, (3) final approval of the version to be submitted. In the covering letter to the editorial office, we ask you make a true statement that all authors meet the criteria for authorship, have approved the final article and that all those entitled to authorship are listed as authors.
Those who meet some but not all of the criteria for authors can be identified as 'contributors' at the end of the manuscript with their contribution specified. All those individuals who provided help during the research (e.g., collecting data, providing language help, writing assistance or proofreading the article, etc.) that do not meet criteria for authorship should be acknowledged in the paper.
Papers with 10 or more authors should give a corporate name for the research group (e.g. ATLAS Research Group) and list all authors and contributors [as defined above] at the end of the paper. Any acknowledgements should be listed additionally, as described above. In the covering letter to the editorial office, we ask that roles for each and every author be individually described, with reference to the criteria for authorship. You must make a true statement that all authors have approved the final article and acknowledge that all those entitled to authorship are listed as authors.
Conflict of interest
All authors must disclose any financial and personal relationships with other people or organisations 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. See also http://www.elsevier.com/conflictsofinterest.
Covering letter
A cover letter must be submitted with the manuscript. This should include the following information:
• Confirmation of the fact that the article is not under consideration for publication elsewhere.
• Each author should have participated sufficiently in any submission to take public responsibility for its content. Please provide full contact details for each author.
• Publication is approved by all authors and tacitly or explicitly by the responsible authorities where the work was carried out.
• That the author(s) or author(s) institutions have no conflicts of interest. This includes financial or personal relationships that inappropriately influence (bias) his or her actions (such relationships are also known as dual commitments, competing interests, or competing loyalties) within 3 years of the work beginning submitted. If there are no conflicts of interest, authors should state that there are none.
Author Form
The corresponding author must submit a completed Author Form with their submission. The form must be signed by the corresponding author and uploaded to EES with the manuscript.
Subject Area
In order to find the most appropriate reviewers for your article, we ask you to choose the subject area(s) which best fit your work from this predetermined list:
• Abdominal/GI/GU
• Cardiac
• Chest
• Head and Neck
• Health Policy
• Interventional Radiology
• Musculoskeletal
• Neuroradiology
• Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging
• Paediatric
• Women's Imaging/Breast Imaging
PREPARATION OF THE MANUSCRIPT - SPECIFIC
Sections of the Article
Please ensure your article is in the following order: Title, Authors, Affiliations, Abstract, Keywords, Main text, Acknowledgements, Appendix, References, Figure legends (do not import figure files into the text file) and Tables.
First Title Page
Please create a title page for your article. The title should be clear, informative and not too long. The page should bear names, full postal addresses, telephone and email addresses of all author(s). The contact details of the corresponding author should be highlighted.
Second Title Page
The second page should only bear the title (without information about the authors) for blind peer review.
Abstract
The abstract should concisely describe the content of the article. It should be approximately 200-250 words. Abbreviations and references should be avoided in the abstract. An abstract is often presented separately from the article, so it must be able to stand alone.
Keywords
Between 3 and 6 keywords should be listed at the end of the abstract. These keywords should follow MeSH guidelines: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/mesh/.
Article Body
The main body of the article should be ordered under the following headings: Introduction (or Objective); Materials and Methods (or Patients); Results; Discussion; and Conclusions.
Table and figures
Number tables consecutively in Arabic in accordance with their appearance in the text. If no grid is being used, use tabs to align columns instead of spaces. Each table should have a brief and self-explanatory title. Standard abbreviations of units of measurements should be added between parentheses. Place footnotes to tables below the table body and indicate them with superscript lowercase letters. Be sparing with the use of tables and ensure that the data presented in tables does not duplicate results described elsewhere in the article.
File formats - General points
• Make sure you use uniform lettering and sizing of your original artwork.
• Save text in illustrations as "graphics" or enclose the font.
• Only use the following fonts in your illustrations: Arial, Courier, Times, Symbol.
• Number the illustrations according to their sequence in the text.
• Use a logical naming convention for your artwork files.
• Provide captions to illustrations separately.
• Produce images near to the desired size of the printed version.
• Submit each figure as a separate file.
A detailed guide on electronic artwork is available on our website: http://www.elsevier.com/artworkinstructions
Formats
Regardless of the application used, when your electronic artwork is finalised, 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: Vector drawings. Embed the font or save the text as "graphics".
• TIFF: color or grayscale photographs (halftones): always use a minimum of 300 dpi.
• TIFF: Bitmapped line drawings: use a minimum of 1000 dpi.
• TIFF: Combinations bitmapped line/half-tone (color or grayscale): a minimum of 500 dpi is required.
• DOC, XLS or PPT: If your electronic artwork is created in any of these Microsoft Office applications please supply "as is".
Please do not:
• Supply embedded graphics in your wordprocessor (spreadsheet, presentation) document.
• Supply files that are optimised for screen use (like GIF, BMP, PICT, WPG); the resolution is too low.
• Supply files that are too low in resolution.
• Submit graphics that are disproportionately large for the content.
Equipment and Drugs
When quoting specific equipment or drugs, authors must state in parentheses the name and address of the manufacturer. Generic names should be used wherever possible.
Units and Abbreviations
Measurements of length, height, weight and volume should be given in metric units (metre, kilogram, litre) or their decimal multiples in terms of the International System of Units http://www.bipm.fr/en/si/. Temperatures should be given in degrees Celsius and blood pressure in mmHg. Define abbreviations that are not standard in the field at their first occurrence in the article, in the abstract but also in the main text after it. Ensure consistency of abbreviations throughout the text.
Preparation of Supplementary Data
Elsevier accepts supplementary material to support and enhance your scientific research. Supplementary files offer the Author additional possibilities to publish supporting applications, movies, animation sequences, high-resolution images, background datasets, sound clips and more. Supplementary files supplied will be published online alongside the electronic version of your article in Elsevier Web products, including ScienceDirect: http://www.sciencedirect.com. In order to ensure that your submitted material is directly usable, please ensure that data is provided in one of our recommended file formats. Authors should submit the material in electronic format together with the article and supply a concise and descriptive caption for each file. For more detailed instructions please visit our artwork instruction pages at http://www.elsevier.com/authors.
References
Reference lists must be limited to a maximum of no more than 30 relevant citations per article for original research papers and up to 60 relevant citations per paper for review articles. Additional citations may be allowed at the discretion of the Editor-in-Chief. Responsibility for the accuracy of bibliographic citations lies entirely with the authors. They should be numbered consecutively as they appear in the text. All references in the reference list must be cited in the text (and vice versa). Any references cited in the abstract must be given in full. Indicate references by superscript numbers in the text. The actual authors can be referred to, but the reference number(s) must always be given. Abbreviations for titles of medical journals should conform to those used in the latest edition of Index Medicus. Unpublished results and personal communications should not be included in the reference list, but should be cited in the text only (e.g. Smith et al., unpublished results). Citation of a reference as 'in press' implies that the item has been accepted for publication. Citing and listing web references: as a minimum, the full url should be given. Any further information if known (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.
In the reference list, number the references in the order in which they appear in the text, and provide surname and initial of all authors. For references with more than six authors insert 'et al.' after the third name. European references should be stressed. Style and punctuation are shown in the following examples:
Journal article:
[1] Greess H, Nomayr A, Tomandl B, et al. 2D and 3D visualisation of head and neck tumours from spiral-CT data. Eur J Radiol 2000;33(3):170-7.
Book:
[2] Enge I, Edgren J. Patient safety and adverse events in contrast media examinations. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1985.
Chapter in a book:
[3] Gutin PH. Treatment of radiation necrosis of the brain. In: Gutin PH, Leibel SA, Sheline GE, editors. Radiation injury to the nervous system. New York: Raven Press, 1991:271-81
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.
Proofs
When the manuscript for your accepted article is received, it is considered to be in its final form. Proofs are not to be regarded as 'drafts'. Proofreading is solely your responsibility. One set of page proofs will be sent to the corresponding author to check for typesetting accuracy. Only typesetting and factual errors may be corrected, changes in, or additions to, the accepted (and subsequently edited) manuscript will not be allowed at this stage. Any queries should be answered in full. The Publisher reserves the right to charge authors for the cost of changes made to the text or the figures at proof stage, where such changes are extensive. Please return corrections within 24 hours of receipt. It is important to ensure that all corrections are sent back to us in one communication. Subsequent corrections will not be possible, so please ensure that the first sending is complete. Should there be no corrections, please confirm this. The Publisher reserves the right to proceed with publication if corrections are not communicated. For more information on proofreading go to http://www.elsevier.com/authors. Please note that once your paper has been proofed we publish the identical paper online as in print.
Peer review process
The manuscript is sent to two reviewers who are responsible for further evaluation and peer review. The corresponding author will be sent notification that the article has been received and will also be informed of the outcome of the peer review process. All papers are submitted for review without details of the name or source of the paper (as far as possible). Similarly, names of the reviewers are not submitted to authors. Confidentiality is respected throughout the review process. Should authors be requested by the Editor to revise the text, the revised version should be submitted within 10 weeks. After this period, the article will be regarded as a new submission.
Author Services
The AuthorGateway is Elsevier's online tool for authors.
• Authors can track the status of their paper throughout the review process using http://www.ees.elsevier.com/ejr/
• Authors can track the status of their accepted paper during the production process online at http://authors.elsevier.com/TrackPaper.html using the reference supplied by the Publisher
• Publication in this journal is free of charge
• All articles are published on ScienceDirect within 3-4 weeks of receipt of the corrected proof at Elsevier. These are fully citable using the article's unique Digital Object Identifier
Offprints
The corresponding author, at no cost, will be provided with a PDF file of the article via e-mail. The PDF file is a watermarked version of the published article and includes a cover sheet with the journal cover image and a disclaimer outlining the terms and conditions of use.