Online Submission
All authors are encouraged to submit their work online at http://ees.elsevier.com/ghir

FREE colour reproduction! Growth Hormone & IGF Research does not charge its authors for publishing any colour illustrations.

Submissions

A covering message must accompany all submissions and should be signed by all authors. The first named author is responsible for ensuring that all authors have seen and approved the manuscript. Each author should have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for the content. The authors must acknowledge in their cover message that the work the article represents has not been submitted for publication elsewhere. If the work or an abstract of it has been published, for instance, in another language, then this fact should be made clear in the covering letter. A manuscript is accepted for publication on the understanding that it has not been submitted sumultaneously to another journal in the English language.

Authors should suggest three potential reviewers by submitting relevant names, addresses and email addresses.

For North & South America:
Derek Le Roith MD PhD
Chief of the Division of Endocrinology and Diabetes
Department of Medicine
The Mount Sinai School of Medicine
One Gustave L. Levy Place, Box 1055
Annenberg Building Room 23-66B
New York, NY 10029-6574
USA
E-mail: derek.leroith@mssm.edu

For Europe & Rest of World:
Professor Jan Frystyk
Medical Research Laboratories
Aarhus University Hospital
Norrebrogade 44
DK 8000 Aarhus C
Denmark
E-mail: jan@frystyk.dk

Conflict of interest statement

All authors must disclose any financial and personal relationships with other people or organisations that could inappropriately influence (bias) their work, all within years of beginning the work submitted. If there are no conflicts of interest, authors should state that there are none.

Ethics

The journal publishes all material relating to human investigation and animal experiments on the understanding that the design of the work has been approved by the local Ethical Committees or that it conforms to guidelines on animal care and use currently applied in the country of origin. In the case of invasive studies in humans, typescripts should include a statement that the research protocol was approved by a local ethical committee.

The Editors-in-Chief reserve the right to make editorial and literary corrections. Any opinions expressed or policies advocated do not necessarily reflect the opinions or policies of the Editors-in-Chief.

Copyright

To ensure maximum dissemination and copyright protection of material published in the journal, copyright must be explicitly transferred from author to publisher. We assure you that no limitation shall be put on your personal freedom to use material contained in the manuscript without requesting permission, providing acknowledgement is made to the journal as the original source of publication. Offprints/reprints may be ordered at extra cost using order forms supplied with the proofs.

Presentation of Manuscripts

• The following instructions are in accordance with the requirements as stated in the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors Uniform (BMJ 1991; 302: 338-341) with regard to manuscripts submitted to biomedical journals.

• Manuscripts should be submitted in the journal style. Failure to do so may lead to significant delays in the publication. Spelling may be British or American.

• The directives for preparing the manuscript in the style of the journal is set out in the instructions to authors must be followed; i.e. ensure that the document is in the following order: Title; Authors; Addresses; Running title (maximum of 50 characters including spaces); Abstract; Introduction; Materials and Methods; Results; Discussion: Acknowledgements; References; Appendices; Figure Legends; Tables; Footnotes.

Additional points to note:

• Use two carriage returns to end headings and paragraphs.
• Type text without end of line hyphenation, except for compound words.
• Do not use lower case "I" for "1" or "O" for "0". (They have different typesetting values).
• Be consistent with punctuation and only insert a single space between words and after punctuation.
• Please include a list of any special characters you have has to use, e.g. Greek, maths.

Abbreviations, Numbers & SI Units
The decimal point and not a comma should be used, e.g. 6.89 not 6,89. A space rather than a comma should follow thousands and multiples thereof, e.g. 10 000 not 10,000.

Measurements of length, height, weight and volume should be reported in metric units (metre, kilogram, litre). Temperatures should be given in degrees Celsius and blood pressures in millimetres of mercury or kPa with the alternative unit in parentheses. All other measurements including laboratory measurement should be reported in the metric system in terms of the International System of Units (SI).

Isotopically labelled chemicals should be identified by the atomic number and the symbol of the isotope and its location in the molecule. The specific activity of the starting material should be given in terms of the curies (ci) or becquerels (Bq): disintegrations/second per molar weight.

Authors should limit the use of abbreviations. Terms which are mentioned frequently may be abbreviated but only if this does not detract from reader comprehension. The abbreviation should be defined after the first use of the term.

When quoting from specific materials or proprietary drugs, authors must state in parentheses the name and address of the manufacturer. Generic names should be used if possible.

Statistical Analyses
Statistical methods must be identified. Computer software packages which are used for anything, other than widely known standard statistical procedures, should be identified by name or acronym and by author or organisation or origin. When variability is expressed in terms of the standard error of a mean (SEM) or the standard deviation (SD), the number of observations (n) must also be given. Levels of significance should also be expressed as more/less than equal to given probability (e.g. P > 0.01).

Common errors such as (1) using one-tailed instead of two-tailed tests, (2) inappropriate use of parametric analyses and (3) lack of correction (for multiple comparisons), should be avoided.

The terms "significant" and "not significant" must not be used in a statistical sense without providing the level of significance in terms of P.

Alterations in Proofs
The publisher reserves the right to charge authors the cost of the changes made to the text or the figures at the proof stage when such changes are extensive. No charge will, of course, be made for correction of errors made during the editorial processor by the printer.

Proofs will be sent to the author (first named author if no corresponding author is identified on multi-authored papers) by PDF wherever possible and should be returned within 48 hours of receipt, preferably by e-mail. Corrections should be restricted to typesetting errors; any other amendments made may be charged to the author. Any queries should be answered in full.

Elsevier will do everything possible to get your article corrected and published as quickly and accurately as possible. Therefore it is important to ensure that all of your corrections are returned to us in one all-inclusive email or fax. Subsequent additional corrections will not be possible, so please ensure that your first communication is complete. Should you choose to mail your corrections, please return them to: Log-in Department, Elsevier, Stover Court, Bampfylde Street, Exeter, EX1 2AH, UK.

Short Communications
These will receive priority treatment. Manuscripts may be submitted as short communications if they do not exceed four printed pages (inclusive of all text, tables, illustrations and references). They will be referred as ordinary papers and must be completed pieces of work, preliminary studies are not acceptable. Methods must be adequately described to allow repetition and results must be sufficient to justify claims.

Mini-Reviews
It is intended that these be short reviews covering recent advances and ideas in an area. They will be published regularly. There are no special requirements for the organisation of these reviews but they should conform to the general requirements for original research articles.

Full Papers
Papers should be set out as follows, with each section beginning on a separate sheet; title page, summary, text, acknowledgments, references, tables, captions to illustrations.

Title Page:
The title page should give the following information:
• Title of the article.
• Initials and name of each author.
• Full address, tel/fax and email of corresponding author.
• Name and address of the department/institution to which the work is attributed.

Abstract:
Abstracts shall be structured as per the guidelines published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA 1995;273: 27--34). In brief, the abstract should be divided into sections including the following: (1) Objective; (2) Design---if clinical to include setting, selection of patients, details on the intervention, outcome measures, etc.; if laboratory research to include details on methods; (3) Results; (4) Conclusions.

Keywords:
Three to ten words should be given below the abstract, to be used for indexing purposes.

Text:
Headings should be appropriate to the nature of the paper. In general those for experimental papers should follow the usual conventions. Other papers can be subdivided as the author desires; the use of headings enhances readability.
Normally only two categories of headings should be used: major ones should be typed in capital letters in the centre of the page and underlined; minor ones should be typed in lower case (with an initial capital letter) at the left hand margin and underlined.
Do not use "he", "his" etc where the sex of the person is unknown; say "the patient" etc. Avoid inelegant alternatives such as "he/she". Patients should not be automatically designated as "she", and doctors as "he".

Reference Format:
The accuracy of references is the responsibility of the author. References should be entered consecutively by superscript arabic numerals in the text. The reference list should be listed in numerical order on a separate sheet in double or triple spacing. References to journals should include the author's name and initials (list all authors when six or fewer; when seven or more, list only the first three and add et al.), full title of paper, journal title abbreviated, using Index Medicus abbreviations, volume number, year of publication, first and last page numbers. For example:

D.L. Kleinberg, G.L. Noll, A.G. Frantz, Galactorrhoea: a study of 235 cases, including 48 with pituitary tumours, N. Engl. J. Med. 296 (1977) 589-600.

C.D. Haagenson, Disease of the Breast. 3rd Edition, W.B. Saunders, Philadelphia, 1986 p. 173.

Tables:
These should be double spaced on separate sheets and contain only horizontal rules. Do not submit tables as photographs. A short descriptive title should appear above each table and any footnotes, suitably identified, below. Care must be taken to ensure that all units are included. Ensure that each table is cited in the text.

Illustrations
Illustrations must be suitable for high-quality reproduction. Lettering should be complete, of professional quality, and of size appropriate to that of the illustration or drawing, with the necessary reduction in size taken in to account. If, together with your accepeted article, you submit usable colour figures, Elsevier will ensure that these figures appear free-of-charge in colour in the electronic version of your accepted article, regardless of whether or not these illustrations are reproduced in colour in the printed version. Colour illustrations can only be included in the print if the additional cost of reproduction is contributed by the author: you will receive information regarding the costs from Elsevier after receipt of your accepted article. Please note that because of technical complications which may arise by converting colour figures to "grey scale" (for the printed version, should you not opt for colour in print), you should submit in addition usable black and white prints corresponding to all the colour illustrations.

For further information, please visit http://ees.elsevier.com/ghir and click on 'Artwork Guidelines'.

Line:
All line illustrations should present a crisp black image on an even white background with a resolution of 300dpi or above.

Photographic Illustrations and Radiographs:
These should be submitted as clear, lightly contrasted black and white or colour images, sizes as above. Photomicrographs should have the magnification and details of staining techniques shown. X-ray films should be submitted as photographic images, carefully made to bring out the detail to be illustrated with an overlay indicating the area of importance. Figures should be submitted appropriately lettered in capitals. The size of the letters should be appropriate to that of the illustration. All illustrations should be clearly marked with figure number and author's name, and the top of the figure should be indicated by an arrow.

Patient confidentiality:
If identifiable features are not essential to an illustration of a patient, please indicate where the illustration can be cropped. In cases where consent has not been obtained and recognizable features may appear, it will be necessary to retouch the illustration to mask the eyes or otherwise render the individual "officially unrecognisable".

Permissions to reproduce:
Written permission to reproduce borrowed material (illustrations and tables) must be obtained from the original publishers and authors, and submitted with the typescript. Borrowed material should be acknowledged in the captions in this style: "Reproduced by the kind permission of ... (publishers) from ...(reference)".

Preparation of Supplementary Data

Elsevier now accepts electronic 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 http://ees.elsevier.com/ghir

Offprints

Offprints/reprints may be ordered at extra cost using order forms supplied with the proofs.