THERIOGENOLOGY - GUIDE FOR AUTHORS

INTRODUCTION

Please consult this Guide for Authors for further details on the requirements for submitting your paper to Theriogenology. The guidelines described in this document should be adhered to carefully, to ensure high-quality and rapid publication of your manuscript.

Theriogenology is an international, peer-reviewed journal that publishes papers regarding the study of reproduction in domestic and non-domestic mammals, birds, reptiles, and fish. Theriogenology publishes only material that has never been previously published and is not currently being considered for publication elsewhere; the exception would be limited disclosure (e.g. publication of an abstract or in the proceedings of a scientific conference, with limited circulation).

Types of article

1. Original Research Papers (Regular Papers)
2. Review Articles
3. Technical Notes

Review Articles should cover subjects within the scope of the journal that are of active current interest. They are usually invited, but prospective Authors may contact the Editors with proposals.

Technical Notes are concise, comprehensive descriptions of technical aspects of innovative methods (that will not be subsequently published as a full-length paper). The entire submitted manuscript typically should not exceed approximately 12 double-spaced pages.

Page Charges

This journal has no page charges.

BEFORE YOU BEGIN

Ethics in Publishing

For information on Ethics in Publishing and Ethical guidelines for journal publication see http://www.elsevier.com/publishingethics and http://www.elsevier.com/ethicalguidelines

Policy and Ethics

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/index.html; EU Directive 2010/63/EU for animal experiments http://ec.europa.eu/environment/chemicals/lab_animals/legislation_en.htm; Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals http://www.icmje.org. This must be stated at an appropriate point in the article.

Unnecessary cruelty in animal experimentation is not acceptable to the Editors of Theriogenology.

Conflict of Interest

All authors are requested to disclose any actual or potential conflict of interest including any financial, personal or other relationships with other people or organizations within three years of beginning the submitted work that could inappropriately influence, or be perceived to influence, their work. See also http://www.elsevier.com/conflictsofinterest

Submission Declaration

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), that it is not under current 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, without the written consent of the copyright-holder.

Contributors

Each author is required to declare his or her individual contribution to the article: all authors must have materially participated in the research and/or article preparation, so roles for all authors should be described. The statement that all authors have approved the final article should be true and included in the disclosure.

Authorship

All authors should have made substantial contributions to all of the following: (1) the conception and design of the study, or acquisition, analysis and interpretation of data; (2) drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content; and (3) final approval of the version to be submitted.

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' (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. However, 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. Elsevier has preprinted forms for use by authors in these cases (please consult http://www.elsevier.com/permissions).

Retained Author Rights

As an author you (or your employer or institution) retain certain rights; for details see http://www.elsevier.com/authorsrights.

Role of the Funding Source

You are requested to identify the source(s) of 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 writing the report; and in the decision to submit the paper for publication. If the funding source(s) had no such involvement, 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 author's 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 we have established an agreement with. For a full list please see 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. 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 $USD 2,500, excluding taxes.

Learn more about Elsevier's pricing policy
www.elsevier.com/openaccesspricing

Funding Body Agreements and Policies

Elsevier has established agreements and developed policies to allow authors, whose articles appear in journals published by Elsevier, to comply with potential manuscript archiving requirements as specified as conditions of their grant awards. To learn more about existing agreements and policies, please visit http://www.elsevier.com/fundingbodies.

Language and language services

Please write your text in good English (American or British usage is accepted, but not a mixture of these). Authors who require information about language editing and copyediting services pre- and post-submission please visit http://webshop.elsevier.com/languageservices or our customer support site at http://support.elsevier.com for more information.

Submission

Submission to this journal proceeds totally online; you will be guided stepwise through the creation and uploading of your files. The system automatically converts source files to a single PDF file of the article, which is used in the peer-review process. Please note that even though manuscript source files are converted to PDF files 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, removing the need for a paper trail.Submit your article
Please submit your article via http://ees.elsevier.com/therio.

Referees

Please submit, as part of the covering letter with the manuscript, the names, full affiliations (department, institution, city and country) and e-mail addresses of 3 potential Referees. Appropriate Referees should be knowledgeable about the subject, but have no close connection with any of the authors. You may also suggest reviewers you do not want to review your manuscript, but please state your reasons for doing so.

PREPARATION

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 and double spaced. It is important that all pages and lines are numbered. 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. Do not embed "graphically designed" equations or tables, but prepare these using the word processor's facility. 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. In lieu of a grid, use tabs, not spaces, to align columns. Electronic text should be prepared similar to that of conventional manuscripts (see also the Guide to Publishing with Elsevier: http://www.elsevier.com/guidepublication). Do not import the figures into the text file; instead, indicate their approximate locations directly in the electronic text and on the manuscript. See also the section on Electronic illustrations. To avoid unnecessary errors you are strongly advised to use the "spell-check" and "grammar-check" functions of your word processor, and to read it critically.

Article Structure

Subdivision - numbered sections
Divide your article into clearly defined and numbered sections. Subsections should be numbered 1.1. (then 1.1.1., 1.1.2., ...), 1.2., etc. (the abstract is not included in section numbering). Use this numbering also for internal cross-referencing: do not just refer to "the text". Any subsection may be given a brief heading. Each heading should appear on its own separate line, with one blank line above and below.

Introduction
State the objectives of the work and provide an adequate background, avoiding a detailed literature survey or a summary of the results. Introduction should generally not exceed 2 manuscript pages (double-spaced).

Materials and methods
Provide sufficient detail to allow the work to be reproduced. Methods already published in a readily available source should be indicated by a reference (only relevant modifications should be described).

Results
Results should be clear and concise. If data are reported in a table or figure, the text should only highlight the information, but not repeat it in detail.

Discussion
This should explore the relevance and implications of the results of the work, not simply repeat them. A combined Results and Discussion section may be appropriate. Avoid excessive citations and discussion of published literature. Although there are always exceptions, in general the Discussion section should generally not exceed 40% of the manuscript (excluding references, figures, and tables) and there should be no more than 35 references (except for review papers).

Conclusions
The main conclusions of the study may be presented in a short Conclusions section, which may stand alone or form a subsection of a Discussion or a Results and Discussion section.

Essential title page information
Title. Concise and informative. Titles are often used in information-retrieval systems. Avoid abbreviations, trade names, and formulae.

Author names and affiliations. Where the family name may be ambiguous (e.g., a double name), please indicate this clearly. First names or initials can be used according to author preference. 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 is willing to handle correspondence at all stages of review 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.

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.

Abstract

A concise and factual abstract is required. The abstract should state briefly the purpose of the research, the principal results and major conclusions. Since an abstract is often presented separately from the article, it must be able to stand alone. For this reason, references should generally be avoided, but if essential, they must be cited in full, without reference to the reference list. Also, non-standard or uncommon abbreviations should be avoided, but if their use is essential, they must be defined at their first mention in the abstract itself. Abstracts must be limited to a single paragraph with no more than 2,500 keystrokes (characters plus spaces).

Keywords

Immediately after the abstract, provide a maximum of 6 keywords, using American spelling and avoiding general and plural terms and multiple concepts (avoid, for example, "and", "of"). Some keywords may be identical to words used in the title, but consideration should be given to keywords which are complimentary to words used in the title (to facilitate retrieval of your article from electronic databases). Be sparing with abbreviations: only abbreviations firmly established in the field should be used. These keywords will be used for indexing purposes.

Acknowledgements

Collate acknowledgements in a separate section at the end of the article before the references; therefore, do not include them on the title page, as a footnote to the title, etc.. List individuals who provided help during the research (e.g., providing language help, writing assistance or proof reading the article, etc.), sources of financial support, and donations of products and materials.

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. You are urged to consult IUB: Biochemical Nomenclature and Related Documents: http://www.chem.qmw.ac.uk/iubmb/ for further information.

Math formulae

Present simple formulae in the line of 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). Please see Additional Style Notes below.

Footnotes

Footnotes should be used sparingly. Number them consecutively throughout the article, using superscript Arabic numbers. Many word processors build footnotes into the text, and this feature may be used. Should this not be the case, indicate the position of footnotes in the text and present the footnotes themselves separately at the end of the article. Do not include footnotes in the Reference list.

Table footnotes
Indicate each footnote in a table with a superscript lowercase letter.

Artwork

Image manipulation
Although it is generally accepted that authors sometimes need to manipulate images for clarity, manipulation for purposes of deception or fraud will be seen as scientific ethical abuse and will be dealt with accordingly. For graphical images, this journal is applying the following policy: no specific feature within an image may be enhanced, obscured, moved, removed, or introduced. Adjustments of brightness, contrast, or color balance are acceptable if and as long as they do not obscure or eliminate any information present in the original. Nonlinear adjustments (e.g. changes to gamma settings) must be disclosed in the figure legend.

Electronic artwork
General points
• Make sure you use uniform lettering and sizing of your original artwork. Avoid excessively large fonts.
• For labels on figures, both those on the figure axes as well as those directly on the figure, capitalize only the first letter of the first word.
• Do not prepare a figure to communicate very limited data that could easily be included in the text of the Results.
• 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

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

Formats
Regardless of the application used, 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: 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.
If your electronic artwork is created in a Microsoft Office application (Word, PowerPoint, Excel) then please supply 'as is'.

Please do not:
• Supply files that are optimized for screen use (e.g.,
• 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, EPS 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 on the Web (e.g., ScienceDirect and other sites), regardless of whether or not these illustrations are reproduced in color in the printed version. Information regarding the cost of color reproduction in print will be sent by Elsevier after your article has been accepted. Please indicate your preference for color: in print or on the Web only. For further information on the preparation of electronic artwork, please see http://www.elsevier.com/artworkinstructions.

Please note: Since technical complications can arise by converting color figures to 'gray scale' (for the printed version, should you not opt for color in print), if you have any figures with color that will not be published in color in the printed version, please submit two versions (color and usable black and white).

Figure captions
Ensure that each illustration has a caption. Supply captions separately, not attached to the figure. A caption should comprise a brief title (not on the figure itself) and a description of the illustration. Keep text in the illustrations themselves to a minimum but explain all symbols and abbreviations used.

Text graphics
Present incidental graphics not suitable for mention as figures, plates or schemes at the end of the article and number them "Graphic 1", etc. Their precise position in the text can then be indicated. See further information under Electronic artwork. If you are working with LaTeX and have such features embedded in the text, these can be left, but such embedding should not be done specifically for publishing purposes. Further, high-resolution graphics files must be provided separately.Tables

Number tables consecutively in accordance with their appearance in the text. Place footnotes to tables below the table body and indicate them with superscript lowercase letters. Avoid vertical rules. Be sparing in the use of tables and ensure that the data presented in tables do not duplicate results described elsewhere in the article.

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. 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. 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 style
Text: Indicate references by number(s) in square brackets in line with the text. The actual authors can be referred to, but the reference number(s) must always be given.Example: "...as demonstrated [3,6]. Barnaby and Jones [8] obtained a different result..."

List: Number the references (numbers in square brackets) in the list in the order in which they first appear in the text.

Examples:

Reference to a journal publication:
[1] Van der Geer J, Hanraads JAJ, Lupton RA. The art of writing a scientific article. J Sci Commun 2010;163:51-9.

Reference to a book:
[2] Strunk Jr W, White EB. The elements of style. 4th ed. New York: Longman; 2000.

Reference to a chapter in an edited book:
[3] Mettam GR, Adams LB. How to prepare an electronic version of your article. In: Jones BS, Smith RZ, editors. Introduction to the electronic age, New York: E-Publishing Inc; 2009, p. 281-304.

Note shortened form for last page number. e.g., 51-9, and that for more than 6 authors, the first 6 should be listed followed by 'et al.' For further details, you are referred to 'Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts submitted to Biomedical Journals' (J Am Med Assoc 1997;277:927-34) (see also http://www.nlm.nih.gov/bsd/uniform_requirements.html)

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 serial title word abbreviations: http://www.issn.org/2-22661-LTWA-online.php;
CAS (Chemical Abstracts Service): http://www.cas.org/sent.html.

Do not abbreviate a journal name which is a single word, or is in a language other than English.

Supplementary material

Elsevier accepts electronic supplementary material to support and enhance your scientific research. Supplementary files offer authors additional possibilities to publish supporting applications, movies, animation sequences, high-resolution images, background datasets, sound clips, etc. Supplementary files supplied will be published online alongside the electronic version of your article in Elsevier Web products, including ScienceDirect: http://www.sciencedirect.com. To ensure that your submitted material is directly usable, please ensure that data are 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. Video files: please supply 'stills' with your files: you can choose any frame from the video or make a separate image. These will be used instead of standard icons and will personalize the link to your supplementary information. For more detailed instructions please visit our artwork instruction pages at http://www.elsevier.com/artworkinstructions.

Additional style notes

Please use the following words, phrases, abbreviations, and stylistic conventions
• Avoid the word "injected," (e.g., "Cows were injected with cloprostenol") but include the generic name, proprietary name, dosage and route of administration (e.g., "Cows were treated with cloprostenol [Estrumate 500 &Mgr;g im]").
• Either cite a P value (recommended for Abstract and for Results) or use the term 'significant' (recommended for Discussion), but generally avoid doing both.
• Terms with a specific statistical meaning (i.e. significant, tended and correlated), should only be used in a strict statistical context.
• Numbers less than 10 are written as a word, unless followed by an abbreviation for unit of measure, e.g. five embryos, 5 min

Use the following expressions
• transrectal palpation, not rectal palpation
• nucleus transfer, not nuclear transplant
• estrus (noun) synchronization, but, estrous (adjective) behavior
• sperm can be used as both noun and adjective
• 120 to 125, not 120-125
• treatment by period, not treatment X period
• gravity: 100 X g (in lieu of speed for centrifugation)
• magnification: X 100
• identification number of an animal: No. 10, but 30 animals: n = 30
• 3 d, Day 3 (define Day 0)

Standard definitions
• oogonium: female gamete before meiosis
• oocyte, primary: female gamete from onset of the first maturation division (meiosis) to extrusion of the first polar body
• oocyte secondary: female gamete from onset of second meiosis to extrusion of the second polar body
• ovum: female gamete from the end of both meiotic divisions until the union of the male and female pronuclei (differs from the common use of ovum as a general term for any female gamete)
• germinal vesicle: nucleus of the ovum
• zygote: a fertilized ovum, from fusion of the male and female gamete to completion of first cleavage
• embryo: a conceptus from the 2-cell stage to the stage when cell migration and differentiation are largely complete
• fetus: a conceptus after organogenesis is mostly complete (primarily increasing in size)
• conceptus: an embryo or fetus with all its membranes and accessory structures
• abortion: expulsion of a conceptus incapable of independent life
• premature parturition: expulsion (before full term) of a conceptus capable of independent life
• stillbirth: avoid this term (use fetal death or abortion)

Abbreviations
Never use an abbreviation to start a sentence. Some abbreviations may be used anywhere else, including the manuscript's title and in figures, table titles and legends, without definition; others may not be used in the title, but may be used in the text without definition. In general, abbreviations must be defined when used for the first time (this may be avoided in the ABSTRACT if necessary to conserve space). To make reading the paper more pleasant, avoid using excessive abbreviations and acronyms; instead use short synonyms, for instance: for "Cesarean section" instead of "CS" use "section" or "hysterotomy."

The following abbreviations may be used in the text without definition (note that abbreviations exclude periods):

Units of Measure
cpm - counts per min
dpm - disintegrations per min
g - gram
ga - gauge of hypodermic needle
h - hour
kg - kilogram
L - liter
mL - milliliter
&mgr;L - microliter
m - meter
min - minute
mo - month
s - second
v:v - volume ratio
wk - week
wt/vol - weight per volume
y - year

Routes of treatment
id - intradermal
im - intramuscular
iu - intrauterine
iv - intravenous
sc - subcutaneous
po - oral

Statistical expressions
ANOVA - analysis of variance
CV - coefficient of variation
df - degrees of freedom
F - variance ratio
NS - not significant
P - probability
SD - standard deviation
SEM - standard error of the mean
r - correlation coefficient
r2 - coefficient of regression

Additional information
• For issues of style and format not addressed here, please consult Scientific Style and Format: The CBE Manual for Authors, Editors, and Publishers, Sixth Edition.
• For spelling, word formation and divisions, plurals, possessives, meanings and usage, consult the CBE Manual or a current English language (collegiate-level or higher) dictionary.
• For conflicts between instructions in this Guide and any of the references, the Guide takes precedence. Do not hesitate to contact the Editorial Office if you have any questions regarding preparation of your 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 regarding any item.

Ensure that the following items are present:
One author has been designated as the corresponding author with contact details:
• E-mail address
• Full postal address
• Telephone and fax numbers

All necessary files have been uploaded, and contain:
• Keywords
• All figure captions
• All tables (including title, description, footnotes)

Further considerations
• Manuscript has been 'spell-checked' and 'grammar-checked' (and critically read and reviewed)
• 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

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):

doi:10.1016/j.physletb.2003.10.071

When you use the DOI to create URL hyperlinks to documents on the web, they are guaranteed never to change.

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. Elsevier now provides authors with PDF proofs which can be annotated; for this you will need to download Adobe Reader version 7 (or higher) available free from http://get.adobe.com/reader. Instructions on how to annotate PDF files will accompany the proofs (also given online). The exact system requirements are on the Adobe site: http://www.adobe.com/products/reader/tech-specs.html.

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 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 return by fax, or scan the pages and send by e-mail or by post. 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 - please let us have all your corrections within 48 hours. 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. Note that if no response is received, Elsevier may proceed with publication of your article.

Offprints

The corresponding author, at no cost, will be provided with a PDF file of the article via e-mail. For an extra charge, paper offprints can be ordered via the offprint order form which is sent once the article is accepted for publication. 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.

AUTHOR INQUIRIES

For inquiries relating to the submission of articles (including electronic submission) please visit this journal's homepage. Contact details for questions arising after acceptance of an article, especially those relating to proofs, will be provided by the publisher. You can track accepted articles at http://www.elsevier.com/trackarticle. You can also check our Author FAQs (http://www.elsevier.com/authorFAQ) and/or contact Customer Support via http://support.elsevier.com.

Updated January 2012