It is hoped that this list will be useful during the final checking of an article prior to sending it to the journal's Editor for review. Please consult this Guide for Authors for further details of any item.

Ensure that the following items are present:


• One Author designated as corresponding Author:
• E-mail address
• Full postal address
• Telephone and fax numbers trtrtr
• Disk is enclosed
• The electronic version and the hardcopy of the manuscript are identical
• Disk has been labelled with
• article details (first Author, first words of title)
• file name(s)
• media format (e.g., PC, Mac)
• file format (e.g., Word, LaTeX)


• All text pages
• Keywords
• Original artwork (high-quality prints)
• All figure captions
• All tables (including title, description, footnotes)

Further considerations

• Manuscript has been "spellchecked"

• 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)

• Colour figures are clearly marked as being intended for colour reproduction on the Web (free of charge) and in print or to be reproduced in colour on the Web (free of charge) and in black-and-white in print

• If only colour on the Web is required, black and white versions of the figures are also supplied for printing purposes For any further information please contact the Author Support Department at authorsupport@elsevier.com.

General
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 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and tacitly or explicitly by the responsible authorities where the work was carried out, and that, if accepted, it will not be published elsewhere in the same form, in English or in any other language, without the written consent of the Publisher.

Upon acceptance of an article, Authors will be asked to sign 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 or letter 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 the agreement. 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: contact Elsevier's Rights Department, Oxford, UK: phone (+44) 1865 843830, fax (+44) 1865 853333, e-mail permissions@elsevier.com. Requests may also be completed online via the Elsevier homepage ( http://www.elsevier.com/locate/permissions).

US National Institutes of Health (NIH) voluntary posting (" Public Access") policy
Elsevier facilitates author response to the NIH voluntary posting request (referred to as the NIH "Public Access Policy"; see http://www.nih.gov/about/publicaccess/index.htm) by posting the peer-reviewed author's manuscript directly to PubMed Central on request from the author, 12 months after formal publication. Upon notification from Elsevier of acceptance, we will ask you to confirm via e-mail (by e-mailing us at NIHauthorrequest@elsevier.com) that your work has received NIH funding and that you intend to respond to the NIH policy request, along with your NIH award number to facilitate processing. Upon such confirmation, Elsevier will submit to PubMed Central on your behalf a version of your manuscript that will include peer-review comments, for posting 12 months after formal publication. This will ensure that you will have responded fully to the NIH request policy. There will be no need for you to post your manuscript directly with PubMed Central, and any such posting is prohibited.

Authors' rights
As an author, you (or your employer or institution) retain certain rights; for details you are referred to: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/authorshome.authors/authorsrights.

Types of contribution
Contributions will be accepted in English as Reviews, Research Papers or New Source Reports. Reviews which survey important and developing areas of biochemical systematics and ecology are encouraged but authors are advised to consult the Editor before preparing such articles.

English language help service: Upon request, Elsevier will direct Authors to an agent who can check and improve the English of their paper (before submission). Please contact www.elsevier.com/locate/elsevierpublishing

Submission to the journal From now on, all manuscripts should be submitted electronically through the Elsevier Editorial System (EES) which can be accessed at http://ees.elsevier.com/bse. The system will automatically convert your source files to a single Adobe Acrobat PDF version of the article, which will be used during the peer-review process. Please note that even though manuscript souce files are converted to PDF at submission for the review process, these source files will be needed for further processing after acceptance. If you are not able to submit your paper to BSE electronically please contact the Editor-in-Chief, Professor Monique Simmonds for further instructions.

Reviewers
Please submit, with your manuscript, the names and addresses (including email) of two potential reviewers.

Please write your text in good English (American or British usage is accepted, but not a mixture of these). Italics are not to be used for expressions of Latin origin, for example, in vivo, et al., per se. Use decimal points (not commas); use a space for thousands (10 000 and above).

Language Polishing:
Authors who require information about language editing and copyediting services pre- and post-submission please visit( http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/authorshome.authors/languagepolishing or contact authorsupport@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. For more information please refer to our terms & conditions ( http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/termsconditions.cws_home/termsconditions).

Provide the following data on the title page (in the order given):Title. Concise and informative. Titles are often used in information-retrieval systems. Avoid abbreviations and formulae where possible.
Author names and affiliations. Where the family name may be ambiguous (e.g., a double name), please indicate this clearly. 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 refereeing 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 (maximum length 150 words). The abstract should state briefly the purpose of the research, the principal results and major conclusions. An abstract is often presented separate from the article, so it must be able to stand alone. References should therefore be avoided, but if essential, they must be cited in full, without reference to the reference list. Non-standard or uncommon abbreviations should be avoided, but if essential they must be defined at their first mention in the abstract itself.
Keywords. Immediately after the abstract, provide a maximum of 8 keywords, avoiding general and plural terms and multiple concepts (avoid, for example, 'and', 'of'). Be sparing with abbreviations: only abbreviations firmly established in the field may be eligible. These keywords will be used for indexing purposes.
N.B. Acknowledgements. Collate acknowledgements in a separate section at the end of the article and do not, therefore, include them on the title page, as a footnote to the title or otherwise.



Subdivision of the article. 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.
Introduction. State the objectives of the work and provide an adequate background, avoiding a detailed literature survey or a summary of the results.
Experimental/Materials and methods. Provide sufficient detail to allow the work to be reproduced. Methods already published should be indicated by a reference: only relevant modifications should be described.
Discussion. This should explore the significance of the results of the work, not repeat them.
Appendices. If there is more than one appendix, they should be identified as A, B, etc. Formulae and equations in appendices should be given separate numbering: (Eq. A.1), (Eq. A.2), etc.; in a subsequent appendix, (Eq. B.1) and so forth.

Acknowledgements. Place acknowledgements, including information on grants received, before the references, in a separate section, and not as a footnote on the title page.

Figure legends, tables, figures, schemes. Present these, in this order, at the end of the article. They are described in more detail below. High-resolution graphics files must always be provided separate from the main text file (see Preparation of illustrations ).
Footnotes. Footnotes should be used sparingly. Number them consecutively throughout the article, using superscript Arabic numbers. Many wordprocessors 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 on a separate sheet 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.
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.

Nomenclature and Units (PDF)

New Source Reports
New source reports are designed to allow the report of known metabolites with bona fide systematic or ecological interest from a new biological source. Material for this section will be refereed with the same rigour as research papers. New source reports must be written to a strict format and have a maximum size of two printed pages in the journal. The format consists of: (i)Title (max.12 words), (ii) Authors, (iii) Addresses, (iv)Keywords (max.6 words), (v)Subject and source - description of subject species and its validation, (vi) Previous work, (vii) Present study - the results to be reported, (viii) Chemotaxonomic (or Ecological) significance - justification for publication, (ix) Acknowledgements, (x) References - abbreviated forms without titles for papers and with just the first page number.
Authors submitting New Source Reports are required to send all information necessary to confirm the identity of the compounds being reported. This should include copies of original spectroscopic data (e.g. UV, MS, NMR) for new and uncommon compounds.

References
Responsibility for the accuracy of bibliographic citations lies entirely with the authors.

Citations in the 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 should not be 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.
Citing and listing of 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.

Text: All citations in the text should refer to:
1. Single author: the author's name (without initials, unless there is ambiguity) and the year of publication;
2. Two authors: both authors' names and the year of publication; 3. Three or more authors: first author's name followed by 'et al.' and the year of publication. Citations may be made directly (or parenthetically). Groups of references should be listed first alphabetically, then chronologically.

Examples: "as demonstrated (Allan, 1996a, 1996b, 1999; Allan and Jones, 1995). Kramer et al. (2000) have recently shown ...."

List: References should be arranged first alphabetically and then further sorted chronologically if necessary. More than one reference from the same author(s) in the same year must be identified by the letters "a", "b", "c", etc., placed after the year of publication.

Examples: Reference to a journal publication:

Van der Geer, J., Hanraads, J.A.J., Lupton, R.A., 2000. The art of writing a scientific article. J. Sci. Commun. 163, 51-59.

Reference to a book:

Strunk Jr., W., White, E.B., 1979. The Elements of Style, third ed. Macmillan, New York.

Reference to a chapter in an edited book:

Mettam, G.R., Adams, L.B., 1999. How to prepare an electronic version of your article, in: Jones, B.S., Smith , R.Z. (Eds.), Introduction to the Electronic Age. E-Publishing Inc., New York, pp. 281-304.



Submitting your artwork in an electronic format helps us to produce your work to the best possible standards, ensuring accuracy, clarity and a high level of detail.

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, Helvetica, Times, Symbol.
• Number the illustrations according to their sequence in the text.
• Use a logical naming convention for your artwork files, and supply a separate listing of the files and the software used.
• Provide all illustrations as separate files
• Provide captions to illustrations separately.
Produce images near to the desired size of the printed version

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.

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 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: Colour or greyscale 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 (colour or greyscale): 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.

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.

Colour illustrations
If, together with your accepted article, you submit usable colour figures then Elsevier will ensure, at no additional charge, that these figures will appear in colour on the web (e.g., ScienceDirect and other sites) regardless of whether or not these illustrations are reproduced in colour in the printed version. For colour reproduction in print, you will receive information regarding the costs from Elsevier after receipt of your accepted article. A detailed guide on electronic artwork is available on our website: http://www.elsevier.com/artworkinstructions.
Please note: Because of technical complications which can arise by converting colour figures to 'grey scale' (for the printed version should you not opt for colour in print) please submit in addition usable black and white prints corresponding to all the colour illustrations.

Proofs

When your manuscript is received by the Publisher it is considered to be in its final form. Proofs are not to be regarded as "drafts". One set of page proofs in PDF format will be sent by e-mail to the corresponding author, to be checked for typesetting/editing. No changes in, or additions to, the accepted (and subsequently edited) manuscript will be allowed at this stage. Proofreading is solely your responsibility. A form with queries from the copyeditor may accompany your proofs. Please answer all queries and make any corrections or additions required. Elsevier will do everything possible to get your article corrected and published as quickly and accurately as possible. In order to do this we need your help. When you receive the (PDF) proof of your article for correction, it is important to ensure that all of your corrections are sent back to us in one communication. Subsequent corrections will not be possible, so please ensure your first sending is complete. Note that this does not mean you have any less time to make your corrections, just that only one set of corrections will be accepted.

Electronic Offprints (e-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. Additional paper offprints can be ordered by the authors. An order form with prices will be sent to the corresponding author.

Author Services

For enquiries relating to the submission of articles (including electronic submission where available) please visit this journal's homepage at http://www.elsevier.com/journals. From here you can also track accepted articles ( http://www.elsevier.com/trackarticle) and set up e-mail alerts to inform you of when an article's status has changed, as well as detailed artwork guidelines, copyright information, frequently asked questions and more.
Contact details for questions arising after acceptance of an article, especially those relating to proofs, are provided after registration of an article for publication.

Biochemical Systematics and Ecology has no page charges! For further information please see the journal home page at: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/biochemsyseco.