Guide for Authors
Forensic Science International is a peer-reviewed, international journal
for the publication of original contributions in the many different scientific disciplines comprising the forensic sciences. These fields
include, but are not limited to, forensic pathology and histochemistry, toxicology (including drugs, alcohol, etc.), serology, chemistry,
biochemistry, biology (including the identification of hairs and fibres), odontology, psychiatry, anthropology, the physical sciences,
firearms, and document examination, as well as the many other disciplines where science and medicine interact with the law.
Types of paper
1. Original Research Papers (Regular Papers)
2. Review Articles
3. Forensic Anthropology
Population Data
3. Preliminary Communications
4. Letters to the Editor
5. Case Reports
6. Book Reviews
7. Rapid
Communications
Please note that all contributions of type 4 to 7 will be published as e-only articles. Their citation details, including
e-page numbers, will continue to be listed in the relevant print issue of the journal's Table of Contents.
Announcement of Population
Data: these types of articles will be published in Forensic Science International: Genetics, only. Please submit these articles via
http://www.ees.elsevier.com/fsigen/.
Review Articles and Preliminary Communications (where brief accounts of
important new work may be announced with less delay than is inevitable with major papers) may be accepted after correspondence with the
appropriate Associate Editor.
Forensic Anthropology Population Data: Although the main focus of the anthropology section
of the journal remains on the publication of original research, authors are invited to submit their forensic anthropology population
data articles by selecting the "Forensic Anthropology Population Data" article type on the online submission system. When submitting
a Forensic Anthropology Population data article, please assure that "Forensic Anthropology Population Data" is included as
one of the keywords. These forensic anthropology population data articles involve the application of already published and standardised
methods of aging, sexing, determination of ancestry and stature and other well known diagnoses on different populations. This is at the
heart of applied forensic anthropology. For example, in order to correctly assess age, stature or even sex of individuals of different
ancestry or from different populations, it is fundamental that the method be tested on the specific population one is working on. In
building the biological profile of a skeleton in order to aid identification, one needs to calibrate such techniques on the population
of interest before applying them. The same may be true in a completely different scenario of anthropology, for example identifying criminals
taped on video surveillance systems and aging victims of juvenile pornography. This section is dedicated to forensic anthropological
population data and other types of updates (state of the art of particular issues, etc.), particularly concerning the following:
-
Sexing
- Aging sub adult skeletal remains
- Aging adult skeletal remains
- Aging living sub adults and adults
- Determining
ancestry
- Stature estimation
- Facial reconstruction
- Non metric trait distribution, pathology and trauma
- Positive
identification of human skeletal remains
- Positive identification of the living
Forensic Anthropology Population Data articles
will be published in abridged form in print (a clear, descriptive summary taken from the abstract), and the full length article will
be published online only. Full citation details and a reference to the online article, including e-page numbers, will be published in
the relevant print issue of the journal. All submitted manuscripts will be evaluated by a strict peer review process.
Case Reports
will be accepted only if they contain some important new information for the readers.
Rapid Communications should describe
work of significant interest, whose impact would suffer if publication were not expedited. They should not be longer than 5 printed journal
pages (about 10 submitted pages). Authors may suggest that their work is treated as a Rapid Communication, but the final decision on
whether it is suitable as such will be taken by the handling Associate Editor. Rapid Communications requiring rev
Revisions deadline
Please note that articles that are sent to the author for revision need to be returned
within four months. A reminder will be sent in the third month. Any articles that are sent after the fourth month period of revision
will be considered a re-submission.
Contact details for submission
Papers
for consideration should be submitted by topic. Editors and their topic specialty are listed below.
P. Saukko (Editor-in-Chief):
Experimental Forensic Pathology, Traffic Medicine, and subjects not listed elsewhere
Tel: +358 2 3337543
Fax: +358 2 3337600
E-mail:
psaukko@utu.fi
A. Carracedo: Forensic Genetics. Please note only review articles on this topic
should be submitted to FSI. All non-review papers should be submitted to the FSI daughter journal devoted to this subject Forensic Science
International: Genetics, via
http://ees.elsevier.com/fsigen/
Fax:+34 981 580336
E-mail:
carrafsi@usc.es
C. Cattaneo: Osteology and Anthropology
Tel: +39 2 5031 5678
Fax: +39 2 5031 5724
E-mail:
cristina.cattaneo@unimi.it
P. Margot: Questioned Documents and Physical Science: ballistics, tool marks, contact traces, drugs analysis, fingerprints and
identification, etc.
Tel: +41 21 692 4605
Fax: +41 21 692 4605
E-mail:
pierre.margot@unil.ch
O.H. Drummer:
Toxicology
Tel: +61 3 9684 4334
Fax: +61 3 9682 7353
E-mail:
olaf@vifm.org
G. Willems: Odontology
Tel: +32 16 33 24 59
Fax: +32 16 33 24 35
E-Mail:
guy.willems@med.kuleuven.ac.be
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.
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 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 including electronically in the same form, in English or in any
other language, without the written consent of the copyright-holder.
Additional information
Multiple submissions is not acceptable to the Editor, and any such papers, together with future submissions from the authors,
will be rejected outright. Submission also implies that all authors have approved the paper for release and are in agreement with its
content.
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.
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. 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
you are referred to:
http://www.elsevier.com/authorsrights.
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 article for publication. If the funding source(s) had no such
involvement then this should be stated. Please see
http://www.elsevier.com/funding.
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 and 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/fsi.
Article structure
Introduction
State the objectives
of the work and provide an adequate background, avoiding a detailed literature survey or a summary of the results.
Material 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.
Results
Results should be clear and concise.
Discussion
This should explore the significance of the results of the work, not repeat them. A combined Results and Discussion section is often
appropriate. Avoid extensive citations and discussion of published literature.
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 Results and Discussion section.
Essential title page information
•
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 will 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. Contact details must be kept up to date by the corresponding author.
•
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. An abstract is often presented separately from the article, so it must be able
to stand alone. For this reason, References should be avoided, but if essential, then cite the author(s) and year(s). Also, 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 6 keywords, using American spelling and 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.
Acknowledgements
Collate acknowledgements in a separate section at the end of the article before the references and do
not, therefore, include them on the title page, as a footnote to the title or otherwise. List here those individuals who provided help
during the research (e.g., providing language help, writing assistance or proof reading the article, etc.).
Artwork
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.
For color reproduction in print, you will receive information regarding the costs from Elsevier after receipt of your accepted
article. 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: Because of technical complications which
can arise by converting color figures to 'gray scale' (for the printed version should you not opt for color in print) please submit in
addition usable black and white versions of all the color illustrations.
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. If these references
are included in the reference list they should follow the standard reference style of the journal and should include a substitution of
the publication date with either 'Unpublished results' or 'Personal communication'. Citation of a reference as 'in press' implies that
the item has been accepted for publication.
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 appear in the text.
Examples:
Reference to a journal publication:
[1] J. van der Geer, J.A.J. Hanraads, R.A. Lupton, The art of writing a scientific article,
J. Sci. Commun. 163 (2010) 51–59.
Reference to a book:
[2] W. Strunk Jr., E.B. White, The Elements of Style, fourth ed.,
Longman, New York, 2000.
Reference to a chapter in an edited book:
[3] G.R. Mettam, L.B. Adams, How to prepare an electronic
version of your article, in: B.S. Jones, R.Z. Smith (Eds.), Introduction to the Electronic Age, E-Publishing Inc., New York, 2009, pp.
281–304.
Video data
Elsevier accepts video material and animation
sequences to support and enhance your scientific research. Authors who have video or animation files that they wish to submit with their
article are strongly encouraged to include these within the body of the article. This can be done in the same way as a figure or table
by referring to the video or animation content and noting in the body text where it should be placed. All submitted files should be properly
labeled so that they directly relate to the video file's content. In order to ensure that your video or animation material is directly
usable, please provide the files in one of our recommended file formats with a preferred maximum size of 50 MB. Video and animation files
supplied will be published online in the electronic version of your article in Elsevier Web products, including ScienceDirect:
http://www.sciencedirect.com.
Please supply 'stills' with your files: you can choose any frame from the video or animation or make a separate image. These will be
used instead of standard icons and will personalize the link to your video data. For more detailed instructions please visit our video
instruction pages at
http://www.elsevier.com/artworkinstructions. Note: since video and animation cannot be embedded in
the print version of the journal, please provide text for both the electronic and the print version for the portions of the article that
refer to this content.
Supplementary data
Elsevier accepts electronic
supplementary material to support and enhance your scientific research. Supplementary files offer the author additional possibilities
to publish supporting applications, 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 provide the data 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/artworkinstructions.
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 of 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'
• 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.
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.2010.09.059
When
you use the DOI to create URL hyperlinks to documents on the web, the DOIs 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 given at 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, for any reason, 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 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
Elsevier may proceed with the publication of your article if no response is received.
Offprints
The corresponding author, at no cost, will be provided with a PDF file of the article via e-mail or, alternatively,
25 free paper offprints. If the corresponding author opts for paper offprints, this preference must be indicated via the offprint order
form which is sent once the article is accepted for publication. Additional paper offprints can also be ordered via this form for an
extra charge. 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 orders
When
your article is published, you can commemorate your publication with printed author copies of the journal issue, customized full-color
posters, extra offprints, and more. Please visit
http://webshop.elsevier.com to learn more.
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.
