European Journal of Operational Research

Ethics in publishing

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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 and verification

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and tacitly or explicitly by the responsible authorities where the work was carried out, and that, if accepted, it will not be published elsewhere in the same form, in English or in any other language, including electronically without the written consent of the copyright-holder. To verify originality, your article may be checked by the originality detection software iThenticate. See also http://www.elsevier.com/editors/plagdetect.

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.

Open access

This journal offers you the option of making your article freely available to all via the ScienceDirect platform. To prevent any conflict of interest, you can only make this choice after receiving notification that your article has been accepted for publication. The fee of $3,000 excludes taxes and other potential author fees such as color charges. In some cases, institutions and funding bodies have entered into agreement with Elsevier to meet these fees on behalf of their authors. Details of these agreements are available at http://www.elsevier.com/fundingbodies. Authors of accepted articles, who wish to take advantage of this option, should complete and submit the order form (available at http://www.elsevier.com/locate/openaccessform.pdf). Whatever access option you choose, you retain many rights as an author, including the right to post a revised personal version of your article on your own website. More information can be found here: http://www.elsevier.com/authorsrights.

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/ejor

Editorial Policy

The European Journal of Operational Research (EJOR) publishes high quality, original papers that contribute to the methodology of operational research (OR) and to the practice of decision making. The relation with ongoing research should be demonstrated by providing proper reference to the recent OR literature. With application papers, originality should be demonstrated by applying OR to a problem with interesting new aspects or by providing fresh insights leading to successful implementation. Practitioners often suffer from the need to conceal commercial secrets. Referees will take this into sympathetic consideration when advising on an application paper, but it will not be allowed to detract from clarity of the presentation.

EJOR is much more selective than in the past due to the growing inflow of submissions and limited volume. Papers that do not contain a major new research finding or novel approach to the application of OR will be rejected and not sent out for review. The same applies to papers written in poor English. As acceptance to EJOR is competitive, a paper may also be rejected because in the opinion of the editor it does not make a sufficient scientific contribution - even if some of the reviewers support publication.

EJOR welcomes the following types of papers:

• Invited Reviews, explaining to the general OR audience the developments in an OR topic over the recent years
• Innovative Applications of OR, describing novel ways to solve real problems
• Theory and Methodology Papers, presenting original research results contributing to the methodology of OR and to its theoretical foundations,
• Short Communications, including comments on papers previously published in EJOR

An Invited Review may be either on a specific research topic, a tutorial, or a bibliographic survey. Anyone interested in writing a review is requested first to suggest a topic to one of the editors or to a member of the editorial board of EJOR. A paper presenting an Innovative Application of OR may be worthy of publication simply because it can be used to convince managers of the value to be gained by applying OR to particular problems.

The Theory and Methodology Papers will be classified into one of the seven headings:

• Continuous Optimization
• Discrete Optimization
• Production, Manufacturing and Logistics
• Stochastics and Statistics
• Decision Support
• Computational Intelligence and Information Management
• Interfaces with Other Disciplines

The above classification will be based on the EJOR keywords (see the list at the end of the Guide).

All submitted papers that conform to the editorial policy will be refereed. However, the manuscripts that do not will be rejected without refereeing.





Use of wordprocessing software

It is important that the file be saved in the native format of the wordprocessor used. The text should be in single-column format. 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 wordprocessor'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 wordprocessor'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. If no grid is used, use tabs, not spaces, to align columns. The electronic text should be prepared in a way very similar to that of conventional manuscripts (see also the Guide to Publishing with Elsevier: http://www.elsevier.com/guidepublication). Preferably embed all figures and tables into the text file and upload as one complete file. If the size of the complete file is too large to be uploaded, then upload figures and tables separately (see the section on Electronic artwork.

LaTeX

If the LaTeX file is suitable, proofs will be produced without rekeying the text. The article should preferably be written using Elsevier's document class 'elsarticle', or alternatively any of the other recognized classes and formats supported in Elsevier's electronic submissions system, for further information see http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/authorsview.authors/latex-ees-supported.
The Elsevier 'elsarticle' LaTeX style file package (including detailed instructions for LaTeX preparation) can be obtained from the Quickguide: http://www.elsevier.com/latex. It consists of the file: elsarticle.cls, complete user documentation for the class file, bibliographic style files in various styles, and template files for a quick start.

Article structure

Length of article
Articles should be as concise as possible. Regular articles should not exceed 30 standard manuscript pages and short communications should not exceed 10 standard manuscript pages, including tables and figures. A standard manuscript page is A4 or letter size, text with 1.5 line spacing, 12 pt font and ample margins. In exceptional cases the Editors may waive this requirement. Supplementary material is allowed, which will be available in e-version only.

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.

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.

Theory/calculation
A Theory section should extend, not repeat, the background to the article already dealt with in the Introduction and lay the foundation for further work. In contrast, a Calculation section represents a practical development from a theoretical basis.

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.

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 on. Similarly for tables and figures: Table A.1; Fig. A.1, etc.

It they exceed the page limit, they can be put as supplementary material, which will be available in e-version only.

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.

An abstract of between 50 and 250 words. Abstracts should not contain formulae.

Graphical abstract

A Graphical abstract is optional and should summarize the contents of the article in a concise, pictorial form designed to capture the attention of a wide readership online. Authors must provide images that clearly represent the work described in the article. Graphical abstracts should be submitted as a separate file in the online submission system. Image size: Please provide an image with a minimum of 531 × 1328 pixels (h × w) or proportionally more. The image should be readable at a size of 5 × 13 cm using a regular screen resolution of 96 dpi. Preferred file types: TIFF, EPS, PDF or MS Office files. See http://www.elsevier.com/graphicalabstracts for examples.
Authors can make use of Elsevier's Illustration and Enhancement service to ensure the best presentation of their images also in accordance with all technical requirements: Illustration Service.

Highlights
Highlights are a short collection of bullet points that convey the core findings of the article. Highlights should be submitted in a separate file in the online submission system. Please use 'Highlights' in the file name and include 3 to 5 bullet points (maximum 85 characters including spaces, or, maximum 20 words per bullet point). See http://www.elsevier.com/highlights for examples.

Keywords

Must be included and at least the first one should be selected from the list below. Some keywords from outside the list may be added but the total number of keywords should not exceed six. The letters before the keywords are those of the surnames of the five editors. The paper is submitted to the editor whose initial is given before the first keyword selected from the list.

List of keywords

• (I) Applied probability
• (S) Artificial intelligence
• (S) Assignment
• (D) Auctions/bidding

• (B) Bioinformatics
•(S) Branch and bound
• (P) Business process reengineering

• (S) Combinatorial optimization
• (S) Complexity theory
• (I) Computing science
• (B) Conic programming
• (B) Constraints satisfaction
• (I) Control
• (B) Convex programming
• (P) Cost benefit analysis
• (S) Cutting

• (D) Data envelopment analysis
• (I) Data mining
• (I) Decision support systems
• (D) Decision analysis
• (P) Distributed decision making
• (B) Distribution
• (I) Dynamic programming

• (D) E-commerce
• (P) Economics
• (D) Education
• (D) Environment
• (S) Evolutionary computations
• (S) Expert systems

• (B) Facilities planning and design
• (P) Finance
• (P) Flexible manufacturing systems
• (I) Forecasting
• (B) Fractional programming
• (S) Fuzzy sets

• (I) Game theory
• (P) Gaming
• (S) Genetic algorithms
• (B) Geometric programming
• (B) Global optimization
• (B) Goal programming
• (I) Graph theory
• (S) Group decisions and negotiations

• (S) Heuristics
• (D) Human resources

• (B) Integer programming
• (B) Interior point methods
• (B) Inventory
• (P) Investment analysis

• (S) Knowledge-based systems

• (B) Large scale optimization
• (I) Linear programming
• (I) Location
• (P) Logistics
•

• (I) Maintenance
• (P) Manufacturing
• (D) Marketing
• (I) Markov processes
• (S) Metaheuristics
• (P) Modelling systems and languages
• (S) Multi-agent systems
• (S) Multiple criteria analysis
• (B) Multiple objective programming
• (I) Multivariate statistics

• (I) Network flows
• (I) Neural networks
• (B) Nonlinear programming

• (P) Organization theory
• (I) OR in agriculture
• (I) OR in airlines
• (P) OR in banking
• (I) OR in biology
• (I) OR in developing countries
• (I) OR in energy
• (D) OR in government
• (B) OR in health services
• (P) OR in manpower planning
•(P) OR in service industries
• (B) OR in medicine
• (B) OR in military
• (D) OR in natural resources
• (D) OR in research and development
• (D) OR in societal problem analysis
• (D) OR in strategic planning
• (D) OR in sports
• (I) OR in telecommunications

• (S) Packing
• (S) Parallel computing
• (B) Parametric programming
• (B) Penalty methods
• (S) Petri nets
• (S) Polyhedra
• (P) Pricing
• (D) Problem structuring
• (P) Production
• (D) Productivity and competitiveness
• (P) Project management
• (S) Project scheduling
• (D) Psychology
• (P) Purchasing

• (B) Quadratic programming
• (I) Quality control
• (P) Quality management
• (I) Queueing

• (I) Regression
• (I) Reliability
• (I) Replacement
• (P) Retailing
• (D) Revenue management
• (P) Risk analysis
• (P) Risk management
• (I) Robustness and sensitivity analysis
• (S) Rough sets
• (B) Routing

• (P) Scenarios
• (S) Scheduling
• (S) Search theory
• (B) Semi-infinite programming
• (S) Simulated annealing
• (I) Simulation
• (I) Stochastic processes
• (I) Stochastic programming
• (D) Supply chain management
• (P) Systems dynamics

• (S) Tabu search
• (I) Time series
• (S) Timetabling
• (B) Traffic
• (B) Transportation
• (B) Travelling salesman

• (P) Uncertainty modelling
• (P) Utility theory

• (P) Visual interactive modelling

*Codes of Editors: (B) - Jean-Charles Billaut, (I) - Immanuel Bomze, (D) - Robert Dyson, (P) - Lorenzo Peccati, (S) - Roman Slowinski

Database linking

Elsevier aims at connecting online articles with external databases which are useful in their respective research communities. If your article contains relevant unique identifiers or accession numbers (bioinformatics) linking to information on entities (genes, proteins, diseases, etc.) or structures deposited in public databases, then please indicate those entities according to the standard explained below.
Authors should explicitly mention the database abbreviation (as mentioned below) together with the actual database number, bearing in mind that an error in a letter or number can result in a dead link in the online version of the article.
Please use the following format: Database ID: xxxx
Links can be provided in your online article to the following databases (examples of citations are given in parentheses):
• ASTM: ASTM Standards Database (ASTM ID: G63)
• CCDC: Cambridge Crystallographic Data Centre (CCDC ID: AI631510)
• GenBank: Genetic sequence database at the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) (GenBank ID: BA123456)
• GEO: Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO ID: GSE27196; GEO ID: GPL5366; GEO ID: GSM9853)
• MI: EMBL-EBI OLS Molecular Interaction Ontology (MI ID: 0218)
• MINT: Molecular INTeractions database (MINT ID: 6166710)
• NCBI Taxonomy: NCBI Taxonomy Browser (NCBI Taxonomy ID: 48184)
• NCT: ClinicalTrials.gov (NCT ID: NCT00222573)
• OMIM: Online Mendelian Inheritance in Man (OMIM ID: 601240)
• PDB: Worldwide Protein Data Bank (PDB ID: 1TUP)
• TAIR: The Arabidopsis Information Resource database (TAIR ID: AT1G01020)
• UniProt: Universal Protein Resource Knowledgebase (UniProt ID: Q9H0H5)

Artwork

Electronic artwork
General points
• Make sure you use uniform lettering and sizing of your original artwork.
• Save text in illustrations as 'graphics' or enclose the font.
• Only use the following fonts in your illustrations: Arial, Courier, Times, Symbol.
• Number the illustrations according to their sequence in the text.
• Use a logical naming convention for your artwork files.
• Provide captions to illustrations separately.
• Produce images near to the desired size of the printed version.
• Submit each figure as a separate file.

A detailed guide on electronic artwork is available on our website:
http://www.elsevier.com/artworkinstructions
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: 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 optimised for screen use (e.g., 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.

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.

Web references
As a minimum, the full URL should be given and the date when the reference was last accessed. 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.

Reference management software
This journal has standard templates available in key reference management packages EndNote ( http://www.endnote.com/support/enstyles.asp) and Reference Manager ( http://refman.com/support/rmstyles.asp). Using plug-ins to wordprocessing packages, authors only need to select the appropriate journal template when preparing their article and the list of references and citations to these will be formatted according to the journal style which is described below.

Reference style
Text: Citations in the text should follow the referencing style used by the American Psychological Association. You are referred to the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, Sixth Edition, ISBN 978-1-4338-0561-5, copies of which may be ordered from http://books.apa.org/books.cfm?id=4200067 or APA Order Dept., P.O.B. 2710, Hyattsville, MD 20784, USA or APA, 3 Henrietta Street, London, WC3E 8LU, UK. Details concerning this referencing style can also be found at http://linguistics.byu.edu/faculty/henrichsenl/apa/apa01.html.
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. (2010). The art of writing a scientific article. Journal of Scientific Communications, 163, 51–59.
Reference to a book:
Strunk, W., Jr., & White, E. B. (2000). The elements of style. (4th ed.). New York: Longman, (Chapter 4).
Reference to a chapter in an edited book:
Mettam, G. R., & Adams, L. B. (2009). How to prepare an electronic version of your article. In B. S. Jones, & R. Z. Smith (Eds.), Introduction to the electronic age (pp. 281–304). New York: E-Publishing Inc.

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.

Large data tables and long proofs of theorems should also be treated as supplementary data.

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. 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.



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.

Author Information Pack