Guide for Authors
Types
of paper
The journal publishes empirical reports, reviews and brief reports of fewer than 1500 words (excluding the references).
Covering letter
Authors are required to submit a covering letter with their submission and must address the following:
a) State
briefly the main contribution of the current report
b) State that your manuscript meets the guidelines for ethical conduct and report
of research
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/authorsview.authors/rights?tab=3
c) State whether potential or actual conflicts
of interest do or do not exist
http://www.elsevier.com/conflictsofinterest. If a potential or actual conflict of interests
exists, it must be included at the end of the manuscript, under a subheading "Disclosure Statement”.
d) State that the reported research
(partially or in its entirety) is unpublished and not under consideration for publication elsewhere.
The
Neuroscience Peer Review Consortium
Biological Psychology is a member of the Neuroscience Peer Review Consortium
(NPRC). The NPRC has been formed to reduce the time expended and, in particular, the duplication of effort by, and associated burden
on reviewers involved in the peer review of original neuroscience research papers. It is an alliance of neuroscience journals that have
agreed to accept manuscript reviews from other Consortium journals. By reducing the number of times that a manuscript is reviewed, the
Consortium will reduce the load on reviewers and Editors, and speed the publication of research results.
If a manuscript has been
rejected by another journal in the Consortium, authors can submit the manuscript to
Biological Psychology and indicate that
the referees' reports from the first journal be made available to the Editors of Biological Psychology. (N.B. Only manuscripts which
were first submitted to another journal after 1st January 2008 are eligible for the NPRC scheme.)
It is the authors' decision as
to whether or not to indicate that a set of referee's reports should be forwarded from the first journal to
Biological Psychology . If an author does not wish for this to happen, the manuscript can be submitted to
Biological Psychology without reference
to the previous submission. No information will be exchanged between journals except at the request of authors. However, if the original
referees' reports suggested that the paper is of high quality, but not suitable for the first journal, then it will often be to an author's
advantage to indicate that referees' reports should be made available.
Authors should revise the original submission in accordance
with the first journal's set of referee reports, reformat the paper to
Biological Psychology specification and submit the
paper to
Biological Psychology with a covering letter describing the changes that have been made, and informing the Editors
that they are happy for referees' reports to be forwarded from the first Consortium journal. Authors will be asked upon submission to
Biological Psychology the title of the first journal submitted to and the manuscript ID that was given by that journal. The
editorial office of
Biological Psychology will request the referees' reports from the first journal.
The Editors of
Biological Psychology will use forwarded referees' reports at their discretion. The Editors may use the reports directly to make
a decision, or they may request further reviews if they feel such are necessary.
Visit
http://nprc.incf.org for a
list of Consortium journals, as well as further information on the scheme.
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 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.
US National Institutes of Health (NIH) voluntary posting
(" Public Access") policy.
As a service to our authors, Elsevier will deposit to PubMed Central (PMC) author manuscripts on behalf
of Elsevier authors reporting NIH funded research. This service is a continuation of Elsevier's 2005 agreement with the NIH when the
NIH introduced their voluntary 'Public Access Policy.'
The service will help authors comply with the National Institutes of Health
(NIH) revised ''Public Access Policy,'' effective April 7, 2008. The NIH's revised policy requires that NIH-funded authors submit to
PubMed Central (PMC), or have submitted on their behalf, their peer-reviewed author manuscripts, to appear on PMC no later than 12 months
after final publication.
Elsevier will send to PMC the final peer-reviewed manuscript, which was accepted for publication and sent
to Elsevier's production department, and that reflects any author-agreed changes made in response to peer-review comments. Elsevier will
authorize the author manuscript's public access posting 12 months after final publication. Following the deposit by Elsevier, authors
will receive further communications from Elsevier and NIH with respect to the submission.
Authors are also welcome to post their accepted
author manuscript on their personal or institutional web site. Please note that consistent with Elsevier's author agreement, authors
should not post manuscripts directly to PMC or other third party sites. Individual modifications to this general policy may apply to
some Elsevier journals and society publishing partners.
As a leading publisher of scientific, technical and medical (STM) journals,
Elsevier has led the industry in developing tools, programs and partnerships that provide greater access to, and understanding of, the
vast global body of STM information. This service is an example of Elsevier willingness to work cooperatively to meet the needs of all
participants in the STM publishing community.
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 online. Visit the submission
page of this journal at
http://ees.elsevier.com/biopsy where 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.
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. 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).
Note that source files of figures, tables and text graphics will be required whether or not you embed your figures in the text. See also
the section on Electronic artwork.
To avoid unnecessary errors you are strongly advised to use the 'spell-check' and 'grammar-check'
functions of your wordprocessor.
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.
The abstract should
be no more than 150 words.
Manuscripts should be prepared in accordance with the formatting recommendations found in Publication
Manual of the American Psychological Association (fifth edition, 2001). This covers recommendations as to general manuscript format,
referencing, and the preparation of Figures and Tables. Footnotes should be kept to minimum. Papers which do not conform to the above
instructions may be returned for the necessary revisions prior to review.
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 mandatory for this journal. They consist
of a short collection of bullet points that convey the core findings of the article and 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, per bullet point). See
http://www.elsevier.com/highlights for examples.
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.
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.
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
Text graphics may be embedded in the text at the appropriate position.
If you are working with LaTeX and have such features embedded in the text, these can be left. Further, high-resolution graphics files
must be provided separately whether or not the graphics are embedded. See further under Electronic artwork.
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.
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. 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.
