Guide for Authors

An international journal concerned with the continuity of fetal and postnatal life

The aim of this peer-reviewed interdisciplinary journal is to provide a forum where, papers concerned with early human growth and development are gathered. The emphasis is on the continuum of fetal life, the problems of the perinatal period and those aspects of postnatal growth which are influenced by early events; and on the safe-guarding of the quality of human survival.

Early Human Development only accepts online submissions

Online Submission of Manuscripts
http://ees.elsevier.com/ehd

Submission and peer review of all papers is now conducted entirely online, increasing efficiency for editors, authors, and reviewers, and enhancing publication speed. Online submission to Early Human Development:
• Decreases the transfer time between Author, Editor, Reviewer and Production.
• Provides Authors with live Information on manuscript status.
• Provides Editors with an end-to-end system to support the peer-review process.
• Provides Reviewers with online refereeing capability.
Authors are guided stepwise through the entire process, and are kept abreast of the progress of their paper at each stage.
The system creates PDF version of the submitted manuscript for peer review, revision and proofing. All correspondence, including the Editor's decision and request for revisions, is conducted by e-mail.

Authors requesting further information on online submission are strongly encouraged to view the system, including a tutorial, at http://ees.elsevier.com/ehd A comprehensive Author Support service is also available to answer additional enquiries at authorsupport@elsevier.com.

Types of papers
Papers should deal with original research not previously published or being considered for publication elsewhere. The act of submitting a manuscript to the journal carries with it the permission for the journal to publish that paper. The main object of the journal is the publication of original research papers with application to the human species. These should appeal to clinicians and research workers alike. Manuscripts will be considered for publication in the following fields: obstetrics; reproduction and fertility; fetal medicine and surgery; perinatology; paediatric growth and development; teratology; developmental neurology; and psychology. Papers from other fields or studies on other species will also be considered, if they are related to early human development.

1. Full length research papers should include a summary of not more than 250 words. The papers should be divided into sections, and should not normally exceed 10 printed pages.
2. Short communications should provide a brief but complete account of a particular piece of work, and will be limited to 4 printed pages, including one figure. A summary of not more than 50 words should be included.
3. Review articles are usually published after an invitation from the editors. They should be a survey, evaluation and critical interpretation of recent research and concepts in the fields covered by the journal. They are peer reviewed in the usual way.
4. Letters to the editor should either be on a topic of current interest, or comment upon material previously or simultaneously published in this journal. They should not normally exceed 500 words.
5. The inclusion of announcements, book reviews, etc. is at the discretion of the editors and the publishers, and subject to space availability.

Submission of papers

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

Authors signatures
Early Human Development will not publish a paper unless it has the signatures of all the authors at the time of submission. We suggest the following format: "I declare that I participated in the design, execution, and analysis of the paper by..... and colleagues entitled....., that I have seen and approved the final version and that it has neither been published nor submitted elsewhere. I also declare that I have no conflict of interest, other than any noted in the covering letter to the editor" These signatures need not be dated; when provided on separate sheet(s) these statements will be returned if the paper is not accepted for publication.

Ethics
Work on human beings that is submitted to Early Human Development should comply with the principles laid down in the Declaration of Helsinki; Recommendations guiding physicians in biomedical research involving human subjects. Adopted by the 18th World Medical Assembly, Helsinki, Finland, June 1964, amended by the 29th World Medical Assembly, Tokyo, Japan, October 1975, the 35th World Medical Assembly, Venice, Italy, October 1983, and the 41st World Medical Assembly, Hong Kong, September 1989. The manuscript should contain a statement that the work has been approved by the appropriate ethical committees related to the institution(s) in which it was performed and that subjects gave informed consent to the work. Studies involving experiments with animals must state that their care was in accordance with institution guidelines. Studies on patients or volunteers require ethics committee approval and informed consent which should be documented in your paper. Patients have a right to privacy. Therefore identifying information, including patients? images, names, initials, or hospital numbers, should not be included in videos, recordings, written descriptions, photographs, and pedigrees unless the information is essential for scientific purposes and you have obtained written informed consent for publication in print and electronic form from the patient (or parent, guardian or next of kin where applicable). If such consent is made subject to any conditions, Elsevier must be made aware of all such conditions. Written consents must be provided to Elsevier on request. Even where consent has been given, identifying details should be omitted if they are not essential. If identifying characteristics are altered to protect anonymity, such as in genetic pedigrees, authors should provide assurance that alterations do not distort scientific meaning and editors should so note. If such consent has not been obtained, personal details of patients included in any part of the paper and in any supplementary materials (including all illustrations and videos) must be removed before submission.

Acknowledgements: All contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship as defined above should be listed in an acknowledgements section. Examples of those who might be acknowledged include a person who provided purely technical help, writing assistance, or a department chair who provided only general support. Authors should disclose whether they had any writing assistance and identify the entity that paid for this assistance.

Conflict of interest: At the end of the text, under a subheading "Conflict of interest statement" all authors must disclose any financial and personal relationships with other people or organisations that could inappropriately influence (bias) their work. Examples of potential conflicts of interest include employment, consultancies, stock ownership, honoraria, paid expert testimony, patent applications/registrations, and grants or other funding.

Role of the funding source: All sources of funding should be declared as an acknowledgement at the end of the text. Authors should declare the role of study sponsors, if any, in the study design, in the collection, analysis and interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript; and in the decision to submit the manuscript for publication. If the study sponsors had no such involvement, the authors should so state.

Randomised controlled trials: All randomised controlled trials submitted for publication in Early Human Development should include a completed Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials (CONSORT) flow chart. Please refer to the CONSORT statement website at http://www.consort-statement.org for more information. Early Human Development has adopted the proposal from the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) which require, as a condition of consideration for publication of clinical trials, registration in a public trials registry. Trials must register at or before the onset of patient enrolment. The clinical trial registration number should be included at the end of the abstract of the article. For this purpose, a clinical trial is defined as any research project that prospectively assigns human subjects to intervention or comparison groups to study the cause-and-effect relationship between a medical intervention and a health outcome. Studies designed for other purposes, such as to study pharmacokinetics or major toxicity (e.g. phase I trials) would be exempt. Further information can be found at www.icmje.org.

Structure of manuscripts
For the initial submission of manuscripts for consideration it is essential to send via EES your text, tables, legends and figures. The manuscript must be in English. The manuscripts should be typed with double spacing with wide margins on one side of the paper only; full length papers should be divided into sections (such as introduction, methods, results and discussion). The author's full names and academic addresses should be given on the title page, as well as an address for correspondence.

Although minor alterations to the English can be made in the editorial office it is important that authors whose first language is not English should have the paper checked by a native English speaker before submission.

Title should be informative and preferably not exceed 185 characters, including spaces. Extraneous words should be avoided.

Structured Abstract not exceeding 250 words should be given at the beginning of the paper. The Abstract should include: background, aims, study design, subjects, outcome measures, results and conclusions.

Tables should be typed, with double spacing, each on a separate sheet, numbered consecutively with arabic numerals, and should only contain horizontal lines. A short descriptive heading should be given above each table, and any footnotes and explanations underneath.

Figures initially should be submitted in print in black and white, or colour on a plain sheet of paper, or glossy photographs. Three copies are required of each figure. The legends should be typed with double spacing, on a separate sheet. After final acceptance the legends and graphics can be submitted in electronic format and the instructions will be sent with the letter of acceptance.

References should be in the Vancouver style (International Committee of Medical Journal Editors. Uniform requirements for manuscripts submitted to biomedical journals. Ann Intern Med. 1997;126:36--47.)

Examples:
1. Gudmundsson S, Mar?al K. Blood velocity waveforms in the fetal aorta and umbilical artery as predictor of fetal outcome: a comparison. Am J Perinatol 1991;8:1-6.

2. Drop SLS, Brinkman A, Kortleve DJ, Groffen Schuller A, Warthoff Z. The evolution of the insulin-like growth factors binding protein family. In: Spencer EM, editor. Modern concepts of insulin-like growth factors. New York: Elsevier; 1991. pp. 311-28.

Information from manuscripts not yet in press, papers reported at meetings, or personal communications should not be cited. Authors must verify references against the original documents before submitting the article.

Authors in Japan please note: if you would like information about how to have the English of your paper checked, corrected and improved (before submission), please contact our Tokyo office who will inform you of the services provided by language correctors: Elsevier Japan, 20-12 Yushima 3-chome, Bunkyoku, Tokyo 113; Tel:(03) 5561 5033 and Fax:(03) 5561 5047; E-mail: info@elsevier.co.jp.

Copyright
Upon acceptance of an article, authors will be asked to sign a ?Journal Publishing Agreement?? (for more information on this and copyright see http://authors.elsevier.com). 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.

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, Philadelphia, PA, USA: Tel. (+1) 215 238 7869; Fax (+1) 215 238 2239; e-mail healthpermissions@elsevier.com . Requests may also be completed online via the Elsevier homepage ( http://www.elsevier.com/locate/permissions).

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

Proofs
One set of page proofs in PDF format 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). Elsevier now sends PDF proofs which can be annotated; for this you will need to download Adobe Reader version 7 available free from http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html. Instructions on how to annotate PDF files will accompany the proofs. The exact system requirements are given at the Adobe site: http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/acrrsystemreqs.html#70win. If you do not wish to use the PDF annotations function, you may list the corrections (including replies to the Query Form) and return 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. Therefore, it is important to ensure that all of your 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. 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.

Early Human Development has no page charges.