Guide for Authors
Biophysical
Chemistry publishes original work and reviews in the areas of chemistry and physics directly impacting biological phenomena. Quantitative
analysis of the properties of biological macromolecules, biologically active molecules, macromolecular assemblies and cell components
in terms of kinetics, thermodynamics, spatio-temporal organization, NMR and X-ray structural biology, as well as single-molecule detection
represent a major focus of the journal. Theoretical and computational treatments of biomacromolecular systems, macromolecular interactions,
regulatory control and systems biology are also of interest to the journal.
The journal publishes regular articles, letters and
invited reviews. Manuscripts that fall outside the scopes and interests of the journal are returned to the Authors without in-depth review.
Relevant manuscripts are reviewed expeditiously with decisions generally made within 3 weeks from receipt. Letters are short articles
(6 printed pages maximum) reporting results of unusual timeliness and significance. Decisions on Letters are made within 1-2 weeks from
receipt and publication is offered only to manuscripts requiring minor revision. Reviews are published by invitation from the Editors,
but suggestions are welcome at any time. Authors can now submit supplementary material for online publication on ScienceDirect
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/03014622.
See below for more information.
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that, if accepted, it will not be published elsewhere including electronically in the same form, in English or in any other language,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.
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.
For submitting your manuscripts to Biophysical Chemistry please go to our Elsevier Editorial System (EES) Website at:
http://ees.elsevier.com/biophyschem/.
Referees
Please submit, with the manuscript, the names,
addresses and e-mail addresses of three potential referees. Note that the editor retains the sole right to decide whether or not the
suggested reviewers are used.
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.
Article structure
The manuscript is to be preceded
by a page bearing the name, full postal address, fax and telephone numbers, and e-mail address of the corresponding author.
Introduction
State the objectives of the work and provide an adequate background, avoiding a detailed literature
survey or a summary of the results.
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
All
scientific papers (including notes) should have an abstract in English, on a separate sheet. It should consist of a brief and factual
account of the contents and conclusions of the paper, in addition to an indication of any new information which it may contain and of
its relevance. No references or uncommon abbreviations should be given in the abstract. The abstract of 100-150 words should contain
all the pertinent details of the methods and the results obtained, and be written in such a way so that it will address a wider audience.
Graphical abstract
A Graphical abstract is mandatory for this journal. It 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.
Keywords
Authors are requested to select a maximum of six keywords (or short phrases) and include them below
the abstract. These will be used in the compilation of the volume cumulative index and will be printed on the title page of the article.
(Authors should note that American spelling is used and that plural terms are avoided where possible.) Important factors of the investigation
as a whole should be selected as keywords and general terms like, membrane, transport, etc., should be avoided. In some cases, the general
term can be used when qualified, e.g., membrane protein, K+ transport, etc. The key words should be chosen so that the combination of
these (as they will appear in the published index) will give the reader sufficient direct information as to the relevance of a given
article to his/her particular field.
Example: Title: Computer simulation of T3/T7 phage infection using lag times
Keywords:
Infection mechanism; Protein synthesis; DNA replication; Lag time; Computer simulation; (Phage T3, Phage T7).
The submitted list
may be amended by the editorial office to ensure that index entries are consistent throughout the cumulative index. If words appear in
parentheses, this indicates that these words are appropriate to the article, but are not of sufficient indexing value; these words will
not appear as individual index entries, but will be printed each time a keyword index entry appears.
Abbreviations,
symbols and terms
When it is advantageous to the reader, abbreviations or symbols may be used. Should there be any doubt
about a particular symbol or abbreviation, the full expression followed by the abbreviation (in parentheses) should be given the first
time it appears in the text. Abbreviations used in a figure should be explained ln the legend; those used in a table should be taken
to use correct terminology.
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.).
Acknowledgements of financial support should not be made by a footnote to
the title or name of the author, but should be included in Acknowledgements at the end of the paper.
Quantities,
symbols and units
The International System of Units (SI) must be used. Symbols for physical quantities (SI, SI derived,
used together with the SI) are recommended, for example, by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemsitry (IUPAC) or by the International
Organization for Standardization.
Formulae
Displayed formulae should be numbered. Vectors
will be printed in bold-face italics (heavy, slanting type), and should be indicated by a wavy underlining in the typescript. Special
attention should be paid to characters that can easily be misread, such as i (lowercase), I (cap), l (el), 1 (one), ' (prime), o (lower
case), O (cap.), 0 (zero), degree, u, v, (vee), Greek nu, V (cap), x, multiplication sign, X, z, Z, p, P, Greek rho, etc., and definition
of such characters should be given in the margin.
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
Considerable
thought should be given to the layout of the tables, so that the significance of the results can be grasped readily and quickly.
It should also be remembered that the length of a printed page is always greater than its width. Vertical lines are not used to separate
the columns of tables.
Tables should be typed using double spacing on a separate page. Each table should have an arabic number and
a title, which makes its general meaning understandable without reference to the text. When tabulating data, units and symbols should
be used in column headings only, and not within the columns themselves. The appropriate places for the insertion of the tables should
be indicated in the text of the manuscript. Table legends should be typed with double or triple spacing.
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
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.
References
In the text,
reference to other parts of the paper should be made by section (or equation) number, not by page number.
References
to the Literature:
References should be numbered in the order in which they are cited in the text. The list of references
at the end of the manuscript should be given using double spacing on a separate sheet of the typescript. References should include the
title of the work referred to. Footnotes should not include bibliographic material. Authors should check whether every reference in the
text appears in the list of references and vice versa. Numerals for references should be given in square brackets [ ] in the text.'
'Expressions such as et al., idem and ibid. should not be used in the list of references: details of each reference should be given in
full. The following system should be used:
Book: R. Zallen, The physics of amorphous solids (Wiley, New York, 1983).
Journal
articles: T.P.Burghardt, J.E. Lyke and K. Ajtai, Fluorescence emission and anisotropy from rhodamine dimers, Biophys. Chem. 59 (1996)
119-131.
Paper in a contributed volume: E. Stelzer and H. Ruf, in: Physical chemistry of transmembrane motion, ed. G. Spach,
Studies in physical and theoretical chemistry, vol. 24 (Elsevier, Amsterdam, 1983) p. 37.
Unpublished paper: D. Schallreuther,
Ph.D. thesis, Universitat Konstanz (1982)."Personal communication", "in preparation", "unpublished results", etc., should not be cited
in the reference list but in the text.
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.
