Atherosclerosis

Atherosclerosis is a fully electronic journal, all manuscripts are to be submitted via the internet.
To submit your paper online, click on the link http://ees.elsevier.com/ath/. This will take you to the Atherosclerosis Editorial Manager home page. The Authors section to the right of the page provides relevant information, including a tutorial on how to submit your manuscript.

Authors must select an appropriate Associate Editor from the list shown on the website, the expertise terms for each Editor are shown to assist with this choice. Authors must suggest four potential reviewers for their paper and to avoid delay in processing your submission please ensure that email addresses given for reviewers are correct. The Editorial Board reserves the right to decide whether or not the suggested reviewers are used. Please note the Associate Editors will not act as reviewers. Authors may also indicate if a particular reviewer should not be approached.

Types of paper

Types of papers that can be submitted for consideration by the Editorial Board include:

a) Basic Research Papers reporting results of original research or investigation using in vitro, cell culture, or animal models. Basic Research Papers should not exceed 4000 words (including tables and legends to figures) and no more than 30 references.

b) Clinical Research Papers reporting results of original clinical research or investigation in human subjects. Clinical Research Papers should not exceed 4000 words (including tables and legends to figures) and no more than 30 references.

Basic and Clinical Research papers must have no more than 5 figures and tables in total (e.g., 1 figure consisting of panels A and B, and 4 tables). Authors are encouraged to include additional figures and tables as supplementary appendixes, and these will be considered for Web-only publication.

c) Fast-track submission. For new findings of sufficient importance to justify accelerated review and publication, a fast-track submission process for original articles is available. In the submission letter, authors should explicitly request this option. If the editors agree that the manuscript is worthy of fast-track publication, a fee of 600 Euros will be charged to the author. If accepted for fast-track submission, an article will be reviewed within 72 hours (otherwise, authors will be informed that the paper will be handled within the normal peer-review process). If accepted, a fast-track submission will appear in the first available issue of the journal.
PLEASE SELECT THE "FAST TRACK" OPTION FROM THE DROP DOWN MENU OF PAPER TYPES WHEN YOU SUBMIT YOUR MANUSCRIPT.

d) Rapid Communications. These papers should provide a brief but complete account of important new observations which merit urgent publication. The papers should be less than 5 printed pages (8-10 double-spaced typed pages) including figures and tables and should be concisely but adequately referenced. Authors should state in the comments section during the submission process why the paper merits urgent publication. Papers requiring revision will not be considered as Rapid Communications. The Editor-in-Chief will normally reach a decision on these papers within one month.

e) Short Communications. These papers should include original data of basic or clinical research. The following word limits apply: abstract 150 words, main text 1500 words, up to 2 figures and or tables and a maximum of 15 references. Authors maybe invited to submit a short communication by the editorial team.

f) Review Articles and Mini-Reviews, usually by invitation. Mini-Reviews should normally consist of current short reviews of topical information. Word limit: 3500, 25 references and up to 3 tables and or figures. Full reviews may contain up to 6 tables and or figures, authors are encouraged to include a "mechanism/overview" figure. Word limit 5000 and 60 references. Exceptions to these limits should be discussed with the Reviews Editor before submission. All Reviews should be submitted for handling by the Reviews Editor, Arnold von Eckardstein.

g) Hypotheses and Viewpoints of up to 1500 words are published occasionally. These contributions are subject to the normal editorial procedure. These should be submitted to the Editor-in-Chief.

h) Commentary. If you wish to comment on work published in Atherosclerosis, please submit your opinions as a Commentary. The original Author(s) will have the opportunity to respond to your comments in the same issue of the journal.

i) Letters to the Editor are welcomed. Letters to the Editor reporting research findings that do not include novel data are unlikely to be published. Letters should not exceed 1200 words and should be submitted to the Editor-in-Chief.

j) Announcements of meetings, workshops, courses etc. are welcomed subject to available space.

Correspondence

Correspondence can be sent to the Editor-in-Chief:

Professor Steve Humphries
Cardiovascular Genetics
University College London
Medical School, Rayne Institute
5 University Street
London WC1 E6JJ
UK
Fax: +44 20 7679 6212
E-mail: rmhasle@ucl.ac.uk


Reviews Editor: Arnold von Eckardstein (arnold.voneckardstein@ikc.usz.ch) Supplements Editor: Steve Humphries (rmhasle@ucl.ac.uk) To ensure fast and efficient correspondence, all Authors must provide recent e-mail addresses. Authors must submit the names, addresses, email addresses and phone/fax numbers of four potential reviewers.



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.

Patient consent

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, date of birth 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.

Submission declaration

Submission of an article to Atherosclerosis 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.

Submission of an article therefore means:

• The article is not under consideration for publication elsewhere.
• Publication of the article is approved by all authors and tacitly or explicitly by the responsible authorities where the work was carried out.
• If the article is accepted, it will not be published elsewhere by the authors, including electronically in the same form, in English or in any other language, without the written consent of the copyright-holder.

Atherosclerosis will not tolerate plagiarism in any form in submitted manuscripts. Passages of text, data or figures quoted or closely paraphrased from other authors (or from any of the author's own published work) must be identified as quotations or paraphrases and the sources of such material must be acknowledged. The use of unacknowledged material will be construed as plagiarism. If any manuscript is found to contain plagiarised material the review process will be halted immediately, and the University or Institute of the corresponding Author will be informed.

Atherosclerosis will not tolerate manipulation or enhancement of data. Authors will be asked to provide further evidence for the validity of data, and the University or Institute of the corresponding Author will be informed if such evidence is not forthcoming.

Statement of Originality and Covering Letter
You will be required to outline in a covering letter and in a statement of originality that you have met the criteria above and that all authors are in agreement with submission of the manuscript to Atherosclerosis.

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

Elsevier has established agreements and developed policies to allow authors whose articles appear in journals published by Elsevier, to comply with potential manuscript archiving requirements as specified as conditions of their grant awards. To learn more about existing agreements and policies please visit http://www.elsevier.com/fundingbodies.

Language and language services

Please write your text in good English (American or British usage is accepted, but not a mixture of these). Authors who require information about language editing and copyediting services pre- and post-submission please visit http://webshop.elsevier.com/languageservices or our customer support site at http://support.elsevier.com for more information.

Submission address

Atherosclerosis is a fully electronic journal, all manuscripts are to be submitted via the internet.

To submit your paper online, click on the link http://ees.elsevier.com/ath/. This will take you to the Atherosclerosis Editorial Manager home page. The Author Information box to the right of the page provides relevant information, including a tutorial on how to submit your manuscript.



Manuscripts

Original articles should report original research not previously published or being considered for publication elsewhere. Please note, suspected cases of plagiarism or manipulation of data will be dealt with in consultation with the communicating author and the relevant authorities (please see below). Manuscripts should be written in the English language (using either American or British spelling).
The number of words per manuscript should not exceed 4000 (including tables and legends to figures).
As a rule, research papers should be divided into sections, headed by a caption (e.g. Abstract, Introduction, Materials, Methods, Experimental Results, Discussion, etc.).
Please include a short paragraph of conclusions (at the end of the text), indicating the relevance of the study with regard to the basics and/or clinical aspect of atherosclerosis. A statement concerning the source of funding, conflicts of interests and disclosures of financial support is highly recommended.

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.

Abstracts

A structured abstract (objective, methods, results and conclusion) of 50-250 words must be included.

Keywords

A keyword summary must be provided; normally 3-7 items should be included. Authors are encouraged to choose their own keywords but, if in grave doubt which items to select, Medical Subject Headings (issued with the January Index Medicus, 1969) may be used as a guideline.

Tables

Tables with titles and legends must be on separate pages with double spacing; they may be included in the same file as the manuscript text or in separate file(s). Authors must list on the title page or in the covering e-mail, the number of figures and/or tables to be found in the paper.

References

References should be numbered consecutively (with brackets) as they appear in the text. Type the reference list with double spacing on a separate sheet. References should accord with the system used in Uniform requirements for manuscripts submitted to biomedical journals (N Engl J Med 1991; 324: 424-428). Examples:
[1] De Soyza N, Thenabadu PN, Murphy ML, Kane JJ, Doherty JE. Ventricular arrhythmia before and after aortocoronary bypass surgery. Int J Cardiol 1981; 1:123-130.
[2] Akutsu T. Artificial heart: total replacement and partial support. Amsterdam: Elsevier/North-Holland, 1975.
[3] Goldman RH. Digitalis toxicity. In: Bristow MR, editors. Drug-induced heart disease. Amsterdam: Elsevier/North-Holland, 1980:217-40.

Please note that all authors should be listed when six or less; when seven or more, list only the first three and add et al. Do not include references to personal communications, unpublished data or manuscripts either "in preparation" or "submitted for publication". If essential, such material may be incorporated into the appropriate place in the text. Recheck references in the text against reference list after your manuscript has been revised.


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

Standardized genetic nomenclature

Every gene, DNA sequence, cell line and polymorphism/variant referred to in an article must adhere to standardized nomenclature as outlined below:

• All DNA sequences and GenBank accession numbers must be provided as bold underlined text, with letters in the accession number as capitals. Example: (GenBank accession nos. AI631510 , AI631511 , AI632198 , and BF223228 ), a B-cell tumour from a chronic lymphatic leukaemia (GenBank accession no. BE675048 ), and a T-cell lymphoma (GenBank accession no. AA361117 ).
• The rs number must be provided for all SNPs/variants. Example: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/projects/SNP/snp_ref.cgi?rs=117852275.
• Current standard nomenclature for designation of DNA and peptide sequence variants must be adhered to, for the latest recommendations please see: http://www.hgvs.org.
• In order to allow for the work to be reproduced by others, where not previously published, authors are encouraged to provide as supplementary material for web-publication only, the primers and PCR conditions for all variants genotyped in the manuscript.

Guidelines for authors submitting genetic association papers

Atherosclerosis is interested in publishing genetic association papers that present data that is novel, statistically robust, clinically relevant and that add significantly to the field. Authors are advised to follow the reporting guidelines outlined in the STREGA Statement ( http://www.strega-statement.org) [1], and to achieve this, the following criteria should be met.


1. All the following aspects should be addressed appropriately and Methods used should be reported: a) Population stratification should be addressed in case of admixed populations; b) Test on Hardy-Weinberg-Equilibrium must be carried out and the p value reported; c) LD-structure between SNPs (if multiple SNPs are reported) must be presented; d) Genotyping errors / call rate must be reported; e) Appropriate correction for multiple testing (if multiple independent SNPs are reported) must be included; f) Possible relatedness between studied subjects must be documented and addressed if present.


2. All papers must include a power calculation to estimate the effect the size the study has the power to detect, based on sample size and minor allele frequency of the included SNPs. If power calculations are not included the paper is likely to be rejected without review. It should be stated whether or not power calculations were performed before or after study completion.

Comment: The study should have an adequate sample size. Ideally, power calculations should have been performed before conducting the study since post-hoc power calculations are often a self-fulfilling prophecy. It should be stated whether or not power calculations were performed before or after study completion. Several programs are available to perform power and/or sample size calculations for genetic association studies, e.g. the "Genetic Power Calculator" ( http://pngu.mgh.harvard.edu/~purcell/gpc) [2], and see table 1 below. Sample size and /or Power calculations on two-stage designs can be calculated e.g. by using the program CATS ( http://www.sph.umich.edu/csg/abecasis/CaTS) [3] for case-control studies and QpowR ( https://www.msu.edu/~steibelj/JP_files/QpowR.html) for studies on quantitative traits. Since genetic association studies often involve more complex study designs involving meta-analysis or several replication stages, simple answers on required sample sizes cannot be given. Authors are advised, however, to keep this issue in mind and give a good rationale, if the study is clearly underpowered.


3. For any novel association a replication study must be included in the submitted manuscript. Any novel association not including a replication study may be rejected without review.

Comment: The presentation of novel association results requires replication in most cases, if appropriate replication studies exist. However, if the first study has already an appropriate sample size (considering that very large studies with several thousands of individuals are available) and if the results show a strong association, it might not be necessary to provide a replication. Furthermore, giving additional evidence from other sources could replace replication studies, if they are convincing, e.g. results from functional experiments. Meta-analysis on the discovery stage or other outstanding studies do also not require replication in every case, but it should be clear that these are exceptional cases and have to discussed in that way to be acceptable for publication.


4. For any association study replicating a previously published finding, there should be sufficient novelty to add significantly to the literature. This could include confirming the effect size in a different ethnic group, or extending the association observations to additional intermediate traits or disease groups. Any study not having sufficient novelty is likely to be rejected without review.


5. We require all SNPs to have their designated RS number and for the numbering of base pair changes and amino acid changes and gene symbols to be using agreed nomenclature. For example see the following website: http://www.hgvs.org/mutnomen.


6. Generally, authors should present the rationale as to why gene regions and SNPs have been selected. Association studies using SNPs where previous studies have demonstrated that the base change has an effect on protein function or gene expression will be favored over those using SNPs where no functionality has been previously determined. Studies using a tagSNP approach will also be considered, where these add additional data to the already known variations, in order to further explain observed associations.


References:

[1] Little J et al: STrengthening the REporting of Genetic Association Studies (STREGA): an extension of the STROBE statement. PLoS Med. 2009 Feb 3;6(2):e22.

[2] Purcell S, et al. Genetic Power Calculator: design of linkage and association genetic mapping studies of complex traits. Bioinformatics 2003, 19(1):149-150.

[3] Skol AD et al. Joint analysis is more efficient than replication-based analysis for two-stage genome-wide association studies. Nat Genet (2006) 38:209-13.


In the following table, some sample sizes are given, calculated from the "Genetic Power Calculator", assuming an alpha-level of = 0.05, an additive inheritance model, an assumed prevalence of disease of 30% and a power of 80% for a balanced case-control study (1:1 case:control ratio) for varying minor allele frequencies (MAF) and genetic relative risks (GRR). Relative risks of between 1.1 and 1.3 are in the range that can be expected in genetic association studies on complex diseases. This table can be used as a rough guidance.

MAF	GRR assumed per Allele	Cases required in a balanced design
0.01	1.1	40000
	1.3	4700
	1.5	1800
0.05	1.1	8400
	1.3	1000
	1.5	380
0.1	1.1	4500
	1.3	500
	1.5	200
0.2	1.1	2500
	1.3	300
	1.5	125
0.3	1.1	2000
	1.3	250
	1.5	100
0.4	1.1	1700
	1.3	230
	1.5	100

Guidelines for meta-analyses to be published in Atherosclerosis

In principle, literature-based meta-analyses should be reported in that way, that any interested researcher is able to reproduce the results. To ensure this, authors are strongly advised to follow the guidelines listed below and are further encouraged to use the PRISMA ( http://www.prisma-statement.org/statement.htm) and the MOOSE statements ( http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/full/283/15/2008) as a guide. Therefore, as much information as needed should be provided. However, for the average reader only the most mandatory information should be reported in the main paper with additional information given in the Supplementary Material.

1. Specification of objective and primary study outcome. If there are previous meta-analyses on the same outcome available, the authors should specify clearly the differences and added value of their meta-analysis in a separate section ("Added value to previous meta-analysis on the same topic").
2. Detailed specification of search strategy, study selection strategy (including approaches to reach unpublished studies) and eligibility criteria for studies. It is highly recommended to use a graphical Flow Chart (templates available at http://www.prisma-statement.org/statement.htm).
3. Description of possible sources of bias and confounding and strategies to prevent them. This includes:
   1. Bias in individual studies
   2. Bias across studies (e.g. publication bias, selective reporting within studies)
   3. Quality and comparability of studies (study types, study outcomes, sample size)
4. Description of Statistical Methods:
   1. What is the primary summary measure (Difference in Mean, OR, etc.)? How was it extracted from the individual studies (e.g. calculated from raw numbers or tables or taken as reported)
   2. Methods to assess heterogeneity and bias
   3. Methods used for the combined analysis (fixed effects, random effects) including a rationale for using this method.
5. Reporting of results:
   1. Individual study characteristics (including sample size, study type, population/ethnicity, primary outcome, reference)
   2. Individual study results (effect estimates including confidence intervals or standard errors). Graphical presentations is preferred (Forest plots).
   3. Meta-analysis results: Combined effect estimate, confidence intervals, some measure of heterogeneity, results of bias assessment (preferably using graphical presentations, e.g. Funnel plot)
6. Additional for meta-analysis of genetic association studies:
   1. Specification of the genes / polymorphisms (rs numbers) and rationale for selection of the specific polymorphisms
   2. Genotyping methods in each individual study
   3. Genotype characteristics (genotyping success rate, minor allele frequency, frequencies of genotypes, Hardy-Weinberg-equilibrium)

Supplementary data

Elsevier accepts electronic supplementary material (e-components) to support and enhance presentation of your scientific research. Supplementary files offer the Author additional possibilities to publish supporting applications, movies, animation sequences, 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 ensure that data is provided 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.

Artwork

Electronic artwork
General points
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http://www.elsevier.com/artworkinstructions
You are urged to visit this site; some excerpts from the detailed information are given here.
Formats
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Colour illustrations
Colour illustrations online

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Submission checklist

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Ensure that the following items are present:
One author has been designated as the corresponding author with contact details:
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All necessary files have been uploaded, and contain:
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Further considerations
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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.

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