Guide for Authors
Life Sciences is an international journal publishing articles that emphasize the molecular,
cellular, and functional basis of therapy. All articles are rigorously reviewed.
The Journal favors publication of full-length papers
where modern scientific technologies are used to explain molecular, cellular and physiological mechanisms. Articles that merely report
observations are rarely accepted. Articles should be written at a level accessible to readers who are non-specialists in the topic of
the article themselves, but who are interested in the research.
The Journal welcomes mini-reviews on topics of wide interest to
investigators in the life sciences. We particularly encourage submission of brief, focused reviews containing high-quality artwork and
mechanistic diagrams.
IMPORTANT INFORMATION
• Submission of a paper will be held to imply that the manuscript contains
original unpublished work and is not being submitted for publication elsewhere.
• Manuscripts should present novel findings addressing
significant biological questions. Studies that fail to do so may be rejected without review.
• Quantitative conclusions must
be based on truly quantitative methods.
•
Life Sciences does not publish work on the actions of biological extracts
of unknown chemical composition. Compounds studied must be of known chemical structure and concentration.
• The study must
be reproducible; materials used must be available to other researchers so they can repeat the experiment.
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.
Policy and ethics
The
work described in your article must have been carried out in accordance with
The Code of Ethics of the World Medical Association
(Declaration of Helsinki) for experiments involving humans http://www.wma.net/e/policy/b3.htm;
EC Directive 86/609/EEC
for animal experiments http://ec.europa.eu/environment/chemicals/lab_animals/legislation_en.htm;
Uniform Requirements
for manuscripts submitted to Biomedical journals http://www.icmje.org. This must be stated at an appropriate point
in the article.
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 in the same form, in English or in any other language, without the written consent of the copyright-holder.
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 paper 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.
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://www.elsevier.com/languagepolishing or our customer support site at
http://epsupport.elsevier.com
for more information. Please note Elsevier neither endorses nor takes responsibility for any products, goods or services offered by outside
vendors through our services or in any advertising. For more information please refer to our Terms & Conditions:
http://www.elsevier.com/termsandconditions.
Submission to this journal proceeds totally online. Use the following guidelines to prepare your article.
Via the homepage of this journal (
http://www.elsevier.com/journals) you will be guided stepwise through the creation and
uploading of the various files. The system automatically converts source files to a single Adobe Acrobat PDF version of the article,
which is used in the peer-review process. Please note that even though manuscript source files are converted to PDF 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 and via the author's page in EES, removing the need for a hard-copy
paper trail.
Following submission, the article is assigned to either the European or U.S. Editorial Offices. Specific queries can
be directed to
lifesci@elsevier.com.
Referees
To expedite
the review process, authors must submit names of 4 - 6 individuals who are qualified to review their work. Include the email address
of each potential referee, as much contact information as possible, and why you feel this person is competent to review your work. You
should not have collaborated with the suggested reviewers at any time in the past five years. In our effort to enhance global perspective
and communication of science, these individuals should be associated with institutions from as many different regions as possible (Europe,
North America, Asia, etc.). Exception: Symposium submissions which have been previously reviewed and approved by their Organizing Committee.
Language
Please write your text
in good English (American or British usage is accepted, but not a mixture of these). For language assistance, please see Language Services,
above. Use decimal points (not decimal commas); use a space for thousands (10 000 and above).
Formatting instructions
1. Prepare the text in Microsoft Word in order to prevent conversion errors.
2. Use double
line spacing with no paragraph indents.
3. All manuscript pages should be numbered.
4. Use the word-processor's word-wrap feature.
Use hard returns only at the end of paragraphs.
5. Do not italicize common Latin terms (i.e., in vivo, in vitro, et al., ad libitum).
Organization of the manuscript
Beginning with the first page, present your manuscript in the order below:
1. Title: First letter capitalized, subsequent letters in lower case. Maximum length 150 characters including spaces. Avoid abbreviations.
2a. Names of all authors.
2b. Affiliations of all authors. If necessary, use superscripted lowercase letters after the author's
name to distinguish affiliations.
3. Author to whom proofs and correspondence should be sent, including name, mailing address, telephone
and fax numbers, and e-mail address.
4. A structured abstract has to be submitted for
full length articles (not for reviews)
of no more than 250 words. The following headings must be used:
Aims:
Main methods:
Key findings:
Significance:
5.
Three or more key words for indexing purposes. In addition to key words from the title, please suggest other terms that help define the
study. We encourage authors to test the relevance of their key words by using them for a database search and comparing the results with
the topic of their own paper.
Word limits: In
full papers, individual sections should be no longer than Abstract 250
words, Introduction 500 words, Discussion 1500 words, Conclusion 150 words. Materials and Methods and Results sections should be concise
but there is no formal word limit.
Review articles should be no longer than 8000 words.
Headings: Papers must include
the major headings Abstract, Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results, Discussion, Conclusion, Acknowledgments, and References. Include
subheadings as appropriate. Review articles must contain Abstract and Introduction, with subsequent headings and subheadings as appropriate.
Introduction
State the objectives of the work and provide an adequate background, avoiding a detailed
literature survey or a summary of the results.
Material and methods
Provide
sufficient detail to allow the work to be reproduced. Methods already published should be indicated by a reference: only relevant modifications
should be described.
Results
Results should be clear and concise.
Discussion
This should explore the significance of the results of the work, not repeat them. Avoid extensive
citations and discussion of published literature.
Conclusions
The main
conclusions of the study may be presented in a short Conclusions section.
Abbreviations
Abbreviations must be explained the first time they are used, both in the Abstract and again in the main text.
Abbreviations
used as names of cell lines do not need to be explained, but the species and tissue of origin should be made clear in text the first
time the cell line is mentioned. Examples: "the human colonic adenocarcinoma cell line Caco-2" or "the porcine renal endothelial cell
line LLC-PK1".
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.).
Please note that funding information must
appear under the Acknowledgments heading.
Artwork
Electronic Artwork
Placement of figures and tables will be determined by the printer at the time of publication;
do not indicate where they appear in the text. Avoid using patterns in histograms/bar graphs. Solid white/gray/black bars are preferred.
Do not import figures into the manuscript file. Figures composed of many similar panels should be submitted both in compiled form for
review and as separate high-resolution images for production. Tables must be submitted in word processing format, not as images.
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 as part of the manuscript following
References, 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.
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.
References
Citation in text
Please ensure that
every reference cited in the text is also present in the reference list (and vice versa). Any references cited in the abstract must be
given in full. Unpublished results and personal communications are not recommended in the reference list, but may be mentioned in the
text. If these references are included in the reference list they should follow the standard reference style of the journal and should
include a substitution of the publication date with either "Unpublished results" or "Personal communication" Citation of a reference
as "in press" implies that the item has been accepted for publication.
•
Single author (Smith 2003)
• Two authors (Smith and Thompson 2003)
• Three or more authors (Smith et al. 2003) (N.B.:
note period after et al.)
• Multiple references (Smith et al. 2003; Jones et al. 2003) (N.B.: note semicolon)
• Same
author(s), same year (Smith and Thompson 2000a,b,c)
• Same author(s), different years (Smith et al. 1999, 2001)
Reference list
List references alphabetically. Include the full title of the article referred to, capitalizing
only the initial letter of the title. Spell out all words in journal titles. All major words in journal titles should be capitalized.
Sample references:
Journal articles:
Feldman RD, Gros R. New insights into the regulation of cAMP synthesis beyond
GPCR/G protein activation: Implications in cardiovascular regulation. Life Sciences 81(4), 267-271, 2007
Books: Strunk
W Jr, White EB. The Elements of Style, third ed. MacMillan, New York (Chapter 4), 1979
Articles or chapters in edited books:
Zhang SS, Bruneau BG. Transcriptional control of the cardiac conduction system (Chapter 10). In: Bodmer R (Ed) Cardiovascular Development,
Advances in Developmental Biology, Vol 18. Elsevier, Amsterdam/Oxford, pp 219-258, 2008
Articles published on the Internet:
Kuiper JWP, Pluk H, Oerlemans F, van Leeuwen FN, de Lange F, Fransen J, Wieringa B. Creatine kinase-mediated ATP supply fuels actin-based
events in phagocytosis. PLoS Biology 6(3) doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.0060051, 2008
Articles from conferences:
Cooke JP.
Angiogenesis and the role of the endothelial nicotinic acetylcholine receptor. In: Grando SA, Kawashima K, Kirkpatrick CJ, Wessler I
(Eds) Proceedings of the Second International Symposium on Non-neuronal Acetylcholine, Mainz, Germany, August 31-September 2, 2006. Life
Sciences 80(24/25), 2347-2351, 2007
Articles in Special Issues:
Please ensure that the words "this issue" are added
(in the list and text) to any references to other articles in the Special Issue.
To view an example please
click
here
.
Supplementary material
Elsevier accepts electronic
supplementary material to support and enhance 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
are 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. Video files: please supply 'stills' with your files: you can choose any frame
from the video or make a separate image. These will be used instead of standard icons and will personalize the link to your supplementary
information. For more detailed instructions please visit our artwork instruction pages at
http://www.elsevier.com/artworkinstructions.
Submission checklist
It is hoped that this list will be useful during the final checking of an article prior
to sending it to the journal's Editor for review. Please consult this Guide for Authors for further details of any item.
Ensure
that the following items are present:
One Author designated as corresponding Author:
• E-mail address
• Full
postal address
• Telephone and fax numbers
All necessary files have been uploaded
• Keywords
• All figure
captions
• All tables (including title, description, footnotes)
Further considerations
• Manuscript has been "spellchecked"
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://epsupport.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.2003.10.071
When you use the DOI to create URL hyperlinks to documents on the web, they 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://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html. 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/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 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. 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. 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
where available) please visit this journal's homepage. You can track accepted articles at
http://www.elsevier.com/trackarticle
and set up e-mail alerts to inform you of when an article's status has changed. Also accessible from here is information on copyright,
frequently asked questions and more. Contact details for questions arising after acceptance of an article, especially those relating
to proofs, will be provided by the publisher.
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