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original unpublished work and is not being submitted for publication elsewhere.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.
For more details on how
to write a world class paper, please visit our
Pharmacology
Author Resources page.
Please include word count and figure/table count on the cover page of your manuscript.
Authors are encouraged to submit video material or animation sequences to support and enhance your scientific research. For
more information please see the paragraph on video data below.
Types of paper
•
Original research articles
• Minireview (max. 4000 words). Minireviews are a special feature of Life Sciences. As author of this
article type please click
here to read the specific guidelines.
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/en/30publications/10policies/b3/index.html;
EU Directive 2010/63/EU 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.
Conflict of Interest Policy
The Journal requires full disclosure of all potential conflicts of interest. At the end
of the manuscript 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. If there are no conflicts of
interest, the authors should state: "The authors declare that there are no conflicts of interest." A signed
Conflict
of Interests Policy Form is required upon submission. The corresponding author is responsible for completing the form, and
signing it on behalf of all authors.
Submission declaration and verification
Submission
of an article implies that the work described has not been published previously (except in the form of an abstract or as part of a published
lecture or academic thesis), that it is not under consideration for publication elsewhere, that its publication is approved by all authors
and tacitly or explicitly by the responsible authorities where the work was carried out, and that, if accepted, it will not be published
elsewhere in the same form, in English or in any other language, including electronically without the written consent of the copyright-holder.
To verify originality, your article may be checked by the originality detection software iThenticate. See also
http://www.elsevier.com/editors/plagdetect.
Changes to authorship
This policy concerns the addition, deletion, or rearrangement of author names in the
authorship of accepted manuscripts:
Before the accepted manuscript is published in an online issue: Requests to add or remove
an author, or to rearrange the author names, must be sent to the Journal Manager from the corresponding author of the accepted manuscript
and must include: (a) the reason the name should be added or removed, or the author names rearranged and (b) written confirmation (e-mail,
fax, letter) from all authors that they agree with the addition, removal or rearrangement. In the case of addition or removal of authors,
this includes confirmation from the author being added or removed. Requests that are not sent by the corresponding author will be forwarded
by the Journal Manager to the corresponding author, who must follow the procedure as described above. Note that: (1) Journal Managers
will inform the Journal Editors of any such requests and (2) publication of the accepted manuscript in an online issue is suspended until
authorship has been agreed.
After the accepted manuscript is published in an online issue: Any requests to add, delete, or
rearrange author names in an article published in an online issue will follow the same policies as noted above and result in a corrigendum.
Copyright
Upon acceptance of an article, authors will be asked to complete a 'Journal Publishing Agreement'
(for more information on this and copyright see
http://www.elsevier.com/copyright). Acceptance of the agreement will ensure
the widest possible dissemination of information. An e-mail will be sent to the corresponding author confirming receipt of the manuscript
together with a 'Journal Publishing Agreement' form or a link to the online version of this agreement.
Subscribers may reproduce
tables of contents or prepare lists of articles including abstracts for internal circulation within their institutions. Permission of
the Publisher is required for resale or distribution outside the institution and for all other derivative works, including compilations
and translations (please consult
http://www.elsevier.com/permissions). If excerpts from other copyrighted works are included,
the author(s) must obtain written permission from the copyright owners and credit the source(s) in the article. Elsevier has preprinted
forms for use by authors in these cases: please consult
http://www.elsevier.com/permissions.
Retained author rights
As an author you (or your employer or institution) retain certain rights; for details
you are referred to:
http://www.elsevier.com/authorsrights.
Role of the
funding source
You are requested to identify who provided financial support for the conduct of the research and/or preparation
of the article and to briefly describe the role of the sponsor(s), if any, in study design; in the collection, analysis and interpretation
of data; in the writing of the report; and in the decision to submit the article for publication. If the funding source(s) had no such
involvement then this should be stated. Please see
http://www.elsevier.com/funding.
Funding body agreements and policies
Elsevier has established agreements and developed policies to allow authors whose
articles appear in journals published by Elsevier, to comply with potential manuscript archiving requirements as specified as conditions
of their grant awards. To learn more about existing agreements and policies please visit
http://www.elsevier.com/fundingbodies.
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 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.
Minireviews should be restricted to 4000 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.
Database linking and Accession numbers
Elsevier aims at connecting online articles with external databases which are useful in their respective research communities.
If your article contains relevant unique identifiers or accession numbers (bioinformatics) linking to information on entities (genes,
proteins, diseases, etc.) or structures deposited in public databases, then please indicate those entities according to the standard
explained below.
Authors should explicitly mention the
database abbreviation (as mentioned below) together with the actual database
number, bearing in mind that an error in a letter or number can result in a dead link in the online version of the article.
Please
use the following format:
Database ID: xxxx
Links can be provided in your online article to the following databases (examples
of citations are given in parentheses):
•
GenBank: Genetic
sequence database at the National Center for Biotechnical Information (NCBI) (GenBank ID: BA123456)
•
PDB:
Worldwide Protein Data Bank (PDB ID: 1TUP)
•
CCDC: Cambridge Crystallographic
Data Centre (CCDC ID: AI631510)
•
TAIR: The Arabidopsis Information
Resource database (TAIR ID: AT1G01020)
•
NCT: ClinicalTrials.gov
(NCT ID: NCT00222573)
•
OMIM: Online Mendelian Inheritance
in Man (OMIM ID: 601240)
•
MINT: Molecular INTeractions
database (MINT ID: 6166710)
•
MI: EMBL-EBI OLS Molecular
Interaction Ontology (MI ID: 0218)
•
UniProt: Universal Protein Resource
Knowledgebase (UniProt ID: Q9H0H5)
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 style
Text: All citations in the text should refer to:
1.
Single author:
the author's name (without initials, unless there is ambiguity) and the year of publication;
2.
Two authors: both authors'
names and the year of publication;
3.
Three or more authors: first author's name followed by 'et al.' and the year of publication.
Citations may be made directly (or parenthetically). Groups of references should be listed first alphabetically, then chronologically.
Examples: 'as demonstrated in wheat (Allan, 2000a, 2000b, 1999; Allan and Jones, 1999). Kramer et al. (2010) have recently shown
....'
List: References should be arranged first alphabetically and then further sorted chronologically if necessary. More
than one reference from the same author(s) in the same year must be identified by the letters 'a', 'b', 'c', etc., placed after the year
of publication.
Examples:
Reference to a journal publication:
Van der Geer J, Hanraads JAJ, Lupton RA. The art of
writing a scientific article. J Sci Commun 2010;163:51–9.
Reference to a book:
Strunk Jr W, White EB. The elements of style.
4th ed. New York: Longman; 1979.
Reference to a chapter in an edited book:
Mettam GR, Adams LB. How to prepare an electronic
version of your article. In: Jones BS, Smith RZ, editors. Introduction to the electronic age. New York: E-Publishing Inc; 2009. p. 281–304.
Note shortened form for last page number. e.g., 51–9, and that for more than 6 authors the first 6 should be listed followed
by "et al." For further details you are referred to "Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts submitted to Biomedical Journals" (J Am Med
Assoc 1997;277:927–34) (see also
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/bsd/uniform_requirements.html).
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. 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.
