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Progress in Neuro-Psychopharmacology & Biological Psychiatry

An International Research, Review, and News Journal

Progress in Neuro-Psychopharmacology & Biological Psychiatry
ISSN: 0278-5846
Imprint: ELSEVIER

Statistics
Impact Factor: 2.638
5-Year Impact Factor: 3.224
Issues per year: 8

Guide for Authors


An International Research, Review, and News Journal



US National Institutes of Health (NIH) voluntary posting (" Public Access") policy

Elsevier facilitates author response to the NIH voluntary posting request (referred to as the NIH "Public Access Policy"; see External link http://www.nih.gov/about/publicaccess/index.htm) by posting the peer-reviewed author's manuscript directly to PubMed Central on request from the author, 12 months after formal publication. Upon notification from Elsevier of acceptance, we will ask you to confirm via e-mail (by e-mailing us at NIHauthorrequest@elsevier.com) that your work has received NIH funding and that you intend to respond to the NIH policy request, along with your NIH award number to facilitate processing. Upon such confirmation, Elsevier will submit to PubMed Central on your behalf a version of your manuscript that will include peer-review comments, for posting 12 months after formal publication. This will ensure that you will have responded fully to the NIH request policy. There will be no need for you to post your manuscript directly with PubMed Central, and any such posting is prohibited.

Exceptions: It is the policy of Elsevier that authors need not obtain permission in the following cases only: (1) to use their original figures or tables in their future works; (2) to make copies of their papers for use in their classroom teaching; and (3) to include their papers as part of their dissertations.

Submission of Articles


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and tacitly or explicitly by the responsible authorities where the work was carried out, and that, if accepted, it will not be published elsewhere in the same form, in English or in any other language, without the written consent of the Publisher.

Submission Procedure


Web Submission
Web submission is preferred . Use the following guidelines to prepare your article. Visit the submission page of this journal at External link http://ees.elsevier.com/PNP, where 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 homepage, removing the need for a hard-copy paper trail.
The above represents a very brief outline of this form of submission. It can be advantageous to print this "Guide for Authors" section from the site for reference in the subsequent stages of article preparation.
We accept most wordprocessing formats, but Word, WordPerfect or LaTeX is preferred. Always keep a backup copy of the electronic file for reference and safety. Save your files using the default extension of the program used.

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: External link 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 External link http://www.elsevier.com/artworkinstructions.

Organization of Manuscripts
Language
Articles should be submitted in English. If English is not their native language, authors are recommended to consult a colleague whose English could be regarded as impeccable. Alternatively, the authors may consider to use an editing service that had provided excellent results with some of our authors. We have successfully negotiated with eight language editing companies to provide language editing services to our authors at competitive rates. American Journal Experts, Asia Science Editing, Diacritech Language Editing Services, Edanz Editing, International Science Editing, ScienceDocs Editing Services and SPI Publisher Services provide language and copy editing services globally to authors who wish to publish in scientific, technical and medical peer-reviewed journals and would like assistance either before they submit an article for peer review or before it is accepted for publication.

Fine-tune your grammar, correct your conjugations and find out more about these services: External link http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/authors.authors/languagepolishing.

For Authors in Japan please note that, upon request, Elsevier Japan will provide authors with a list of people who can check and improve the English of their paper (before submission). Please contact our Tokyo office: Elsevier, 4F Higashi-Azabu, 1 Chome Bldg. 1-9-15 Higashi-Azabu, Minato-ku, Tokyo 106-0044, Japan; phone:(03)-5561-5032; fax: (03)-5561-5045; e-mail: jp.info@elsevier.com

Article types are:• Original articles (full-length and short papers)
• Review articles (mini-reviews or comprehensive reviews)
• Letters to the Editor (case reports)
• Letters to the Editor (comments)


Each type of article should contain the following parts:
1. Original articles (full length and short papers): 1) title page; 2) abstract; 3) (3-6) keywords; 4) abbreviations; 5) introduction; 6) methods; 7) results; 8) discussion; 9) conclusion; 10) acknowledgments; 11) references; 12) tables; 13) figures; 14) figure legends.

2. Review articles (mini-reviews or comprehensive reviews of cutting edge work, or syntheses of cutting edge work that has been done in the past two years); 1) title page; 2) abstract; 3) (3-6) keywords; 4) abbreviations; 5) introduction.

3. Case reports should be novel descriptions of clinical cases that are either educational or describe a diagnostic or therapeutic dilemma. These articles should not include an abstract or keywords and should be no longer than 1000 words excluding references. They should consist of: 1) title page; 2) introduction; 3) case report; 4) discussion; 5) conclusion; 6) acknowledgments; 7) references (no more than 15 where possible). If appropriate, only one table or one figure could be added as integral part to the text. Additional items could be added as supplemental material (e-component).

4. Letters to the Editor/Comments. A limited amount of space will be available for comments about important scientific points that arise out of papers previously published in Progress in Neuro-Psychopharmacology and Biological Psychiatry. Such comments should be sent to the Editor-in-chief or Associate Editor and they should be no longer than 1000 words excluding references. The Editors reserve the right to invite replies to such comments by the authors of the original papers. After the introduction, each review article should have its own framework. Contributors should prepare a well-structured text using appropriate headings and subheadings. It is also highly recommended that review articles be well illustrated so that interested but non-expert readers can easily and rapidly understand the text. For further information, invited author or authors who want to submit a review article should contact the Editorial Office at the address given below.

Specific recommendations for original articles

1. Title page. This should contain:
1.1. Complete title of the article.The title of the paper should be brief; no longer than 100 characters in length, and should capture and communicate the key message of your research to a broader audience. To aid this, abbreviations, unless familiar to a broad audience, should be avoided
1.2. Names of all authors, with an asterisk beside the name of the corresponding author. Where the family name may be ambiguous (e.g. a double name), please indicate this clearly.
1.3. Full mailing addresses of each author, including the name of the institution and the department. Present the Authors' affiliation addresses (where the actual work was done) below the names. 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.
1.4. Links (lowercase roman letters) connecting authors with their affiliations (all of the authors' names should be on one line and all of their affiliations on another; if authors share an affiliation, they should share the link).

2. Abstract page. This should contain:
2.1. Abstract representing in concise form the purpose, the general methods, the findings and the conclusions of the authors.
2.2. Keywords in alphabetical order, given as an aid to indexing.
2.3. Abbreviations. Whenever an abbreviation other than those listed under General recommendations is used in an article, it is to be defined in text at first mention. An alphabetical list of abbreviations, followed by their full terms, should be placed under the keywords


3. Body of the text
3.1. Introduction. This section should contain a clear statement of the general and specific objectives as well as the hypotheses which the work is designed to test. It should also give a brief account of the reported literature. The last sentence should clearly state the purpose of the article.
3.2. Methods. This section should contain explicit, concise descriptions of all procedures, materials and methods used in the investigation to enable the reader to judge their accuracy, reproducibility, etc. To increase clarity, headings should be used throughout. For example, the following subheadings, which should be numbered, could be used:
3.2.1. Experimental articles (full length or short papers): Animals, Drugs, Apparatus, Experimental procedure, and Statistical analysis.
3.2.2. Clinical articles (full length or short papers): Patient population, Drug administration, Study design, Assessment instruments, and Data analysis. Depending on the type of article they are preparing, authors could introduce any other subheadings they find useful.
3.3. Results. This section usually contains the experimental data, but no extended discussion of their significance. The results should be illustrated (figures and tables); data are usually easier for readers to grasp if they are represented in graphic or tabular form, rather than discursively. Graphic presentation of data is preferred. Data should not be needlessly repeated in text. Sufficient data may allow interested but non-expert readers to judge the variability and reliability of the results. The section should be well structured using appropriate subheadings.
3.4. Discussion. This should be pertinent to the results. Speculative discussion is not discouraged provided it is based on the data presented. The discussion should be as concise as possible and well structured, using appropriate subheadings.
3.5. Conclusions. A short paragraph of conclusions (5 to 10 lines) should be included.

4. Acknowledgments. These may be included at the end of the text before the References; they should have a separate heading.

5. References.
5.1Text: 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, 1996a, 1996b, 1999; Allan and Jones, 1995). Kramer et al. (2000) have recently shown...."

5.2List: 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:

5.2.1 Reference to a journal publication:

Van der Geer J, Hanraads JAJ, Lupton RA. The art of writing a scientific article. J Sci Commun 2000;163:51-9.

5.2.2 Reference to a book:

Strunk Jr W, White EB. The elements of style. 3rd ed. New York: Macmillan, 1979.

5.2.3 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.; 1994.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 External link http://www.nlm.nih.gov/tsd/serials/terms_cond.html

6. Tables. All tables must be cited in the text, have brief, descriptive titles and be consecutively numbered with Arabic numerals. Information other than that defining the data should be presented as footnotes. Use lowercase roman letters for footnotes. Only horizontal rules should be included, and kept to a minimum.

7. Illustrations. Each illustration should be clearly marked on the reverse side with the name of the corresponding author, the number of the illustration and its orientation (top); use a soft pencil or felt-ripped pen, and do not press hard against the surface.
7.1. Photographs. Photographs should be glossy prints with high contrast. Magnification should be indicated by a line representing the actual scale of reproduction (0.1 μm, 1 μm). Avoid the use of magnification factors whenever possible.
7.2. Line figures. Figures will not be redrawn by the Publisher. They should be black ink on white paper, or black and white prints. Do not place the title of the figure within the figure itself. The size of the lettering should be consistent, taking into consideration the possibility of reduction.
7.3. Colour figures. If together with your accepted article, you submit usable colour figures, then Elsevier will ensure, at no additional charge, that these figures will appear in colour on the Web (e.g., ScienceDirect and other sites) regardless of whether these illustrations are reproduced in colour in the printed version. For colour reproduction in print, you will receive information regarding the costs from Elsevier after receipt of your accepted article. For further information on the preparation of electronic artwork, please see External link http://www.elsevier.com/artworkinstructions [Please note: Because of technical complications that can arise in converting colour figures to "grey scale" (for the printed version should you not opt for colour in print), please submit in addition usable black-and-white files corresponding to all the colour illustrations]. Authors should note that a request to revert from full colour to colour only in the electronic publication at the stage of typesetting and proof correction, will require separate editorial agreement, with possible re-review if necessary, and may significantly delay publication of your manuscript.

8. Legends for figures. These should be typed on a separate page, double spaced as part of the text. Legends, should be numbered consecutively in Arabic numerals. Legends should explain the figures in sufficient detail so that repeated referral to the text is unnecessary. Abbreviations in the legends should conform to those in the text.

9. Footnotes. These are best avoided or they should be kept to a minimum. When used, they should be typed at the bottom of the appropriate page and separated from the text by a short line. Footnotes should be used for authors' degrees and positions, proprietary names and trademarked drugs and other materials not appropriately referred to in the text or in the reference list.

10. Supplementary material: Electronic supplementary material is now accepted 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: External link 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 Corporate Website at External link http://www.elsevier.com/authors.

General recommendations
Abbreviations
Define abbreviations that are not standard in this field at their first occurrence in the article: in the abstract but also in the main text after it. Ensure consistency of abbreviations throughout the article.
The following abbreviations or their properly prefixed multiples and submultiples may be used without definition in the text, tables or figures (Notice to contributors, 1981, J. Pharmacol. Exp. Ther.):

table of abbrev

Drug nomenclature
Generic names should be used in text, tables and figures. Trade names and the name and city of their manufacturer may be mentioned in parentheses in the first text reference to the drug, but should not appear in titles, figures or tables. Chemical names could also be used. Code numbers could be given in brackets. When a trade name is used, it should be capitalized; general or chemical names are not capitalized. The chemical nature of new drugs must be given when known. The form of drug used in calculations of doses (e.g., base or salt) should be indicated.

Ethical Standards
• The authors declare that all experiments on human subjects were conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki External link http://www.wma.net and that all procedures were carried out with the adequate understanding and written consent of the subjects.
• The authors also certify that formal approval to conduct the experiments described has been obtained from the human subjects review board of their institution and could be provided upon request.
• If the studies deal with animal experiments, the authors certify that they were carried out in accordance with the National Institute of Health Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals (NIH Publications No. 80-23) revised 1996 or the UK Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986 and associated guidelines, or the European Communities Council Directive of 24 November 1986 (86/609/EEC).
• The authors also certify that formal approval to conduct the experiments described has been obtained from the animal subjects review board of their institution and could be provided upon request.
• The authors further attest that all efforts were made to minimize the number of animals used and their suffering.
• If the ethical standard governing the reported research is different from those guidelines indicated above, the authors must provide information in the submission cover letter about which guidelines and oversight procedures were followed.
• The Editor reserves the right to return manuscripts in which there is any question as to the appropriate and ethical use of human or animal subjects.

Mailing
Place disks in a disk mailer; place manuscripts between thick cardboard when mailing.

Proofs
If the e-mail address of the corresponding author is provided, the author will receive his proofs as a PDF attachment to an e-mail. To view these proofs, the author must have Acrobat Reader, which is available free of charge from Adobe (download from External link http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep.html). If no e-mail address is provided, or if the corresponding author prefers page proofs, those will be sent instead.
Elsevier will do everything possible to get your article corrected and published as quickly and accurately as possible, both online (ScienceDirect) and in print. Therefore, it is important to ensure that all your corrections are sent back to us in one communication. Subsequent corrections will not be possible, so please ensure your first sending is complete.

Offprints:
The corresponding author, at no cost, will be provided with a pdf offprint.

Copyright
Upon acceptance of an article, Authors will be asked to transfer copyright (for more information on copyright see External link http://www.elsevier.com/copyright). This transfer will ensure the widest possible dissemination of information. A letter will be sent to the corresponding Author confirming receipt of the manuscript. A form facilitating transfer of copyright will be provided.
If excerpts from other copyrighted works are included, the Author(s) must obtain written permission from the copyright owners and credit the source(s) in the article. Elsevier has preprinted forms for use by Authors in these cases: contact Elsevier's Rights Department, Oxford, UK: phone (+44) 1865 843830, fax (+44) 1865 853333, e-mail permissions@elsevier.com. Requests may also be completed on-line via the Elsevier homepage (External link http://www.elsevier.com/locate/permissions).

US National Institutes of Health (NIH) voluntary posting/"Public Access Policy"
Elsevier facilitates author posting in connection with the voluntary posting request of the NIH (referred to as the NIH "Public Access Policy", see External link http://publicaccess.nih.gov/) by submitting the peer-reviewed author's manuscript directly to PubMed Central on request from the author, immediately after final publication. Please e-mail us at NIHauthorrequest@elsevier.com that your work has received NIH funding (with the NIH grant/project number(s), as well as name and e-mail address of the Principal Investigator(s)) and that you intend to respond to the NIH request. Upon such confirmation, Elsevier will submit to PubMed Central on your behalf a version of your manuscript that will include peer-review comments, for public access posting 12 months after the final publication date. This will ensure that you will have responded fully to the NIH request policy. There will be no need for you to post your manuscript directly to PubMed Central, and any such posting is prohibited (although Elsevier will not request that manuscripts authored and posted by US government employees should be taken down from PubMed Central). Individual modifications to this general policy may apply to some Elsevier journals and its society publishing partners.

Author enquiries:
For enquiries relating to the submission of articles (including electronic submission where available) please visit this journal's EES page. You can track accepted articles at External link http://www.elsevier.com/trackarticle and set up e-mail alerts to inform you of when an article's status has changed, as well as copyright information, frequently asked questions and more. Contact details for questions arising after acceptance of an article, especially those relating to proofs, are provided after registration of an article for publication.

For any information regarding the preparation and forwarding of manuscripts, authors may contact
Editorial Office:
PROGRESS IN NEURO-PSYCHOPHARMACOLOGY & BIOLOGICAL PSYCHIATRY
Centre de Recherche du CHUL (CHUQ)
Neurosciences, RC-9800
2705 boul. Laurier
Québec (QC), Canada, G1V 4G2
Tel: (418) 656-4141 (ext: 47979); Fax: (418) 654-2753
Email: PNPBP@crchul.ulaval.ca
External link http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/525488/description#description
External link http://ees.elsevier.com/pnp/

Disclaimer:
Whilst every effort is made by the publishers and editorial board to see that no inaccurate or misleading data, opinion or statement appears in this journal, they wish to make it clear that the data and opinions appearing in the articles and advertisements herein are the sole responsibility of the contributor or advertiser concerned. Accordingly, the publishers, the editorial board and editors and their respective employees, officers and agents accept no responsibility or liability whatsoever for the consequences of any inaccurate or misleading data, opinion or statement.
 
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