Official Journal of the Clinical Immunology Society

Clinical Immunology is an international medium devoted to publication of original investigations of the molecular and cellular basis of immunological diseases.

Submission of Manuscripts

It is a condition of publication that all manuscripts must be written in clear and grammatical English and be submitted to the Clinical Immunology Web site at http://ees.elsevier.com/yclim. Authors are requested to transmit the text and art of the manuscript in electronic form to this address. Minimal exceptions will be allowed. Each manuscript must also be accompanied by a cover letter outlining the basic findings of the paper and their significance. Complete instructions are available at the submission Web site. Authors who are unable to provide an electronic version should contact the Editorial Office prior to submission (e-mail: clin@elsevier.com; telephone: (619) 699-6746; or fax: (619) 699-6859).

There are no submission fees or pages charges.

Manuscripts are accepted for review with the understanding that no substantial portion of the study has been published or is under consideration for publication elsewhere, and that its submission for publication has been approved by all of the authors and by the institution where the work was carried out. Manuscripts that do not meet the general criteria or standards for publication in Clinical Immunology will be immediately returned to the authors, without detailed review.

Upon acceptance of an article, authors will be asked to transfer copyright (for more information on copyright, see http://www.elsevier.com/authorsrights). 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 after acceptance.

If material from other copyrighted works is 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 Global Rights Department, P.O. Box 800, Oxford OX5 1DX, UK; phone: (+44) 1865 843830, fax: (+44) 1865 853333, e-mail: permissions@elsevier.com.

Conflict of Interest--Financial Disclosure Clause

All authors are required to inform the Editorial Office of any financial arrangements that could be related to their manuscript, or confirm that they do not have any disclosure to make at submission.

Authors of research, review, or editorial articles should disclose to the Editors of Clinical Immunology at the time of their submission any past, present, or pending financial arrangements of themselves or immediate family members with a commercial company whose products are prominently presented in their article, or with a company whose products compete with those in their article. This disclosure of financial interest will be held confidential by the Editors and will not be given to reviewers, but if the article is accepted for publication, the Editor will ask the author how this information will be contained in the article, e.g., footnote disclaimer. If the author refuses the disclaimer, the Editor may not permit publication of the article.

If there are no financial conflicts, please add the following sentence to the cover letter accompanying the submission: "None of the authors has any potential financial conflict of interest related to this manuscript."

Types of Articles

Original Articles. The chief criteria for acceptance of papers submitted for publication are the originality, clarity, and quality of the work reported. In preparing an article for submission to Clinical Immunology, please be as concise as possible. Data should be presented clearly and without repetition. Where possible, refer to previously published material rather than including lengthy descriptions in the Materials and Methods section, combine tables or illustrations, and avoid repetition in the Introduction and Discussion sections.

Reviews of 20 manuscript pages (double spaced or less, exclusive of references) are published monthly. Generally a maximum total of 4 figures/tables are included. Typically, they deal analytically with recent developments in basic, translational, and clinical interventional immunology of immediate interest to a broad range of clinical immunologists. Contributors are encouraged to contact the Editor-in-Chief or Associate Editor-in-Chief before undertaking a review in order to determine its suitability.

Symposia-in-Writing. Periodically, the journal publishes a collection of brief state-of-the-art essays based on a single topic, accompanied by an introduction by the symposium's moderator. Potential moderators should contact the Editor-in-Chief or Associate Editor-in-Chief.

Reviews of Animal Models of Human Disease. Brief articles describing and evaluating animal models of immune-mediated diseases of humans are published occasionally. Contributors should contact Dr. Pierluigi E. Bigazzi, Department of Pathology, University of Connecticut School of Medicine, Farmington, CT 06030-3105, USA.

Rapid Communications (of no more than 3000 words and two tables and/or figures) will be considered for publication on an accelerated schedule. This category is not simply a place for short manuscripts but is reserved for papers that the authors feel will have unusually high impact and should be disseminated as soon as possible. The reasons for requesting a paper be considered as a Rapid Communication should be made clear in the cover letter Rapid communications will receive an expedited review, and reviewers will be requested to indicate only their recommendation for or against acceptance for publication, and the major reasons for this. Authors will be notified of their acceptability as early as possible. Once in production Rapid Communications will always be placed in the first available issue

Case Discussions are invited articles only. These are put together at the discretion of and under the direction of Dr. Kathleen Sullivan, who can be contacted at sullivak@mail.med.upenn.edu. Please do not choose this option when submitting your paper online. Should you have any questions, please contact the journal editorial office.

Letters to the Editor will be considered if they relate to articles published in the journal.

Editorials and Meeting Reports are published occasionally if they are directly relevant to the themes of the journal.

Preparation of Manuscripts

Manuscripts should be double-spaced throughout with standard one-column formatting and 1-inch margins on both sides. Pages should be numbered consecutively and organized as follows:

The title page (p. 1) should contain the article title, authors' names and complete affiliations, footnotes to the title, and the address for manuscript correspondence (including e-mail address and telephone and fax numbers).

The abstract (p. 2) must be a single paragraph that summarizes the main findings of the paper in less than 150 words. After the abstract a list of up to 10 keywords that will be useful for indexing or searching should be included.

The introduction should be as concise as possible, without subheadings.

Materials and methods should be sufficiently detailed to enable the experiments to be reproduced.

Results and Discussion may be combined and may be organized into subheadings.

Acknowledgments should be brief and should precede the references.

References should be cited in the text by a number in brackets and listed at the end of the paper in numerical order. Abbreviations of journal names should follow the style of Chemical Abstracts Service Source Index 1985. Unpublished observations and personal communications should be cited in the text as such, and should not be included in the reference list. Please note the following examples.

[1] N. Alexis, K. Griffith, M. Almond, D.B. Peden, IL-4 induces IL-6 and signs of allergic-type inflammation in the nasal airways of nonallergic individuals, Clin. Immunol. 104 (2002) 217-220.

[2] K. Shortman, L.Wu, Thymic dendritic cells, in: M.T. Lotze, A.W. Thomson (Eds.), Dendritic Cells, Academic Press, San Diego 1998, pp. 15-28.

[3] A. Silverstein, A History of Immunology, Academic Press, San Diego, 1989.

Figures
Number figures consecutively with Arabic numerals. For information on the preparation of electronic artwork, please see http://www.elsevier.com/artworkinstructions.

Color Figures
One color plate will be published in the printed issue free of charge in each article. However, 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 these illustrations are reproduced in color in the printed version. For further information on the preparation of electronic artwork, please see http://www.elsevier.com/artworkinstructions.
Please note: Because of technical complications that can arise in 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 files corresponding to all the color illustrations.

Tables
Tables should be numbered consecutively with Arabic numerals in order of appearance in the text. Each table should be given a short descriptive title directly above it, with essential footnotes below.

Preparation of Supplementary Material

Elsevier now accepts electronic supplementary material to support and enhance your scientific research. Supplementary files offer additional possibilities for publishing 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). 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. Please note, however, that supplementary material will not appear in the printed journal. Files can be stored on 3.5-inch diskette, ZIP disk, or CD (either MS-DOS or Macintosh). For more detailed instructions, please contact the Editorial Office (e-mail: clin@elsevier.com; telephone: (619) 699-6776; or fax: (619) 699-6700).

Proofs

PDF proofs will be e-mailed to the corresponding author. To avoid delay in publication, only necessary changes should be made, and corrections should be returned promptly. Authors will be charged for alterations that exceed 10% of the total cost of composition.

Author Inquiries

For inquiries relating to the submission of articles (including electronic submission where available) please contact clin@elsevier.com or support@elsevier.com.