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EXPERIMENTAL CELL RESEARCH


!!! Important information for NIH authors !!!



Guide for Authors

Experimental Cell Research (ECR) is dedicated to publishing manuscripts that significantly advance our understanding of cell and molecular biology. Examples of areas of interest to ECR are the cell cycle; gene regulation; chromatin; subcellular organization; signal transduction; nuclear import-export; intracellular trafficking; programmed cell death; the dynamics and function of the cytoskeleton, cell membrane, and extracellular matrix; the biology of meiosis and mitosis; cell motility and migration; mechanisms of cellular growth control and differentiation; and cell-cell interaction between cells in tissues or in culture. Manuscripts in the area of cancer research, particularly those that address fundamental aspects of cell and molecular biology, are also welcomed. Reports describing new experimental techniques and methods or of theoretical work having a direct bearing on experimental approaches are also appropriate for inclusion in the journal. Experimental manuscripts will be given the highest priority and can range from the subcellular to the organism level, including work on transgenic animals. Purely descriptive work, including descriptions of RNA or protein expression patterns, is given lower priority but can be accepted if it provides important new or unexpected information.

Acceptance of manuscripts will be based on scientific excellence and priority as judged by editors and reviewers, on relevance to the central themes of the journal, and on the interest of the results to a broad readership of cell and molecular biology. A manuscript of high intrinsic quality may be returned if it seems better suited to a more specialized journal. Also, manuscripts that present preliminary observations or an incremental increase in understanding are not encouraged.

Manuscripts are published in ECR under the condition that the author(s) agree to provide, in a timely manner, unique non-commercial reagents to other investigators upon request.

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 Experimental Cell Research Web site at http://ees.elsevier.com/yexcr). 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. If you are unable to provide an electronic version, please contact the editorial office prior to submission by e-mail: ecr@elsevier.com; telephone: (619) 699-6793; or fax: (619) 699-6211.

Authors are encouraged to suggest four competent reviewers in their field (include telephone number, fax number, and/or e-mail address for potential reviewers) and may also suggest individuals whom they wish to have excluded from the review process.

Acceptable file types. Once a paper is accepted, ECR cannot use PDF or PostScript files because they do not allow editing of the text. Most word-processing packages are acceptable; however, we prefer that authors use a recent version of Microsoft Word or Corel WordPerfect. Manuscripts saved with formatting intact are preferred. Rich-text format (.rtf extension) is acceptable, but plain text (.txt extension) files are discouraged. Submit each figure as a separate TIFF or EPS file.

Files created in layout programs such as Adobe FrameMaker or PageMaker, QuarkXPress, and Corel Ventura are unacceptable. Artwork should not be embedded within the manuscript. It must be supplied in electronic files separate from the manuscript file.

Terms. Original papers only will be considered. Manuscripts are accepted for review on the understanding that the same work has not been published, that it is not under consideration for publication elsewhere, and that its submission for publication has been approved by all of the authors and by the appropriate authority at the institution where the work was carried out. Authors must verify the wording of any cited personal communication with the persons who supplied the information and obtain approval for the use of their names in connection with the quoted information or for the citation of unpublished work; written evidence of such approval should accompany the manuscript. All material published in ECR represents the opinions of the authors and should not be construed to reflect the opinions of the Editors or the Publisher.

Upon acceptance of an article, authors will be asked to sign a "Journal Publishing Agreement" (for more information on this and copyright see External link http://www.elsevier.com/copyright). Acceptance of the agreement will ensure the widest possible dissemination of information. An e-mail (or letter) 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 of 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 External link 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 External link http://www.elsevier.com/permissions.

Manuscripts can be published in the format of regular articles. There is no strict size limitation on regular articles, although they usually do not exceed 15,000 words, preceded by an abstract not to exceed 200 words. ECR also publishes review articles, which should be between 3000 and 5000 words in length. ECR does not accept unsolicited review articles unless they are preapproved by the Editor-in-Chief. All review articles will be subject to review before publication.

Ethics of experimentation Authors describing investigations in animals or on human tissue must specify that the research conformed to the stipulations of the appropriate institutional review body and ethics committee.

Funding Body Agreements and Policies. Elsevier has established agreements and developed policies to allow authors who publish in Elsevier journals 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 External link http://www.elsevier.com/fundingbodies.

Authors' Rights. As an author you (or your employer or institution) retain certain rights; for details you are referred to: External link http://www.elsevier.com/authorsrights.

Language Services. Authors who require information about language editing and copyediting services pre- and post-submission please visit External link http://www.elsevier.com/locate/languagepolishing or contact authorsupport@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 External link http://www.elsevier.com/termsandconditions

Preparation of Manuscripts

Manuscripts should be double-spaced throughout. 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 200 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 to the literature should be cited by number in square brackets in the text and listed in numerical order at the end. Use the most recent edition of the Chemical Abstracts Service Source Index for abbreviations of journal titles. Please note the following examples:

[1] K.H. Tan, W. Hunziker, Compartmentalization of fas and fas ligand may prevent auto- or paracrine apoptosis in epithelial cells, Exp. Cell Res. 284 (2003) 281-288.
[2] E.A. Holleran, S. Karki, E.L.F. Holzbaur, The role of the dynactin complex in intracellular motility, in: K.W. Jeon (Ed.), International Review of Cytology, Academic Press, San Diego, 1998, Vol. 182, pp. 69-109.
[3] G.N. Stephanopoulos, A.A. Aristidou, J. Nielsen, Metabolic Engineering: Principles and Methodologies, Academic Press, San Diego, 1998.

Please ensure that the words 'this issue' are added to any references in the list (and any citations in the text) to other articles in the same Special Issue.

Figures. Number figures consecutively with Arabic numerals. Please visit our Web site at External link http://www.elsevier.com/artworkinstructions for detailed instructions on preparing electronic artwork. Figure legends should appear before the references and separate from the actual figure.

Color figures. One color plate will be published free of charge in each article, provided color is deemed scientifically necessary by the reviewers and the Editorial Board. Additional color figures will be charged to the author. 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 color 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 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 should be numbered consecutively with Arabic numerals in order of appearance in the text. Type each table double-spaced on a separate page with a short descriptive title typed directly above and with essential footnotes below.

DNA sequences and GenBank accession numbers. Authors wishing to enable other scientists to use the accession numbers cited in their papers via links to these sources should type this information in the following manner: For each and every accession number cited in an article, authors should type the accession number in bold, underlined text. Letters in the accession number should always be capitalized (see example below). This combination of letters and format will enable the typesetter to recognize the relevant texts as accession numbers and add the required link to GenBank's sequences.

Example: GenBank accession nos. AI631510 , AI631511 , AI632198 , and BF223228 ), a B-cell tumor from a chronic lymphatic leukemia (GenBank accession no. BE675048 ), and a T-cell lymphoma (GenBank accession no. AA361117 ).

Authors are encouraged to check accession numbers used very carefully. An error in a letter or number can result in a dead link.

In the final version of the printed article, the accession number text will not appear bold or underlined. In the final version of the electronic copy, the accession number text will be linked to the appropriate source in the NCBI databases, enabling readers to go directly to that source from the article.

Preparation of Supplementary Material

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). To ensure that your submitted material is directly usable, please provide data in one of our recommended file formats. 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 External link http://www.elsevier.com/artworkinstructions.

Proofs

PDF proofs will be sent by e-mail to the corresponding author. To avoid delay in publication, only necessary changes should be made, and corrections should be returned promptly.

Policy

It is understood that novel biological reagents described in manuscripts accepted for publication in ECR, e.g., DNA and antibodies, will be made available to scientists in academic research. All novel genetic sequence information must be deposited with GenBank or the EMBL database.

Author Inquiries

Register for free to receive email updates from the article tracking service at External link http://www.elsevier.com/trackarticle. The article tracking service also provides the facility to set up e-mail alerts to inform you of when an article's status has changed, as well as detailed artwork guidelines, 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.

Sponsored Articles

Experimental Cell Research offers authors or their institutions the option to sponsor non-subscriber access to their articles on Elsevier's electronic publishing platforms. For more information please click here.
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