Guide for Authors
The goal
of Frontiers in Neuroendocrinology is to present reviews of particularly exciting, rapidly moving, and, in some instances, controversial
aspects of the broad field of brain-endocrine interactions. This includes integrative, cellular, and molecular aspects of hormonally
active peptides, including those that are common to many different tissues. It also includes neurotransmitters that regulate the secretion
of hypothalamic hormones, and comparative and clinical neuroendocrinology. Most of the reviews are invited, but unsolicited reviews are
also welcome provided it is understood that they will be subject to rigorous and thorough peer review. In addition, the journal may contain
occasional editorials and, when appropriate, letters to the editors. Because manuscripts will be peer reviewed and Elsevier will provide
rapid publication, authors may wish to include original data as well as refer to previously published material. Of course, the original
data will have to be presented in sufficient detail for review. Alternatively, authors may wish to cite data that are being submitted
elsewhere. This is permissible, provided a reference that includes the name of the journal is inserted in the text.
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.
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carried out, and that, if accepted, it will not be published elsewhere including electronically in the same form, in English or in any
other language, without the written consent of the copyright-holder.
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.
US National Institutes
of Health (NIH) voluntary posting (" Public Access") policy.
As a service to our authors, Elsevier will deposit to PubMed Central
(PMC) author manuscripts on behalf of Elsevier authors reporting NIH funded research. This service is a continuation of Elsevier's 2005
agreement with the NIH when the NIH introduced their voluntary 'Public Access Policy.'
The service will help authors comply with the
National Institutes of Health (NIH) revised ''Public Access Policy,'' effective April 7, 2008. The NIH's revised policy requires that
NIH-funded authors submit to PubMed Central (PMC), or have submitted on their behalf, their peer-reviewed author manuscripts, to appear
on PMC no later than 12 months after final publication.
Elsevier will send to PMC the final peer-reviewed manuscript, which was accepted
for publication and sent to Elsevier's production department, and that reflects any author-agreed changes made in response to peer-review
comments. Elsevier will authorize the author manuscript's public access posting 12 months after final publication. Following the deposit
by Elsevier, authors will receive further communications from Elsevier and NIH with respect to the submission.
Authors are also welcome
to post their accepted author manuscript on their personal or institutional web site. Please note that consistent with Elsevier's author
agreement, authors should not post manuscripts directly to PMC or other third party sites. Individual modifications to this general policy
may apply to some Elsevier journals and society publishing partners.
As a leading publisher of scientific, technical and medical (STM)
journals, Elsevier has led the industry in developing tools, programs and partnerships that provide greater access to, and understanding
of, the vast global body of STM information. This service is an example of Elsevier willingness to work cooperatively to meet the needs
of all participants in the STM publishing community.
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
Manuscripts must be written in grammatical English and
submitted using the journal's online submission and review Web site at
http://ees.elsevier.com/fin. To use this submission
route, please go to the Web site and upload your article and its associated artwork. A PDF is generated and the reviewing process is
carried out using that PDF. All correspondence between editors, authors, and reviewers is performed on this system, and paper copies
are no longer required.
For questions regarding submission, please contact:
Frontiers in Neuroendocrinology Editorial
Office 525 B Street, Suite 1900 San Diego, CA 92101-4495, USA Telephone: (619) 699-6495 Fax: (619) 699-6859 E-mail:
fin@elsevier.com.
There are no submission fees or page charges. Each manuscript should be accompanied by a letter outlining the basic findings of the
paper and their significance.
Manuscripts should be double-spaced throughout with length between 8000 and 15000 words, excluding
references and tables. 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 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.
Acknowledgments should
be brief and should precede the references.
References should be listed in strict alphabetical order by author(s) and then
numbered and cited in the text by numbers in square brackets. Chronological order should be used only in the case of multiple papers
with the exact same authors. A list of references should be typed double-spaced at the end of the text. The names of all coauthors, opening
and closing page numbers, and full titles of papers must be given. The list should include only published papers or papers that have
been formally accepted for publication; list the latter as in press and give the name of the journal. Papers that are in preparation
or have been submitted for publication, as well as personal communications and references to unpublished data or theses, should not be
included in the References, but should be identified in parentheses, with the names and initials of the investigators, where they are
discussed in the text; for example, H. A. Jones and Q. X. Smith, unpublished data; M. J. Maestrioni and S. W. Calgeri, submitted for
publication. For abbreviations of journal names, refer to List of Journals Indexed in Index Medicus available from the U.S. Government
Printing Office at
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/pubs/pubcat.html.
Accuracy of reference data is the responsibility of the
author(s).
[1] K.A. Mesce, S.E. Fahrback, Integration of endocrine signals that regulate insect ecdysis, Front. Neuroendocrinol.
23 (2002) 179-199.
[2] E.E. Muller, G. Nistico, Brain Messengers and the Pituitary, Academic Press, San Diego, 1989.
[3] M.C. Reich,
Fractal neuronal firing patterns, in: T. McKenna, J. Davis, S.F. Zornetzer (Eds.), Single Neuron Computation, Academic Press, San Diego,
1992, pp. 589-601.
Submit your article
lease submit your article via
http://ees.elsevier.com/fin/
Use of wordprocessing software
It is important that the file be
saved in the native format of the wordprocessor used. The text should be in single-column format. Keep the layout of the text as simple
as possible. Most formatting codes will be removed and replaced on processing the article. In particular, do not use the wordprocessor's
options to justify text or to hyphenate words. However, do use bold face, italics, subscripts, superscripts etc. When preparing tables,
if you are using a table grid, use only one grid for each individual table and not a grid for each row. If no grid is used, use tabs,
not spaces, to align columns. The electronic text should be prepared in a way very similar to that of conventional manuscripts (see also
the Guide to Publishing with Elsevier:
http://www.elsevier.com/guidepublication). Note that source files of figures, tables
and text graphics will be required whether or not you embed your figures in the text. See also the section on Electronic artwork.
To
avoid unnecessary errors you are strongly advised to use the 'spell-check' and 'grammar-check' functions of your wordprocessor.
Article structure
Essential title page information
•
Title.
Concise and informative. Titles are often used in information-retrieval systems. Avoid abbreviations and formulae where possible.
•
Author names and affiliations.
Where the family name may be ambiguous (e.g., a double name), please indicate this clearly.
Present the authors' affiliation addresses (where the actual work was done) below the names. Indicate all affiliations with a lower-case
superscript letter immediately after the author's name and in front of the appropriate address. Provide the full postal address of each
affiliation, including the country name and, if available, the e-mail address of each author.
•
Corresponding author.
Clearly indicate who will handle correspondence at all stages of refereeing and publication, also post-publication.
Ensure that telephone
and fax numbers (with country and area code) are provided in addition to the e-mail address and the complete postal address. Contact
details must be kept up to date by the corresponding author.
•
Present/permanent address.
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. The address at which the author actually did the work must be retained as the main,
affiliation address. Superscript Arabic numerals are used for such footnotes.
Graphical abstract
A
Graphical abstract is optional and should summarize the contents of the article in a concise, pictorial form designed to capture the
attention of a wide readership online. Authors must provide images that clearly represent the work described in the article. Graphical
abstracts should be submitted as a separate file in the online submission system. Image size: Please provide an image with a minimum
of 531 × 1328 pixels (h × w) or proportionally more. The image should be readable at a size of 5 × 13 cm using a regular
screen resolution of 96 dpi. Preferred file types: TIFF, EPS, PDF or MS Office files. See
http://www.elsevier.com/graphicalabstracts
for examples.
Authors can make use of Elsevier's Illustration and Enhancement service to ensure the best presentation of their images
also in accordance with all technical requirements:
Illustration
Service.
Highlights
Highlights are mandatory for this journal. They consist
of a short collection of bullet points that convey the core findings of the article and should be submitted in a separate file in the
online submission system. Please use 'Highlights' in the file name and include 3 to 5 bullet points (maximum 85 characters, including
spaces, per bullet point). See
http://www.elsevier.com/highlights for examples.
Database
linking
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):
•
ASTM: ASTM Standards Database
(ASTM ID: G63)
•
CCDC: Cambridge Crystallographic Data Centre
(CCDC ID: AI631510)
•
GenBank: Genetic sequence database
at the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) (GenBank ID: BA123456)
•
GEO:
Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO ID: GSE27196; GEO ID: GPL5366; GEO ID: GSM9853)
•
MI:
EMBL-EBI OLS Molecular Interaction Ontology (MI ID: 0218)
•
MINT:
Molecular INTeractions database (MINT ID: 6166710)
•
NCBI Taxonomy:
NCBI Taxonomy Browser (NCBI Taxonomy ID: 48184)
•
NCT: ClinicalTrials.gov
(NCT ID: NCT00222573)
•
OMIM: Online Mendelian Inheritance
in Man (OMIM ID: 601240)
•
PDB: Worldwide Protein Data
Bank (PDB ID: 1TUP)
•
TAIR: The Arabidopsis Information Resource
database (TAIR ID: AT1G01020)
•
UniProt: Universal Protein Resource
Knowledgebase (UniProt ID: Q9H0H5)
Electronic artwork
General points
•
Make sure you use uniform lettering and sizing of your original artwork.
• Save text in illustrations as 'graphics' or enclose
the font.
• Only use the following fonts in your illustrations: Arial, Courier, Times, Symbol.
• Number the illustrations
according to their sequence in the text.
• Use a logical naming convention for your artwork files.
• Provide captions
to illustrations separately.
• Produce images near to the desired size of the printed version.
• Submit each figure
as a separate file.
A detailed guide on electronic artwork is available on our website:
http://www.elsevier.com/artworkinstructions
You are urged to visit this site; some excerpts from the detailed information are given here.
Formats
Regardless
of the application used, when your electronic artwork is finalised, please 'save as' or convert the images to one of the following formats
(note the resolution requirements for line drawings, halftones, and line/halftone combinations given below):
EPS: Vector drawings.
Embed the font or save the text as 'graphics'.
TIFF: Color or grayscale photographs (halftones): always use a minimum of 300 dpi.
TIFF: Bitmapped line drawings: use a minimum of 1000 dpi.
TIFF: Combinations bitmapped line/half-tone (color or grayscale): a
minimum of 500 dpi is required.
If your electronic artwork is created in a Microsoft Office application (Word, PowerPoint, Excel)
then please supply 'as is'.
Please do not:
• Supply files that are optimised for screen use (e.g., GIF, BMP, PICT,
WPG); the resolution is too low;
• Supply files that are too low in resolution;
• Submit graphics that are disproportionately
large for the content.
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 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 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 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.
Color
figures for exclusive use as
cover illustrations may be submitted by authors who are also submitting a manuscript for consideration.
These figures do not need to relate to the manuscript being submitted but should relate to the larger scope and focus of
Frontiers
in Neuroendocrinology.
Figure captions
Number figures consecutively with Arabic
numerals. Please visit our Web site at
http://www.elsevier.com/artworkinstructionsfor detailed instructions on preparing
electronic artwork.
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. For an extra charge, paper offprints can be ordered via
the offprint order form which is sent once the article is accepted for publication. 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.
