Hormones and Behavior is the official journal of the Society for Behavioral Neuroendocrinology. It publishes original research articles as well as occasional reviews and special issues concerning hormone-brain-behavior relationships, broadly defined. The journal's scope ranges from laboratory and field studies concerning neuroendocrine as well as endocrine mechanisms controlling the development or adult expression of behavior to studies concerning the environmental control and evolutionary significance of hormone-behavior relationships. The journal welcomes studies conducted on species ranging from invertebrates to mammals, including humans.

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 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 Manuscripts

It is a condition of publication that all manuscripts must be written in clear and grammatical English and be submitted to the Hormones and Behavior website at http://ees.elsevier.com/hb. 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 website.
There are no submission fees or page 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 Hormones and Behavior will be immediately returned to the authors, without detailed review. When submitting a manuscript, authors should provide the names of three persons who they feel are qualified to review the manuscript; they may also request that the manuscript not be sent to particular persons for review. The Editors will select two or three reviewers for each manuscript.

Upon acceptance of an article, authors will be asked to sign 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 letter will be sent to the corresponding author confirming receipt of the manuscript together with a link to the online version of the "Journal Publishing Agreement".

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 Rights Department, P.O. Box 800, Oxford OX5 1DX, UK; phone: (+44) 1865 843830, fax: (+44) 1865 853333, e-mail: permissions@elsevier.com. Requests may also be completed online via the Elsevier home page ( http://www.elsevier.com/locate/permissions).

Papers that depart from the format stated in the Guide for Authors below will be returned for correction before being considered for review.

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 title of the paper should be brief; no longer than 120 characters in length, and should capture and communicate the key message of your research to a broader audience. To accomplish this,, abbreviations, (unless familiar to a broad audience), should be avoided.

The abstract (p. 2) must be a single paragraph that summarizes the main findings of the paper in less than 250 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 provide a context for the new results being presented while giving proper attribution to relevant, prior research on the topic.

The name and date system should be used for citing all references. 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.

Examples: "as demonstrated (Allan, 1996a, 1996b, 1999; Allan and Jones, 1995). Kramer et al. (2000) have recently shown. . . ."

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 letters "a", "b", "c", etc., placed after the year of publication.

Journal titles should be abbreviated according to Index Medicus.

Please note the following examples:

Degroot, L. (Ed.), 1989. Endocrinology. Saunders, Philadelphia.

Fleming, A.S., Corter, C., Stallings, J., Steiner, M., 2002. Testosterone and prolactin are associated with emotional responses to infant cries in new father. Horm. Behav. 42, 399-413.

McEwen, B.S., Sakai, R.R., Spencer, R.L., 1993. Adrenal steroid effects of the brain: versatile hormones with good and bad effects. In: J. Schulkin (Ed.), Hormonally Induced Changes in Mind and Brain. Academic Press, New York, pp. 221-365.

Figures should be in a finished form suitable for publication. Number figures consecutively with Arabic numerals. Please visit our website at http://authors.elsevier.com/artwork for detailed instructions on preparing electronic artwork.

Authors are requested to number lines continuously throughout the manuscript with Arabic numerals.

Color figures

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 http://authors.elsevier.com/artwork. [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.]

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.

Cover artwork. Authors are encouraged to submit photos or other artwork associated with their article for possible use on the cover of the issue of Hormones and Behavior in which the article appears. The author whose artwork is chosen for the cover receives a gratis issue.

Tables should be numbered consecutively with Arabic numerals in order of appearance in the text. Each table should be double-spaced on a separate page with a short descriptive title typed directly above and with essential footnotes below.

Language editing

International Science Editing and Asia Science Editing can provide English language and copyediting services to authors who want to publish in scientific, technical and medical journals and need assistance before they submit their article or before it is accepted for publication. Authors can contact these services directly: International Science Editing ( http://www.internationalscienceediting.com) and Asia Science Editing ( http://www.asiascienceediting.com) or, for more information about language editing services, authors may contact authorsupport@elsevier.com who will be happy to deal with any questions. 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 and conditions ( http://authors.elsevier.com/terms_and_conditions.html).

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: 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 http://www.elsevier.com/authors.

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. Authors will be charged for alterations in excess of 10% of the total cost of composition.

Ethics: When human subjects are used, manuscripts must be accompanied by a statement that the experiments were undertaken with the understanding and written consent of each subject, with the approval of the appropriate local ethics committee, and in compliance with national legislation and the Code of Ethical Principles for Medical Research Involving Human Subjects of the World Medical Association (Declaration of Helsinki) [ http://www.wma.net/e/policy/b3.htm. When experimental animals are used, the materials and methods section must clearly indicate that adequate measures were taken to minimise pain or discomfort, and that the experiments were conducted in accordance with international standards on animal welfare as well as being compliant with local and national regulations. Studies are expected to be compliant with minimal standards as defined by the European Communities Council Directive of 24 November 1986 (86/609/EEC) . For more information on Animal Ethics please see below 'Animal Welfare' section.

Animal Welfare

It is expected that investigators will adhere to the highest possible standards for the humane treatment of animals used in laboratory or field studies reported in Hormones and Behavior. This includes the legal acquisition of laboratory animals and the authorized use of wild animals. It also includes the use of appropriate anesthetics and analgesics for surgery and approved methods of euthanasia, as specified in the United States by the National Institutes of Health Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals (DHEW Publication 80-23, Revised 1985, Office of Science and Health Reports, DRR/ NIH, Bethesda, MD 20205) or by an equivalent agency in other countries. A statement attesting to the authors' adherence to these NIH standards, or their equivalents, must be included in the Methods section of all manuscripts published in Hormones and Behavior.

Hormone Assays

All assay data should be accompanied by a description of the antibodies used, the sensitivity of the assay, and statistical validation (e.g., inter- and intra-assay variance).

Offprints:

This journal gives either an E-offprint (default) or 50 gratis paper offprints (not both). AU must request to receive the 50 gratis paper offprints.

For enquiries relating to the submission of articles (including electronic submission where available) please visit this journal's homepage. You can track accepted articles at 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

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.