Aims and Scope

The Journal of Cereal Science was established in 1983 to provide an International forum for the publication of original research papers of high standing covering all aspects of cereal science related to the functional and nutritional quality of cereal grains and their products.

The journal also publishes concise and critical review articles appraising the status and future directions of specific areas of cereal science and short rapid communications that present news of important advances in research. The journal aims at topicality and at providing comprehensive coverage of progress in the field.

Papers submitted to Journal of Cereal Science should not be purely descriptive or confirmatory in nature, but should be innovative and offer new insights into cereal science research.

Research Areas Include:


• Composition and analysis of cereal grains in relation to quality in end use
• Morphology, biochemistry, and biophysics of cereal grains relevant to functional and nutritional characteristics
• Structure and physicochemical properties of functionally and nutritionally important components of cereal grains such as polysaccharides, proteins, oils, enzymes, vitamins, and minerals
• Storage of cereal grains and derivatives and effects on nutritional and functional quality
• Genetics, agronomy, and pathology of cereal crops if there is a substantive relationship to end-use properties of cereal grains
• Functional and nutritional aspects of cereal-based foods and beverages, whether baked, fermented, or extruded
• Industrial products (e.g., starch derivatives, syrups, protein concentrates, and isolates) from cereal grains, and their technology
• functional genomics as it relates to end-use quality.

The Journal of Cereal Science publishes papers originating in any country. Papers dealing with topics of only restricted local interest will not be accepted, however, unless the information presented can be demonstrated to be of general applicability.

The Journal exists to advance scientific concepts in cereal science, and the content of papers published within it must be consistent with this goal.

Submission of Manuscripts

Submission for all types of manuscripts to Journal of Cereal Science proceeds totally online. Via the Elsevier Editorial System website for this journal, http://ees.elsevier.com/yjcrs you will be guided step-by-step through the creation and uploading of the various files. When submitting a manuscript to Elsevier Editorial System, authors need to provide an electronic version of their manuscript. For this purpose only original source files are allowed, so PDF files are not permitted. Once the uploading is done, the system automatically generates an electronic proof, which is then used for reviewing. All correspondence, including the Editor's decision and request for revisions, will be by e-mail. Authors may send queries concerning the submission process, manuscript status, or journal procedures to the Editorial Office at jcs@elsevier.com.

It is hoped that this list will be useful during the final checking of an article prior to submitting 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 designated as corresponding Author:
• E-mail address
• Full postal address
• Telephone and fax numbers
•All necessary files have been uploaded
• Keywords
• An alphabetical list of abbreviations
• All figure captions
• All tables (including title, description, footnotes)
• Manuscript has been "spellchecked"
• 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)
• Colour figures are clearly marked as being intended for colour reproduction on the Web (free of charge) and in print or to be reproduced in colour on the Web (free of charge) and in black-and-white in print
• If only colour on the Web is required, black and white versions of the figures are also supplied for printing purposes
For any further information please contact the Author Support Department at authorsupport@elsevier.com Research papers
The main activity of the Journal in fulfilling its mission is the publication of original and innovative research papers of a high scientific standard. These papers should: (a) report a specific identifiable advance in knowledge that has not been published elsewhere; (b) claim no more than can be substantiated by the results; (c) be logically consistent both within themselves and within the existing body of knowledge; (d) give enough information to allow the research to be tested and repeated by competent researchers elsewhere; and (e) give due reference to previously published work relevant to the research described.
Rapid communications: These are intended as vehicles for conveying news of advances in cereal science, the scientific importance of which merits preferential treatment. Scientific importance and novelty of the information will be the key criteria in judging their acceptability.
Research notes : These are intended as a means of publishing the results of studies of limited size that do not merit high-priority treatment.
Reviews : These should present critical appraisals of the current status and future directions of specific areas of topical interest. They are not intended as exhaustive, archival literature surveys over a broad front. They should aim to give balanced, objective assessments by giving due reference to relevant published work and not merely represent the prejudices of individual authors or summarise only work carried out by the authors or by those with whom the authors agree. They should also avoid undue speculation.
Letters to the Editor concerned with issues raised by articles recently published in the journal or by recent developments in cereal science are welcomed. These may be submitted informally to the Editor at any time. Letters should not exceed 750 words.
Book reviews : Please contact the Editor-in-Chief if you wish to submit a book review.

Review System
Papers are peer-reviewed by independent reviewers with appropriate expertise in the subject area of the paper. The review process is anonymous, although the reviewers' recommendations and comments are usually transmitted to the authors to help them in revising their manuscripts (which is almost invariably required). The Editors and reviewers attempt to make the review system as constructive and sympathetic as possible, although they must, at the same time, attempt to ensure that only papers of a high standard are published. Many contributors acknowledge the help they receive from the review process in improving their papers. No revision of Rapid Communications will be allowed in order to ensure rapid publication.

As well as advising on the paper's acceptability, the reviewers are also asked to give a priority rating, which will help to give the highest priority to papers that represent important new advances. Papers recommended for publication will be categorised as: (a) being of outstanding scientific standard and representing an important advance in the particular subject area; (b) being of high scientific standard but representing a logical or predictable extension of previous research; (c) presenting necessary information and of good scientific standard but being essentially confirmatory in nature.

Please note: authors may suggest the name of appropriate reviewers for their papers or may identify individual reviewers whom they would prefer not to review the manuscript; provided that valid reasons are given in the latter case the Editors will respect the author's wishes.

Originality of Research
Submission of a paper for consideration for publication in the Journal of Cereal Science will be held to imply that the material represents the results of original research or of an original interpretation of existing knowledge not previously published, that it is not under consideration for publication elsewhere, and that, if accepted for publication in the Journal of Cereal Science, it will not be published elsewhere in the same form, in English or any other language without the consent of the Editorial Board and the Publisher.

Resubmission of Revised Manuscripts
If a manuscript returned to the author for revision is not resubmitted within 6 weeks (making due allowance for postage times), it may on re-submission be deemed a new paper and the date of receipt altered accordingly.

The standard of preparation of the manuscript determines to a considerable extent the speed of processing and publication. Authors are advised in their own interests to read these notes carefully and to ensure that their manuscript meets the requirements; they are also urged to ensure that the manuscript does not contain superfluous material. Manuscripts should meet the obvious criteria of relevance, originality and scientific validity. Two other important attributes should also be considered: first, papers should be intelligible to an international readership, many of whom may not be experts in particular specialist fields with their attendant assumptions and jargon. Second, papers should contain adequate and concise information to enable a competent research worker to reproduce the work. Authors are urged to read their own manuscripts objectively and with the same critical approach that they would employ in reading the work of others.

All categories of manuscript should be typed on standard-sized (preferably A4) paper on one side of the paper only, triple-spaced with two wide margins (at least 3 cm all round). Pages should be numbered, and each line on the page should also be numbered. The first page should contain: the Title indicating the subject matter as briefly as possible and, in any case, in not more than 250 characters, including spaces; names of authors; address(es) of the laboratory(ies) where the work was done; full postal and e-mail address for correspondence; an alphabetically-arranged list of all abbreviations used; current addresses of authors, if different from above. The texts of different types of paper will differ and guidelines for each are set out below.

Key Word Index
To assist in the preparation of a key word index, authors should provide a list of up to four key words on the title page of the manuscript.

Language
The language of the Journal is English (Concise Oxford Dictionary, Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary). To expedite publication and to avoid ambiguities and errors, authors whose first language is not English, are strongly advised to have their manuscript checked by an English-speaking colleague who is knowledgeable about written English and English grammar. Contributors from North, Central and South America may use American spellings if they so wish. Authors from all other countries should use English spellings. For the latter, 's' spellings are preferred in words such as 'summarise', 'hydridise'. Care should be taken over the use of a- and b- as prefixes for carbohydrates. Greek letters α- and β- should be used only for enzymes that have specificity for glycosidic linkages with particular configuration at the anomeric carbon atom, e.g. a-glucanases, α- and β-glucosidases. In the particular case of alpha- and beta-amylases, both enzymes are specific for the (1n4)-a-linkage between glucose residues instarch polymers (and glycogen) and in this case 'alpha' and 'beta' should be spelled out in full in italics.

Nomenclature
Abbreviations and symbols should, wherever possible, follow the IUBMB recommendations on Biochemical and Organic Nomenclature, Symbols and Terminology, at http://www.chem.qmul.ac.uk/iubmb/.

Non-standard abbreviations should be kept to a minimum. The words to be abbreviated should be spelled out in full on the first citation and the abbreviation given in parentheses. All abbreviations used should be listed and their meanings given on the title page (this list will be included on the front page of the published article). Enzyme nomenclature should follow the IUBMB Enzyme Commission recommendations ( http://www.chem.qmul.ac.uk/enzyme/) (relevant EC numbers should be given).

The International System of units (SI) should be followed (see "Quantities, Units and Symbols in Physical Chemistry", Mills, Ian; Cvitas, Tomislav; Homann, Klaus; Kallay, Nikola; Kuchitsu, Kozo, C R C Press Blackwell Science (UK), ISBN: 0632035838, 1995, or "Specification for quantities, units and symbols. Physical chemistry and molecular physics" BS 5775-8:1993 ISO 31-8:1992, ISBN: 0580221954, 1993). You may also wish to consult the website of the Bureau International des Poids et Mesures, http://www1.bipm.org/en/si.

Non-standard, but conventional, units may be accepted if unambiguous and where there is no SI unit. Non-standard, but conventional, units may be accepted if unambiguous and where there is no SI unit.

Research Papers
Papers must contain a maximum of 6000 words of text, no more than six tables or figures and up to 30 references. The second page of the manuscript should contain the Abstract only. The text should then follow the sequence: Introduction, Experimental, Results, Discussion, Acknowledgements, References, Tables, Figure Captions and, finally, Figures. Please number the pages, and each section should also be numbered.

The Abstract should be clear and concise with a maximum of 200 words. When submitting your article, please ensure that the abstract is included in your manuscript text as well as supplying the manuscript online when requested.

The Introduction should be brief and contain sufficient information to provide the background to the research reported in the paper, but should not present a complete historical review. The objectives of the work (but not the results or conclusions) should be stated clearly at the end of this section.

The Experimental section should contain sufficient information on material and methods to enable a competent worker to repeat the work. Details of methods published in commonly available journals need not be given at length; instead, appropriate references should be quoted and a brief summary of the method given.

The Results section should present concisely the experiments done and the results obtained. Discussion of the results should not appear in this section.

The Discussion section should interpret the findings in the context of current knowledge but should not reiterate material in the Results section. Authors should be careful to distinguish between interpretation and speculation and should avoid the latter. Conclusions should be incorporated in the discussion, not as a separate section.

For conciseness and clarity, it may be convenient to combine the Results and Discussions section, in which case a brief concluding paragraph would be necessary.

Acknowledgements should be brief.

The References should be checked carefully before submission. Responsibility for the accuracy of bibliographic citations lies entirely with the authors.

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

List: 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. Journal titles should be given in full.

Examples:

Reference to a journal publication:
Cuvelier, G., Launay, B., 1986. Concentration regimes in xanthum gum solutions deduced from flow and viscosity properties. Carbohydrate Polymers 6, 321-333.

Reference to a book:
Strunk Jr., W., White, E.B., 1979. The Elements of Style, third ed. Macmillan, New York.

Reference to a chapter in an edited book:
Mettam, G.R., Adams, L.B., 1999. How to prepare an electronic version of your article. In: Jones, B.S., Smith, R.Z. (Eds.), Introduction to the Electronic Age. E-Publishing Inc., New York, pp. 281-304.

It is important that the references cited should be accessible to the general reader. References to unpublished materials should not appear in the reference list. References to papers `in press' or in obscure sources should also be avoided, as should references to proceedings of conferences/conference abstracts available only to the conference attendees. References to papers in private publications, e.g. a report appearing in a publication directed to the membership of a private research organisation, must not be used.

Citing and listing of web references. As a minimum, the full URL should be given. Any further information, if known (author names, dates, reference to a source publication, etc.), should also be given. Web references can be listed separately (e.g., after the reference list) under a different heading if desired, or can be included in the reference list.

Reviews
The layout for reviews is flexible, and will be dictated to a large extent by the points that the author is attempting to discuss. An Abstract should be included, however, and the background should be contained in an Introduction. Details on citation and listing of references, preparation of figures and tables, abbreviations and units, etc., are as for conventional research papers.

Rapid Communications and Research Notes
The format for these papers is flexible. No Abstract is required, and there is no specification as to number of tables, figures or references. The paper should not be split into sections, although it should begin with a few sentences to introduce the subject area and to indicate the nature of the problem being examined. Likewise, at the end of the paper the conclusions drawn from the work should be summarised.

Rapid Communications and Research Notes will be strictly limited to two printed pages in the journal (equivalent of approx. 2000 words) in total, i.e. including title, references, tables and figures, etc. Where figures or tables are used, the number of words must be reduced to compensate for these, giving due regard to the size of such tables and figures. Other details on preparation are as for conventional research papers.

For Rapid Communications, authors are required to justify in a covering letter why the paper should be accorded priority treatment.

Photographs, charts and diagrams are all to be referred to as 'Figure(s)' and should be numbered consecutively in the order to which they are referred. They should accompany the manuscript, but not be included within the text. All figures are to have a caption that should always indicate the source of the figure. Captions should be supplied on a separate sheet. A maximum total of 5 figures, tables and boxes are allowed. Boxes are useful to highlight a concept that is central to the article, or to set aside necessary explanatory material that might otherwise impede the flow of the text. Boxes may contain only text, or a mixture of text and figures. Tables should be numbered consecutively and given a suitable caption and each table typed on a separate sheet. Arabic numerals should be used. Footnotes to tables should be typed below the table and should be referred to by superscript lowercase letters. No vertical rules should be used. Titles should be brief but unambiguous. Any explanatory material should be itemised in footnotes and indicated with symbols or superscript, lower case letters (a,b,c). Standard abbreviations and units should be used wherever possible. Experimental values should be qualified by indications of statistical significance (standard deviation, standard error of the mean, number of determinations, P-value, etc.) or range. Tables should not duplicate results presented elsewhere in the manuscript, (e.g. in graphs).

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 or not 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 http://www.elsevier.com/artworkinstructions. Please note: Because of technical complications which can arise by 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 prints corresponding to all the colour illustrations. As only one figure caption may be used for both colour and black and white versions of figures, please ensure that the figure captions are meaningful for both versions, if applicable.

Preparation of electronic illustrations
Submitting your artwork in an electronic format helps us to produce your work to the best possible standards, ensuring accuracy, clarity and a high level of detail.
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, Helvetica, Times, Symbol.
•Number the illustrations according to their sequence in the text.
•Use a logical naming convention for your artwork files.
•Provide all illustrations as separate files and as hardcopy printouts on separate sheets.
•Provide captions to illustrations separately.
•Produce images near to the desired size of the printed version.

A detailed guide on electronic artwork is available on our website: http://www.elsevier.com/artworkinstructions You are urged to visit this site.

Preparation of supplementary data . Elsevier now 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. 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 http://authors.elsevier.com. When your manuscript is received at the Publisher it is considered to be in its final form. Proofs are not to be regarded as 'drafts'. One set of page proofs in PDF format will be sent by e-mail to the corresponding author, to be checked for typesetting/editing. No changes in, or additions to, the accepted (and subsequently edited) manuscript will be allowed at this stage. Proofreading is solely your responsibility. A form with queries from the copy editor may accompany your proofs. Please answer all queries and make any corrections or additions required. The Publisher reserves the right to proceed with publication if corrections are not communicated. Return corrections within two working days of receipt of the proofs. Should there be no corrections, please confirm this. Elsevier will do everything possible to get your article corrected and published as quickly and accurately as possible. In order to do this we need your help. When you receive the (PDF) proof of your article for correction, it is important to ensure that all of your corrections are sent back to us in one communication. Subsequent corrections will not be possible, so please ensure your first sending is complete. Note that this does not mean you have any less time to make your corrections, just that only one set of corrections will be accepted. Proofs are to be returned to proofcorrections@elsevier.com. Twenty-five offprints will be supplied free of charge. If colour has been paid for within the article, 100 extra offprints will be supplied free of charge. Additional offprints and copies of the issue can be ordered at a specially reduced rate using the order form sent to the corresponding author after the manuscript has been accepted. Orders for reprints (produced after publication of an article) will incur a 50% surcharge.

Please note: Papers published in the Journal of Cereal Science do not incur page charges or any manuscript processing fee. Upon acceptance of an article, authors will be asked to transfer copyright (for more information on copyright see 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 Ltd., Global Rights Department, The Boulevard, Langford Lane, Oxford, OX5 1GB, UK; phone: (+44) 1865 843830, fax: (+44) 1865 853333, e-mail: permissions@elsevier.com Authors can keep track of the progress of their accepted article, and set up e-mail alerts informing them of changes to their manuscript's status, at http://www.elsevier.com/trackarticle. Contact details for questions arising after acceptance of an article, especially those relating to proofs, are provided when an article is accepted for publication.