Guide for Authors

Neurobiology of Learning and Memory publishes articles concerned with neural and behavioral plasticity, including learning and memory and related aspects of neural adaptation, at all levels of analysis from molecular biology through behavior.

Submission of Manuscripts



Manuscripts must be written in English and should be submitted via the journal's online submission and review Web site at http://ees.elsevier.com/ynlme. Please go to the Web site and upload your article and associated art files. A PDF of the article is generated, and the reviewing process is carried out using that PDF. Authors, reviewers, and editors send and receive all correspondence by e-mail, and paper copies are no longer required. Each manuscript should also be accompanied by a cover letter outlining the basic findings of the paper and their significance. There are no submission fees or page charges. For questions about the submission process, please contact the Editorial Office:

Neurobiology of Learning and Memory
Editorial Office
525 B Street, Suite 1900
San Diego, CA 92101-4495, USA
Telephone: (619) 699-6460; Fax: (619) 699-6801
E-mail: nlm@elsevier.com


Ethics
Papers submitted for publication in Neurobiology of Learning and Memory should be original contributions to the scientific literature. Manuscripts are accepted for review with 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 institution where the work was carried out; further, that any person cited as a source of personal communications has approved such citation. Written authorization may be required at the editors' discretion. Papers are accepted on the understanding that they are subject to minor editorial revision. Articles and any other material published in Neurobiology of Learning and Memory represent the opinions of the authors and should not be construed to reflect the opinions of the editors or the publisher. Manuscripts that do not meet the general criteria or standards for publication in Neurobiology of Learning and Memory will be immediately returned to the authors, without detailed review.

All research reported in Neurobiology of Learning and Memory must have been conducted in accord with the U.S. Public Health Service "Policy on Humane Care and Use of Laboratory Animals" and the National Institutes of Health "Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals," as well as with national, state, and local laws and regulations that apply to the use of animals in research. Where the USPHS and NIH regulations are not mandated, authors must specify that equivalent procedures have been used. Copies of the above documents are available from the Editorial Office or from The Office for Protection from Research Risks, National Institutes of Health, Building 31, Room 4B09, 9000 Rockville Pike, Bethesda, MD 20892, USA (OPRR PHS Policy on Humane Care and Use of Laboratory Animals), and NIH, 9000 Rockville Pike, Bethesda, MD 20892, USA (Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals).

Copyright
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 (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 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.

The Neuroscience Peer Review Consortium
Neurobiology of Learning and Memory is a member of the Neuroscience Peer Review Consortium (NPRC). The NPRC has been formed to reduce the time expended and, in particular, the duplication of effort by, and associated burden on reviewers involved in the peer review of original neuroscience research papers. It is an alliance of neuroscience journals that have agreed to accept manuscript reviews from other Consortium journals. By reducing the number of times that a manuscript is reviewed, the Consortium will reduce the load on reviewers and editors, and speed the publication of research results.

If a manuscript has been rejected by another journal in the Consortium, authors can now submit the manuscript to Neurobiology of Learning and Memory and indicate that the referees' reports from the first journal be made available to the editors of Neurobiology of Learning and Memory.

It is the authors' decision whether or not to indicate that a set of referee's reports should be forwarded from the first journal to Neurobiology of Learning and Memory. If an author does not wish for this to happen, the manuscript can be submitted to Neurobiology of Learning and Memory without reference to the previous submission. No information will be exchanged between journals except at the request of authors. However, if the original referees' reports suggested that the paper is of high quality, but not suitable for the first journal, then it will often be to an author's advantage to indicate that referees' reports should be made available.

Authors should revise the original submission in accordance with the first journal's set of referee reports, reformat the paper to Neurobiology of Learning and Memory's specification and submit the paper to Neurobiology of Learning and Memory with a covering letter describing the changes that have been made and informing the editors that they are happy for referees' reports to be forwarded from the first Consortium journal. Authors will be asked upon submission to Neurobiology of Learning and Memory the title of the first journal submitted to and the manuscript ID that was given by that journal. The editorial office of Neurobiology of Learning and Memory will request the referees' reports from the first journal.

The editors of Neurobiology of Learning and Memory will use forwarded referees' reports at their discretion. The editors may use the reports directly to make a decision, or they may request further reviews if they feel such are necessary.

Visit http://nprc.incf.org for a list of Consortium journals, as well as further information on the scheme.

Types of Papers
Neurobiology of Learning and Memory publishes research articles, reviews, and commentaries.

1. Research articles present results of original research.
2. Reviews ordinarily do not exceed 50 typed manuscript pages in length.
3. Commentaries should not exceed 800 words including references and should consist of comments dealing with technical, methodological, and/or theoretical issues raised by articles published in NLM. Omit abstract and section headings.

Language Services
Authors who require information about language editing and copyediting services pre- and post-submission please visit http://www.elsevier.com/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 http://www.elsevier.com/termsandconditions

Preparation of Manuscript
Manuscripts should be double-spaced throughout. All 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 include the species and strain used, type of preparation (chronic, acute, decerebrate, etc.), drugs and doses employed, research methods, major findings, conclusions, and interpretation of results. An appropriate length for an abstract is 150 to 250 words. In addition, a list of keywords suitable for indexing should be incuded on this page.

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.

References. Journal titles should not be abbreviated. Literature citations in the text consist of the surname(s) of the author(s) and the year of publication. If a work has two authors, both names are cited each time the reference occurs. When there are more than two authors, all authors are cited the first time the reference occurs and only the first author's name followed by "et al." (not italicized) and the date is used in subsequent citations. Multiple author citations that occur in running text are connected by "and," whereas in tabular and parenthetical material the names are joined by an ampersand (&). Multiple citations referencing a given point should be alphabetized by the names of the first author of each article. In instances where there are several publications by the same author(s) in a given year, the designations a, b, c, etc. should be used. Only articles that have been published or are in press should be included in the references. Unpublished results or personal communications should be cited as such in the text. References should be listed alphabetically and typed double-spaced as follows:

Conrad, C. D., Lupien, S. J., & McEwen, B. S. (1999). Support for a bimodal role for type II adrenal steroid receptors in spatial memory. Neurobiology of Learning and Memory, 72, 39-46.

Heimer, L., Zahm, D. S., & Alheid, G. F. (1995). Basal ganglia. In G. Paxinos (Ed.), The rat nervous system (pp. 579-628). San Diego: Academic Press.

Paxinos, G., & Watson, C. (1997). The rat brain in stereotaxic coordinates (3rd ed.). San Diego: Academic Press.

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

Color figures. Illustrations in color in the printed issue can be accepted only if the authors defray the cost. 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 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 consecutively numbered with Arabic numerals in order of their 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.

Preparation of supplementary data
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. 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.

Proofs
One set of page proofs in PDF format 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). Elsevier now sends PDF proofs thath can be annotated; for this you will need to download Adobe Reader version 7 available free from http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html. Instructions on how to annotate PDF files will accompany the proofs. The exact system requirements are given at the Adobe site: http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/acrrsystemreqs.html#70win

If you do not wish to use the PDF annotations function, you may list the corrections (including replies to the Query Form) and return 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 send by post.

Online publication

Your article will appear on Elsevier's online journal database ScienceDirect as an "Article in Press" within approximately 4-6 weeks of acceptance. Articles in Press for this journal can be viewed at http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/10747427.

An Article in Press may be cited prior to its publication in an issue of the journal by means of its unique digital object identifier (DOI) number, which does not change throughout the publication process.

Offprints
The corresponding author, at no cost, will be provided with a PDF file of the article via e-mail or, alternatively, 25 free paper offprints. 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.

Additional paper offprints can be ordered by the authors. An order form with prices will be sent to the corresponding author.

Author Inquiries
For inquiries relating to the submission of articles please visit this journal's homepage at http://www.elsevier.com/locate/ynlme. 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.

Special Subject Repositories
As a service to our authors, Elsevier will deposit to PubMed Central (PMC) author manuscripts on behalf of Elsevier authors reporting National Institutes of Health (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 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 that 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.

Disclaimer
Although 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.