Guide for Authors

The print edition of Best Practice & Research Clinical Rheumatology publishes review articles integrating the results from the latest original research articles into practical, evidence-based review articles. These articles seek to address the key clinical issues of diagnosis, treatment and patient management. Each issue follows a problem-orientated approach which focuses on the key questions to be addressed, clearly defining what is known and not known, covering the spectrum of clinical and laboratory rheumatological practice and research. Although most reviews are invited, the Editor welcomes suggestions from potential authors. They should first write an outline of the intended review and send this to:

Professor Anthony Woolf
Royal Cornwall Hospital
Treliske
Truro
Cornwall TR1 3LJ
UK

Fax: +44 1872 222857
Email: Anthony.Woolf@btopenworld.com

The online-only edition of Best Practice & Research Clinical Rheumatology publishes original research articles addressing all aspects of clinical rheumatology. Articles are published online only and listed in the print edition's Table of Contents.

Original research articles should be submitted on-line via EES: http://ees.elsevier.com/berh . Please refer to the 'Tutorial for Authors' located on the EES site for guidance on the electronic submission process.

If you are unable to submit online or have any general queries, please contact Professor Woolf at the address above regarding alternatives.

The following categories of manuscripts will be considered for online-only publication. (1) Original Research Articles are full length reports of original work. (2) Letters to the Editor-in-Chief. These contributions should be concerned with matters of opinion and criticism on contributions published in the journal and other matters of interest to researchers in our field. (3) Supplement issues may cover various topics in the field of rheumatology. They are approved by the Editor-in-Chief. In addition to the above categories various News Items and Announcements are printed.

Authors are asked to limit their Original Research Articles and their Letters to the Editor-in-Chief to 3,000 words. News Items and Announcements should be limited to 500 words.

Sections 1 - 9 below apply both to authors of commissioned review articles for the print edition and to authors of submitted original research articles for the online-only edition.

Sections 10 - 11 and the Formatting Instructions apply to authors of submitted original research articles only.

1. Authorship
All authors should have made substantial contributions to all of the following: (1) acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data, (2) drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content, (3) final approval of the version to be submitted.

2. Acknowledgements
All contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship as defined above should be listed in an acknowledgements section. Examples of those who might be acknowledged include a person who provided purely technical help, writing assistance, or a department chair who provided only general support. Authors should disclose whether they had any writing assistance and identify the entity that paid for this assistance.

3. Conflict of interest
At the end of the text, under a subheading "Conflict of interest statement" all authors must disclose any financial and personal relationships with other people or organisations that could inappropriately influence (bias) their work. Examples of potential conflicts of interest include employment, consultancies, stock ownership, honoraria, paid expert testimony, patent applications/registrations, and grants or other funding.

4. Role of the funding source
All sources of funding should be declared as an acknowledgement at the end of the text. Authors should declare the role of study sponsors, if any, in the collection, analysis and interpretation of data and in the writing of the manuscript. If the study sponsors had no such involvement, the authors should so state.

5. 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/wps/find/supportfaq.cws_home/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.

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's Rights Department, Philadelphia, PA, USA: Tel. (+1) 215 238 7869; Fax (+1) 215 238 2239; e-mail healthpermissions@elsevier.com . Requests may also be completed online via the Elsevier homepage: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/permissions.

6. Special Subject Repositories
Certain repositories such as PubMed Central ("PMC") are authorized under special arrangement with Elsevier to process and post certain articles. The following agreements have been established for authors whose articles have been accepted for publication in an Elsevier journal and whose underlying research is supported by one of the following funding bodies:
• National Institutes of Health. Elsevier will send a version of the author's accepted manuscript that includes author revisions following peer-review for public access posting 12 months after final publication. Because the NIH 'Public Access' policy is voluntary, authors may elect not to deposit such articles in PMC. If you wish to 'opt out' and not deposit to PMC, you may indicate this by sending an e-mail to: NIHauthorrequest@elsevier.com. More information regarding the agreement between Elsevier and the National Institutes of Health can be found at: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/authorshome.authors/nihauthorrequest
• The Wellcome Trust. Elsevier will send to PMC the version of the author's manuscript that reflects all author-agreed changes including those made post peer review, for public access posting immediately after final publication. Authors are required to initially subsidize their manuscript with fees reimbursed by the Wellcome Trust. Wellcome Trust authors, whose manuscripts are subsidized, will have the corresponding articles made free to non-subscribers on: http://www.sciencedirect.com and Elsevier's electronic publishing platforms. More information regarding the agreement between Elsevier and The Wellcome Trust can be found at: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/authorshome.authors/wellcometrustauthors

7. 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 which 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 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. Therefore, it is important to ensure that all of your 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.

8. Offprints
The Corresponding author, at no cost, will be provided with a PDF file of the article via e-mail. 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.

9. Ethics
Identifying information, including patients' images, names, initials, or hospital numbers, should not be included in videos, recordings, written descriptions, photographs, and pedigrees unless the information is essential for scientific purposes and you have obtained written informed consent for publication in print and electronic form from the patient (or parent, guardian or next of kin where applicable). If such consent is made subject to any conditions, Elsevier must be made aware of all such conditions. Written consents must be provided to Elsevier on request. Even where consent has been given, identifying details should be omitted if they are not essential. If identifying characteristics are altered to protect anonymity, such as in genetic pedigrees, authors should provide assurance that alterations do not distort scientific meaning and editors should so note. If such consent has not been obtained, personal details of patients included in any part of the paper and in any supplementary materials (including all illustrations and videos) must be removed before submission.

10. Randomised controlled trials
All randomised controlled trials submitted for publication in Best Practice & Research Clinical Rheumatology should include a completed Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials (CONSORT) flow chart. Please refer to the CONSORT statement website at: http://www.consort-statement.org for more information. Best Practice & Research Clinical Rheumatology has adopted the proposal from the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) which require, as a condition of consideration for publication of clinical trials, registration in a public trials registry. Trials must register at or before the onset of patient enrolment. The clinical trial registration number should be included at the end of the abstract of the article. For this purpose, a clinical trial is defined as any research study that prospectively assigns human participants or groups of humans to one or more health-related interventions to evaluate the effects of health outcomes. Health-related interventions include any intervention used to modify a biomedical or health-related outcome (for example drugs, surgical procedures, devices, behavioural treatments, dietary interventions, and process-of-care changes). Health outcomes include any biomedical or health-related measures obtained in patients or participants, including pharmacokinetic measures and adverse events. Purely observational studies (those in which the assignment of the medical intervention is not at the discretion of the investigator) will not require registration. Further information can be found at http://www.icmje.org. If a CONSORT flow chart is not included with the submitted manuscript, authors should provide a statement explaining the omission.

11. Disclosure of clinical trial results
In line with the position of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors, Best Practice & Research Clinical Rheumatology is willing to consider manuscripts which include results posted in the same clinical trials registry in which primary registration resides. It will not consider such postings to be prior publication, providing the results are presented in the form of a brief structured (500 words) abstract or table. However, divulging results in other circumstances (eg, investors' meetings) is strongly discouraged and may jeopardise consideration of the manuscript. Authors should fully disclose all postings in registries of the same or closely related work.

FORMATTING INSTRUCTIONS


General Information: It is the responsibility of the authors to write in standard, grammatical English. Spelling may be British or American, but must be consistent throughout the text, tables and legends to tables and figures. A word count should be provided in the 'Enter Comments' section of EES and on the title page of the manuscript file. Original Research Articles should be organised as follows: (a) Title page; (b) Abstract, Keywords, and Abbreviations; (c) Text with the following sections; Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results, Discussion, Acknowledgments; (d) References; (e) Tables; (f) Table Legends and Figure Legends. The pages should be numbered consecutively; the Title page is page 1, the Abstract page 2, etc. throughout the manuscript (including References, Tables, and Legends to Tables and Figures).
(a) Title Page: Identify the category of the communication on top of the page. Include a brief and descriptive Title of the article, the full Name(s) of the Author(s)(in the format First Name, Initials, and Surname) and the Name and Location of the institution where the research was carried out. A word count of the text should include Tables and Legends. Exclude the Abstract and Reference list. The name, postal and email addresses, telephone and fax numbers of the corresponding author should be included at the bottom of the title page as well as, if necessary, additional addresses of other Authors. If the manuscript was presented at a meeting, the name of the organization, the place and the date on which it was read must be indicated.
(b) Abstract Page: Abstracts are required for original articles only. The abstract is essential and the most read part of the paper. It should be informative, not descriptive, and should avoid abbreviations except for units of measure. An abstract for a regular article should not exceed 250 words and should end with the principal conclusions of the study. Structured abstracts are encouraged and should use the following headings: Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results and Conclusions.Keywords and Abbreviations should follow the abstract and be on the same page (or on a separate page if no abstract). List up to 6 key words for subject indexing, preferably to be taken from Index Medicus. List all abbreviations used.
(c) Text of Articles: The text should be arranged as follows: Introduction, without heading, should state the purpose of the investigation and give a short review of pertinent literature. Materials and methods should be described in detail with appropriate information about patients or experimental animals. Authors should stipulate that informed consent was obtained when applicable to research on humans, with the comment that the study was approved by the institutional Ethics Committee on human research. Manuscripts reporting animal experiments must include the statement that all animals received care in compliance with the American, European, or any other Convention on Animal Care, with the comment that the study was approved by the institutional Ethics Committee. Generic names of drugs and equipment should be used throughout the manuscript with brand names (proprietary name) and the name and location (city, state, country) of the manufacturer in parentheses when first mentioned in the text.Results should be reported concisely. Results presented either in tables or figures should be commented on in the text. Discussion is an interpretation of the results and their significance with reference to pertinent work by other authors. It should be clear and concise. The importance of the study and its limitations should be discussed.
Acknowledgments of financial or personal assistance should be placed at the end of the text.
(d) References: Consecutive numbers in square brackets should be used to indicate references in the text, e.g., [1,2], as part of the text and not raised above it.
The full reference should be cited in a numbered list essentially according to the Vancouver Uniform Requirements (5th ed., Ann Intern Med 1997;126(1):36-47).
References should contain names of all authors in small letters (surnames first followed by initials), Title of communication in lower case lettering, Title of Journal [abbreviated according to International Serials Data System-List of Serial title Word Abbreviations, 1985 (ISDS-ISO International Centre, 20 rue Bachaumont, 75002 Paris, France)], year of publication; volume number: first and last page number (see Ref.1).
Reference to Journal Supplement, cf. example (Ref. 2).
References to books should contain Author Name(s) in the same format as above: Title. Publisher's location: Name; Year of publication. page range (see Ref. 3).
References to multi-author books with editor(s) should contain Author Name(s) in the same format as above: Title of contribution. In: Name(s) of editor(s). Title of book. Publisher's location: Name; Year of publication. If necessary page range (see Ref. 4)
For communications which have been accepted for publication, but not yet printed, the reference must contain the journal name and year (see Ref. 5). Material referred to by the phrase "personal communication" or "submitted for publication" are not considered full references and should only be placed in parentheses at the appropriate place in the text, e.g., (Hessel 1997 personal communication).
Examples of references are shown below.
1. Ordljin TM, Shainoff JR, Lawrence SO, and Simpson-Haidaris PJ. Thrombin cleavage enhances exposure of heparin binding domain in the N-terminus of the fibrin beta chain. Blood 1996;88:2050-61.
2. Copley AL. The endoendothelial fibrin lining. Thromb Res 1983;(SV):1-154.
3. Davies JT, Rideal EK. Interfacial Phenomena. New York-London: Academic Press; 1961. p. 110-30.
4. Blomback B. Fibrinogen to fibrin transformation. In: Seegers WH, editor.
Blood Clotting Enzymology. New York-London: Academic Press; 1967. p. 143-215.
5. Leshner AI. Molecular mechanisms of cocaine addiction. N Engl J Med. In Press 1996.
(e) Tables and Figures:
Tables and figures are submitted via the online submission system EES with the accompanying article. Each Table should be included on a separate page. Tables should supplement but not duplicate the text. A brief title should be provided for each. Abbreviations used in Tables should be defined. Legends to Tables should be included at the end of the manuscript file. Figures should be in black and white, all details clear enough to permit reproduction, and legible in the actual size in which they should be published. If the number of tables and/or figures is excessive, the author(s) could be asked to eliminate some of them. Authors wishing to provide colour figures should ensure that the artwork is in an acceptable format (TIFF, EPS, or MS Office files) and at the correct resolution. For more detailed specification on submitting electronic illustrations, please see the following webpage: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/authorartwork

Peer Review: Original Research Articles are subjected to review by two referees. Acceptance is based upon the significance, originality and validity of the material presented. If you are interested in reviewing for the Journal, please contact the Editor-in-Chief.

Revised Manuscripts: When returning a revised manuscript to the Editor, provide a covering letter in the 'Enter Comments' section of Editorial Manager, replying to the Editor's and referees' comments, describing the changes which have been made in the revised version. Highlight the changes in the revised manuscript to facilitate editorial reassessment. Time for revision must never exceed 60 days.