It is hoped that this list will be useful during the final checking of an article prior to sending it to the journal's editor 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
• All figure captions
• All tables (including title, description, footnotes)
• Further considerations
• Manuscript has been "spell 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)
• Colour figures are clearly marked as being intended for colour reproduction or to be reproduced in black-and-white

For any further information please contact the Author Support Department at authorsupport@elsevier.com General

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and tacitly or explicitly by the responsible authorities where the work was carried out, and that, if accepted, it will not be published elsewhere in the same form, in English or in any other language, without the written consent of the Publisher.

Upon acceptance of an article, authors will be asked to transfer 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 pre-printed forms for use by authors in these cases: contact Elsevier Global Rights Department, P.O. Box 800, Oxford, OX5 1DX, UK; phone: (+44) 1865 843830, fax: (+44) 1865 853333, permissions@elsevier.com
Should authors be requested by the editor to revise the text, the revised version should be submitted within two months. After this period, the article will be regarded as a new submission.

On-line submission to the journal prior to acceptance

Submission to this journal proceeds totally on-line. Use the following guidelines to prepare your article. Via the "Author Gateway" page of this journal ( http://authors.elsevier.com/journal/seizure) you will be guided stepwise through the creation and uploading of the various files. Once the uploading is done, our system automatically generates an electronic (PDF) proof, which is then used for reviewing. It is crucial that all graphical and tabular elements be placed within the text, so that the PDF is suitable for reviewing. All correspondence, including notification of the Editor's decision and requests for revisions, will be by e-mail. In general, no separate proof is sent to you: the PDF is your proof. A proof will be provided only when the final layout of the article has to differ significantly from that in the initial PDF.

The above represents a very brief outline of this form of submission. It can be advantageous to print this 'Guide for Authors' section from the site for reference in the subsequent stages of article preparation.

Electronic format requirements for accepted articles

General points
We accept most word-processing formats, but Word, WordPerfect or LaTeX is preferred. Always keep a backup copy of the electronic file for reference and safety. Save your files using the default extension of the program used.

Word processed documents
It is important that the file be saved in the native format of the word processor 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 word-processor's options to justify text or to hyphenate words. However, do use bold face, italics, subscripts, superscripts etc. Do not embed 'graphically designed' equations or tables, but prepare these using the word-processor's facility. 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 Author Gateway's Quickguide: http://authors.elsevier.com/artwork/seizure). Do not import the figures into the text file but, instead, indicate their approximate locations directly in the electronic text and on the manuscript. See also the section on Preparation of electronic illustrations.

To avoid unnecessary errors you are strongly advised to use the 'spellchecker' function of your word processor. Presentation of manuscript

General
Please write your text in good English (American or British usage is accepted, but not a mixture of these). Italics are to be used for expressions of Latin origin, for example, in vivo, et al., per se. Use decimal points (not commas); use a space for thousands (10 000 and above).

Set out the entire manuscript using double spacing and wide (3 cm) margins. (Avoid full justification, i.e., do not use a constant right-hand margin.) Ensure that each new paragraph is clearly indicated. Present tables and figure legends on separate pages at the end of the manuscript. If possible, consult a recent issue of the journal to become familiar with layout and conventions. Number all pages consecutively.

Provide the following data on the title page (in the order given):

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 is willing to 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.

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.

Abstract
A concise and factual abstract is required (maximum length 250 words). The abstract should state briefly the purpose of the research, the principal results and major conclusions. An abstract is often presented separate from the article, so it must be able to stand alone.
References should therefore be avoided, but if essential, they must be cited in full, without reference to the reference list.

Keywords
Immediately after the abstract, provide a maximum of six keywords, avoiding general and plural terms and multiple concepts (avoid, for example, 'and', 'of'). Be sparing with abbreviations: only abbreviations firmly established in the field may be eligible. These keywords will be used for indexing purposes.

Abbreviations
Define abbreviations that are not standard in this field at their first occurrence in the article: in the abstract but also in the main text after it. Ensure consistency of abbreviations throughout the article.

Acknowledgements
Collate acknowledgements in a separate section at the end of the article and do not, therefore, include them on the title page, as a footnote to the title or otherwise.

Arrangement of the article
Subdivision of the article
Divide your article into clearly defined sections. Each subsection is given a brief heading. Each heading should appear on its own separate line. Subsections should be used as much as possible when cross-referencing text: refer to the subsection by heading as opposed to simply 'the text.'

Introduction
State the objectives of the work and provide an adequate background, avoiding a detailed literature survey or a summary of the results.

Experimental/Materials and methods
Provide sufficient detail to allow the work to be reproduced. Methods already published should be indicated by a reference: only relevant modifications should be described.

Theory and/or calculation
A Theory section should extend, not repeat, the background to the article already dealt with in the Introduction and lay the foundation for further work. In contrast, a Calculation section represents a practical development from a theoretical basis.

Results
In this section the findings should be described clearly, concisely, and in logical order without extended discussions of their significance. Only in case of short communications, the results and discussion sections may be combined. Results should usually be presented in graphic or tabular form, rather than discursively. There should be no duplication in text, tables and figures. Experimental conclusions should normally be based on adequate numbers of observations with statistical analysis of variance and the significance of differences. The number of individual values represented by a mean should be indicated.

Discussion
This section should present conclusions to be drawn from the results accompanied by an assessment of their significance in relation to previous work. Speculative discussion is not discouraged, but the speculation should be based on the data presented and identified as such. In general, the discussion should be as concise as possible.

Conclusions
The main conclusions of the study may be presented in a short Conclusions section, which may stand alone or form a subsection of a Discussion or Results and Discussion section.

Acknowledgements
Place acknowledgements, including information on grants received, before the references, in a separate section, and not as a footnote on the title page.

References
See separate section, below.

Figure legends, tables, figures, schemes
Present these, in this order, at the end of the article. They are described in more detail below. High-resolution graphics files must always be provided separate from the main text file (see Preparation of illustrations).

Text graphics
Present incidental graphics not suitable for mention as figures, plates or schemes at the end of the article and number them 'Graphic 1', etc. Their precise position in the text can then be defined similarly (both on the manuscript and in the file). See further under the section, Preparation of illustrations. Ensure that high-resolution graphics files are provided, even if the graphic appears as part of your normal word processed text file.

Specific remarks


Mathematical formulae
Present simple formulae in the line of normal text where possible. In principle, variables are to be presented in italics. Use the solidus (/) instead of a horizontal line, e.g.

X/Y
rather than
X
Y

Powers of e are often more conveniently denoted by exp.
Number consecutively any equations that have to be displayed separate from the text (if referred to explicitly in the text).

Footnotes
Footnotes should be used sparingly. Number them consecutively throughout the article, using superscript Arabic numbers. Many word processors build footnotes into the text, and this feature may be used. Should this not be the case, indicate the position of footnotes in the text and present the footnotes themselves on a separate sheet at the end of the article. Do not include footnotes in the Reference list.

Table footnotes
Indicate each footnote in a table with a superscript lowercase letter.

Tables
Number tables consecutively in accordance with their appearance in the text. Place footnotes to tables below the table body and indicate them with superscript lowercase letters. Avoid vertical rules. Be sparing in the use of tables and ensure that the data presented in tables do not duplicate results described elsewhere in the article.

Nomenclature and units
Follow internationally accepted rules and conventions: use the international system of units (SI). If other quantities are mentioned, give their equivalent in SI. The nomenclature for seizures should be that employed by the Commission on Classification of the International League Against Epilepsy of 1981 (Epilepsia 1981; 22: 489-501).

DNA sequences and GenBank Accession numbers. Many Elsevier journals cite "gene accession numbers" in their running text and footnotes. Gene accession numbers refer to genes or DNA sequences about which further information can be found in the databases at the National Center for Biotechnical Information (NCBI) at the National Library of Medicine. Elsevier authors wishing to enable other scientists to use the accession numbers cited in their papers via links to these sources, should type this information in the following manner:
For each and every accession number cited in an article, authors should type the accession number in bold, underlined text. Letters in the accession number should always be capitalised. (See Example below). This combination of letters and format will enable Elsevier's typesetters to recognise the relevant texts as accession numbers and add the required link to GenBank's sequences.

Example: "GenBank accession nos. AI631510 , AI631511 , AI632198 , and BF223228) , a B-cell tumor from a chronic lymphatic leukemia (GenBank accession no. BE675048) , and a T-cell lymphoma (GenBank accession no. AA361117) ".

Authors are encouraged to check accession numbers used very carefully. An error in a letter or number can result in a dead link. In the final version of the printed article, the accession number text will not appear bold or underlined. In the final version of the electronic copy, the accession number text will be linked to the appropriate source in the NCBI databases enabling readers to go directly to that source from the article.

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: 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 Author Gateway at http://authors.elsevier.com/artwork/seizure. This journal offers electronic submission services and supplementary data files can be uploaded via the Author Gateway page of this journal via http://authors.elsevier.com/journal/seizure.

Policy and ethics
The work described in your article must have been carried out in accordance with
The Code of Ethics of the World Medical Association(Declaration of Helsinki) for experiments involving humans; http://www.wma.net/e/policy/17-a_e.html and EC Directive 86/609/EEC for animal experiments; http://europa.eu.int/scadplus/leg/en/s23000.htm. This must be stated at an appropriate point in the article.

Protection of patients' rights to privacy
Patients have rights to privacy that should not be infringed without informed consent. Identifying information should not be published in written descriptions, photographs, or pedigrees unless the information is essential for scientific purposes and the patient (or parent or guardian) gives written consent for publication. Informed consent for this purpose requires that the patient should be shown the manuscript to be published.

Identifying details should be omitted if they are not essential, but patient data should never be altered or falsified in an attempt to attain anonymity. Complete anonymity is difficult to achieve, and informed consent should be obtained if there is any doubt; for example, masking of the eye region in photographs of patients is inadequate protection of anonymity. When informed consent has been obtained it should be indicated in the published article.

Funding bodies

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

Statement of conflict of interest
Authors must state possible conflicts of interest when submitting a manuscript. State any potential conflict of interest between any possible commercial or governmental sponsorship and the manuscript in question. Conflict of interest might arise if the author has been paid to write the piece, or if s/he is giving their name to a manuscript 'ghost written' by somebody else, if the research has been sponsored by a government or a company, if the author's department or research programme is dependent on sponsorship or donation from a relevant company. If authors do not make a declaration we may ask them to do so. Where research, for example from a focus group or a research team, is written up by a third party, we expect all named authors to very carefully read the manuscript before putting their names to it to ensure that it accurately reflects their views, and to ask 'Is there a potential conflict of interest here?' Responsibility for the accuracy of bibliographic citations lies entirely with the authors.

Citations in the text
Please ensure that every reference cited in the text is also present in the reference list (and vice versa). Any references cited in the abstract must be given in full. Unpublished results and personal communications should not be in the reference list, but may be mentioned in the text. Citation of a reference as 'in press' implies that the item has been accepted for publication.

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.

Text
Indicate references by number(s) in square brackets in line with the text. The actual authors can be referred to, but the reference number(s) must always be given.

Example:

"..... as demonstrated [3,6]. Barnaby and Jones [8] obtained a different result ...."
List: Number the references (numbers in square brackets) in the list in the order in which they appear in the text.

Examples:

Reference to a journal publication:

[1] Slater, E. and Beard, A.W. The Schizophrenia-like psychoses of epilepsy. British Journal of Psychiatry 1963;109:95-150.


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

Reference to a chapter in an edited book:
[3] Betts, T.A. A follow up study of a cohort of patients with epilepsy admitted to psychiatric care in an English city. In: Proceedings of the Hans Berger Centenary Symposium (Eds P. Harris and C.Maudsley). Edinburgh, Churchill Livingstone, 1974: pp.326-338.

Note that journal names are not to be abbreviated and that "et al." is used if there are seven or more authors.

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
• Always supply high-quality printouts of your artwork, in case conversion of the electronic artwork is problematic.
• 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, and supply a separate listing of the files and the software used.
• Provide all illustrations as separate files.
• Provide captions to illustrations separately.
• Produce images near to the desired size of the printed version.

This journal offers electronic submission services and graphic files can be uploaded via the Author Gateway page of this journal via http://authors.elsevier.com. A detailed guide on electronic artwork is available on our website: http://authors.elsevier.com/artwork

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: Colour or greyscale 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 (colour or greyscale): a minimum of 500 dpi is required.
DOC, XLS or PPT: If your electronic artwork is created in any of these Microsoft Office applications please supply "as is".Please do not:
• Supply embedded graphics in your word processor (spreadsheet, presentation) document;
• Supply files that are optimised for screen use (like 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.

Captions
Ensure that each illustration has a caption. Supply captions on a separate sheet, not attached to the figure. A caption should comprise a brief title (not on the figure itself) and a description of the illustration. Keep text in the illustrations themselves to a minimum but explain all symbols and abbreviations used.

Colour illustrations
Submit colour illustrations as original photographs, high-quality computer prints or transparencies, close to the size expected in publication, or as 35 mm slides. Polaroid colour prints are not suitable. 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://authors.elsevier.com/artwork

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. When your manuscript is received by 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 copyeditor 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 2 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.