Published on behalf of Acta Materialia, Inc.
Structure-Property-Function relationships in Biomaterials

Short Overview
Acta Biomaterialia is an international journal that publishes peer-reviewed original research reports, review papers, and communications in the broadly defined field of biomaterials science. The emphasis of the journal is on the relationships among biomaterial structure, properties, and function at all length scales. Papers should be directed to those aspects of the science of materials defined in the statement of the journal's scope. Manuscripts must be written in good English. Poorly written papers will be automatically returned for rewriting before review. Communications are accepted in English only.

The entire submission and review process for
Acta Biomaterialia is handled electronically, which shortens publication times. All papers should be submitted electronically through http://ees.elsevier.com/actbio. Authors submit their articles online by simply registering, logging-in, and submitting. Editors will then invite potential reviewers by e-mail.

Prior to submitting your paper, please follow the instructions given below. Please note that you must have an e-mail address to use the online submission system.

Detailed instructions on the use of the online submission system are available at http://ees.elsevier.com/actbio. Please read the "Hints" for information on how to register, and review the "Tutorial for Authors" for a run-through of the submission process. If you need any further help, please do not hesitate to contact our Author Support Department at authorsupport@elsevier.com.

General Guidelines for Submission of Papers

The system will convert your manuscript to a PDF for the review process. Elsevier can accept text files in most standard word-processing formats but Microsoft Word is preferred. Alternatively, manuscripts can be in either LaTex or PostScript. Graphics should be high-resolution and the preferred format is either TIFF or JPEG. For further information on the preparation of electronic artwork, please visit http://www.elsevier.com/artworkinstructions

. All submissions must be accompanied by a statement regarding the originality of the research in the "Enter Comments" field. It is also recommended that you provide a brief statement regarding the significance and impact of the submitted work. Please note that when your manuscript is received at Elsevier it is considered to be in its final form. Therefore please check your manuscript carefully before you submit it online.

The editor will notify authors of the outcome of the peer-review process through e-mail. The publisher will send a notification of receipt for accepted papers as they enter production.

Conflict of Interest Disclosure
Acta Biomaterialia requires authors to disclose any possible conflicts of interest. If an author has a financial relationship with one or more companies whose products are featured in a manuscript, this relationship should be briefly defined in the "Enter Comments" section of the online submission forms.

Copyright
It is a condition of publication that manuscripts submitted to this journal have not been published and will not be simultaneously submitted or published elsewhere. By submitting a manuscript, the authors agree that the copyright for their article is transferred to Acta Materialia Inc. if and when the article is accepted for publication. However, assignment of copyright is not required from authors who work for organizations that do not permit such assignment. The copyright covers the exclusive rights to reproduce and distribute the article, including reprints, photographic reproductions, microform or any other reproductions of similar nature, and translations. Authors are responsible for obtaining from the copyright holder permission to reproduce any figures or other material for which copyright exists. For more information, including rights retained by the author, please go to http://www.elsevier.com/copyright and follow the link for copyright information.

Authors' Rights
As an author you (or your employer or institution) retain certain rights; for details you are referred to: http://www.elsevier.com/authorsrights.

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

General Guidelines for Manuscript Preparation

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

Length of Papers

Papers submitted to Acta Biomaterialia , to be acceptable, must normally be less than 10 printed pages in length; as a rule of thumb, a paper of 20 double-spaced typescript pages, plus a typical number of figures (8 or so), reduces to 10 printed pages. Papers that are longer than 25 double-spaced typescript pages will likely be returned to the authors with a request that they be shortened before they are considered further. Shortening, almost always, is in the author's best interest: readers read short papers. Please ensure that your manuscript is paginated, as this will help both editors and reviewers to process it promptly.

Title Page Provide the following data on the title page (in the order given).

• The title should be carefully chosen to indicate as clearly as possible the subject of the communication.
• 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 lowercase 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
An abstract is required for all papers. The abstract should indicate the content of the paper, and should describe the main conclusions. An effective abstract is brief and normally less than 200 words. Abstracts must not exceed 250 words. References should be avoided, but if essential, they must be cited in full, without reference to the reference list.

Keywords
Immediately after the abstract, authors should list four to five keywords that appropriately represent the contents of their manuscripts.

Headings
The component parts of the main text of a research paper will normally be Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results, and Discussion. A succinct one-paragraph Conclusions section at the end of the main text is also recommended. Other parts of the manuscript will normally include References, tables, figure legends, and figures.

Units
SI units should be used throughout.

Studies Involving Animals or Humans
When data from animal subjects are reported, institutional approval of the protocol is required and a statement should be included in the "Methods" section of the text that indicates compliance with the NIH Guide for Care and Use of Laboratory Animals or other appropriate guidelines.

For human subject data, a statement must be added to the "Methods" section indicating that an institutional review committee approved the study (with the date of approval) and that the subjects provided informed consent.

References All references to other papers, books, etc., should be given at the end of the paper. They should be numbered in sequence by their appearance in the text. The numbers should appear in the text at the appropriate places. Please include all authors for citations including seven authors or less. For citations with greater than seven authors, cite the first author's name followed by et al. Please include titles of all cited articles as in the following examples.

Examples:
1. Jeon SI, Lee JH, Andrade JD, De Gennes PG. Protein-surface interactions in the presence of polyethylene oxide. J Colloid Interface Sci 1991;142:149-158.

2. Tjia JS, Moghe PV. "Cell-internalizable" ligand microinterfaces on biomaterials: design of regulatory determinants of cell migration. In: Dillow AK, Lowman AM, Hudgins KA, editors. Biomimetic Materials and Design. New York: Marcel Dekker; 2002. p 335-374.

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.

Figures
All submitted figures must be in digital form (minimum 300 dpi). A scale bar should appear in all micrographs. It is not acceptable to list a power of magnification. Please see http://www.Elsevier.com/artworkinstructions for more information.

Color
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, the cost of printing in color, in 2007, is US $440 per printed color page. You will receive information regarding the total 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 from the conversion of colour figures to 'gray scale' (for the printed version should you not opt for color in print) it is recommended that you submit in addition usable black-and-white images corresponding to all the color illustrations.

Spellchecking
Be sure that your manuscripts are free of spelling errors. If you wish to check the technical spelling of your manuscript, please refer to www.sciproof.com. SCIPROOF offers a product called Scientific Dictionary Package (SDP) 2.0 that contains over 1.8 million entries and is the only spellchecking software that specifically includes materials science terms, plus chemical and biomedical terms (for biomaterials), and journal titles and abbreviations. This program is an add-on for Microsoft Office and augments the native Office spell checker.

PDF Proofs
One set of page proofs in PDF format will be sent by e-mail to the corresponding author, to be checked for typesetting/editing. The corrections should be returned within 48 hours. No changes in, or additions to, the accepted (and subsequently edited) manuscript will be allowed at this stage. Proofreading is solely the author's responsibility. Any queries should be answered in full. Please correct factual errors only, or errors introduced by typesetting. For more information on proofreading please go to our proofreading page at http://www.elsevier.com/locate/guidepublication. Please note that once your paper has been proofed, the paper published online will be identical to the paper in print.

Author Benefits

• No page charges: Publication in this journal is free of charge.
• Free offprints: Twenty-five offprints will be supplied free of charge. Corresponding authors will be given the choice to buy extra offprints before printing of the article. Authors who pay for color illustrations will receive an extra fifty offprints free of charge.
• Author discounts: Contributors to Elsevier journals are entitled to a 30% discount on all Elsevier books. See http://www.elsevier.com/bookauthorsfor more information.

Online Paper Tracking
Authors can track the status of their accepted paper online at http://www.elsevier.com/trackarticles using the reference supplied by the publisher.

Author Inquiries
All author inquiries should be sent to authorsupport@elsevier.com

Useful Links

• A submissions checklist can be found at http://www.elsevier.com/locate/guidepublication
• Register for free to receive e-mail updates from the article tracking service at http://www.elsevier.com/trackarticle
• If you are interested in submitting a book in this area, go to http://www.elsevier.com/bookauthors