Published by Elsevier on behalf of The British Mycological Society

Mycological Research is an international journal which publishes papers in all fields of mycology including biotechnology and industrial applications of fungi, and plant, animal and human pathology.

Mycological Research will publish both full length and short papers reporting original research which makes a significant contribution to mycology. Review articles on themes of topical interest are welcome. There are no page charges, and non-members of the Society are encouraged to submit manuscripts for publication. Authors receive 50 free offprints.

Submission of Articles

It is essential to give a fax number and email address when submitting a manuscript.

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tacitly or explicitly by the responsible authorities where the work was carried out, and that, if accepted, it will not be published elsewhere in the same form, in English or in any other language, without the written consent of the copyright-holder.

Upon acceptance of an article, Authors will be asked to transfer copyright (for more information on copyright see http://authors.elsevier.com. 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's Rights Department, Oxford, UK: phone (+44) 1865 843830, fax (+44) 1865 853333, e-mail permissions@elsevier.com. Requests may also be completed on-line via the Elsevier homepage http://www.elsevier.com/locate/permissions.

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/ you will be guided stepwise through the creation and uploading of the various files. The system automatically converts source files to a single Adobe Acrobat PDF version of the article, which is used in the peer-review process. Please note that even though manuscript source files are converted to PDF at submission for the review process, these source files are needed for further processing after acceptance. All correspondence, including notification of the Editor's decision and requests for revision, takes place by e-mail and via the Author's homepage, removing the need for a hard-copy paper trail.

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.

Preparation of the text

Please write your text in good English. English spellings are required, and should follow The Concise Oxford Dictionary (Oxford: Clarendon Press). Words of non-English origin, like bona fide, prima facie, in vitro, in situ, should be in italic type.

Title Page

The first page of your manuscript should show the title of the paper, names of authors and their affiliations, and a short summary.

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. 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 e-mail and full postal address, as well as telephone and fax numbers (with country and area code) are provided.

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.

Text

Summary. A concise and factual summary is required. The summary should state briefly the purpose of the research, the principal results and major conclusions. A summary (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.

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.

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. All materials must be available to others. This means that commercial sources must be identified, proprietary materials must be patented prior to publication (so that they can be released), and all cultures, strains or varieties on which the work is based must be deposited in an identified culture collection from which they can be obtained by others.

Results. Results should be clear and concise. Numerical data which lack statistical analysis are valueless and will not be published. Data from a sufficient number of independent experiments should be reported to permit evaluation of the reproducibility and significance of results. When any significance is claimed, the test of significance used should be stated and an estimate of the probability given. If you use complex statistical transformations a few lines of explanation in plain English of the purpose and the outcome of the test should be provided.

Discussion. This should explore the significance of the results of the work, not repeat them.

Appendices. If there is more than one appendix, they should be identified as A, B, etc. Formulae and equations in appendices should be given separate numbering: (Eq. A.1), (Eq. A.2), etc.; in a subsequent appendix, (Eq. B.1) and so forth.

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

References. See separate section, below.

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

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.

Preparation of supplementary data. Elsevier now accepts electronic supplementary material (e-components) 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 artwork instruction pages at the Author Gateway at http://authors.elsevier.com/artwork.

References

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 summary must be given in full. Unpublished results and personal communications are not recommended in the reference list, but may be mentioned in the text. If these references are included in the reference list they should follow the standard reference style of the journal and should include a substitution of the publication date with either "Unpublished results" or "Personal communication". Citation of a reference as "in press" implies that the item has been accepted for publication.

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.

Examples:

Reference to a journal publication:

Van der Geer J, Hanraads JAJ, Lupton RA, 2000. The art of writing a scientific article. Journal of the Scientific Community 163: 51-59.

Reference to a book:

Strunk jr W, White EB, 1979. The Elements of Style,3rd edn. Macmillan, New York.

Reference to a chapter in an edited book:

Yarrow D, 1998. Methods for the isolation, maintenance and identification of yeasts. In: Kurtzman CP, Fell JW (eds),The Yeasts: a Taxonomic Study, 4th edn. Elsevier, Amsterdam, pp. 77-100.

Preparation of illustrations

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 wordprocessor (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.

Magnifications Magnifications must be indicated by scale bars, and these must show whole numbers and the most appropriate unit.

Colour Illustrations 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. Please indicate your preference for colour in print or on the Web only. For further information on the preparation of electronic artwork, please see http://authors.elsevier.com/artwork.

Proofs

When your accepted 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 will accompany your proofs. Please answer all queries and make any corrections or additions required. 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.