Guide for Authors
INTRODUCTION
Please consult this Guide for Authors for further details on the requirements for submitting your paper to
Journal of Veterinary Behavior: Clinical Applications and Research. The guidelines described in this document should be adhered
to carefully, to ensure high-quality and rapid publication of your manuscript.
Aims and scope
Journal of Veterinary
Behavior: Clinical Applications and Research Research is an international journal that focuses on all aspects of veterinary behavioral
medicine, with a particular emphasis on clinical applications and research. Articles on basic research involving normal signaling or
social behaviors, welfare and, or housing issues, molecular or quantitative genetics, and applied behavioral issues (e.g., working dogs)
that may have implications for clinical interest or assessment are encouraged. Focus is not restricted by species of interest.
Types of article
1. Original Research Papers (Regular Papers)
2. Review Articles
3. Case Reports
4. Discussion/Roundtable
5. Point/Counterpoint
6. In Brief: Practice and Procedure
Original Research Papers should report the results
of original research. The material should not have been previously published elsewhere, except in a preliminary form.
Review
Articles should cover subjects falling within the scope of the journal that are of active current interest. They may be submitted
or invited. Because of the nature of review papers, scrupulous attention must be paid to relevant attribution and this should be reflected
in the literature cited section and in the acknowledgements.
Case Reports can focus on any species, but by definition, must
include core clinical content. Content can focus on a report of new condition, treatment and follow-up of complex presentations, working
with variants of normal versus abnormal behaviors, a report of a familial condition with a proposed mode of inheritance, et cetera, as
long as the nature of a case report is respected. The format for case reports, generally, is as follows: Presentation, history and presenting
signs, physical and laboratory evaluation and any other diagnostic assessments deemed relevant, diagnosis, treatment, follow-up, summary
and discussion, acknowledgements, and references. Laboratory and other data can be appended in tabular form after the references.
Discussions/Roundtables can include synopses of, or reports from 'think tanks' or discussion groups, topical issues that have
stirred debate, or invited discussion and commentary suggested by members of the Board of Editorial Advisors. Discussion contributions
are not peer-reviewed, must be published with attribution, must be more formal than those in list serves, should include citations, where
relevant, and may be edited prior to publication.
Point/Counterpoint submissions focus on subjects for which there may not
be sufficient published data to generate a consensus view, or on approaches that may seem radical to some reviewers. Some papers submitted
as "Original Research Papers/Regular Papers" may be published in this section, but independent submission for this section is also encouraged.
Papers suitable for this section include those involving specific types of data that would need to be collected to make the case, but
which are unavailable, and the case made within the paper justifies their collection.
In Brief: Practice and Procedure seeks
to forge links between the research and practitioner communities. This section features submissions on common behavioral issues about
which practitioners ask, and about techniques and approaches used in different types of research. The hope is that those who come from
a research background will learn to appreciate the practical issues facing many who read their articles, and those who come from a more
patient-oriented approach will learn to appreciate the nuances and intrigue of key aspects of research.
Page charges
This journal has no page charges.
BEFORE YOU BEGIN
Ethics in publishing
For information on Ethics in Publishing and
Ethical guidelines for journal publication see
http://www.elsevier.com/publishingethics and
http://www.elsevier.com/ethicalguidelines.
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/en/30publications/10policies/b3/index.html;
EU Directive 2010/63/EU for animal experiments
http://ec.europa.eu/environment/chemicals/lab_animals/legislation_en.htm;
Uniform Requirements for manuscripts submitted to Biomedical journals
http://www.icmje.org. This must be stated
at an appropriate point in the article.
Unnecessary cruelty in animal experimentation is not acceptable to the Editors of
Journal
of Veterinary Behavior.
Conflict of interest
All authors are requested to disclose any actual or potential conflict
of interest including any financial, personal or other relationships with other people or organizations within three years of beginning
the submitted work that could inappropriately influence, or be perceived to influence, their work. See also
http://www.elsevier.com/conflictsofinterest.
Submission declaration
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.
Contributors
Each author is required to declare his or her individual contribution
to the article: all authors must have materially participated in the research and/or article preparation, so roles for all authors should
be described. The statement that all authors have approved the final article should be true and included in the disclosure.
Authorship
All authors should have made substantial contributions to all of the following: (1) the conception and design of the study, or 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.
Changes to authorship
This policy concerns the addition, deletion,
or rearrangement of author names in the authorship of accepted manuscripts:
Before the accepted manuscript is published in an
online issue: Requests to add or remove an author, or to rearrange the author names, must be sent to the Journal Manager from the
corresponding author of the accepted manuscript and must include: (a) the reason the name should be added or removed, or the author names
rearranged and (b) written confirmation (e-mail, fax, letter) from all authors that they agree with the addition, removal or rearrangement.
In the case of addition or removal of authors, this includes confirmation from the author being added or removed. Requests that are not
sent by the corresponding author will be forwarded by the Journal Manager to the corresponding author, who must follow the procedure
as described above. Note that: (1) Journal Managers will inform the Journal Editors of any such requests and (2) publication of the accepted
manuscript in an online issue is suspended until authorship has been agreed.
After the accepted manuscript is published in an
online issue: Any requests to add, delete, or rearrange author names in an article published in an online issue will follow the
same policies as noted above and result in a corrigendum.
Copyright
Upon acceptance of an article, authors will
be asked to complete 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 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
.
Retained author rights
As an author you (or your employer or institution) retain certain rights; for details you are
referred to:
http://www.elsevier.com/authorsrights .
Role of the funding source
You are requested to identify
who provided financial support for the conduct of the research and/or preparation of the article and to briefly describe the role of
the sponsor(s), if any, in study design; in the collection, analysis and interpretation of data; in the writing of the report; and in
the decision to submit the paper for publication. If the funding source(s) had no such involvement then this should be stated. Please
see
http://www.elsevier.com/funding .
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.
Open access
This journal offers you the option of making your
article freely available to all via the ScienceDirect platform. To prevent any conflict of interest, you can only make this choice after
receiving notification that your article has been accepted for publication. The fee of $3,000 excludes taxes and other potential
author fees such as color charges. In some cases, institutions and funding bodies have entered into agreement with Elsevier to meet these
fees on behalf of their authors. Details of these agreements are available at
http://www.elsevier.com/fundingbodies. Authors
of accepted articles, who wish to take advantage of this option, should complete and submit the order form (available at
http://www.elsevier.com/locate/openaccessform.pdf.
Whatever access option you choose, you retain many rights as an author, including the right to post a revised personal version of your
article on your own website. More information can be found here:
http://www.elsevier.com/authorsrights.
Language
and language services
Please write your text in good English (American or British usage is accepted, but not a mixture of these).
Authors who require information about language editing and copyediting services pre- and post-submission please visit
http://webshop.elsevier.com/languageservices
or our customer support site at
http://support.elsevier.com for more information.
Submission
Submission
to this journal proceeds totally online and you will be guided stepwise through the creation and uploading of your files. The system
automatically converts source files to a single PDF file of the article, which is used in the peer-review process. Please note that even
though manuscript source files are converted to PDF files 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 removing the need for a paper trail.
Submit your article
Please submit your article via
http://ees.elsevier.com/jveb.
Peer review
All submissions will be reviewed by two to three anonymous reviewers to evaluate them for originality, clear
statement of a hypothesis, experimental design appropriate for the hypothesis, completeness of methods, and thoughtfulness of the discussion
and conclusions that are supported by data. If only two reviews are solicited/received and there is conflict in their assessment, a third
review will be undertaken. Authors may name up to five potential reviewers when they submit the manuscript and must provide complete
contact information, including e-mail addresses; however, the Editor-in-Chief retains the right to assign different reviewers as deemed
appropriate. Appropriate Referees should be knowledgeable about the subject but have no close connection with any of the authors. In
addition, Referees should be from institutions other than (and preferably countries other than) those of any of the Authors. You may
also suggest reviewers you do not want to review your manuscript, but please state your reasons for doing so.
If an author wishes
to appeal an outcome, he/she should contact the Editor-in-Chief in writing and detail his/her concern. Appeals will only be successful
if reviews were inadequate or unjust.
PREPARATION
Use of word-processing software
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 Guide
to Publishing with Elsevier:
http://www.elsevier.com/guidepublication). 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 Electronic
illustrations. To avoid unnecessary errors you are strongly advised to use the "spell-check" and "grammar-check" functions of your word
processor.
Article structure
Subdivision - unnumbered sections
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.
Introduction should not exceed 1.5 manuscript pages.
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.
Results
Results should be clear and concise.
Discussion
This should explore the significance
of the results of the work, not repeat them. A combined Results and Discussion section is often appropriate. Avoid excessive citations
and discussion of published literature. Although there are always exceptions, a good rule of thumb is for the Discussion section to not
exceed 5 double-spaced manuscript pages and to limit the number of references to no more than 35.
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.
Essential title page information
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. The abstract should state briefly the purpose of the research, the principal results and major
conclusions. An abstract is often presented separately from the article, so it must be able to stand alone. For this reason, References
should be avoided, but if essential, they must be cited in full, without reference to the reference list. Also, non-standard or uncommon
abbreviations should be avoided, but if essential they must be defined at their first mention in the abstract itself. Abstracts must
be limited to a single paragraph with no more than 2,500 keystrokes (characters plus spaces).
Keywords
Immediately after
the abstract, provide a maximum of 6 keywords, using American spelling and 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.
Acknowledgements
Collate acknowledgements in a separate section at the end of the
article before the references and do not, therefore, include them on the title page, as a footnote to the title or otherwise. List here
those individuals who provided help during the research (e.g., providing language help, writing assistance or proof reading the article,
etc.).
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. You are urged to consult IUB: Biochemical Nomenclature and
Related Documents:
http://www.chem.qmw.ac.uk/iubmb/ for further information.
Nucleotide sequences
Submission
of a manuscript containing nucleotide sequence information implies that the primary nucleotide sequence data will be deposited in an
internationally available depository.
Statistical conventions
Means and standard errors / deviations and, or medians,
interquartile ranges, and confidence limits, should be written: 0 ∋ 10.20 ∀ 1.01 g, N=15. For significance tests, the name
of the test should be noted followed by a colon, the test statistic and its value, the degrees of freedom or sample size (depending on
the convention of the test), and the P value. These parts should all be separated by commas. Decimals should not be cited as naked points.
In other words, use 0.01, not .01.
Math formulae
Present simple formulae in the line of normal text where possible and
use the solidus (/) instead of a horizontal line for small fractional terms, e.g., X/Y. In principle, variables are to be presented in
italics. Powers of e are often more conveniently denoted by exp. Number consecutively any equations that have to be displayed separately
from the text (if referred to explicitly in the text). Please see
Additional Style Notes below.
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 separately 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.
Artwork
Image manipulation
While it is accepted that authors sometimes need to manipulate images for clarity, manipulation for purposes of deception
or fraud will be seen as scientific ethical abuse and will be dealt with accordingly. For graphical images, this journal is applying
the following policy: no specific feature within an image may be enhanced, obscured, moved, removed, or introduced. Adjustments of brightness,
contrast, or color balance are acceptable if and as long as they do not obscure or eliminate any information present in the original.
Nonlinear adjustments (e.g. changes to gamma settings) must be disclosed in the figure legend.
Electronic artwork
General points
• 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, Times,
Symbol.
• Number the illustrations according to their sequence in the text.
• Use a logical naming convention for
your artwork files.
• Provide captions to illustrations separately.
• Produce images near to the desired size of
the printed version.
• Submit each figure as a separate file.
A detailed guide on electronic artwork is available on our
website:
http://www.elsevier.com/artworkinstructions
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 finalized,
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: Color
or grayscale 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 (color or grayscale): a minimum of 500 dpi is required.
If your electronic artwork
is created in a Microsoft Office application (Word, PowerPoint, Excel) then please supply 'as is'.
Please do not:
•
Supply files that are optimized for screen use (e.g., 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.
Color artwork
Please make sure that artwork files are in an acceptable format (TIFF, EPS or MS Office files) and with the correct resolution.
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 or not 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. Please indicate your preference for color: in print or on the Web only. For further information
on the preparation of electronic artwork, please see
http://www.elsevier.com/artworkinstructions.
Please note: Because
of technical complications which can arise by 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 versions of all the color illustrations.
Figure captions
Ensure that each illustration has a caption. Supply captions separately, 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.
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 indicated. See further under Electronic artwork. If you are working with LaTeX and have such features embedded in the text, these
can be left, but such embedding should not be done specifically for publishing purposes. Further, high-resolution graphics files must
be provided separately.
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.
References
Citation in 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 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.
Web
references
As a minimum, the full URL should be given. Any further information, if known (DOI, 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.
References in a special issue
Please
ensure that the words 'this issue' are added to any references in the list (and any citations in the text) to other articles in the same
Special Issue.
Reference Style
Text: Refer to the author's name (without initial) and year of publication,
followed, if necessary, by a short reference to relevant pages. Examples: "Since Peterson (1988) has shown that..."; "This is in agreement
with results obtained later (Kramer, 1989, pp. 12-16)". If reference is made in the text to a publication written by more than two authors,
the name of the first author should be used followed by "et al." This indication, however, should never be used in the list of references.
In this list, names of first author and all co-authors should be mentioned. References cited together in the text of the manuscript should
be arranged chronologically, starting with the earliest reference and ending with the most recent.
List: Arrange alphabetically
on authors' names. When the same author has more than one citation, references should be in chronological order starting with the earliest
reference and ending with the most recent. If an author's name in the list is also mentioned with co-authors, the following order should
be used: publications of the single author, arranged according to publication dates - publications of the same author with one co-author
- publications of the author with more than one co-author. Publications by the same author(s) in the same year should be listed as 1974a,
1974b, etc. Examples:
Reference to a journal publication:
Mastrota, F. M., Mench, J. A., 1994. Avoidance of dyed food by the
northern bobwhite. Appl. Anim. Behav. Sci. 42, 109-119.
Reference to an edited symposium, special issue, etc. published in a journal:
Thompson, K.V., 1991. Flehmen and social dominance in captive female sable antelope, Hippotragus niger. In: Mungal, E.C. (Ed.), Ungulate
Behavior and Management. Appl. Anim. Behav. Sci. 29, 121-133.
Reference to a book:
Alcock, J., 1975. Animal Behaviour. Sinauer
Associates, Sunderland, MA, pp. 173-204.
Reference to a chapter in an edited book:
Challis, J., Olson, D., 1988. Parturition.
In: Knobil, E., J. (Ed), The Physiology of Reproduction, Vol. 2. Raven Press, New York, pp. 2177-2216.
Journal abbreviations
source
Journal names should be abbreviated according to
Index Medicus journal abbreviations:
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/tsd/serials/lji.html
;
List of serial title word abbreviations:
http://www.issn.org/2-22661-LTWA-online.php;
CAS (Chemical Abstracts
Service):
http://www.cas.org/sent.html.
Supplementary material
Elsevier 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 are 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. Video files: please supply 'stills' with your files: you can choose any frame from the video or make a separate
image. These will be used instead of standard icons and will personalize the link to your supplementary information. For more detailed
instructions please visit our artwork instruction pages at
http://www.elsevier.com/artworkinstructions.
Additional
information
• For issues of style and format not addressed here, please consult Scientific Style and Format: The CBE Manual
for Authors, Editors, and Publishers, Sixth Edition.
• For spelling, word formation and divisions, plurals, possessives, meanings
and usage, consult the CBE Manual or a current English language collegiate-level dictionary.
• For conflicts between instructions
in this Guide and any of the references, the Guide takes precedence. Do not hesitate to contact the Editorial Office in you have any
questions about the preparation of your manuscript.
Submission checklist
The following list will be useful during the
final checking of an article prior to sending it to the journal for review. Please consult this Guide for Authors for further details
of any item.
Ensure that the following items are present:
One author has been designated as the corresponding author
with contact details:
• E-mail address
• Full postal address
• Telephone and fax numbers
All necessary
files have been uploaded, and contain:
• Keywords
• All figure captions
• All tables (including title,
description, footnotes)
Further considerations
• Manuscript has been 'spell-checked' and 'grammar-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)
•
Color figures are clearly marked as being intended for color reproduction on the Web (free of charge) and in print, or to be reproduced
in color on the Web (free of charge) and in black-and-white in print
• If only color on the Web is required, black-and-white
versions of the figures are also supplied for printing purposes
For any further information please visit our customer support site
at
http://support.elsevier.com.
AFTER ACCEPTANCE
Use of the digital object identifier
The Digital
Object Identifier (DOI) may be used to cite and link to electronic documents. The DOI consists of a unique alpha-numeric character string
which is assigned to a document by the publisher upon the initial electronic publication. The assigned DOI never changes. Therefore,
it is an ideal medium for citing a document, particularly 'Articles in press' because they have not yet received their full bibliographic
information.
The correct format for citing a DOI is shown as follows (example taken from a document in the journal
Physics Letters
B):
doi:10.1016/j.physletb.2003.10.071
When you use the DOI to create URL hyperlinks to documents on the web, they are
guaranteed never to change.
Proofs
One set of page proofs (as PDF files) 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) or, a link will be provided in the e-mail so that
authors can download the files themselves. Elsevier now provides authors with PDF proofs which can be annotated; for this you will need
to download Adobe Reader version 7 (or higher) available free from
http://get.adobe.com/reader. Instructions on how to
annotate PDF files will accompany the proofs (also given online). The exact system requirements are given at the Adobe site:
http://www.adobe.com/products/reader/tech-specs.html.
If you do not wish to use the PDF annotations function, you may list the corrections (including replies to the Query Form) and return
them 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 - please let us have all your corrections
within 48 hours. It is important to ensure that all 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.
Offprints
The corresponding author, at no
cost, will be provided with a PDF file of the article via e-mail. For an extra charge, paper offprints can be ordered via the offprint
order form which is sent once the article is accepted for publication. 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.
AUTHOR INQUIRIES
For inquiries relating to the submission of articles (including electronic submission) please visit this journal's homepage. Contact
details for questions arising after acceptance of an article, especially those relating to proofs, will be provided by the publisher.
You can track accepted articles at
http://www.elsevier.com/trackarticle. You can also check our Author FAQs (
http://www.elsevier.com/authorFAQ)
and/or contact Customer Support via
http://support.elsevier.com.
Updated January 2012