Journal of Biomechanics

Affiliated with the American Society of Biomechanics, the International Society of Biomechanics, the European Society of Biomechanics, the Japanese Society for Clinical Biomechanics and Related Research and the Australian and New Zealand Society of Biomechanics.

The following types of manuscripts can be submitted for publication:

1. Surveys, normally 4000 to 6000 words (by invitation from the Editor only). 2. Original Articles, normally 2000 to 3000 words (3000 words approximately equals the content of 12 double-spaced manuscript pages with additional space for 8 to 10 figures or tables), although longer articles may occasionally be considered by the editors in special circumstances. Original articles typically explore some explicit biological hypothesis or report original but substantial observations or data of broad utility. Conceptually novel experimental or computational methods may be submitted as Original Articles when their relevance and importance for research of biological questions is demonstrated or otherwise emphasised in the text.
3. Perspective Articles, typically in the range of 500-2000 words. These manuscripts will explore controversial yet important themes, allowing expression of particular views or speculations, yet based on a solid understanding of published scientific information. Currently, such articles are by invitation only.
4. Short Communications, in the range of 500 to 1500 words, reporting preliminary observations, new interpretations of old data, simple new techniques or devices, or points of historical interest.
5. Book Reviews, normally no longer than 1000 words (by invitation from the Book Review Editor only).
6. Letters to the Editor normally no longer than 1000 words.

Other material that can be published

1. Announcements of relevant scientific meetings on biomechanics.
2. Announcements of employment opportunities.

Publication condition

A manuscript submitted to this journal can only be published if it (or a similar version) has not been published and will not be simultaneously submitted or published elsewhere. A violation of this condition is considered fraud, and will be addressed by appropriate sanctions. Two manuscripts are considered similar if they concern the same hypothesis, question or goal, using the same methods and/or essentially similar data.

Submissions

Authors are requested to submit their original manuscript and figures online via http://ees.elsevier.com/bm/. This is the Elsevier web-based submission and review system. You will find full instructions located on this site - a Guide for Authors and a Guide for Online Submission. Please follow these guide lines to prepare and upload your article. Once the uploading is done, our system automatically generates an electronic pdf proof, which is then used for reviewing. All correspondence, including notification of the Editor's decision and requests for revisions, will be managed via this system.

Paper submissions are not normally accepted. If you cannot submit electronically, please email the editorial office for assistance on JBM@elsevier.com

Authors or publishers wishing to have a book reviewed should send a copy to the Book Review Editor; the decision to review the book and choice of reviewers is that of the editor, although reviewers may be suggested.

What information to include with the manuscript

1. Having read the criteria for submissions, authors should specify in their letter of transmittal, and on the title page, whether they are submitting their work as an Original Article, Perspective Article, Short Communication, or a Letter to the Editor.

2. 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. A letter of transmittal should be included stating this and that each of the authors has read and concurs with the content in the manuscript.

3. 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.

4. 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.

5. 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 study design, in the collection, analysis and interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript; and in the decision to submit the manuscript for publication. If the study sponsors had no such involvement, the authors should so state.

6. Only papers not previously published will be accepted; each manuscript must be accompanied by a statement signed by all co-authors that the material within has not been and will not be submitted for publication elsewhere except as an abstract. Emphasis will be placed upon originality of concept and execution.

7. Authors are encouraged to suggest referees although the choice is left to the editors. If you do, please supply the address and the email address, if known to you. Please do not include those with whom you have had active collaboration within the past 3 years.

Randomised controlled trials

All randomised controlled trials submitted for publication in the Journal 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. The Journal of Biomechanics 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 project that prospectively assigns human subjects to intervention or comparison groups to study the cause-and-effect relationship between a medical intervention and a health outcome. Studies designed for other purposes, such as to study pharmacokinetics or major toxicity (e.g. phase I trials) would be exempt. Further information can be found at www.icmje.org.

Ethics

Work on human beings that is submitted to the Journal of Biomechanics should comply with the principles laid down in the Declaration of Helsinki; Recommendations guiding physicians in biomedical research involving human subjects. Adopted by the 18th World Medical Assembly, Helsinki, Finland, June 1964, amended by the 29th World Medical Assembly, Tokyo, Japan, October 1975, the 35th World Medical Assembly, Venice, Italy, October 1983, and the 41st World Medical Assembly, Hong Kong, September 1989. The manuscript should contain a statement that the work has been approved by the appropriate ethical committees related to the institution(s) in which it was performed and that subjects gave informed consent to the work. Studies involving experiments with animals must state that their care was in accordance with institution guidelines. Patients' and volunteers' names, initials, and hospital numbers should not be used.

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.

Review and publication process

1. You will receive an acknowledgement of receipt of the manuscript.

2. Submitted manuscripts will be reviewed by selected referees and subsequently, the author will be informed of editorial decisions based on the referee comments, as soon as possible. As a rule, manuscripts and photographs, or other material you have submitted will not be returned to you with the decision letter, only the referee comments will be included.

3. If your manuscript was conditionally accepted, you must return your revision with a separate sheet, addressing all the referee comments, and explaining how you dealt with them.

4. When returning the revised manuscript to the Editorial Office, make sure that the manuscript number, the revision number (Rev. 1,2,3. . ) and the designation Original/Copy are clearly typed on the top of the title pages of the original manuscript and all copies.

5. When the final version of the manuscript is accepted, the corresponding author will be notified of acceptance and the manuscript will be forwarded to production.

6. Upon acceptance of an article, authors will be asked to sign a "Journal Publishing Agreement" (for more information on this and copyright see http://ees.elsevier.com/bm/). 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).

7. 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. After publication, 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.

Supplementary Website material

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: http://ees.elsevier.com/bm/.

This journal offers electronic submission services and supplementary data files can be uploaded with your manuscript via the web-based submission system, http://ees.elsevier.com/bm.

Preparation of the manuscript

1. All publications will be in English. Authors whose 'first' language is not English should arrange for their manuscripts to be written in idiomatic English before submission.

2. Authors should bear in mind that readers potentially include scientists from various disciplines. Abstracts, introductions and discussions should be in relatively non-specialised language so that a broad biomechanics audience may understand them. Discussions should include an appropriate synthesis of relevant literature for those not intimately familiar with the specific field. Implications for other fields should be noted.

3. A separate title page should include the title, authors' names and affiliations, and a complete address for the corresponding author including telephone and fax numbers as well as an E-mail address. Authors should supply up to five keywords. Keywords may be modified or added by the Editors. Please provide a word count (Introduction through Discussion) on the title page. All pages, starting with the title page, should be numbered.

4. An abstract not exceeding one paragraph of 250 words should appear at the beginning of each Survey, Original Article, Perspective Article or Short Communication; the abstract will serve instead of a concluding summary and should be substantive, factual and intelligible without reference to the rest of the paper.

5. Papers involving human experiments should contain a statement in the Methods section that proper informed consent was obtained. Papers involving animal experiments should contain a statement in the Methods section that the experiments conducted were within the animal welfare regulations and guidelines for the country in which the experiments were performed.

6. Acknowledgements should be included after the end of the Discussion and just prior to the References. Include external sources of support.

7. The text should be ready for setting in type and should be carefully checked for errors prior to submission. Scripts should be typed double-spaced.

8. All illustrations should accompany the typescript, but not be inserted in the text. Refer to photographs, charts, and diagrams as 'figures' and number consecutively in order of appearance in the text. Substantive captions for each figure explaining the major point or points should be typed on a separate sheet.

Please make sure that artwork files are in an acceptable format (TIFF, EPS or MS Office files) and are of the correct resolution. Information relating to the preferred formats for artwork may be found at http://www.ees.elsevier.com/bm/.

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, authors will be charged at current printing prices unless colour printing has been requested free of charge, at the discretion of the editors.

9. All key references related to methods must be from published materials; submitted manuscripts, research reports, or theses which would be unavailable to readers should be avoided. References are indicated in the text alphabetically by names of the authors and the year of publication, e.g. Ralston (1957) or (Brown and Shaw, 1984; Lai et al., 1978). The full references should be collected in a separate section at the end of the paper in the following forms:

A. Journals:
The reference should include the title of the paper, the title of the journal in full and the first and last page number.

Belardinelli, E. Cavalcanti, S., 1991. A new non-linear two-dimensional model of blood motion in tapered and elastic vessels. Computers in Biology and Medicine 21, 1-3.

B. Books:
If the work referred to is a book, or part of a book, the reference should be in the following form:

Weiner, S., Traub, W., 1991. Organization of crystals in bone. In: Suga, S., Nakahara, H. (Eds.), Mechanisms and Phylogeny of Mineralisations in Biological Systems. Springer, Tokyo, pp. 247-253.

C. Theses
van Werff, K., 1977. Kinematic and dynamic analysis of mechanisms. A finite element approach. PhD. thesis, Delft University Press, Delft.

D. Proceedings
van Soest, A. J., van den Bogert, A. J., 1991. Criteria for the comparison of direct dynamics software systems to be used in the field of biomechanics. In Proceedings of the 3rd International Symposium on Computer Simulation in Biomechanics. University of Western Australia, Perth.

E. Footnotes


As distinct from literature references, should be avoided. Where they are essential, superscript Arabic numbers should be employed.

10. SI (Metric) Units must be used for all quantities in text, figures and tables. It is suggested that a complete list of symbols used and their explanation be included, in a notation section at the beginning of the manuscript.

11. Authors submitting manuscripts reporting data on cell responses to mechanical loads should report their study according to the standards suggested in the Editorial accompanying our special Issue on cell mechanics (Volume 33, Issue 1).

Agreements with Funding Bodies
Elsevier has established agreements and developed policies to allow authors who publish in this journal to comply with manuscript archiving requirements of the following funding bodies, as specified as conditions of researcher grant awards. Please see www.elsevier.com/wps/find/authorsview.authors/fundingbodyagreements for full details of the agreements that are in place for these bodies:

• Arthritis Research Campaign (UK)
• British Heart Foundation (UK)
• Cancer Research (UK)
• Howard Hughes Medical Institute (USA)
• Medical Research Council (UK)
• National Institutes of Health (USA)
• Wellcome Trust (UK)

These agreements and policies enable authors to comply with their funding body's archiving policy without having to violate their publishing agreements with Elsevier. The agreements and policies are intended to support the needs of Elsevier authors, editors, and society publishing partners, and protect the quality and integrity of the peer review process. They are examples of Elsevier's ongoing engagement with scientific and academic communities to explore ways to deliver demonstrable and sustainable benefits for the research communities we serve.

Authors who report research by funding bodies not listed above, and who are concerned that their author agreement may be incompatible with archiving requirements specified by a funding body that supports an author's research are strongly encouraged to contact Elsevier's author support team (AuthorSupport@elsevier.com). Elsevier has a track-record of working on behalf of our authors to ensure authors can always publish in Elsevier journals and still comply with archiving conditions defined in research grant awards.