open access text

Manuscript

OA Text do not have restrictions on manuscript length. There are no explicit restrictions for the number of words, figures, or the length of the supporting information, although we encourage a concise and accessible writing style. We do, however, encourage you to employ a clear and concise writing style. If you believe your manuscripts would benefit from professional editing, we encourage you to utilize a copyediting service—or ask a colleague whose native language is English for assistance

All submissions should begin with the following sections:

Title

Your manuscript must be submitted with both a full title and a short title, which will appear at the top of the PDF upon publication, if accepted. Only the full title should be included in the manuscript file; the short title will be entered during the online submission process.

Your article title should be concise, accurate, and informative. Titles are often used by search engines and other information retrieval systems. The title should be specific and it should contain words that readers might be searching for.

This will make it more likely that people will find and read your article. The title must reflect the content of your article; if it does not, readers will be confused or disappointed. The title must also be comprehensible to the general reader outside your field. Where possible avoid abbreviations, formulae, and numbers.

The full title must be 150 characters or fewer and set in sentence case (the first word only and proper nouns capitalized). It should be specific, descriptive, concise, and comprehensible to readers outside the subject field.The short title should be 50 characters or fewer and should state the topic of the paper. Authors who hold patents related to the research presented in manuscript should include a statement in a foot note.

Authors and Affiliations

All persons designated as authors should qualify for authorship, and all those who qualify should be listed. Those who contributed to the work but do not qualify for authorship should be listed in the acknowledgments. When a large group or center has conducted the work, the author list should include the individuals whose contributions meet the criteria defined above, as well as the group name.

All author names should be listed in the following order:

• First names (or initials, if used),
• Middle names (or initials, if used), and
• Last names (surname, family name)

Each author should list an Highest acedemic qualification, academic position in the associated department, university, or organizational affiliation and its location, including city, state/province (if applicable), and country. If the article has been submitted on behalf of a consortium, all author names and affiliations should be listed.

One author should be designated (with an asterisk) as the corresponding author, and his or her contact address, contact phone number, email and fax number should be included on the manuscript cover page. This information will be published with the article, if accepted. No changes to affiliation can be made after the article is accepted.

Abstract

Your abstract is what readers will use when they are deciding whether to read your article. For this reason your abstract is very important and you should spend time making sure that it is readable and that it contains a complete description of your research.

• In approximately 100-300 words, you will need to summarize your findings and what the implications of those findings are.
• The abstract must be accurate as a reflection of what is in your article.
• Because abstracts are the only substantive portion of the article indexed in mnay electronic databases, and the only portion many readers read, authors need to be careful that abstracts reflect the content of the article accurately. It should emphasize new and important aspects of the study or observations.
• Please do not include citations in your abstract and avoid the use of abbreviations, if possible and must be self-contained.
• It is a good idea to include keywords in your abstract, as this will help readers to find it. Key phrases need to make sense within the abstract. Try to keep to a maximum of three or four different keyword phrases, and avoid over-repetition of such phrases as this can look like an attempt to trick a search engine, which may result in a page being rejected.
• Check that the abstract reads well.
• For papers reporting original research, state the primary objective and any hypothesis tested; describe the research design and your reasons for adopting that methodology; state the methods and procedures employed, state the main outcomes and results, and state the conclusions that might be drawn from these data and results, including their implications for further research or application/practice.
• For review papers, state the primary objective of the review; the reasoning behind your literature selection; and the way you critically analyse the literature; state the main outcomes and results of your review; and state the conclusions that might be drawn, including their implications for further research or application/practice.

KeyWords

Key words can be up to 6 which may include the species, variables tested, and the major resonse criteria. The first letter of each key word is lowercase (unless a proper noun); key words are separated by commas and presented in alphabetical order; and no abbreviations should be used. Key words will assist indexers in cross-indexing the article and may be published with the abstract.

Abbreviations and Symbols

Use only standard abbreviations; the use of non-standard abbreviations can be extremely confusing to readers. Avoid abbreviations in the title. The full term for which an abbreviation stands should precede its first use in the text unless it is a standard unit of measurement.

All submissions should end with the sections of:

Authorship and Contributorship

The International Committee of Medical Journal Editorshas recommended the following criteria for authorship; these criteria are still appropriate for those journals that distinguish authors from other contributors.

Byline Authors

• An "author" is generally considered to be someone who has made substantive intellectual contributions to a published study, and biomedical authorship continues to have important academic, social, and financial implications.
• Editors are strongly encouraged to develop and implement a contributorship policy, as well as a policy on identifying who is responsible for the integrity of the work as a whole.
• While contributorship and guarantorship policies obviously remove much of the ambiguity surrounding contributions, it leaves unresolved the question of the quantity and quality of contribution that qualify for authorship.
• Authorship credit should be based on 1) substantial contributions to conception and design, 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 published; and 4) agreement to act as guarantor of the work (ensuring that questions related to any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved). Authors should meet conditions 1, 2, 3 and 4.
• When a large, multi-center group has conducted the work, the group should identify the individuals who accept direct responsibility for the manuscript . These individuals should fully meet the criteria for authorship defined above and editors will ask these individuals to complete journal-specific author and conflict of interest disclosure forms. When submitting a group author manuscript, the corresponding author should clearly indicate the preferred citation and should clearly identify all individual authors as well as the group name. Journals will generally list other members of the group in the acknowledgements. The National Library of Medicine indexes the group name and the names of individuals the group has identified as being directly responsible for the manuscript.
• Acquisition of funding, collection of data, or general supervision of the research group, alone, does not justify authorship.
• All persons designated as authors should qualify for authorship, and all those who qualify should be listed.
• Each author should have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for appropriate portions of the content.
• Increasingly, authorship of multi-center trials is attributed to a group. All members of the group who are named as authors should fully meet the above criteria for authorship.
• The order of authorship on the byline should be a joint decision of the co-authors. Authors should be prepared to explain the order in which authors are listed.

Contributors Listed in Acknowledgments

• All contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship should be listed in an acknowledgments 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. Financial and material support should also be acknowledged.
• Groups of persons who have contributed materially to the paper but whose contributions do not justify authorship may be listed under a heading such as "clinical investigators" or "participating investigators," and their function or contribution should be described — for example, "served as scientific advisors," "critically reviewed the study proposal," "collected data," or "provided and cared for study patients."
• Because readers may infer their endorsement of the data and conclusions, all persons must give written permission to be acknowledged.

Acknowledgments

In this section acknowledge anyone who contributed towards the study by making substantial contributions to conception, materials essential for the study, design, acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data, or who was involved in drafting the manuscript or revising it critically for important intellectual content, but who does not meet the criteria for authorship. In acknowledging the assistance of colleagues, it is expected that you will have obtained their permission to be named. If the text and/or figures are being reprinted with permission of an author or publisher, acknowledge them in this section.

Funding sources should not be included in the acknowledgments, or anywhere in the manuscript file. You will provide this information during the manuscript submission process.

Funding information

Please provide a list of the sources of funding, as well as the relevant grant numbers, where possible. List the authors associated with specific funding sources.

Competing interest

Authors are responsible for recognizing and disclosing conflicts of interest that might bias their work. They should acknowledge in the manuscript all financial support for the work and other personal connections. Authors are required to complete a declaration of competing interests. All competing interests that are declared will be listed at the end of published articles. Where an author gives no competing interests, the listing will read 'The author(s) declare that they have no competing interests'. When completing your declaration, please consider the following questions:

Financial competing interests

• In the past five years have you received reimbursements, fees, funding, or salary from an organization that may in any way gain or lose financially from the publication of this manuscript, either now or in the future? Is such an organization financing this manuscript (including the article-processing charge)? If so, please specify.
• Do you hold any stocks or shares in an organization that may in any way gain or lose financially from the publication of this manuscript, either now or in the future? If so, please specify
• Do you hold or are you currently applying for any patents relating to the content of the manuscript? Have you received reimbursements, fees, funding, or salary from an organization that holds or has applied for patents relating to the content of the manuscript? If so, please specify.
• Do you have any other financial competing interests? If so, please specify.

Non-financial competing interests

• Are there any non-financial competing interests (political, personal, religious, ideological, academic, intellectual, commercial or any other) to declare in relation to this manuscript? If so, please specify.
• If you are unsure as to whether you, or one your co-authors, has a competing interest please discuss it with the editorial office.

References

Published works, works accepted for publication, and citable datasets should appear in the reference list. Mentions of unpublished work should be cited parenthetically within the main text of the article as personal communications.

OA Text employees the name-year (or “Harvard”) system of in-text references, in which the author’s surname and year of publication are cited in the text of your work, enclosed in parentheses. References should be numbered consecutively in the order in which they are first mentioned in the text. Identify references in text, tables, and legends by Arabic numerals in parentheses. References cited only in tables or figure legends should be numbered in accordance with the sequence established by the first identification in the text of the particular table or figure. Journals’ titles should be abbreviated following theISI Journal Title Abbreviation List, but set in title case and italicized. The list can also be obtained through theLibrary's website.

Detailed information on formatting references can be found in ourReference Style Guide. We use Scientific Style and Format: The CSE Manual for Authors, Editors, and Publishers (7th Edition, 2006) as our primary style guide and highly recommend that authors consult it.

Supplemental material

Although we do not limit the number or type of Supplemental Material items authors may include, we do require that they provide a relevant and useful expansion of the article, and that they be as well described as are figures and tables included within the body of the article. Good metadata of this material are key to discoverability and usefulness. All Supplemental Material should include the following:

Type and number:Supplemental material can be named in almost any way, provided that the files are consistently named, and numbers are preceded by “S” and closed with a period. Examples:

• Figure S1.
• Table S1.
• Text S1.
• Video S1.
• Animation S1.
• Alternative Language Abstract S1.

Figures, Tables, Videos, Animations should be provided with titles should be no more than 15 words and set in bold type, using sentence case.

Supplemental material figures and tables should follow the requirements for main-text figures and tables (seeFigure PreparationandTable Preparation).

Other types of supplementary material files should include a caption of no more than 300 words, should be describing the key message of the figure/video/animation in such a way that readers can interpret the file without referring to the text.

Tables

Tables capture information concisely, and display it efficiently; they also provide information at any desired level of detail and precision. Including data in tables rather than text frequently makes it possible to reduce the length of the text.

Type or print each table with double spacing on a separate sheet of paper. Number tables consecutively in the order of their first citation in the text and supply a brief title for each. Do not use internal horizontal or vertical lines. Give each column a short or abbreviated heading. Authors should place explanatory matter in footnotes, not in the heading. Explain in footnotes all nonstandard abbreviations. For footnotes use the following symbols, in sequence:

*,†,‡,§,¶,**,††,‡‡,§§,¶¶

Identify statistical measures of variations, such as standard deviation and standard error of the mean.

Be sure that each table is cited in the text.

If you use data from another published or unpublished source, obtain permission and acknowledge them fully.

Additional tables containing backup data too extensive to publish in print may be appropriate for publication in the electronic version of the journal, deposited with an archival service, or made available to readers directly by the authors. In that event an appropriate statement will be added to the text. Submit such tables for consideration with the paper so that they will be available to the peer reviewers. Please consultTable Preparationfor detailed guidelines on formatting tables.

Figures

Figures should be either professionally drawn and photographed, or submitted as photographic quality digital prints. In addition to requiring a version of the figures suitable for printing, some journals now ask authors for electronic files of figures in a format (e.g., JPEG or GIF) that will produce high quality images in the web version of the journal; authors should review the images of such files on a computer screen before submitting them, to be sure they meet their own quality standard.

For x-ray films, scans, and other diagnostic images, as well as pictures of pathology specimens or photomicrographs, send sharp, glossy, black-and-white or color photographic prints, usually 127 x 173 mm (5 x 7 inches). Although some journals redraw figures, many do not. Letters, numbers, and symbols on Figures should therefore be clear and even throughout, and of sufficient size that when reduced for publication each item will still be legible. Figures should be made as self-explanatory as possible, since many will be used directly in slide presentations. Titles and detailed explanations belong in the legends, however, not on the illustrations themselves.

Photomicrographs should have internal scale markers. Symbols, arrows, or letters used in photomicrographs should contrast with the background.

If photographs of people are used, either the subjects must not be identifiable or their pictures must be accompanied by written permission to use the photograph.Whenever possible permission for publication should be obtained.

Figures should be numbered consecutively according to the order in which they have been first cited in the text. If a figure has been published, acknowledge the original source and submit written permission from the copyright holder to reproduce the material. Permission is required irrespective of authorship or publisher except for documents in the public domain.

For illustrations in color, ascertain whether the journal requires color negatives, positive transparencies, or color prints. Accompanying drawings marked to indicate the region to be reproduced might be useful to the editor.

Please consultFigure Preparationfor detailed guidelines.

Legends for Figures

Type or print out legends for illustrations using double spacing, starting on a separate page, with Arabic numerals corresponding to the illustrations. When symbols, arrows, numbers, or letters are used to identify parts of the illustrations, identify and explain each one clearly in the legend. Explain the internal scale and identify the method of staining in photomicrographs.

Units of Measurement

Measurements of length, height, weight, and volume should be reported in metric units (meter, kilogram, or liter) or their decimal multiples.

Temperatures should be in degrees Celsius. Blood pressures should be in millimeters of mercury, unless other units are specifically required by the journal.

Journals vary in the units they use for reporting hematological, clinical chemistry, and other measurements. Authors must consult the information for authors for the particular journal and should report laboratory information in both the local and International System of Units (SI). Editors may request that the authors before publication add alternative or non-SI units, since SI units are not universally used. Drug concentrations may be reported in either SI or mass units, but the alternative should be provided in parentheses where appropriate.

Submissions with Equations

In both displayed equations and in text, scalar variables must be in italics, with non-variable matter in upright type.

Displayed equations referred to in the text should be numbered serially ((1), (2), etc.) on the right-hand side of the page. Short expressions not referred to by any number will usually be incorporated in the text.

Mathematical equations should preferably be typewritten, with subscripts and superscripts clearly shown. It is helpful to identify unusual or ambiguous symbols in the margin when they first occur. Please ensure all symbols are described in the text. If equations are numbered, consecutive Arabic numbers in parentheses should be used. Equations may be referred to in the text as "equation (1)", "equations (2)-(4)". To simplify typesetting, please use: (1) the "exp" form of complex exponential functions; (2) fractional exponents instead of root signs; and (3) the solidus (/) to simplify fractions e.g. 3/4, exp x½. Other letters not marked will be set in roman type. Please supply reproducible artwork for equations containing ring formulae and other complex chemical structures. Schemes should also be numbered with consecutive Arabic numbers.

If you are submitting your manuscript as a Word-processed document, please ensure that equations are editable (i.e., not an image or locked). If using an equation editor, do not save the equations in non-editable format.

Submissions with Mathematical Scripts

Special care should be taken with mathematical scripts, especially subscripts and superscripts and differentiation between the letter "ell" and the figure one, and the letter "oh" and the figure zero.

If your keyboard or PC does not have the characters you need, or when using longhand, it is important to differentiate between: K and k; X, x and x (multiplication); asterisks intended to appear when published as multiplication signs and those intended to remain as asterisks; etc.

Special symbols, and others used to stand for symbols not available in the character set of your PC, should be highlighted in the text and explained in the margin. In some cases it is helpful to supply annotated lists of symbols for the guidance of the sub-editor and the typesetter, and/or a Nomenclature section preceding the Introduction.

In both displayed equations and in text, scalar variables must be in italics, with non-variable matter in upright type. For simple fractions in the text, the solidus "/" should be used instead of a horizontal line, care being taken to insert parentheses where necessary to avoid ambiguity. Exceptions are the proper fractions available as single type on keyboards and in character sets (e.g. ¼, ½, ¾).

The solidus is not generally used for units: m s-¹ not m/s, but note electrons/s, counts/channel, etc.

Displayed equations referred to in the text should be numbered serially ((1), (2), etc.) on the right-hand side of the page. Short expressions not referred to by any number will usually be incorporated in the text.

Symbols used to represent tensors, matrices, vectors and scalar variables should either be used as required from the character set of the application you are using or marked on hard-copy by underlining with a wavy underline for bold, a straight underline for italic and a straight red underline for sans serif.

The following styles are preferred: upright bold sans serif r for tensors, bold serif italic r for vectors, upright bold serif for matrices, and medium-face sloping serif r for scalar variables. In mathematical expressions, the use of "d" for differential should be made clear and coded in roman, not italic.

Typographical requirements must be clearly indicated at their first occurrence, e.g. Greek, Roman, script, sans serif, bold, italic. Authors will be charged for corrections at proof stage resulting from a failure to do so.

Braces, brackets and parentheses are used in the order { [( )] } , except where mathematical convention dictates otherwise (e.g. square brackets for commutators and anticommutators; braces for the exponent in exponentials).

For units and symbols, the SI system should be used. Where measurements are given in other systems, conversion factors or conversions should be inserted by the author.

Submissions with Special Characters

If your article contains special characters, accents, or diacritics and you are preparing your manuscript in Microsoft Word, we recommend the following procedure:

For European accents, Greek, Hebrew, or Cyrillic letters, or phonetic symbols: choose Times New Roman font from the dropdown menu in the "Insert symbol" window and insert the character you require.

For Asian languages such as Sanskrit, Korean, Chinese, or Japanese: choose Arial Unicode font from the dropdown menu in the Insert symbol” window and insert the character you require.

For transliterated Arabic: you may choose either Times New Roman or Arial Unicode (unless the Instructions for Authors specify a particular font). For ayns and hamzas choose Arial Unicode font from the dropdown menu in the "Insert symbol" window and then type the Unicode hexes directly into the "Character code" box. Use 02BF for ayn, and 02BE for hamza.

Please also see theUnicode character code chart.

Submissions with Footnotes

Footnotes should be used sparingly. Number them consecutively throughout the article, using superscript Arabic numbers. Many wordprocessors 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.

Please note that figures and supplemental material should not be included in the body of the manuscript, but rather submitted separately as individual files.

The title, authors, and affiliations should all be included on a title page as the first page of the manuscript file.

There are no explicit requirements for section organization between these beginning and ending sections. Articles may be organized in different ways and with different section titles, according to the authors' preferenceand type of article. In most cases, internal sections typically include:

Introduction

The introduction must not exceed 2,000 keystrokes (characters plus spaces) and briefly justifies the research, specifies the hypotheses to be tested, and gives the objective(s).

The introduction should:

• Provide background that puts the manuscript into context and allows readers outside the field to understand the purpose and significance of the study
• Define the problem addressed and why it is important
• Include a brief review of the key literature
• Reports of clinical research should, where appropriate, include a summary of a search of the literature to indicate why this study was necessary and what it aimed to contribute to the field
• Note any relevant controversies or disagreements in the field
• The section should end with a very brief statement of what is being reported in the article.
• The main and secondary objectives should be made clear, and any pre-specified subgroup analysis should be described.
• Give only strictly pertinent references and do not include data or conclusions from the work being reported.
• Extensive discussion of relevant literature should be included in the discussion.

Materials and Methods

Sufficient information should be given to permit repetition of the experimental work. This should include the design of the study, the setting, the type of participants or materials involved, a clear description of all interventions and comparisons, and the type of analysis used, including a power calculation if appropriate.

Specific information and/or protocols for new methods should be included in detail. If materials, methods, and protocols are well established, authors may cite articles where those protocols are described in detail, but the submission should include sufficient information to be understood independent of these references.

We encourage authors to submit detailed protocols for newer or less well-established methods as Supporting Information.

Methods sections of papers with data that should be deposited in a publicly available database should specify where the data have been deposited and provide the relevant accession numbers and version numbers, if appropriate. Accession numbers should be provided in parentheses after the entity on first use. If the accession numbers have not yet been obtained at the time of submission, please state that they will be provided during review. They must be provided prior to publication.

Results

Present your results in logical sequence in the text or in the form of tables or figures/illustrations when feasible, giving the main or most important findings first. The text should explain or elaborate on the tabular data, but numbers should not be repeated within text. Extra or supplementary data and technical details can be placed in an appendix where it will be accessible but will not interrupt the flow of the text.

When data are summarized in the results section, sufficient data, all with some index of variation attached should be presented to allow the readers to interpret the results of the experiment. Give numeric results not only as derivatives (For example %) but also as the absolute numbers from which the derivatives were calculated and specify the statistical methods used to analyse them.

Restrict tables and figures to those needed to explain the argument of the paper and to assess its support. Use graphs as an alternative to tables with many entries; do not duplicate data in graphs and tables. Avoid non –technical uses of technical terms in statistics, such as “random” (which implies a randomizing device), “normal”, “significant”, “correlations”, and “sample”.

Results section may be further divided into subsections, each with a concise subheading, as appropriate. These sections have no word limit, but the language should be clear and concise.

Discussion

These sections may all be separate, or may be combined to create a mixed Results/Discussion section (commonly labeled "Results and Discussion") or a mixed Discussion/Conclusions section (commonly labeled "Discussion").

Emphasize the new and important aspects of the study and the conclusions that follow from them. Do not repeat in detail data or other material given in the Introduction or the Results section. For experimental studies it is useful to begin the discussion by summarizing briefly the main findings, then explore possible mechanisms or explanations for these findings, compare and contrast how your research is different from previous reported and how your observations will significantly advance the current knowledge of the subject, state the limitations of the study. Do not repeat the details given in the introduction. Link the conclusions with the goals of the study but avoid unqualified statements and conclusions not adequately supported by the data. Avoid claiming priority and alluding to work that has not been completed. State new hypotheses when warranted, but clearly label them as such.

Abbreviations should be kept to a minimum and defined upon first use in the text. Non-standard abbreviations should not be used unless they appear at least three times in the text.

Standardized nomenclature should be used as appropriate, including appropriate usage of species names and SI units.