Submission guidelines

Article types

• Editorial:

Please note that systematic review articles should be submitted as Reviews and meta-analyses should submitted as Original Articles.

• Original Articles:

word limit 5000 words, 45 references, no more than 6 figures/tables

• Short Communications:

2500 words, 20 references, no more than 2 figures/tables.

• Reviews: word limit 10000 words, 200 references, no more than 10 figures

• Concise Clinical Reviews (see following section)

• Position Papers

• Consensus Statements

• Case Reports:

1500 words, 1-2 figures/tables, 20 references

• Letters:

500 words

• Editorials

Invited Reviews must also be submitted online.

• Reviews invited by E. Michael Lewiecki are managed by the editorial office in New York: authors must select “F. Cosman” in the manuscript routing section of EditorialManager.

• Reviews invited by Rene Rizzoli are managed by the editorial office in Europe: authors must select “J. Kanis” in the manuscript routing section of EditorialManager.

These articles will then follow the standard peer review procedure.

Please note:

All word counts listed below refer to restrictions to the main body of the article only, and are exclusive of title page, abstract, references, tables and figures.

Concise Clinical Reviews

Concise Clinical Reviews will provide brief but informative updates on common issues with clinical relevance to practicing physicians and clinical investigators. The goal of these reviews is to provide an overview of an important clinical area with key references and to provide clinical tips to assist in managing patients with osteoporosis or metabolic bone disease. Papers are not to exceed 2500 words (excluding abstract, references, figures/tables). Clinical Tips for each concise clinical review should be presented in table form. There should be no more than 40 references and no more than 2 figures/tables in addition to the Clinical Tips table. Papers should contain a structured abstract of 300 words, containing sections of Clinical Relevance, Observations, and Conclusions. The manuscript text may contain an Expert Opinion section but it must be clearly distinguished from the Conclusions that should be supported by a high level of medical evidence. Continuing Medical Education (CME) credit is offered for completion of online multiple choice questions associated with the article. Please see the section entitled CME Activity for specific details. As author of a concise clinical review, you will also be asked to prepare three learning objectives.

CME Activity

Target Audience:

The target audience for Osteoporosis International Concise Clinical Reviews is clinicians who participate in the care of patients at risk for, or suffering from, osteoporosis. The audience will include individuals in primary care, endocrinology, geriatrics, gynecology, internal medicine, obstetrics, orthopedics, osteopathy, pediatrics, physiatry, radiology, rheumatology and physical therapy.

Accreditation:

The National Osteoporosis Foundation (NOF) is accredited by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) to provide continuing medical education for physicians.

Credit Statement:

The National Osteoporosis Foundation designates this journal-based CME activity for a maximum of 0.5 AMA PRA Category 1 Credit(s)™. Physicians should claim only the credit commensurate with the extent of their participation in the activity. American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC) accepts AMA PRA Category 1 credit™ from organizations accredited by the ACCME. American Academy of Nurse Practitioners National Certification Program (AANP) accepts AMA PRA Category 1 credit™ from organizations accredited by the ACCME. American Academy of Physician Assistants (AAPA) accepts certificates of participation for educational activities certified for AMA PRA Category 1 credit™ from organizations accredited by the ACCME.

Learning Objectives:

On completion of this article, you should be able to:

1.

2.

3.

[Objectives should be specific for each article]

Disclosure of Commercial Support:

It is the policy of the NOF and IOF to ensure balance, independence, objectivity, and scientific rigor in all its sponsored publications and programs. NOF/IOF require the disclosure of the existence of any significant financial interest or any other relationship the editors, editorial board or authors have with the manufacturer(s) of any commercial product(s) discussed in an educational presentation. All authors and contributors to this continuing education activity have disclosed any real or apparent interest that may have direct bearing on the subject matter of this program. Please be advised that NOF’s accreditation status with ACCME does not imply endorsement of any commercial product discussed or point of view expressed in conjunction with this activity.

Method of Participation:

In order to claim credit, participants must complete the following:

1. Read the article.

2. Visit www.cme.nof.org and sign in. If you have not yet established an account, you will be prompted to do so.

3. Select CME Opportunities, and then select Concise Clinical Reviews to access the online CME process. On successful completion of the online test and evaluation, you will be able to download and print your certificate of credit.

4. You may also link to the article and read it from within the NOF Professional Learning Center. After reading the article, return to www.cme.nof.org to complete the CME Test and Evaluation.

5. Complete the online CME Test and Evaluation. Participants must achieve a score of 80% on the CME Test. One retake is allowed.

Estimated Time: The estimated time to complete each article and exam is 30-60 minutes.

Hardware/Software: PC or MAC with Internet access.

Date of Release: 1/1/2017 [Varies with release date]

Expiration Date: 12/31/2017 [Varies with release date] (Credit can no longer be offered after it has passed the expiration date.)

Questions: Please direct questions to +1-703-6473000 or Education@NOF.org

Review procedure

All manuscripts undergo strict peer review, including Reviews, Consensus Statements and Supplements.

Manuscripts are initially considered by the managing Editor-in-Chief. Any manuscript that does not meet the general certain criteria of the journal, e.g.

• relevance to the aims of the journal with the topic being of overall general interest

• sufficiently original and contributing to the advancement of the field,

• clearly written with appropriate study methods, well-supported data and conclusions which are supported by the data

will be reviewed and discussed with the local Associate Editor(s) prior to the submission being returned to the author without acceptance.

All other submitted manuscripts are assigned to an editor who will manage the external peer review process and editorial decision. The Journal encourages authors to recommend individuals who could be considered as reviewers, providing the editorial office with full names and contact details. Authors are also given the opportunity to request the exclusion of a specific reviewer. In this case, authors should provide justification for their request.

Each manuscript is reviewed by a minimum of two expert referees who will provide unbiased, critical and independent assessment of the submission. The (corresponding) author is notified by email of the editorial decision, which will include any applicable criticisms and comments from the reviewers and managing editor. The decision to accept with/without revision or otherwise, will be made by the managing editor based on the critical assessments of the experts.

Manuscripts which are returned to the authors for minor or major modifications should be resubmitted online within one or three months, respectively; otherwise, they will be considered withdrawn. Normally, revised manuscripts are reassessed by the same reviewers to determine if the authors have satisfactorily addressed their criticisms and comments. Depending upon this evaluation, the manuscript may be accepted or rejected. Any questions or concerns regarding the editorial decision on a manuscript must be submitted directly to the managing editorial office within 3 months.

Confidentiality

All manuscripts are treated by the assigned reviewers as privileged and confidential information. Reviewers may request advice from another party, subject to the general principles of confidentiality and permission of the managing editor. Reviewers’ comments are not published or made available publicly except with the prior written permission of the reviewer, author and editor. However, reviewers’ comments are shared with the other reviewers of the same paper, and reviewers will be notified of the editor’s decision. The reviewers’ identity remains anonymous. All reviewers are asked to disclose any potential conflict that could influence their opinions of manuscripts, prior to review of manuscript.

Manuscript preparation

We urge authors to follow the guidelines for authors to speed up the review and publication process.

All manuscripts are subject to copyediting upon acceptance; however, authors are asked to ensure that manuscripts from non-native English language speakers should have the language and grammar checked by a native speaker or a professional agency. Poorly written articles cannot be reviewed and will be returned to the authors.

• Authorship Criteria and Contributions

  All listed authors should have seen and approved the final version of the manuscript.

  Corresponding authors must confirm on behalf of all authors that they have met all three of the following criteria for authorship, thereby accepting public responsibility for appropriate portions of the content:

  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. approval of the version to be published and all subsequent versions.

  If authorship is attributed to a group (such as for multi-center trials), the group must designate one or more individuals as authors or members of a writing group who meet full authorship criteria and who accepts direct responsibility for the manuscript.

  Other group members who are not authors should be listed in the Acknowledgment section of the manuscript as participating investigators.

  Individuals who do not meet the criteria for authorship but who have made substantial, direct contributions to the work (e.g., purely technical help, writing assistance, general or financial or material support) should be acknowledged in the Acknowledgments section of the manuscript, with a brief description of their contributions. Authors should obtain written permission from anyone they wish to list in the Acknowledgments section.

• Redundant, Duplicate or Fraudulent Publication

  Authors must not simultaneously submit their manuscripts to another publication if that manuscript is under consideration by Osteoporosis International.

  Redundant or duplicate publication is a paper that overlaps substantially with one already published in print or electronic media. At the time of manuscript submission, authors must inform the editor about all submissions and previous publications that might be regarded as redundant or duplicate publication of the same or very similar work. Any such publication must be referred to and referenced in the new paper.

  Copies of such material should be included with the submitted paper as a supplemental file.

  Authors must not:

  • Willfully and knowingly submit false data

  • Submit data from source not the authors’ own

  • Submit previously published material (with the exception of abstracts) without correct and proper citation

  • Omit reference to the works of other investigators which established a priority

  • Falsely certify that the submitted work is original

  • Use material previously published elsewhere without prior written approval of the copyright holder

Manuscript Submission

Manuscript Submission

Submission of a manuscript implies: that the work described has not been published before; that it is not under consideration for publication anywhere else; that its publication has been approved by all co-authors, if any, as well as by the responsible authorities – tacitly or explicitly – at the institute where the work has been carried out. The publisher will not be held legally responsible should there be any claims for compensation.

Permissions

Authors wishing to include figures, tables, or text passages that have already been published elsewhere are required to obtain permission from the copyright owner(s) for both the print and online format and to include evidence that such permission has been granted when submitting their papers. Any material received without such evidence will be assumed to originate from the authors.

Online Submission

Please follow the hyperlink “Submit manuscript” and upload all of your manuscript files following the instructions given on the screen.

Source Files

Please ensure you provide all relevant editable source files at every submission and revision. Failing to submit a complete set of editable source files will result in your article not being considered for review. For your manuscript text please always submit in common word processing formats such as .docx or LaTeX.

Title Page

Title Page

Please make sure your title page contains the following information.

Title

The title should be concise and informative.

Author information

• The name(s) of the author(s)
• The affiliation(s) of the author(s), i.e. institution, (department), city, (state), country
• A clear indication and an active e-mail address of the corresponding author
• If available, the 16-digit ORCID of the author(s)

If address information is provided with the affiliation(s) it will also be published.

For authors that are (temporarily) unaffiliated we will only capture their city and country of residence, not their e-mail address unless specifically requested.

Large Language Models (LLMs), such as ChatGPT, do not currently satisfy our authorship criteria. Notably an attribution of authorship carries with it accountability for the work, which cannot be effectively applied to LLMs. Use of an LLM should be properly documented in the Methods section (and if a Methods section is not available, in a suitable alternative part) of the manuscript.

Abstract

Please provide a structured abstract of 150 to 250 words which should be divided into the following sections:

• Purpose (stating the main purposes and research question)
• Methods
• Results
• Conclusion

For life science journals only (when applicable)

• Trial registration number and date of registration for prospectively registered trials
• Trial registration number and date of registration followed by “retrospectively registered”, for retrospectively registered trials

Keywords

Please provide 4 to 6 keywords which can be used for indexing purposes.

Statements and Declarations

The following statements should be included under the heading "Statements and Declarations" for inclusion in the published paper. Please note that submissions that do not include relevant declarations will be returned as incomplete.

• Competing Interests: Authors are required to disclose financial or non-financial interests that are directly or indirectly related to the work submitted for publication. Please refer to “Competing Interests and Funding” below for more information on how to complete this section.

Please see the relevant sections in the submission guidelines for further information as well as various examples of wording. Please revise/customize the sample statements according to your own needs.

Conflict of Interest

Authors no longer need to complete the “Authorship & Disclosure Form”. Corresponding authors must confirm that a Conflict of Interest statement has been included in the manuscript on behalf of all authors as part of the submission process.

Specific remarks

Mini Abstract

50 words or less. Describe the rationale, main result and significance. Use language that can be understood by persons outside the field. Avoid details.

Text

Text Formatting

Manuscripts should be submitted in Word.

• Use a normal, plain font (e.g., 10-point Times Roman) for text.
• Use italics for emphasis.
• Use the automatic page numbering function to number the pages.
• Do not use field functions.
• Use tab stops or other commands for indents, not the space bar.
• Use the table function, not spreadsheets, to make tables.
• Use the equation editor or MathType for equations.
• Save your file in docx format (Word 2007 or higher) or doc format (older Word versions).

Manuscripts with mathematical content can also be submitted in LaTeX. We recommend using Springer Nature’s LaTeX template.

Headings

Please use no more than three levels of displayed headings.

Abbreviations

Abbreviations should be defined at first mention and used consistently thereafter.

Footnotes

Footnotes can be used to give additional information, which may include the citation of a reference included in the reference list. They should not consist solely of a reference citation, and they should never include the bibliographic details of a reference. They should also not contain any figures or tables.

Footnotes to the text are numbered consecutively; those to tables should be indicated by superscript lower-case letters (or asterisks for significance values and other statistical data). Footnotes to the title or the authors of the article are not given reference symbols.

Always use footnotes instead of endnotes.

Acknowledgments

Acknowledgments of people, grants, funds, etc. should be placed in a separate section on the title page. The names of funding organizations should be written in full.

Text Formatting

• Introduction: Develop the study rationale and avoid a literature review. Literature should be cited only to the extent that it helps the reader understand why the question is asked. End the introduction with a stated aim or question, preferably expressed as a testable hypothesis. For example, if the study is aimed at identifying the color of apples, or asks what color are apples, state “we hypothesized that apples will be green rather than red”. The reason for this hypothesis should be contained in the rationale.

• Methods: The methods section should describe the procedures used and provide sufficient information (subjects, measurements, statistical analyses) so that a reader can evaluate the credibility of results and interpretation in the light of possible methodological limitations. Findings should be quantified when possible, and presented with appropriate indicators of measurement error or uncertainty, e.g. confidence intervals. The source or manufacturer name of all products used should be stated. Authors should always consider clarity for other workers about how and why a study was in a particular way.

• Results: Results concerning the primary testable hypothesis should be presented first. Do not save the ”best” for last. For example, if the main aim is to assess anti-fracture efficacy, present these data first and surrogates (BMD or biochemical markers) later. Data should be presented as concisely as possible, if appropriate, in the form of tables and/or graphs, although very large tables should be avoided. If authors wish to present the full data of the study and any technical details, these can be included as Electronic Supplementary Material.

• Discussion: The following paragraph structure is recommended:• A summary of the main findings from most to least important including a statement whether the results are consistent with the stated hypothesis. • Discuss how these results confirm or contrast with the published literature.• If the results differ, discuss the possible reasons for this. Details of methodology and results of published literature may be appropriate here. Avoid reviewing the literature outside the scope of the study.• Discuss the significance and implications of this new data. Having developed the rationale to define the limits of current knowledge, how does this new information advance understanding?• Write a paragraph concerning the limitations of the study. This is critical. The inferences made throughout the Discussion must be written bearing in mind the constraints of the methodological limitations of the work. Papers written without this section will not be considered for publication.• Summarize and Conclude: The conclusion is an inference. Within the constraints of the limitations of the study, the authors may boldly speculate regarding the significance of the findings and future research.

Terminology

Please refer to the below Terminology guidelines and include as appropriate in your submission. All abbreviations in the abstract and text must be defined immediately at first mention and used consistently thereafter.

• Bone histomorphometry: Articles on bone histomorphometry should conform to the recommendations of the American Society for Bone and Mineral Research (Dempster DW, Compston JE, Drezner MK, et al (2013) Standardized Nomenclature, Symbols and Units for Bone Histomorphometry: A 2012 Update of the Report of the ASBMR Histomorphometry Nomenclature Committee. J Bone Miner Res 2013;28:2-17).

• Tumor necrosis factor (TNF) family members: Articles on TNF family members should conform to the recommendations of the American Society of Bone and Mineral Research (ASBMR President’s Committee on Nomenclature (2000) Proposed standard nomenclature for new tumor necrosis factor family members involved in the regulation of bone resorption. J Bone Miner Res 15:2293-2296).

• Bone markers: Articles on bone markers should conform to the recommendations of the International Osteoporosis Foundation (Delmas PD, Eastell R, Garnero P, et al. (2000) The use of biochemical markers of bone turnover in osteoporosis. Osteoporos Int Suppl 6:S2-S17).

• Proprietary substances and materials, and instruments: The correct designation and the manufacturer’s name should be given. Where the manufacturer is not well known, the city and country should also be included.

• Units of measure: SI units should be used throughout, except where non-SI units are more common.

• Drug names: When drugs are mentioned, the international (generic) name should be used. The proprietary name, chemical composition, and manufacturer should be stated in full in the Materials and Methods section. The source of any new and experimental preparation should also be given.

• Papers describing the descriptive epidemiology of osteoporosis using BMD at the femoral neck should include T-scores derived from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) III reference database for femoral neck measurements in Caucasian women aged 20–29 years as described in:

  Kanis JA, , Adachi JD, Cooper C, Clark P, Cummings SR, Diaz-Curiel M, Harvey N, Hiligsmann M, Papaioannou A, D Pierroz D, Silverman SL, Szulc P, and the Epidemiology and Quality of Life Working Group of IOF (2013). Standardising the descriptive epidemiology of osteoporosis: recommendations from the Epidemiology and Quality of Life Working Group of IOF. Osteoporos Int. doi: 10.1007/s00198-013-2413-7

Available from this:

Link

References

Citation

Reference citations in the text should be identified by numbers in square brackets. Some examples:

1. Negotiation research spans many disciplines [3].

2. This result was later contradicted by Becker and Seligman [5].

3. This effect has been widely studied [1-3, 7].

Reference list

The list of references should only include works that are cited in the text and that have been published or accepted for publication. Personal communications and unpublished works should only be mentioned in the text.

The entries in the list should be numbered consecutively.

If available, please always include DOIs as full DOI links in your reference list (e.g. “https://doi.org/abc”).

• Journal article

  Gamelin FX, Baquet G, Berthoin S, Thevenet D, Nourry C, Nottin S, Bosquet L (2009) Effect of high intensity intermittent training on heart rate variability in prepubescent children. Eur J Appl Physiol 105:731-738. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00421-008-0955-8

  Ideally, the names of all authors should be provided, but the usage of “et al” in long author lists will also be accepted:

  Smith J, Jones M Jr, Houghton L et al (1999) Future of health insurance. N Engl J Med 965:325–329

• Article by DOI

  Slifka MK, Whitton JL (2000) Clinical implications of dysregulated cytokine production. J Mol Med. https://doi.org/10.1007/s001090000086

• Book

  South J, Blass B (2001) The future of modern genomics. Blackwell, London

• Book chapter

  Brown B, Aaron M (2001) The politics of nature. In: Smith J (ed) The rise of modern genomics, 3rd edn. Wiley, New York, pp 230-257

• Online document

  Cartwright J (2007) Big stars have weather too. IOP Publishing PhysicsWeb. http://physicsweb.org/articles/news/11/6/16/1. Accessed 26 June 2007

• Dissertation

  Trent JW (1975) Experimental acute renal failure. Dissertation, University of California

Always use the standard abbreviation of a journal’s name according to the ISSN List of Title Word Abbreviations, see

ISSN.org LTWA

If you are unsure, please use the full journal title.

Authors preparing their manuscript in LaTeX can use the bibliography style file sn-basic.bst which is included in the Springer Nature Article Template.

Tables

• All tables are to be numbered using Arabic numerals.
• Tables should always be cited in text in consecutive numerical order.
• For each table, please supply a table caption (title) explaining the components of the table.
• Identify any previously published material by giving the original source in the form of a reference at the end of the table caption.
• Footnotes to tables should be indicated by superscript lower-case letters (or asterisks for significance values and other statistical data) and included beneath the table body.

Artwork and Illustrations Guidelines

Electronic Figure Submission

• Supply all figures electronically.
• Indicate what graphics program was used to create the artwork.
• For vector graphics, the preferred format is EPS; for halftones, please use TIFF format. MSOffice files are also acceptable.
• Vector graphics containing fonts must have the fonts embedded in the files.
• Name your figure files with "Fig" and the figure number, e.g., Fig1.eps.

Line Art

• Definition: Black and white graphic with no shading.
• Do not use faint lines and/or lettering and check that all lines and lettering within the figures are legible at final size.
• All lines should be at least 0.1 mm (0.3 pt) wide.
• Scanned line drawings and line drawings in bitmap format should have a minimum resolution of 1200 dpi.
• Vector graphics containing fonts must have the fonts embedded in the files.

Halftone Art

• Definition: Photographs, drawings, or paintings with fine shading, etc.
• If any magnification is used in the photographs, indicate this by using scale bars within the figures themselves.
• Halftones should have a minimum resolution of 300 dpi.

Combination Art

• Definition: a combination of halftone and line art, e.g., halftones containing line drawing, extensive lettering, color diagrams, etc.
• Combination artwork should have a minimum resolution of 600 dpi.

Color Art

• Color art is free of charge for online publication.
• If black and white will be shown in the print version, make sure that the main information will still be visible. Many colors are not distinguishable from one another when converted to black and white. A simple way to check this is to make a xerographic copy to see if the necessary distinctions between the different colors are still apparent.
• If the figures will be printed in black and white, do not refer to color in the captions.
• Color illustrations should be submitted as RGB (8 bits per channel).

Figure Lettering

• To add lettering, it is best to use Helvetica or Arial (sans serif fonts).
• Keep lettering consistently sized throughout your final-sized artwork, usually about 2–3 mm (8–12 pt).
• Variance of type size within an illustration should be minimal, e.g., do not use 8-pt type on an axis and 20-pt type for the axis label.
• Avoid effects such as shading, outline letters, etc.
• Do not include titles or captions within your illustrations.

Figure Numbering

• All figures are to be numbered using Arabic numerals.
• Figures should always be cited in text in consecutive numerical order.
• Figure parts should be denoted by lowercase letters (a, b, c, etc.).
• If an appendix appears in your article and it contains one or more figures, continue the consecutive numbering of the main text. Do not number the appendix figures,"A1, A2, A3, etc." Figures in online appendices [Supplementary Information (SI)] should, however, be numbered separately.

Figure Captions

• Each figure should have a concise caption describing accurately what the figure depicts. Include the captions in the text file of the manuscript, not in the figure file.
• Figure captions begin with the term Fig. in bold type, followed by the figure number, also in bold type.
• No punctuation is to be included after the number, nor is any punctuation to be placed at the end of the caption.
• Identify all elements found in the figure in the figure caption; and use boxes, circles, etc., as coordinate points in graphs.
• Identify previously published material by giving the original source in the form of a reference citation at the end of the figure caption.

Figure Placement and Size

• Figures should be submitted within the body of the text. Only if the file size of the manuscript causes problems in uploading it, the large figures should be submitted separately from the text.
• When preparing your figures, size figures to fit in the column width.
• For large-sized journals the figures should be 84 mm (for double-column text areas), or 174 mm (for single-column text areas) wide and not higher than 234 mm.
• For small-sized journals, the figures should be 119 mm wide and not higher than 195 mm.

Permissions

If you include figures that have already been published elsewhere, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner(s) for both the print and online format. Please be aware that some publishers do not grant electronic rights for free and that Springer will not be able to refund any costs that may have occurred to receive these permissions. In such cases, material from other sources should be used.

Accessibility

In order to give people of all abilities and disabilities access to the content of your figures, please make sure that

• All figures have descriptive captions (blind users could then use a text-to-speech software or a text-to-Braille hardware)
• Patterns are used instead of or in addition to colors for conveying information (colorblind users would then be able to distinguish the visual elements)
• Any figure lettering has a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1

Additional Information

Graphical / Visual abstracts are permitted, if authors elect to submit. But are not required.

Supplementary Information (SI)

Springer accepts electronic multimedia files (animations, movies, audio, etc.) and other supplementary files to be published online along with an article or a book chapter. This feature can add dimension to the author's article, as certain information cannot be printed or is more convenient in electronic form.

Before submitting research datasets as Supplementary Information, authors should read the journal’s Research data policy. We encourage research data to be archived in data repositories wherever possible.

Submission

• Supply all supplementary material in standard file formats.
• Please include in each file the following information: article title, journal name, author names; affiliation and e-mail address of the corresponding author.
• To accommodate user downloads, please keep in mind that larger-sized files may require very long download times and that some users may experience other problems during downloading.
• High resolution (streamable quality) videos can be submitted up to a maximum of 25GB; low resolution videos should not be larger than 5GB.

Audio, Video, and Animations

• Aspect ratio: 16:9 or 4:3
• Maximum file size: 25 GB for high resolution files; 5 GB for low resolution files
• Minimum video duration: 1 sec
• Supported file formats: avi, wmv, mp4, mov, m2p, mp2, mpg, mpeg, flv, mxf, mts, m4v, 3gp

Text and Presentations

• Submit your material in PDF format; .doc or .ppt files are not suitable for long-term viability.
• A collection of figures may also be combined in a PDF file.

Spreadsheets

• Spreadsheets should be submitted as .csv or .xlsx files (MS Excel).

Specialized Formats

• Specialized format such as .pdb (chemical), .wrl (VRML), .nb (Mathematica notebook), and .tex can also be supplied.

Collecting Multiple Files

• It is possible to collect multiple files in a .zip or .gz file.

Numbering

• If supplying any supplementary material, the text must make specific mention of the material as a citation, similar to that of figures and tables.
• Refer to the supplementary files as “Online Resource”, e.g., "... as shown in the animation (Online Resource 3)", “... additional data are given in Online Resource 4”.
• Name the files consecutively, e.g. “ESM_3.mpg”, “ESM_4.pdf”.

Captions

• For each supplementary material, please supply a concise caption describing the content of the file.

Processing of supplementary files

• Supplementary Information (SI) will be published as received from the author without any conversion, editing, or reformatting.

Accessibility

In order to give people of all abilities and disabilities access to the content of your supplementary files, please make sure that

• The manuscript contains a descriptive caption for each supplementary material
• Video files do not contain anything that flashes more than three times per second (so that users prone to seizures caused by such effects are not put at risk)

Ethical responsibilities of authors

This journal is committed to upholding the integrity of the scientific record. As a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) the journal will follow the COPE guidelines on how to deal with potential acts of misconduct.

Authors should refrain from misrepresenting research results which could damage the trust in the journal and ultimately the entire scientific endeavor. Maintaining integrity of the research and its presentation can be achieved by following the rules of good scientific practice, which includes:

• The manuscript has not been submitted to more than one journal for simultaneous consideration.

• The manuscript has not been published previously (partly or in full), unless the new work concerns an expansion of previous work (please provide transparency on the re-use of material to avoid the hint of text-recycling (“self-plagiarism”)).

• A single study is not split up into several parts to increase the quantity of submissions and submitted to various journals or to one journal over time (e.g. “salami-publishing”).

• No data have been fabricated or manipulated (including images) to support your conclusions

• No data, text, or theories by others are presented as if they were the authors own (“plagiarism”). Proper acknowledgements to other works must be given (this includes material that is closely copied (near verbatim), summarized and/or paraphrased), quotation marks are used for verbatim copying of material, and permissions are secured for material that is copyrighted.

Important note: the journal may use software to screen for plagiarism.

• Consent to submit has been received from all co-authors and responsible authorities at the institute/organization where the work has been carried out before the work is submitted.

• Authors whose names appear on the submission have contributed sufficiently to the scientific work and therefore share collective responsibility and accountability for the results.

In addition:

• Changes of authorship or in the order of authors are not accepted after acceptance of a manuscript.

• Requests to add or delete authors at revision stage or after publication is a serious matter, and may be considered only after receipt of written approval from all authors and detailed explanation about the role/deletion of the new/deleted author. The decision on accepting the change rests with the Editor-in-Chief of the journal.

• Upon request authors should be prepared to send relevant documentation or data in order to verify the validity of the results. This could be in the form of raw data, samples, records, etc.

If there is a suspicion of misconduct, the journal will carry out an investigation following the COPE guidelines. If, after investigation, the allegation seems to raise valid concerns, the accused author will be contacted and given an opportunity to address the issue. If misconduct has been proven, this may result in the Editor-in-Chief’s implementation of the following measures, including, but not limited to:

- If the article is still under consideration, it may be rejected and returned to the author.

- If the article has already been published online, depending on the nature and severity of the infraction, either an erratum will be placed with the article or in severe cases complete retraction of the article will occur. The reason must be given in the published erratum or retraction note.

- The author’s institution may be informed.

Disclosure of potential conflict of interests

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Funding: This study was funded by X (grant number X).

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