Submission guidelines

Major Guidelines

Key instructions are summarized in the following table:

Key instructions (Download pdf, 192 kB)

Articles

Agronomy for Sustainable Development publishes two types of papers: Research articles and Review articles. The findings should be located at the interface of Agriculture and Sustainable Development: see Aims and Scope for specific topics.

Submission

Agronomy for Sustainable Development only accepts online submission, at the following address: http://www.editorialmanager.com/asde

The manuscript must be accompanied with a cover letter containing the article title, the full first name (no initial) and last name of all the authors, a paragraph describing the claimed novelty of the findings versus current knowledge, and a list of six suggested, international reviewers (title, name, postal address, Email address).

Editorial Process

Upon submission, articles enter the preselection process. At that stage, the general quality of the manuscript and its compliance with scope and author instructions are evaluated by the Managing Editor and the Editors in chief. The articles pre-selected are then assigned to an Associate Editor and at least two external reviewers, in a single blind process. The Associate Editor submits his/her decision to the Managing Editors, which communicates a final decision to the authors. When revisions are requested, the authors are asked to answer point by point to each reviewer comment. The revised manuscript returns to the same Associate Editor and is eventually evaluated again by the same or by alternative reviewers. Upon acceptance of the manuscript, the journal requests that the authors provide a short post on their article, that will be published in the journal blog (http://ist.blogs.inra.fr/agronomy/). The purpose of this post is to convert the main research information into easily accessible language in order to be understandable by the largest possible audience. This post must be accompanied by a relevant photo in landscape format. At the production stage, author should carefully examine the article proofs. No major corrections such as change in authorship will be accepted at this stage.

Editorial Procedure - Review Articles

For review articles please follow the general instructions for research articles, with the following exceptions:

• The page number may surpass 15;

• The figure and table numbers are not limited.

• The title should end by “. A review”

• The abstract of less than 300 words should contain two parts: the first part should give general and global issues, then specific and scientific issues in about 5-6 sentences. The second part should start by, e.g., “Here we review… The major points are the following: 1)… 2)…”. Those points are the major advances demonstrated in the article by literature analysis. The reader should clearly understand the added value of those advances.

• The first section of the article should be “1. Introduction”, and the last section “X. Conclusion”. All sections and sub-sections should be numbered. At the end of each section, authors are advised to propose a concise view of the novelty described and/or the main research hypotheses addressed by the reviewed knowledge.

• A Contents should be inserted after the list of keywords, before the introduction section. 

Editorial Procedure - Research Articles

General

Research articles should report the results of original research. The material should not have been previously published or submitted for publication elsewhere. Research articles should focus on one major discovery supported by 2-4 results.

Novelty

The novelty, or difference, of the major finding versus current knowledge should be clearly explained in:

- the cover letter to the Editor-in-Chief;

- the abstract;

- the end of the Results and Discussion section;

- the Conclusion section.

To explain the novelty, authors should first state what is already known (current knowledge), then state what is the added value of the main finding. Novelty claims should be made in an affirmative way, using for instance “Here we show for the first time that ...”, or “This is the first...” Only articles that show an outstanding added value will be sent for in-depth evaluation.

English

All manuscripts should be written in high-quality American English. Non-English native authors should seek appropriate help from English-writing professionals before submission. The journal may ask authors to provide a certificate from an English language proofreading service, ensuring correct grammar and typographical error corrections (i.e., punctuation, spelling, inconsistencies…) to help authors present a clear and scientific message.

Sections

The manuscript should contain the following items (in the same order):

- article title

- full first and last names of authors with an asterisk “*” highlighting the corresponding author; postal addresses; e-mail address of the corresponding author

- Abstract (less than 300 words)

- List of keywords (maximum 10)

- 1. Introduction

- 2. Materials and methods (including subsections

- 2.1, 2.2...)

- 3. Results and discussion (including topical subsections

- 3.1, 3.2...)

- 4. Conclusion

- Acknowledgments

- Declaration on conflict of interest

- References

- Statement of data availability (see in section 11. below what is expected here)

Other sections such as annexes and appendices are not accepted. Separated "results" and "discussion" sections are not accepted.

General presentation

The text length of research articles is limited to 15 pages, excluding figures, tables and references. The number of literature references is limited to 30. All text should be written in a concise and integrated way, by focusing on major points, findings, breakthrough or discoveries, and their broad significance. All running text should be in Times 11 or Times New Roman 11, with 1.5 line spacing. Figure and table captions must be self-explanatory and they should be written in Times 10 or Times New Roman 10. Lines, as well as every page of the manuscript, including the title page, references, tables, etc. should be numbered.

Title

The title of research articles should be concise and informative and focused on the main scientific discovery.

Abstract

The research articles abstract of less than 300 words should report concisely on the main scientific breakthrough. The abstract should not contain abbreviations nor literature references. The abstract is structured in three parts: the first part summarizes the Introduction section, it thus gives the background, the global and specific issues, and the hypothesis (about 3-4 sentences). The second part abstracts the Experimental section, it thus gives a brief overview of the experiments or surveys (about 2-3 sentences). The third part abstracts the Results and discussion section, it thus gives: the 1-2 major results using precise trends and data, then the interpretation of those results, then the claimed novelty of those results versus current knowledge, then the basic or applied benefits of those results for sustainable agriculture. Novelty claims should be made in an affirmative way, using for instance “Here we show that ...”, “Here we demonstrate that ...” or “This is the first...”

Abbreviations

In general abbreviations should be avoided in the main text because they decrease article readability and impact. Only 1-2 common abbreviations such as DNA or LED are accepted in the main text. When their use is essential, abbreviations must be explained when they first appear in the text. Abbreviations in figures, tables and equations are accepted only if there is not enough space to write full words. Here, abbreviations should be explained in figure and table captions, or after equations.

Footnotes

Footnotes in the running text and in tables are not accepted. Table footnotes should be included in the table caption.

Units

Data description in the text, tables and figures should follow the International System of Units, as it is the most widely used system of measurement. The choice of another system of units may be tolerated if it is explained and argued clearly.

Required Format for Meta-Analyses

For meta-analyses, please follow the general instructions for research articles, with the following exceptions:

• The title should end by “. A meta-analysis”

• An additional section “References of the meta-analysis” should be inserted after the “References” section

Meta-analyses should meet the following criteria1:

• The procedure used to select papers from scientific databases should be explained,

• Individual data should be weighted according to their level of precision when possible,

• Site-year variability of the results should be analyzed from an agronomic point of view, to identify relevant explanatory variables,

• Efforts should be made to check for the publication bias and confounding effects.

1 Philibert A, Loyce C, Makowski D.(2012) Assessment of the quality of meta-analysis in agronomy. Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment, 148, 72-82. DOI: 10.1016/j.agee.2011.12.003.

References

• Citation

Cite references in the text by name and year in parentheses. Some examples:

 Negotiation research spans many disciplines (Thompson 1990).

 This result was later contradicted by Becker and Seligman (1996).

 This effect has been widely studied (Abbott 1991; Barakat et al. 1995; Kelso and Smith 1998; Medvec et al. 1993).

• 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. Do not use footnotes or endnotes as a substitute for a reference

list.

Reference list entries should be alphabetized by the last names of the first author of each work.

The DOI should be indicated when available.

 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. doi: 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. doi: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 www.issn.org/2-22661-LTWA-online.php

For authors using EndNote, Springer provides an output style that supports the formatting of in-text citations and reference list.

The authors should check very carefully that references cited in text are in the reference list; and that references in the list are cited in the text. The accuracy of references should also be carefully checked.

Styles for Endnote

Zotero, Mendeley, Papers (CSL file)

Artwork (Tables and Figures)

Tables and figures should be uploaded as separated files at the submission stage. Their place in the manuscript should be clearly indicated by authors.

• Color figure in the introduction section

For both research and review articles, the introduction must contain one figure including 1-2 color photos. This photo should show the main topic of the article to a wide audience.

• Number of tables and figures

For research articles, the number of tables plus figures is limited to 5, including a maximum of 2 tables and the introduction color figure. For review articles, there is no limitation of tables/figures number.

• Colours

Color figures are accepted at no charge for the electronic version.

In the hardcopy version of the journal, figures are in black and white (for color, authors should make a contribution, prices on request).

• Colour Figures:

Sometimes the quality of the colour figures (for the online version) is not satisfactory for BW display for the print version.

In these cases author can provide two figures, colored (for the online version) and B/W (for the print version).

However the images should be identical and should differ only in color.

For easy processing authors should name the images as in the example below and instruction should be posted in the job-sheet or in the PDF manuscript to process both images:

Colored Figure 1 for Online version.PDF

Black and White_Figure 1 for Print version.PDF

• Format

The titles of figure and axes should be bold.

The Y-axis title should be written horizontally at the above-left of the graph. Preferably, a graph should contain a maximum of 3 curves.

Symbol legends are not accepted; the name of a curve should be written in the graph, beside the corresponding curve, using arrows if necessary.

Regression equations should not appear on the graph, but rather at the end of the caption.

The following types of figure are not recommended: bar graphs, 3D figures, and figures using 2 Y-axes.

• Captions

A “scheme” or “photo” should be named “figure”. Figure captions should contain a brief description of the main scientific point of the figure, using 1–2 well thought sentences: a figure should be almost understandable without reading the main body text of the article. The

characters should be in Times or Times New Roman with an appropriate size to be readable after 50% reduction.

• Target

A figure should be drawn to highlight a novel scientific point that should be explained to the reader in the caption.

• Resolution and quality

Figures and tables should be of high quality.

- Scanned line drawings and line drawings in bitmap format should have a minimum resolution of 1200 dpi.

- Combination artwork should have a minimum resolution of 600 dpi

- Halftones should have a minimum resolution of 300 dpi

• Figure Placement and Size

- When preparing your figures, size figures to fit in the column width.

- The figures should be 39 mm, 84 mm, 129 mm, or 174 mm wide and not higher than 234 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-tospeech software or a text-to-Braille hardware)

- Patterns are used instead of or in addition to colors for conveying information (color-blind users would then be able to distinguish the visual elements)

- Any figure lettering has a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1

Electronic Supplementary Material

Springer accepts electronic multimedia files such as animations, movies and audio to be published online along with an article or a book chapter. Data, tables and figures are not accepted. This feature can add dimension to the author's article, as certain information cannot be printed or is more convenient in electronic form.

• 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.

• Audio, Video, and Animations

Always use MPEG-1 (.mpg) format.

• Presentations

Submit your material in PDF format; .doc or .ppt files are not suitable for long-term viability.

• 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

Electronic supplementary material 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)

Research Data Policy

A submission to the journal implies that materials described in the manuscript, including all relevant raw data, will be freely available to any researcher wishing to use them for non-commercial purposes, without breaching participant confidentiality.

The journal strongly encourages that all datasets on which the conclusions of the paper rely should be available to readers. We encourage authors to ensure that their datasets are either deposited in publicly available repositories (where available and appropriate) or presented in the main manuscript or additional supporting files whenever possible. Please see Springer Nature’s information on recommended repositories.

List of Repositories

Research Data Policy

General repositories - for all types of research data - such as figshare and Dryad may be used where appropriate.

Datasets that are assigned digital object identifiers (DOIs) by a data repository may be cited in the reference list. Data citations should include the minimum information recommended by DataCite: authors, title, publisher (repository name), identifier.

DataCite

Where a widely established research community expectation for data archiving in public repositories exists, submission to a community-endorsed, public repository is mandatory. Persistent identifiers (such as DOIs and accession numbers) for relevant datasets must be provided in the paper

For the following types of data set, submission to a community-endorsed, public repository is mandatory:

Mandatory deposition	Suitable repositories
Protein sequences	Uniprot
DNA and RNA sequences	Genbank DNA DataBank of Japan (DDBJ) EMBL Nucleotide Sequence Database (ENA)
DNA and RNA sequencing data	NCBI Trace Archive NCBI Sequence Read Archive (SRA)
Genetic polymorphisms	dbSNP dbVar European Variation Archive (EVA)
Linked genotype and phenotype data	dbGAP The European Genome-phenome Archive (EGA)
Macromolecular structure	Worldwide Protein Data Bank (wwPDB) Biological Magnetic Resonance Data Bank (BMRB) Electron Microscopy Data Bank (EMDB)
Microarray data (must be MIAME compliant)	Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) ArrayExpress
Crystallographic data for small molecules	Cambridge Structural Database

For more information:

Research Data Policy Frequently Asked Questions

Data availability

The journal encourages authors to provide a statement of Data availability in their article. Data availability statements should include information on where data supporting the results reported in the article can be found, including, where applicable, hyperlinks to publicly archived datasets analysed or generated during the study. Data availability statements can also indicate whether data are available on request from the authors and where no data are available, if appropriate.

Data Availability statements can take one of the following forms (or a combination of more than one if required for multiple datasets):

• 1. The datasets generated during and/or analysed during the current study are available in the [NAME] repository, [PERSISTENT WEB LINK TO DATASETS]

• 2. The datasets generated during and/or analysed during the current study are not publicly available due [REASON WHY DATA ARE NOT PUBLIC] but are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

• 3. The datasets generated during and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

• 4. Data sharing not applicable to this article as no datasets were generated or analysed during the current study.
• 5. All data generated or analysed during this study are included in this published article [and its supplementary information files].

More examples of template data availability statements, which include examples of openly available and restricted access datasets, are available:

Data availability statements

This service provides advice on research data policy compliance and on finding research data repositories. It is independent of journal, book and conference proceedings editorial offices and does not advise on specific manuscripts.

Helpdesk

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, the professionalism of scientific authorship, and ultimately the entire scientific endeavour. Maintaining integrity of the research and its presentation is helped by following the rules of good scientific practice, which include*:

• The manuscript should not be submitted to more than one journal for simultaneous consideration.
• The submitted work should be original and should not have been published elsewhere in any form or language (partially 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 concerns about text-recycling (‘self-plagiarism’).
• A single study should not be split up into several parts to increase the quantity of submissions and submitted to various journals or to one journal over time (i.e. ‘salami-slicing/publishing’).
• Concurrent or secondary publication is sometimes justifiable, provided certain conditions are met. Examples include: translations or a manuscript that is intended for a different group of readers.
• Results should be presented clearly, honestly, and without fabrication, falsification or inappropriate data manipulation (including image based manipulation). Authors should adhere to discipline-specific rules for acquiring, selecting and processing data.
• No data, text, or theories by others are presented as if they were the author’s 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 (to indicate words taken from another source) are used for verbatim copying of material, and permissions secured for material that is copyrighted.

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

• Authors should make sure they have permissions for the use of software, questionnaires/(web) surveys and scales in their studies (if appropriate).
• Authors should avoid untrue statements about an entity (who can be an individual person or a company) or descriptions of their behavior or actions that could potentially be seen as personal attacks or allegations about that person.
• Research that may be misapplied to pose a threat to public health or national security should be clearly identified in the manuscript (e.g. dual use of research). Examples include creation of harmful consequences of biological agents or toxins, disruption of immunity of vaccines, unusual hazards in the use of chemicals, weaponization of research/technology (amongst others).
• Authors are strongly advised to ensure the author group, the Corresponding Author, and the order of authors are all correct at submission. Adding and/or deleting authors during the revision stages is generally not permitted, but in some cases may be warranted. Reasons for changes in authorship should be explained in detail. Please note that changes to authorship cannot be made after acceptance of a manuscript.

*All of the above are guidelines and authors need to make sure to respect third parties rights such as copyright and/or moral rights.

Upon request authors should be prepared to send relevant documentation or data in order to verify the validity of the results presented. This could be in the form of raw data, samples, records, etc. Sensitive information in the form of confidential or proprietary data is excluded.

If there is suspicion of misbehavior or alleged fraud the Journal and/or Publisher will carry out an investigation following COPE guidelines. If, after investigation, there are valid concerns, the author(s) concerned will be contacted under their given e-mail address and given an opportunity to address the issue. Depending on the situation, this may result in the Journal’s and/or Publisher’s implementation of the following measures, including, but not limited to:

• If the manuscript 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:

  - an erratum/correction may be placed with the article

  - an expression of concern may be placed with the article

  - or in severe cases retraction of the article may occur.

The reason will be given in the published erratum/correction, expression of concern or retraction note. Please note that retraction means that the article is maintained on the platform, watermarked “retracted” and the explanation for the retraction is provided in a note linked to the watermarked article.

• The author’s institution may be informed
• A notice of suspected transgression of ethical standards in the peer review system may be included as part of the author’s and article’s bibliographic record.

Fundamental errors

Authors have an obligation to correct mistakes once they discover a significant error or inaccuracy in their published article. The author(s) is/are requested to contact the journal and explain in what sense the error is impacting the article. A decision on how to correct the literature will depend on the nature of the error. This may be a correction or retraction. The retraction note should provide transparency which parts of the article are impacted by the error.

Suggesting / excluding reviewers

Authors are welcome to suggest suitable reviewers and/or request the exclusion of certain individuals when they submit their manuscripts. When suggesting reviewers, authors should make sure they are totally independent and not connected to the work in any way. It is strongly recommended to suggest a mix of reviewers from different countries and different institutions. When suggesting reviewers, the Corresponding Author must provide an institutional email address for each suggested reviewer, or, if this is not possible to include other means of verifying the identity such as a link to a personal homepage, a link to the publication record or a researcher or author ID in the submission letter. Please note that the Journal may not use the suggestions, but suggestions are appreciated and may help facilitate the peer review process.

Compliance with Ethical Standards

To ensure objectivity and transparency in research and to ensure that accepted principles of ethical and professional conduct have been followed, authors should include information regarding sources of funding, potential conflicts of interest (financial or non-financial), informed consent if the research involved human participants, and a statement on welfare of animals if the research involved animals.

Authors should include the following statements (if applicable) in a separate section entitled “Compliance with Ethical Standards” when submitting a paper:

• Disclosure of potential conflicts of interest
• Research involving Human Participants and/or Animals
• Informed consent

Please note that standards could vary slightly per journal dependent on their peer review policies (i.e. single or double blind peer review) as well as per journal subject discipline. Before submitting your article check the instructions following this section carefully.

The corresponding author should be prepared to collect documentation of compliance with ethical standards and send if requested during peer review or after publication.

The Editors reserve the right to reject manuscripts that do not comply with the above-mentioned guidelines. The author will be held responsible for false statements or failure to fulfill the above-mentioned guidelines.

Disclosure of potential conflicts of interest

Authors must disclose all relationships or interests that could have direct or potential influence or impart bias on the work. Although an author may not feel there is any conflict, disclosure of relationships and interests provides a more complete and transparent process, leading to an accurate and objective assessment of the work. Awareness of a real or perceived conflicts of interest is a perspective to which the readers are entitled. This is not meant to imply that a financial relationship with an organization that sponsored the research or compensation received for consultancy work is inappropriate. Examples of potential conflicts of interests that are directly or indirectly related to the research may include but are not limited to the following:

• Research grants from funding agencies (please give the research funder and the grant number)
• Honoraria for speaking at symposia
• Financial support for attending symposia
• Financial support for educational programs
• Employment or consultation
• Support from a project sponsor
• Position on advisory board or board of directors or other type of management relationships
• Multiple affiliations
• Financial relationships, for example equity ownership or investment interest
• Intellectual property rights (e.g. patents, copyrights and royalties from such rights)
• Holdings of spouse and/or children that may have financial interest in the work

In addition, interests that go beyond financial interests and compensation (non-financial interests) that may be important to readers should be disclosed. These may include but are not limited to personal relationships or competing interests directly or indirectly tied to this research, or professional interests or personal beliefs that may influence your research.

The corresponding author collects the conflict of interest disclosure forms from all authors. In author collaborations where formal agreements for representation allow it, it is sufficient for the corresponding author to sign the disclosure form on behalf of all authors. Examples of forms can be found

here:

The corresponding author will include a summary statement in the text of the manuscript in a separate section before the reference list, that reflects what is recorded in the potential conflict of interest disclosure form(s).

See below examples of disclosures:

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

Conflict of Interest: Author A has received research grants from Company A. Author B has received a speaker honorarium from Company X and owns stock in Company Y. Author C is a member of committee Z.

If no conflict exists, the authors should state:

Conflict of Interest: The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

After Acceptance

Upon acceptance of your article you will receive a link to the special Author Query Application at Springer’s web page where you can sign the Copyright Transfer Statement

online and indicate whether you wish to order OpenChoice, offprints, or printing of figures in color. Once the Author Query Application has been completed, your article will be

processed and you will receive the proofs.

• Open Choice

In addition to the normal publication process (whereby an article is submitted to the journal and access to that article is granted to customers who have purchased a

subscription), Springer provides an alternative publishing option: Springer Open Choice. A Springer Open Choice article receives all the benefits of a regular subscription-based article, but in addition is made available publicly through Springer’s online platform SpringerLink. We regret that Springer Open Choice cannot be ordered for published

articles.

• Copyright transfer

Authors will be asked to transfer copyright of the article to the Publisher (or grant the Publisher exclusive publication and dissemination rights). This will ensure the widest

possible protection and dissemination of information under copyright laws. Open Choice articles do not require transfer of copyright as the copyright remains with

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• Offprints

Offprints can be ordered by the corresponding author.

• Color illustrations

Online publication of color illustrations is free of charge. For color in the print version, authors will be expected to make a contribution towards the extra costs.

• Proof reading

The purpose of the proof is to check for typesetting or conversion errors and the completeness and accuracy of the text, tables and figures. Substantial changes in content,

e.g., new results, corrected values, title and authorship, are not allowed without the approval of the Editor. After online publication, further changes can only be made in the

form of an Erratum, which will be hyperlinked to the article.

• Online First

The article will be published online after receipt of the corrected proofs. This is the official first publication citable with the DOI. After release of the printed version, the paper can also be cited by issue and page numbers.

Open Choice

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Article processing charges (APCs) vary by journal – view the full list

Benefits:

• Increased researcher engagement: Open Choice enables access by anyone with an internet connection, immediately on publication.
• Higher visibility and impact: In Springer hybrid journals, OA articles are accessed 4 times more often on average, and cited 1.7 more times on average*.

• Easy compliance with funder and institutional mandates: Many funders require open access publishing, and some take compliance into account when assessing future grant applications.

It is easy to find funding to support open access – please see our funding and support pages for more information.

*) Within the first three years of publication. Springer Nature hybrid journal OA impact analysis, 2018.

Open Choice

Funding and Support pages

Copyright and license term – CC BY

Open Choice articles do not require transfer of copyright as the copyright remains with the author. In opting for open access, the author(s) agree to publish the article under the Creative Commons Attribution License.

Find more about the license agreement

English Language Editing

For editors and reviewers to accurately assess the work presented in your manuscript you need to ensure the English language is of sufficient quality to be understood. If you need help with writing in English you should consider:

• Asking a colleague who is a native English speaker to review your manuscript for clarity.
• Visiting the English language tutorial which covers the common mistakes when writing in English.
• Using a professional language editing service where editors will improve the English to ensure that your meaning is clear and identify problems that require your review. Two such services are provided by our affiliates Nature Research Editing Service and American Journal Experts. Springer authors are entitled to a 10% discount on their first submission to either of these services, simply follow the links below.

English language tutorial

Nature Research Editing Service

American Journal Experts

Please note that the use of a language editing service is not a requirement for publication in this journal and does not imply or guarantee that the article will be selected for peer review or accepted.

If your manuscript is accepted it will be checked by our copyeditors for spelling and formal style before publication.

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英語のチュートリアル

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영어 원고의 경우, 에디터 및 리뷰어들이 귀하의 원고에 실린 결과물을 정확하게 평가할 수 있도록, 그들이 충분히 이해할 수 있을 만한 수준으로 작성되어야 합니다. 만약 영작문과 관련하여 도움을 받기를 원하신다면 다음의 사항들을 고려하여 주십시오:

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영어 튜토리얼 페이지

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