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  Nucleic Acids Research </our_journals/nar/>

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    * GENERAL POLICIES OF THE JOURNAL


  GENERAL POLICIES OF THE JOURNAL

*Authors' responsibilities*
Submission of a manuscript implies that it reports unpublished work and
that it is not under consideration elsewhere. The submission process
must be carried out by the corresponding author. The corresponding
author checks the relevant boxes during online submission on behalf of
all authors to indicate that they are in complete agreement with the
contents of the manuscript and are prepared to abide by the general
policies of /NAR/ as listed below. If the corresponding author is not
the senior author, then full contact details of the latter must be
included in the submission. Under certain circumstances the journal may
need to communicate with the senior author of the manuscript. The email
addresses of all co-authors must also be provided.

During submission, authors are requested to upload a cover letter
containing additional information which will aid the processing of the
manuscript. This *must* include details of any previous submission of
the work to /NAR/, either partial or in entirety, which has been
rejected, regardless of any changes in authorship. The manuscript number
of the earlier submission must be provided, together with a file
containing the responses to any editorial or referee reports and a
summary of the changes that have been made. The cover letter should also
contain details of any data obtained from other groups which is cited in
the manuscript as a personal communication(s). The corresponding author
must confirm that permission has been obtained for each inclusion.

Authors must also advise the journal of any related manuscripts
currently under consideration by /NAR/ or any other journal, especially
where the related manuscript describes work that may impinge
significantly on the results or interpretation of the current /NAR/
submission. A file of the related manuscript should be uploaded into the
online submission system.

*Conflicts of Interest*
/NAR/ policy requires that EACH author of all manuscripts reveal any
financial interests or connections, direct or indirect, or other
situations /that might raise the question of bias/ in the work reported
or the conclusions, implications, or opinions stated - including
pertinent commercial or other sources of funding for the individual
author(s) or for the associated department(s) or organization(s),
personal relationships, or direct academic competition. When considering
whether you should declare a conflicting interest or connection please
consider the conflict of interest test: Is there any arrangement that
would embarrass you or any of your co-authors if it was to emerge after
publication and you had not declared it?

It is the responsibility of the corresponding author to ensure that all
co-authors adhere to this policy and to confirm whether they have any
conflicts to declare. The corresponding author should then, during the
submission process, complete the conflict of interest field on behalf of
all co-authors.

If the corresponding author is unable to do this, then each co-author
must complete and return an individual copy of the form available at the
following link (Conflict of Interest Form
</our_journals/nar/for_authors/conflictofinterestform.pdf>). It is the
corresponding author's responsibility to co-ordinate the completion and
return of written forms. The forms should be faxed to either the UK (+44
2380 597748) or the US (+1 978 380 7406) Senior Editorial Office before
the manuscript is accepted.

In the event of one or more co-authors declaring a conflict of interest,
details should be provided either online during the submission process
or in the faxed form, and a prominent paragraph included in the
submitted manuscript. If the manuscript is published, this information
will be communicated in a statement in the published paper.

If you are in any doubt as to what constitutes a conflict, please read
the FAQs
<http://www.oxfordjournals.org/faq/for_authors/conflicts_of_interest.html>
or contact one of the Senior Editorial Offices.

*Ethical conduct*
/NAR/ expects that authors will observe high standards with respect to
publication ethics. For example, the following practices are
unacceptable: (1) falsification or fabrication of data, (2) plagiarism,
including duplicate publication of the authors' own work, in whole or in
part without proper citation, (3) misappropriation of the work of others
such as omission of qualified authors or of information regarding
financial support. Allegations of unethical conduct will be discussed
initially with the corresponding author. In the event of continued
dispute the matter will be referred to the author's institution and
funding agencies for investigation and adjudication.

Oxford Journals, publisher of /NAR/, is a member of the Committee on
Publication Ethics (COPE), and the journal strives to adhere to the COPE
code of conduct and guidelines. For further information see
http://www.publicationethics.org.uk.

*Copyright*
Copyright of any article published in /NAR/ will belong to the author or
their designee. However, it is a condition of publication in the journal
that authors grant an exclusive licence to publish to Oxford University
Press. A copyright licence form <licence.pdf> should be completed and
returned to Oxford University Press at the time of acceptance of the
manuscript. This ensures that requests from third parties to reproduce
articles are handled efficiently and consistently and allows the article
to be as widely disseminated as possible. As part of the licence
agreement, authors may use their own material in other publications
provided that the Journal is acknowledged as the original place of
publication and Oxford University Press as the Publisher. Information
about the *New Creative Commons licence * can be found here
<http://www.oxfordjournals.org/our_journals/nar/for_authors/creativecommons.pdf>.


*Author Self-Archiving/Public Access policy*
For information about this journal's policy, please visit our Author
Self-Archiving policy </access_purchase/self-archiving_policyc.html> page.

*Authorisations*
If previously published tables, illustrations or more than 200 words of
text are to be included in an article in /NAR/, then the copyright
holder's permission must be obtained, and copies of such permission
letters should be forwarded to the production office upon acceptance of
the manuscript. Authors must obtain authorisation for all personal
communications.

*Joint first authorship*
Such a footnote is allowed, provided that the relevant boxes are
completed during the initial online submission. The footnote should
contain the statement: "The authors wish it to be known that, in their
opinion, the first x authors should be regarded as joint First Authors".
Other statements concerning joint authorship will not be published.
Joint senior/last authorship is not permitted.

*Back-to-back publication*
The Editors will honour requests for back-to-back publication only if
the manuscripts are submitted simultaneously and the relevant boxes
completed during online submission.

*Proofs*
Corresponding authors will be sent proofs in PDF format by email. It is
the authors' responsibility to check proofs thoroughly.

*Post-publication corrections*
Corrections are made if the publication record is seriously affected by
the accuracy of published information. /NAR/ operates a rapid online
publication model, 'Advance Access'. Advance Access publication
constitutes definitive publication and is not subject to informal
changes. However if a significant error is discovered after publication
of an Advance Access article, which necessitates correction to the
online version, a new version will be published online with a footnote
to outline the changes made. Both versions will ocntinue to be available
online.

Corresponding authors who wish to have considered the publication of a
correction /that materially affects the data or conclusions/ of their
already published paper should contact the editor who handled their
manuscript.

*Page charges*
ALL papers are made freely available under an Open Access model at the
/NAR/ website http://www.nar.oxfordjournals.org) and also at PubMed
Central (http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/) immediately upon publication.
For all papers published in 2007 there is an Open Access charge of
$1185/£625/935 euros for authors from member institutions, and
$2370/£1250/1870 euros for authors from institutions without /NAR/
membership.
For all papers published in 2008 the charge for authors at institutions
with /NAR/ membership will be $1335/£685/1025 euros. The charge for
authors at institutions without /NAR/ membership will be
$2670/£1370/2050 euros.

There are no charges for colour figures (use of colour is subject to
editorial discretion), and no excess page charges for papers that occupy
9 pages or less. Papers published in 2007 that occupy more than 9 pages
incur an additional charge of $170/£90/135 euros for each page in excess
of 9. Papers published in 2008 that occupy more than 9 pages will incur
an additional charge of $195/£100/150 euros for each page in excess of 9.

Waivers or discounts will be considered sympathetically for
corresponding authors from developing countries and those in genuine
hardship. An NAR Author Loyalty Discount may also be available. Further
information is available from our website
http://nar.oxfordjournals.org/openaccess.

Orders from UK will be subject to a 17.5% VAT charge. For orders from
the rest of the EU, we will assume that the service is provided for
business purposes, please provide a VAT number for yourself or your
institution and ensure you account for your own local VAT correctly.

*Offprints*
The publisher will provide free online access to the full text (both
HTML and PDF) of the article. Print offprints, including online-only
papers, are available for a charge. Offprints of papers containing
colour figures are subject to a 100% surcharge. An offprint order form
<offprint.pdf> detailing these options should be completed and returned
directly to the publisher on acceptance.

*Availability of materials*

    * *Research materials*: including strains, clones, cell lines,
      hybridomas, X-ray and NMR co-ordinates, algorithms and computer
      programs that are described in publications in the Journal should
      be made available to any qualified investigator promptly upon
      request. Materials must be available freely or at reasonable cost
      to members of academic institutes
    * *Databases*: must be freely available to all via the web and not
      be password protected. Authors are encouraged, but not required,
      to make the contents of their databases freely available as flat
      or relational files upon request.
    * *Web server:*: Authors are encouraged, but not required, to make
      the code available for their web tools upon request.

The Editors are prepared to deny further publication rights in the
Journal to authors unwilling to abide by these principles.

*Deposition of sequence and structural data*
Sequence information, co-ordinates used to create molecular models
described in a manuscript, and structural data must be submitted in
electronic form, prior to acceptance, to the appropriate database for
release no later than the date of publication of the corresponding
article in the Journal. Deposition numbers and/or accession numbers
provided by the database should be included in the manuscript and
entered into the relevant boxes during online submission or communicated
to the Executive Editor handling the manuscript as soon as received. In
cases where there may be no appropriate database, atomic co-ordinates
may be included in the publication as supplementary material.
Manuscripts will not be published until the Journal is in receipt of the
deposition number.

/For papers reporting novel nucleic acid sequences/
Nucleic acid sequence information must be deposited with one of the
three major collaborative databases (EMBL/GenBank/DDBJ). For sequences
obtained from a public or private web site, it is the author's
responsibility to ensure that any sequence used within the manuscript is
deposited before publication. It is necessary to submit sequences to one
database only since data are exchanged between EMBL, GenBank and DDBJ on
a daily basis. New sequence names and their accession numbers should be
listed at the beginning of the Materials and Methods section to aid
searches by readers. In order to allow new methods of data search, /NAR/
encourages authors to cite GenBank accession numbers when referring to
established sequences within their manuscript. Contact details for
submission to databases
</our_journals/nar/for_authors/databasecontacts.html>.

/For papers reporting novel three-dimensional structures/
Atomic co-ordinates and the related experimental data (structure factor
amplitudes/intensities and/or NMR restraints) must be deposited with a
database. Authors must agree to release the atomic coordinates and
experimental data when the associated article is published.
The Cambridge Crystallographic Data Centre (CCDC) is appropriate for
deposition of data on nucleosides, nucleotides and other small molecules.
A member site of the Worldwide Protein Data Bank (www.wwpdb.org): RCSB
PDB (www.pdb.org), MSD-EBI (www.ebi.ac.uk/msd), PDBj (www.pdbj.org), or
BMRB (www.bmrb.wisc.edu) is appropriate for deposition of data on
proteins determined by X-ray crystallography and for all macromolecules
determined by NMR methods.
The Nucleic Acid Database (NDB) is appropriate for atomic co-ordinate
and structure factor data for crystal structures of nucleic acids.
Contact details for submission to databases.
Contact details for submission to databases
</our_journals/nar/for_authors/databasecontacts.html>.

/For papers reporting novel protein sequences/
Protein sequences, which have been determined by direct sequencing of
the protein, must be submitted to UniProt (i.e. TrEMBL, Swiss-Prot and
PIR) using the interactive submission tool SPIN. Please note that they
do not provide accession numbers, IN ADVANCE, for protein sequences that
are the result of translation of nucleic acid sequences. These
translations will forwarded automatically from the nucleotide sequence
databases (EMBL/GebBank/DDBJ) and assigned UniProt accession numbers on
incorporation into UniProt. Results from characterization experiments
should also be submitted to UniProt: for novel sequences, these should
be included with the sequence submission. Existing UniProt entries
should also be updated. This can include information such as function,
subcellular location, subunit, etc. Contact details for submission to
databases </our_journals/nar/for_authors/databasecontacts.html>.

*Microarray data* All authors must comply with the 'Minimal Information
About a Microarray Experiment' (MIAME) guidelines published by the
Microarray Gene Expression Data Society, which can be found at
http://www.mged.org/Workgroups/MIAME/miame_checklist.html. /NAR/ also
requires submission of microarray data to the GEO
(http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/geo/) or ArrayExpress
(http://www.ebi.ac.uk/arrayexpress/) databases, with accession numbers
at or before acceptance for publication.


    The Journal

    * About this journal </nar/about.html>
    * NAR Methods online </nar/collections/index.dtl>
    * 2007 Database Issue
      <http://nar.oxfordjournals.org/content/vol35/suppl_1/index.dtl>
    * 2007 Web Server Issue
      <http://nar.oxfordjournals.org/content/vol35/suppl_2/index.dtl>
    * Referee Information
      <http://www.oxfordjournals.org/nar/referee_info.html>
    * Rights & Permissions </access_purchase/rights_permissions.html>
    * Dispatch date of the next issue
      <HTTP://www.oxfordjournals.org/access_purchase/dispatch_dates.html#NARESE>


      Impact factor: 6.317


      Senior Executive Editors


        R.J.Roberts, Ipswich, MA, USA


        K.R.Fox, Southampton, UK

    * View full editorial board </nar/editorial_board.html>


    For Authors

    * Instructions to authors </nar/for_authors/index.html>
    * Scope and Criteria for Consideration
      <http://www.oxfordjournals.org/nar/for_authors/criteria_scope.html>
    * Online submission instructions
      <http://www.oxfordjournals.org/nar/for_authors/msprep_submission.html>
    * Submit a manuscript now <http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/nar>
    * Self-archiving policy </access_purchase/self-archiving_policyc.html>

Open Access Options for Authors

Open access
<http://www.oxfordjournals.org/our_journals/nar/announce_openaccess.html>
options for authors


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