The Plant Journal

Published in association with the Society for Experimental Biology

Edited by:
Harry Klee

Print ISSN: 0960-7412
Online ISSN: 1365-313X
Frequency: Twice Monthly
Current Volume: 51 / 2007
ISI Journal Citation Reports® Ranking: 2006: 6/147 (Plant Sciences)
Impact Factor: 6.565

TopAuthor Guidelines

Instructions for Authors

Except in extenuating circumstances, only manuscripts submitted via the journal's online site will be considered for publication. If assistance is needed (or if for some reason online submission is not possible), the Editorial Office can be contacted and will readily provide any help users need to upload their manuscripts.
Contact: Sarah Threapleton (Submissions Manager), e-mail: tpj-submissions@york.ac.uk or telephone: +44-1904-434594.

Full instructions for preparing and submitting manuscripts online are provided at the submission site: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/tpj. Please note that manuscript submission online must be done from the Corresponding Author's TPJ Manuscript Central account.

Aims and Scope

The aim of The Plant Journal is to publish novel and exciting science which addresses fundamental questions in plant biology.

For publication in The Plant Journal, the research must provide a highly significant new contribution to our understanding of plants and be of general interest to the plant science community.

All areas of plant biology are welcome in the journal and the experimental approaches used can be wide-ranging.

With the completion of genome sequencing programmes, and availability of new technologies and bioinformatics, the combined powers of genetics, biochemistry and cell biology are leading to the very rapid production of new information.  The Plant Journal welcomes the results of these functional genomics programmes, so long as the scientific question rather than technology is driving the experimental research.

Two categories of manuscript can be submitted: primary research articles and technical advances.  Submissions for the technical advance section must be applicable and useful to a large proportion of the community and not be narrow in scope, benefiting just a few laboratories. They should describe new methods that substantively advance an area of plant biology.  Manuscripts that describe very large incremental advances in the uses of a current technology will also be considered, but variations on existing methods, or vectors, will not be.  Manuscripts that describe results already published but extended to another species will not be considered unless there are substantive and demonstrable differences between the two sets of data.

If authors have any concerns whether their manuscript comes within the scope of The Plant Journal, they should e-mail a summary highlighting the novelty and significance of the study to the Editorial Office (tpj-general@york.ac.uk), for advice prior to full submission.

Authors are welcome to submit Supplementary Material, such as data sets or additional figures or tables, that will not be published in the print edition of the journal, but which will be viewable via the online edition.

Authors including microarray analysis should refer to the MIAME recommendations for guidance in preparing their manuscripts. 

The Plant Journal is covered by Blackwell Publishing's OnlineEarly service. OnlineEarly articles are complete full-text articles published online in advance of their publication in a printed issue. Articles are therefore available as soon as they are ready, rather than having to wait for the next scheduled print issue. OnlineEarly articles are complete and final. They have been fully reviewed, revised and edited for publication, and the authors' final corrections have been incorporated. Because they are in final form, no changes can be made after online publication. The nature of OnlineEarly articles means that they do not yet have volume, issue or page numbers, so OnlineEarly articles cannot be cited in the traditional way. They are therefore given a Digital Object Identifier (DOI), which allows the article to be cited and tracked before it is allocated to an issue. After print publication, the DOI remains valid and can continue to be used to cite and access the article. More information about DOIs can be found at: http://www.doi.org/faq.html.

Submission of Manuscripts

The Plant Journal has no page or handling charges.

The Plant Journal's online submission site can be found at http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/tpj.
Submission online enables the quickest possible review and allows online manuscript tracking. Please note that manuscript submission online must be done from the Corresponding Author's TPJ Manuscript Central account.

Authors are now required to submit their manuscripts as individual original files:
- Text as Microsoft Word, Rich Text Format or Post Script
- Figures as high-resolution TIFF, EPS or PDF files as appropriate
- Supplementary Material files as required.

*Please note: TPJ does not accept Microsoft Word 2007 documents at this time. Please use Word's "Save As" option to save your document as an older (.doc) file type.*

For further information on file types, see the document 'Tips for Uploading Files and Images on Manuscript Central' via the 'Get Help Now' link in the top- right-hand corner of the screen. These files will be automatically converted to a PDF and an HTML document on upload. Manuscripts should be formatted as described below in 'Presentation of Manuscripts'. When preparing your file, please use only standard fonts such as Times, Times New Roman or Arial for text, and Symbol font for Greek letters, to avoid inadvertent character substitutions. In particular, please do not use Japanese or other Asian fonts.

Check your proof carefully before final submission, both for readability and to ensure that it includes everything it should.

Supplementary Material and supporting documents may also be uploaded. For any supporting documents, please indicate clearly what the document is, as well as its format. The online site automatically converts Excel files to PDF. However, as Supplementary Material is becoming increasingly complex, any Excel file submitted as Supplementary Material will be made available for review in its original format unless authors specifically request otherwise. Please note that the maximum file size for each Supplementary Material file is 20 MB.

Authors should select an Editor and provide names of potential reviewers for their manuscript. Submission to the Editor closest to the field of interest will speed reviewing. Suggested reviewers should not have been advisors, advisees, co-authors or collaborators within the past 3 years.

You have the option of suggesting up to two potential reviewers who you prefer were not selected to review your manuscript. IF YOU DO CHOOSE THIS OPTION PLEASE STATE YOUR REASONS IN THE COVERING LETTER. IF REASONS ARE NOT PROVIDED, YOUR REQUEST WILL NOT BE CONSIDERED. IF THE REASONS INVOLVE CONFLICTS OF INTEREST THESE SHOULD BE EXPLAINED.

If you have any problems during submission, please contact the Submissions Manager, Sarah Threapleton at tpj-submissions@york.ac.uk (tel: +44-1904-434594).

Related manuscripts in press or submitted elsewhere must be included.

All submissions will be considered by the Editorial Board to determine whether they lie within the scope of the journal. Those that do will be sent out for full review. Those that do not will be returned to the authors quickly so that submission elsewhere will not be unduly delayed.

Revised manuscripts must be received by the Editorial Office within 2 months of authors being notified of conditional acceptance pending satisfactory revision. Full instructions for submission of revised manuscripts can be found below in 'Submission of Revised Manuscripts'. Authors resubmitting manuscripts should follow the same procedures as for submission of new manuscripts.

All questions about the status of manuscripts under review should be directed to the Editorial Office, and not to the Editor. Please use the e-mail address tpj-manuscripts@york.ac.uk or phone number +44 1904 434337 for such enquiries.

Correspondence relating to all other editorial matters should be directed to:

Dr Irene Hames
Managing Editor
The Plant Journal Editorial Office
Department of Biology (Area 2)
University of York
York YO10 5DD
UK

Tel: +44 1904 434338/434594
Fax: +44 1904 434339
e-mail: tpj-general@york.ac.uk

Papers are accepted on the understanding that no part has been, or will be, published elsewhere. Publication of a paper in The Plant Journal explicitly requires that authors will provide, for non-profit research, all the biological and chemical materials not commercially available that are used for the experiments reported. To ensure complete transparency of this requirement, The Plant Journal requires authors to state that these materials will be available on request. If materials are not available within 4 weeks of manuscript acceptance, papers will be rejected. Clearly, requests must be reasonable, particularly when materials have required substantial effort for their production. Authors must state at the time of manuscript submission, both in their cover letter and in the Experimental Procedures, any restrictions that will affect the sharing of materials and plant lines. Any IP restrictions on use of methods should also be clearly stated. The reviewers will be asked to determine the acceptability of these restrictions for publication.

Statements of priority or use of expressions such as 'first demonstration' are not allowed. Authors should rather identify such claims in their submission letters.

Submission of a manuscript to The Plant Journal implies that all persons listed as authors qualify for authorship, and all those who qualify are listed. Each author should have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for the content, and each author must have approved the final version of the submitted manuscript.

Author material archive policy. Please note that unless specifically requested, Blackwell Publishing will dispose of all hardcopy or electronic material submitted one month after publication in an issue. If you require the return of any material submitted, please inform the Editorial Office or the Production Editor as soon as possible if you have not already done so.

Presentation of Manuscripts

Only manuscripts in English will be published. Spelling should conform to that in The Concise Oxford Dictionary or Websters New Collegiate Dictionary. All unusual symbols should be identified. Care should be taken to differentiate between certain letters and numbers (e.g. the letter O and zero, the letter I and the number 1).

Authors for whom English is a second language may choose to have their manuscript professionally edited before submission to improve the English. A list of independent suppliers of editing services can be found at www.blackwellpublishing.com/bauthor/english_language.asp. All services are paid for and arranged by the author, and use of one of these services does not guarantee acceptance or preference for publication.

It is important to differentiate between genes and proteins. All gene names and loci should be italic; proteins should be upright.

NEW: The Plant Journal now has a strict restriction policy on the length of articles. Any manuscripts that contain more than 7000 words (to include all parts except the References and Supplementary Material) will be returned to the authors without editorial or external review.  The total word count (excluding the References and Supplementary Material) must be given on the front page of the manuscript.  A breakdown of the word count for each section of the manuscript should also be provided, including the References.

All sections of the manuscript should be typed double-spaced with margins of at least 30 mm all round. The title page should include: the full title of the paper; the full names of all the authors; the name(s) and address(es) of the institution(s) at which the work was carried out (the present addresses of the authors, if different from the above, should appear in a footnote); the name, address, telephone and fax numbers and e-mail address of the author to whom all correspondence and proofs should be sent; the e-mail addresses of all the authors if possible; a suggested running title of not more than 50 characters, including spaces; six key words (listed in order of importance) to aid indexing; accession numbers for the sequence data and Arabidopsis seed stock if required; word count.

Generally, all papers should be divided into the following sections and appear in the order: (1) Summary, not exceeding 250 words, (2) Introduction, (3) Results, (4) Discussion, (5) Experimental procedures, (6) Acknowledgements, (7) References, (8) Short legends for Supplementary Material, (9) Tables, (10) Figure legends, (11) Figures. The Results and Discussion sections may be combined and may contain subheadings. Experimental procedures should be sufficiently detailed to enable the experiments to be reproduced. Trade names should be capitalized and the manufacturer's name and Web site given.

All pages must be numbered consecutively from the title page, and include the acknowledgements, references, tables, and figure legends.

Submission of Revised Manuscripts 

Authors should submit the revised version of their manuscript online via the submission site http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/tpj following the instructions provided in their editorial correspondence. Hard copy materials are no longer required as, after acceptance, the authors' files will be sent electronically to the Production Department. It is very important therefore, that the files uploaded at revision are in their final format and of sufficient quality for publication.  At revision, authors should provide:

• The manuscript text in Word format (all tracked changes removed). This file should be text only, and not contain figures. Tables must not be embedded but provided in editable format.
• Figures as high-resolution TIFF, EPS or PDF files as appropriate.
• Supplementary Material files as required. Please note that the maximum file size for each Supplementary Material file is 20 MB.
• Brief supplementary legends should be provided within the main manuscript text file. If required, more comprehensive supplementary legends can be provided in a separate Word file.
• Please also upload a copy of the text file with changes highlighted and ensure that you select 'Supporting Document' as this file designation.

A letter of response to the reviewers' comments, detailing point by point the changes made and giving reasons for those not made, should also be uploaded.

Revised manuscripts must be received within 2 months of authors being notified of conditional acceptance pending satisfactory revision. Revised manuscripts received after this time will be considered as completely new submissions, and be subject again to the full review procedure. This time limit will be rigidly adhered to except under unusual circumstances, which must be explained in full, in writing, to both the Handling Editor and the Managing Editor.

Revised manuscripts must be in their final form when submitted. The proofs received later are for correction of typographical errors only. They should not be used for final changes to articles; such changes must be made to the manuscript before it goes to the publishers. Major alterations to the text at proof stage will be charged to the author and may delay publication.

Manuscripts should be checked very carefully for correct designation of genes and proteins. It is important to differentiate between genes and proteins. Gene names and loci should be italic, proteins should be upright.

A completed colour work agreement form must also be returned with the revised manuscript if it contains colour. Failure to return the forms will delay the publication of manuscripts if they are accepted.

Exclusive Licence Form. 
Authors will be required to sign an Exclusive Licence Form (ELF) for all papers accepted for publication. Signature of the ELF is a condition of publication and papers will not be passed to the publisher for production unless a signed form has been received. Please note that signature of the Exclusive Licence Form does not affect ownership of copyright in the material.  (Government employees need to complete the Author Warranty sections, although copyright  in such cases does not need to  be assigned).  After submission authors will retain the right to publish their paper in various media/circumstances (please see the form for further details). To assist authors an ELF can be supplied by the Editorial Office. Alternatively, authors may like to download a copy of the form Here.

Supplementary Material 

Supplementary Material, such as data sets or additional figures or tables, that will not be published in the print edition of the journal, but which will be viewable via the online edition, can be submitted.
For information on how to submit files, please click Here.

It should be clearly stated at the time of submission that the Supplementary Material is intended to be made available through the online edition. If the size or format of the Supplementary Material is such that it cannot be accommodated on the journal's Web site, the author agrees to make the Supplementary Material available free of charge on a permanent Web site, to which links will be set up from The Plant Journal's Web site. The author must advise Blackwell Publishing if the URL of the Web site where the Supplementary Material is located changes. The content of the Supplementary Material must not be altered after the paper has been accepted for publication.

The availability of Supplementary Material should be indicated in the main manuscript by a paragraph, to appear after the References, headed "Supplementary Material" and providing titles of figures, tables, etc. Full legends for Supplementary Material must also be provided as a separate Word document. In order to protect reviewer anonymity, material posted on authors' Web sites cannot be reviewed. If the size or format is such that it cannot be submitted online, four copies on CD or disk must be provided. The Supplementary Material is an integral part of the article and will be reviewed accordingly.

Units and Abbreviations

Système International (SI) units should be used, as given in Units, Symbols and Abbreviations, published by the Royal Society of Medicine Services Ltd, 1 Wimpole Street, London W1M 8AE, UK. Abbreviations included in the list published in the final issue of each volume of The Plant Journal need not be defined. For a full list of abbreviations, please click on Abbreviations. Other abbreviations should be given in words the first time they are used.

Scientific Names

Complete scientific names should be given when organisms are first mentioned. The generic name may subsequently be abbreviated to the initial.

References

References in Articles
We recommend the use of a tool such as EndNote or Reference Manager for reference management and formatting.
EndNote reference styles can be searched for here:
http://www.endnote.com/support/enstyles.asp

Reference Manager reference styles can be searched for here:
http://www.refman.com/support/rmstyles.asp

References should be cited in the text by author and date, e.g. Shah and Klessig (1999). Joint authors should be referred to by et al. if there are more than two, e.g. Sambrook et al. (1989). More than one paper from the same author(s) in the same year must be identified by the letters a, b, c, etc., placed after the year of publication. Listings of references in the text should be alphabetical, e.g. (Sambrook et al., 1989; Shah and Klessig, 1999). At the end of the paper, references should be listed alphabetically according to the first named author. The full titles of papers, chapters and books should be given, the abbreviated names of journals, with the first and last page numbers.

Examples

Lacomme, C. and Santa Cruz, S. (1999) Bax-induced cell death in tobacco is similar to the hypersensitive response. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA, 96, 7956-7961.

Sambrook, J., Fritsch, E.F. and Maniatis, T. (1989) Molecular Cloning: A Laboratory Manual 2nd edn. Cold Spring Harbor: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press.

Shah, J. and Klessig, D.F. (1999) Salicylic acid: signal perception and transduction. In Biochemistry and Molecular Biology of Plant Hormones (Hooykaas, P.P.J., Hall, M.A. and Libbenga, K.R., eds). New York: Elsevier Science, pp. 513-541.

Work that has not been accepted for publication and personal communications should not appear in the reference list, but may be referred to in the text. It is the authors' responsibility to obtain permission from colleagues to include their work as a personal communication.

Figures

It is important that error bars are given on graphs.

With the exception of composite photographs suitable for full-page reproduction (maximum width, including lettering, 16.8 cm), all other figures should be set to a maximum width of 8 cm (including all lettering). Labelling on the figures should be in 8pt Helvetica if possible. Figure sections should be designated with lower case letters. Magnification bars should be given on electron and light microscope photographs.

Figure legends should contain sufficient information to be understood without reference to the text, but should not contain methods. Each should begin with a short title for the figure. All symbols and abbreviations used in the figures should be explained. In the full text online edition of the journal, figure legends may be truncated in abbreviated links to the full screen version. Therefore the first 100 characters of any legend should inform the reader of key aspects of the figure.

The journal welcomes colour photographs. It is the policy of The Plant Journal for authors to pay the full cost for the reproduction of their colour artwork. Therefore, please note that if there is colour artwork in your manuscript when it is accepted for publication, Blackwell Publishing require you to complete and return a colour work agreement form before your paper can be published. This form can be downloaded as a PDF from the internet. The web address for the form is:

http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/pdf/SN_Sub2000_X_CoW.pdf

If you are unable to access the internet, or are unable to download the form, please contact Dr Irene Hames, Managing Editor, at:

The Plant Journal
Department of Biology (Area 2)
University of York, Heslington
York YO10 5DD UK

Tel: +44  1904 434338/434594
Fax: +44  1904 434339
Email: tpj-general@york.ac.uk

and a copy of the form will be emailed or FAXed to you. The charges are £150 for the first figure and £50 for each subsequent figure.

Once completed, please return the form to the Editorial Office at the address given above.

Any article received by Blackwell Publishing with colour work will not be published until the form has been returned.

To read PDF files, you must have Acrobat Reader installed on your computer. If you do not have this program, it is available as a free download from the following web address:

http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html

Under exceptional circumstances, authors may request waiver of these charges. This must be done, in writing, at the time of submission of the manuscript, and authors must justify to the Editors that inclusion of the figure(s) in colour is essential for interpretation of the results presented. Figures reviewed in colour must appear in colour. Any changes must first be agreed with the Editorial Office.

Electronic Artwork 

Artwork should be supplied in electronic form. Vector graphics (e.g. line artwork) should be saved in Encapsulated Postscript Format (EPS), and bitmap files (e.g. half-tones) in Tagged Image File Format (TIFF). Ideally, vector graphics that have been saved in metafile (.WMF) or pict (.PCT) format should be embedded within the body of the text file. Detailed information on digital illustration standards is available at:

http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/authors/digill.asp

Tables

Tables should be typed on separate sheets. They should have a brief descriptive title and be self-explanatory. No vertical rules should be used. Units should appear in parentheses in the column headings, not in the body of the table. Repeated words or numerals on successive lines should be written in full. Please ensure that all tables are presented in an editable form - i.e. as text within a Word file rather than an embedded image or a pdf file.

Proofs

Proofs will be downloaded as an Acrobat PDF (portable document format) file. You will be notified by email when your proof is ready to download, therefore, the corresponding author should supply their email address when they submit their manuscript. Acrobat Reader will be required in order to read this file. This software can be downloaded (free of charge) from the following Web site:

http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readermain.html

This will enable the file to be opened, read on screen, and printed out in order for any corrections to be added. Further instructions will be sent with the proofs. Proofs will be posted if no e-mail address is available. In your absence, please arrange for a colleague to access your e-mail to retrieve the proofs.

Major alterations to the text will be charged to the author and may delay publication.

Please click here for instructions on how to register specific Search/Notification criteria with Synergy so that You can receive an e-mail alert when your article is published OnlineEarly. 

Offprints

Twenty-five offprints of each article will be supplied free. Additional offprints may be purchased if ordered on the form supplied with the proofs.

Registration of sequences

All papers containing original nucleotide sequences must provide nucleotide sequence database accession numbers.  Nucleotide data submitted to any of the collaborating databases of the International Nucleotide Sequence Database consortium, that includes EMBL, DDBJ and GenBank, will be shared amongst them all. To obtain an EMBL accession number, please use the EMBL submission tool, Webin, at http://www.ebi.ac.uk/embl/Submission/webin.html. Full instructions are provided online. Accession numbers can normally be provided within 2 days of completion of submission or 5 days for submission of large amounts of data. Papers containing original amino acid sequences must supply a UniProt/Swiss-Prot accession number. To obtain an accession number, please use the UniProt/Swiss-Prot data submission tool (SPIN) at http://www.ebi.ac.uk/swissprot/Submissions/submissions.html. Accession numbers for protein submissions through SPIN are normally returned within a week of submission. Nucleotide and amino acid sequence accession numbers should be incorporated into manuscripts after the References. Any paper which does not have its accession number(s) by proof stage will not be published until this has been provided.

Cover Photograph

Images of high quality suitable for the cover of The Plant Journal are welcomed. They can be supplied as glossy photos, 212 mm wide x 172 mm high or as low-resolution digital images.They should be sent to the Editorial Office and be accompanied by a brief descriptive summary.

NEW: Online production tracking is now available for your article through Blackwell's Author Services.
Author Services enables authors to track their article - once it has been accepted - through the production process to publication online and in print. Authors can check the status of their articles online and choose to receive automated e-mails at key stages of production so they don't need to contact the production editor to check on progress. Visit www.blackwellpublishing.com/bauthor for more details on online production tracking and for a wealth of resources including FAQs and tips on article preparation, submission and more.

OnlineOpen
OnlineOpen is a pay-to-publish service from Blackwell that offers authors whose papers are accepted for publication the opportunity to pay up-front for their article to become open access (i.e. free for all to view and download) via the Blackwell Synergy Website. Each OnlineOpen article will be subject to a one-off fee of £1300(equivalent to $2600) to be met by or on behalf of the Author in advance of publication. Upon online publication, the article (both full-text and PDF versions) will be available to all for viewing and download free of charge. The print version of the article will also be branded as OnlineOpen and will draw attention to the fact that the paper can be downloaded for free via the Blackwell Synergy service.

Any authors wishing to send their paper OnlineOpen will be required to complete the combined payment and copyright licence form available from our Website at:

http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/pdf/TPJ_OOF.pdf

(Please note this form is for use with OnlineOpen material ONLY.)

Once complete this form should be sent to the Editorial Office along with the rest of the manuscript materials at the time of acceptance or as soon as possible after that (preferably within 24 hours to avoid any delays in processing). 

**IMPORTANT: Please do not inform the Editorial Office or Editors prior to acceptance whether or not you intend to take up the Online Open option. **