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| FEBS LETTERS |
An international journal established for the rapid publication of essentially final short reports in the fields of molecular biosciences. FEBS Letters and Molecular Oncology are published by Elsevier on behalf of the Federation of European Biochemical Societies
Guide for Authors
1. Brief Guidelines
2. Editorial Policy
2.1 Aims and Scope
2.2 Submission of Manuscripts
2.3 Evaluation of Manuscripts
2.4 Language Editing
2.5 Ethics of Experimentation
2.6 Colour reproduction
2.7 Copyright
2.8 Press releases
3. Submission Procedure
3.1 Original submissions
3.2 Revisions and Resubmissions
3.2.1 Revisions
3.2.2 Resubmissions
4. Manuscript Preparation Guidelines
4.1 Research Letters
4.1.1 Title Page
4.1.2 Abstract
4.1.3 Acknowledgements
4.1.4 References
4.1.5 Tables
4.1.6 Figures
4.1.7 Supplementary material
4.2 Minireviews and Hypotheses
5. Publication Matters
5.1 Proofs
5.2 Reprints
1. Brief Guidelines
FEBS Letters requires authors to submit all manuscripts online at: http://www.ees.elsevier.com/febsletters. Authors unable to submit online should contact the editorial office at febs.letters@bzh.uni-heidelberg.de.

- Please submit the text of your manuscript (including title, keywords, abbreviations, main text, references and figure legends) followed by tables and figures as a single .word file.
- Upload your figures separately as .jpg .eps or .tiff files. Tables should be uploaded as .word or .xls files.
- Each figure should be labeled with a figure number.
- Standard fonts should be used. Times, Times New Roman or Courier for the general text and Arial or Helvetica for the figures.
- Use the Symbol font and the "Insert Symbol" option from the menu bar for introducing symbols in MS Word.
- The length of the manuscript should not exceed 3000 words (16 000 characters).

Original submissions
Fast-Track Publication
FEBS Letters offers expedited handling of manuscripts that have been rejected from very high-level journals. Authors are encouraged to enclose reviews and/or comments from the editor of previously reviewed manuscripts to expedite their handling as your manuscript may be accepted based on the previous reviews. You will receive a final decision from the Managing Editor within a few days of submitting manuscripts with reviews.
2. Editorial Policy
FEBS Letters is an international journal established for the rapid publication of short reports in the molecular biosciences. It provides a forum for reviews and research reports that merit urgent publication. FEBS Letters is published by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of the Federation of European Biochemical Societies (FEBS).
2.1
Papers should be short but complete and essentially final reports. FEBS Letters is not a vehicle for the publication of preliminary or fragmentary observations, for reports that are scientifically sound but do not warrant urgent publication or are only addressed to a specialized readership. As a rule, we do not publish the following: cloning and sequencing of cDNA or genes that have previously been reported for other species; conventionally achieved expression of a protein; incomplete NMR or other spectroscopic assignments; conventionally achieved crystallization of a protein; correlative studies; or negative observations. As a general policy, methodological papers are not published unless they are truly novel and significant. Manuscripts applying standard bioinformatics approaches to limited sets of publicly available protein or gene sequences will only be considered if the results are of great biological interest and are not easily obtained using readily available methods. The overriding criterion is that a paper must be of sufficient immediate importance to justify urgent publication.
The subject area of FEBS Letters is broad. It covers biochemistry (including protein chemistry, enzymology, nucleic acid chemistry, metabolism, and immunochemistry) structural biology, biophysics, computational biology (genomics, proteomics, and bioinformatics), molecular genetics, molecular biology, molecular cell biology (signal transduction, intracellular traffic, regulation of cellular proliferation, cell-cell interactions) and systems biology. Studies on microbes, plants and animals performed at the molecular level are within the scope of FEBS Letters.
2.2 Submission of Manuscripts
All material submitted to FEBS Letters must be original and not published or submitted for publication elsewhere. Closely related papers that are in press or that have been submitted elsewhere must be included with the manuscript.
We assume that all of the authors have approved the submitted manuscript. If this assumption turns out to be incorrect, the manuscript will be withdrawn and will not be published.
Submission of a research letter implies that the authors are willing to make available to academic researchers cell lines, DNA clones, antibodies or similar materials that have been used in the experiments reported.
Data regarding protein or nucleic acid sequences, solution-state or crystallographic structures should be deposited in an appropriate, publicly available database such as Genbank, EMBL, SWISS-PROT, PDB and BMRB. Microarray data should be submitted to the GEO or ArrayExpress databases. Data describing three-dimentional protein models may be submitted to the PMDB database ( http://www.caspur.it/PMDB/). Authors are encouraged to deposit plasmid constructions in a public repository, such as Addgene or similar. The databank must be in general use in the field and give free access to researchers. Database accession numbers should be listed in the manuscript and must be obtained before the paper can be accepted for publication. For any data set for which there is no public repository, data must be made freely available following publication of the manuscript.
Submitted manuscripts will generally be published within a week of acceptance and thus be made public.
NIH Policy: Effective May 2, 2005, The National Institutes of Health (NIH) will initiate its "Public Access Policy" which requests that NIH-funded authors submit their peer-reviewed author manuscripts to PubMed Central (PMC) within 12 months of final publication. NIH has made clear that it will not penalize NIH-funded authors who choose not to meet the NIH's request. Should you wish to comply, however, please consult the Elsevier information page on the NIH initiative for further details. http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/authorshome.authors/nihauthorrequest
2.3 Evaluation of Manuscripts
Initial evaluation of manuscripts takes place at the FEBS Letters editorial office. Papers that pass this first screen will be assigned to an editor with experience in the field who will decide whether it should be sent out for peer review. All papers published in FEBS Letters (Research Letters, Minireviews and Hypotheses) are peer-reviewed.
2.4 Language Editing
Authors who are unsure of correct English usage should have their manuscript checked by someone proficient in the language. Manuscripts in which the English is difficult to understand may be returned to the author for revision before scientific review. The following external services are offered here for your consideration only:
International Science Editing Limited and Asia Science Editing offer a language and copyediting service to authors who want to publish in scientific peer-reviewed journals. All of their science editors are native English speakers and those working for International Science Editing Limited also have postgraduate qualifications and experience in science research. For more information please see: http://www.internationalscienceediting.com or http://www.asiascienceediting.com. With Asia Science Editing, Elsevier has negotiated a rate of EUR 0.024 per word (ca EUR 6 per page). A EUR 10 handling fee per manuscript is added, if payment is by credit card. Different rates apply for mathematic-based manuscripts. Turnaround time is typically 5 days.
For all third party language editing recommendations, all interaction and responsibility is between the Author and the Language Editor. Language editing should not be confused with the copy-editing that takes place during the production process after a manuscript has been accepted.
2.5 Ethics of Experimentation
Scientific investigations involving humans or animals must have approval of the appropriate ethics committee. Animal experiments should be carried out in accordance with the EU (86./609/EEC) or the NIH guidelines. A statement that informed consent was obtained from all subjects must accompany investigations involving humans.
2.6 Colour reproduction
When essential to the understanding of a paper, figures may be reproduced in colour (print and Web versions) at no cost to the authors. The use of free colour is at the discretion of the editorial office. Authors who wish to use colour (without the approval of the editorial office) may do at no cost for the Web version, but will be charged Euro 340 (exclusive of sales tax) for a single page printed in colour. For more than one full colour page, the cost per page is Euro 227 plus sales tax.
2.7 Copyright
Authors, or a third party, wishing to reproduce figures, tables, or brief quotations from the text of articles published in FEBS Letters for non-commercial purposes may do so, provided that the original publication is acknowledged accordingly and the authors' approval is obtained. No special permission is needed from FEBS, the Publisher, or the Managing Editor for this. If authors, or a third party, wish to use a major part of an article or an entire article elsewhere, whether in English or any translation, permission must be asked from the Publisher, who will, if necessary, contact FEBS, the copyright holder.
2.8 Press releases
Authors who wish to issue a press release on material accepted by FEBS Letters are welcome to do so. The best time for a press release is after completion of the typesetting of the issue, i.e., usually about two weeks before the dispatch date. Only then is the correct and complete reference known. The initiative of a press release may be taken by the handling editor, who will contact the authors and the editorial office.
3. Submission Procedure
Please submit your manuscript through our online submission and peer-review system at: http://www.ees.elsevier.com/febsletters. Please prepare your text and figures according to the manuscript preparation guidelines.
3.1 Original submissions
Authors are welcome to suggest one or two members of the FEBS Letters Editorial Board whom they feel would be the most appropriate to handle their manuscript. Please understand that these requests cannot always be fulfilled. Authors are also requested to provide the names and e-mail addresses of 3 to 4 people who have the expertise to review their manuscript. Authors may request that certain people - who are in direct competition, or otherwise have a conflict of interest - be excluded from the review process.
The editorial office will acknowledge receipt of your manuscript within 24 hours of submission. Please contact the editorial office (febs.letters@bzh.uni-heidelberg.de) if you do not receive confirmation within this period of time. The 'date of receipt' that appears in the published paper will be the date when the handling editor received the manuscript.
3.2 Revisions and Resubmissions
3.2.1 Revisions
Papers may be returned to authors for revision. Authors will be given four weeks after receipt of the reviewers' comments to revise their paper. Revisions must be submitted via the online submission system, under the heading "Submit a revised manuscript". Click on the link "Revised manuscripts" then on the "View comments/Respond" link to view the comments of the editor and reviewers. Then click on the title of the manuscript to upload your revised files. Please do not submit the revision via email.
3.2.2 Resubmissions
Resubmissions of manuscripts are only considered when encouraged by the handling Editor. Authors may be encouraged to resubmit the paper after additional experimental data is obtained. Resubmissions should be submitted via the online submission system under "submit first draft of a new manuscript". The paper must be marked as a resubmission and list the handling editor and manuscript number of the original submission. Please also provide a letter giving point-by-point responses to the referees of the previous version.
4. Manuscript Preparation Guidelines
For the submission and peer-review process, FEBS Letters urges you to prepare your manuscript as a single file using a word processing program and saving it as a .doc, .rtf, .ps or .pdf file. When your paper is accepted for publication, you will be asked to provide one complete copy of the paper containing printers quality figures and a CD with the most recent version of the text and figures to the editorial office.
4.1 Research Letters
General arrangement - The length of the submitted manuscript should not exceed16,000 characters or 3000 words, including the figure legends, tables, and references. Editors will accept longer papers only when there are compelling reasons to do so. Any repetition of information in the text and figures should be avoided.
The text should be double-spaced and size 11 or larger and a standard font (Times, Times New Roman, Arial, or Helvetica) should be used. When using Word, insert all symbols by selecting "Insert - Symbol" from the menu and use the "Symbol" font.
The title page of the manuscript should be followed by numbered sections:

1. Introduction.
2. Materials and Methods.
3. Results.
4. Discussion.
5. Acknowledgements.
6. References.
7. Figure legends.
8. Tables and figures.

When appropriate, results and discussion sections may be combined.
4.1.1 Title Page
The first page of the manuscript should contain the following information:
Title
The title should be a maximum of two printed lines in the journal (140 characters, including spaces). Active titles are preferred. Technical terms, such as 'cloning,' 'expression,' 'purification' and specialized abbreviations should be avoided. Titles should not be repetitive but clearly and concisely state the subject of the manuscript. FEBS Letters reserves the right to edit titles for length and clarity.
Authors' names and affiliations
The full names and affiliations should be provided for all authors. The corresponding author should also provide a full postal address, telephone and fax number (including country code), and an e-mail address as a footnote on the title page.
Keywords
The keywords should reflect the significant factors of the investigation as a whole. Authors are requested to consult the annual cumulative subject index of FEBS Letters or the list of subject headings from Index Medicus. A maximum of six keywords should be selected and included with the submitted manuscript. The list submitted may be amended to ensure that index entries are consistent in the master index. General terms such as enzyme or membrane should not be used unless qualified, e.g. membrane translocation, enzyme activation.
List of abbreviations
Authors should follow internationally agreed rules as set out in "Biochemical Nomenclature and Related Documents" (A Compendium, 2nd edition, 1992) International Union of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, published by Portland Press, London and Chapel Hill, UK. Abbreviations should be expanded in a footnote on the title page.
4.1.2 Abstract
The abstract should be submitted as a separate file. Absracts must be less than 100 words in length and summarize the question being addresses and the pertinent findings.
4.1.3 Acknowledgements
In this section authors may acknowledge the assistance of persons who do not meet criteria of authors. Financial and material support could be acknowledged in this section. Dedications should not be listed in this section but on the title page, after the author affiliation and before the abstract (see section 4.1.1).
4.1.4 References
These should be numbered in square brackets, e.g. [7], or [11-13,17], in order of citation in the text. The list of references will be printed at the end of the paper. References to databases, personal communications or unpublished data should be cited in the text or as footnotes. Articles may only be cited as 'in press' if a copy of the acceptance notice is supplied at the time of submission. References should include the title of the article and be cited as follows:
Examples of journals [1] [2] and books [3] [4]:
[1] MacKinnon, R. (2003) Potassium channels. FEBS Lett. 555, 62-65.
[2] Nixon, J.E., Wang, A., Morrison, H.G., McArthur, A.G., Sogin, M.L., Loftus, B.J. and Samuelson, J. (2002) A splicesomal intron in Giardia lamblia. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 99, 422-431.
[3] Langer, T. and Neupert, W. (1994) Chaperoning mitochondrial biogenesis. in: The Biology of Heat Shock Proteins and Molecular Chaperones (Morimoto, R.I., Tissieres, A. and Georgopoulos, C., Eds), pp. 53-83. Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, Plainview, NY.
[4] Feldmann, H. (2004) Forty years of FEBS. Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Oxford.
4.1.5 Tables
Tables should be used only when the data cannot be presented clearly in the text. Authors are requested to consult recent issues of FEBS Letters for the proper table layout. The heading of the table should make its general meaning understandable without reference to the text.
4.1.6 Figures
Use quality graphic programs such as Adobe PhotoShop, Adobe Illustrator, Corel Draw, or Freehand to create your figures. Figures should be approximately the same size as you would like them to appear in press. Please prepare and save your figures according to the chart below.
Images should not be modified to change their appearance or enhance any specific feature. Any adjustments of brightness and contrast or colour balance must be applied to the entire image and should not result in loss or gain of information. Unacceptable modifications include the addition, alteration or removal of a particular feature of an image. All figures in manuscripts will be examined for any indication of improper modifications. The final acceptance of all manuscripts is contingent on any concerns raised by referees and editors being resolved.

| Line art Charts, graphs and hand-drawn images | Halftones Photographic images, micrographs | Combination art work artwork with both, text/lines and photographic images (e.g. gels with lanes labeled)
Text | Use standard fonts or embed all fonts | N/A | Use standard fonts or embed all fonts; use solid black or white text
Color encoding: | RGB | RGB | RGB
Compression: | Color - noneBlack & White - LZW | Color - noneBlack & White - LZW | Color - noneBlack & White - LZW
Save as: | .eps (recommended)or .tiff (1000 dpi)* | .tiff (300 dpi) | .eps (recommended),or .tiff (500 dpi)*

*Use .tiff format for scanned images or when it is not possible to save in .eps format
Note: While an image may look perfect on the screen, it is often of insufficient resolution for publication. Try viewing your figure at 400% on the screen, if it is not blurry, it is probably of high enough resolution for the printing process.
Glossary:
RGB - (red, green, blue) colour mode
LZW - type of compression recommended for black and white images
Dpi - (dots per inch) measure of resolution for printers, scanners and displays
EPS - (Encapsulated PostScript) files are the preferred format for electronic line art and combination art (not for Corel Draw, see below)
.tiff - (Tagged Image File Format) is the recommended file format for scanned halftones, bitmaps and colour images: Corel Draw files should be saved in .tiff format using a minimum resolution of 500 dpi.
While we strongly encourage you to save your figures as .tiff or .eps files, the following format types are also acceptable, provided you follow Elsevier's instructions Word (.doc), Excel (.xls) or PowerPoint (.ppt).• Adobe PDF, Adobe Illustrator (.ai) or PhotoShop (.psd). For more detailed information on artwork, please see http://www.elsevier.com/artworkinstructions
4.1.7 Supplementary material
Authors are requested to include sequence, microarray, and other supporting data as supplementary data. Figures and text should be prepared according to the above guidelines and should be provided at the time of initial submission.
Movies/animations - Supplementary movies or animation files should be provided in one of the following formats: .mpg, .mov, .gif, and .avi. For more information please see: http://www.elsevier.com/artworkinstructions.
4.2 Minireviews and Hypotheses
The Minireviews and Hypotheses should be topical and of interest not only to specialists in the field but also to the general reader. Sufficient information should be included in the introduction to provide background to non-specialists. Minireviews should not be longer than 2500 words, and preferably not have more than 50 references and 3 figures or tables. They should contain at least one figure, scheme or table that illustrates a central aspect of the review. A short abstract (less than 100 words) and 3-6 keywords should be included. The author(s) should use short descriptive subtitles. Papers labeled 'Hypothesis' should present novel ideas or new interpretations of established observations, but should be based on sound data and avoid excessive speculation (please note that preliminary experiments cannot be published as a Hypothesis).
Since the majority of Minireviews and Hypotheses are solicited, authors who wish to submit such manuscripts should e-mail the FEBS Letters Editorial Office (febs.letters@bzh.uni-heidelberg.de) prior to submission, providing a title, abstract and key references of the article to be considered.
5. Publication Matters
For general enquiries and answers to frequently asked questions, please visit Author Gateway at http://authors.elsevier.com. The Author Gateway also provides the facility to track accepted articles and set up e-mail alerts to inform you when an article's status has changed, as well as detailed artwork guidelines and copyright information.
Please address all queries concerning accepted manuscripts to FEBS Letters Issue Management. E-mail: FEBSLettersIM@elsevier.com, specifying the manuscript number and handling editor.
5.1 Proofs
The corresponding author will receive proofs by e-mail (PDF proofs). Authors are requested to check the proofs and return any corrections within 48 hours. Thereafter, proofs will be processed and included in the first available issue. Late corrections cannot be accepted. If the authors wish to introduce extensive changes (at the issue manager's discretion) the proofs will be sent to the handling editor and be treated as a revised version. Amendments requiring this extra procedure at the proof stage may delay the appearance of the paper by several weeks.
5.2 E-Offprints
The corresponding author, at no cost, will be provided with a PDF file of the article via e-mail or, alternatively, 25 free paper offprints. The PDF file is a watermarked version of the published article and includes a cover sheet with the journal cover image and a disclaimer outlining the terms and conditions of use.
Copyright © 1996-2007, Federation of European Biochemical Societies. All rights reserved. Last updated October 2007

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