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| DEVELOPMENTAL BIOLOGY |
An official journal of the Society for Developmental Biology
Guide for Authors
Developmental Biology Editorial Office
525 B Street, Suite 1900
San Diego, CA 92101-4495, USA
Tel: (619) 699-6351
Fax: (619) 699-6211
E-mail: db@elsevier.com
Developmental Biology publishes original research on mechanisms of development, differentiation, and growth in animals and plants at the molecular, cellular, and genetic levels. Areas of particular emphasis include transcriptional control mechanisms, embryonic patterning, cell–cell interactions, growth factors and signal transduction, and regulatory hierarchies.
Submission of Manuscripts
It is a condition of publication that all manuscripts must be written in clear and grammatical English and be submitted to the Developmental Biology Web site at to http://ees.elsevier.com/developmentalbiology/. Text and tables should be submitted as Word documents, and figures should be submitted as TIFF or EPS files (300 dpi). The accompanying cover letter, outlining the basic findings of the paper and their significance, may be addressed to the editor of choice or to Editorial Office.
Authors should suggest at least four competent reviewers in their field and may also suggest individuals whom they wish to have excluded from the review process. The list of reviewer suggestions should be compiled as a separate document.
There are no submission fees or page charges.
Language Editing:
International Science Editing and Asia Science Editing can provide English language and copyediting services to authors who want to publish in scientific, technical and medical journals and need assistance before they submit their article or, before it is accepted for publication. Authors can contact these services directly: International Science Editing ( http://www.internationalscienceediting.com) and Asia Science Editing ( http://www.asiascienceediting.com) or, for more information about language editing services, please contact authorsupport@elsevier.com who will be happy to deal with any questions.
Please note Elsevier neither endorses nor takes responsibility for any products, goods or services offered by outside vendors through our services or in any advertising. For more information please refer to our terms and conditions ( http://www.elsevier.com/termsandconditions).
Terms of Submission
Manuscripts are accepted for review with the understanding that no substantial portion of the study has been published or is under consideration for publication elsewhere, and that its submission for publication has been approved by all of the authors and by the institution where the work was carried out. Manuscripts that do not meet the general criteria or standards for publication in Developmental Biology will be immediately returned to the authors, without detailed review.
Upon acceptance of an article, authors will be asked to transfer copyright (for more information on copyright, see http://www.elsevier.com/copyright). This transfer will ensure the widest possible dissemination of information. A letter will be sent to the corresponding author confirming receipt of the manuscript. A form facilitating transfer of copyright will be provided after acceptance.
If material from other copyrighted works is included, the author(s) must obtain written permission from the copyright owners and credit the source(s) in the article. Elsevier has preprinted forms for use by authors in these cases: contact Elsevier Global Rights Department, P.O. Box 800, Oxford OX5 1DX, UK; phone: (+44) 1865 843830, fax: (+44) 1865 853333, e-mail: permissions@elsevier.com.
If revisions are requested, the revised manuscript must be submitted within three months of the request; otherwise it is regarded as a new submission.
Original Research Papers
Developmental Biology seeks to publish only the very best papers that contribute new information to our understanding of developmental mechanisms. Questions are frequently raised about "descriptive" papers. Such papers are appropriate for DB if they provide important new insights. This would not include, for example, a description of the expression pattern of a gene in one species that has already been described in another species, or an expression pattern with no obvious link to a developmental process.
We require that manuscripts specifically address biological relevance. While morpholino, microarray and RNAi studies may be acceptable, they must contain adequate controls to be considered for publication.
Papers usually do not exceed 15,000 words. Prepare manuscripts according to the guidelines given in the next section.
Review Articles
Review articles are intended to reach a broad audience of readers from investigators in the field to new graduate students learning the material for the first time. Review articles are subject to the same review process as original papers, but may receive expedited consideration. Manuscripts should be prepared according to the general guidelines given below. The Materials and Methods, Results, and Discussion sections may be replaced with appropriate alternatives; an abstract is still required. The editor-in-chief and the reviews editor invite inquiries and suggestions for timely and provocative review articles.
Genomes and Developmental Control
This new section is dedicated to papers that address analysis of developmental cis-regulatory systems; developmental genomics; transcriptional mechanisms in development, analysis of specific developmental processes, and system-level approaches to such networks; comparative analysis and evolution of regulatory systems; and computational advances that illuminate the identification and the structure/function relationships of developmental control systems. Papers selected for this section will appear together on a monthly basis. As always, we are dedicated to rapidly reviewing papers.
Preparation of Manuscripts
Pages should be numbered consecutively and organized as follows:
The Title Page (p. 1) should contain the article title, authors' names and complete affiliations, footnotes to the title, and the address for manuscript correspondence (including e-mail address and telephone and fax numbers).
The Abstract (p. 2) must be a single paragraph that summarizes the main findings of the paper in less than 200 words. After the abstract a list of up to 10 keywords that will be useful for indexing or searching should be included.
The Introduction should be as concise as possible, without subheadings.
Materials and methods should be sufficiently detailed to enable the experiments to be reproduced.
The Results and Discussion sections may be organized into subheadings and may be combined.
Acknowledgments should be brief and should precede the references.
The References section should be alphabetized by first author's last name. References should be cited in the text by name and date. Cite papers with three or more authors using the first author's last name and "et al." Only articles that have been published or are in press should be included in the references. Unpublished results or personal communications should be cited as such in the text. Please note the following examples.
Harvey, R.P., Rosenthal, N. (Eds.), 1999. Heart Development. Academic Press, San Diego.
Holleran, E.A., Karki, S., Holzbaur, E.L.F., The role of the dynactin complex in intracellular motility. In: Jeon, K.W. (Ed.), International Review of Cytology, Vol. 182. Academic Press, San Diego, 1998, pp. 69-109.
Milan, M., Cohen, S.M., 2000. Subdividing cell populations in the developing limbs of Drosophila: do wing veins and leg segments define units of growth control? Dev. Biol. 217, 1–9.
Tables
Tables should be numbered consecutively with Arabic numerals in order of appearance in the text. Give each table a short descriptive title typed directly above it, with essential footnotes below.
Figures
Figure legends must begin on a new page. Number figures consecutively with Arabic numerals. Please use the Helvetica typeface for lettering. Sequence figures should be in the Courier typeface, and may be prepared with a word-processing program. Please visit our Web site at http://elsevier.com/artwork for detailed instructions on preparing electronic artwork.
Two pages of color will be published free of charge in each article. Additional pages of color will be published free of charge at the discretion of the editor.
If, together with your accepted article, you submit usable color figures, then Elsevier will ensure, at no additional charge, that these figures will appear in color on the Web (e.g., ScienceDirect and other sites) regardless of whether these illustrations are reproduced in color in the printed version. For color reproduction in print, you will receive information regarding the costs from Elsevier after receipt of your accepted article. For further information on the preparation of electronic artwork, please see http://www.elsevier.com/artwork.
Please note: Because of technical complications that can arise in converting color figures to "gray scale" (for the printed version should you not opt for color in print), please submit in addition usable black-and-white files corresponding to all the color illustrations.
Cover Submissions
Color figures for exclusive use as cover illustrations may be submitted by authors who are also submitting a manuscript for consideration. Such illustrations do not need to relate to the manuscript being submitted but should relate to the larger scope and focus of Developmental Biology. A legend of 100 or fewer words should accompany each image.
Materials
Publication of a research article in Developmental Biology is taken to imply that the authors are prepared to distribute all non-commercially obtained materials used in the experiments (e.g. cells, DNA, antibodies, primary data), to other academic researchers for their own use or for verification. All nucleic acid and protein sequences must have been deposited in the appropriate databases and the Accession Numbers cited in the paper.
DNA Sequences and GenBank Accession Numbers
Authors wishing to enable other scientists to use the accession numbers cited in their papers via links to these sources should type this information in the following manner: For each and every accession number cited in an article, authors should type the accession number in bold, underlined text. Letters in the accession number should always be capitalized (see example below). This combination of letters and format will enable Elsevier's typesetters to recognize the relevant texts as accession numbers and add the required link to GenBank's sequences.
Example: GenBank accession nos. AI631510 , AI631511 , AI632198 , and BF223228 ), a B-cell tumor from a chronic lymphatic leukemia (GenBank accession no. BE675048 ), and a T-cell lymphoma (GenBank accession no. AA361117 ).
Authors are encouraged to check accession numbers used very carefully. An error in a letter or number can result in a dead link.
In the final version of the printed article, the accession number text will not appear bold or underlined. In the final version of the electronic copy, the accession number text will be linked to the appropriate source in the NCBI databases, enabling readers to go directly to that source from the article.
Data from microarray and other similar screens:
Please see the MGED open letter specifying microarray standards at http://www.mged.org/Workgroups/MIAME/miame_checklist.html. Authors submitting manuscripts relying on microarray or similar screens must supply the data as Supplementary data (see below) at the time of submission, along with the completed MIAME checklist. The data must be MIAME-compliant and supplied in a form that is widely accessible. The microarray data must also be submitted to either 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 of the paper for publication. The editors understand that on occasion authors may not feel it appropriate to deposit the entire data set at the time of publication of this paper. We are therefore willing to consider exceptions to this requirement in response to a request from the authors, which must be made at the time of initial submission or as part of an informal pre-submission enquiry.
Preparation of Supplementary Material
Elsevier now accepts electronic supplementary material to support and enhance your scientific research. Supplementary files offer additional possibilities for publishing supporting applications, movies, animation sequences, high-resolution images, background datasets, sound clips, and more. Supplementary files supplied will be published online alongside the electronic version of your article in Elsevier Web products, including ScienceDirect (http://www.sciencedirect.com). To ensure that your submitted material is directly usable, please provide the data in one of our recommended file formats. Authors should submit the material in electronic format together with the article and supply a concise and descriptive caption for each file. Please note, however, that supplementary material will not appear in the printed journal. Movies should be stored on 3.5-inch diskette, ZIP disk, or CD and sent to the Editorial Office. For more detailed instructions, please contact the Editorial Office at db@elsevier.com.
Proofs
PDF proofs will be e-mailed to the corresponding author. To avoid delay in publication, only necessary changes should be made, and proofs should be returned promptly. Authors will be charged for alterations that exceed 10% of the total cost of composition.
Distribution of Material
Authors who publish a research article in Developmental Biology must be prepared to freely distribute to academic researchers for their own use any cell lines, DNA clones, monoclonal antibodies, or genetically engineered mice described in the article. All genetic-sequence information published in Developmental Biology must also be deposited with GenBank or the EMBL Database Library.
Author Inquiries
Visit http://www.elsevier.com/authors for the facility to track accepted articles and set up e-mail alerts to inform you when an article's status has changed. The Elsevier site also provides detailed artwork guidelines, copyright information, frequently asked questions and more. Contact details for questions arising after acceptance of an article, especially those relating to proofs, are provided after registration of an article for publication.
US National Institutes of Health (NIH) voluntary posting ("Public Access") policy.
Elsevier facilitates author response to the NIH voluntary posting request (referred to as the NIH "Public Access Policy"; see http://www.nih.gov/about/publicaccess/index.htm) by posting the author's peer-reviewed manuscript directly to PubMed Central on request from the author, 12 months after formal publication. Upon notification from Elsevier of acceptance, we will ask you to confirm via e-mail (by e-mailing us at NIHauthorrequest@elsevier.com) that your work has received NIH funding and that you intend to respond to the NIH policy request, along with your NIH award number to facilitate processing. Upon such confirmation, Elsevier will submit to PubMed Central on your behalf a version of your manuscript that will include peer-review comments, for posting 12 months after formal publication. This will ensure that you will have responded fully to the NIH request policy. There will be no need for you to post your manuscript directly with PubMed Central, and any such posting is prohibited.
Access to non-subscribers 12 months after publication
Elsevier is pleased to announce that all articles published in Developmental Biology are accessible to non-subscribers 12 months after publication via ScienceDirect ( http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/00121606).
Policy for Wellcome Trust funded authors
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/authorshome.authors/wellcometrustauthors
Authors' rights:
As an author you (or your employer or institution) may do the following:
• make copies (print or electronic) of the article for your own personal use, including for your own classroom teaching use
• make copies and distribute such copies (including through e-mail) of the article to research colleagues, for the personal use by such colleagues (but not commercially or systematically, e.g., via an e-mail list or list server)
• post a pre-print version of the article on Internet websites including electronic pre-print servers, and to retain indefinitely such version on such servers of sites
• post a revised personal version of the final text of the article (to reflect changes made in the peer review and editing process) on your personal or institutional website or server, with a link to the journal homepage (on Elsevier.com)
• present the article at a meeting or conference and to distribute copies of the article to the delegates attending such a meeting
• for your employer, if the articles is a 'work for hire', made within the scope of your employment, your employer may use all or part of the information in the article for other intra-company use (e.g., training)
• retain patent and trademark rights and rights to any processes or procedure described in the article
• include the article in full or in part in a thesis or dissertation (provided that this is not to be published commercially)
• use the article or any part thereof in a printed compilation of your works, such as collected writings or lecture notes (subsequent to publication of your article in the journal)
• prepare other derivative works, to extend the article into book-length form, or to otherwise re-use portions or excerpts in other works, with full acknowledgement of its original publication in the journal.

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