Text Format

YOU DO NOT NEED TO REFORMAT YOUR MANUSCRIPT FOR A FIRST SUBMISSION

The following IJOSR guidelines refer to peer-reviewed content. While published manuscripts are expected to conform to the following guidelines, this is not a requirement at first submission.

Manuscripts must be written in clear and concise English and be intelligible to a broad readership.

The Editorial Office will only accept text files in RTF or MS Word format, and the file should include figure legends, tables, and references. Tables can also be provided as separate Excel files.

Submitted manuscripts should be divided into the following sections:

Title page
Summary blurb
Abstract
Introduction
Results
Discussion
Materials and Methods
Data Availability
Acknowledgements
Author contributions
Conflict of interest
References
Figure legends, including supplementary figure legends
Tables and their legends
Supplementary Material

Title Page

The title should be short and informative, and should not contain any abbreviations. However, commonly used gene or protein acronyms are acceptable. The total length of the title should not exceed 100 characters (including spaces). Serial titles are not accepted.

The full name (middle names as initials) of each author should be given. Multiple first-authorships are acceptable and should be indicated. Numbers in superscript should be used to indicate the department, institution, city and country for each author. Any changes of address may also be given in numbered footnotes.

Please provide a running title of no more than 40 characters including spaces.

Up to six keywords, which may or may not appear in the title, should be given in alphabetical order.

Summary blurb

A short text summarizing in a single sentence the study (max. 200 characters including spaces). This text is used in the Table of Content of the issue the article appears in, hence in conjunction with the title of the paper. The information should be informative and complementary to the title, and describe the context and significance of the findings for a general readership; it should be written in the present tense and refer to the work in the third person. Author names should not be mentioned.

Abstract

This should be a single paragraph not exceeding 175 words. The Abstract should be comprehensible to readers before they have read the paper, and abbreviations should be avoided where possible. Reference citations within the abstract are not permitted. The abstract should describe all key findings of the study.

Graphical Abstract (Optional)

Authors may include a Graphical Abstract with their manuscript. A Graphical Abstract is a single, concise, and self-explanatory visual summary of the main findings of the article that should capture the content of the article at a single glance. If provided, the Graphical Abstract should be entirely original unpublished artwork created by the authors, and it should avoid including speculative conclusions. Graphical Abstracts should be submitted as a single high-resolution (300 dpi or greater) image file; preferred file types are .tif, .jpg, or .eps. Graphical Abstracts are displayed in the article HTML display but not in the PDF.

Introduction

The Introduction should be succinct and without subheadings. It should provide only the necessary background information, rather than comprise a comprehensive review of the field. Citation of the primary literature is required where appropriate.

Results

The Results section, and associated figures, tables, and Supplementary Information must accurately describe the findings of the study. Figure, Table, and Supplementary Information order should follow the text.

Discussion

The Discussion should accurately interpret the results, but not be repetitive with the Results section. Related published data must be appropriately discussed and cited. Speculation is allowed but should be clearly labelled as such. For shorter articles, the Results and Discussion sections can be combined.

Materials and Methods

This section should contain sufficient detail so that all experimental procedures can be repeated by others, in conjunction with cited references. Reagents must be described in such a way as to allow readers to identify them unequivocally and/or reproduce them.

Data Availability

Large-scale datasets, sequences, atomic coordinates and computational models should be deposited in one of the relevant public databases and the accession codes should be included in the data availability section. Suggested wording: “The [protein interaction | microarray | mass spectrometry] data from this publication have been deposited to the [name of the database] database [URL] and assigned the identifier [accession | permalink | hashtag].”

For data for which no suitable public database exists, please see section https://ijosr.org/manuscript-preparation#datadepot

Acknowledgements

These should be placed at the end of the text and not in footnotes. Personal acknowledgements should precede those of institutions or agencies. Grant numbers are permissible. Funding data will be taken from the information you provide in our submission system as well as those mined from Acknowledgements, then merged and tagged for deposition to Crossref, allowing funders to track publications resulting from their grants.

Therefore, it is important to use full, accurate agency names and grant numbers. Dedications are discouraged.

Author contributions

IJOSR requires a statement specifying the contributions of every author. We encourage use of the CRediT nomenclature.

Conflict of interest

IJOSR requires a statement specifying whether or not the authors have a conflict of interest. In the case of a conflict of interest, this must be specified.

References and Citations

As a matter of policy, IJOSR requires the citation of primary literature (over review articles) wherever appropriate. Authors are responsible for the accuracy of the references. Authors are responsible for ensuring that the related literature is accurately and comprehensively discussed and cited.

Only articles published or accepted for publication at a named publication or posted to a preprint server should be cited in the reference list. Papers accepted for publication must be cited with the corresponding author’s permission and should include title and all author names (or initials if any of the authors are co-authors of the present contribution), as well as either the DOI, if available, or the term ‘in press’. Citations of work posted on preprint servers must be clearly labeled as ‘preprint’.

In the text of the manuscript, a reference should be cited by author and year of publication; ‘et al’ should be used if there are more than two authors (i.e. Smith & Jones, 2003; Smith et al, 2000). In-text citations of work posted on preprint servers must be clearly labeled as non-peer-reviewed work, e.g.: (NAME et al., 2017; preprint) or (2; preprint).

Alternatively, in the text, a reference can be cited by a number in parentheses: (1). The citation should appear within the punctuation. Where more than one reference is cited, commas should be used to separate references, e.g.: (1, 2, 3, 8).

In the reference list, citations should be listed with the authors’ surnames and initials inverted. Where there are more than 10 authors on a paper, the first 10 will be listed, followed by ‘et al.’. Publications by the same author(s) in the same year should be identified with a, b, c after the year of publication. The name of each journal should be abbreviated according to Index Medicus and italicized, e.g.: Akhmedkhanov A, Toniolo P, Zeleniuch-Jacquotte A, Koenig KL, Shore RE (2002) Aspirin and lung cancer in women. Br J Cancer 87: 49-53

Tables

Tables should be provided in .doc/.docx or .xls format and need to be editable (no image files). They can be included at the bottom of the main manuscript file or be sent as separate files. Tables should be numbered consecutively with Arabic numerals (1, 2, 3, 4). Tables should be self-explanatory and include a brief descriptive title. Supplementary tables should always be submitted in .xls format.

Conventions and Abbreviations

In general, IJOSR follows conventions given in Scientific Style and Format: The CSE Manual for Authors, Editors and Publishers. Please follow Chemical Abstracts and its indexes for chemical names. For guidance in the use of biochemical terminology follow the recommendations issued by the IUPAC-IUBMB Joint Commission on Biochemical Nomenclature. In general, genes and genotypes should be indicated in italics; proteins and phenotypes should not be italicized.

For drawing glycan structures using symbols, we recommend the Symbol Nomenclature for Glycans (SNFG) described in the 3^rd edition of Essentials of Glycobiology and at the NCBI. Please include a citation in the methods section or in the legend of a figure using these symbols e.g, “Monosaccharide symbols follow the Symbol Nomenclature for Glycans (SNFG) (PMID 26543186, Glycobiology 25: 1323–1324, 2015; www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/glycans/snfg.html)”.

Authors should use approved gene and gene product nomenclature and apply the italicization and capitalization formatting as appropriate for each organism’s standard nomenclature. Please consult the appropriate nomenclature databases for correct gene names and symbols. Some useful general resources include: Entrez Gene; UniProt.

Try to restrict the use of abbreviations to SI symbols (standard units of measurements) and those recommended by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC). Abbreviations should be defined in brackets after their first mention in the text, not in a list of abbreviations. SI symbols and symbols of chemical elements may be used without definition in the body of the paper. Abbreviations of standard biochemical compounds, e.g. ATP, DNA, nucleotides in nucleic acids, and amino acids in proteins, need not be defined.

Figures

Figure Legends

Figure legends should contain sufficient information to allow the reader to follow the data presented without referring back to the text, but should not be redundant with the Results section. Each figure must contain a heading. All symbols and abbreviations used in the figure must be defined. Figure legends should be formatted such that each panel, or group of panels, has its own entry with the panel letter (or range) in bold. The panels should be described in sequential order in the legend. Details on the statistical analysis and the number of replicates should be indicated for each panel and figure where appropriate.

Example:

Figure 1 – Generation of hiPSCs from a patient with type-2 long-QT syndrome.

(A) Bright-field images of neurospheres obtained from SVZ neural stem cells of P15 control and hGFAP-SDHD mouse brains. Scale bars: 500 μm. (B, C) Neurosphere (NS) forming efficiency (B) and core diameter (C) in cultures grown from SVZ of P15 control and hGFAP-SDHD mice (n = 6 cultures/mice for each genotype). (D) Quantitative RT–PCR detection of SdhD expression levels in SVZ neurospheres of wild-type (flox/+) and mutant (flox/-, and flox/- cre) mice (n = 4 mice for each group).
Data information: In (B–D), data are presented as mean ± SEM. *P≤0.05 (Student’s t-test).

Figure and Video Formatting

Figures and supplementary figures should be presented in the order they are mentioned in the text. Figures use the numbering system Fig 1, while supplementary figures use the system supplementary Fig S1. The figure count in each is separate, such that there will be both a Fig 1 and a supplementary Fig S1 (and so on) in a manuscript.

Minimum resolution for all figures is 300 dpi.

For figures that contain both photographs and line art or text, 600 dpi is highly recommended.

Figures containing only black and white elements (line art, no color, and no gray) should be 1000 dpi.

Maximum figure size is 7 in wide x 9 in high (17.5 x 22.8 cm) at the correct resolution.

Use standard fonts (Arial, Times New Roman, Courier New, or Symbol) retained in a separate layer and embedded in final files when possible. Do not convert text to outlines.

Scale bars, rather than magnification factors, should be used, with the length of the bar defined in the legend rather than on the bar itself.

For publication, we require PowerPoint, TIFF, PDF or EPS files in PC or Macintosh format, preferably from PhotoShop or Illustrator software.

A helpful guide for preparing figures can be found at our partner journal here.

For videos, we recommend MP4 files, but also accept MOV, MPG, and AVI files.

Provide one file for each video. Videos should be named by order of citation appearance (e.g. Video1.mp4). No more than 10 videos should be submitted.

Videos may be no larger than 10 MB. We recommend H.264 compression, although other codecs may be used. However, please do not use MPEG-1 encoding or Intel Indeo because of incompatibilities across platforms. Color depth should be kept to a minimum, using grayscale for black and white videos.

Image Processing

Images submitted with a manuscript for review should be minimally processed (for instance, only to add arrows to a micrograph). Authors should retain their unprocessed data and metadata files, as editors may request them to aid in manuscript evaluation. If unprocessed data are unavailable, manuscript evaluation may be stalled until the issue is resolved.

A certain degree of image processing is acceptable for publication (and for some experiments, fields, and techniques is unavoidable), but the final image must correctly represent the original data and conform to community standards. Treatments should be explicitly mentioned.

Images gathered at different times or from different locations should not be combined into a single image, unless it is stated that the resultant image is a product of time-averaged data or a time-lapse sequence. If juxtaposing images is essential, the borders should be clearly demarcated in the figure and described in the legend.

The use of touch-up tools, such as cloning and healing tools in Photoshop, or any feature that deliberately obscures manipulations, is to be avoided.

Processing (such as changing brightness and contrast) is appropriate only when it is applied equally across the entire image and is applied equally to controls. Contrast should not be adjusted so that data disappear.

Electrophoretic gels and blots

Positive and negative controls, as well as molecular size markers, should be included on each gel and blot. For previously characterized antibodies, a citation must be provided. For antibodies less well characterized in the system under study, a detailed characterization that demonstrates the specificity of the antibody should be published. Vertically sliced images that juxtapose lanes that were non-adjacent in the gel must have a clear separation or a black line delineating the boundary between the gels. Loading controls must be run on the same blot. High-contrast gels and blots are discouraged, as overexposure may mask additional bands.

Microscopy

Authors should be prepared to supply the editors with original data on request, at the resolution collected, from which their images were generated. Adjustments should be applied to the entire image.

Figure/Data Presentation

Figures must accurately reflect the results of the experiments. Appropriate controls, markers and scale bars should be included in all panels. Statistical tests must be clearly defined and appropriate to the data.

Source Data

IJOSR strongly encourages authors to upload the ‘source data’ – for example, tables of individual numerical values and measurements or uncropped gels – that were used to generate figures. These files are separate from the Supplementary Information files and are submitted using the “figure source data” option in the manuscript submission system. Source data are directly linked to specific figures so that interested readers can download them for alternative visualization, re-analysis or integration with other data. Please submit one source data figure file per main figure.

Statistical analysis

The description of all reported data that includes statistical testing must state the name of the statistical test used to generate error bars and P values, the number (n) of independent experiments underlying each data point (not replicate measures of one sample), and the P value for each test. Discussion of statistical methodology can be reported in the Materials and Methods section, but figure legends should contain a basic description of n, P and the test applied.

For each experiment, the number of both technical and biological replicates should be clearly stated. We recommend that the actual individual data from each experiment should be plotted, particularly if n < 5, alongside an error bar. In cases where n is small, a justification for the use of the statistical test employed has to be provided. For more information on the appropriate use of standard deviation, standard error, and confidence intervals please refer to Sullivan et al (2016), American Statistical Association guidelines (2016), Motulsky (2014), and Cumming et al (2007). File naming conventions

Files should be uploaded, ordered and named based on file type and sequence position as in the following examples.

Fig1.tiff

SourceDataForFigure1A-F.PDF

Fig2.tiff

SourceDataForFigure2E.xls

FigS1.tiff

Video1.zip

Table1.xls

ComputerCode1.zip

Unpublished Data

Personal communications (Author name(s), personal communications) must be authorized in writing by those involved, and the authorization sent to the editorial office at the time of submission. Care should be taken that embargo policies are not contravened.

Data deposition

Large-scale datasets, sequences, atomic coordinates and computational models should be deposited in one of the relevant public databases prior to submission (provided private access is available at the database) to enable referees to consider this data as part of the peer review process. Accession codes should be included in a “Data Availability” section at the end of Materials and Methods (suggested wording: “The [protein interaction | microarray | mass spectrometry ] data from this publication have been deposited to the [name of the database] database [URL] and assigned the identifier [accession | permalink | hashtag ]).” Where applicable, please include in the cover letter at submission username and password for confidential access by peer reviewers.

Data for which no suitable public database exists should be deposited in a database for unstructured data (for example: BioStudies, Dryad, Zenodo, Figshare) or included as dataset files in the supplementary data section of the manuscript if the file size allows this. In cases where data cannot be confidentially deposited in a public database, please contact the editorial office for advice on how to make these data available for refereeing purposes.

Summary table of data repositories recommended:

Summary table of Data repositories

Data types	Repositories	Standards (via BioSharing)
Functional genomics	ArrayExpress, GEO	MIAME, MINSEQE
Mass spectrometry proteomics	Pride, PeptideAtlas	MIAPE
Molecular interactions	IMEx	MIMIx
Metabolomics	Metabolight	MSI
Sequences	GenBank, ENA, DDBJ
Flow Cytometry	FlowRepository	MIFlowCyt
Structure data	PDB, NDB, EMDB
Genotypic and phenotypic data	dbGAP, EGA, dbSNP
Computational models, code	BioModels, JJWS, Zenodo	Combine
Unstructured data	BioStudies, Dryad, Zenodo, Figshare