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Instructions for Authors

Submission Checklist

1) read the Aims and Scope to gain an overview and assess if your manuscript is suitable for this journal;

2) use the Microsoft Word template  to prepare your manuscript;

3) make sure that issues about publication ethics, copyright,  figure formats, and references format have been appropriately considered;

4) ensure that all authors have approved the content of the submitted manuscript.

As part of the submission process, authors are required to check off their submission’s compliance with all of the following items, and submissions may be returned to authors that do not adhere to these guidelines.

  1. The submission has not been previously published, nor is it before another journal for consideration (or an explanation has been provided in Comments to the Editor).
  2. The submission file is in OpenOffice, Microsoft Word, RTF, or WordPerfect document file format.
  3. Where available, URLs for the references have been provided.
  4. The text is single-spaced; uses a 12-point font; employs italics, rather than underlining (except with URL addresses); and all illustrations, figures, and tables are placed within the text at the appropriate points, rather than at the end.

 

Manuscript Submission Overview

Types of Publications

There is no restriction on the length of manuscripts, provided that the text is concise and comprehensive. Full experimental details must be provided so that the results can be reproduced by other groups. We encourages authors to publish all experimental controls and full datasets as supplementary files.

The different types of articles published are indicated in the first section of the Aims and Scope. The main types are:

  • Articles: research manuscripts report new evidence or new conclusions which have neither been published before nor are under consideration for publication in another journal. ISCI considers all original research manuscripts provided that the work reports scientifically sound experiments and provides a substantial amount of new information. We strongly recommend authors not to unnecessarily divide their work into several related manuscripts.
  • Short communications of preliminary, but significant, results will also be considered.
  • Reviews: review manuscripts provide concise and precise updates on the latest progress made in a given area of research.
  • Conference Papers: Expanded and high quality conference papers are also considered if they fulfill the following requirements: (1) the paper should be expanded to the size of a research article; (2) the conference paper should be cited and noted on the first page of the paper; (3) if the authors do not hold the copyright to the published conference paper, authors should seek the appropriate permission from the copyright holder; (4) authors are asked to disclose that it is conference paper in their cover letter and include a statement on what has been changed compared to the original conference paper.

 

Submission Process

Manuscripts should be submitted online. The submitting author, who is generally the corresponding author, is responsible for the manuscript during the submission and peer-review process. The submitting authors must ensure that all co-authors have been included in the author list and that they all have read and approved the submitted version of the manuscript. To submit your manuscript, register and log in to this website. All co-authors can see the manuscript details in the submission system, if they register and log in using the e-mail address provided during manuscript submission.

 

Accepted File Formats

Authors must use the Microsoft Word template to prepare their manuscript. Using the template file will substantially shorten the time to complete copy-editing and publication of accepted manuscripts. Accepted file formats are:

  • Microsoft Word: Manuscripts prepared in Microsoft Word must be converted into a single file before submission. When preparing manuscripts in Microsoft Word, the Microsoft Word template file must be used. Please insert your graphics (schemes, figures, etc.) in the main text after the paragraph of its first citation.

Preparation of a Manuscript

General Considerations

  • Research manuscripts should comprise:
    • Front matter: Title, Author list, Affiliations, Abstract, Keywords
    • Research manuscript sections: Introduction, Results, Discussion, Experimental Section, Conclusions (optional), Supplementary Materials
    • Back matter: Acknowledgments, Author Contributions, Conflicts of Interests, References.
  • Review manuscripts should comprise the front matter, literature review sections and the back matter. The template file can also be used to prepare the front and back matter of your review manuscript. It is not necessary to follow the remaining structure.
  • Abstract Graphic: Authors are encouraged to provide a graphical abstract as a self-explanatory image to appear alongside with the text abstract in the Table of Contents, if you have not done so already. Figures should be a high quality image in any common image format. Note that images displayed online will be up to 11 by 9 cm on screen and the figure should be clear at this size.
  • “Data not shown” should be avoided in research manuscripts. We encourage our authors to publish all observations related to the submitted manuscript as Supplementary Materials. “Unpublished data” intended for publication in a different manuscript, i.e., in a manuscript that is either planned, “in preparation”or that have been “submitted” but not yet accepted, should be cited in the text and a reference should be added in the References section. “Personal Communications” should also be cited in the text and reference added in the References section. .
  • Abbreviations should be defined in parentheses the first time they appear in the abstract, main text and in figure captions.
  • SI Units (International System of Units) should be used for this journal. Imperial, US customary and other units should be converted to SI units whenever possible before submission of a manuscript to the journal.
  • Equations: If you are using Word, please use either the Microsoft Equation Editor or the MathType add-on in your paper. Equations should be editable by the editorial office and not appear in a picture format.
  • Supplementary Materials and Research Data: To maintain the transparency and reproducibility of research results, authors are encouraged to make their experimental and research data openly available either by depositing into data repositories or by publishing the data and files as “Supplementary Materials”. Large datasets and files should be deposited in specialized data repositories. Small datasets, spreadsheets, images, video sequences, conference slides, software source code, etc. can be uploaded as “Supplementary Files” during the manuscript submission process. The supplementary files will also be made available to the referees during the peer-review process and be published online alongside the manuscript. Please read the information about Supplementary Materials and Data Deposit for additional guidelines.

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Front Matter

These sections should appear in all manuscript types

  • Title: The title of your manuscript should be concise, specific and relevant.
  • Author List and Affiliations: Authors’ full first and last names must be provided. The initials of any middle names can be added. The PubMed/MEDLINE standard format is used for affiliations: complete address information including city, zip code, state/province, country, and all email addresses. At least one author should be designated as corresponding author, and his or her email address and other details should be included at the end of the affiliation section.
  • Abstract: The abstract should be a total of about 200 words maximum. The abstract should be a single paragraph and should follow the style of structured abstracts, but without headings: 1) Background: Place the question addressed in a broad context and highlight the purpose of the study; 2) Methods: Describe briefly the main methods or treatments applied; 3) Results: Summarize the article’s main findings; and 4) Conclusion: Indicate the main conclusions or interpretations. The abstract should be an objective representation of the article: it must not contain results which are not presented and substantiated in the main text and should not exaggerate the main conclusions.
  • Keywords: Three to ten pertinent keywords need to be added after the abstract. We recommend that the keywords are specific to the article, yet reasonably common within the subject discipline.

 

Research Manuscript Sections

  • Introduction: The introduction should briefly place the study in a broad context and highlight why it is important. It should define the purpose of the work and its significance. The current state of the research field should be reviewed carefully and key publications should be cited. Please highlight controversial and diverging hypotheses when necessary. Finally, briefly mention the main aim of the work and highlight the main conclusions. As far as possible, please keep the introduction comprehensible to scientists outside your particular field of research.
  • Experimental Section: This section should be divided by subheadings. Materials and Methods should be described with sufficient details to allow others to replicate and build on published results. Please note that publication of your manuscript implies that you must make all materials, data, and protocols associated with the publication available to readers. Give the name and version of any software used. Please disclose at the submission stage any restrictions on the availability of materials or information. New methods and protocols should be described in detail while well-established methods can be briefly described and appropriately cited.
    • Research manuscripts reporting large datasets that are deposited in a publicly available database should specify where the data have been deposited and provide the relevant accession numbers. If the accession numbers have not yet been obtained at the time of submission, please state that they will be provided during review. They must be provided prior to publication.
  • Results and Discussion : This section may be divided by subheadings. It should provide a concise and precise description of the experimental results, their interpretation as well as the experimental conclusions that can be drawn. Authors should discuss the results and how they can be interpreted in perspective of previous studies and of the working hypotheses. The findings and their implications should be discussed in the broadest context possible. Future research directions may also be highlighted.
  • Conclusions: This section is not mandatory, but can be added to the manuscript if the discussion is unusually long or complex.
  • Supplementary Materials: This section should be included when supplementary information is published online alongside the manuscript. Please indicate the name and title of each supplementary file as follows Figure S1: title, Table S1: title, etc.

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Back Matter

      • Acknowledgments: All sources of funding of the study should be disclosed. Please clearly indicate grants that you have received in support of your research work. Clearly state if you received funds for covering the costs to publish in open access. Note that some funders will not refund article processing charges (APC) if the funder and grant number are not clearly identified in the paper. Funding information can be entered separately into the submission system by the authors during submission of their manuscript. Such funding information, if available, will be deposited to FundRef if the manuscript is finally published. Authors must have obtained specific permission from individuals and institutions to mention their names in the Acknowledgements.
      • Author Contributions: For research articles with several authors, a short paragraph specifying their individual contributions must be provided. The following statements should be used “X and Y conceived and designed the experiments; X performed the experiments; Y analyzed the data; W contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools; Y wrote the paper.” Authorship must be limited to those who have contributed substantially to the work reported. 
      • Conflicts of Interest: Authors must identify and declare any personal circumstances or interest that may be perceived as inappropriately influencing the representation or interpretation of reported research results. If there is no conflict of interest, please state “The authors declare no conflict of interest.” Any role of the funding sponsors in the design of the study; in the collection, analyses or interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript, or in the decision to publish the results must be declared in this section. If there is no role, please state “The funding sponsors had no role in the design of the study; in the collection, analyses, or interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript, and in the decision to publish the results”.
      • References: References must be numbered in order of appearance in the text (including tables and legends) and listed individually at the end of the manuscript. We recommend preparing the references with a bibliography software package, such as EndNote, ReferenceManager or Zotero to avoid typing mistakes and duplicated references.

 

Preparing Figures, Schemes and Tables

  • All figure files should be separately uploaded during submission.
  • Figures and schemes must be provided at a sufficiently high resolution (minimum 1000 pixels width/height, or a resolution of 300 dpi or higher). All Figure file formats are accepted. However, TIFF, JPEG, EPS and PDF files are preferred.
  • This Journal can publish multimedia files in articles or as supplementary materials. Please get in touch with the Editorial office for further information.
  • All Figures, Schemes and Tables should also be inserted into the main text close to their first citation and must be numbered following their number of appearance (Figure 1, Scheme I, Figure 2, Scheme II, Table 1, etc.).
  • All Figures, Schemes and Tables should have a short explanatory title and a caption.
  • All table columns should have an explanatory heading. To facilitate the copy-editing of larger tables, smaller fonts may be used, but in no less than 8 pt. in size. Authors should use the Table option of Microsoft Word to create tables.
  • For multi-panel figures, the file must contain all data in one file. For tips on creating multi-panel figures, please read the helpful advice provided by L2 Molecule.
  • Authors are encouraged to prepare figures and schemes in color (RGB at 8-bit per channel). Full color graphics will be published free of charge.

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English Corrections

This journal is published in English. To facilitate proper peer-reviewing of your manuscript, it is essential that it is submitted in grammatically correct English. If you are not a native English speaker, we strongly recommend that you have your manuscript professionally edited before submission or read by a native English-speaking colleague. Professional editing will mean that reviewers and future readers are better able to read and assess the content of your manuscript. For additional information see the English Editing Services for Authors.

 

Publication Ethics Statement

This Journal is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). We fully adhere to its Code of Conduct and to its Best Practice Guidelines.

The editors of this journal take the responsibility to enforce a rigorous peer-review process together with strict ethical policies and standards to ensure to add high quality scientific works to the field of scholarly publication. Unfortunately, cases of plagiarism, data falsification, image manipulation, inappropriate authorship credit, and the like, do arise. The editors take such publishing ethics issues very seriously and are trained to proceed in such cases with a zero tolerance policy.

Authors wishing to publish their papers are asked to abide to the following rules:

    • Any facts that might be perceived as a possible conflict of interest of the author(s) must be disclosed in the paper prior to submission.
    • Authors should accurately present their research findings and include an objective discussion of the significance of their findings.
    • Data and methods used in the research need to be presented in sufficient detail in the paper, so that other researchers can replicate the work.
    • Raw data should preferably be publicly deposited by the authors before submission of their manuscript. Authors need to at least have the raw data readily available for presentation to the referees and the editors of the journal, if requested. Authors need to ensure appropriate measures are taken so that raw data is retained in full for a reasonable time after publication.
    • Simultaneous submission of manuscripts to more than one journal is not tolerated.
    • Republishing content that is not novel is not tolerated (for example, an English translation of a paper that is already published in another language will not be accepted).
    • If errors and inaccuracies are found by the authors after publication of their paper, they need to be promptly communicated to the editors of this journal so that appropriate actions can be taken.
    • Your manuscript should not contain any information that has already been published. If you include already published figures or images, please obtain the necessary permission from the copyright holder to publish under the CC-BY license.
    • Plagiarism, data fabrication and image manipulation are not tolerated.
      • Plagiarism is not acceptable in submissions.Plagiarism includes copying text, ideas, images, or data from another source, even from your own publications, without giving any credit to the original source.Reuse of text that is copied from another source must be between quotes and the original source must be cited. If a study’s design or the manuscript’s structure or language has been inspired by previous works, these works must be explicitly cited. If plagiarism is detected during the peer review process, the manuscript may be rejected. If plagiarism is detected after publication, we may publish a correction or retract the paper.
      • Image files must not be manipulated or adjusted in any way that could lead to misinterpretation of the information provided by the original image. Irregular manipulation includes: 1) introduction, enhancement, moving, or removing features from the original image; 2) grouping of images that should obviously be presented separately (e.g., from different parts of the same gel, or from different gels); or 3) modifying the contrast, brightness or color balance to obscure, eliminate or enhance some information.If irregular image manipulation is identified and confirmed during the peer review process, we may reject the manuscript. If irregular image manipulation is identified and confirmed after publication, we may correct or retract the paper.

Our in-house editors will investigate any allegations of publication misconduct and may contact the authors’ institutions or funders if necessary. If evidence of misconduct is found, appropriate action will be taken to correct or retract the publication. Authors are expected to comply with the best ethical publication practices when publishing with ISCI.

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Supplementary Materials and Data Deposit

In order to maintain the integrity, transparency and reproducibility of research records, and to retain important chemical and structural information, authors are strongly encouraged to make their experimental and research data openly available either by depositing into data repositories or by publishing the data and files as supplementary information in this journal. Additional data and files can be uploaded as “Supplementary Files” during the manuscript submission process. The supplementary files will also be available to the referees as part of the peer-review process, although referees are not specifically asked to review these files. Accepted file formats include (but are not limited to):

  • spectral data (NMR, IR, Raman, ESR, etc.) in JCAMP (JDX) format
  • 3D coordinate structures (in PDB, MOL, XYZ or other common format)
  • crystallographic information (in CIF format)
  • data tables and spreadsheets (text files, MS Excel, OpenOffice, CSV, XML, etc.)
  • text documents (text files, PDF, MS Word, OpenOffice, etc.; text documents will usually be converted to PDF files for publication)
  • images (JPEG, PNG, GIF, TIFF, BMP, etc.)
  • videos (AVI, MPG, QuickTime, etc.)
  • executables (EXE, Java, etc.)
  • software source code

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