The scope of MHR includes primary research reports on cellular, molecular, biochemical or genetic aspects of reproductive science with medical relevance. Equally welcome are experimental medicine studies that inform basic reproductive science. Animal and human scientific models pertain, so long as they are relevant. Short critical reviews on new developments and letters-to-the-editor on points of scientific interest are encouraged. Reviews (recommended word limit 5000) incorporating hypotheses and novel unpublished data are welcomed for the ‘New Research Horizons’ series. Coverage includes male and female gonadal and reproductive tract biology, reproductive immunology, endocrinology and cell signalling, gene regulation and expression, gene mutations, gametogenesis, fertilisation, embryo development and implantation. Also in scope are fundamental aspects of feto-maternal communication during gestation and parturition. Advances that increase understanding or that have diagnostic or therapeutic potential qualify. Novelty and scientific rigour are sole criteria for acceptability.

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The Editor-in-Chief also takes the final decision on papers of 'borderline' importance. The decision and reports are usually returned to the authors within 3-4 weeks of submission. If the authors have solid reasons for dissatisfaction with the review process, the Editor-in-Chief is willing to consider a well-supported appeal. Articles submitted by the Editor-in-Chief or by Associate Editors are considered completely independently of these people.
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Failure to comply with these guidelines will be considered a double-publishing offence and treated appropriately. Plagiarism of text from a previously published manuscript by another author is also a serious offence, unless the material quoted is similarly indicated. Fraudulent data or data stolen from other authors is also unethical and will be treated accordingly. Any potential offence is considered initially by the Editor-in-Chief (in consultation with other editors and members of the Editorial Office) and later by the ESHRE Publication Committee. ESHRE reserves the right to reject papers on this basis alone, to bar authors from advisory positions on the journals or from membership of ESHRE, and to publish details of any transgression. In addition, other sanctions as recommended by COPE will be considered (such as informing the author's institutional head, publishing a notice of retraction, etc.).
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The editors draw the authors' attention to the Declaration of Helsinki for Medical Research involving Human Subjects (http://www.wma.net/e/policy/pdf/17c.pdf). In addition, when reporting experiments on animals, authors should indicate whether the institutional and national guidelines for the care and use of laboratory animals were followed. The Editors reserve the right to seek further clarification regarding the conditions under which the study was performed and to refuse publication where ethical approval is lacking.
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Inadequate or incorrect statistical analyses frequently cause rejection or delays in the review of manuscripts. If necessary, authors should seek advice from a professional statistician before the manuscript is submitted.
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Manuscripts should be submitted online at http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/molehr. Full instructions on submitting your manuscript online can be found here, or at the online submission site.
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The following must be completed and can all be found on the authors signature form:

Signatures from each author agreeing to their inclusion in the list of authors in order of appearance on the manuscript, along with a brief description of each author's role in the study.

MHR adheres strictly to the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) guidelines regarding ‘Authorship and Contributorship’ (see http://www.icmje.org/index.html). All authors must indicate their individual contribution to the paper. Justification of authorship includes 1) substantial contributions to conception and design, or acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data, 2) drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content, and 3) final approval of the version to be published. All authors must meet contributions (1), (2) and (3). Authors’ roles will appear on the paper as part of the title page.

1) financial competing interests, such as stock ownership, paid employment, board membership, patent application (pending and actual), research grants (from whatever source), travel grants and honoraria for speaking or participation at meetings and gifts;

2) personal competing interests, such as membership of lobbying organizations and relationships with editors of Molecular Human Reproduction;
3) professional competing interests, such as acting as an expert witness, membership of Government advisory board and organizations and funding bodies.
Competing interest statements should be included in an appropriate position in the manuscript.
The above statements are in line with the recommendations of the World Association of Medical Editors (WAME) with regard to funding of research (http://www.wame.org/wamestmt.htm) and competing interests (http://www.wame.org/resources/publication ethics policies for medical journals).

* MHR no longer requires authors to cover the costs of printing 'essential' colour figures. Included are any figures that can not easily be interpreted in black and white, for example photomicrographs and FACS scans. Non essential figures may be reproduced in colour, but at a cost to the author of £350/$600 per page. The Editor in Chief / Editorial Office reserve the right to decide upon whether or not a figure needs to be reproduced in colour.

Note that it is the responsibility of the corresponding author to obtain permission to publish previously published material and submit with their manuscript the permission from the copyright holder.

It is a condition of publication that authors assign a 'licence to publish' to ESHRE. Upon acceptance a 'licence to publish' form must be completed. Authors may use their own material in future publications provided the Journal is acknowledged as the original place of publication and permission agreed.

Page charges are NOT levied.
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For information about this journal's policy, please visit our Author Self-Archiving policy page.

OPEN ACCESS OPTION FOR AUTHORS

MHR authors have the option, at an additional charge, to make their paper freely available online immediately upon publication, under the oxford open initiative. After your manuscript is accepted, as part of the mandatory licence form required of all corresponding authors, you will be asked to indicate whether or not you wish to pay to have your paper made freely available immediately. If you do not select the Open Access option, your paper will be published with standard subscription-based access and you will not be charged.

For those selecting the Open Access option, the charges for MHR vary depending on the institution at which the Corresponding author is based:

Optional Oxford Open charges:

For a Corresponding author based at an institution with an online subscription to MHR:
Regular charge - £900 / $1800 / €1350
List B developing country charge** - £450 / $900 / €675
List A developing country charge** - £0 / $0 / €0

For a Corresponding author based at an institution that does not subscribe to the online journal:
Regular charge - £1500 / $3000 / €2250
List B developing country charge** - £750 / $1500 / €1125
List A developing country charge** - £0 /$0 / €0

*Visit http://www.oxfordjournals.org/jnls/devel/ for list of qualifying countries.

The above Open Access charges are in addition to any page charges and colour charges that might apply.

Orders from UK will be subject to a 17.5% VAT charge. For orders from the rest of the EU, we will assume that the service is provided for business purposes, please provide a VAT number for yourself or your institution and ensure you account for your own local VAT correctly.

If you choose the Open Access option you will also be asked to complete an Open Access charge formonline. You will be automatically directed to the appropriate version of the form depending on whether you are based at an institution with an online subscription to MHR. Therefore please make sure that you are using an institutional computer when accessing the form. To check whether you are based at a subscribing institution please use the Subscriber Test link for MHR.

RETURN OF REVISED MANUSCRIPT

Revised manuscripts should be submitted online at http://molehr.manuscriptcentral.com. Detailed instructions are provided in the letter to the corresponding author when the manuscript is provisionally accepted. A reply to the reviewers comments, item by item, must be included together with a copy of the manuscript in which changes have been highlighted. Figures for revised manuscripts should preferably be submitted as TIF files. If the figures submitted online are not of high enough quality for publication, please send a disk containing high quality figures to Editorial Office, ESHRE Journals, 5 Mill Yard, Childerley, Cambs. CB23 8BA, UK.
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• The sentence should begin: ‘This work was supported by …’
• The full official funding agency name should be given, i.e. ‘National Institutes of Health’, not ‘NIH’ (full RIN-approved list of UK funding agencies) Grant numbers should be given in brackets as follows: ‘[grant number xxxx]’
• Multiple grant numbers should be separated by a comma as follows: ‘[grant numbers xxxx, yyyy]’
• Agencies should be separated by a semi-colon (plus ‘and’ before the last funding agency)
• Where individuals need to be specified for certain sources of funding the following text should be added after the relevant agency or grant number 'to [author initials]'.

An example is given here: ‘This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health [AA123456 to C.S., BB765432 to M.H.]; and the Alcohol & Education Research Council [hfygr667789].

REFERENCE CITATIONS WITHIN THE TEXT

Authors are responsible for the accuracy of the references. Each reference should be cited by author and date. If there are two authors please list both, if more than two please use first author then et al. All published papers appear on the Internet. Please note that the hypertext links used to link the text with the online reference list will only work if author and year of publication are contained together within a single set of brackets, e.g. 'it was stated (Smith et al., 2001) that the study'. Authors are requested to follow this style when preparing text references, as reformatting text to this style can cause inadvertent changes to meaning.

Permission to cite personal communications (J.Smith, personal communication) should be obtained by the corresponding author. Unpublished data should be cited as (unpublished data) and not included in the reference list. Either should be used only when essential.

References to papers accepted for publication, but not yet published, should be cited as such in the reference list e.g. Bloggs, A. (2002) In-vitro fertilization. Hum. Reprod., in press.

Reference list: please use the following style. Note that correct punctuation and journal abbreviations must be used in order to run the search programs used to edit the manuscript. Incorrectly typed references take a lot of time to correct, for which we reserve the right to charge. Up to 10 authors should be included, after which et al. should be used. Refer to the following examples. Abbreviate scientific journals according to established publications.

Dalrymple A, Mahn K, Poston L, Songu-Mize E and Tribe RM (2007) Mechanical stretch regulates TRPC expression and calcium entry in human myometrial smooth muscle cells. Mol Hum Reprod 13, 171-180.
Gekas J, Thepot F, Turleau C, Siffroi JP, Dadoune JP, Briault S, Rio M, Bourouillou G, Carré-Pigeon F, Wasels R et al. (2001) Chromosomal factors of infertility in candidate couples for ICSI: an equal risk of constitutional aberrations in women and men. Hum Reprod 16,82-90.
Elliott WH and Elliott DC (2001) Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. 2nd edn, Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK.
Warren MA, Li TC and Klentzeris D (1994) Cell biology of the endometrium: histology, cell types and menstrual changes. In Chard T and Grudzinskas JG (eds) The Uterus. Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK, pp. 94-125.

MICROARRAY DATA

Microarray data should comply with MIAME standards (for more information see http://www.mged.org/Workgroups/MIAME/miame_checklist.html). Authors are required to submit primary microarray data to one of the public repositories Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/geo/) ArrayExpress (http://www.ebi.ac.uk/arrayexpress) or Center for Information Biology gene Expression database (CIBEX) (http://cibex.nig.ac.jp ) and to provide a valid accession number on submission of the manuscript to MHR.

FIGURE LEGENDS

Should be included on a separate page. Each legend must be self-contained, with all symbols and abbreviations used in the figure defined.

In the text, number references to figures sequentially as Figure 1, 2 etc. and indicate positioning in the margin.

TABLES

Each table should be submitted on a separate page and numbered consecutively with Roman numerals. Please avoid complex constructions. Each item of data should be separated by a single tab bar, avoiding the use of columnar formatting or customized packages. Each table should be self-explanatory and include a brief descriptive title. Footnotes to the table indicated by superscript lowercase letters are acceptable but should not include extensive experimental detail. References to the tables in the text should be indicated in the margins and referenced sequentially as Table I, II etc.
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FIGURES

Figures should be prepared in the desired final size and labelled clearly in appropriately sized text. Please note that the Production Editor may alter the size of figures to balance with the text. The maximum page width is 178 mm. Scale bars must be included where appropriate.

In preparing graphs authors should avoid background tints, 3D effects and maintain a consistent label size and aspect ratio (the x/y axis ratio) throughout a paper. Figure and axes titles should be clear and NOT in bold text.

Failure to supply illustrations of acceptable quality will delay publication. The Editors reserve the right to charge for extensive changes.

COLOUR FIGURES

As of January 2005, we will no longer require authors to cover the costs of printing 'essential' colour figures. Included are any figures that can not easily be interpreted in black and white, for example photomicrographs and FACS scans. Non-essential figures may be reproduced in colour, but at a cost to the author of £350/$600 per page. The Editor-in-Chief / Editorial Office reserve the right to decide upon whether or not a figure needs to be reproduced in colour.
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Authors are sent page proofs by the Production Editor for checking ~6-8 weeks after acceptance of the article. Proofs are sent by e-mail as PDF files and should be checked and returned within 48 hours of receipt. Extensive changes of an essential nature may be made only by insertion of a Note Added in Proof. A charge may be made to authors who insist on amendment to the text at the proof stage. It is the author's responsibility to check that all the text and data as contained in the page proofs are suitable for publication.
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On publication of an article, the corresponding author will receive the unique URL that gives free electronic access to both PDF and HTML versions of the article. Offprints may be ordered using this form. Late orders submitted after the journal is printed are subject to increased prices.
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