SCOPE AND POLICY OF MUTAGENESIS

Mutagenesis is an international multi-disciplinary journal designed to bring together research aimed at the identification, characterization and elucidation of the mechanisms of action of physical, chemical and biological agents capable of producing genetic change in living organisms and the study of the consequences of such changes.

A variety of different types of manuscripts are published in Mutagenesis:

Original articles, reporting the results of fundamental and molecular studies upon the mechanisms of induction of point, chromosomal and genomic mutations and their roles in inherited and somatic disorders.

Papers on guidelines for mutagenicity testing of environmental agents, which describe and discuss the techniques and quality control standards necessary for adequate testing of environmental agents.

The results and conclusions of mutagenicity testing programmes. Authors wishing to publish the results of extensive testing programmes are invited to submit their complete laboratory data for inclusion in the Database Section of Mutagenesis. The conclusions of such studies are published in summary form in the Journal and copies of laboratory data for specific agents may be obtained directly from the Publisher, quoting Journal reference, test system and test agent. Authors wishing to publish their data in this section should consult the paper by Brooks,T.M., Meyer,A.L. and Hutson,D.H. (1988) The genetic toxicology of some hydrocarbon and oxygenated solvents. Mutagenesis, 3, 227-232, for an example of the appropriate format.

Cell lines, strains, DNA probes etc. The submission to and acceptance of a manuscript for publication in Mutagenesis implies that the authors will provide samples of such materials as cell lines, strains, mutants and DNA probes described in their publication to other investigators for research purposes.

Animal husbandry. Papers that report experiments involving live animals must include a statement that the animals were treated and housed in accordance with approved guidelines (giving the source) or supervised by an animal care committee (giving the name) or both.

Letters to the Editors may be submitted on current topics. Such letters may cover theoretical, social and practical aspects of mutational change, but should aim for a concise presentation.

Reviews The Editors welcome the submission of reviews of topics covering all aspects of mutagenic change.

All manuscripts submitted to Mutagenesis are refereed for their pertinence, content and relevance to the scope of the journal.

SUBMISSION OF MANUSCRIPTS

Mutagenesis accepts submissions online at http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/mutage

Author Self-Archiving/Public Access policy from May 2005
For information about this journal's policy, please visit our Author Self-Archiving policy page http://www.oxfordjournals.org/access_purchase/self-archiving_policya.html.

For instructions on how to submit your manuscript online please click here.

For any queries please contact the editorial office:
Prof. D H Phillips, Institute of Cancer Research, Brookes Lawley Building, Cotswold Road, Sutton, Surrey, SM2 5NG, UK.
Click here to email the Editorial Office.

Submission of a paper implies that it reports unpublished work and that it is not under consideration for publication elsewhere. If previously published tables, illustrations or more than 200 words of text are to be included, then the copyright holder's written permission must be obtained. Copies of any such permission letters should be enclosed with the paper.

Mutagenesis 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 [http://www.oxfordjournals.org/mutage/for_authors/licence.pdf ] 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 Mutagenesis 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 Mutagenesis:
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.

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.

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

If you choose the Open Access option you will also be asked to complete an Open Access charge form online. 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 Mutagenesis. 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 Mutagenesis.

CONFLICT OF INTEREST DECLARATION

At the point of submission, Mutagenesis policy requires that each author reveal any financial interests or connections, direct or indirect, or other situations that might raise the question of bias in the work reported or the conclusions, implications, or opinions stated - including pertinent commercial or other sources of funding for the individual author(s) or for the associated department(s) or organization(s), personal relationships, or direct academic competition. When considering whether you should declare a conflicting interest or connection please consider the conflict of interest test: Is there any arrangement that would embarrass you or any of your co-authors if it was to emerge after publication and you had not declared it?

As an integral part of the online submission process, Corresponding authors are required to confirm whether they or their co-authors have any conflicts of interest to declare, and to provide details of these. If the Corresponding author is unable to confirm this information on behalf of all co-authors, the authors in question will then be required to submit a completed Conflict of Interest form to the Production Office. It is the Corresponding author’s responsibility to ensure that all authors adhere to this policy.

If the manuscript is published, Conflict of Interest information will be communicated in a statement in the published paper.

PROOFS

Authors are sent page proofs electronically as a PDF file, or by post if required. To avoid delays in publication, proofs should be checked immediately for typographical errors and returned to the publishers by express (special delivery) post. Alternatively, to save time, corrections may be given to Oxford University Press by fax: +44 (0)1865 353773. Essential changes of an extensive nature may be made only by insertion of a Note added in proof. A charge is made to authors who insist on amendment within the text at the page-proof stage.

LICENCE TO PUBLISH

It is a condition of publication in the Journal that authors grant an exclusive licence to UK Environmental Mutagen Society. This ensures that requests from third parties to reproduce articles are handled efficiently and consistently and will also allow the article to be as widely disseminated as possible. Authors may use their own material in other publications provided that the Journal is ackowledged as the original place of publication, and Oxford University Press is notified in writing and in advance.

PREPARATION OF MANUSCRIPTS

Manuscripts should be in their final form when they are submitted so that proofs require only correction of typographical errors.

Sections of the manuscript

Regular full-length papers should be subdivided into the following sequence of sections: Title page, Abstract, Introduction, Materials and methods, Results, Discussion, Acknowledgements, References, Legends to figures, Tables. The Title page must include the telephone and fax numbers and E-mail address of the corresponding author. In the Journal, the Materials and methods, Acknowledgements and References sections are printed in smaller type to accommodate more text. The Materials and methods section must give precise details of strains, concentrations and solvents. Where an activation system has been included it is necessary to know (i) the source, (ii) the inducer and (iii) the concentration treatment time, and incubation time with conditions should be given. Positive and negative controls together with their concentrations must be included. The number of replicates and the number of repeat experiments should be stated. Additional factors for in vivo tests should include age, weight, sex and total number of animals used in each experiment. A detailed dose regime is required. Papers for the Mutagenicity testing section should conform to the above requirements. In addition, results should be presented in tabular form.

General format

Prepare your manuscript text using a Word processing package (save in .doc or .rtf format). Use double spacing (space between lines of type not less than 6 mm) throughout the manuscript and leave margins of 25 mm (1 inch) at the top, bottom and sides of each page. Number each page. Please avoid footnotes; use instead, and as sparingly as possible, parenthesis within brackets. Enter text in the style and order of the journal. Type references in the correct order and style of the journal. Type unjustified, without hyphenation, except for compound words. Type headings in the style of the journal. Use the TAB key once for paragraph indents. Where possible use Times for the text font and Symbol for the Greek and special characters. Use the word processing formatting features to indicate Bold, Italic, Greek, Maths, ^Superscript and _Subscript characters. Clearly identify unusual symbols and Greek letters. Differentiate between the letter O and zero, and the letters I and l and the number 1. Mark the approximate position of each figure and table.

Check the final copy of your paper carefully, as any spelling mistakes and errors may be translated into the typeset version.

Abstract

The second page of every manuscript must contain only the Abstract, which should be a single paragraph not exceeding 300 words. Please abide strictly by this limitation of length. Published papers will only have the first 300 words of their abstracts incorporated into Medline, text in excess of this limit will be lost. The Abstract should be comprehensible to readers before they have read the paper, and abbreviations and reference citations should be avoided.

Funding
Details of all funding sources for the work in question should be given in a separate section entitled 'Funding'. This should appear before the 'Acknowledgements' section.

The following rules should be followed:

• 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].

Acknowledgements

These should be included at the end of the text and not in footnotes. Personal acknowledgements should precede those of institutions or agencies.

References

Authors are responsible for the accuracy of the references. Published articles and those in press (state the journal which has accepted them) may be included. In the text, references should be cited, in order of appearance, as a number in brackets, e.g. (1). These should be on the line, do not use superscript. At the end of the manuscript the citations should be listed numerically. References should include, in the following order: all authors' names (with surnames and initials inverted), year, paper title in full, journal title, volume number and inclusive page numbers. If a book, the name and address of the publisher should be given. The name of the journal should be abbreviated according to the World List of Scientific Periodicals and underlined to indicate italics.

References should therefore be listed as follows:

1. Hartley-Asp,B. and Hyldig-Nielsen,F. (1984) Comparative genotoxicity of nitrogen mustard and nor-nitrogen mustard. Carcinogenesis, 5, 1637-1640.

2. Kirk,J.T.O. and Tilney-Bassett,R.A.E. (1978) The Plastids. Their Chemistry, Structure, Growth and Inheritance, 2nd revised edn. Elsevier/North Holland, New York.

3. Warren,W. (1984) The analysis of alkylated DNA by high pressure liquid chromatography. In Venitt,S. and Parry,J.M. (eds), Mutagenicity Testing - a Practical Approach. IRL Press, Oxford, pp. 25-44.

Personal communication (J.Smith, personal communication) should be authorized by those involved, in writing, and unpublished data should be cited as (unpublished data). Both should be used as sparingly as possible and only when the unpublished data referred to is peripheral rather than central to the discussion. References to manuscripts in preparation or submitted, but not yet accepted, should be cited in the text as (B.Smith and N.Jones, in preparation) and should NOT be included in the list of references.

Tables

Tables should be typed on separate sheets, and numbered consecutively with Roman numerals. Tables should be self-explanatory and include a brief descriptive title. Footnotes to tables indicated by lower case letters are acceptable, but they should not include extensive experimental detail. An arrow in the text margin should be used to indicate where a table should be inserted in the text.

Illustrations

All illustrations (line drawings and photographs) should be referred to in the text as Figure 1 etc., which should be abbreviated to 'Fig. 1.' only in the figure legend. Figures must be prepared at publication quality resolution, using applications capable of generating high-resolution TIFF files of at least 300 pixels per inch at the final printed size for colour figures and photographs, and 1200 pixels per inch for black and white line drawings. Although some other formats can be translated into TIFF format by the publisher, the conversion may alter the tones, resolution and contrast of the image. Digital colour art should be submitted in CMYK rather than RGB format, as the printing process requires colours to be separated into CMYK and this conversion can alter the intensity and brightness of colours. Therefore authors should be satisfied with the colours in CMYK (both on screen and when printed) before submission. Please also keep in mind that colours can appear differently on different screens and printers. Failure to follow these guides could result in complications and delays.

Photographs. These must be submitted in the desired final size so that reduction can be avoided. The type area of a page is 248 x 185 mm (width) and photographs, including their legends, must not exceed this area. A single column is 88 mm wide. A double column is 185 mm wide. Ideally, photographs should fit either a single column or a double column. Photographs should be of sufficiently high quality with respect to detail, contrast and fineness of grain to withstand the inevitable loss of contrast and detail inherent in the printing process. Please indicate the magnification by a rule on the photographs.

Colour plates. There is a special charge for the inclusion of colour plates. The cost is £350 per plate. (For cost purposes, the definition of a single figure is artwork that can be processed as a unit and printed on a single page without intervening type. Authors should note the potential cost savings inherent in this definition; for example, two consecutive half-page colour figures mounted as a composite and printed on one page, with both legends below or on the facing page, would be treated as one figure.) 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.

Line drawings. Please provide these as clear, sharp prints, suitable for reproduction as submitted. No additional artwork, redrawing or typesetting is done. Therefore, all labelling should be on the original drawing. Ensure that the size of lettering is in proportion with the overall dimensions of the drawing. Ideally, line drawings should be submitted in the desired final size to avoid reduction (maximum dimensions 248 x 185 mm including legends) and should fit either a single (88 mm) or a double column width (185 mm). If submitting line drawings which require reduction, please check that the lettering will be clearly legible after the drawing has been reduced to the size at which it will be printed. After reduction, letters should not be smaller than 1.5 mm in height.

Figure legends. These should be on a separate, numbered manuscript sheet. Define all symbols and abbreviations used in the figure. Common abbreviations and others in the preceding text should not be redefined in the legend.

Conventions

In general, the journal follows the conventions of the CBE Style Manual (Council of Biology Editors, Bethesda, MD, 1983, 5th edn).

Follow Chemical Abstracts and its indexes for chemical names. For guidance in the use of biochemical terminology follow the recommendations issued by the IUPAC-IUB Commission on Biochemical Nomenclature, as given in Biochemical Nomenclature and Related Documents, published by the Biochemical Society, UK. For enzymes, use the recommended name assigned by the IUPAC-IUB Commission on Biochemical Nomenclature, 1978, as given in Enzyme Nomenclature, published by Academic Press, New York, 1980. Where possible, use the recommended SI (Systeme International) units.

Genotypes should be italicized; phenotypes should not be italicized. For bacterial genetics nomenclature follow Demerec et al. (1966) Genetics, 54, 61-76.

Abbreviations

Try to restrict the use of abbreviations to SI symbols and those recommended by the IUPAC. Abbreviations should be defined in brackets after their first mention in the text. Standard units of measurements and chemical symbols of elements may be used without definition in the body of the paper.

LANGUAGE EDITING

Particularly if English is not your first language, before submitting your manuscript you may wish to have it edited for language. This is not a mandatory step, but may help to ensure that the academic content of your paper is fully understood by journal editors and reviewers. Language editing does not guarantee that your manuscript will be accepted for publication. If you would like information about one such service please click here. There are other specialist language editing companies that offer similar services and you can also use any of these. Authors are liable for all costs associated with such services.

REPRINTS

The publishers supply the URL upon electronic publication. Offprint order forms are available to purchase printed offprints however, all must be completed and returned with the proofs to Oxford University Press. Late orders submitted after the journal is printed are subject to increased prices.

AUTHOR SELF-ARCHIVING/PUBLIC ACCESS POLICY

For information about this journal's policy, please visit our Author Self-Archiving policy page.