INTRODUCTION

Scope of the Journal

Annals of Botany is published for the Annals of Botany Company by Oxford University Press. Experimental, theoretical and applied papers on all aspects of plant science are welcome. The submitted manuscript or its essential content must not have been published previously or be under consideration for publication elsewhere. To merit publication in Annals of Botany, contributions should be substantial, written in clear English and combine originality of content with potential general interest. Submission of manuscripts that report small incremental advances or are of geographically local interest only is discouraged unless the implications of the findings are wide-reaching. Agronomic papers are expected to contain a substantial amount of basic plant biology. In general, a paper is unlikely to be accepted unless the referees and editors involved in its evaluation are enthusiastic about the science. The Covering Letter is an essential part of all submissions. It should include an ~60 word summary of the scientific strengths of the paper that the author(s) believe qualify it for consideration by Annals of Botany.

Authors whose first language is not English are well advised to have the manuscript, including Abstract, and the Covering Letter, checked by a native English speaker prior to submission. Many professional language-editing services are available on the internet. One such service is provided by RESCRIPT Co of New Zealand that includes help with manuscript revisions. It is contactable on http://www.rescript.co.nz. The Annals of Botany takes no responsibility for the quality of the service offered by this company and use of such a service does not guarantee that any manuscript will be accepted for publication.

Charges

Authors pay no fees or page charges unless electing for our Open Access scheme (see below for details). The corresponding author receives a free copy of the issue of the Journal in which their paper appears and a unique URL that gives access to a PDF (Portable Document Format) file of their article. In addition, 25 offprints of the article will be supplied without charge. Additional offprints can be ordered using the form sent out with the proofs. Orders from the UK will be subject to a 17.5% VAT charge. For orders from elsewhere in the EU you or your institution should account for VAT by way of a reverse charge.  Please provide us with your or your institution’s VAT number. Colour photographs and graphics are also printed without charge where their use enhances scientific content or clarity.

Open Access

Starting in January 2006, Annals of Botany authors have the option to make their accepted paper freely available online immediately upon publication, under the ‘Oxford Open’ initiative. Authors can choose this open access option when completing the customary Licence to Publish form sent to the corresponding author of all accepted papers. Here, authors are asked to indicate whether or not they wish to have their paper made freely available immediately online. There is a charge, which varies depending on circumstances (see http://www.oxfordjournals.org/oxfordopen) but it is considerably cheaper for authors whose university or institution subscribes to the Journal, and for authors in developing countries. Orders from the UK will be subject to a 17.5% VAT charge. For orders from elsewhere in the EU you or your institution should account for VAT by way of a reverse charge.  Please provide us with your or your institution’s VAT number. 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.

Types of article

Standard research papers (‘ORIGINAL ARTICLES’) and ‘TECHNICAL ARTICLES’ should not normally exceed ten printed pages (each printed page in the journal holds approximately 1000 words or 40–50 references). A ‘REVIEW’ submitted speculatively should have fewer than 24 printed pages. ‘SHORT COMMUNICATIONS’ should not exceed six printed pages. Short opinion papers (‘VIEWPOINT’) up to 6 pages long will also be considered. ‘INVITED REVIEWS’ (up to 24 pages) and ‘BOTANICAL BRIEFINGS’ (up to 6 pages) are published by invitation only. The journal also publishes book reviews (Publishers' Books for Review).

Summary of submission processes

Submission management and evaluation of submitted manuscripts will involve the Journal's online manuscript submission system. The manuscript text should be prepared in English (see PREPARING THE ARTICLE FILE below for details) and submitted online starting from our login page. Figures, tables and other types of content should be organized into separate files for submission (see PREPARING TABLE and FIGURE FILES, SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION FILES and VIDEO FILES below for details). If you are using the online submission system for the first time please go to the login page and generate a login name and password after clicking on the “First time authors only should register here” link. If you are already registered but need to be reminded of your login name or password please go to the login page and click on “Unknown/Forgotten password?”. There is extensive guidance available throughout the submission process. To make use of this guidance please click on the “Author Instructions” link or the “Tips” link situated at the top of every screen. In addition, there are frequent context-sensitive help points throughout the site that can be opened by clicking on the following symbol ?.

If you are unable to access our web-based submission system, please contact the Editorial Office (e-mail: annals-botany@bristol.ac.uk) for alternative methods of submitting your paper. The postal address is Annals of Botany Editorial Office, School of Biological Sciences, University of Bristol, Woodland Road, Bristol BS8 1UG, UK.

Preparing a covering letter

Each submission should be accompanied by a Covering Letter formatted in MS Word (file type DOC) or in Rich Text Format (file type RTF). The letter should include contact details of the corresponding author, the title and authorship of the paper, and should state if the paper is a first submission, revision or a resubmission. It must also include an ~60 word summary of the scientific strengths of the paper that the author(s) believe qualify it for consideration by Annals of Botany. The manuscript reference number must be given if the paper is a revision or resubmission. If the paper is a revised or resubmitted manuscript, the letter should explain what changes have been made to the manuscript and where changes requested by the Handling Editor and referees have not been carried out. Any other information to which authors wish to draw the Chief Editor’s attention should also be included in this letter.

Names of plants must be written out in full (Genus, species) in the abstract and again in the main text for every organism. The authority (e.g. L., Mill., Benth.) is not required unless it is controversial. Guidance for naming plants correctly is given in The International Plant Names Index and in The Plant Book: a Portable Dictionary of the Vascular Plants (1997) by D.J. Mabberley (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521-414210-0). After first mention, the generic name may be abbreviated to its initial (e.g. A. thaliana) except where its use causes confusion.

Any cultivar or variety should be added to the full scientific name e.g. Lycopersicon esculentum 'Moneymaker' following the appropriate international code of practice. For guidance, refer to the ISHS International Code of Nomenclature for Cultivated Plants (2004) edited by C.D. Brickell, B. R. Baum, W. L. A. Hetterscheid, A. C. Leslie, J. McNeill, P. Trehane, F. Vrugtman, J. H. Wiersema (ISBN 3-906166-16-3).

Once defined in full, plants may also be referred to using vernacular or quasi-scientific names without italics or uppercase letters (e.g. arabidopsis, dahlia, chrysanthemum, rumex, soybean, tomato). This is often more convenient.

Items of Specialized Equipment mentioned in MATERIALS AND METHODS should be accompanied by details of the model, manufacturer, and city and country of origin.

Numbers up to and including ten should be written out unless they are measurements. All numbers above ten should be in numerals except at the start of sentences. Dates should be in the form of 10 Jan. 1999, and Clock Time in the form of 1600 h.

Mathematical equations must be in proper symbolic form; word equations are not acceptable. Each quantity should be defined with a unique single character or symbol together with a descriptive subscript if necessary. Each subscript should also be a single character if possible, but a short word is permissible. For example, a relationship between plant dry mass and fresh mass should appear as M_d = 0.006M_f^1.461, where M_d is plant dry mass and M_f is plant fresh mass; and not as DM = 0.006FM^1.461.

The meaning of terms used in equations should be explained when they first appear. Standard conventions for use of italics only for variables should be followed: normal (Roman) font should be used for letters that are identifiers. Thus in the above example, M is the variable quantity of mass, the subscripts d and f are identifiers for dry and fresh respectively.

Special note regarding ‘Equation Editor’ and other software for presentation of mathematics. Symbols and equations that are imported into Word documents as embedded objects from other software packages are generally incompatible with typesetting software and have to be re-keyed as part of the proof-making process. It is therefore strongly advisable to type symbols and equations directly into MS Word wherever possible. Importing from other software should ideally be confined to situations where it is essential, such as two-line equations (i.e. where numerators and denominators cannot be set clearly on a single line using ‘/’) and to symbols that are not available in Word fonts. This will minimize the risk of errors associated with rekeying by copyeditors.

Summary statistics should be accompanied by the number of replicates and a measure of variation such as standard error or least significance difference. Analysis of variance is often appropriate where several treatments are involved. Presentation of an abridged ANOVA table is permissible when its use illustrates critical features of the experiment.

Chemical, biochemical and molecular biological nomenclature should be based on rules of the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) and the International Union of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (IUBMB). Chapter 16 of Scientific Style and Format. The CBE Manual for Authors, Editors, and Publishers 6th edn., by Edward J. Huth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-47154-0) gives guidelines.

Sequence information. Before novel sequences for proteins or nucleotides can be published, authors are required to deposit their data with one of the principal databases comprising the International Nucleotide Sequence Database Collaboration: EMBL Nucleotide Sequence Database, GenBank, or the DNA Data Bank of Japan and to include an accession number in the paper. Sequence matrices should only be included if alignment information is critical to the message of the paper. Such matrices can be in colour but should not occupy more than one printed page. Larger matrices will only be printed by special agreement but may more readily be published electronically as Supplementary Information (see below).

Gene nomenclature. Species-specific rules on plant gene nomenclature are available for:

maize;
rice;
wheat and
arabidopsis.

Otherwise, Annals of Botany adopts the following conventions for abbreviations: each gene abbreviation is preceded by letters identifying the species of origin. Lower-case italics should be used for mutant genes (e.g. Rp-etr1); upper-case italics (e.g. Le-ACO1) for wild-type genes; upright lower-case for proteins of mutated genes (e.g. Le-adh1); and upright upper-case for proteins of wild-type genes (e.g. At-MYB2). It may often be helpful to readers if the names of genes or gene families are spelled out in full at first mention.

Citations in the text. These should take the form of Felle (2005) or Jacobsen and Forbes (1999) or (Williamson and Watanabe, 1987; Rodrigues, 2002a, b) and be ordered chronologically. Papers by three or more authors, even on first mention, should be abbreviated to the name of the first author followed by et al. (e.g. Zhang et al., 2005). If two different authors have the same last name, give their initials (e.g. NH Kawano, 2003) to avoid confusion. Only refer to papers as 'in press' if they have been accepted for publication in a named journal, otherwise use the terms 'unpubl. res.', giving the initials and location of the person concerned. (e.g. H Gautier, INRA, Lusignan, France, unpubl. res.) or 'pers. comm.' (e.g. WT Jones, University of Oxford, UK, ‘pers. comm.’)

The LITERATURE CITED should be arranged alphabetically based on the surname of the first or sole author. Where the same sole author or same first author has two or more papers listed, these papers should be grouped in year order. Where such an author has more than one paper in the same year, these should be ordered with single authored papers first followed by two-author papers (ordered first alphabetically based on the second author's surname, then by year) , and then any three-or-more-author papers (in year order only). Italicized letters 'a', 'b', 'c', etc., should be added to the date of papers with the same first authorship and year.

Each entry must conform to one of the following styles according to the type of publication.

Books

Öpik H, Rolfe S. 2005. The physiology of flowering plants. Physicochemical and environmental plant physiology, 4th edn. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Chapters in books

Scandalios JG. 2001. Molecular responses to oxidative stress. In: Hawkesford MJ, Buchner P, eds. Molecular analysis of plant adaptation to the environment. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 181-208.

Research papers

Popper ZA, Fry SC. 2003. Primary cell wall composition of bryophytes and charophytes. Annals of Botany 91: 1–12.

Theses

Tholen D. 2005. Growth and photosynthesis in ethylene-insensitive plants. PhD Thesis, University of Utrecht, The Netherlands.

Anonymous sources

Anonymous. Year. Title of booklet, leaflet, report, etc. City: Publisher or other source, Country.

Online references should be structured as: Author(s) name, author(s) initial(s). year. Full title of article. Full URL. Date of last successful access (e.g. 12 Jan. 2003)

Acknowledgements. In the ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS, please be brief. 'We thank . . .' (not 'The present authors would like to express their thanks to . . .').

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 full official funding agency name should be given, i.e. ‘National Institutes of Health’, not ‘NIH’; grant numbers should be given in brackets; multiple grant numbers should be separated by a comma; agencies should be separated by a semi-colon; no extra wording like 'Funding for this work was provided by ...' should be used; 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: ‘National Institutes of Health (CB5453961 to C.S., DB645473 to M.H.); Funding Agency (hfygr667789).’

Appendix.
If elaborate use is made of units, symbols and abbreviations, or a detailed explanation of one facet of the paper seems in order, further details may be included in a separate APPENDIX placed after the LITERATURE CITED.
For more detail and information on types of files required for text, graphics and tables etc., please see the next section.

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The corresponding author and all co-authors receive an acknowledgment of receipt of the manuscript and a manuscript reference number by e-mail. The corresponding author is informed when a Handling Editor has been assigned to the paper. Manuscripts considered suitable for peer review are sent to at least two outside referees. We give referees a target of two weeks for the return of their reports. Currently (2006) less than 25 % of submitted papers are accepted. Authors are asked to revise provisionally accepted articles within four weeks. To view the make-up of the Editorial Board click on View full editorial board.

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When a paper is finally accepted you will be asked to supply some additional material for our ContentSnapshot feature. Each ContentSnapshot comprises a thumbnail image relevant to the paper and a short summary of its principal findings. For this, you will be asked to prepare a suitable Snapshot Image file (in colour) for the thumbnail illustration and also a short summary title and text (up to 60 words) to associate with the image. Examples of ContentSnapshots can be found at http://aob.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/contentsnapshot/93/1.pdf.

You will also be invited to submit an eye-catching front cover picture and about 60 words of text for possible printing on the inside cover of the issue in which your article would appear. The technical requirements are similar to those for manuscript photographs. The picture should be sharp, of good contrast and be related to the content of the submitted paper; however, it need not be duplicated in the paper itself. The image should be sent as a TIFF, JPG or GIF file at 300 dpi, size approx. 10 × 10 cm. Authors of selected material will receive a copy of the cover illustration and a complimentary copy of the relevant issue of the Journal.

At the time of acceptance you will also be asked to return a Licence to Publish form to the publisher Oxford University Press (Licence to Publish). This form also offers the opportunity to choose to have the full text and PDF versions of the paper made available to non-subscribers online from the time of first publication (Open Access). There is a charge for this, which varies depending on circumstances (see http://www.oxfordjournals.org/oxfordopen) but it is considerably cheaper for authors whose university or institution subscribes to the Journal, and for authors in developing countries. If you do not select the Open Access option, your paper will be published with standard subscription-based access and no charge will be made.

Information about the New Creative Commons licence can be found here.

Once a satisfactorily revised version has been received and accepted, the title of the paper, authorship and hyperlinked e-mail address of the corresponding author will be posted on the Annals of Botany website under AOBFirstAlert. This feature is accessible by subscribers and non-subscribers from the Journal’s home page. Corresponding authors will receive PDF proofs by e-mail attachment approximately 4–6 weeks after acceptance. Corrected proofs should be returned within 24 h. Adobe Acrobat Reader will be needed to read the PDF proof and is downloadable without charge from: http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html. Authors should pay special attention to diagrams, figures and to equations since these items are usually re-keyed or redrawn by the publisher. At this stage, authors will also be invited to order offprints and extra single copies of the issue in which the article will appear.

Publication and printing process

Once corrected proofs have been received and checked, the paper is posted on the website approximately six weeks ahead of print under AOBPreview. Each article is identified by a unique DOI (Digital Object Identifier), a code that can be used in bibliographic referencing and searching. The DOI and date of electronic publication in AOBPreview are also printed in the normal fully paginated monthly issue that is published about six weeks later. The paper will appear online and in print during the week preceding the start of the month of issue. The dates of submission, first return for revision, final acceptance and date of electronic publication of each article are printed on each paper.
The corresponding author will receive a free copy of the printed issue in which their paper appears and a free URL that gives access to the article online and to a downloadable PDF. In addition, 25 free printed copies of the article will be supplied provided that the offprint order form is completed and returned to OUP. These items are normally dispatched within seven days of publication of the printed journal. The corresponding author is responsible for distributing this URL to any co-authors.

Post-publication services

After publication any author or reader is given the opportunity to comment on your paper (and any other paper) electronically using the ‘E-Letters’ feature. For more information click on this E-Letters link. Monthly alerts that supply the Journal’s current Table of Contents can be requested by clicking on Email table of contentsor by using an RSS feed . For more details on the latter click on XML RSS feed. Readers can also be alerted to related papers in Annals of Botany and a wide range of other journals using the High Wire ‘CiteTrack’ alerting system. To access this click on CiteTrack.

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Authors or their employers retain copyright on articles published in Annals of Botany. However, it is a condition of publication in the Journal that authors or their employers grant an exclusive licence to the Annals of Botany Company by completing and signing the Licence to Publish. This ensures that requests from third parties to reproduce articles are handled efficiently and consistently and allows the article to be disseminated as widely as possible. The Licence permits authors to use their own material in other publications provided that the Journal is acknowledged as the original place of publication and that the Annals of Botany Company is notified in writing

Papers are published on the understanding that the work is free of plagiarism, that all authors have agreed to publication in Annals of Botany and that those contributing substantially to the work have been appropriately acknowledged or given co-authorship. The official publication date is the date on which the paper is first posted electronically on the website. This date will normally be when the paper appears in AOBPreview. If a paper is not posted in AOBPreview, the date of publication is the date of first appearance in a fully paginated print or electronic monthly issue. For more about rights and permissions click on this link Rights

Author Self-Archiving/Public Access policy

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

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