EP - Europace - The European Journal of Pacing, Arrhythmias and Cardiac Electrophysiology - is an official Journal of the European Heart Rhythm Association (EHRA), a Registered Branch of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) and the ESC Working Group on Cardiac Cellular Electrophysiology, and aims to provide an international avenue of communication for top quality original scientific work and reviews in the fields of arrhythmias and pacing. Clinical investigations, basic science translational research, technical issues, short case reports, comprehensive reviews, editorial comments, educational articles, images in pacing and electrophysiology, book reviews and correspondence are included.

Papers that do not adhere to the following instructions will be returned for revision before assessment.

All authors must declare any conflicts of interest. When submitting your manuscript via Editorial Manager, you will be asked whether you have any conflicts of interest. As submitting author, it is your responsibility to ascertain any conflicts of interest from your co-authors and to highlight these accordingly. If you are unable to declare any conflicts of interest on behalf of your co-authors, all contributing authors will need to complete and return Conflict of Interest forms. These must be sent to the editorial office by fax to: +44 (0)1865 355906.

Any potential conflict of interest that might constitute an embarrassment to any of the authors if it were not to be declared and were to emerge after publication should be declared. Such conflicts might include, but are not limited to, author (or first degree relative) shareholding in or receipt of a grant or consultancy fee from a company whose product features in the submitted manuscript or which manufactures a competing product.

In addition, all authors must submit a statement of Conflict of Interest to be published at the end of their article. If no Conflict of Interest is declared, this will be stated in the article using the following wording:
'Conflict of interest: none declared'

Assignment of Copyright

OPEN ACCESS OPTION FOR AUTHORS
EP - Europace 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 Europace 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 Europace:
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.

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 EP - Europace. 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 EP - Europace.

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.

Offprints and Single Issues

Authors may order offprints or copies of the issue in which their article appears by returning a completed offprint order form. Details of charges are on the form. Upon online publication, the corresponding author for each article will receive, automatically and free of charge, a url giving free access to the article online. This url may be distributed among co-authors and interested colleagues.

If you need help with the electronic submission process please contact the Editorial Office. Enquiries about the review process and other journal matters should also be directed to the Editorial Office.

Online submission

Please go to the Editorial Manager website for EP - Europace, and follow the instructions given on screen. First-time users must click 'Register' on the navigation menu at the top of the screen, and enter the required information. The system will send you an automatic e-mail with your username and password. Detailed guidelines are available at the Editorial Manager site, by clicking on 'Help' or viewing the author or reviewer tutorials.

You will be asked to supply information about your manuscript and then attach your files containing the text and any figures and tables. Editorial Manager will create a PDF from your data, which is the format in which the manuscript will be made available to the editors and referees during the peer-review process.

The manuscript text, references and figure legends should be prepared in a single file. Papers should be submitted Microsoft Word where possible, although other standard word-processing formats may be acceptable. The manuscript must not be submitted in .pdf format.

Tables and figures may be included in the manuscript file, but must appear at the end of the text on separate sheets (and not embedded in the text).

If preferred, tables and illustrations may be prepared and submitted in separate files. Electronically submitted figures should be in high resolution and in one of the following formats: tiff, bitmap (.bmp), jpeg (.jpg), postscript (.ps or .eps) or as PowerPoint or Excel files. (Should the manuscript be accepted, the original photographs may be required for use in the production process.) Tables may be submitted as Word tables, or in .rtf format.

You will be required to enter the Abstract, Condensed Abstract, Representative Figure and Keywords during the submission process. These may be copied and pasted from the manuscript document, but must still appear in the manuscript itself. Please supply the names and addresses of three referees to whom your manuscript may be sent for review in the 'Enter Comments' section of your electronic submission.

When completing the 'Add Authors' section, please enter the names of the all the authors listed on the manuscript.

Fast track publication

The journal offers fast track publication for manuscripts that are of particular topical interest. Authors wishing to have fast track publication should follow the standard submission process and indicate in their covering letter why their paper is suitable for this expedited service. If the Editors decide that the paper should undergo expedited review, they will aim to give a first decision within seven days. After acceptance the Publisher will aim to publish the article online within ten days, provided that the proofs are returned within 48 hours. If the paper is not accepted for fast track publication the manuscript will go through the normal review process.

NEW! Colour Scheme for EP - Europace
Authors are asked to use the journal's colour scheme in charts and diagrams as much as possible. PowerPoint allows the specification of custom colour according to the RGB definition.

For details of the new colour scheme click here

The Publisher may re-draw any charts or graphs using the colour palette where necessary during the production process. Authors will have the opportunity to correct any inappropriate changes at the proof correction stage.

All illustrations should be referred to as figures and should be numbered in a single sequence in the order in which they are mentioned in the text.

Electronically submitted figures should be in high resolution and in one of the following formats: tiff, bitmap (.bmp), jpeg (.jpg), portable data format (.pdf) or postscript (.ps or .eps). The resolution required for publication is 300-500 dpi.

If there is difficulty in submitting figures electronically, they may be sent by post to the Editorial Office. (Consideration of the manuscript will not begin until all materials have been received).

For useful information on preparing your figures for publication, go to http://cpc.cadmus.com/da

Representative Figure

Authors should designate a single figure that best summarizes their techniques, their results or the impact of their work. This figure (generally in colour) may be used as a cover illustration for EP - Europace or appear in its table of contents. Colour illustrations which appear only on the front cover will not incur production costs.

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.

Tables

Tables are typed on separate sheets with the table number (in arabic numerals) and title above and any explanatory notes below.

Ethics

The manuscript should state that the study complies with the Declaration of Helsinki, that the research protocol is approved by the locally appointed ethics committee, and that the informed consent of the subjects (or their parents) has been obtained. Any potential conflict of interest should be declared to the Editor.

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. 'the National Cancer Institute at the National Institutes of Health’ or simply 'National Institutes of Health' not ‘NCI' (one of the 27 subinstitutions) or 'NCI at NIH' (full RIN-approved list of UK funding agencies) Grant numbers should be complete and accurate and provided in brackets as follows: ‘[grant number ABX CDXXXXXX]'
• Multiple grant numbers should be separated by a comma as follows: ‘[grant numbers ABX CDXXXXXX, EFX GHXXXXXX]’
• 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 [P50 CA098252 and CA118790 to R.B.S.R.]; and the Alcohol & Education Research Council [hfygr667789].’

Oxford Journals will deposit all NIH-funded articles in PubMed Central. See http://www.oxfordjournals.org/for_authors/repositories.html for details. Authors must ensure that manuscripts are clearly indicated as NIH-funded using the guidelines above.

Declaration by authors

A covering letter, signed by all authors stating that they have seen and approved the paper and that the work has not been, and will not be, published elsewhere, should be sent by post to the Editorial Office.

Units and abbreviations

Use SI units of measurement. Avoid abbreviations in the title and abstract and explain abbreviations when they first occur in the text.

DNA sequences and GenBank accession numbers

For each and every gene accession number cited in an article, authors should type the accession number in bold, underlined text. Letters in the accession number should always be capitalised. Example: "(GenBank accession nos. AI631510, AI631511, AI632198, and BF223228), a B-cell tumour from a chronic lymphatic leukaemia (GenBank accession no. BE675048), and a T-cell lymphoma (GenBank accession no. AA361117)".

Permissions

If illustrations are borrowed from published sources, written permission must be obtained from both publisher and author, and a credit line giving the source added to the legend. If text material totalling 250 to 300 words, or any tables, are borrowed verbatim from published sources, written permission is required from both publisher and author. With shorter quotations, it is sufficient to add a bibliographic credit. Permission letters for reproduced text or illustrations must accompany the manuscript. If you have been unable to obtain permission, please point this out.

Proofs

PDF proofs will be e-mailed to the corresponding author. Major alterations (other than corrections of typesetting errors) instigated by the author at proof stage will be charged to the author. Proofs should be returned to Oxford Journals within 2 working days of receipt. Proofs are also read by the Editor-in-Chief, who reserves the right of final decision.

Offprints

A URL providing free access to the online version of the article will be e-mailed to the corresponding author. This link may then be distributed to interested parties. Paper offprints may be ordered at proof stage using the Offprint Order Form sent with the proof.

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.

Referees

The editors of EP - Europace will select the referees to whom the manuscript will be sent for review. Up to 4 referees may be proposed by authors provided that they supply full names and contact details. Referees will be asked to declare any potential conflict of interest. The names and potential conflicts of interest of referees who have assisted the journal to accept a manuscript for publication will be printed with the paper.

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