Instructions to authors

New for 2010 – Please note that the journal now encourages authors to complete their copyright licence to publish form online

OPEN ACCESS OPTION FOR AUTHORS

1. Scope and policy

Journal of Electron Microscopy, the official publication of the Japanese Society of Microscopy, aims to promote research combined with any type of microscopy techniques, not limited to electron microscopy, by publishing informative articles dealing with their theories, methods, techniques and instrumentation as well as their applications to life and material sciences. Although the journal is closely associated with the society, contributions by non-society members are welcome.

2. Types of papers accepted

Full-length papers
Full-length papers should present new findings of broad interest and describe significant and original results to be critically evaluated.

Letters
'Letters' of exceptional interest or with novel findings will be rapidly accepted and published.

Technical Report
'Technical Reports' includes brief reports of specifications or mechanical aspects of the innovative devise, evaluation of the devise, as well as the quality assurance protocols for specimen preparation. It should be original, and be of sufficiently broad interes.

Reviews
They are commissioned by the Editor-in-Chief, the Managing Editor, Regional Editors or Executive Editors.

3. Preparation of the manuscript

Length
Full-length papers are fewer than ten printed pages. This is approximately equivalent to 30 double-spaced type pages (including references, figure legends and tables). Letters and Notes should not exceed four and two printed pages, respectively.

General format
All manuscripts should be typed double-spaced, including title page, abstract, text, references tables and figure legends in 12 point type. Pages should have margins of 2.5 cm (about 1 inch).

Spelling
UK or US spelling is acceptable, but should be used consistently. UK spelling should be Oxford English, i.e. -ize endings rather than -ise (but use "analyse").

Title page
All manuscript title pages must include the following: a complete title, a running title not in excess of 50 letters including spaces, full given and last name of each contributor followed by full address, telephone and fax number and E-mail address, name of the contributor who will deal with correspondence including proofs, and six keywords for the indexing services. The total number of pages and figures being submitted should also be indicated on this page.

Sections
Full-length papers should start with an ABSTRACT, followed by a brief INTRODUCTION, which outlines the historical or logical origins of the study, a section on METHODS and one on RESULTS, in which the findings are presented in a compact form with minimal reference to earlier literature or to possible interpretations. The DISCUSSION should be devoted to interpreting the results from various viewpoints and to considering their physical and biological significance. CONCLUDING REMARKS are obligatory. They may start with a brief summary of the results, but repetition of the abstract should be avoided. For theoretical/methodological articles, sections on METHODS and RESULTS are not obligatory.
When submitting your manuscript, specify which category your manuscript may fall under by selecting appropriate manuscript type from the drop down list at the submission stage, step 1.

Letters and Notes should also start with an ABSTRACT, but there should be no other individual sections afterwards.

Abstract
It should be written on complete sentences and should summarize the content in no more than 250 words (for full-length papers and Reviews) or no more than 100 words (for Letters and Notes). If references are used in an abstract, they must include the author(s), journal title, volume number, starting page and year. Avoid abbreviations in abstracts as far as possible.

Main text
There should be an indication in the main text to show the most appropriate placement of each table and illustration. Acknowledgements, references, tables and figure legends should follow the main text in that order.

References
References are to be cited in the text by a number in brackets and should be numbered in order of first appearance. An example is: 'McMichael and Gotch [12] have reported ...'. Where there are more than three authors, the citation in the text should use the formulation 'et al.'. An example is: 'This observation has been reported by Shackelford et al. [24]'.

In the list of references, papers from journals should be listed thus:

Hirokawa K, Kokubo Y, Kitamura M, and Shiraishi T (1987) Fine structure of intestinal fibroblasts autoradiographic and three dimensional studies. J. Electron Microsc. 37, 213-228.

Books should be listed as:

Squire J (1981) The Structural Basis of Muscular Contraction. (Plenum Press, New York.)

McMichael A J and Gotch F (1987) T-cell antigens new and previously defined clusters. In: Leukocyte Typing III, ed. McMichael A J, pp. 31-35, (Oxford University Press, Oxford).

Tables
Tables should be typed on separate sheets and numbered consecutively with Roman numerals. They should be self-explanatory.

Figures
Figures should be uploaded individually at the website in the order of which they are mentioned in the text. They should be numbered as a single series. The final size of printed figures cannot exceed 174 mm wide × 237 mm deep for a full page illustration and 84 mm wide for a single column one. All symbols, letters, numbers, and scale bars should be of sufficient size to be produced clearly at the final reduction. Letters or numbers less than 2 mm high are not acceptable in the final print. All figures should show clearly against the background.

Scanned image files should be at least 300 dpi for continuous tone images (greyscale or colour), and at least 1200 dpi for line drawing, when the figure is magnified to the size at which it will appear on the printed page.

Please note that figure quality is the responsibility of the author. During the production process, OUP will be able to advise on figure quality, if submitted figures are not adequate for print. In such cases, authors will be given the opportunity to submit better quality figures. However, OUP cannot improve the quality of figures created or presented by the author.

TIFF files are preferable. If there are two or more parts to a figure, they should be labelled as a, b, c, etc. (i.e. lower case letters).

Photographs must include magnification scale. Micrographs are reproduced without reduction unless they exceed 174 mm × 237 mm. All figures in a group should have approximately the same contrast values. The Editorial Office should be notified of any special instructions for the printer.

Colour figures will be published in the online journal but authors are required to pay the costs if figures are to appear in colour in print. Colour photographs can be published without charge to the authors if the Editor-in-Chief considers the figures to be of utmost importance to the journal. Please contact the editor in charge of your paper for details. See section 9 below for further information.

For useful information on creating figure files, please go to:
http://cpc.cadmus.com/da/index.jsp

Units
Use of SI units is mandatory.

Mathematics
A brief guide to setting mathematics is available here.

Referees
When submitting a manuscript, authors may suggest the names of potential referees (who have not yet seen the manuscript). The names of possible referees, if any, should not be written on the manuscripts itself, but on the cover letter to the Editor.

4. Authors' Responsibility

Submission of manuscript
Submission of a paper will be taken to imply that it reports unpublished work (except for Reviews) and that it is not being considered for publication elsewhere. All manuscript should be submitted online. For online submission, see Online Manuscript Submission for details.

Authorship
All persons designated as authors should qualify for authorship. The order of authorship should be a joint decision of the co-authors. Each author should have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for the content. Authorship credit should be based on substantial contribution to conception and design, execution, or analysis and interpretation of data. All authors should be involved in drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content, and must have read and approved the final version of the manuscript. Assurance that all authors of the paper have fulfilled these criteria for authorship should be given at time of online submission.

Ethical standards
In cases where a study involves the use of live animals or human subjects, authors must include in the appropriate section of the manuscript a statement that all experiments were performed in compliance with the relevant laws and institutional guidelines in accordance with the ethical standards of the Declaration of Helsinki. The institutional committees that have approved the experiments must be named.

Funding and Conflict of Interest
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].’

Conflict of Interest
At the point of submission, Journal of Electron Microscopy’s 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 Conflict of Interest form to the Editorial Office. It is the Corresponding author’s responsibility to ensure that all authors adhere to this policy. The form can be found here.

5. Submission of manuscripts

Submission of a paper will be taken to imply that it reports unpublished work (except for Reviews) and that it is not being considered for publication elsewhere. All manuscript should be submitted online. See Online Manuscript Submission for details.

6. Reviewing process

The paper will be assigned to one Executive Editor or Regional Editor, who asks one (in the case of Letters, Notes, and Reviews) or two (in the case of full-length papers) referees to review it. The Regional Editor or Executive Editor in charge will ask authors for revision, if necessary, or notify rejection based on the comments by the referees. The Regional Editor or Executive Editor in charge will decide the acceptance or rejection of the paper. The Editor-in-Chief or Managing Editor may take on the final decision at their request.

7. Revision

When a manuscript is returned to authors for revision prior to final acceptance, the revised version must be submitted within 3 months after it is returned.

8. Proofs

Authors are sent page proofs via email. They should be checked within 48 hours for typographical errors and returned to the publisher by email, fax or express post. Essential changes of an extensive nature may be made by insertion of a Note added in proof.

9. Colour cost

JEM is happy to announce the launch of the Flexible Color Option, beginning for all articles accepted after 20 April 2010. All figures submitted to the journal in color will be published in color online at no cost (unless the author specifically requests that their figures be in black and white online). Authors may choose to also publish their figures in color in the print journal for £350 per figure: you will be asked to approve this cost after your article is accepted for publication. Colour figures must have a resolution of at least 300 dots per inch at their final sizes. You will be issued an invoice at the time of publication. Figure captions must be suitably worded to apply to both the print and online versions of the article. Switching a color figure to black and white figures after acceptance may require Editorial approval. Thus, authors are advised to submit black and white figures if they are not willing to pay for the color cost. Black and white figures will be printed without additional cost, but should be well prepared with high contrast.

Note: Orders from the UK will be subject to the current UK 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.

10. Licence form and offprints

Upon receipt of accepted manuscripts at Oxford Journals authors will be invited to complete an online copyright licence to publish form at our Author Services site.

Please note that by submitting an article for publication you confirm that you are the corresponding/submitting author and that Oxford University Press ("OUP") may retain your email address for the purpose of communicating with you about the article. You agree to notify OUP immediately if your details change. If your article is accepted for publication OUP will contact you using the email address you have used in the registration process. Please note that OUP does not retain copies of rejected articles.

The corresponding author is entitled to receive 25 printed offprints free of charge. These can be claimed using the Oxford Journals Author Services site.

11. 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.

12. Permissions

Permission to reproduce copyright material, for print and online publication in perpetuity, must be cleared. Evidence in writing that such permissions have been secured from the rights-holder must be made available to the Editorial Board. It is also the author's responsibility to include acknowledgements as stipulated by the particular institutions. Oxford University Press can offer information and documentation to assist authors in securing print and online permissions: please see the Guidelines for Authors section (http://www.oxfordjournals.org/access_purchase/permissions_guidelines.html).

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