EDITORIAL POLICY

1. Plant and Cell Physiology is an international journal devoted to publication of original papers pertaining to physiology, biochemistry, biophysics, chemistry, genetics, molecular biology, gene-engineering and cell biology of plants and microorganisms. The Journal welcomes submissions from non-society members as well as society members.
2. Manuscripts that contain new and significant findings are welcome, with the understanding that the contents have not been published in any other journal. Should any related papers are in press or submitted elsewhere authors are requested to give details on submission.
3. Misconduct on submitted manuscript including dual-submission, plagiarism, figure manipulation will be immediately rejected. If misconduct is found after the manuscript is accepted, acceptance will be retracted and a note to announce retraction will be published. If authors are not using original material, they must obtain permission to reproduce any copyright material, and include an acknowledgement of the source in their manuscript.
4. Each manuscript is classified as a Regular Paper, Rapid Paper or Short Communication.
   • Regular Papers are full-length research articles that contain new and significant findings contributing to plant sciences.
   • Rapid Papers should contain new findings of exceptional interest and novelty which require quick publication, and will be printed within 40 days after acceptance in the fastest case. Particular attention should be paid to the preparation of the manuscript according to the instructions to eliminate any errors and enable early publication. An author of a Rapid Paper must submit a covering letter to justify the scientific significance of the results that necessitate quick publication.
   • Short Communications are intended to present significant new information to readers of the Journal in a short but complete form. This form may be suitable for the publication of novel experimental techniques and their specific methods, bioinformatics or insightful findings of plant development and function. Manuscripts for Short Communications must not exceed 5 printed pages. They are not intended to publish preliminary results or to be a reduced version of Regular Papers or Rapid Papers.
   • An additional category, Mini Review, is published only on invitation by the Editors.
5. The primary criteria for the acceptance of manuscripts are their originality, significance to plant sciences, validity of design and reliability of results. The journal will not accept manuscripts that contain purely descriptive information, that are merely confirmatory, or that report the purification of proteins, the cloning of genes, the isolation of new mutants, or microarray data without data and/or discussion of functional aspects. Manuscripts that do not meet the appropriate criteria may be declined without review. If they fulfill these criteria, the Editors will select reviewers for their competence in specialized areas; their names are not divulged to authors. On submission of a manuscript, authors may suggest the names and addresses of up to five potential reviewers who have not seen the manuscript before its submission. The Editors are not, however, bound by these suggestions. Authors may also request disqualification of up to two possible reviewers.
6. Corresponding Authors should receive a letter of decision from the Editor together with reports from the reviewers within two weeks after submissions for Rapid Papers, or within one month for Regular Papers, Mini Reviews and Short Communications.
   When revision of a manuscript is requested, the author must respond to the comments of the Editor and reviewers; must indicate which comments have been incorporated in the revision; and must give reasons why any comments have been disregarded. The revised manuscript must be returned within the period assigned by the Editor. A revised manuscript received after this time will be considered a new submission.
   Accepted manuscripts are published online within 1 week from acceptance (Publish Ahead of Print: PAP) and will be assigned to an issue and published online on average of 50 days after acceptance .
   
7. Manuscripts should be written in clear and concise grammatical English. A contributor whose native language is not English is strongly recommended to have the manuscript checked by a native English speaker or by a colleague with ample experience in writing English manuscripts. If the contents of the manuscript are not understandable due to poor English quality it will be rejected without review process. Submit the manuscript to Manuscript Central (http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/pcp).

Preparing Your Manuscript

Format

1. Arrange the manuscript in the following order: Number all pages consecutively including tables and legends. We recommend that authors prepare the text as a Microsoft Word file.
   • Page 1: Running title. not to exceed 50 characters, counting letters and spaces.
     Corresponding author. street address, telephone number (including extension), fax number and e-mail address for editorial correspondence.
     Subject areas which are most relevant to the study. Select one or two subject areas from (1) growth and development, (2) environmental and stress responses, (3) regulation of gene expression, (4) proteins, enzymes and metabolism, (5) photosynthesis, respiration and bioenergetics, (6) structure and function of cells, (7) membrane and transport, (8) cell–cell interaction, (9) natural products, (10) genomics, systems biology and evolution, and (11) new methodology.
     Number of black and white figures, color figures and tables. Figures submitted in color will be printed in color.
   • *Authors of Short Communications should state the total number of words (including the Abstract)
   • Page 2: Title. full title of the manuscript (start each word with capital letter)
     Authors. full names for all authors
     Authors' addresses. Multiple authors with different addresses must indicate their respective addresses separately by superscript numbers:
     
     Taro Tanaka¹ and Jiro Yamamoto^{2
     1}Department of Botany, Faculty of Science, PCP University Shizuhama, 432-0001 Japan
     ²Environmental Engineering Laboratory, JSPP College Kanayama, 234-0001 Japan
   • Abbreviations. Define alphabetically, other than abbreviations that can be used without definition. Words or phrases that are abbreviated in the Introduction and following text should be written out in full the first time that they appear in the text, with each abbreviated form in parenthesis. For abbreviations that can be used without definition, click here (Abbreviations).
     Footnotes. Registration of nucleotide sequences, if presented, as follows (unnumbered): The nucleotide sequence reported in this paper has been submitted to (database) under accession numbers. Present addresses of authors if different from heading.
   • Page3: Abstract. Less than 250 words for a Regular Paper and a Rapid Paper, and up to 100 words for a Short Communication.
     Keywords. Not more than six in alphabetical order. Include the common name or scientific name, or both, of plant materials.
   • Page 4 and subsequent pages: In order of Text - Acknowledgments - References - Tables - Legends to figures - Figures.
2. Text. Regular Papers and Rapid Papers should be prepared with the headings Introduction, Results, Discussion, and Materials and Methods, in this order. Short Communications should be prepared according to item 7 in these instructions. In Materials and Methods section, Methods must be described completely enough that other laboratories can replicate results and verify claims. Generally, standard procedures should be referenced, though significant variations should be described. Appropriate experimental design and statistical methods should be applied and described wherever necessary for proper interpretation of data and verification of claims. All novel materials and the procedures to prepare them should be described in sufficient detail to allow their reproduction (For data handling information, see also item 8). Also authors should ensure that the full addresses (town/city, state and country) of all suppliers are cited in the text.
3. References. Literature citations in the text should be made by name(s) of author(s) and year. For references with more than two authors, use the name of the first author followed by ‘et al.’
   
   Takahashi and Yamamoto (1986) reported that ...
   The results have been interpreted (Suzuki et al. 1996).
   • References should be listed in alphabetical order, by the authors' last names. For the same author, or for the same set of authors, references should be arranged chronologically. If there is more than one publication in the same year for the same author(s), the letters 'a', 'b', etc. should be added to the year. When the authors are more than 6, list first 6 authors and then et al. Do not use indentations in typing References. Use one line of space to separate each reference. For example:
   • • Birch, B.P. (1995a) Growth responses of Nicotiana tabacum L. to light and water stress. Plant Cell Physiol. 36: 1-10.
     • Birch, B.P. (1995b) Organic acid metabolism in light-grown radish (Raphanus sativus L.). Plant Cell Physiol. 36: 101-110.
     • Cherry, P.Y., Juniper, R. and Aoki, J. (1994) Kinetic studies of photosynthetic activity in Chlorella. In Mechanism of Photosynthesis. Edited by Yanagi, M. and Liu, Y. pp. 123-234. Science Press, Tokyo.
     • Cherry, P.Y. and Oaks, B.B. (1997) Translocation of photosynthetic products. Annu. Rev. Plant Sci. 130: 15-60.
     • Holly, M.C. (1987) Plant Biophysics. p. 102. Botany Press, Kyoto.
   • Unpublished data and personal communications should not be cited as literature citations, but given in the text in parentheses. 'In press' articles that have been accepted for publication may be cited in References. Include in the citation the journal in which the 'in press' article will appear and the publication date, if a date is available.
4. Tables should be prepared in a form consistent with recent issues of Plant and Cell Physiology and should be numbered consecutively with Arabic numerals. Explanatory material should be given in the table legends and footnotes. Each table should be prepared on a separate page. (Note: Tables must be submitted as data—a .doc, .rtf, Excel or PowerPoint file—because tables submitted as image data cannot be edited when a manuscript is accepted for publication.) Please note that tables including any colors/symbols will have to be handled as figures, and they will not be edited. Use of Gothic type fonts is desirable to be consistent with standard tables.
5. Figures. Submit an original figure. To avoid wasted white space and clutter ensure that the figure is reasonably sized and laid out. Line drawings must be clear, with high black and white contrast. TIFF files are preferable. Figures should be created in the following resolution:
   Line Drawings: higher than 1200 dpi
   Half Tones: higher than 300 dpi
   Single column figures should be less than 85mm wide. Double column figures should be less than 170mm wide. Appropriate sized numbers, letters and symbols should be used, no smaller than 2mm in size. Failure to comply with these specifications will require new figures and delay publication. For useful information on creating figure files, please go to: http://cpc.cadmus.com/da/index.jsp.
   There is no color reproduction charge for PCP. We encourage authors to take advantage of this initiative and submit figures in color. See example here ).*All color figures should be submitted in CMYK mode so that original color will not be lost in published article.
   
6. Supplemental Data. The journal encourages authors to include data such as videos, 3-D structures/images, sequence alignments and very large data sets such as microarray data sets. These data will be reviewed as part of the normal manuscript review process. Files should be prepared using guidelines for figures (item 5). Videos should be prepared in QuickTime Video (mov), MPEG Movie (mpg) or Microsoft AVI Video (avi) format. Each file should not exceed 5 MB. Supplementary data should be submitted in a separate file(s), in its final form. Please note that Supplementary data will not be edited, so ensure that it is clearly and succinctly presented, and that the style of terms conforms to the rest of the paper.
7. Short Communications should include introduction, results, discussion and materials and methods in this order. Introduction, results and discussion should be prepared in one section and headings should only be inserted for Materials and Methods. Short Communications should be 5 printed pages or less, including all references, figures and tables. The abstract should be up to 100 words as stated above. References should be less than 30.Total number of words including references must not exceed 3,000 words. Numbers of figures and tables should be less than four (if each figure or table is less than 1/4 page). Authors should state total number of words (including Abstract) in the cover letter. Manuscripts that do not fulfill these criteria will be rejected without review as Short Communications. If Short Communication articles exceed 5 printed pages upon publication, there is an excess page charge of 20,000 yen per excess page.
8. Database Registration. Sequence informationand X-ray crystallographic coordinates described in a manuscript must be submitted in electronic form to the appropriate database for release no later than the date of publication of the corresponding article in the Journal. Include database deposition and/or accession numbers in the manuscript and refer to this in the letter of submission. If microarray data is included in the manuscripts authors are requested to deposit the data in public repository such as GEO, ArrayExpress and CIBEX. Authors are also adviced to make integral materials available in public repositories.
9. Fonts. Authors are advised to use Times New Roman. Be especially careful when you are inserting special characters, as those inserted in different fonts may be replaced by different characters when converted to pdf files. It is well known that 'µ' will be replaced by other characters when fonts such as 'Symbol' or 'Mincho' are used.
10. Funding Information.
    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, no extra wording like ‘Funding for this work was provided by . . .’ should be used and 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].
11. Cover Photographs. PCP welcomes suitable photographs or illustrations for our cover illustration each month. Send high-quality photos to the Editor-in-Chief when you submit a manuscript. These photos should have some connection with the topic of the manuscript. If their photos are used, authors will receive 50 free reprints of their article bound with the color cover, along with a high-resolution JPEG image of the cover.
12. 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.
    
13. Conflict of Interest. At the point of submission, PCP’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.

File Preparation

When naming your files, please use simple file names and avoid special characters and spaces. If you are a Macintosh user, you must also type the three-letter extension at the end of the file name you choose (e.g. .doc, .rtf, .jpg, .tif, .xls, .pdf).

You may prepare files for review in the following way.

1. Prepare the text in Microsoft Word according to [Format].
2. Prepare tables as DOC, RTF or Excel files according to [Format].
3. Prepare figures in TIFF format according to [Format].
4. Submit the file(s) at the web site (http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/pcp).

Submitted files will automatically be converted to PDF proof on the system. In order to prevent faulty conversions caused by wide variety of special fonts and symbols that are currently in use, embedding fonts before saving MS Word file is recommended, with the following procedure:

1. (while the document is still open) From the top menu bar, select "Tools"
2. Click on "Options"
3. On the newly opened window, select the "Save" tab
4. Check the box "Embed TrueType fonts" (leave the two sub-options unchecked)
5. Click "OK"

Preparing a Revised Manuscript

1. You will receive an e-mail with reviewer comments. Please revise your manuscript accordingly. Be sure to use a red font where changes have been made so the Editor and reviewers will be able to spot the changes.
2. Prepare a cover letter containing point by point responses to the reviewers' comments.
3. Prepare files according to File Preparation. The cover letter and the main document should be created as separate files.

After Your Manuscript Is Accepted

1. Proof reading. Authors are responsible for reading page proofs and correcting typographical errors. Major changes from the manuscript should be avoided, but if made on the page proofs, they will be sent to the Editor in Chief for subsequent instructions. Authors will be charged for the expense of alterations.
2. Reprints. Fifty reprints of each article will be provided free of charge. Authors will be charged for additional reprints. An order form will be sent from The Japanese Society of Plant Physiologists.
   

Author Charges

Please note new page charge scheme for Short Communications. (effective from papers published in Volume 50, Issue 4 onwards)

1. Color Charge. There will be no color charge and all color figures can be printed free of charge.
2. Page charge. No page charge is sought for articles up to 8 printed pages. For articles of 9 or more printed pages, the author will be billed a page charge of 20,000 yen per printed page in excess of 8 printed pages.
3. Page charge for Short Communication. If Short Communication articles exceed 5 printed pages, there is an excess page charge of 20,000 yen per excess page.
4. Handling charge. Members of the Society are charged a handling fee of 10,000 yen and non-member authors are charged 20,000 yen per accepted manuscript.

Author charges may be waived or discounted provided a written explanation giving the reason for the request is made to Editorial Office at the time of manuscript submission. Waivers /discounts are granted to authors working in developing countries. Please refer to our Developing Countries List to check countries that are entitled to waiver/discount. To avoid any effect on review decisions information of author’s application for waiver/discounts will not be disclosed to Editors until the manuscript is accepted.

The journal offers an optional open access model under Oxford Open initiative. For detailed information please refer to the relevant section below.

Editorial Office
Oxford Journals
Oxford University Press
4-5-10-8F Shiba
Minato-ku, Tokyo
108-8386 Japan
Tel: +81 3 5444 5858
Fax: +81 3 3454 2929
Email: pcp.editorialoffice@oxfordjournals.org


For any queries regarding production:
Ms. Lisa Plumbridge
Oxford Journals
Oxford University Press
Great Clarendon Street
Oxford OX2 6DP
UK
Tel: +44 (0)1865 354705
Fax: +44 (0)1865 353773
Email: pcp@oxfordjournals.org

OPEN ACCESS OPTION FOR AUTHORS

FUNDING

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’ - see the full RIN-approved list of UK funding agencies for details
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 [HFY GR667789].

Oxford Journals will deposit all NIH-funded articles in PubMed Central. See Depositing articles in repositories – information for authors for details. Authors must ensure that manuscripts are clearly indicated as NIH-funded using the guidelines above.