General Guidelines
The scope of Toxicological Sciences is inclusive to attract significant contributions to toxicological research (from molecular mechanisms of toxic effects to safety evaluation and risk assessment), encompassing all technologies used in toxicology (from mass spectrometry and molecular biology to tissue culture, histopathology, and whole-animal studies). The editors encourage integrative approaches that combine exposure scenarios entailing multipathway exposures with multiple effects.
Manuscripts submitted for peer review should describe studies that are hypothesis driven and relevant to toxicology. Completeness usually requires that dose-response relationships be examined, and authors are encouraged to include in their manuscripts the rationale for dose selection for chemicals that are the focus of their studies. Manuscripts that primarily describe new methods, either experimental or theoretical, should provide examples of their use. Manuscripts describing the results of microarray analyses are expected to verify transcriptional changes deemed to be important by the authors with additional methods.
When studies involve the use of experimental animals, manuscripts should briefly describe the procedures employed for animal care and handling. Experiments that require the use of animals must be conducted in accordance with the Guiding Principles in the Use of Animals in Toxicology, which were adopted by the Society of Toxicology in 1989. A statement of these principles is published each year in the January issue.
Safety evaluation studies of chemicals and drugs may be published if the work is considered complete and the conclusions are unequivocal. The toxicity profile of a given chemical should be summarized in a single manuscript. Information regarding the toxicity of a chemical must include: (1) the structure and/or chemical name along with chemical class or pharmacological target; (2) documentation of exposure (3) a discussion of the relevance of the toxicity findings for human safety evaluation and (4) a manuscript title that reflects a major finding rather than outlining the nature of the study (i.e. 28-day oral toxicity study). Results presented in the manuscript should focus on the major target organ(s) affected. Other study results must be submitted as Supplementary Data, if included. Studies that fail to elicit a toxic response (negative studies) may be acceptable if the results represent important new scientific information.
Public Access Policy
The public access guidelines recently released by the NIH requests that authors of all publications resulting from NIH sponsored research deposit the final accepted version of their manuscripts in PubMed Central within 12 months of the date they are accepted for publication. The policy, which became effective on May 2, 2005, is described in detail at: http://grants1.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-05-022.html.
Presently, Toxicological Sciences grants free public access to all articles published in the journal 12 months after printed publication. We understand that authors will want to comply voluntarily with the NIH policy, and therefore, we will grant permission to all authors to deposit their accepted manuscripts in PubMed Central.
For compliance with public access guidelines, authors are permitted to transmit their manuscripts to PubMed Central after receipt of the URL providing online access to the final version of the accepted paper. Upon submission, authors will specify when their final manuscript will be publicly accessible through PubMed Central. For consistency with current policies of Toxicological Sciences that grant free public access to all articles published in the journal 12 months after printed publication, authors should indicate that the paper will be publicly accessible after 12 months.
Submission instructions for authors can be found at: http://nihms.nih.gov/. Additional information regarding the implementation of the NIH public access policy and the ability to specify when an article is available is at: http://publicaccess.nih.gov/ .
Details of all funding sources for the work in question should be given in a separate manuscript 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 such as, "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 (AG123456 to C.S., etc.); Funding Agency (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.
Research Involving Human Subjects
Toxicological Sciences will consider manuscripts presenting data obtained from research involving human subjects (http://www.cdc.gov/OD/ads/hsrdocs.htm). Research on human subjects must be approved by an appropriate Institutional Review Board (IRB) and comply with all relevant national, state and local regulations. For research conducted outside federal regulations, authors must provide documentation that the research was conducted according to the principles of the Declaration of Helsinki http://www.wma.net/e/policy/b3.htm. A statement describing IRB approval, consent procedures and that all human participants gave written informed consent must appear at the beginning of the Methods section; the editor may request to see such documentation.
In addition, authors will be asked to indicate and certify that they have complied with all appropriate government regulations when the manuscript is submitted for review and confirm their understanding that the editor will rely on all of the disclosures called for under this policy in determining whether to accept the manuscript. No paper will be considered for review and publication without this certification from the authors. If accepted, the published paper will include a footnote stating that the authors certified that the work in human subjects was compliant with all relevant regulations or the Declaration of Helsinki, as appropriate.
Manuscript Submission
All works submitted to Toxicological Sciences are subject to peer review, a process that is the responsibility of the Editors. The authors agree that, if the work is accepted for publication, they will grant an exclusive license to publish to the Society of Toxicology, including the right of reproduction in all forms and media, whether now known or hereafter developed, and the right to include the article in collections and databases.
When a manuscript is submitted, authors will be asked to confirm that: (1) all authors have made a significant contribution to the paper, have read and approved the version submitted and share responsibility for it; (2) no portion of the work has been published or accepted for publication in any other journal; (3) the work will not be submitted to another journal while under consideration by Toxicological Sciences and (4) any potential conflict of interest has been disclosed to the Editor. Any allegations of ethical misconduct regarding possible violations of these requirements will be investigated by the Editorial Office. Failure to conform to these ethical guidelines may result in the paper being withdrawn from consideration by the journal and possible suspension or revocation of an author’s privilege to publish in the journal.
The author(s) of each article appearing in this journal is (are) solely responsible for the content thereof; the publication of an article shall not constitute or be deemed to constitute any representation by the Editors, the Society of Toxicology, or its Boards that the data presented therein are correct or are sufficient to support the conclusions reached or that the experiment design or methodology is adequate.
Original and revised manuscripts are to be submitted electronically through Toxicological Sciences ScholarOne Manuscripts (http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/toxsci). Complete submission instructions are located in Instructions and Forms in the top right corner of the ScholarOne Manuscripts home page.
