SUBMITTING A MANUSCRIPT

Manuscripts must be submitted online. Once you have prepared your manuscript according to the instructions please visit the online submission web site http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/tp. Instructions on submitting your manuscript online can be viewed here. Manuscripts submitted to the journal may be checked for originality
using anti-plagiarism software.

SCOPE OF THE JOURNAL

Tree Physiology is a refereed journal distributed internationally. Articles published may deal with any aspect of tree physiology, including growth, morphogenesis, photosynthesis, nutrition, pathology, reproduction, evolution, environmental adaptation, symbioses, heredity, metabolism, molecular biology and relationships between structure and function. Also published are articles dealing with physiological aspects of biotechnology, environmental management and the economic use of trees.

TYPES OF ARTICLES PUBLISHED

Tree Physiology is intended primarily as a medium for reporting original research, both theoretical and experimental, although technical reviews are also included. Preliminary reports, or reports presenting results of only one aspect of a larger study, will normally be declined.

Articles must be written clearly, concisely and in correct English. Articles of excessive length are returned for condensation. Authors whose knowledge of English is limited should obtain the assistance of a scientifically qualified English-language editor before submitting their work to Tree Physiology. Manuscripts in need of extensive editing or rewriting are returned without review.

Terms of consideration

A research report submitted to Tree Physiology must contain original work, not be under consideration for publication elsewhere, and have been read and approved by those named as authors.

Correspondence

Please click here to contact the Editorial Office.

PREPARATION OF MANUSCRIPTS

General

All articles are in English. Foreign words and phrases that occur in the body of the dictionary should not be italicized.

Please also include the files for any other supplementary material to be submitted with your manuscript.

Please prepare your typescript text using a word-processing package, ideally Microsoft Word (save in .doc or .rtf format). PDF files may be acceptable for some journals, especially if you have used Latex to write your manuscript. Typescripts should be double-spaced. Please number each page.

Please use short, simple filenames when saving all your documents, and avoid special characters, punctuation marks, symbols (such as &), and spaces. If you are a Macintosh user, you must also type the extension at the end of the file name you choose (.doc, .rtf, .jpg, .gif, .tif, .xls, .pdf, .eps, .ppt, .mov or .qt).

Other helpful hints are: (i) use the TAB key once for paragraph indents; (ii) where possible use Times New Roman for the text font and Symbol for any Greek and special characters; (iii) use the word processing formatting features to indicate Bold, Italic, Greek, Maths, Superscript and Subscript characters; (iv) please avoid using underline: for cases use italic; for emphasis use bold; (v) clearly identify unusual symbols and Greek letters; (vi) differentiate between the letter O and zero, and the letters I and l and the number 1.

The first page of the manuscript must give: title of paper, contributor names, key words and the full address (including email) of the author designated to receive proofs/correspondence. The authorship of the paper should be confined to those who have made a significant contribution to the design and execution of the work described.

Place authors' first name and initials before family name and use superscript numerals to link authors' names to addresses. Include the telephone number, fax number and e-mail address of the corresponding author, a running head of up to 50 characters and spaces, and any necessary footnotes.

A concise summary must be provided and an alphabetical list of keywords or phrases, excluding those in the title.

Authors’ names and the running head should be in upper case letters.

Headings should be to journal style. Type unjustified, hyphenating only compound words.

Authors are responsible for checking the accuracy of all footnotes and references.

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.

Units and abbreviations

Système International (SI) units of measure and their abbreviations should normally be used; although certain non-SI units are also acceptable including litre (l), minute (min), day, week and year, the last three of which should be spelled out in full. Non-standard abbreviations should be defined at the first occurrence and introduced only where multiple use is made.

Whole numbers less than 10 are spelled out unless followed by a unit of measure. Otherwise, numbers are represented by numerals provided that they do not occur as the first word in a sentence.

Italics

Italicize letters representing statistical parameters (e.g., P and F).

Italicize abbreviations comprising a single letter of the Roman alphabet, although any subscript or superscript will not normally be italicized (e.g., Ia or Amax).

Do not italicize Greek symbols or multi-letter abbreviations (e.g., Ψ or LAI).

Italicize Latin binomials, e.g., Nothofagus nitida.

Italicize gene names, but not names of proteins.

Do not italicize common Latin phrases and abbreviations which are found in Webster’s dictionary, for example, in vitro, etc. (et cetera), e.g. (exempli gratia), i.e. (id est), et al. (et alii (m.), et aliae (f.), et alia (n.)). Avoid Latin phrases where equivalent English terms exist.

Species names

Common names of organisms may be used provided that in every case the Latin binomial and authority are given in parentheses following the first use in both the Summary and the body of the paper.

Materials and methods

The description of experimental procedures should be sufficient to allow repetition of the work. Details should be omitted where reference can be made to published procedures. Except in the case of standard procedures, however, methods should be outlined even when reference is made to a published description. Procedures published in sources that will not be readily available to most readers of Tree Physiology should be described in full.

Acknowledgements

Acknowledgements and details of non-financial support must be included at the end of the text before references and not in footnotes. Personal acknowledgements should precede those of institutions or agencies. Please note that acknowledgement of funding bodies should be given in a separate Funding section.

References

Articles cited in the text will be referred to by the name(s) of the author(s) with the year of publication in parentheses. If both are in parentheses, no punctuation separates the name(s) of the authors(s) and the year of publication. Consecutive citations in the text are placed in chronological order and separated by commas. If there are more than two authors, only the first author's name is given, and this is followed by the phrase et al., which should be in roman, not italic, type (e.g. Kramer 1986, Day et al. 2002).
Beginning on a separate sheet, references should be listed alphabetically at the end of the article thus:

Bowen, E.D. 1973. Mineral nutrition of ectomycorrhizae. In Ectomycorrhizae: Their Ecology and Physiology. Eds. G.C. Marks and T.T. Kozlowski. Academic Press, New York, pp 151-205.

Day, M.E., M.S. Greenwood and C. Diaz-Sala. 2002. Age- and size-related trends in woody plant shoot development: regulatory pathways and evidence for genetic control. Tree Physiol. 22:507-513.

Harley, J.L. 1969. The biology of mycorrhizae. Plant Sci. Monogr. 2nd Edn. Leonard Hill, London, 334 p.

Biological Abstracts should be used as a guide to the abbreviation of journal titles. Personal communications, unpublished works, or papers in preparation or submitted for publication should not be listed as references, but incorporated in the text.

Tables

Tables should be typed with double spacing, but minimizing redundant space, and each should be placed on a separate sheet. Each table should be numbered in sequence using Arabic numerals. Tables should also have a title above and an explanatory footnote below, if required. Units in which results are expressed should be given in parentheses at the top of each column and not repeated in each line of the table. Ditto signs are not used. Avoid overcrowding the tables and the excessive use of words. The format of tables should be in keeping with that normally used by the journal; in particular, vertical lines, coloured text and shading should not be used. Please ensure that the data given in tables are correct.

Figures

When submitting your manuscript, please try to provide your images in their original format as separate files, and at minimum resolution of 600 d.p.i. for line drawings and 300 d.p.i. for colour and half-tone artwork.

When reproduced at final size, lettering on figures (which must be of the same style for all figures in a paper) should be 1.5 to 2.5 mm in height (capitals and numerals). A multi-part figure must be assembled to fit a single page.

Figures should be designed to fit one (8.23 cm), one and a half (11.5–12.5 cm), or two (17.16 cm) column widths, with a maximum height of 23.4 cm. For the best reproduction, figures should be submitted at the size they are to appear in the journal.

Use only solid or open symbols, and avoid the use of light lines or fine screen shading. Distinguish areas within a diagram with solid white or black fill, hatching, or cross-hatching.

When creating figures, please make sure any embedded text is large enough to read. Many figures contain miniscule characters such as numbers on a chart or graph. If these characters are not easily readable, they will most likely be illegible in the final version. Certain image formats such as .jpg and .gif do not have high resolutions, so you may elect to save your figures and insert them as .tif instead.

GENERAL POLICIES

Open access

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 Tree Physiology 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 Tree Physiology:

• 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 a list of qualifying countries.

The above Open Access charges are in addition to any page charges and colour charges that might apply.

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 Tree Physiology. 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 Tree Physiology.

Advance access

Advance Access articles are published online soon after they have been accepted for publication, in advance of their appearance in a printed journal. Appearance in Advance Access constitutes official publication, and the Advance Access version can be cited by a unique DOI (Digital Object Identifier). When an article appears in an issue, it is removed from the Advance Access page.

Articles posted for Advance Access have been copyedited and typeset and any corrections included. This is before they are paginated for inclusion in a specific issue of the journal. Once an article appears in an issue, both versions of the paper continue to be accessible and citable

Copyright and licence

It is a condition of publication for all Oxford Journals that authors grant an exclusive licence to Oxford University Press or the sponsoring Society. Please download form here. This ensures that requests from third parties to reproduce articles are handled efficiently and consistently and will also allow the article to be as widely disseminated as possible. No article will be published unless the signed licence has been received at Oxford Journals. Faxing a copy of the form when requested will assist in the rapid publication of your article. As part of the licence agreement, Authors may use their own material in other publications provided that Tree Physiology is acknowledged as the original place of publication and Oxford University Press as the Publisher. As the Author(s), copyright of the Article remains yours (or your employer’s if your employer claims copyright in your work). See here for full details of Oxford Journals' copyright policy.

Editing

Articles may be edited after acceptance, but authors will be able to approve the changes.

Charges for colour figures

All figures submitted to the journal in colour will be published in colour online at no cost.

Inclusion of colour figures in the print issue is subject to a special charge (£200/US$400 per figure).

Ethics

Tree Physiology expects that authors will observe high standards with respect to publication ethics. For example, the following practices are unacceptable: (1) falsification or fabrication of data, (2) plagiarism, including duplicate publication of the authors' own work, in whole or in part without proper citation, (3) misappropriation of the work of others such as omission of qualified authors or of information regarding financial support. Allegations of unethical conduct will be discussed initially with the corresponding author. In the event of continued dispute the matter will be referred to the author's institution and funding agencies for investigation and adjudication.

Conflict of interest

The manuscript submission system requires you to declare whether your manuscript includes a potential conflict of interest. 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.

If no Conflict of Interest is declared, this will be stated in the article using the following wording: 'Conflict of Interest: none declared'.

Permissions for illustrations and figures

Permission to reproduce copyright material, for print and online publication in perpetuity, must be cleared and if necessary paid for by the author; this includes applications and payments to DACS, ARS and similar licencing agencies where appropriate. Evidence in writing that such permissions have been secured from the rights-holder must be made available to the editors. It is also the author's responsibility to include acknowledgements as stipulated by the particular institutions. Oxford Journals can offer information and documentation to assist authors in securing print and online permissions: please see Guidelines for Authors at http://www.oxfordjournals.org/access_purchase/rights_permissions.html. Information on permissions contacts for a number of main galleries and museums can also be provided. Should you require copies of this then please contact the editorial office of the journal in question or the Oxford Journals Rights department on journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org.

Authors must:

• obtain permission from the original publisher and, if requested, the original author (i.e. the corresponding author of the article from which the figure/table has come) for reproducing/modifying figures/tables.
• request the following when seeking to reproduce any kind of third party material:
  
  (i) non-exclusive rights to reproduce the material in the specified article and journal.
  (ii) print and electronic rights, preferably for use in any form or medium.
  (iii) the right to use the material for the life of the work.
  (iv) world-wide English-language rights. If rights for all languages can be secured, this is preferable.
  (v) the right to use images with a resolution of 150 dpi in the PDF version of the journal or 72 dpi in the HTML version.
  
• include a statement indicating that permission has been obtained in the relevant legend/footnote.
• provide the Editorial Office with copies of any relevant paperwork.

For further details, as well as a template permissions request letter, please contact the editorial office.

Proofs

Authors are sent page proofs by email. These should be checked immediately and corrections, as well as answers to any queries, returned to the publishers as an annotated PDF via email or fax within 3 working days (further details are supplied with the proof). It is the author's responsibility to check proofs thoroughly.

Supplementary data

Supporting material that is not essential for inclusion in the full text of the manuscript, but would nevertheless benefit the reader, can be made available by the publisher as online-only content, linked to the online manuscript. The material should not be essential to understanding the conclusions of the paper, but should contain data that is additional or complementary and directly relevant to the article content. Such information might include more detailed methods, extended data sets/data analysis, or additional figures.
It is standard practice for appendices to be made available online-only as supplementary data. All text and figures must be provided in suitable electronic formats. All material to be considered as supplementary data must be submitted at the same time as the main manuscript for peer review. It cannot be altered or replaced after the paper has been accepted for publication, and will not be edited. Please indicate clearly all material intended as supplementary data upon submission. Also ensure that the supplementary data is referred to in the main manuscript where necessary, for example as '(see Supplementary data)' or '(see Supplementary Figure 1)'.

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 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 (CB5453961 to C.S., DB645473 to M.H.); 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.

Self-archiving policy

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

Offprints

Authors will receive electronic access to their paper free of charge. Additional printed offprints may be purchased. Rates are indicated on the order form, which must be returned with the proofs.