Microbiology Online submission guidelines
|
|
|||||||||
|
|
||||||||||
Online submission
General Information
All papers must be submitted online, via the system. Submissions are not accepted in hard copy or by e-mail.
This page gives brief guidelines on the submission procedure. Authors may find it helpful to read through these guidelines before going to the Bench>Press site to submit a paper. Further details and help pages are available on the site.
Authors must:
- read the Instructions for Authors and ensure that their paper complies with them before submission;
- all agree to the submission and agree that the corresponding author may act on their behalf throughout the review and publication process:
- provide the names and contact details of at least three (and not more than five) potential reviewers;
- obtain permission for any citations of personal communications or unpublished results; this should be confirmed in a covering message;
- indicate the Contents Category for the paper on the title page (it should also be entered in the Contents Category field of the online submission form in );
- include on the title page the word count of both the abstract and the main text (including the figure and table legends, in-text citations and any appendices, but not including the title page, acknowledgements, table bodies and footnotes, or reference list) and the number of tables and figures;
- use continuous line numbering throughout the manuscript, to facilitate online reviewing;
- ensure that citations of references in the text and references list conform to Microbiology style;
- upload any supplementary material associated with the paper as a supplementary file(s) for peer review with the paper;
- upload any cited papers that have been accepted for publication but are not yet published as a supplementary file(s).
Preparing files for submission
Papers can be submitted initially either as a single PDF file or as separate word-processor and image files, which will be compiled into a PDF by the system. The submission system will also attempt to prepare an HTML version of the reference list with links to papers that it can identify on the PubMed and HighWire databases, for use by the reviewers. This conversion will not work reliably if the reference format is incorrect (see the Instructions for Authors for the correct style); however, an HTML reference list is not essential for review of the paper to proceed. Supplementary material should be submitted as a separate file(s), rather than being incorporated within the single PDF or word-processor file. When submitting the revised version of a paper, authors should supply the source files for the text and figures, to expedite the publication of the paper if it is accepted.
Submission as a single PDF. Please refer to the on the submission site for guidelines on preparing PDFs for submission, including advice on reducing the size of image files (the submitted PDF should preferably not be much larger than 1 MB).
Submission as separate word-processor and image files. Most standard word-processor files (including .docx files produced in Word 2007) will convert successfully to PDF. Times, Times New Roman, Courier, Helvetica and Arial, and the Symbol font for special characters, are the recommended fonts. Other fonts are not guaranteed to convert successfully convert to PDF. Tables for the main paper must be prepared as part of the word-processor file; they must not be supplied as images or Excel files. (Excel files are, however, acceptable for supplementary data). Word-processor files including inserted image files will normally be converted successfully to PDF by the system, but please note that files using OLE (Object Linking and Embedding) technology to display information or embedded files are not supported. If the conversion is not satisfactory, either convert the file to PDF yourself, and submit that, or submit the image files separately.
The file types that are supported for submission of separate image files for conversion to PDF are PDF, GIF, TIFF, EPS, JPEG and PPT. A resolution of 300 d.p.i. at a reasonable size of reproduction is recommended; in other words, an image intended to fit in a single column of the journal should be around 1000 pixels wide and an image intended to fit across two columns should be around 2000 pixels wide. The following file types are not supported at the initial submission stage as they cannot be converted to PDF by the system: bitmap (.bmp), PICT (.pict), Excel (.xls), Photoshop (.psd), Canvas (.cnv), CorelDRAW (.cdr) and locked or encrypted PDFs. Image files will be converted to PDF and added to the end of the manuscript PDF produced by the system. If any of the image files are very large, it is advisable to reduce their size before submission if possible: refer to the for guidelines on how to do this.
Source files intended for publication
Our requirements for files intended for publication are different from those for files that will be converted to PDF by the Bench>Press system as part of an initial submission, as set out below. If you are unsure whether your file formats are suitable, please contact the Editorial Office.
| Text |
The text (including tables, but without embedded figures) must be supplied as a word-processor file. Word files are preferred; please note that .docx files produced in Word 2007 can now be used as source files. TeX and LaTeX formats can not be used. Tables. Tables must not be supplied as image files (TIFF, PDF, PowerPoint); files containing tables prepared as images (whether provided separately or pasted into a Word file) will be returned to the author and this may delay publication. Tables should be prepared using your word-processor's table functions, with individual entries in individual table cells. They must not be supplied as tab- or space-separated text or as multiple entries separated by line breaks in single table cells. Tables prepared in Excel can be accepted but are not desirable. Equations. Equations that cannot be represented using the keyboard can be prepared using the Word equation editor (in versions up to Word 2003) or MathType. Word 2007 users should not use the default equation editor to prepare equations as it is not compatible with any other current software; equations in Word 2007 should be prepared using the MathType equation editor or the 'legacy' equation editor included as part of Word 2007 (i.e. the equation editor included with Word up to and including Word 2003, accessible from 'Insert Object' on the 'Insert' ribbon). |
| Line figures |
Line figures should be produced as vector rather than bitmap (raster) images. Acceptable formats are PDF, EPS, CorelDRAW (.cdr; version 11 or earlier), Adobe Illustrator (.ai), Excel (.xls), Word and PowerPoint. Fonts must be embedded for figures supplied as PDF or EPS. TIFF and other bitmap formats are not recommended for line figures; if their use cannot be avoided, the resolution should be at least 600 d.p.i. |
| Halftone figures (photographs) |
The preferred format for halftones (i.e. photographic images) is TIFF, but PDF, EPS and JPG/JPEG are also acceptable. If image files are pasted into Word, PowerPoint, Photoshop, etc., in order to add lettering or other annotation or to combine line and halftone images, the original unlabelled halftone images should also be supplied. A final print resolution of 300 d.p.i. or more is recommended; i.e. an image intended to fit in a single column of the journal should be around 1000 pixels wide and an image intended to fit across two columns should be around 2000 pixels wide. Colour images should use CMYK colour (which can be reproduced in print) rather than RGB (which cannot be reproduced faithfully using four-colour printing) (this setting can be accessed in Adobe Photoshop via Image:Mode:CMYK Color, for example). For some colour images, such as fluorescence micrographs, it may be useful to submit an RGB version of the image to be mounted online as supplementary material. |
| Scanning images |
If figures must be scanned, a resolution of 300 d.p.i. is usually sufficient for same-size reproduction of halftone (photographic) images without text, whereas 600 or 1200 d.p.i. should be used for figures containing lines and/or text. The scanned image should be cropped to remove as much white space as possible and supplied in TIFF format. |
| Supplementary material |
Files supplied as supplementary material should follow the appropriate guidelines given above. If supplementary files contain material that cannot be represented in print (sound, video, computer programs, etc.), please consult the Editorial Office for advice on suitable formats. |
Last modified: 1 March 2011
| HOME | HELP | FEEDBACK | SUBSCRIPTIONS | ARCHIVE | SEARCH |
| INT J SYST EVOL MICROBIOL | MICROBIOLOGY | J GEN VIROL |
| J MED MICROBIOL | ALL SGM JOURNALS | |