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Types of Papers Published
Research papers: The main activity of the Journal in fulfilling its mission is the publication of original and innovative research papers of a high scientific standard. These papers should: (a) report a specific identifiable advance in knowledge that has not been published elsewhere; (b) claim no more than can be substantiated by the results; (c) be logically consistent both within themselves and within the existing body of knowledge; (d) give enough information to allow the research to be tested and repeated by competent researchers elsewhere; and (e) give due reference to previously published work relevant to the research described.
Rapid communications: These are intended as vehicles for conveying news of advances in cereal science, the scientific importance of which merits preferential treatment. Scientific importance and novelty of the information will be the key criteria in judging their accepability.
Research notes: These are intended as a means of publishing the results of studies of limited size that do not merit high-priority treatment.
Mini-reviews: These should present critical appraisals of the current status and future directions of specific areas of topical interest. They are not intended as exhaustive, archival literature surveys over a broad front. They should aim to give balanced, objective assessments by giving due reference to relevant published work and not merely represent the prejudices of individual authors or summarise only work carried out by the authors or by those with whom the authors agree. They should also avoid undue speculation.
Review System
Papers are peer-reviewed by independent reviewers with appropriate expertise in the subject area of the paper. The review process is anonymous, although the reviewers' recommendations and comments are usually transmitted to the authors to help them in revising their manuscripts (which is almost invariably required). The Editors and reviewers attempt to make the review system as constructive and sympathetic as possible, although they must, at the same time, attempt to ensure that only papers of a high standard are published. Many contributors acknowledge the help they receive from the review process in improving their papers. No revision of Rapid Communications will be allowed in order to ensure rapid publication.
As well as advising on the paper's acceptability, the reviewers are also asked to give a priority rating, which will help to give the highest priority to papers that represent important new advances. Papers recommended for publication will be categorised as: (a) being of outstanding scientific standard and representingan important advance in the particular subject area; (b) being of high scientific standard but representing a logical or predictable extension of previous research; (c) presenting necessary information and of good scientific standard but being essentially confirmatory in nature.
Please note: authors may suggest the name of appropriate reviewers for their papers or may identify individual reviewers whom they would prefer not to review the manuscript; provided that valid reasons are given in the latter case the Editors will respect the author's wishes.
Originality of Research
Submission of a paper for consideration for publication in the Journal of Cereal Science will be held to imply that the material represents the results of original research or of an original interpretation of existing knowledge not previously published, that it is not under consideration for publication elsewhere, and that, if accepted for publication in the Journal of Cereal Science, it will not be published elsewhere in the same form, in English or any other language without the consent of the Editorial Board and the Publisher.
Re-Submission of Revised Manuscripts
If a manuscript returned to the author for revision is not resubmitted within 6 weeks (making due allowance for postage times), it may on re-submission be deemed a new paper and the date of receipt altered accordingly.
SUBMISSION OF MANUSCRIPTS
Manuscripts should be submitted to:
Journal of Cereal Science
c/o Academic Press Editorial Office
Block A2
Westbrook Centre
Milton Road
Cambridge CB4 1YG, U.K.
Preparation of Manuscripts
The standard of preparation of the manuscript determines to a considerable extent the speed of processing and publication. Authors are advised in their own interests to read these notes carefully and to ensure that their manuscript meets the requirements; they are also urged to ensure that the manuscript does not contain superfluous material.
Manuscripts should meet the obvious criteria of relevance, originality and scientific validity. Two other important attributes should also be considered: first, papers should be intelligible to an international readership, many of whom may not be experts in particular specialist fields with their attendant assumptions and jargon. Second, papers should contain adequate and concise information to enable a competent research worker to reproduce the work. Authors are urged to read their own manuscripts objectively and with the same critical approach that they would employ in reading the work of others.
All types of paper should be typed on standard-sized (preferably A4) paper on one side of the paper only, triple-spaced with two wide margins (at least 3 cm all round). Pages should be numbered. Five copies of the manuscripts should be submitted. The first page should contain: the Title indicating the subject matter as briefly as possible and, in any case, in not more than 250 characters, including spaces; names of authors; address(es) of the laboratory(ies) where the work was done; full postal address for correspondence; a running headline (max. 40 characters and spaces); a list of all abbreviations used; current addresses of authors, if different from above. The texts of different types of paper will differ and guidelines for each are set out below.
Key Word Index. To assist in the preparation of a key word index, authors should provide a list of up to four key words on the title page of the manuscript.
Research Papers. An ideal paper would probably contain a maximum of 6000 words of text (approx. 4-5 printed pages), no more than six tables or figures and up to 30 references. The second page of the manuscript should contain the Abstract only. The text should then follow the sequence: Introduction, Experimental, Results, Discussion, Acknowledgements, References, Tables, Figure Captions and, finally, Figures. Please number the pages.
The Abstract should be clear and concise with a maximum of 200 words.
The Introduction should be brief and contain sufficient information to provide the background to the research reported in the paper, but should not present a complete historical review. The objectives of the work (but not the results or conclusions) should be stated clearly at the end of this section.
The Experimental section should contain sufficient information on material and methods to enable a competent worker to repeat the work. Details of methods published in commonly-available journals need not be given at length; instead, appropriate references should be quoted and a brief summary of the method given.
The Results section should present concisely the experiments done and the results obtained. Discussion of the results should not appear in this section.
The Discussion section should interpret the findings in the context of current knowledge but should not reiterate material in the Results section. Authors should be careful to distinguish between interpretation and speculation and should avoid the latter.
For conciseness and clarity, it may be convenient to combine the Results and Discussions section, in which case a brief concluding paragraph would be necessary.
Acknowledgements should be brief.
The References should be checked carefully before submission. Responsibility for the accuracy of bibliographic citations lies entirely with the authors.
Text: All citations in the text should refer to:
1. Single author: the author's name (without initials, unless there is ambiguity) and the year of publication;
2. Two authors: both authors' names and the year of publication;
3. Three or more authors: first author's name followed by 'et al.' and the year of publication. Citations may be made directly (or parenthetically). Groups of references should be listed first alphabetically, then chronologically.
Examples: "as demonstrated (Allan, 1996a, 1996b, 1999; Allan and Jones, 1995). Kramer et al. (2000) have recently shown ...."
List: References should be arranged first alphabetically and then further sorted chronologically if necessary. More than one reference from the same author(s) in the same year must be identified by the letters "a", "b", "c", etc., placed after the year of publication.
Examples:
Reference to a journal publication:
Van der Geer, J., Hanraads, J.A.J., Lupton, R.A., 2000. The art of writing a scientific article. J. Sci. Commun. 163, 51-59.
Reference to a book:
Strunk Jr., W., White, E.B., 1979. The Elements of Style, third ed. Macmillan, New York.
Reference to a chapter in an edited book:
Mettam, G.R., Adams, L.B., 1999. How to prepare an electronic version of your article, in: Jones, B.S., Smith , R.Z. (Eds.), Introduction to the Electronic Age. E-Publishing Inc., New York, pp. 281-304.
It is important that the references cited should be accessible to the general reader. References to unpublished materials should not appear in the reference list. References to papers `in press'or in obscure sources should also be avoided, as should references to proceedings of conferences/conference abstracts available only to the conference attendees. References to papers in private publications, e.g. a report appearing in a publication directed to the membership of a private research organisation, must not be used.
Preparation of supplementary data. Elsevier now accepts electronic supplementary material to support and enhance your scientific research. Supplementary files offer the author additional possibilities to publish supporting applications, movies, animation sequences, high-resolution images, background datasets, sound clips and more. Supplementary files supplied will be published online alongside the electronic version of your article in Elsevier web products, including ScienceDirect: http://www.sciencedirect.com. In order to ensure that your submitted material is directly usable, please ensure that data is provided in one of our recommended file formats. Authors should submit the material in electronic format together with the article and supply a concise and descriptive caption for each file. For more detailed instructions please visit our Author Gateway at http://authors.elsevier.com.
Files can be stored on 3? inch diskette, ZIP-disk or CD (either MS-DOS or Macintosh).
Tables
Tables should be indicated with Roman numerals. Titles should be brief but unambiguous. Any explanatory material should be itemised in footnotes and indicated with symbols or superscript, lower case letters (a,b,c). Standard abbreviations and units should be used wherever possible. Experimental values should be qualified by indications of statistical significance (standard deviation, standard error of the mean, number of determinations, P-value, etc.) or range. Each table should occupy a separate sheet at the end of the manuscript.
Figures
Figures should be indicated with Arabic numerals. Line drawings should be drawn in India ink on white drawing paper, tracing paper or tracing linen, or using a computer graphics program that can provide figures of appropriate quality and preferably printed using a laser printer. There is no need to apply lettering or numbering to a line drawing; it is preferable for lettering to be pencilled onto a transparent, or a tracing paper overlay in case editorial changes are required. All drawings should be marked clearly on the reverse side with the author's name(s) and the figure number, and the top of the figure should also be indicated on the reverse side. For photographs, good-quality, well-contrasted black and white prints on glossy paper should be submitted. Three photographic prints of each half-tone figure should be submitted; photocopies are not acceptable.
Colour Prints
Colour prints may be accepted for publication exceptionally. A small page budget will be available for free colour reproduction. This will be used at the discretion of the Editors only in cases where colour reproduction is deemed essential. The Editors'decision on this matter will be final. Any other colour reproduction required by contributors will be at their ownexpense, and authors should discuss their requirements with the Editors before submitting such material. Figure captions should be typed on a separate sheet.
Nomenclature
Abbreviations and symbols should, wherever possible, follow the recommendations of IUBMB nomenclature committee's `Biochemical Nomenclature and Related Documents', 2ndedn., Portland Press, London, 1992. Non-standard abbreviations should be kept to a minimum. The words to be abbreviated should be spelled out in full on the first citation and the abbreviation given in parentheses. All abbreviations used should be listed and their meanings given on the title page. Enzyme nomenclature, 6th edn., Academic Press, Orlando, 1992 (relevant EC members should be given).
The International System of units (SI) should be followed (see`Quantities, Units and Symbols in Physical Chemistry', Blackwell Scientific Publications, Oxford, 1988). Non-standard, but conventional, units may be accepted if unambiguous and where there is no SI unit.
Critical Reviews
The layout for critical reviews is flexible, and will be dictated to a large extent by the points that the author is attempting to discuss. An Abstract should be included, however, and the background should be contained in an Introduction. Details on citation and listing of references, preparation of figures and tables, abbreviations and units, etc., are as for conventional research papers.
Rapid Communications and Research Notes
The format for these papers is flexible. No Abstract is required, and there is no specification as to number of tables, figures or references. The paper should not be split into sections, although it should begin with a few sentences to introduce the subject area and to indicate the nature of the problem being examined. Likewise, at the end of the paper the conclusions drawn from the work should be summarised.
Rapid Communications and Research Notes will be strictly limited to two printed pages in the journal (equivalent of approx. 2000 words) in total, i.e. including title, references, tables and figures, etc. Where figures or tables are used, the number of words must be reduced to compensate for these, giving due regard to the size of such tables and figures. Other details on preparation are as for conventional research papers.
For Rapid Communications, authors are required to justify in a covering letter why the paper should be accorded priority treatment.
Language
The language of the Journal is English (Concise Oxford Dictionary, Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary). To expedite publication and to avoid ambiguities and errors, authors, whose first language is not English, are strongly advised to have their manuscript checked by an English-speaking colleague who is knowledgeable about written English and English grammar. Contributors from North, Central and South America may use American spellings if they so wish. Authors from all other countries should use English spellings. For the latter, `s' spellings are preferred in words such as `summarise', `hydridise'. Care should be taken over the use of - and a- as prefixes for carbohydrates. Greek letters a- and - should be used only for enzymes that have specificity for glycosidic linkages with particular configuration at the anomeric carbon atom, e.g. a-glucanases, a- and ?-glucosidases. In the particular case of alpha- and beta-amylases, both enzymes are specific for the (1n4)-a-linkage between glucose residues instarch polymers (and glycogen) and in this case `alpha' and`beta' should be spelled out in full in italics.
Notices of Scientific Conferences
The Journal will consider publishing notices of scientific conferences and other meetings of relevance to cereal science. Such notices will be strictly limited to one printed page, and organisers are advised to contact the Editor in Chief to indicate their requirements.
Proofs, Reprints and Copyright
Proofs of accepted articles will be sent to authors for the correction of printer's errors; authors' alterations may be charged. Submission of a manuscript to one of the Editors will be held to imply that it has not been published previously, that it is submitted with the full knowledge and approval of all the authors and the institution(s) concerned, and that it is not under consideration for publication elsewhere in the same form in any language without the written consent of the Publisher, to whom exclusive copyright in the paper will be assigned. In consideration of the assignment of copyright, 25 reprints of each paper will be supplied free of charge. Further reprints may be ordered at extra cost; the copyright assignment form and the reprint order form will be sent with the proofs. The Publisher will not put any limitation on the personal freedom of the author to use material contained in the paper in other works.
Please note: Papers published in the Journal of Cereal Science do not incur page charges or any manuscript processing fee. In addition, 25 reprints of papers published in the journal are supplied free of charge.
Manuscripts on Disk
When supplying your final accepted manuscript please include, where possible, a disk on PC- compatible or Apple Macintosh computers, along with the hard copy print-outs. 51/4" or 31/2"sized disks and most word-processing packages are acceptable, although any version of WordPerfect or Microsoft Word are preferred.
PLEASE FOLLOW THESE GUIDELINES CAREFULLY:
- Include an ASCII version on the disk, together with the word-processed version if possible.
- Ensure that the files are not saved as read-only.
- Manuscripts prepared on disks must be accompanied by three hardcopies, printed with triple spacing, and including all figures. These may be used if setting from the disk proves impracticable.
- Ensure the the final version of the hard copy and the file on disk are the same. It is the authors' responsibility to ensure complete compatibility. If there are differences the hard copy will be used.
- The directives for preparing the paper in the style of thejournal as set out in the Notes for Contributors must befollowed.
- The operating system and the word-processing software used to produce the article should be noted on the disk (e.g. DOS/WordPerfect), as well as all file names. If UNIX, method of extraction should also be noted.
- The disk/tape should be labelled with the journal reference number (if known), author name(s), hardware and software used to generate the disk file.
- Do not include copyright material, e.g. word- processing, software or operating system files, on the disk because this can create difficulties with Customs clearance.
- Package floppy disks in such a way as to avoid damage in the post.
ADDITIONAL POINTS TO NOTE:
- Use two carriage returns to end headings and paragraphs.
- Type text without end-of-line hyphenation, except for compoundwords.
- Do not use lower case l (el) for 1(one) or O (capital) for 0 (zero). (They have different typesetting values.)
- Tables, figure legends, and footnotes should be saved at the end of the text or preferably in a separate file from the main text of the manuscript. However, please ensure that clear hard copies are supplied as they will almost certainly be typeset from these.
- Be consistent with punctuation and only insert a single space between words and after punctuation.
Copyright Notice
Authors submitting a manuscript do so on the understanding that if it is accepted for publication, copyright in the article, including the right to reproduce the article in all forms and media, shall be assigned exclusively to the publisher. The Copyright Transfer Agreement, which made be copied from the back of the journal or found on the journal home page, should be signed by the appropriate person(s) and should accompany the original submission of a manuscript to this journal. The transfer of copyright does not take effect until the manuscript is accepted for publication.
Illustrations Submitted on Disk
Authors' illustrations should also, where possible, be supplied as both hard copy and electronic files. Figures drawn using Aldus Freehand (Apple Macintosh) and saved as Encapsulated Post Script (EPS) are preferred and should be supplied on a separate disk.
Regardless of the application used, when your electronic artwork is finalised, please "save as" or convert the images to one of the following formats (Note the resolution requirements for line drawings, halftones, and line/halftone combinations given below.):
EPS: Vector drawings. Embed the font or save the text as "graphics". TIFF: Colour or greyscale photographs (halftones): always use a minimum of 300 dpi. For colour images always use RGB. TIFF: Bitmapped line drawings: use a minimum of 1000 dpi. TIFF: Combinations bitmapped line/half-tone (colour or greyscale): a minimum of 500 dpi is required. DOC, XLS or PPT: If your electronic artwork is created in any of these Microsoft Office applications please supply "as is".
Please do not:
- Supply embedded graphics in your wordprocessor (spreadsheet, presentation) document;
- Supply files that are optimised for screen use (like GIF, BMP, PICT, WPG); the resolution is too low;
- Supply files that are too low in resolution; Submit graphics that are disproportionately large for the content.
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