Manuscript Preparation and Organisation
Manuscripts should follow Molecular Plant style, be written in concise and grammatically correct English, and be presented in a manner and at a level that will be accessible to the broad readership of the journal, not specialists. The use of abbreviations and jargon should be avoided, and terms that are not widely known should be explained clearly at first use.
Consult a current issue of Molecular Plant for guidance on format, organization, and preparation of figures, legends, tables, and references. In general, there are no limits to the length of manuscripts published in Molecular Plant; however, the editors may request shortening of papers they deem unnecessarily long. Manuscripts should be prepared in Microsoft Word with 1.5 line spacing and in 12 point type; use symbol font for Greek characters to avoid inadvertent character substitutions. Please do not use Chinese, Japanese or Korean fonts. Figures should be prepared digitally (see below).
Formats accepted for the manuscript file are Word, WordPerfect, and PDF (Portable Document File). For Word processing files, Times, Times New Roman, Courier, Helvetica and Arial are the recommended fonts; for best quality conversions of special characters and symbols, use the Symbol font. Image and table file formats accepted are GIF, TIFF, EPS and JPEG. For tables, the system also accepts the most common word processing formats. Formats not supported include the following: Bitmap (.bmp), PICT (.pict), Excel (.xls), Photoshop (.psd), Canvas (.cnv), CorelDRAW (.cdr) and locked or encrypted PDFs. Multi-page PowerPoint files (.ppt) are not supported; one slide per file is acceptable.
Organize manuscripts in the following order: Title Page, Abstract, Introduction, Results, Discussion, Methods, Acknowledgments, Figure Legends, Tables, and References. Note that when submitting your manuscript the References must be placed at the end of your document file. Tables should be included as part of your manuscript file. Figures and regular Supplementary data (Supplementary text, figures and small tables) should be sent as separate files and not as part of the manuscript. See the sections on Figures and Supplementary Data below for more details.
Corresponding authors must declare if they or their co-authors have any conflicts of interest to declare, and to provide details of these by submitting a completed Conflict of Interest form to the Editorial Office. 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. It is the Corresponding author’s responsibility to ensure that all authors adhere to this policy.
If the manuscript is published, Conflict of Interest information will be communicated in a statement in the published paper. Please note that your submission must be accompanied by a Conflict of Interest form.
Title Page
The title page should include the authors' full names and affiliations, a running title of 50 characters or less (in addition to the full paper title), and the telephone and fax numbers and e-mail address of the corresponding author, who will be designated in the online submission system to be the primary contact with the journal office. Institutional affiliations should correspond to where the work was done, not where the author is at present.
Manuscript Title
The full manuscript title should be succinct (approximately 120 characters and informative. The title should include sufficient detail for indexing but be general enough to be clear to the broad readership of the journal. Toward that end, abbreviations and acronyms, including those for gene and protein names, should be avoided in titles or the general nature of the abbreviated entity should be clear. The journal encourages active titles over merely descriptive ones whenever possible. The title must mention the subject organism (or general group in the case of comparative works). Common names are allowed for major model systems (maize, rice, yeast); scientific names should be used for all organisms that have no widely accepted common name.
Abstract
The abstract should stand on its own with no reference to the text. It should contain approximately 200 words and must summarize the questions being addressed, the approach taken, the major findings, and the significance of the results. It should not contain discursive matter. The abstract should be concise, complete, and clearly communicate the importance of the work for a broad audience.
Introduction
The Introduction should provide the necessary background information for the average reader; it should be both complete and concise. Previous publications that form a basis for the work presented must be cited. Citation of reviews is not a substitute for citing primary research articles. Citation of recent research articles is not a substitute for citing original discoveries. An author's own work should not be cited preferentially over equally relevant work of others. Authors' previously published data that are presented along with new data must be identified clearly and cited appropriately; duplicate publication of data (including data previously published as supplementary material) is not allowed without citation.
Results and Discussion
The Results and Discussion can be subdivided if subheadings give the manuscript more clarity. The Discussion should not repeat the Results; instead, the Discussion should explore the implications of the Results, citing relevant published research, and should also be as concise as possible.
Conclusions
A Conclusions section is generally not permitted. Statements of priority or first finding are generally not permitted in Molecular Plant.
Methods
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 (e.g., DNA constructs, genetic stocks, enzyme preparations, and analytical software). Publication in Molecular Plant requires that authors make available all novel materials integral to the reported results for non-commercial research purposes (see Materials Distribution Policy [link 3]). A statement concerning the availability, or restrictions on availability, should be included in the Methods section of the paper; it will be up to referees to decide if any such restrictions are reasonable.
Large-scale experiments. In evaluating large-scale experiments such as transcript profiling, we will consider whether there is a clear and complete description of each experiment; whether biological and/or technical replicates should have been used; what statistical analysis has been performed. Large-scale data sets must be made available for review at the time of submission and must be deposited in an accepted format to a permanent public repository with open access (e.g., GEO http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov or Array-Express http://www.ebi.ac.uk/arrayexpress.
Quantification of molecules, including DNA, RNA, and proteins. Methods for quantification of levels or differences in levels of molecules in biological samples must be described fully and shown to be quantitative and reproducible, using true biological replicates. Any conclusion that levels differ between samples must be supported by presentation of methods and data shown to be reliable; supporting information demonstrating reliability of an assay may sometimes be provided as Supplementary Information rather than in the body of the manuscript, subject to the approval of the handling editor. Use of the term ‘semi-quantitative’ is not acceptable in Molecular Plant; instead, assays must be shown to be sufficiently quantitative to support a conclusion of changes in levels.
Molecular phylogenetic analyses. Methods used for sequence analysis must be reported in full with citations and software and parameter values (even if only default values were used) in a separate section of Methods entitled "Phylogenetic Analysis". Please note that CLUSTAL does not produce an acceptable phylogeny; use a true phylogenetic analysis program (e.g., PHYLIP, MEGA, MR. BAYES). Alignments used to produce phylogenies should be produced with an appropriate alignment program (e.g., CLUSTAL), then manually adjusted to optimize alignments. Alignments must be provided as a Supplementary Table or Figure (preferably as a .doc file). Statistical support for nodes in phylogenetic tree figures must be reported (e.g., posterior probabilities or bootstrap values from a minimum of 1000 trials). Authors are encouraged to consult with an expert in molecular phylogenetics if they do not have such expertise themselves.
Accession numbers. Novel nucleotide and amino acid sequences must be deposited in a public repository such as the GenBank database (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/). Accession numbers for genes must be specific for each gene; accession numbers for BAC clones or chromosomes are not acceptable substitutes. In the case of Arabidopsis, the AGI locus identifier ("At number") must be provided for each gene described (see http://www.arabidopsis.org). If a new function or mutation is found to be associated with a previously known DNA sequence (i.e., an existing GenBank entry), authors are encouraged to create a new GenBank entry in order to link the sequence and the gene symbol/function in the database. In the case of (partially or completely) sequenced vectors and constructs, accession numbers should be provided. All data necessary to validate protein structure determinations, including x-ray amplitudes and phases and the derived atomic coordinates, should be submitted to the Protein Data Bank (http://www.rcsb.org/pdb).
Accession numbers should be provided as the last paragraph of Methods (just before Acknowledgements) with the heading "Accession Numbers" for any genes or new sequence data discussed in the article. Insert the following statement and provide accession numbers: "Sequence data from this article can be found in the EMBL/GenBank data libraries under accession number(s) XX000000." In the case of Arabidopsis, the AGI locus identifier ("At number") must be provided for each gene described (see http://www.arabidopsis.org). If a list of accession numbers is provided in a table or figure, that can be stated in this section, rather than listing all of the numbers. Accession numbers must also be provided for any supplementary data that is placed in a permanent public repository (e.g., GEO http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/geo, Array-Express http://www.ebi.ac.uk/arrayexpress, or Protein Data Bank (http://www.rcsb.org/pdb)). If an accession number has not been assigned at the time of submission, please use Xs as placeholders to be updated later. In general, accession numbers should be provided only in the Methods, not elsewhere in the manuscript, unless needed for clarity.
Supplementary Data
We encourage authors to include all necessary data in the manuscript body. If large data sets are necessary and cannot be accommodated in the text body, supplementary data can be submitted according to the instructions for Supplementary Data Submission.
Figure legends
Figure legends should be concise and should not repeat information presented in the text. Figure numbers should be given in Arabic numerals and figure parts in upper case letters (eg 1A, 1B).
Include:
• all symbols and abbreviations that are used in the figure
• bar graph error bars and sample sizes
• scale, unless already indicated in the picture
Accession numbers should not be included in figure legends.
A separate typewritten, double-spaced list of legends of all figures must be supplied and included in the text file. Please be aware that figure legends are used by search engines for figure searc
References
You can download the current reference style for Molecular Plant from EndNote's website.
Cite references in the text by name and date of publication and not by number. List only articles that are published or in press. Cite in the text all unpublished results, including personal communications and submitted manuscripts (for example, R. Goldberg and K. Jofuku, unpublished results). A permission letter from each person cited as a personal communication will be required upon acceptance. Permission is also required from the authors of unpublished information cited in the text if those authors are different from the article's authors. Citations for web sites (other than for primary literature) should be handled parenthetically in the text and not included in the reference list. Authors should test all URLs and links.
It is expected that all cited publications have been read and determined to be appropriate by the authors, not merely identified by database searches. Reference to specific results should be to original research articles, not to more recent articles or reviews.
References should contain complete titles and inclusive page numbers. If you are citing an article that only exists as an online pre-issue version, use the ‘doi’ (unique identifying number) and publication date, as follows:
Author, A.B., and Author, B.B. (2007). Title of article. Molecular Plant Advance Access published March 5, 2003, doi:10.1093/mplant/msg013
The ‘doi’ is the long number typically given at the end of the reference in the online contents.
Authors are expected to proofread every citation in their reference list against the PDF or photocopy of the cited work so that the reference list is accurate with respect to spellings, symbols, italics, subscripts/superscripts, and accents.
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