Guide for authors

Welcome to the website for all electronic manuscript submissions to The EMBO Journal.

• About The EMBO Journal
• Aims and Scope
• Prior to submission
  • Availability of published material
  • Author notification and contribution
  • Conflicts of Interest
  • Use of living organisms
  • Electronic manipulation of images
  • Scientific integrity
  • Submission to public databases
  • Supplementary information for the editors and the reviewers
• Submission
  • General format
  • Title Page
  • Abstract
  • Introduction
  • Results and Discussion
  • Materials and methods
  • Acknowledgements
  • References
  • Figure legends
  • Figures
  • Tables
  • Supplementary Information
  • Conventions
  • Abbreviations
• How to Submit
  • Electronic Submissions
• Revision
  • Format of text
  • Saving files with Microsoft Office 2007
  • Illustrations
  • Free colour on the web
  • Supplementary information
  • Submission to public databases
  • • Sequence data
    • Structural data
    • Microarray data
• Publication
  • Speed of publication
  • Proofs
  • Supplementary transcript of the editorial process
  • Charges
  • • EMBO Open Charges
  • Author licence agreement
  • Offprints
  • Digital object identifier
  • Adobe Acrobat
• Getting help
  • Manuscript status
  • Business matters

The EMBO Journal is an international print and online publication dedicated to providing full-length, rapidly published papers in all areas of molecular biology. The Journal is owned and run by the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) and is editorially independent of its publisher.

For papers submitted from January 2009 onwards, The EMBO Journal will make the editorial process transparent for all accepted manuscripts, by publishing as an online supplementary document all correspondence between authors and the editorial office relevant to the decision process. This will by default include all referee comments directed to the authors, as well as the authors' point-by-point responses. Internal communications and informal consultations between editors, editorial advisors or referees, as well as confidential comments of the reviewers will remain excluded from these policies. Likewise, referee anonymity will be strictly maintained. Authors who are, for specific reasons or as a matter of principle, not comfortable with these disclosures will have the possibility to opt out of the transparent process at any stage prior to publication.

Authors of accepted peer-reviewed original articles may choose to pay a fee in order for their published article to be made freely accessible to all immediately upon publication. For further information, please see the EMBO Open FAQs and also visit the section on Charges below.

The EMBO Journal publishes full-length papers describing original research of general rather than specialist interest in molecular biology. The journal encourages submission of articles in the areas of development, immunology, neuroscience, plant biology, structural biology, genomic & computational biology, genome stability & dynamics, chromatin & transcription, RNA, proteins, cellular metabolism, signal transduction, cell cycle, differentiation & death, membranes & transport, cell & tissue architecture, microbiology & pathogens, and molecular biology of disease. The Editors select those manuscripts that merit urgent publication because they report novel findings of wide biological significance. This policy applies in particular to reports that are preliminary or describe, for example, new tools or methods. Papers should be intelligible to as wide an audience as possible; particular attention should be paid to the Abstract, Introduction and Discussion sections, which should clearly draw attention to the novelty and significance of the data reported. Broad citation of primary literature highly relevant to the presented work is strongly encouraged in this context. Submission of a paper implies that it reports unpublished work and that neither itself, nor parts of it, have been published or are under consideration for publication elsewhere. The EMBO Journal reserves the right not to publish material that has already been pre-published (either in electronic or other media). By submitting a manuscript to The EMBO Journal, the authors guarantee that they have the appropriate authority from their employers and/or funding agencies to publish the work. For further information on the journal and the editorial process, please refer to this earlier editorial. Rørth P (2005) Authors, reviewers and editors at The EMBO Journal. EMBO J 24: 3831-3833

To avoid unnecessary delays in the review process, please consider the following policies carefully before you submit your manuscript.

Availability of published material

It is understood that by publishing a paper in The EMBO Journal the authors agree to make freely available to colleagues in academic research any of the organisms, viruses, cells, nucleic acids, antibodies, and other reagents that were used in the research reported and that are not available from commercial suppliers.

Author notification and contribution

Submission of a paper implies that all authors have seen and approved of the manuscripts and its contents, and that they are aware of the responsibilities connected to authorship. The nature of each author's contribution should be specified both in the manuscript submission system and ideally also in the acknowledgment section of the manuscript.

Conflicts of Interest

In the interests of transparency and to help reviewers assess any potential bias, The EMBO Journal requires authors of original research papers to declare any competing commercial interests in relation to the submitted work. Referees are also asked to indicate any potential conflict they might have reviewing a particular paper. Please refer to the Guide for Referees.

Use of living organisms

For primary research manuscripts in the EMBO journals reporting experiments on live vertebrates and/or higher invertebrates, the corresponding author must confirm that all experiments were performed in accordance with relevant guidelines and regulations. The manuscript must include in the Supplementary Information (methods) section (or, if brief, within the print/online article at an appropriate place), a statement identifying the institutional and/or licensing committee approving the experiments, including any relevant details. For experiments involving human subjects, authors must identify the committee approving the experiments, and include with their submission a statement confirming that informed consent was obtained from all subjects.

Electronic manipulation of images

Digital image enhancement is acceptable practice, although it can result in the presentation of quite unrepresentative data as well as in the loss of meaningful signals. During manipulation of images a positive relationship between the original data and the resulting electronic image must be maintained. If a figure has been subjected to significant electronic manipulation, the specific nature of the enhancements must be noted in the figure legend or in the 'Materials and methods' section. The Editors reserve the right to request original versions of figures and the original images that were used to assemble the figure from the authors of a paper under consideration. The following publication is a good reference for acceptable practices: Rossner M, Yamada KM (2004) What's in a picture? The temptation of image manipulation. J Cell Biol 166: 11-15 (View on PubMed at http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?tool=pubmed&pubmedid=15240566)

Scientific integrity

The editorial staff of The EMBO Journal is strongly committed to maintaining high standards of integrity of the published scientific record. The journal requests that authors take note of and adhere to guidelines established by the US Department of Health and Human Services Office of Research Integrity (http://ori.dhhs.gov). The journal will investigate suspected instances of scientific fraud, inappropriate graphics manipulation, plagiarism, duplicate publication and other cases that violate research ethics. Depending on the outcome of these investigations, the journal may opt to publish errata or corrigenda, or, in cases of serious scientific misconduct, either to ask authors to retract their paper, or to impose retraction on them.

Submission to public databases

The EMBO Journal will only review and publish manuscripts if the authors agree to make all data that cannot be published in the journal itself (e.g. novel nucleotide sequences, structural data, or data from large-scale gene expression experiments) freely available in one of the public databases (see Submission to public databases below). Accession codes must be provided at the time a revised manuscript is returned to the Editorial Office. To avoid delays in publication of the manuscript, we encourage authors to deposit relevant data in public databases prior to submission. The authors may request that the data be stored in a confidential section of the database, in which they can request passwords from the database administrators, and these should be passed on to the Editorial Office to allow the editors and referees to anonymously access the information during the review process.

Supplementary information for the editors and the reviewers

Any manuscripts under consideration, review, revision or accepted for publication elsewhere should accompany the submission if they are relevant to its scientific assessment. Authors should also provide upon submission any kind of supplementary material that will aid the review process, including data that would otherwise be referenced as 'data not shown'.

The Editors reserve the right to return manuscripts that are not in accordance with the following instructions.

Manuscripts must be written in clear and concise English and be intelligible to a broad readership.

Authors may include the names of potential reviewers expected to give an unbiased and informed assessment, and may also request the exclusion of a limited number of individuals for reasons of potential conflicts of interest. Papers are generally reviewed by three appropriate referees selected by the Editors and based on their arguments and recommendations, the decision concerning publication, revision or rejection is taken. Papers may, however, be returned to authors without review if in the judgement of the Editors and the Editorial Board, they fail to meet the criteria of wide biological significance and novelty, or if they are considered too preliminary.

We will acknowledge receipt of a submitted manuscript by e-mail as soon as an Editor has been assigned to the paper. All further correspondence will also be by e-mail.

Presubmission inquiries are not encouraged: this is because it is often difficult to judge a paper based on limited information in the abstract and cover letter and without seeing the relevant data. Instead, we consider electronic submissions of full manuscripts. Submission of the full manuscript allows us to make an informed decision on the manuscript and to give authors a rapid decision in case we feel the manuscript is not appropriate for the journal (within a week), or otherwise proceed with the review of the manuscript.

General format

From January 2009, references listed in the bibliography are no longer included in the total character count, so as to allow authors to broadly cite all relevant background literature in the form of primary citations. Therefore, the total character count limit of 55,000 including spaces for the entire manuscript now includes title page, abstract and figure legends but excludes references, tables and supplementary material (the exact character count to be printed on the title page). Manuscripts exceeding this limit at submission may be returned to the authors for amendment. Please consider including a Supplementary information section (see below) if your manuscript exceeds the above limitations.

To accommodate extended reference lists, excess page charges for manuscripts published from January 2009 on will apply only to the body of a published article, not to the reference list. The upper page limit without charge is therefore six pages excluding the space devoted to references. For details and costs please refer to Charges below. Please bear in mind the total page number when preparing figures and tables.

Please use 'Times' font at 10 or 12 point size for all text pages, 'Symbol' font for non-Latin characters, and 'Arial or Sans-serif' font for lettering on figures. 'Courier' font may be used for sequence data. Line spacing should at least be 1.5 but ideally double spaced throughout. Number each page at the bottom to aid the review process (Title page is 1).

Manuscripts should be divided into the following sections:

• Title page
• Abstract
• Introduction
• Results
• Discussion
• Materials and methods
• Acknowledgements
• Figure legends
• References
• Figures
• Tables
• Supplementary information

Title page

The title should be short and informative, and should not contain any abbreviations. The total length of the title should not exceed 100 characters (including spaces). Serial titles are not accepted.

The full name of each author should be given. Numbers in superscript should be used to indicate the department, institution, city with postal code and country, for each author. Any changes of address may also be given in numbered footnotes. It is possible to name more than one author as the correspondent of a published article at the time of submission, however, it is important to indicate only a single author to whom all correspondence is to be addressed, together with an e-mail address, telephone and fax numbers.

The title page must also state the precise character count (see above) of the manuscript.

Please provide a running title of no more than 50 characters including spaces.

Up to five keywords, which may or may not appear in the title, should be given in alphabetical order, below the abstract, each separated by a slash (/).

Subject Categories are used to structure the current and archived online content of The EMBO Journal, and to help readers interested in particular areas of molecular biology find relevant information more easily. Subject Categories are also indicated in the table of contents and on the title page of the published article.

Authors should suggest appropriate Subject Categories for the submitted manuscript. One or two categories may be selected from the following list:

Subject Category	Scope
Cell & Tissue Architecture	cytoskeleton, extracellular matrix, cell polarity, migration and adhesion
Cell Cycle	mechanisms regulating the division cycle of eukaryotic and prokaryotic cells
Cellular Metabolism	bioenergetics, anabolic/catabolic processes studied at the molecular level
Chromatin & Transcription	nuclear and chromosomal architecture, epigenetics, transcription and its regulation
Development	mechanisms of developmental processes, investigated at a molecular level
Differentiation & Death	molecular studies on cellular differentiation processes and cell death
Genome Stability & Dynamics	processes involved in repair, recombination and replication of genomes
Genomic & Computational Biology	large-scale analysis of genomes and their expression, modelling of biological processes at all levels of molecular organization
Immunology	molecular mechanisms underlying innate and adaptive immunity in all organisms
Membranes & Transport	structure and function of cellular membranes and compartments, trafficking and transport of (macro)molecules
Microbiology & Pathogens	molecular biology of viruses, bacteria, and unicellular or multicellular pathogens
Molecular Biology of Disease	molecular mechanisms underlying human or other diseases, cancer
Neuroscience	molecular aspects of differentiation, (patho)physiology and (dys)function of the nervous system
Plant Biology	molecular studies focusing on unicellular and multicellular autotrophic organisms
Proteins	translation, protein folding, post-translational modification and degradation of proteins
RNA	splicing, modification, folding, stability and catalytic activity of RNA
Signal Transduction	mechanisms involved in sending, receiving and integrating biological signals
Structural Biology	multi-dimensional structures and dynamics of biological macromolecules

Abstract

This should be a single paragraph not exceeding 175 words. The Abstract should be comprehensible to readers before they have read the paper, and abbreviations should be avoided. Reference citations within the abstract are not permitted.

Introduction

The Introduction should be succinct and without subheadings. It should not attempt to provide a comprehensive review of the specific field. It should however clearly lay out the necessary background information, including broad citation of the relevant primary literature.

Results and Discussion

These sections should each be divided by subheadings and may be combined into one section if appropriate.

Materials and methods

This section should contain sufficient detail so that all experimental procedures can be repeated by others, in conjunction with cited references. The EMBO Journal encourages further detailed descriptions of methodology or additional materials to be included as Supplementary Information. This additional information should, however, not be of immediate importance for the understanding of the manuscript, and it is not permissible to move the entire "Materials and methods" section into the online supplement.

Acknowledgements

These should be placed at the end of the text and not in footnotes. Personal acknowledgements should precede those of institutions or agencies. We also encourage that individual contributions of each author be specified in this section.

References

Authors are responsible for the accuracy of the references. Review articles should only be cited for general background information, the proposal of certain concepts, or similar purposes, whereas primary research articles should be preferentially be referenced to introduce the question being addressed or to support the conclusions and interpretations of the results. Published articles as well as those in press (for the latter please state the name of the journal and enclose a copy of the manuscript for reviewing purposes) may be included. In the text of the manuscript, a reference should be cited by author and year of publication; no more than two authors may be cited per reference; 'et al' should be used if there are more than two authors (Ferrier & Lunkes, 2003; Wiersdorff et al, 2000). In the reference list, citations should be listed in alphabetical order and then chronologically, with the authors' surnames and initials inverted; et al should not be used unless there are more than 20 authors. Publications by the same author(s) in the same year should be identified with a, b, c after the year of publication. The name of each journal should be abbreviated according to Index Medicus and italicized. References should therefore be listed (and will subsequently appear in print) as follows:

Akhmedkhanov A, Toniolo P, Zeleniuch-Jacquotte A, Koenig KL, Shore RE (2002) Aspirin and lung cancer in women. Br J Cancer 87: 49-53

Wendland J (2003) Analysis of the landmark protein Bud3 of Ashbya gossypii reveals a novel role in septum construction. EMBO rep 4: 200-204

a) Example of book chapter:

Price SR, Oubridge C, Varani G, Nagai K (1998) Preparation of RNA–protein complexes for X–ray crystallography and NMR. In RNA–Protein Interaction: Practical Approach, Smith C (ed) pp 37–74. Oxford: Oxford University Press

b) Example of book:

Sambrook J, Fritsch E & Maniatis T (1989) Molecular Cloning: A Laboratory Manual. Cold Spring Harbour Press, Cold Spring Harbour, New York, USA

Citations to articles in press or only published online at the time of submission should be made as follows:

c) Example of article in press without doi:

Lim E-K, Ashford DA, Hou B, Jackson RG, Bowles DJ (2004) Arabidopsis glycosyltransferases as biocatalysts in fermentation for regioselective synthesis of diverse quercetin glucosides. Biotech Bioeng, (in press)

d) Example of article in press with doi:

Eng-Kiat Lim and Dianna J Bowles, A class of plant glycosyltransferases involved in cellular homeostasis, The EMBO Journal advance online publication 8 July 2004; doi: 10.1038/sj.emboj.7600295

Personal communications (J Doe, personal communication, 2001) should be authorized in writing by those involved, and unpublished data should be cited as (J Smith and D Jones, unpublished data, 2001). References to manuscripts in preparation or submitted, but not yet accepted, should be cited in the text as (C Lee and N Jones, in preparation), not as (C Lee and N Jones, submitted), and should not be included in the list of references. Like manuscripts in press, copies of such manuscripts should be enclosed for reviewing purposes where relevant.

Websites should be only cited in the text or as reference if they are likely to be available long-term. URLs to individual documents should be shortened whenever possible. If the document can be easily found using the website's search engine, only the URL to the homepage should be given.

Figure Legends

All symbols and abbreviations used in the figure must be defined, unless they are common abbreviations or have already been defined in the text. Experimental details should, where possible, be given in the Materials and Methods section, and not repeated in the figure legends.

Figures

Figures should be labeled in consecutive Arabic numerals (1, 2, 3,). The final size of figures will be between 82 mm and 172 mm wide on the printed page. Please bear this in mind when submitting your manuscript for review and allow for sufficient resolution at a suitable size.

Figures divided into parts should be labeled with an upper-case, bold letter (A, B, C,). Figures with several parts should also be in proportion, with consistently sized lettering so that the whole figure can be reduced by the same amount to the smallest size at which the essential details are visible. Use Courier font for sequence data and Symbol font for any symbols.

Scale bars, rather than magnification factors, should be used, with the length of the bar defined in the legend rather than on the bar itself. In general, visual cues on the figure itself are preferred rather than verbal explanations (for example, 'broken line' or 'filled black triangles') in the legend.

Detailed instructions for the preparation of electronic figures are provided below.

Tables

Tables should be typed on separate sheets and numbered consecutively with Roman numerals (I, II, III, IV,). Tables should be self-explanatory and include a brief descriptive title. Footnotes to tables indicated by lower-case superscript letters are acceptable, but they should not include extensive experimental detail.

Supplementary information

Authors should ensure that supplementary information is supplied in its FINAL format because it is not subedited and will appear online exactly as originally submitted. It cannot be altered, nor new supplementary information added, after the paper has been accepted for publication.

Supplementary information is peer-reviewed material directly relevant to the conclusions of an article that cannot be included in the printed version owing to space or format constraints. It is posted on the journal's web site and linked to the article when the article is published and may consist of additional text, figures, movies or extensive tables. We encourage that all supporting material otherwise referenced as 'data not shown' be included in this section.

You may also use this option to supply, for online publication, colour versions of individual figures that are to appear in black-and-white in print. In this case, please include the text "A full-colour version of this figure is available at The EMBO Journal Online" at the end of the respective printed figure legend.

The printed article must be complete and self-explanatory without the supplementary information. Supplementary information should enhance, but not be essential to, a reader's understanding of the paper. While The EMBO Journal encourages authors to supply additional, extensive descriptions of the materials and methods used in a study as supplementary information, it is not permissible to move the entire "Materials and methods" section (or any other section of the manuscript) into the online supplement.

Supplementary information must be supplied to the Editorial Office in its final form for peer review. Supplementary information is not subedited, so authors should ensure that it is supplied ready for publication online. Please see below for acceptable file formats and sizes (file formats and sizes).

Supplementary data describing the results of microarray studies or similar large-scale expression experiments should be deposited with one of the public databases (ArrayExpress (www.ebi.ac.uk/microarray-as/ae/) or GEO (www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/geo/) prior to submission of the paper. To avoid delays in publication of the manuscript, we encourage authors to deposit relevant data in public databases prior to submission. The authors may request that the data be stored in a confidential section of the database, in which they can request passwords from the database administrators, and these should be passed on to the Editorial Office to allow the editors and referees to anonymously access the information during the review process. Alternatively, if they have not received passwords from the database administrators yet at the time of submission, authors may submit the data in a MIAME format on CD-ROMs in a form accessible on different computer systems, or e-mail or upload a file archive.

Conventions

In general, the journal follows conventions given in Scientific Style and Format: The CBE Manual for Authors, Editors and Publishers (1994) Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 6th edn. Please follow Chemical Abstracts and its indexes for chemical names. For guidance in the use of biochemical terminology follow the recommendations issued by the IUPAC-IUBMB Joint Commission on Biochemical Nomenclature. In general, genotypes should be indicated in italics; phenotypes should not be italicized.

Abbreviations

Try to restrict the use of abbreviations to SI symbols and those recommended by the IUPAC. Abbreviations should be defined in brackets after their first mention in the text, not in a list of abbreviations. Standard units of measurements (SI symbols) and symbols of chemical elements may be used without definition in the body of the paper. Abbreviations of standard biochemical compounds, e.g. ATP, DNA, nucleotides in nucleic acids, and amino acids in proteins, need not be defined.

We use an online manuscript submission and tracking system: http://mts-emboj.nature.com

The first thing you need to do, if you have not done so already, is to register for an account. After this, please consult the instructions below to enable you to submit your article through our secure server.

Please be sure that your browser is set to accept cookies. Our tracking system requires cookies for proper operation. (If you have Windows XP the defaults will need changing. For more details on this, please refer to the 'Tips' function on this site.)

Please refrain from submitting your manuscript by e-mail attachment. Once the site replicates your details on screen, then your paper has been successfully submitted.

For original submissions, you will need to upload a cover letter, a Word file of the text of the manuscript (including figure legends), and a PDF file containing all the figures. Alternatively individual figure files can be uploaded separately. but please note that this can be more time-consuming than a PDF submission. Additional supplementary files can also be uploaded when applicable (please refer to the section Supplementary information above).

Once you have submitted your files and the conversion is in progress, you may log off the internet and come back later to check and approve the conversion. This process can take up to 30 minutes before the PDF, created in the conversion process, is ready for approval. Please remember that your manuscript will not be submitted until you have approved the converted files.

To avoid any unnecessary delays, please refer to the most current electronic formatting guidelines when preparing your manuscript for submission. Authors using computer systems with non-Western type encoding are strongly encouraged to eliminate all occurrences of non-standard fonts in both the manuscript and the figures. We suggest using only the fonts Times, Symbol, Courier and Helvetica.

When a manuscript is returned to authors for revision, the revised version should be submitted within three months of the authors' receipt of the referee reports. If a revised manuscript is returned thereafter, it will generally be considered as a new submission. Additional time for revision can be granted upon request, at the Editors' discretion.

Only a single round of revision will be permitted. To avoid multiple rounds of revisions, the Editors therefore usually only invite revisions if the amount of work required for publication appears to be feasible within this three-months time frame.

Authors will be provided with a URL in the letter of decision regarding the original version of the manuscript. Please use this URL for submission of revised manuscripts.

Format of text

The Editorial Office will only accept text files in RTF or MS Word format. The final character count must be clearly indicated on the title page of the revised manuscript. Manuscripts that do not comply with the formatting guidelines above, or exceed the length restrictions, will not be considered and returned to the authors for amendment. Please submit the full text (including figure legends, tables, and references) as an MS Word or RTF file, named "<5-digit manuscript number>.doc" or "<5-digit manuscript number>.rtf" (eg "48000.doc" or "48000.rtf").

Please submit the full text (including figure legends, tables, and references) as an MS Word or RTF file, named "<5-digit manuscript number>.doc" or "<5-digit manuscript number>.rtf" (eg "48000.doc" or "48000.rtf").

Saving files with Microsoft Office 2007

Microsoft Office 2007 saves files in an XML format by default (file extensions .docx, .pptx and xlsx). Files saved in this format cannot be accepted for publication.

Save Word documents using the file extension .doc

• Select the Office Button in the upper left corner of the Word 2007 Window and choose "Save As"
• Select "Word 97–2003 Document"
• Enter a file name and select "Save"

These instructions also apply for the new versions of Excel and PowerPoint.

Equations in Word must be created using Equation Editor 3.0

Equations created using the new equation editor in Word 2007 and saved as a "Word 97-2003 Document" (.doc) are converted to graphics and can no longer be edited. To insert or change an equation with the previous equation editor:

• Select "Object" on the "Text" section of the "Insert" tab
• In the drop-down menu - select "Equation Editor 3.0"

Do not use the "Equation" button in the "Symbols" section of the "Insert" tab.

Illustrations

When submitting a revised manuscript, it is essential to include high-quality computer files for all figures, which will be used for the production process.

We can only accept one file per figure. Composite figures containing multiple panels must be collected into one file before submission and must be scaled such that they can be reproduced on a single printed page.

The figure files must be labeled in the following way: "Fig_1.eps", "Fig_2.tif", "Fig_3.psd", "Fig_4.ai", etc. Please do not use an alternative labelling system and do not include the manuscript number in the file names.

Composite figures may be assembled in Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator and may be submitted in the default formats offered by these programs. If it is not possible to send artwork in the above formats, the Editorial Office can accept line drawings and composite figures in EPS format, and halftone figures in TIFF (please be sure to use LZW compression) or EPS formats. High-quality PDF or MS PowerPoint files for figures may also be acceptable.

All lettering should be done using standard fonts (Helvetica, Times, Symbol, Courier) and retained in a separate layer (if possible) so that the production team can adapt any labels to the Journal's style if necessary. All fonts used for labelling the figures should also be embedded in the final files if the software package offers this option.

All colour artwork must be submitted in CMYK colour mode. When converting files from RGB, please consider that the final figures will be printed on coated paper, using Euroscale process inks. If you are not familiar with these specifications, or are not sure how to apply them within your software package, please consult a local graphics expert. Ultimately, it is important that all colours look satisfactory after conversion to CMYK, both on screen and when printed on different printers.

Non-vector graphics should be preserved at high resolution: 300 dpi minimum at final size for greyscale or colour halftone images, and 1,000 dpi minimum for bitmap (b/w) artwork.

Further information regarding the preparation of electronic figures is available at http://www.nature.com/aj/artworkguidelines.pdf (16KB).

Free colour on the web

It is possible to add colour versions of individual figures to the online version of the article, by submitting them as Supplementary information files. Please see the instructions below for details, and enclose the sentence "A colour version of this figure is available at The EMBO Journal Online" at the end of the respective figure legend.

Supplementary information

Supplementary information must be supplied in one of the following file formats:

• Quick Time files (.mov)
• Graphical image files (.gif)
• HTML files (.html)
• MPEG movie files (.mpg)
• JPEG image files (.jpg)
• Sound files (.wav)
• Plain ASCII text (.txt)
• Acrobat files (.pdf)
• MS Word documents (.doc)
• Postscript files (.ps)
• MS Excel spreadsheet documents (.xls)
• PowerPoint files (.ppt)

We cannot accept TeX and LaTeX.

Data supplied in other formats cannot be considered for online publication

File sizes must be as small as possible, so that they can be downloaded quickly. The number of files should be limited to 10 and individual files should not be larger than 1MB (PDF or Excel files), 8MB (movie files) and 6MB (image files). Please seek advice from the Editorial Office before sending files larger than our maximum size to avoid delays in reviewing and publication.

It is important that you name the supplementary files "Sup_1.pdf", "Sup_2.xls", "Sup_3.mpg", "Sup_3_legend.pdf", etc. Please do not use an alternative labelling system.

The supplementary information may not be altered, nor new supplementary information added, after the paper has been accepted for publication.

Please refer to each supplementary item in the body of the text or the figure legends. You should also include the text "Supplementary information is available at The EMBO Journal Online" at the end of the article and before the references.

Submission to public databases

The EMBO Journal requires submission of novel sequence and structural data to the appropriate public databases. We will not accept an article for publication until the relevant entry codes have been provided. These must be quoted in the text of the article.

Sequence data

Nucleotide sequence data can be submitted in electronic form to any one of the three major collaborative databases:

1. DDBJ: DNA Data Bank of Japan, Center for Information Biology, National Institute of Genetics, Mishima, Shizuoka 411, Japan. Tel: +81 559 81 6853; Fax: +81 559 81 6849; E-mail: ddbjsub@ddbj.nig.ac.jp (for data submissions); WWW URL: http://www.ddbj.nig.ac.jp
2. EMBL: EMBL Nucleotide Sequence Submissions, European Bioinformatics Institute, Wellcome Trust Genome Campus, Hinxton, Cambridge CB10 1SD, UK. Tel: +44 1223 494400; Fax: +44 1223 494472; E-mail: datasubs@ebi.ac.uk; WWW URL: http://www.ebi.ac.uk
3. GenBank: National Center for Biotechnology Information, National Library of Medicine, Building 38A, Room 8N-803, Bethesda, MD 20894, USA. Tel: +1 301 496 2475; Fax: +1 301 480 9241; E-mail: gb-sub@ncbi.nlm.nih.gov; WWW URL: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

The suggested wording for referring to accession number information in journal articles is "These sequence data have been submitted to the DDBJ/EMBL/GenBank databases under accession No. U12345".

Structural data

The EMBO Journal accepts and follows the recommendations of the International Union of Crystallography (IUCr), with regard to the deposition and release of macromolecular structural data. These guidelines are set out in the article by the IUCr Commission on Biological Macromolecules in Acta Crystallographica (2000), D56, 2. In summary, they state that all publications must be accompanied by deposition of both the atomic coordinates and the structure-factor amplitudes in the appropriate database (PDB or NDB). In the case of low-resolution structures for which only a chain trace is reported, a set of C alpha positions and structure-factor amplitudes may be sufficient.

For NMR structures, data deposited should include resonance assignments, and all restraints used in structure determination (NOEs, spin-spin coupling constants, amide exchange rates, etc) and the derived atomic coordinates for both an individual structure and for a family of acceptable structures.

Structures of biological macromolecules solved by electron microscopy must be submitted to the EMDB database at http://www.ebi.ac.uk/msd/Deposition.html. For a brief description of the database, see Tagari et al. (2002) Trends Biochem Sci 27:589.

Under exceptional circumstances and upon request, the Editors may grant a delay of up to six months for deposition or the release of deposited data.

Microarray data

Authors should refer to the MGED open letter specifying microarray standards (http://www.mged.org/Workgroups/MIAME/miame_checklist.html). The EMBO Journal requires submission of microarray data to the ArrayExpress (http://www.ebi.ac.uk/arrayexpress), GEO (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/geo) or CIBEX (http://cibex.nig.ac.jp/index.jsp) databases, and provision of accession numbers before acceptance of the paper for publication.

Speed of publication

The journal aims for rapid publication of papers, using Advance Online Publication to expedite the process. Please help the Editors and publisher avoid delays by providing e-mail address(es), telephone and fax numbers at which author(s) can be contacted.

Proofs

Authors will be sent an e-mail with a link to download the proof forms (please note that supplementary information will be published as formatted by the authors and is therefore not included here). Proof forms should be printed, annotated for necessary corrections (which should be detailed in a covering letter in case the FAX is unclear), and then returned by FAX to Nature Publishing Group (+44 1256 321638). In the interests of speed, corrections should be returned within 24 hours. Essential changes of more extensive nature may be made only by insertion of a 'Note added in proof', and only with the approval of the Editors. A charge will be made to authors who insist on extensive amendment within the text at the page proof stage. Excessive alterations may delay publication of the article.

Supplementary transcript of the editorial process

The online version of each published manuscript will be accompanied by an additional supplementary file documenting all relevant correspondence between the authors and the editorial office, including referee reports directly to the authors and the authors' point-by-point response letters. Dates related to the editorial process (e.g. date of submission, initial decision, post-review decision, resubmission etc.) will be included as well. Authors can choose against publication of this supplementary transcript at any stage prior to publication in cases where they should, for specific reasons or as a matter of principle, not be comfortable with these disclosures.

Charges

For papers exceeding six printed pages (excluding reference list), a per page fee of £125/$250 will be charged to the authors upon publication of the manuscript. Additional charges will be made to the authors to cover the extra costs incurred in reproducing colour illustrations. Prior to publication, authors will be advised of any such charges.

The colour charges for The EMBO Journal (print and online PDF version) are as follows:

Number of colour illustrations	Cost
	Rest of World	USA
1	£325	$650
2	£650	$1,300
3	£975	$1,950
4	£1,191	$2,382
5	£1,407	$2,814
6	£1,464	$2,928
7+	£163	$326
	per additional colour figure
Note: Multiple part figures are one illustration: e.g. Fig 1(a) & (b) is one illustration, Fig 1 and Fig 2 are two illustrations

It is possible to add colour versions of illustrations in the electronically published journal at no additional cost (see Free colour on the web above).

EMBO Open Charges

Upon submission of an original research paper, authors can indicate within the manuscript tracking system whether they wish to pay a one off fee to allow their article to become freely available immediately upon publication. The fee is £1,485/$2,795/€2,200 (plus VAT where applicable) and can be paid via credit card or by requesting an invoice be raised.

By paying this fee authors are also permitted to post the final, published PDF of their article on a web site, institutional repository or other free public server, immediately on publication.

Upon acceptance it is mandatory for authors to complete the EMBO Open payment form and EMBO Open licence to publish form and return to the editorial office (details provided on form). Failure to do so will result in the article being published as a standard paper behind access control.

For further information on Open Access please see the EMBO Open FAQ’s and EMBO Open payment form

Author licence agreement

The corresponding author must complete and sign the Licence to Publish form uupon acceptance of the manuscript and return it to the editorial office. Failure to do so will result in delays to the publication of your paper. Please note: Manuscripts to be published as EMBO Open papers alternatively require an EMBO Open Licence to Publish form which should be completed and returned along with the EMBO Open payment form.

Nature Publishing Group does not require authors of original research papers to release copyright to their published contributions. Authors grant NPG an exclusive licence to publish, in return for which they can re-use their papers in their future printed work. NPG's author licence page provides details of the policy and a sample form. Authors are encouraged to submit their version of the accepted, peer-reviewed manuscript to their funding body's archive, for public release six months after publication. In addition, authors are encouraged to archive their version of the manuscript in their institution's repositories (as well as on their personal websites), also six months after the original publication. Authors should cite the publication reference and doi number on any deposited version, and provide a link from it to the published article on the NPG website. This policy complements the policies of the US National Institutes of Health, the Wellcome Trust and other research funding bodies around the world. NPG recognises the efforts of funding bodies to increase access of the research they fund, and strongly encourages authors to participate in such efforts. Upon submission, authors of original research articles can opt for NPG to deposit their author accepted paper on PMC and UKPMC via NPG's manuscript deposition service.

EMBO Open articles are published either under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 licence or a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 licence, at the free choice of the authors and/or their funding bodies. Click here for a copy of the EMBO Open Licence to Publish form.

Under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 licence, users are free to share (copy, distribute and transmit) and remix (adapt) the contribution under the following conditions (read full legal code):

• Attribution. Users must attribute the contribution in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they or their use of the contribution is endorsed by the author or licensor).
• Noncommercial. Users may not use this work for commercial purposes.
• Share Alike. If users alter, transform, or build upon this work, they may distribute the resulting work only under the same or similar license to this one.

Under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 licence, users are free to share (copy, distribute and transmit) the contribution under the following conditions (read full legal code):

• Attribution. Users must attribute the contribution in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they or their use of the contribution is endorsed by the author or licensor).
• Noncommercial. Users may not use this work for commercial purposes.
• No derivative works. Users may not alter, transform, or build upon this work.

Neither Creative Commons Licence impairs or restricts the author's moral rights. Additionally, the following terms hold (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/legalcode):

• For any reuse or distribution, users must make clear to others the license terms of this work, preferably using a link to the Creative commons webpage
• Any of the above conditions can be waived if users get permission from the copyright holder.

Offprints

Offprint order forms will be sent with the proofs and should be completed and returned to the publisher before the journal is printed. Late orders submitted after the journal is printed are subject to increased prices.

Digital object identifier

Nature Publishing Group assigns a unique digital object identifier (DOI) to every article it publishes. The DOI initiative is an international effort for electronic content identification and is guided by the International DOI Foundation, composed primarily of academic publishers and societies. The DOI appears on the title page of the article. It is assigned after the article has been accepted for publication and persists throughout the lifetime of the article. It is important to include the article's DOI in the reference, as volume and page information is not always available for articles published online.

Adobe Acrobat

We recommend that for accessing the PDF files, best results are achieved if you have access to Adobe Acrobat Reader (4.0 or above). Download this FREE program and follow the on-screen installation instructions. (We recommend that on completion of installation, you amend one of the default settings. Select: File - Preferences - General, and UNCHECK Web Browser Integration. This will open PDF files in Acrobat Reader itself rather than in your browser. The amendment will not affect any functionality of either Acrobat Reader or your browser software.)

Manuscript status

After you approve your manuscript files, the submission is complete. A formal acknowledgement e-mail will be sent once your manuscript has been assigned to an Editor. Please note that depending on the submission rate this may take a few days, however you would be notified in case that unusual greater delays might be expected. You can check the status of your manuscript at any time in the review process by:

1. Accessing the system with your password or link sent to you in the acknowledgement e-mail.
2. Clicking on the link represented by your manuscript tracking number and abbreviated title.
3. Clicking on the "Check Status" link at the bottom of the displayed page.

This procedure will display tracking information about where your manuscript is in the submission/peer review process.

Business matters

For links to useful e-mail addresses for business correspondence and enquiries with The EMBO Journal's publisher, Nature Publishing Group please contact Allison Lang or, for other matters such as supplement publication and sponsorship opportunities, write to the relevant NPG office at:

The EMBO Journal
Nature Publishing Group
4 Crinan Street
London N1 9XW
Tel: +44 (0) 20 7843 4879
Fax: +44 (0) 20 7843 4839

You may contact The EMBO Journal office via e-mail at contact@embojournal.org

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