Guide to Authors

What is Heredity?

Please note:

• Manuscripts should be double-spaced, with all margins at least 4 cm in width.
• Pages and lines should be continually numbered to aid cross-referencing.
• Any manuscript cited as ‘in press’ should be uploaded if possible.
• Papers based on thesis chapters normally require rewriting and drastic abbreviation before submission.
• All manuscripts are subject to editorial review.
• Papers must be submitted exclusively to Heredity and are accepted on the understanding that they have not been, and will not be, published elsewhere - for further details see the journal Editorial Policies.
• If accepted, papers become the property of The Genetics Society. Authors should ensure that a full copy of all submitted material, including illustrations, is retained.
• It is the author’s responsibility to obtain permission to reproduce illustrations, tables, etc. from other publications - for further details see the journal Editorial Policies.

Articles must contain the following components. Please see below for further details.

• Cover letter
• Title page (excluding acknowledgements)
• Abstract
• Introduction
• Materials and Methods
• Results
• Discussion
• Acknowledgements
• Author contribution statement
• Conflict of Interest
• Data archiving
• Research Ethics Statement
• References
• Figure legends
• Tables and/or Figures (uploaded separately)

Cover Letter: Authors must provide a cover letter to accompany their submission.  Authors should briefly discuss the importance of the work and explain why it is considered appropriate for the diverse readership of the journal. 
The cover letter should confirm the material is original research, has not been previously published and has not been submitted for publication elsewhere while under consideration. If the manuscript has been previously considered for publication in another journal, please include the previous reviewer comments, to help expedite the decision by the Editorial team.
If your manuscript is a resubmission to Heredity, please state the original manuscript number.
We encourage suggestions for reviewers but ask that these are included in the ‘Manuscript Comment’ during submission. Requests to exclude referees should also be made via this route.
Please also include a Competing Interests statement - see Editorial Policies for more details.

Title Page: The title page should contain:

• Title of the paper - succinct, informative, of 150 characters or less 
• Full names of all authors and their affiliations, together with the e-mail address of the corresponding author. If authors regard it as essential to indicate that two or more co-authors are equal in status, they may be identified by an asterisk symbol with the caption ‘These authors contributed equally to this work’ immediately under the address list.
• Word count for main text (excluding references, tables and figures)

Large Language Models (LLMs), such as ChatGPT, do not currently satisfy our authorship criteria. Notably an attribution of authorship carries with it accountability for the work, which cannot be effectively applied to LLMs. Use of an LLM should be properly documented in the Methods section (and if a Methods section is not available, in a suitable alternative part) of the manuscript.

Abstract:  This should not exceed 250 words and should be provided on a separate page in the file, as well as on the online submission form. It is particularly important that the Abstract identifies the conceptual issue(s) addressed in the paper, as well as outlining the approach and the main findings. Please ensure that the conclusions consider a broad general message in addition to specific conclusions about the focal study system. 

Graphical Abstracts (optional): A graphical abstract, which summarizes the manuscript in a visual way, is designed to attract the attention of readers in the table of contents of the journal. Files should be uploaded as a ‘Figure’ and be labelled ‘Graphical abstract’.  A standard file format (.tiff, .eps, .jpg, .bmp, .doc, or .pdf.) should be used, and the graphic should be 9 cm wide x 5 cm high when printed at full scale and a minimum of 300 dpi. All graphical abstracts should be submitted with a white background and imagery should fill the available width, whenever possible. Colour graphical abstracts are encouraged and will be published at no additional charge. Textual statements should be kept to a minimum.

Introduction: The Introduction should be concise but provide an overview of previous research to motivate each of the objectives.  It should clearly specify gaps in knowledge that make the novelty of the study clear.  The objectives should be clearly stated in the final paragraph of the introduction.

Materials/Subjects and Methods:  This section should contain sufficient detail, so that all experimental procedures can be reproduced, and include references. Methods, however, that have been published in detail elsewhere should not be described in detail. Authors should provide the name of the manufacturer and their location for any specifically named medical equipment and instruments.

Results:  The Results section should briefly present the experimental data in text, tables or figures. Tables and figures should not be described extensively in the text but all should be cited and captions used to clearly describe what they indicate, including pointing out what the reader should notice that is relevant to the objectives.

Discussion:  The Discussion should focus on the interpretation and the significance of the findings with concise objective comments that describe their relation to other work in the area. It should not repeat information in the results. The final paragraph should highlight the main conclusion(s), and provide some indication of the direction that future research should take. 

Acknowledgements: These should be brief, and should include sources of support including sponsorship (e.g. university, charity, commercial organisation) and sources of material (e.g. novel drugs) not available commercially.

Author Contributions: Authors must include a statement about the contribution of each author to the manuscript (see Editorial Policies page for details regarding authorship). The statement can be up to several sentences long, describing the tasks of individual authors referred to by their initials.
See example below:
MAJ was responsible for designing the review protocol, writing the protocol and report, conducting the search, screening potentially eligible studies, extracting and analysing data, interpreting results, updating reference lists and creating ’Summary of findings’ tables. SBM was responsible for designing the review protocol and screening potentially eligible studies. She contributed to writing the report, extracting and analysing data, interpreting results and creating ’Summary of findings’ tables. DIH conducted the meta-regression analyses and contributed to the design of the review protocol, writing the report, arbitrating potentially eligible studies, extracting and analysing data and interpreting results. NAL contributed to data extraction and provided feedback on the report. FRT and RAL provided feedback on the report. 

Competing Interests:  Authors must declare whether or not there are any competing financial interests in relation to the work described. This information must be included at this stage and will be published as part of the paper, but should also be noted in the cover letter. Please see the Competing Interests definition in the Editorial Policies section for detailed information.

Data Archiving: Heredity subscribes to the Joint Data Archiving Policy which mandates that the primary data on which a study is based is archived in a public repository. We strongly believe that the free availability of data to other research scientists is beneficial to the development of our field of study and that electronic archiving now makes this goal attainable. The data archived should be sufficient for another scientist to repeat your analyses or conduct new analyses of their own. For a population genetics survey, for example, this would mean archiving genotypes of individuals but not raw data such as sequencer spectrograms or gel photographs. Similarly, for a QTL analysis individual genotypes and phenotypes would be archived.  Sequence data must be submitted to an appropriate public repository (e.g. National Centre for Biotechnology Information) and accession numbers provided.  
Authors are strongly encouraged to follow established minimum guidelines for the reporting of biological data, wherever appropriate. Guidelines for many relevant data types are available from MIBBI: Minimum Information for Biological and Biomedical Investigations. Advice on good practice in data archiving is provided by Whitlock (2011). DNA sequences published in Heredity must be deposited in a publicly available database, usually EMBL/GenBank/DDBJ, and accession numbers must be included in the final version of the manuscript. Where public databases exist for other data types, such as microarray data (see www.ebi.ac.uk/Databases/microarray.html, for example), they must be used and the relevant reference should be included in the manuscript. Where no public database exists, authors must submit their data to the Dryad data repository. On acceptance of an Original Article, the corresponding author will automatically receive an email with details of the steps necessary for submission to Dryad. 
Dryad can accept data of any type. The data should be formatted for use in a relevant, readily available software package, ideally one which allows data export in a variety of formats (such as CREATE for population genetic data. It is the corresponding author’s responsibility to ensure that sufficient metadata (such as sample locations, individual identities etc.) are provided to allow easy repetition of analyses presented in the manuscript. We recognise that some information may be sensitive (such as identities of subjects or locations of endangered species). Such information can be excluded from the submission provided that this does not prejudice re-analysis of the data.
Articles must contain a section entitled ‘Data Archiving’ which specifies where the data used in the paper can be accessed. See the section under Format of Papers for details. Authors will be asked about data archiving during the manuscript submission process but data archiving is not mandatory until the paper has been accepted for publication. At that stage, the corresponding author will be asked to confirm that all relevant data have been appropriately archived; the manuscript will not be published until this confirmation, and relevant accession numbers or other data identifiers, have been received.
Where a paper describes new simulations or analytical methods, Heredity requires authors to make any relevant software publicly available, wherever possible. The Dryad repository can accept code. We recognise that software may utilise proprietary code which the authors are not free to distribute and in such cases the requirement to submit code may be waived. Authors should consult the Editorial Office if in doubt.
We recognise that, in some cases, authors may wish to restrict access to their data while they perform additional analyses. Where the relevant database supports the use of embargoes on data access, Heredity will allow an access restriction of up to one year from the date of publication of the article. In exceptional circumstances, longer embargoes may be possible, at the discretion of the Managing Editor.
Except in very exceptional circumstances, the journal will not accept RAPD based studies for publication, and authors wishing to submit papers on this subject should contact the Editorial Office beforehand for advice. 

Research Ethics Statement
Human and Other Animal Experiments
Research involving human subjects, human material, or human data must have been performed in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki and must have been approved by an appropriate ethics committee. A statement detailing this, including the name of the ethics committee and the reference number where appropriate, must appear in all manuscripts reporting such research. Recommendations can be found here.
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.

Research Involving Animals and their Data or Biological Material
For primary research manuscripts 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 a brief statement identifying the institutional and/or licensing committee approving the experiments. Recommendations can be found here.
Heredity recommends following the ARRIVE reporting guidelines when documenting animal studies.

References:  These should be indicated chronologically in the text by the surnames of the authors with the year of publication. Citation by name and year can be given entirely in parentheses or by citing the year in parentheses after an author's name used in the text - examples below:

• Negotiation research spans many disciplines (Thompson 1990).
• This result was later contradicted by Becker and Seligman (1996).
• This effect has been widely studied (Abbott 1991; Barakat et al. 1995a, b; Kelso and Smith 1998; Medvec et al. 1999, 2000).

There should normally be no more than 100 references. The list of references should only include works that are cited in the text and that have been published or accepted for publication. Personal communications and unpublished works should only be mentioned in the text. Do not use footnotes or endnotes as a substitute for a reference list.
Reference list entries should be alphabetized by the last name/s of the first author of each work. Please alphabetize according to the following rules: 1) For one author, by name of author, then chronologically; 2) For two authors, by name of author, then name of coauthor, then chronologically; 3) For more than two authors, by name of first author, then chronologically.
All authors should be listed for papers with up to six authors; for papers with more than six authors, the first six only should be listed, followed by et al.

Examples:
Journal article:  Gamelin FX, Baquet G, Berthoin S, Thevenet D, Nourry C, Nottin S et al. (2009) Effect of high intensity intermittent training on heart rate variability in prepubescent children. Eur J Appl Physiol 105:731-738
Article by DOI:  Slifka MK, Whitton JL (2000) Clinical implications of dysregulated cytokine production. J Mol Med. https://doi.org/10.1007/s001090000086  
Journal article, in press:  Gallardo RL, Juneja HS, Gardner FH (in press) Normal human marrow stromal cells induce clonal growth of human malignant T-lymphoblasts. Int J Cell Cloning 
Book:  South J, Blass B (2001) The future of modern genomics. Blackwell, London
Book chapter:  Brown B, Aaron M (2001) The politics of nature. In: Smith J (ed) The rise of modern genomics, 3rd edn. Wiley, New York, pp 230- 257
Website:  Kassambara A. (2020) rstatix: pipe-friendly framework for basic statistical tests. https://rpkgs.datanovia.com/rstatix/
Online document:  Cartwright J (2007) Big stars have weather too. IOP Publishing PhysicsWeb. http://physicsweb.org/articles/news/11/6/16/1. Accessed 26 June 2007
Dissertation:  Trent JW (1975) Experimental acute renal failure. Dissertation, University of California

Always use the standard abbreviation of a journal’s name according to the ISSN List of Title Word Abbreviations, see http://www.issn.org/services/online-services/access-to-the-ltwa/. If you are unsure, please use the full journal title.
For authors using EndNote, Springer provides an output style that supports the formatting of in-text citations and reference list. LINK

Figure Legends:  These should be brief, specific and appear on a separate manuscript page after the References section.

Tables:  Tables should only be used to present essential data; they should not duplicate what is written in the text. It is imperative that any tables used are editable, ideally presented in Excel.  Each must be uploaded as a separate workbook with a title or caption and be clearly labelled, sequentially. Please make sure each table is cited within the text and in the correct order, e.g. (Table 3).  Please save the files with extensions .xls / .xlsx / .ods / or .doc or .docx. Please ensure that you provide a 'flat' file, with single values in each cell with no macros or links to other workbooks or worksheets and no calculations or functions.

Figures:  Figures and images should be labelled sequentially and cited in the text. Figures should not be embedded within the text but rather uploaded as separate files. The use of three-dimensional histograms is strongly discouraged unless the addition of the third dimension is important for conveying the results.
Please note: Composite figures containing more than three individual figures will count as two figures. All parts of a figure should be grouped together.  Where possible large figures and tables should be included as supplementary material.

Detailed guidelines for submitting artwork can be found by downloading our Artwork Guidelines. Using the guidelines, please submit production quality artwork with your initial online submission. If you have followed the guidelines, we will not require the artwork to be resubmitted following the peer-review process, if your paper is accepted for publication.

Reuse of Display Items: See the Editorial Policy section for information on using previously published tables or figures.  

Supplementary Information: Supplementary information is material directly relevant to the conclusion of an article that cannot be included in the printed version owing to space or format constraints. The article must be complete and self-explanatory without the Supplementary Information, which is posted on the journal's website and linked to the article. Supplementary Information may consist of data files, graphics, movies or extensive tables.

Please submit supplementary figures, small tables and text as a single combined PDF document. Tables longer than one page should be provided as an Excel or similar file type. Please refer to the journal’s Data Policies, outlined in the Editorial Policies section of these guidelines for additional options for such files, and which provides guidance on alternatives to supplementary files for data deposition, linking, preservation, and storage.

For optimal quality video files, please use H.264 encoding, the standard aspect ratio of 16:9 (4:3 is second best) and do not compress the video. Important: Supplementary information is not copyedited, so please ensure that it is clearly and succinctly presented, that the style and terminology conform to the rest of the manuscript, and that any tracked-changes or review mark-ups are removed.

Authors should submit supplementary information files in the FINAL format as they are not edited, typeset or changed, and will appear online exactly as submitted. When submitting Supplementary Information, authors are required to: 

• Include a text summary (no more than 50 words) to describe the contents of each file.
• Identify the types of files (file formats) submitted.

Please note: We do not allow the resupplying of Supplementary Information files for style reasons after a paper has been exported in production, unless there is a serious error that affects the science and, if by not replacing, it would lead to a formal correction once the paper has been published. In these cases we would make an exception and replace the file; however there are very few instances where a Supplementary Information file would be corrected post publication.

Video summaries: Authors are welcome to include a video summary of their submission in order to support and enhance their scientific research. Files should be uploaded as a ‘video’ and be labelled ‘Video abstract’.
Please take note of the technical requirements listed below.
Technical requirements:
The maximum file size of a video should not exceed 25 GB.  An audio track is required, and video and audio streams must be in the correct order (video before audio). To ensure streamed video playout in HD in an acceptable quality, the following minimum requirements are recommended:
Resolution -  At least 480p. If no HD is available: 1024 x 576 (PAL 16:9) respectively 768 x 576 (PAL 4:3)
Aspect ratio - Standard 16:9 or acceptable 4:3
Video bitrate - 5.000 to 10.000 Kbit/s
Audio bitrate - 320 Kbit/s, stereo, 44,1 KHz
Sound - AAC

Tips for presentation:
1. The video should introduce the topic of the article, highlight the main results and conclusions, discuss the current status and potential future developments in the field
2. Write your script and practise first – explain any obscure terminology
3. Film in a quiet room against a plain (white if possible) background and ensure there is nothing confidential in view
4. Avoid using background music
5. Include figures, slides, video clips of the experiment, etc. to help explain your methods and results. Please try to include a mixture of you talking to the camera and slides – it is nice for viewers to see your face at times
6. Keep figures simple; don’t show raw data and ensure any text is legible. Do not include lots of small text or data that won’t be legible in a small video player that’s the size of a smartphone screen.
7. Please do not use images, music, or insignia in your video for which you do not own the copyright or have documented permission from the copyright holder.
Files will be viewed by the editorial office for quality; however the onus for creating, uploading and editing the video falls on the author.

House Style
As the electronic submission will provide the basic material for typesetting, it is important that papers are prepared in the general editorial style of the journal. 

• Manuscripts should be double-spaced, with all margins at least 4 cm in width.
• Pages and lines should be continually numbered to aid cross-referencing.
• Do not make rules thinner than 1pt (0.36mm).
• Use a coarse hatching pattern rather than shading for tints in graphs.
• Colour should be distinct when being used as an identifying tool.
• Commas should be used to separate thousands.
• At first mention of a manufacturer, the town (and state if USA) and country should be provided.   
• Statistical methods: For normally distributed data, mean (SD) is the preferred summary statistic. Relative risks should be expressed as odds ratios with 95% confidence interval. To compare two methods for measuring a variable the method of Bland & Altman (1986, Lancet 1, 307–310) should be used; for this, calculation of P only is not appropriate.
• Units: Use metric units (SI units) as fully as possible. Preferably give measurements of energy in kiloJoules or MegaJoules with kilocalories in parentheses (1 kcal = 4.186kJ). Use % throughout.   
• Abbreviations: On first using an abbreviation place it in parentheses after the full item. Very common abbreviations such as DNA, RNA, need not be defined. Note these abbreviations: gram g; litre l; milligram mg; kilogram kg; kilojoule kJ; megajoule MJ; weight wt; seconds s; minutes min; hours h. Do not add s for plural units. 

File Formats
File formats for manuscript files, figures and tables that are acceptable for our electronic manuscript submission process are given on the online forms. Article files should be submitted in either Word or LaTex format. Further advice on file types is also available from the Author Tips webpage. Either embed tables converted into images at the end of your Word document, or as separate files in which ever program you used to generate them. If you submit raw data, this can be done in Excel, or tab/comma delimited format. 

Subject Ontology 
Upon submission authors will be asked to select a series of subject terms relevant to the topic of their manuscript from our subject ontology. Providing these terms will ensure your article is more discoverable and will appear on appropriate subject specific pages on nature.com, in addition to the journal’s own pages. Your article should be indexed with at least one, and up to four unique subject terms that describe the key subjects and concepts in your manuscript. Click here for help with this.