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Guide to Authors

 

Submission of Revised Materials for Accepted Manuscripts
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The instructions below are intended to help us process your manuscript in an accurate and timely manner. Please therefore follow them as closely as possible, in order to avoid delays in publication. Please note that these instructions apply to accepted manuscripts only. There is a separate Guide to Authors that describes how to submit a manuscript for editorial consideration. See http://www.nature.com/neuro/info/guide_authors/ for more information.

PERSONAL COMMUNICATIONS
Please provide a written statement of permission from any person who is quoted as a personal communication. Printouts of e-mail permission messages are acceptable.

HARD COPY
Please send two hard copies of the final manuscript, complete with two sets of publication-quality printed figures if the figures have been revised. The text should be double spaced throughout (including references and figure legends). Please include the revision date on the cover page.

TEXT
Please insure that it conforms as closely as possible to our format requirements, including the following points:

Please use American English spelling throughout. Abstract should be around 100 words, and should be a self-contained paragraph without references. Introduction should explain the background, rationale and main conclusions of your study in language that will be intelligible to a broad general readership. Jargon should be avoided as far as possible, and explained where it is unavoidable. Results and Discussion sections should be marked as such with cross-headings in bold. Subsidiary headings may be included within the results section. References: Our format is identical to that of Nature; references are numbered in order of appearance. If the number of authors does not exceed five, they should be listed in the form Golgi, C., Ramón y Cajal, S. & Sherrington, C.S. Lists of six or more authors should be in the form Golgi, C. et al. Titles should be quoted in full. Journal names should be italicized, using standard abbreviations with periods. The volume number should be in bold, followed by a comma, the first and last page numbers, and the year in parenthesis. Citations in the text should be given in superscript, with no space preceding the number. Numbers should be separated by commas but no spaces; consecutive numbers should be given as (for example) 9-12. Abstracts, personal communications, and internet URLs should be cited in the text, not as numbered references. References to figures in the text should be in bold and should include parentheses, capital Fig, period, space (thus Fig. 1a). Figure legends should begin with a brief title for the figure. Individual panels should be referred to in bold lower-case in parentheses (a).

FIGURES
The final versions of figures should be of publication quality. Please give careful thought to clarity and layout, bearing in mind the final size on the printed page. Figures should appear on a white background. All labeling should be in a sans serif font such as Helvetica. Use the Symbol font for Greek characters. The identity of the figure (Fig. 1a, etc) should appear on the back. In general, visual cues on the figure itself are preferred to verbal explanations (eg "broken line", "filled black triangles", "horizontal hatching") in the legend. Please also avoid the following:

  • Gratuitous use of color for decorative effect
  • Other decorative effects such as three-dimensional histograms
  • 'Boxing' around graphs (generally two lines for the two axes will suffice, and additional superfluous lines will merely distract from the data)
  • Highly pixelated computer drawings
  • Truncated graph axes
  • Any hairlines less than 1 point thick

Submission of Digital Electronic Figures Where possible, we prefer to use electronic figures. Please note, however, that these are not a substitute for hard copy; electronic figures may sometimes reproduce incorrectly, and including a hard copy is the only way for us to check this.

FORMAT

  • We can only use TIFF, EPS or postscript (PS) files in PC or Macintosh format, preferrably from Photoshop, Illustrator or Freehand software
  • We cannot accept Corel Draw, Powerpoint or MacDrawPro files

RESOLUTION

  • Color: 300 d.p.i. minimum. Please convert all color files into CMYK mode before sending; we cannot use RGB files.
  • Grayscale: 600 d.p.i. minimum for blots and black & white photographs
  • Line art: 1200 d.p.i. minimum for graphs and illustrations
Anything less than these standards will not reproduce well and may delay publication until we receive high resolution images. We cannot be held responsible for assuming the cost of corrected reprints should such images need to be used.

HOW TO SEND FILES

  • Floppy disk
  • Zip disk
  • Jaz disk
  • CD
  • SyQuest cartridge
Name your files with the corresponding author's name, figure number and letter, and file format (i.e. Dr. Golgi's figure 3a in TIFF format: golgi3a.tiff). Please compress your files using Zip or StuffIt before uploading.

FTP SITE
Using any type of FTP software (such as Fetch), you can place files on our FTP site. Name your files with the corresponding author's name, figure number and letter, and file format (i.e. Dr. Cajal's figure 3a in TIFF format: cajal3a.tiff). Please compress your files using Zip or StuffIt before uploading.

  • site address:ftp.nature.com
  • user name: nn
  • password: brain
If you have questions, please contact our production editor Ivy Robles (tel. 212 726 9228; fax 212 696 9751; e-mail <"mailto:i.robles@natureny.com">i.robles@natureny.com).

 
 
 

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