Types of Articles Published in Frontiers

Tier 2:Frontiersin Neuroscience

Focused Review
Frontiers in Neuroscience publish Focused Reviews on major discoveries selected from top articles in the Frontiers in Neuroscience Specialty Journals. Focused Reviews are centred on the democratically selected discovery, place the discovery in a wider context and are no more than 5 printed pages. Focused Reviews should embody related research by the authors and by other researchers that demonstrate the wider implications of the research discovery. Focused Reviews are invited articles, peer-reviewed by the original reviewers implicated at the specialty level and edited by the Chief Editor of the Specialty Journal from which the discovery arose. Advanced copy-editors ensure readability and comprehensibility by the general audience across the neuroscience field. Focused Reviews receive a DOI, are citable, published in HTML and PDF format and submitted to PubMed for indexing. Authors are not required to pay a fee to publish a Focused Review.

Highlights
Frontiers in Neuroscience website automatically highlights the first 5 lines of the democratically selected top peer-reviewed and non-peer reviewed Articles, such as Research Articles, Commentaries, Hypothesis and Theories, Perspectives, Technology Reports, and Book Reviews, Methods, Reviews, News, etc published in the Specialty Journals with links to the original articles.

News & Announcements
Any registered Frontiers user may make an announcement for an upcoming conference, events, acknowledgements of research awards and achievements, or institutional announcements on the Specialty Journal website. Announcements are not for job applications or announcements of open positions. Announcements are published immediately on submission on the Journal's website. Discussion & Debates (coming up soon!) Any registered Frontiers user may post a comments and opinions on any subject raising discussions and debates. Jobs & Positions (coming up soon!) Any registered users may make an announcement for open positions in their laboratory or institute or post a job search. Postings are published immediately upon submission.

Tier 1: Frontiers Specialty Journals

Original Research Articles
Original Research Articles describe the results of original research, can be up to 12 pages long, are peer-reviewed, copy-edited, receive a DOI, are citable, published in PDF and HTML format and submitted to PubMed for indexing. Authors are required to pay a fee to publish an Original Research Article. Authors of articles that are amongst the top articles selected democratically by the Frontiers Evaluation System will be invited to write a Focused Review of their discovery to be published in Frontiers in Neuroscience.

Hypothesis and Theory Articles
Hypothesis and Theory Articles present a scientific argument, synthesis, hypothesis or theory. Hypothesis and Theory Articles should be closely tied to empirical data, and provide novel insights into a significant question or issue. In addition, the argument or theory put forth in a Hypothesis and Theory Articles should lead to testable predictions. Hypothesis and Theory Articles can be up to 12 pages long, are peer-reviewed, copy-edited, receive a DOI, are citable, published in PDF and HTML format and submitted to PubMed for indexing. Authors are required to pay a fee to publish a Hypothesis and Theory Article. Top Hypothesis and Theory Articles democratically selected by the Frontiers Evaluation System will be highlighted on the Frontiers in Neurosciencewebpage with a direct link to the article.

Perspectives
Perspectives present a viewpoint on an important area of research. Perspectives focus on a specific field or subfield and discuss current advances and future directions. Perspectives may add personal insight and opinion to a field. Perspectives can be up to 5 pages long, are peer-reviewed, copy-edited, receive a DOI, are citable, published in PDF and HTML format and submitted to PubMed for indexing. Authors are required to pay a fee to publish a Perspective Article. Top Perspective Articles democratically selected by the Frontiers Evaluation System will be highlighted on the Frontiers in Neuroscience webpage with a direct link to the article.

Commentaries (coming soon!)
Commentaries call attention to papers of particular note and are written by the Review Editors who refereed the concerning paper. Commentaries are 1 printed page and may contain no more than one illustration, are peer-reviewed by the Associate Editors, receive a DOI, are citable, published in HTML and PDF format and submitted to PubMed for indexing. Authors (that is the submitting Review Editors) are not required to pay a fee to publish a Commentary. Top Commentaries democratically selected by the Frontiers Evaluation System will be highlighted on the Frontiers in Neuroscience webpage with a direct link to the article.

Book Reviews (coming up soon!)
Book Reviews are immediately published after submission, are not reviewed, do not receive a DOI and are not published in PDF format, but are posted on the Specialty Journal website in HTML format immediately upon submission. Any registered Frontiers user may submit Book Reviews. Authors are not required to pay a fee to publish a Book Review. Top book reviews democratically selected by the Frontiers Evaluation System will be highlighted on the Frontiers in Neuroscience webpage with a direct link to the article.

Technology Reports (coming up soon!)
Technology Reports provide a ½-1 page report on a new method or emerging technique for the specialty field. Technology Reports introduce the basic technical background of the method and evaluate the advantages and the limitations of the approach and its applications. Technology Reports are not reviewed, and do not receive a DOI, but are posted on the Specialty Journal website in HTML format. Any registered Frontiers user, including companies, may submit Technology Reports. Authors are not required to pay a fee to publish Technology Reports. Top Technology Reports democratically selected by the Frontiers Evaluation System will be highlighted on the Frontiers in Neuroscience webpage with a direct link to the report.

News
Any registered Frontiers users may make a news announcement of an event, of research awards and achievements, or institutional news on the Specialty Journal website. Frontiers News is not for job applications or announcements of open positions. News are published immediately on submission on the Speciality Journal's website. Authors are not required to pay a fee to publish a News report. Top news democratically selected by the Frontiers Evaluation System will be highlighted on the Frontiers in Neuroscience webpage with a direct link to the news article.

Conferences (coming up soon!)
The Frontiers Conference site accepts postings of and links to upcoming conferences, as well as conference proceedings. Any registered Frontiers user may make a posting free of charge.

Lectures (coming up soon!)
The Frontiers Lectures site accepts postings of and links to lectures given by researchers. Any registered Frontiers user may make a posting free of charge. Jobs & Positions (coming up soon!) Any registered users may make an announcement for open positions in their laboratory or institute or post a job search. Postings are published immediately upon submission free of charge.

Discussions & Debates (coming up soon!)
Any registered users may post a comment on any subject and raise any issue relevant to the speciality field. Postings are published immediately upon submission for of charge.

Methods Articles (to be published in Frontiers in Neuroscience Methods - coming up in 2008!)
Methods Articles present a "cutting-edge" technology that opens new avenues for experimental investigation of important neurobiological questions. Methods manuscripts should include in the form of a brief statement: the experimental objectives, the limitations of current techniques, and a detailed protocol of the new technique. In addition, there should be some data to demonstrate the power of the technique. Methods Articles may add personal insight and opinion of the significance of the technology for a field. Methods Articles can be up to 12 pages long, are peer-reviewed, copy-edited, receive a DOI, are citable, published in PDF and HTML format and submitted to PubMed for indexing. Authors are required to pay a fee to publish a Methods Article. Top Methods Articles democratically selected by the Frontiers Evaluation System will be highlighted on the Frontiers in Neuroscience webpage with a direct link to the article.

Review Articles (to be published in Frontiers in Neuroscience Reviews - coming up in 2008!)
Review articles cover topics that have seen significant development or progress in recent years with comprehensive depth, balanced perspective, intellectual insight, and broad general interest. Reviews do not merely recap the literature, but critique fundamental concepts, issues, and problems that define the field. Review Articles can be up to 12 pages long, are peer-reviewed, copy-edited, receive a DOI, are citable, published in PDF and HTML format and submitted to PubMed for indexing. Authors are required to pay a fee to publish a Review Article. Top Reviews democratically selected by the Frontiers Evaluation System will be highlighted on the Frontiers in Neuroscience webpage with a direct link to the article.

Please view the table below for a summary on article types and general manuscript style guidelines.


Quick Submission Checklist

Please note, that the corresponding and submitting author(s) MUST be registered with Frontiers before submitting the article, because the review process takes place online and requires a Frontiers account. You may send your CV to registration@frontiersin.org and our team will upload your profile. Before submission starts you must log into your Frontiers account.

The submission process consists of the following steps:
Step 1: Select a journal, associate editor and submission type.
Step 2: Provide article information such as title, running title, abstract and keywords.
Step 3: Add author and co-author names, emails and affiliations.
Step 4: Verify abstract proof.
Step 5: Edit cover letter and recommend review editors.
Step 6: Upload files. It is obligatory to submit

• 1) a manuscript PDF file which contains all the images and tables.
• 2) the manuscript source file (Word/Latex/Zip) used for generating the PDF.
• 3) all figure and table images in TIFF and JPEG format only, RGB color mode, minimum resolution required: Line Art 900 dpi, Combination (Line Art + Halftone) 600 dpi, Halftone 300 dpi.

Step 7: Specify conflict of interest statement and agree to Frontiers copyrights.
Step 8: Preview your submission and submit all. You can save and resume your submission at any step. If you do so, you will find your article in: My Frontiers => For Authors => In Preparation Articles.

Please click here to download manuscript and image guidelines.

Please note that the Manuscript and Image Guidelines are updated intermittingly - it advisable to visit this page before submission.

General Style Guidelines for your Frontiers Manuscript

Please view the table below for a summary on currently accepted article types and general manuscript style guidelines.

	Submitted through	Peer Review	Manuscript length	Number of figures/tables
Tier 1 Frontiers Speciality Journals
Original Research Article	FrontiersSubmission System	Yes	Encouraged: up to 12 PDF pages	Up to 15
Hypothesis and Theory Articles	Frontiers Submission System	Yes	Encouraged: up to 12 PDF pages	Up to 15
Perspective Articles	Frontiers Submission System	Yes	5 PDF pages	Up to 3
Commentaries	Interactive Review Forum	Yes	1 page	Up to 1
Book Reviews	Coming soon!	No	No limit	No limit
Technology Reports	Coming soon!	No	½-1 page	Up to 1
Tier 2 Frontiers in Neuroscience
Focused Review	Frontiers Submission System	Yes	5 pages	Up to 5

General Manuscript Length

Original Research Articles: Frontiers encourages a standard article length of 10-12 pages as in the final PDF version for Original Research Articles submitted to Tier 1 Frontiers Specialty Journals. However, since the First-Tier Speciality Journals are electronic Journals we do not have a limit to the size of articles. Thus it is not necessary to push important results and information into supplementary sections.

Focused Reviews: Focused Reviews prepared for the Second-Tier print version, Frontiers in Neuroscience, should have a final PDF page limit of 5 pages.

Commentaries: Commentaries on Original Research Articles submitted by Reviewers must no exceed 1 printed PDF page.

Title and Headers

• Title is centered in 16 point bold Times New Roman font at the top of page.
• Abstract, Keywords, Acknowledgements, Disclosure/Conflict-of-Interest Statement and References are unnumbered, 12 point bold Times New Roman
• Introduction, Material and Methods, Results and Discussion are numbered, may contain subheadings (also numbered), 12 point bold Times New Roman. Note that Numbering always ends with a period (e.g. 2.1. Animals or 3.2. Sleep-dependent IEG expression). You may insert up to 4 heading levels into your manuscript (not more than for example: 3.2.2.1. REM)

Text
The body text is in 10 point normal Times New Roman. New paragraphs will be separated with a single empty line. The entire document should be single-spaced. Your manuscript should be written using either LaTeX or MS-Word (DOC)

Figure and Table Legends
Figure and table legends are the same as body text (10 point normal Times New Roman, single spaced). Legends should be preceded by a label, for example "Figure 1." or "Table 4." .Figure legends should be placed immediately after the figure. Please use only a single paragraph for the legend. Figure panels are refereed to by bold capital letters in brackets: (A), (B), (C), (D), etc.

Abbreviations
Non-standard abbreviations should be defined when first used in the text.

Equations
Equations can be left as the image output of the equation editor in the text.

Supplemental Material
First-Tier Speciality Journals
Since the First-Tier Speciality Journals are electronic Journals we do not have a limit to the size of articles. Thus it is not necessary to push important results and information into supplementary sections. In general, a Supplemental Material section is made for additional material that cannot be included in the article because it is too large or the current format does not permit it, such as movies, raw data traces, power point presentations, etc.
Second-Tiers Frontiers in Neuroscience
Please note that we do not accept supplemental material, such as extra figures, tables or text.

References
References should be called according to the last name of the first author, followed by the year. Endnotes or other bibliographic software programs should be configured to the Elsevier family of journals, including Neuroscience. The references include only articles that are published or in press. Unpublished data, submitted manuscripts, or personal communications should be cited within the text only. Personal communications should be documented by a letter of permission. Please use the following style for references:

Article in a periodical:
Sondheimer, N., and Lindquist, S. (2000). Rnq1: an epigenetic modifier of protein function in yeast. Mol. Cell 5, 163-172.

Article in a book:
Sorenson, P.W., and Caprio, J.C. (1998). Chemoreception. In The Physiology of Fishes, D.H. Evans, ed. (Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press), pp. 375-405.

An entire book:
Cowan, W.M., Jessell, T.M., and Zipursky, S.L. (1997). Molecular and Cellular Approaches to Neural Development (New York: Oxford University Press).

General Style Guidelines for your Images, Figures and Tables

Figures and tables should be embedded as images in the manuscript where they are mentioned (see manuscript template, below). Images should be flushed left. There should be no text on the same horizontal level as the image. An empty line should be left before and after the image. The resolution of images embedded in the .DOC and .PDF files should be sufficient so that all figures are legible.

Image Size
Figure and Table images should be prepared with the PDF/journal layout in mind, with a width that corresponds to either 1 column (7-9 cm) or 2 columns (14.0-18.0 cm). Tables can be any length up to 22 cm.

Text within the Figure
Text in Figures and Tables should be in Arial font and no smaller than 9 points when reduced to one of the two formats mentioned above. Figure panels are lettered by bold capital letters: A, B, C, D, etc.

Format
We accept images in the following formats:

• TIFF (.tif)
• JPEG (.jpg)

Color Images
Please submit your images in the color mode RGB.

Resolution Requirements
It is obligatory to upload separately high resolution images in the submission procedure. For black and white line art the minimum resolution should be 900 dpi. For any type of graph or drawing in greyscale or combinations between line art and halftone, the resolution of your file should be a minimum of 600 dpi. For figures that contain color, the resolution should be a minimum of 300 dpi. See below a table exemplifying the image specifications.


These image specifications were modified from PubMed Central and are fully compatible with submitting your article to PubMed Central.

Figure or Table File Naming
Please name figure files by first author and number of figure, e.g., Ribeiro_Figure_1.tif, Ribeiro_Figure_2.tif, etc. Please name table files by first author and number of table, e.g., Ribeiro_Table_1.tif, Ribeiro_ Table_2.tif, etc.

Organization of Your Frontiers Manuscript

This section describes the organization of an Original Research Article submitted to any Tier 1 Speciality Journal. For other article types submitted to the Tier 1 Speciality Journals (Perspective Articles, Methods Articles, Review Articles, Commentaries, Opinions, Technology Reports, Book Reviews) or Tier 2 Frontiers in Neuroscience (Focused Reviews), please view Types of Articles Published in Frontiers and follow the General Style Guidelines for Manuscripts / Images and Tables.
In the sequence of appearance your Frontiers manuscript should be organized as follows:

Title
Title centered in 16 point bold Times New Roman font at the top of page.

Authors and Affiliations
See template document (below) for structure. Corresponding Author should be marked with an asterisk. Please provide the affiliation just below the author names, but please spare detailed address information such as city zip codes or street names. Please provide in a separate paragraph the exact contact address and email of the corresponding author.

Running Title
A maximum of 5 words.

Abstract
The "Abstract" header is mandatory and unnumbered (Times New Roman, 12, bold). A single paragraph no more than 250 words. The primary goal of the Abstract should be to make the general significance and conceptual advance of the work clearly accessible to a broad readership. References should not be cited in the Abstract. The text of the abstract section should be in normal body text.

Keywords
No more than 8 keywords

1. Introduction
Succinct, with no subheadings. Introduction heading is numbered (Times New Roman, 12, bold). Note that numbering always ends with a period.

2. Material and Methods
This section may be divided by subheadings. Heading and subheadings are numbered (terminating with a period, Times New Roman, 12, bold). This section should contain sufficient detail so that when read in conjunction with cited references, all procedures can be repeated.
Authorization for the Use of Experimental Animals or Human Subjects. All experiments on live vertebrates or higher invertebrates must be performed in accordance with relevant institutional and national guidelines and regulations. In the manuscript, authors must identify the committee approving the experiments and must confirm that all experiments conform to the relevant regulatory standards. For manuscripts reporting experiments on human subjects, authors must identify the committee approving the experiments and must also include a statement confirming that informed consent was obtained from all subjects. These statements should appear in the Materials and Methods section.

3. Results
This section may be divided by subheadings. Heading and subheadings are numbered (terminating with a period, Times New Roman, 12, bold). Footnotes should not be used and have to be transferred to the text. Gene symbols should be italicized; protein products are not italicized.
Figures and Tables should be inserted into the text where they are mentioned. Figure and Table legends should start with a label, for example "Figure 1." or "Table 4." Legends should be placed immediately after the figure or table. Please use only a single paragraph for the legend.

4. Discussion
This sections may be divided by subheadings. Heading and subheadings are numbered (terminating with a period, Times New Roman, 12, bold).
Discussions should cover the key findings of the study, discuss any prior art related to the field in order to place the novelty of the discovery in the appropriate context, discuss their potential short-comings & limitations on their interpretations, discuss their integration into the current understanding of the problem and how this advances the current views, speculate on the future direction of the research and freely postulate theories that could be tested in the future.

Supplemental Data
Unnumbered. Insert if appropriate. If you have no supplemental data do not insert. If you have insert the following sentence piece: "The Supplemental Data for this article can be found online at".

Conflict of Interest Statement
Unnumbered. All relationships financial, commercial or otherwise that might be perceived by the scientific community as representing a potential conflict of interest must be described. If no such relationship exists, authors will be asked to agree to "declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest."

Acknowledgments
Unnumbered. Short text to acknowledge the contributions of specific colleagues, institutions, or agencies that aided the efforts of the authors, to be published as an acknowledgment. A statement about the principal source of funding is encouraged, including grant numbers if appropriate.