Author Guidelines

1. Summary Table

Please view the table below for a summary on currently accepted article types and general manuscript style guidelines. Article types may vary depending on journal.

2. Manuscript Guidelines

Registration with Frontiers

Please note that the corresponding and all submitting authors MUST register with Frontiers before submitting an article. You must be logged in to your personal Frontiers Account to submit an article.

For any co-author who would like his/her name on the article abstract page and PDF to be linked to a Frontiers profile on the Loop network, please ensure to register before the final publication of the paper.

Original Content

Frontiers publishes only original content. It therefore requires that all submissions must consist as far as possible of content that has not been published previously. In accordance with COPE guidelines, we expect that “original wording taken directly from publications by other researchers should appear in quotation marks with the appropriate citations.” This condition also applies to an author’s own work, and to submissions adapted from conference abstracts and proceedings papers, please see the following sections for more information.

• Theses and Dissertations

  In submitted manuscripts, Frontiers allows the inclusion of content which first appeared in an author’s thesis so long as this represents the only medium it has appeared in, is in line with the author’s university policy, and can be accessed online. If the thesis is not archived online, it is considered as original, unpublished data and thus is subject to the unpublished data restrictions of some of our article-types. This inclusion should be noted in the Acknowledgements section of the manuscript and the thesis should be cited and referenced accordingly in the Reference list. For some examples, please check our References section.

• Conferences, Proceedings and Abstracts

  Manuscripts which first appeared as conference papers can be considered as original work if expanded upon. As a rule of thumb, at least 30% of content must be original. Authors submitting such work are required to:

  1. Cite the conference in the Acknowledgements section, or the references section if applicable
  2. Seek permission for reuse of the published conference paper if the author does not hold the copyright

• Blogs

  Although permissible, extended manuscript content which has previously appeared online in non-academic media e.g. blogs, should be declared at the time of submission in a cover letter or in communication with the relevant editorial office for consideration.

Article Type

Frontiers requires authors to carefully select the appropriate article type for their manuscript, and to comply to the article type descriptions defined in the journal’s "Article Types", which can be seen from the "For Authors" menu on any Frontiers journal page. Please pay close attention to the word count limits. Focused Reviews, Frontiers Commentaries and Grand Challenge articles are invited by the chief editor and cannot be part of any Frontiers Research Topic. Unless you were contacted by the chief editor or the editorial office regarding the submission of a paper selected for tier 2 promotion, do not submit a Focused Review or a Frontiers Commentary - instead, submit a Review or a General Commentary.

Please see Additional Requirements for specific article types including Focused Reviews, General Commentaries, Protocols and Data Reports.

Manuscript Length

Frontiers encourages its authors to closely follow the article word count lengths given in the Summary Table. The manuscript length includes only the main body of the text, footnotes and all citations within it, and excludes abstract, section titles, figure and table captions, funding statements, acknowledgments and references in the bibliography. Please indicate the number of words and the number of figures included in your manuscript on the first page.

Language Editing

Frontiers requires manuscripts submitted to meet international standards for English language to be considered for publication.

For authors who would like their manuscript to receive language editing or proofing to improve the clarity of the manuscript and help highlight their research, Frontiers recommends the language-editing service provided by our external partner Charlesworth Group Author Services, who has a long standing track record in language editing. This is a third-party service for which Frontiers authors will receive a discount by visiting the following link: http://www.charlesworthauthorservices.com/~Frontiers.

Note that sending your manuscript for language editing does not imply or guarantee that it will be accepted for publication by a Frontiers journal. Editorial decisions on the scientific content of a manuscript are independent of whether it has received language editing or proofing by the Charlesworth Group Author Services, or other services.

Language Style

The default language style at Frontiers is American English. If you prefer your article to be formatted in British English, please specify this on your manuscript first page. For any questions regarding style Frontiers recommends authors to consult the Chicago Manual of Style.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

There are a few simple ways to maximize your article’s discoverability. Follow the steps below to improve search results of your article:

• Include a few of your article's keywords in the title of the article;
• Do not use long article titles;
• Pick 5 to 8 keywords using a mix of generic and more specific terms on the article subject(s);
• Use the maximum amount of keywords in the first 2 sentences of the abstract;
• Use some of the keywords in level 1 headings.

Title

The title is written in title case, centered, and in 16 point bold Times New Roman font at the top of page.

The title should be concise, omitting terms that are implicit and, where possible, be a statement of the main result or conclusion presented in the manuscript. Abbreviations should be avoided within the title.

Witty or creative titles are welcome, but only if relevant and within measure. Consider if a title meant to be thought-provoking might be misinterpreted as offensive or alarming. In extreme cases, the editorial office may veto a title and propose an alternative.

Authors should try to avoid, if possible:

• • Titles that are a mere question without giving the answer.

  • Unambitious titles, for example starting with "Towards", "A description of", "A characterization of", "Preliminary study on".

  • Vague titles, for example starting with "Role of...", "Link between...", "Effect of..." that do not specify the role, link, or effect.

  • Include terms that are out of place, for example the taxonomic affiliation apart from species name.

  For Corrigenda, Book Reviews, General Commentaries and Editorials, the title of your manuscript should have the following format:

  • "Corrigendum: Title of original article"

  • "Book Review: Title of book"

  • General Commentaries

    • "Commentary: Title of original article" (This does not apply to Frontiers Commentaries)

    • "Response: Commentary: Title of original article"

  • "Editorial: Title of Research Topic"

For article types requiring it, the running title should be a maximum of 5 words in length. (see Summary Table)

Authors and Affiliations

All names are listed together and separated by commas. Provide exact and correct author names as these will be indexed in official archives. Affiliations should be keyed to the author's name with superscript numbers and be listed as follows: Laboratory, Institute, Department, Organization, City, State abbreviation (USA, Canada, Australia), and Country (without detailed address information such as city zip codes or street names).

Example: Max Maximus, Department of Excellence, International University of Science, New York, NY, USA.

The Corresponding Author(s) should be marked with an asterisk. Provide the exact contact email address of the corresponding author(s) in a separate section.

Correspondence:

Dr. Max Maximus
maximus@gmail.com

If any authors wish to include a change of address, list the present address(es) below the correspondence details using a unique superscript symbol keyed to the author(s) in the author list.

Headings and Sub-headings

Except for special names (e.g. GABAergic), capitalize only the first letter of headings and subheadings. Headings and subheadings need to be defined in Times New Roman, 12, bold. You may insert up to 5 heading levels into your manuscript (not more than for example: 3.2.2.1.2 Heading title).

Abstract

As a primary goal, the abstract should render the general significance and conceptual advance of the work clearly accessible to a broad readership. In the abstract, minimize the use of abbreviations and do not cite references. The text of the abstract section should be in 12 point normal Times New Roman. See Summary Table for abstract requirement and length according to article type.

For Clinical Trial article types, please include the Unique Identifier and the URL of the publicly accessible website on which the trial is registered.

Keywords

All article types: you may provide up to 8 keywords; at least 5 are mandatory.

Text

The body text is in 12 point normal Times New Roman. New paragraphs will be separated with a single empty line. The entire document should be single-spaced and should contain page and line numbers in order to facilitate the review process. Your manuscript should be written using either LaTeX or MS-Word.

Nomenclature

• The use of abbreviations should be kept to a minimum. Non-standard abbreviations should be avoided unless they appear at least four times, and defined upon first use in the main text. Consider also giving a list of non-standard abbreviations at the end, immediately before the Acknowledgments.

• Equations should be inserted in editable format from the equation editor.

• Gene symbols should be italicized; protein products are not italicized.

• Chemical compounds and biomolecules should be referred to using systematic nomenclature, preferably using the recommendations by IUPAC.

• We encourage the use of Standard International Units in all manuscripts.

• Life Science Identifiers (LSIDs) for ZOOBANK registered names or nomenclatural acts should be listed in the manuscript before the keywords. An LSID is represented as a uniform resource name (URN) with the following format:

  urn:lsid:<Authority>:<Namespace>:<ObjectID>[:<Version>]

  For more information on LSIDs please see Inclusion of Zoological Nomenclature section

Sections

Your manuscript is organized by headings and subheadings. For Original Research Articles, Clinical Trial Articles, and Technology Reports the section headings should be those appropriate for your field and the research itself.

For Original Research Articles, it is recommended to organize your manuscript in the following sections or their equivalents for your field:

1. Introduction
   Succinct, with no subheadings.

2. Material and Methods
   This section may be divided by subheadings. This section should contain sufficient detail so that when read in conjunction with cited references, all procedures can be repeated. For experiments reporting results on animal or human subject research, an ethics approval statement should be included in this section (for further information, see here)

3. Results
   This section may be divided by subheadings. Footnotes should not be used and have to be transferred into the main text.

4. Discussion
   This section may be divided by subheadings. Discussions should cover the key findings of the study: discuss any prior art related to the subject so to place the novelty of the discovery in the appropriate context; discuss the potential short-comings and 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.

For further information, please see Additional Requirements for specific article types including Focused Reviews, General Commentaries, Case Reports and Data Reports amongst others or you can check the descriptions defined in the journal’s "Article Types", which can be seen from the "For Authors" menu on any Frontiers journal page.

Conflict of Interest Statement

Frontiers follows the recommendations by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (http://www.icmje.org/recommendations/browse/roles-and-responsibilities/author-responsibilities--conflicts-of-interest.html) which require that all financial, commercial or other relationships that might be perceived by the academic community as representing a potential conflict of interest must be disclosed. If no such relationship exists, authors will be asked 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. When disclosing the potential conflict of interest, the authors need to address the following points:

• Did you or your institution at any time receive payment or services from a third party for any aspect of the submitted work?

• Please declare financial relationships with entities that could be perceived to influence, or that give the appearance of potentially influencing, what you wrote in the submitted work.

• Please declare patents and copyrights, whether pending, issued, licensed and/or receiving royalties relevant to the work.

• Please state other relationships or activities that readers could perceive to have influenced, or that give the appearance of potentially influencing, what you wrote in the submitted work.

Authors and Contributors

When determining authorship the following criteria should be observed:

• Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; AND

• Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content; AND

• Final approval of the version to be published; AND

• Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

Contributors who meet fewer than all 4 of the above criteria for authorship should not be listed as authors, but they should be acknowledged.

The Author Contributions section is mandatory for all articles, including articles by sole authors. If an appropriate statement is not provided on submission, a standard one will be inserted during the production process. The Author Contributions statement must describe the contributions of individual authors and, in doing so, all authors agree to be accountable for the content of the work. Please list only 2 initials for each author, without periods, but separated by commas (e.g. JC, JS). In the case of two authors with the same initials, please use their middle initial to differentiate between them (e.g. REW, RSW). The Author Contributions section should be included at the end of the manuscript before the References.

Funding

Details of all funding sources should be provided, including grant numbers if applicable. Please ensure to add all necessary funding information, as after publication this is no longer possible.

Acknowledgments

This is a short text to acknowledge the contributions of specific colleagues, institutions, or agencies that aided the efforts of the authors.

References

All citations in the text, figures or tables must be in the reference list and vice-versa. The references should only include articles that are published or accepted. Data sets that have been deposited to an online repository should be included in the reference list, include the version and unique identifier when available. For accepted but unpublished works use "in press" instead of page numbers. Unpublished data, submitted manuscripts, or personal communications should be cited within the text only, for the article types that allow such inclusions. Personal communications should be documented by a letter of permission. Website urls should be included as footnotes. Any inclusion of verbatim text must be contained in quotation marks and clearly reference the original source.

The following formatting styles are meant as a guide, as long as the full citation is complete and clear, Frontiers referencing style will be applied during typesetting.

• SCIENCE, ENGINEERING, and HUMANITIES: For articles submitted in the domains of SCIENCE, ENGINEERING and HUMANITIES please apply Author-Year system for in-text citations.

  Reference list: provide the names of the first six authors followed by et al and doi when available.

  In-text citations should be called according to the surname of the first author, followed by the year. For works by 2 authors include both surnames, followed by the year. For works by more than 2 authors include only the surname of the first author, followed by et al., followed by the year. For Humanities and Social Sciences articles please include page numbers in the in-text citations.

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

  Article in an online journal:
  Tahimic, C.G.T., Wang, Y., Bikle, D.D. (2013). Anabolic effects of IGF-1 signaling on the skeleton. Front. Endocrinol. 4:6. doi: 10.3389/fendo.2013.00006

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

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

  Abstract:
  Hendricks, J., Applebaum, R., and Kunkel, S. (2010). A world apart? Bridging the gap between theory and applied social gerontology. Gerontologist 50, 284-293. Abstract retrieved from Abstracts in Social Gerontology database. (Accession No. 50360869)

  Patent:
  Marshall, S. P. (2000). Method and apparatus for eye tracking and monitoring pupil dilation to evaluate cognitive activity. U.S. Patent No 6,090,051. Washington, DC: U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

  Data:
  [Dataset] Perdiguero P, Venturas M, Cervera MT, Gil L, Collada C. (2015) Data from: Massive sequencing of Ulms minor's transcriptome provides new molecular tools for a genus under the constant threat of Dutch elm disease. Dryad Digital Repository. http://dx.doi.org/10.5061/dryad.ps837

  Theses and Dissertations:
  Smith, J. (2008) Post-structuralist discourse relative to phenomological pursuits in the deconstructivist arena. [dissertation/master’s thesis]. [Chicago (IL)]: University of Chicago

  For examples of citing other documents and general questions regarding reference style, please refer to the Chicago Manual of Style.

  Frontiers Science Endnote Style

  Frontiers Science, Engineering and Humanities Bibstyle

• HEALTH, PHYSICS AND MATHEMATICS: For articles submitted in the domain of HEALTH or the journal Frontiers in Physics and Frontiers in Applied Mathematics and Statistics please apply the Vancouver system for in-text citations.

  Reference list: provide the names of the first six authors followed by et al and doi when available.

  In-text citations should be numbered consecutively in order of appearance in the text – identified by Arabic numerals in the parenthesis for Health articles, and in square brackets for Physics and Mathematics articles.

  Article in a print journal:
  Sondheimer N, Lindquist S. Rnq1: an epigenetic modifier of protein function in yeast. Mol Cell (2000) 5:163-72.

  Article in an online journal:
  Tahimic CGT, Wang Y, Bikle DD. Anabolic effects of IGF-1 signaling on the skeleton. Front Endocrinol  (2013) 4:6. doi: 10.3389/fendo.2013.00006

  Article or chapter in a book:
  Sorenson PW, Caprio JC. "Chemoreception,". In: Evans DH, editor. The Physiology of Fishes. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press (1998). p. 375-405.

  Book:
  Cowan WM, Jessell TM, Zipursky SL. Molecular and Cellular Approaches to Neural Development. New York: Oxford University Press (1997). 345 p.

  Abstract:
  Christensen S, Oppacher F. An analysis of Koza's computational effort statistic for genetic programming. In: Foster JA, editor. Genetic Programming. EuroGP 2002: Proceedings of the 5th European Conference on Genetic Programming; 2002 Apr 3–5; Kinsdale, Ireland. Berlin: Springer (2002). p. 182–91.

  Patent:
  Pagedas AC, inventor; Ancel Surgical R&D Inc., assignee. Flexible Endoscopic Grasping and Cutting Device and Positioning Tool Assembly. United States patent US 20020103498 (2002).

  Data:
  [Dataset] Perdiguero P, Venturas M, Cervera MT, Gil L, Collada C. Data from: Massive sequencing of Ulms minor's transcriptome provides new molecular tools for a genus under the constant threat of Dutch elm disease. Dryad Digital Repository. (2015) http://dx.doi.org/10.5061/dryad.ps837

  Theses and Dissertations:
  Smith, J. (2008) Post-structuralist discourse relative to phenomological pursuits in the deconstructivist arena. [dissertation/master’s thesis]. [Chicago (IL)]: University of Chicago

  For examples of citing other documents and general questions regarding reference style, please refer to Citing Medicine.

  Frontiers Health Endnote Style

  Frontiers Health and Physics Bibstyle

Disclaimer

Any necessary disclaimers which must be included in the published article should be clearly indicated in the manuscript.

Supplementary Material

Frontiers journals do not support pushing important results and information into supplementary sections. However, data that are not of primary importance to the text, or which 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.) can be uploaded during the submission procedure and will be displayed along with the published article.

The Supplementary Material can be uploaded as Data Sheet (word, excel, csv, cdx, fasta, pdf or zip files), Presentation (power point, pdf or zip files), Supplementary Image (cdx, eps, jpeg, pdf, png or tif), Supplementary Table (word, excel, csv or pdf), Audio (mp3, wav or wma) or Video (avi, divx, flv, mov, mp4, mpeg, mpg or wmv).

Supplementary material is not typeset so please ensure that all information is clearly presented, the appropriate caption is included in the file and not in the manuscript, and that the style conforms to the rest of the article. For Supplementary Material templates (LaTex and Word) see Supplementary Material for Frontiers.

Word Files

If working with Word please use Frontiers Word.

LaTeX Files

If you wish to submit your article as LaTeX, we recommend our Frontiers LaTeX templates. These templates are meant as a guide, you are of course welcome to use any style or formatting and Frontiers journal style will be applied during typesetting.

When submitting your article please ensure to upload all relevant manuscript files including:

• tex file
• PDF
• .bib file (if the bibliography is not already included in the .tex file)

Figures should be included in the provided pdf. In case of acceptance, our Production Office might require high resolution files of the figures included in the manuscript in eps, jpg or tif format. In order to be able to upload more than one figure at a time, save the figures (labeled in order of appearance in the manuscript) in a zip file, and upload them as ‘Supplementary Material Presentation’.

To facilitate the review process, please include a Word Count at the beginning of your manuscript, one option is texcount which also has an online interface.

3. Additional Requirements

CrossMark Policy

CrossMark is a multi-publisher initiative to provide a standard way for readers to locate the current version of a piece of content. By applying the CrossMark logo Frontiers is committing to maintaining the content it publishes and to alerting readers to changes if and when they occur. Clicking on the CrossMark logo will tell you the current status of a document and may also give you additional publication record information about the document.

Frontiers follows the COPE guidelines for retractions. For our procedure regarding corrections please see the section below. Corrigenda and errata are linked to the original article. Articles are only directly updated in case the correction affects the citation of the publication.

Corrections

If you need to communicate important, scientifically relevant errors or missing information, please submit a Correction, detailing the reason(s) for and location(s) of the change(s) needed in the cover letter. The title of the submission should have the following format: "Corrigendum: Title of original article". You are advised to use the corrigendum Word and LaTeX templates.

If the error was introduced during the publishing process, contact the Frontiers Production Office to issue an erratum.

Commentaries on Articles

For General Commentaries, the title of your manuscript must have the following format: "Commentary: Title of the original article". At the beginning of your Commentary, please provide the citation of the article commented on. Authors commenting on a Frontiers article must submit their commentary for consideration to the same Journal and Specialty as the original article.

Rebuttals may be submitted in response to Commentaries; our limit in place is one commentary and one response. Rebuttals should be submitted as General Commentary articles and the title should have the following format: "Response to: Commentary: Title of the original article".

Book Reviews

For book Reviews, you must provide the full book details at the beginning of the article in this format: "A book review on: Full book reference"

Focused Reviews

For Tier 2 invited Focused Reviews, to shape the paper on the importance of the research to the field, we recommend structuring the Review to discuss the paper's Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results and Discussion. In addition the authors must submit a short biography of the corresponding author(s). This short biography has a maximum of 600 characters, including spaces.

A picture (5 x 5 cm, in *.tif or *.jpg, min 300 dpi) must be submitted along with the biography in the manuscript and separately during figure upload.

Focused Reviews highlight and explain key concepts of your work. Please highlight a minimum of four and a maximum of ten key concepts in bold in your manuscript and provide the definitions/explanations at the end of your manuscript under “Key Concepts”. Each definition has a maximum of 400 characters, including spaces.

Systematic Reviews

For Systematic Reviews, the following article structure applies.

• Title: include systematic review/meta-synthesis/meta-analysis as appropriate in the title

Each of the sections should include specific sub-sections as follows

• Abstract
  
  • Background
  • Methods
  • Results
  • Conclusions
• Introduction
  
  • Rationale
  • Objectives
  • Research question
• Methods
  
  • Study design
  • Participants, interventions, comparators
  • Systematic review protocol
  • Search strategy
  • Data sources, studies sections and data extraction
  • Data analysis
• Results
  
  • Provide a flow diagram of the studies retrieved for the review
  • Study selection and characteristics
  • Synthesized findings
  • Risk of bias
• Discussion
  
  • Summary of main findings
  • Limitations
  • Conclusions

Data Reports

For Data Reports, please make sure to follow these additional specific guidelines.

1. The data sets (defined as a collection of data that contains individual data units organized in a standardized reusable format, including pre-processed or raw data) must be deposited in a public repository for long-term data preservation prior to submission of the Data Report. The data set(s) is to be fixed and made publicly available upon publication of the Data Report.

2. Our data sharing policy also requires that the dataset be made available to the Frontiers editors and reviewers during the review process of the manuscript. Prior to submission of your Data Report manuscript, please ensure that the repository you have selected supports confidential peer-review. If it does not, we recommend that the authors deposit the datasets to figshare or Dryad Digital Repository for the peer-review process. The data set(s) can then be transferred to another relevant repository before final publication, should the article be accepted for publication at Frontiers.

Note that it is the authors’ responsibility to maintain the data sets after publication of the Data Report. Any published Frontiers Data Report article will be considered for retraction should the data be removed from the final selected repository after publication or the access become restricted.

3. The submitted manuscript must include the following details:

• Detailed cover letter (including a link to the data set)
• Name of the data set
• Name of the database/repository where the data set has been submitted
• Link to the data set for confidential peer-review (which can be updated after acceptance, prior to publication once the data is made public)
• Description of how the data was acquired, data collection period
• Filters applied to the data
• Overview of the data files and their formats
• Reference to and/or description of the protocols or methods used to collect the data
• Information on how readers may interpret the data set and reuse the data

All these elements will be peer-reviewed and are required for the publication of the Data Report.

Any future updates to the data set(s) should be deposited as independent versions in a repository and the relevant information may be published as General Commentaries linked on the Frontiers website to the initial Data Report.

Any detailed analyses or new scientific insights relating to the Data Report can be submitted as independent research articles which can also be linked on the Frontiers website to the Data Report article. The protocols and methodology used to collect the data can also be submitted as Methods articles.

Case Reports

For Case Reports the following sections are mandatory:

1. Introduction
   Include symptoms at presentation, physical exams and lab results.

2. Background
   This section may be divided by subheadings. Include history and review of similar cases.

3. Discussion
   This section may be divided by subheadings. Include diagnosis and treatment.

4. Concluding Remarks

Policy Briefs

For Policy Briefs, the following article structure applies:

1. Abstract (bullet point format)
2. Introduction
3. Sections on Policy Options and Implications
4. Section on Actionable Recommendations
5. Conclusions

Protocols

For Protocols articles, please make sure to follow these additional specific guidelines.

1. The submitted manuscript must include the following sections:

   1. An Abstract

   2. An Introduction outlining the protocol and summarizing its possible applications.

   3. A Materials and Equipment section providing a list of reagents or other materials and/or equipment required to carry out the protocol. For basic-science protocols, the formulation of any solutions, e.g. buffers, should be clearly indicated in the Materials and Equipment section.

   4. A Stepwise Procedures section listing, stepwise, the stages of the protocol. The timing of each step or related series of steps should be indicated, as should points at which it is possible to pause or halt the procedure without adversely influencing the outcome. For steps requiring repeated measurements, details of precision and accuracy should be presented. Limits of detection or quantification should also be stipulated where appropriate.

   5. An Anticipated Results section describing, and illustrating with figures, where possible, the expected outcome of the protocol. Any analytical software or methods should be presented in detail in this section, as should possible pitfalls and artifacts of the procedure and any troubleshooting measures to counteract them. These last may also be described in an optional Notes section.

   6. Code or training data sets referenced by the protocol and useful in its execution should be hosted in an online repository; their accession numbers or other stable identifiers should be referenced in the Anticipated Results.

2. The following additional information should be presented in the cover letter accompanying your manuscript:
   • Significance of the protocol and references to any relevant primary research manuscript(s) in which it has been previously employed.
   • Any advance represented by the method compared with other, similar methods.
   • Appropriateness of the manuscript to the Specialty Section to which it has been submitted.
   • Associate Editors with suitable expertise to handle the manuscript.
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  Code

  The code should be novel and presented in human-readable format, adhere to the standard conventions of the language used (variable names, indentation, style and grammar), be well documented (comments in source), be provided with an example data set to show efficacy, be compilable or executable free of errors (stating configuration of system used).

  The code should only call standard (freely accessible) libraries or include required libraries, and include a detailed description of the use-scenarios, expected outcomes from the code and known limitations of the code.

  Please therefore make sure to provide access to the following upon submission:

  1. Abstract explicitly including the language of code

  2. Keywords including the language of the code in the following format:"code:language"” e.g.: "code:matlab"

  3. Cover Letter including the utility of the code and its language

  4. Main Text including:

     • code description
     • application and utility of the code
     • link to an accessible online code repository where the most recent source code version is stored and curated (with an associated DOI for retrieval after review)
     • access to test data and readme files
     • methods used
     • example of use
     • known issues
     • licensing information (Open Source licenses recommended)

  5. Compressed Archive (.zip) of the reviewed version of the code as supplementary material (.zip archives are currently available under the “Presentation” dropdown menu).

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  Cover Letter

  When you submit your manuscript, you will be required to add a cover letter directed to the Editor.

  Please indicate, in the first paragraph, the title of the manuscript, the article type, the Journal and specialty to which the manuscript is being submitted, and whether it is part of a Research Topic. You must also state that the manuscript has not been submitted for publication elsewhere; any closely related works submitted for consideration in other publications should be noted and you may be asked to provide a copy.

  It is essential as well that you provide a short description of the significance of the manuscript. While Frontiers evaluates articles using objective criteria, rather than impact or novelty, your cover letter should frame the question(s) you have addressed in your work in the context of the current body of knowledge, providing evidence that the findings - whether positive or negative - contribute to progress in your research discipline. This will assist the Chief Editors to determine whether your manuscript fits within the scope of a specialty as defined in its mission statement; a detailed cover letter will also facilitate the identification of the Editors and Reviewers most appropriate to evaluate your work, ultimately expediting your manuscript's initial consideration.

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  Studies involving human subjects

  Frontiers endorses the Helsinki declaration and the guidelines of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors. Studies involving human participants must be performed in accordance with relevant institutional and national guidelines, with the appropriate institutional ethics committee's approval and informed written consent from all human subjects involved in the study. For manuscripts reporting studies involving human subjects, authors must clearly state the relevant ethics committee approving the study and confirm that study subjects have granted their written informed consent. Manuscripts reporting clinical trial data need to include the name of the public registry under which the clinical trial has been registered, and the number of the trial. For most article types, the information should appear in the Materials and Methods section.

  For example: This study was carried out in accordance with the recommendations of 'name of guidelines, name of committee' with written informed consent from all subjects. All subjects gave written informed consent in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki.

  Should the study be exempt from this requirement, authors need to clearly state the reasons in the cover letter and manuscript. For incompetent patients (e.g. young children, unconscious patients) some form of consent, such as from family members, is needed.

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  Studies involving animal research

  All experiments reporting results on animal research must be performed in accordance with relevant institutional and national guidelines and regulations. In the manuscript, authors must identify the full name of the ethics committee that approved the work. For most article types, this statement should appear in the Materials and Methods section.

  For example: This study was carried out in accordance with the recommendations of 'name of guidelines, name of committee'. The protocol was approved by the 'name of committee'.

  Should the study be exempt from this requirement, authors need to clearly state the reasons in the cover letter and manuscript.

  Studies involving privately owned animals should demonstrate the best practice veterinary care and confirm that informed consent has been granted by the owner/s, or the legal representative of the owner/s.

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  Clinical Trial Registration

  The World Health Organization defines clinical trial as "any research study that prospectively assigns human participants or groups of humans to one or more health-related interventions to evaluate the effects on health outcomes." In accordance with the Clinical Trial Registration Statement from the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMEJ), all clinical trials must be registered in a public trials registry at or before the onset of participant enrollment. This requirement applies to all clinical trials that begin enrollment after July 1, 2005. To meet the requirements of the ICMJE, clinical trials can be registered with any Primary Registry in the WHO Registry Network or an ICMJE approved registry.

  Clinical trial reports should be compliant with the Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials (CONSORT) both in terms of including a flow diagram presenting the enrollment, intervention allocation, follow-up, and data analysis with number of subjects for each and taking into account the CONSORT Checklist of items to include when reporting a randomized clinical trial.

  The information on the clinical trial registration (Unique Identifier and URL) must be included in the abstract.

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  Materials and Data policies

  Frontiers supports the Transparency and Openness Promotion (TOP) guidelines, which state that materials, data, and code described in published works should be made available, without undue reservation, to any qualified researcher, to expedite work that builds on previous findings and enhance the reproducibility of the scientific record.

  To comply with these guidelines and encourage best practice in methods reporting, Frontiers requires that all research materials be clearly indicated in Materials and Methods sections with sufficient detail to the reader to enable the reproduction of an experiment. Authors wishing to participate in the Resource Identification Initiative should cite antibodies, genetically modified organisms, software tools, data, databases, and services using the corresponding catalog number and RRID in your current manuscript. For more information about the project and for steps on how to search for an RRID, please click here.

  Frontiers also asks that authors make their data available to editor and reviewers during peer-review to enable complete and objective evaluation of the work described. To comply with best practice in their field of research, authors must also make certain types of data available to readers at time of publication in stable, community-supported repositories such as those listed below, unless in case of serious confidentiality concerns (for example, research involving human subjects). Although not mandatory, authors may also consider the deposition of additional data-types (see below). Authors are encouraged to contact their respective journal’s editorial office prior to submission with any queries concerning data reporting.

  Authors are required to deposit the following data-types in public, community-supported repositories, such as those listed below, prior to publication of an associated Frontiers manuscript:

  Data-type	Recommended Repositories	Metadata Standard
  Genetic and genomic sequence (DNA/ RNA)^	GenBank DNA Data Bank of Japan (DDBJ) European Nucleotide Archive (ENA)	MiXS
  Metagenomic sequence	EBI Metagenomics	MiXS
  DNA and RNA trace or short-read sequencing data	NCBI Trace Archive NCBI Sequence Read Archive	MiXS
  Genetic polymorphism data, including SNP and CNV data	dbSNP dbVar European Variation Archive DGVa	MiXS
  Gene expression data; chromatin immunoprecipitation data (deep-sequencing or microarray)	ArrayExpress Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO)	MIAME / MINSEQE
  Data linking genotype to phenotype	dbGaP
  Protein sequence data	UniProt
  Proteome profiling data	PRIDE PeptideAtlas ProteomeXchange	MIAPE
  Small molecule, protein, protein complex data structural data	Crystallography Open Database Cambridge Structural Database wwPDB (Protein DataBank) Electron Microscopy Databank	CIF
  Taxonomy data	Zoobank

  ^ Genetic sequence variants should be annotated according to the guidelines established by the Human Variome Project.

  Authors are encouraged to consider deposition in public, community-supported repositories of the data-types listed below:

  Data-type;	Recommended Repositories	Metadata Standard
  Protein-protein interaction data	Database of Interacting Proteins (DIP)	MIMIx
  Metabolite and metabolome profiling data	MetaboLights Human Metabolome Database	MSI
  Small-molecule screening data, chemical compound data	PubChem	CIF
  Flow cytometry data	Flow Repository
  Brain Imaging data / Neuroimaging data	OpenfMRI INDI NITRC NeuroVault [Statistical maps]
  Trait data	TRY database
  Phenology data	National Phenology Network
  Any data	FigShare Dryad Digital Repository	None

  Inclusion of Zoological Nomenclature

  The International Code of Zoological Nomenclature, in a recent 2012 amendment to the 1999 Zoological Code, allows all electronic-only papers, such as those published by the Frontiers journals, to have valid new taxon names and nomenclatural acts. However, these new names or nomenclatural acts must be registered in ZOOBANK and have associated Life Science Identifiers (LSIDs). Registration must be done by the authors before publication. Should your manuscript include any zoological new taxon names and/or nomenclatural acts, please ensure that they are registered prior to final publication.

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  Inclusion of RNAseq Data

  Studies employing RNASeq for comparative transcriptomic analyses must contain at least 3 biological replicates (unless otherwise justified). Each biological replicate should be represented in an independent library, each with a unique barcode if libraries are multiplexed for sequencing. Validation on a number of key transcripts highlighted in the study is also highly recommended.

  Full data accompanying these experiments must be made available to reviewers at the time of submission in a freely accessible resource e.g the sequence read archive (SRA) or European Nucleotide Archive (ENA). Depending on the question addressed in a manuscript, de novo assemblies of transcriptomes may also require multiple replicates and assembled sequences together with sequence annotation must be made freely available e.g figshare or dryad.

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  Inclusion of Proteomics Data

  Authors should provide relevant information relating to how peptide/protein matches were undertaken, including methods used to process and analyze data, false discovery rates (FDR) for large-scale studies, and threshold or cut-off rates for peptide and protein matches. Further information should include software used, mass spectrometer type, sequence database and version, number of sequences in database, processing methods, mass tolerances used for matching, variable/fixed modifications, allowable missed cleavages, etc.

  Authors should provide as supplementary material information used to identify proteins and/or peptides. This should include information such as accession numbers, observed mass (m/z), charge, delta mass, matched mass, peptide/protein scores, peptide modification, miscleavages, peptide sequence, match rank, matched species (for cross-species matching), number of peptide matches, etc. Ambiguous protein/peptide matches should be indicated.

  For quantitative proteomics analyses, authors should provide information to justify the statistical significance, including biological replicates, statistical methods, estimates of uncertainty, and the methods used for calculating error.

  For peptide matches with biologically relevant post-translational modifications (PTMs) and for any protein match that has occurred using a single mass spectrum, authors should include this information as raw data or annotated spectra, or submit data to an online repository (recommended option; see table below).

  Raw or matched data and 2-DE images should be submitted to public proteomics repositories such as those participating in ProteomeXchange. Submission codes and/or links to data should be provided within the manuscript.

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  4. Figure and Table Guidelines

  General Style Guidelines for Figures

  The maximum number of figures and tables for all article types are shown in the Summary Table. Frontiers requires figures to be submitted individually, in the same order as they are referred to in the manuscript, the figures will then be automatically embedded at the end of the submitted manuscript. Kindly ensure that each table and figure is mentioned in the text and in numerical order.

  For graphs, there must be a self-explanatory label (including units) along each axis. For figures with more than one panel, panels should be clearly indicated using labels (A), (B), (C), (D), etc. However, do not embed the part labels over any part of the image, these labels will be added during typesetting according to Frontiers journal style. Please note that figures which are not according to the guidelines will cause substantial delay during the production process.

  Permission must be obtained for use of copyrighted material from other sources (including re-published/adapted/modified/partial figures and images from the internet). It is the responsibility of the authors to acquire the licenses, to follow any citation instructions requested by third-party rights holders, and cover any supplementary charges.

  Frontiers takes concerns regarding image manipulation seriously. We request that no individual features within an image are modified (eg. enhanced, obscured, moved, removed or added). Where images are grouped together, for example, parts of gels are lined up, this must be clearly explained in the figure or in the figure text, and the original entire gel should be submitted as supplementary material. Where control images are re-used for illustrative purposes, this must be clearly declared in the figure legend. Any change in brightness, contrast or color balance must be applied to every pixel in the image and the changes should not alter the information illustrated in the figure. Any concerns raised will be investigated and the authors will be asked to provide the original images.

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  General Style Guidelines for Tables

  Tables should be inserted at the end of the manuscript. If you use a word processor, build your table in word. If you use a LaTeX processor, build your table in LaTeX. An empty line should be left before and after the table.

  Please note that large tables covering several pages cannot be included in the final PDF for formatting reasons. These tables will be published as supplementary material on the online article abstract page at the time of acceptance. The author will notified during the typesetting of the final article if this is the case. A link in the final PDF will direct to the online material.

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  Figure and Table Legends

  Figure and table legends are required to have the same font as the main text (12 point normal Times New Roman, single spaced). Legends should be preceded by the appropriate label, for example "Figure 1" or "Table 4". Figure legends should be placed at the end of the manuscript (for supplementary images you must include the caption with the figure, uploaded as a separate file). Table legends must be placed immediately before the table. Please use only a single paragraph for the legend. Figure panels are referred to by bold capital letters in brackets: (A), (B), (C), (D), etc.

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  Image Size

  Figure images should be prepared with the PDF layout in mind, individual figures should not be longer than one page and with a width that corresponds to 1 column or 2 columns.

  • All articles are prepared using the 2 column layout: 2 column articles can contain images 85 mm or 180 mm wide.

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  Format

  The following formats are accepted:
  TIFF (.tif) TIFF files should be saved using LZW compression or any other non-lossy compression method.
  JPEG (.jpg)
  EPS (.eps) EPS files can be uploaded upon acceptance

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  Color Image Mode

  Images must be submitted in the color mode RGB.

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  Resolution Requirements

  All images must be uploaded separately in the submission procedure and have a resolution of 300 dpi at final size. Check the resolution of your figure by enlarging it to 150%. If the resolution is too low, the image will appear blurry, jagged or have a stair-stepped effect.

  Please note saving a figure directly as an image file (JPEG, TIF) can greatly affect the resolution of your image. To avoid this, one option is to export the file as PDF, then convert into TIFF or EPS using a graphics software. EPS files can be uploaded upon acceptance.

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  Chemical Structures

  Chemical structures should be prepared using ChemDraw or a similar program according to the guidelines given below:

  Drawing settings: chain angle, 120° bond spacing, 18% of width; fixed length, 14.4 pt; bold width, 2.0 pt; line width, 0.6 pt; margin width 1.6 pt; hash spacing 2.5 pt. Scale 100%Atom Label settings: font, Arial; size, 8 pt.

  Assign all chemical compounds a bold, Arabic numeral in the order in which the compounds are presented in the manuscript text. Figures containing chemical structures should be submitted in a size appropriate for incorporation into the manuscript.

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  Legibility

  Figures must be legible. Check the following:

  • The smallest visible text is no less than 8 points in height, when viewed at actual size.

  • Solid lines are not broken up.

  • Image areas are not pixilated or stair stepped.

  • Text is legible and of high quality.

  • Any lines in the graphic are no smaller than 2 points width.

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