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A Brief Guide To Writing Your First Scientific Manuscript

I’ve had the privilege of writing a few manuscripts in my research career to date, and helping trainees write them. It’s hard work, but planning and organization helps. Here’s some thoughts on how to approach writing manuscripts based on original biomedical research.

Getting ready to write

Involve your principal investigator (PI) early and throughout the process. It’s our job to help you write!

Write down your hypothesis/research question. Everything else will be spun around this.

Gather your proposed figures and tables in a sequence that tells a story. This will form the basis of your Results section. Write bulleted captions for the figures/tables, including a title that explains the key finding for each figure/table, an explanation of experimental groups and associated symbols/labels, and details on biological and technical replicates and statements (such as “one of four representative experiments are shown.”)

Generate a bulleted outline of the major points for each section of the manuscript. This depends on the journal, but typically, and with minor variations: Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion. Use Endnote, Reference Manager, Mendeley, or other citation software to start inserting references to go with bullets. Decide from the beginning what word processing software you’ll use (Word, Google Docs, etc.). Google Docs can be helpful for maintaining a single version of the manuscript, but citation software often doesn’t play well with Google Docs (whereas most software options can automatically update citation changes in Word). Here’s what should go in each of these sections:

Introduction: What did you study, and why is it important? What is your hypothesis/research question?

Methods: What techniques did you use? Each technique should be its own bullet, with sub-bullets for key details. If you used animal or human subjects, include a bullet on ethics approval. Important methodologies and materials, i.e., blinding for subjective analyses, full names of cell lines/strains/reagents and your commercial/academic sources for them.

Results: What were your findings? Each major finding should be its own bullet, with sub-bullets going into more detail for each major finding. These bullets should refer to your figures.

Discussion: Summarize your findings in the context of prior work. Discuss possible interpretations. It is important to include a bullet describing the limitations of the presented work. Mention possible future directions.

Now read the entire outline (including the figures). Is it a complete story? If so, you’re ready to prepare for submission. If not, you should have a good idea of what it will take to finish the manuscript.

Writing your manuscript

You first need to decide where you want to submit your manuscript. I like to consider my ideal target audience. I also like to vary which journals I publish in, both to broaden the potential readers of my papers and to avoid the appearance of having an unfair “inside connection” to a given journal. Your academic reputation is priceless.

Once you’ve chosen your journal, look at the journal’s article types. Decide which article type you would like to submit and reformat your outline according to the journal’s standards (including citation style).

Convert your outline (including the figure captions) to complete sentences. Don’t focus on writing perfect prose for the first draft. Write your abstract after the first draft is completed. Make sure the manuscript conforms to the target journal’s word and figure limits.

Discuss all possible authors with your PI. If the study involved many people, create a table of possible authors showing their specific contributions to the manuscript. (This is helpful to do in any case as many journals now require this information.) Assigning authorship is sometimes complicated, but keep in mind that the Acknowledgements can be used to recognize those who made minor contributions (including reading the manuscript to provide feedback). “Equal contribution” authorship positions for the first and last authors is a newer option for a number of journals. An alternative is to generate the initial outline or first draft with the help of co-authors. This can take a lot more work and coordination, but may make sense for highly collaborative and large manuscripts.

Decide with your PI who will be corresponding author. Usually you or the PI.

Circulate the manuscript draft to all possible authors. Thank them for their prior and ongoing support. Inform your co-authors where you would like to send the manuscript and why. Give them a reasonable deadline to provide feedback (minimum of a few weeks). If you use Microsoft Word, ask your co-authors to use track changes.

Collate comments from your co-authors. The Combine Documents function in Word can be very helpful. Consider reconciling all comments and tracked changes before circulating another manuscript draft so that co-authors can read a “clean” copy. Repeat this process until you and your PI (and co-authors) are satisfied that the manuscript is ready for submission.

Some prefer to avoid listing authors on manuscript drafts until the final version is generated because the relative contributions of authors can shift during manuscript preparation.

Submit your manuscript

Write a cover letter for your manuscript. Put it on institutional letterhead, if you are permitted by the journal’s submission system. This makes the cover letter, and by extension, the manuscript, more professional. Some journals have required language for cover letters regarding simultaneous submissions to other journals. It’s common for journals to require that cover letters include a rationale explaining the impact and findings of the manuscript. If you need to do this, include key references and a citation list at the end of the cover letter.

Most journals will require you to provide keywords, and/or to choose subject areas related to the manuscript. Be prepared to do so.

Conflicts of interest should be declared in the manuscript, even if the journal does not explicitly request this. Ask your co-authors about any such potential conflicts.

Gather names and official designations of any grants that supported the work described in your manuscript. Ask your co-authors and your PI. This is very important for funding agencies such as the NIH, which scrutinize the productivity of their funded investigators and take this into account when reviewing future grants.

It’s common for journals to allow you to suggest an editor to handle your manuscript. Editors with expertise in your area are more likely to be able to identify and recruit reviewers who are also well-versed in the subject matter of your manuscript. Discuss this with your PI and co-authors.

Likewise, journals often allow authors to suggest reviewers. Some meta-literature indicates that manuscripts with suggested reviewers have an overall higher acceptance rate. It also behooves you to have expert reviewers that can evaluate your manuscript fairly, but also provide feedback that can improve your paper if revisions are recommended. Avoid suggesting reviewers at your own institution or who have recently written papers or been awarded grants with you. Savvy editors look for these types of relationships between reviewers and authors, and will nix a suggested reviewer with any potential conflict of interest. Discuss suggested reviewers with your PI and co-authors.

On the flip side, many journals will allow you to list opposed reviewers. If you believe that someone specific will provide a negatively biased review for non-scientific reasons, that is grounds for opposing them as your manuscript’s reviewer. In small fields, it may not be possible to exclude reviewers and still undergo expert peer review. Definitely a must-discuss with your PI and co-authors.

Generate a final version of the manuscript. Most journals use online submission systems that mandate uploading individual files for the manuscript, cover letter, etc. You may have to use pdf converting software (i.e., Adobe Acrobat) to change Word documents to pdf’s, or to combine documents into a single pdf. Review the final version, including the resolution and appearance of figures. Make sure that no edges of text or graphics near page margins are cut off (Adobe Acrobat sometimes does this with Microsoft Word). Send the final version to your PI and co-authors. Revise any errors. Then submit! Good luck!

Edited by Bill Sullivan, PhD, Indiana University School of Medicine.

Michael Hsieh is the Stirewalt Scientific Director of the Biomedical Research Institute and an Associate Professor at the George Washington University, where he studies host-pathogen interactions in the urinary tract. Michael has published over 90 peer-reviewed scientific papers. His work has been featured on PBS and in the New York Times.

Your article is wonderful. just read it. you advise very correctly. I am an experienced writer. I write articles on various scientific topics. and even I took some information for myself, who I have not used before. Your article will help many novice writers. I’m sure of it. You very well described all the points of your article. I completely agree with them. most difficult to determine the target audience. Thanks to your article, everyone who needs some kind of help can get it by reading your article. Thanks you

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Formatting guide

This guide describes how to prepare contributions for submission. We recommend you read this in full if you have not previously submitted a contribution to Nature . We also recommend that, before submission, you familiarize yourself with Nature ’s style and content by reading the journal, either in print or online, particularly if you have not submitted to the journal recently.

Formats for Nature contributions

Articles are the main format for original research contributions to Nature . In addition, Nature publishes other submitted material as detailed below.

Articles are original reports whose conclusions represent a substantial advance in understanding of an important problem and have immediate, far-reaching implications. In print, physical sciences papers do not normally exceed 6 pages on average, and biological, clinical and social-sciences papers do not normally exceed 8 pages on average. However, the final print length is at the editor’s discretion.

Articles start with a fully referenced summary paragraph, ideally of no more than 200 words, which is separate from the main text and avoids numbers, abbreviations, acronyms or measurements unless essential. It is aimed at readers outside the discipline. This summary paragraph should be structured as follows: 2-3 sentences of basic-level introduction to the field; a brief account of the background and rationale of the work; a statement of the main conclusions (introduced by the phrase 'Here we show' or its equivalent); and finally, 2-3 sentences putting the main findings into general context so it is clear how the results described in the paper have moved the field forwards. Please refer to our annotated example   to see how the summary paragraph should be constructed.

The typical length of a 6-page article with 4 modest display items (figures and tables) is 2500 words (summary paragraph plus body text). The typical length of an 8-page article with 5-6 modest display items is 4300 words. A ‘modest’ display item is one that, with its legend, occupies about a quarter of a page (equivalent to ~270 words). If a composite figure (with several panels) needs to occupy at least half a page in order for all the elements to be visible, the text length may need to be reduced accordingly to accommodate such figures. Keep in mind that essential but technical details can be moved into the Methods or Supplementary Information.

As a guideline, articles typically have no more than 50 references. (There is no such constraint on any additional references associated with Methods or Supplementary Information.)

Sections are separated with subheadings to aid navigation. Subheadings may be up to 40 characters (including spaces).

Word counts refer to the text of the paper. Title, author list, acknowledgements and references are not included in total word counts.

Matters Arising and Corrections

Matters Arising are exceptionally interesting or important comments and clarifications on original research papers or other peer-reviewed material published within the past 18 months in Nature . They are published online but not in print.

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See this section for an explanation of Nature 's editorial criteria for publication, refereeing policy and how editors handle papers after submission. Submission to a Nature journal is taken by the journal to mean that all the listed authors have agreed to all of the contents. See authorship policy for more details.

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Readability

Nature is an international journal covering all the sciences. Contributions should therefore be written clearly and simply so that they are accessible to readers in other disciplines and to readers for whom English is not their first language. Thus, technical jargon should be avoided as far as possible and clearly explained where its use is unavoidable. Abbreviations, particularly those that are not standard, should also be kept to a minimum. The background, rationale and main conclusions of the study should be clearly explained. Titles and abstracts in particular should be written in language that will be readily intelligible to any scientist. Essential but specialized terms should be explained concisely but not didactically.

For gene, protein and other specialized names authors can use their preferred terminology so long as it is in current use by the community, but they must give all known names for the entity at first use in the paper. Nature prefers authors to use internationally agreed nomenclature. Papers containing new or revised formal taxonomic nomenclature for animals, whether living or extinct, are accepted conditional on the provision of LSIDs (Life Science Identifiers) by means of registration of such nomenclature with ZooBank, the proposed online registration system for the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN).

Even though no paper will be rejected because of poor language, non–native English speakers occasionally receive feedback from editors and reviewers regarding language and grammar usage in their manuscripts. You may wish to consider asking colleagues to read your manuscript and/or to use a professional editing service such as those provided by our affiliates Nature Research Editing Service or American Journal Experts . You can also get a fast, free grammar check of your manuscript that takes into account all aspects of readability in English. Please note that the use of a language editing service is not a requirement for publication in Nature .

Nature 's editors provide detailed advice about the expected print length when asking for the final version of the manuscript. Nature 's editors often suggest revised titles and rewrite the summary paragraphs of Articles so the conclusions are clear to a broad readership.

After acceptance, Nature 's subeditors (copyeditors) ensure that the text and figures are readable and clear to those outside the field, and edit papers into Nature 's house style. They pay particular attention to summary paragraphs, overall clarity, figures, figure legends and titles.

Proofs are sent before publication; authors are welcome to discuss proposed changes with Nature 's subeditors, but Nature reserves the right to make the final decision about matters of style and the size of figures.

A useful set of articles providing general advice about writing and submitting scientific papers can be found on the SciDev.Net website.

Format of Articles

Contributions should be double-spaced and written in English (spellings as in the Oxford English Dictionary ).

Contributions should be organized in the sequence: title, authors, affiliations (plus present addresses), bold first paragraph, main text, main references, tables, figure legends, methods (including separate data and code availability statements), methods references, acknowledgements, author contributions, competing interest declaration, additional information (containing supplementary information line (if any) and corresponding author line), extended data figure/table legends. In order to facilitate the review process, for initial submissions we encourage authors to present the manuscript text and figures together in a single file (Microsoft Word or PDF, up to 30 MB in size). The figures may be inserted within the text at the appropriate positions or grouped at the end, and each figure legend should be presented together with its figure. Also, please include line numbers within the text.

Titles do not exceed two lines in print. This equates to 75 characters (including spaces). Titles do not normally include numbers, acronyms, abbreviations or punctuation. They should include sufficient detail for indexing purposes but be general enough for readers outside the field to appreciate what the paper is about.

An uninterrupted page of text contains about 1250 words.

A typical 6-page Article contains about 2,500 words of text and, additionally, 4 modest display items (figures and/or tables) with brief legends, reference list and online-only methods section if applicable. A composite figure (with several panels) usually needs to take about half a page, equivalent to about 600 words, in order for all the elements to be visible (see section 5.9 for instructions on sizing figures).

A typical 8-page Article contains about 4300 words of text and, additionally, 5-6 modest display items (figures and/or tables) with brief legends, reference list and online-only methods section if applicable. A composite figure (with several panels) usually needs to take about half a page, equivalent to about 600 words, in order for all the elements to be visible (see section 5.9 for instructions on sizing figures).

Authors of contributions that significantly exceed the limits stated here (or as specified by the editor) will have to shorten their papers before acceptance, inevitably delaying publication.

Nature requires authors to specify the contribution made by their co-authors in the end notes of the paper (see section 5.5). 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. If more than three co-authors are equal in status, this should be indicated in the author contributions statement. Present addresses appear immediately below the author list (below the footnote rule at the bottom of the first page) and may be identified by a dagger symbol; all other essential author-related explanation is placed in the acknowledgements.

Our preferred format for text is Microsoft Word, with the style tags removed.

TeX/LaTeX: If you have prepared your paper using TeX/LaTeX, we will need to convert this to Word after acceptance, before your paper can be typeset. All textual material of the paper (including references, tables, figure captions, online methods, etc.) should be included as a single .tex file.

We prefer the use of a ‘standard’ font, preferably 12-point Times New Roman. For mathematical symbols, Greek letters and other special characters, use normal text or Symbol font. Word Equation Editor/MathType should be used only for formulae that cannot be produced using normal text or Symbol font.

The ‘Methods’ section is in the main text file, following the figure legends. This Methods section will appear in the PDF and in the full-text (HTML) version of the paper online, but will not appear in the printed issue. The Methods section should be written as concisely as possible but should contain all elements necessary to allow interpretation and replication of the results. As a guideline, the Methods section does not typically exceed 3,000 words. To increase reproducibility, authors are encouraged to deposit a detailed description of protocols used in their study in a protocol sharing platform of their choice. Springer Nature’s protocols.io is a free and open service designed to help researchers share experimental know-how. Protocols deposited by the authors in www.protocols.io will be linked to the online Methods section upon publication

Detailed descriptions of methods already published should be avoided; a reference number can be provided to save space, with any new addition or variation stated.

The Methods section should be subdivided by short bold headings referring to methods used and we encourage the inclusion of specific subsections for statistics, reagents and animal models. If further references are included in this section their numbering should continue from the end of the last reference number in the rest of the paper and they are listed after the Methods section.

Please provide separate Data Availability and Code Availability statements after the main text statements and before the Extended Data legends; detailed guidance can be found in our data availability and data citations policy . Certain data types must be deposited in an appropriate public structured data depository (details are available here ), and the accession number(s) provided in the manuscript. Full access is required at the time of publication. Should full access to data be required for peer review, authors must provide it.

The Methods section cannot contain figures or tables (essential display items should be included in the Extended Data or exceptionally in the Supplementary Information).

References are each numbered, ordered sequentially as they appear in the text, tables, boxes, figure legends, Methods, Extended Data tables and Extended Data figure legends.

When cited in the text, reference numbers are superscript, not in brackets unless they are likely to be confused with a superscript number.

Do not use linked fields (produced by EndNote and similar programs). Please use the one-click button provided by EndNote to remove EndNote codes before saving your file.

As a guideline, Articles allow up to 50 references in the main text if needed and within the average page budget. Only one publication can be listed for each number. Additional references for Methods or Supplementary Information are not included in this count.

Only articles that have been published or accepted by a named publication, or that have been uploaded to a recognized preprint server (for example, arXiv, bioRxiv), should be in the reference list; papers in preparation should be mentioned in the text with a list of authors (or initials if any of the authors are co-authors of the present contribution).

Published conference abstracts, numbered patents, preprints on recognized servers, papers in press, and research datasets that have been assigned a digital object identifier may be included in reference lists, but text, grant details and acknowledgements may not. (An exception is the highlighted references which we ask authors of Reviews, Perspectives and Insights articles to provide.)

All authors should be included in reference lists unless there are more than five, in which case only the first author should be given, followed by ‘et al.’.

Please follow the style below in the published edition of Nature in preparing reference lists.

Authors should be listed surname first, followed by a comma and initials of given names.

Titles of all cited articles are required. Titles of articles cited in reference lists should be in upright, not italic text; the first word of the title is capitalized, the title written exactly as it appears in the work cited, ending with a full stop. Book titles are italic with all main words capitalized. Journal titles are italic and abbreviated according to common usage. Volume numbers are bold. The publisher and city of publication are required for books cited. (Refer to published papers in Nature for details.)

Research datasets may be cited in the reference list if they have been assigned digital object identifiers (DOIs) and include authors, title, publisher (repository name), identifier (DOI expressed as a URL). Example: Hao, Z., AghaKouchak, A., Nakhjiri, N. & Farahmand, A. Global Integrated Drought Monitoring and Prediction System (GIDMaPS) data sets. figshare http://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.853801 (2014).

Recognized preprints may be cited in the reference list. Example: Babichev, S. A., Ries, J. & Lvovsky, A. I. Quantum scissors: teleportation of single-mode optical states by means of a nonlocal single photon. Preprint at http://arXiv.org/quant-ph/0208066 (2002).

References to web-only journals should give authors, article title and journal name as above, followed by URL in full - or DOI if known - and the year of publication in parentheses.

References to websites should give authors if known, title of cited page, URL in full, and year of posting in parentheses.

End notes are brief and follow the Methods (or Methods References, if any).

Acknowledgements should be brief, and should not include thanks to anonymous referees and editors, inessential words, or effusive comments. A person can be thanked for assistance, not “excellent” assistance, or for comments, not “insightful” comments, for example. Acknowledgements can contain grant and contribution numbers.

Author Contributions: Authors are required to include a statement to specify the contributions of each co-author. The statement can be up to several sentences long, describing the tasks of individual authors referred to by their initials. See the authorship policy page for further explanation and examples.

Competing interests  statement.

Additional Information: Authors should include a set of statements at the end of the paper, in the following order:

Papers containing Supplementary Information contain the statement: “Supplementary Information is available for this paper.”

A sentence reading "Correspondence and requests for materials should be addressed to XX.” Nature expects this identified author to respond to readers’ enquiries and requests for materials, and to coordinate the handling of any other matters arising from the published contribution, including corrections complaints. The author named as corresponding author is not necessarily the senior author, and publication of this author’s name does not imply seniority. Authors may include more than one e-mail address if essential, in which event Nature will communicate with the first-listed address for any post-publication matters, and expect that author to coordinate with the other co-authors.

Peer review information includes the names of reviewers who agree to be cited and is completed by Nature staff during proofing.

A sentence reading “Reprints and permissions information is available at www.nature.com/reprints.”

Life sciences and behavioural & social sciences reporting guidelines

To improve the transparency of reporting and the reproducibility of published results, authors of life sciences and behavioural & social sciences Articles must provide a completed Reporting Summary that will be made available to editors and reviewers during manuscript assessment. The Reporting Summary will be published with all accepted manuscripts.

Please note: because of the advanced features used in these forms, you must use Adobe Reader to open the documents and fill them out.

Guidance and resources related to the use and reporting of statistics are available here .

Tables should each be presented on a separate page, portrait (not landscape) orientation, and upright on the page, not sideways.

Tables have a short, one-line title in bold text. Tables should be as small as possible. Bear in mind the size of a Nature page as a limiting factor when compiling a table.

Symbols and abbreviations are defined immediately below the table, followed by essential descriptive material as briefly as possible, all in double-spaced text.

Standard table formats are available for submissions of cryo-EM , NMR and X-ray crystallography data . Authors providing these data must use these standard tables and include them as Extended Data.

Figure legends

For initial submissions, we encourage authors to present the manuscript text and figures together in a single Word doc or PDF file, and for each figure legend to be presented together with its figure. However, when preparing the final paper to be accepted, we require figure legends to be listed one after the other, as part of the text document, separate from the figure files, and after the main reference list.

Each figure legend should begin with a brief title for the whole figure and continue with a short description of each panel and the symbols used. If the paper contains a Methods section, legends should not contain any details of methods. Legends should be fewer than 300 words each.

All error bars and statistics must be defined in the figure legend, as discussed above.

Nature requires figures in electronic format. Please ensure that all digital images comply with the Nature journals’ policy on image integrity .

Figures should be as small and simple as is compatible with clarity. The goal is for figures to be comprehensible to readers in other or related disciplines, and to assist their understanding of the paper. Unnecessary figures and parts (panels) of figures should be avoided: data presented in small tables or histograms, for instance, can generally be stated briefly in the text instead. Avoid unnecessary complexity, colouring and excessive detail.

Figures should not contain more than one panel unless the parts are logically connected; each panel of a multipart figure should be sized so that the whole figure can be reduced by the same amount and reproduced on the printed page at the smallest size at which essential details are visible. For guidance, Nature ’s standard figure sizes are 90 mm (single column) and 180 mm (double column) and the full depth of the page is 170 mm.

Amino-acid sequences should be printed in Courier (or other monospaced) font using the one-letter code in lines of 50 or 100 characters.

Authors describing chemical structures should use the Nature Research Chemical Structures style guide .

Some brief guidance for figure preparation:

Lettering in figures (labelling of axes and so on) should be in lower-case type, with the first letter capitalized and no full stop.

Units should have a single space between the number and the unit, and follow SI nomenclature or the nomenclature common to a particular field. Thousands should be separated by commas (1,000). Unusual units or abbreviations are defined in the legend.

Scale bars should be used rather than magnification factors.

Layering type directly over shaded or textured areas and using reversed type (white lettering on a coloured background) should be avoided where possible.

Where possible, text, including keys to symbols, should be provided in the legend rather than on the figure itself.

Figure quality

At initial submission, figures should be at good enough quality to be assessed by referees, preferably incorporated into the manuscript text in a single Word doc or PDF, although figures can be supplied separately as JPEGs if authors are unable to include them with the text. Authors are advised to follow the initial and revised submissions guidelines with respect to sizing, resolution and labelling.

Please note that print-publication quality figures are large and it is not helpful to upload them at the submission stage. Authors will be asked for high-quality figures when they are asked to submit the final version of their article for publication.At that stage, please prepare figures according to these guidelines .

Third party rights

Nature discourages the use or adaptation of previously published display items (for example, figures, tables, images, videos or text boxes). However, we recognize that to illustrate some concepts the use of published data is required and the reuse of previously published display items may be necessary. Please note that in these instances we might not be able to obtain the necessary rights for some images to be reused (as is, or adapted versions) in our articles. In such cases, we will contact you to discuss the sourcing of alternative material.

Figure costs

In order to help cover some of the additional cost of four-colour reproduction, Nature Portfolio charges our authors a fee for the printing of their colour figures. Please contact our offices for exact pricing and details. Inability to pay this charge will not prevent publication of colour figures judged essential by the editors, but this must be agreed with the editor prior to acceptance.

Production-quality figures

When a manuscript is accepted in principle for publication, the editor will ask for high-resolution figures. Do not submit publication-quality figures until asked to do so by an editor. At that stage, please prepare figures according to these guidelines .

Extended Data

Extended Data figures and tables are online-only (appearing in the online PDF and full-text HTML version of the paper), peer-reviewed display items that provide essential background to the Article but are not included in the printed version of the paper due to space constraints or being of interest only to a few specialists. A maximum of ten Extended Data display items (figures and tables) is typically permitted. See Composition of a Nature research paper .

Extended Data tables should be formatted along similar lines to tables appearing in print (see section 5.7) but the main body (excluding title and legend, which should be included at the end of the Word file) should be submitted separately as an image rather than as an editable format in Word, as Extended Data tables are not edited by Nature’s subediting department. Small tables may also be included as sub-panels within Extended Data figures. See Extended Data Formatting Guide .

Extended Data figures should be prepared along slightly different guidelines compared to figures appearing in print, and may be multi-panelled as long as they fit to size rules (see Extended Data Formatting Guide ). Extended Data figures are not edited or styled by Nature’s art department; for this reason, authors are requested to follow Nature style as closely as possible when preparing these figures. The legends for Extended Data figures should be prepared as for print figures and should be listed one after the other at the end of the Word file.

If space allows, Nature encourages authors to include a simple schematic, as a panel in an Extended Data figure, that summarizes the main finding of the paper, where appropriate (for example, to assist understanding of complex detail in cell, structural and molecular biology disciplines).

If a manuscript has Extended Data figures or tables, authors are asked to refer to discrete items at an appropriate place in the main text (for example, Extended Data Fig. 1 and Extended Data Table 1).

If further references are included in the Extended Data tables and Extended Data figure legends, the numbering should continue from the end of the last reference number in the main paper (or from the last reference number in the additional Methods section if present) and the list should be added to the end of the list accompanying the additional Methods section, if present, or added below the Extended Data legends if no additional Methods section is present.

Supplementary Information

Supplementary Information (SI) is online-only, peer-reviewed material that is essential background to the Article (for example, large data sets, methods, calculations), but which is too large or impractical, or of interest only to a few specialists, to justify inclusion in the printed version of the paper. See the Supplementary Information page for further details.

Supplementary Information should not contain figures (any figures additional to those appearing in print should be formatted as Extended Data figures). Tables may be included in Supplementary Information, but only if they are unsuitable for formatting as Extended Data tables (for example, tables containing large data sets or raw data that are best suited to Excel files).

If a manuscript has accompanying SI, either at submission or in response to an editor’s letter that requests it, authors are asked to refer to discrete items of the SI (for example, videos, tables) at an appropriate point in the main manuscript.

Chemical structures and characterization of chemical materials

For guidelines describing Nature ’s standards for experimental methods and the characterization of new compounds, please see the information sheet on the characterization of chemical materials .

We aim to produce chemical structures in a consistent format throughout our articles. Please use the Nature Portfolio Chemical Structures Guide and ChemDraw template to ensure that you prepare your figures in a format that will require minimal changes by our art and production teams. Submit final files at 100% as .cdx files.

Registered Reports

Registered Reports are empirical articles testing confirmatory hypotheses in which the methods and proposed analyses are pre-registered and peer reviewed prior to research being conducted. For further details about Registered Reports and instructions for how to submit such articles to Nature please consult our Registered Reports page.

All contributions should be submitted online , unless otherwise instructed by the editors. Please be sure to read the information on what to include in your cover letter as well as several important content-related issues when putting a submission together.

Before submitting, all contributors must agree to all of Nature's publication policies .

Nature authors must make data and materials publicly available upon publication. This includes deposition of data into the relevant databases and arranging for them to be publicly released by the online publication date (not after). A description of our initiative to improve the transparency and the reproducibility of published results is available here . A full description of Nature’s publication policies is at the Nature Portfolio Authors and Referees website .

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An account of the relationship between all the Nature journals is provided at the Nature family page . 

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How Long Should a Research Paper Be? Data from 61,519 Examples

I analyzed a random sample of 61,519 full-text research papers, uploaded to PubMed Central between the years 2016 and 2021, in order to answer the questions:

What is the typical overall length of a research paper? and how long should each section be?

I used the BioC API to download the data (see the References section below).

Here’s a summary of the key findings

1- The median length of a research paper is 4,133 words (equivalent to 166 sentences or 34 paragraphs), excluding the abstract and references, with 90% of papers being between 2,023 and 8,284 words.

2- A typical article is divided in the following way:

• Introduction section: 14.6% of the total word count.
• Methods section: 29.7% of the total word count.
• Results section: 26.2% of the total word count.
• Discussion section: 29.4% of the total word count.

Notice that the Materials and methods is the longest section of a professionally written article. So always write this section in enough depth to provide the readers with the necessary details that allow them to replicate your study if they wanted to without requiring further information.

Overall length of a research paper

Let’s start by looking at the maximum word count allowed in some of the well-known journals. Note that the numbers reported in this table include the Abstract , Figure legends and References unless otherwise specified:

[1] excluding figure legends [2] excluding references

⚠ Note A review paper is either a systematic review or a meta-analysis, and an original research paper refers to either an observational or an experimental study conducted by the authors themselves.

Notice the large variability between these journals: The maximum number of words allowed ranges between 3,000 and 9,000 words.

Next, let’s look at our data.

Here’s a table that describes the length of a research paper in our sample:

90% of research papers have a word count between 2,023 and 8,284. So it will be a little weird to see a word count outside of this range.

Our data also agree that a typical review paper is a little bit longer than a typical original research paper but not by much (3,858 vs 3,708 words).

Length of each section in a research article

The median article with an IMRaD structure (i.e. contains the following sections: Introduction , Methods , Results and Discussion ) is in general characterized by a short 553 words introduction. And the methods, results and discussion sections are about twice the size of the introduction:

For more information, see:

• How Long Should a Research Title Be? Data from 104,161 Examples
• How Long Should the Abstract Be? Data 61,429 from Examples
• How Long Should the Introduction of a Research Paper Be? Data from 61,518 Examples
• How Long Should the Methods Section Be? Data from 61,514 Examples
• How Long Should the Results Section Be? Data from 61,458 Examples
• How Long Should the Discussion Section Be? Data from 61,517 Examples
• Length of a Conclusion Section: Analysis of 47,810 Examples
• Comeau DC, Wei CH, Islamaj Doğan R, and Lu Z. PMC text mining subset in BioC: about 3 million full text articles and growing,  Bioinformatics , btz070, 2019.

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Types of journal articles

It is helpful to familiarise yourself with the different types of articles published by journals. Although it may appear there are a large number of types of articles published due to the wide variety of names they are published under, most articles published are one of the following types; Original Research, Review Articles, Short reports or Letters, Case Studies, Methodologies.

Original Research:

This is the most common type of journal manuscript used to publish full reports of data from research. It may be called an  Original Article, Research Article, Research, or just  Article, depending on the journal. The Original Research format is suitable for many different fields and different types of studies. It includes full Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion sections.

Short reports or Letters:

These papers communicate brief reports of data from original research that editors believe will be interesting to many researchers, and that will likely stimulate further research in the field. As they are relatively short the format is useful for scientists with results that are time sensitive (for example, those in highly competitive or quickly-changing disciplines). This format often has strict length limits, so some experimental details may not be published until the authors write a full Original Research manuscript. These papers are also sometimes called Brief communications .

Review Articles:

Review Articles provide a comprehensive summary of research on a certain topic, and a perspective on the state of the field and where it is heading. They are often written by leaders in a particular discipline after invitation from the editors of a journal. Reviews are often widely read (for example, by researchers looking for a full introduction to a field) and highly cited. Reviews commonly cite approximately 100 primary research articles.

TIP: If you would like to write a Review but have not been invited by a journal, be sure to check the journal website as some journals to not consider unsolicited Reviews. If the website does not mention whether Reviews are commissioned it is wise to send a pre-submission enquiry letter to the journal editor to propose your Review manuscript before you spend time writing it.  

Case Studies:

These articles report specific instances of interesting phenomena. A goal of Case Studies is to make other researchers aware of the possibility that a specific phenomenon might occur. This type of study is often used in medicine to report the occurrence of previously unknown or emerging pathologies.

Methodologies or Methods

These articles present a new experimental method, test or procedure. The method described may either be completely new, or may offer a better version of an existing method. The article should describe a demonstrable advance on what is currently available.

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• Before You Submit: Categories & Lengths

Categories & Lengths

It is absolutely essential that authors read several of the most recent issues of MISQ to help them determine under which category their research falls. This will also help authors understand the quality expected from submissions. It serves neither authors nor the review team if a manuscript is submitted prematurely. 

The MIS Quarterly reviews and accepts papers that fall into one of the following six categories:

• 1. Research Article
• 2. Research Note
• 3. Methods Article
• 4. Research Commentary
• 5. Theory and Review Article
• 6. Issues and Opinions

This category provides an opportunity for authors to:

• Make a contribution that is sufficiently original and significant so as to warrant a full-length article wherein the authors develop and present their arguments, solutions, and evidence.
• Ground their work in theory, whether it is a new theory being advanced and tested or testing an existing theory. In a Research Article, authors may also be refining or challenging theories.
• Expand our understanding of digital phenomena and the role information systems have in solving high-impact business and societal problems.
• Present evidence that supports the validity of their claims.

Most submissions to and most papers published in the MIS Quarterly are Research Articles. Authors who are developing new theories but do not test that theory in the current submission should categorize their article as a Theory and Review Article . See below for a description of this category.

This category provides a forum for a wide variety of concise research contributions.  Some examples of possible subject matter include:

• Empirical contributions that relate to topics that appear frequently in the MIS Quarterly and other top journals.
• Theoretical insights from the analysis of rich data on phenomena/problems that can trigger the development of theory.
• Discussions around an important methodological issue (or issues) associated with a published article. The connections between a Note’s content and earlier published article(s) must be clearly defined. Notes may arouse controversy and encourage dialogue on an important methodological issue.

Research Notes are typically half the length of a Research Article. A Research Note can also be thought of as a briefer form of a Research Article because it carries a distinct contribution while presenting the research in a more succinct format.

This category provides an opportunity for authors to address methodological issues and propose innovative methods for studying information systems. It is crucial to clearly present ideas to the readership as to introduce perspectives about how researchers should conduct research. A Methods Article may or may not provide empirical evidence, such as simulations, depending on the nature of the topic and the level of evidence required for that particular method. A Methods Article whose impact spans beyond the Information Systems discipline are welcome.

For this category, senior scholars are invited by the EIC to discuss a research stream or methodological approach and offer insight as to how the field should advance. Highlighting seminal or key works that show how the topic has evolved is appropriate. Research Commentaries conclude with a set of research questions that are worth exploring in order to address unanswered questions.

This category is for conceptual articles that develop novel theories and generate theoretical insights that advance the study and practice of information systems design, development, management, use, and consequences. Consistent with the MIS Quarterly‘s broad strategic positioning, the journal is receptive to different types of IS theories (for a discussion of different types of IS theories, see Gregor, S., The Nature of Theory in Information Systems MIS Quarterly (30:3), September 2006). It is also receptive to articles from a wide range of philosophical foundations and disciplinary orientations, including articles that merge siloed theoretical perspectives and are constructively critical of established theory and practice.

Articles in this category can be one of two types:

Theory-Generative Research Synthesis: Comprehensive review and synthesis of previously published research (around a theory, phenomenon, or concept) is done to generate theoretical insights and implications. These articles (1) act as repositories for the accumulated knowledge on important topics within the information systems field, and (2) clearly delineate the directions for future research that emerge from the literature synthesis.

Theory Development: Grounding in theory and/or practice is used to develop new IS theory. In contrast to theory-generative research synthesis, these articles do not engage in comprehensive review and synthesis of the literature (around a theory, phenomenon, or concept) to generate theoretical advances. Instead, they develop new IS theory through approaches such as:

• Conceiving new constructs and relationships pertaining to a phenomenon, problem, or solution.
• Drawing on a novel theoretical lens and elaborating it given the distinctive characteristics of the phenomenon, problem, or solution.
• Integrating multiple theoretical perspectives into a cohesive new IS theory (including integrative, inter- and intra-disciplinary theories).
• Falsifying assumptions and refining existing theories given the characteristics of the phenomena, problem, or solution.
• Challenging existing and advancing new philosophical foundations.

While preparing their manuscript, authors are invited to read prior Theory and Review articles published in MIS Quarterly as well as the following editorials:

• Rivard, S. 2014. The Ions of Theory Construction MIS Quarterly (38:2), pp. iii-xiii.
• Webster, J., and Watson, R. 2002. Analyzing the Past to Prepare for the Future: Writing a Literature Review MIS Quarterly (26:2), pp. xiii-xxiii.
• Zmud, R. W. 1998. Editor’s Comments MIS Quarterly (22:2), June.

This category provides a forum for well-developed and well-articulated position statements concerning emerging, paradoxical, or controversial research issues. An Issues and Opinions article may be described as rigorously argued and/or relying on scholarly evidence. Issues and Opinions submissions should open new areas of discourse, close stale areas, and/or offer fresh views on research topics of importance to the discipline. An Issues and Opinions article should:

• Identify the issue(s) in terms that are accessible.
• Provide appropriate conceptual frameworks for the issue.
• Offer opinions and supportive arguments.
• Describe the implications of these opinions to research, practice, and/or education.
• Include supporting empirical evidence, when appropriate.

Scientometric papers will be considered, but they must yield a large theoretical contribution in our Research Articles. If a scientometric study addresses valuable professional concerns, it could find a home in the Issues and Opinions section.

See the Category Lengths section below for manuscript length requirements for each of the described categories.

Category Lengths

MIS Quarterly has requirements for the maximum total length of an article. MISQ follows these requirements in order to maintain an effective and efficient editorial process that benefits authors, reviewers, and readers of the journal.

The maximum total length requirements include tables, figures, references, and appendices. It is the total length of the article that will be reviewed.

Please follow the guidelines below on maximum total length of an article, including tables, figures, references, and appendices:

• Research Articles : 55 pages
• Research Note : 30 pages
• Method Articles: 55 pages
• Research Commentary : 30 pages
• Theory-Generative Literature Synthesis: 65 pages
• Theory Development : 55 pages For the difference between these types, please refer to the Categories section.
• Issues and Opinions : 30 pages

Submissions that exceed the maximum total lengths of their respective category will either be returned to authors for shortening before review or desk-rejected. The maximum total length must be adhered to in all revised versions.

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The Difference Between a Research Paper and Manuscript

The research paper and manuscript are two distinct forms of academic writing that have many similarities, but also some key differences. This article will explore the main points of distinction between a research paper and a manuscript by examining their purpose, format, content organization, structure and length. Additionally, this article will provide an overview of the major components that compose both papers in order to further clarify any potential confusion for readers regarding these two genres. Finally, implications for writers when choosing one type over another will be discussed in detail with specific reference to areas such as audience appeal and marketability.

I. Introduction

Ii. definition of a research paper, iii. definition of a manuscript, iv. comparison between research papers and manuscripts, v. types of manuscripts, vi. variations in publication requirements for different genres of research papers and manuscripts, vii. conclusion.

When embarking on a scholarly writing journey, it is important to understand the distinction between two types of publications: research paper and manuscript.

• Research Paper : A research paper typically follows an academic format for presenting evidence in support of an argument. It may include data from primary sources such as surveys or interviews conducted by the author themselves, or secondary sources such as books or articles which analyze existing findings. Research papers generally draw upon more than one source when constructing their arguments.

A manuscript , however, can be thought of as more creative than its counterpart. While still containing factual information based on rigorous research methods and thorough analysis, manuscripts often contain narrative elements that help bring stories to life through vivid descriptions and engaging characters. Manuscripts also tend to focus much less heavily on citing other works; rather they are used primarily for conveying ideas in a compelling manner while providing background detail necessary for readers’ understanding.

A Research Paper Research papers are extended scholarly works that explore a specific topic in depth. They generally require an extensive research process, which may involve interviews and surveys as well as traditional library sources such as books or journal articles. These papers typically include the following:

The goal is to present evidence-based conclusions on the selected issue or topic; this will help inform and educate readers about it.

Manuscript vs Research Paper . Manuscripts can be quite similar to research papers, but they focus more narrowly on presenting work created by the author (as opposed to what has already been published). They often emphasize creativity rather than scientific inquiry, though manuscripts can certainly include both components depending on their intended audience and purpose. Manuscripts also usually have less stringent formatting requirements compared to formal research papers – while there may still be elements such as titles pages, these are not always necessary if submitting them in creative writing forums or contests where different rules apply.

Understanding a Manuscript A manuscript is an unpublished work, typically by one or more authors and can be in any medium such as handwritten, typed on a computer or created digitally. It differs from the traditional research paper because it does not need to include source citations; however it should still contain original thought and analysis. While manuscripts may follow established conventions for their form (ie poetry has specific styles), they are also highly creative works meant to draw out emotion.

Distinguishing Characteristics of Manuscripts – A unique product of creativity – Usually involves some level of personal reflection & insight – May have special formatting requirements depending on genre/type – Can take many forms including: book chapters, essays, stories, plays & poems – Not peer reviewed like research papers

In the world of academia, research papers and manuscripts occupy vastly different roles. Though both are written pieces that display an author’s findings or ideas, there is a great disparity in their individual characteristics.

• Scope : Research papers typically cover large amounts of information on a given subject matter; they often take much longer to write than manuscripts. Manuscripts may be shorter but should still present relevant data needed to support any conclusions made by the author.
• Audience : Research papers usually target specialists within a certain field who have advanced knowledge about what constitutes quality work in their specific discipline. On the other hand, manuscripts focus more heavily on general readership and aim to make complex topics easier for non-experts to understand.

There are several distinct types of manuscripts that authors may submit to journals for publication. These include research papers, review articles, and short reports.

• Research Papers : The most common type of manuscript submitted is the research paper . This typically includes an introduction section that outlines the purpose or hypothesis of the experiment followed by a discussion on related work from other authors in this field. Research methods used to carry out experiments should be detailed including how data was collected and analyzed. Finally, results should be presented in graphs and tables with associated interpretations before moving onto a conclusion section.
• Review Articles : A review article , also known as survey paper or literature review provides readers with a comprehensive summary of all significant studies pertaining to particular areas within a given topic while discussing recent developments such as trends, patterns, controversies etc., Such papers aim at helping scientists keep up-to-date with advances in their field.

Research papers and manuscripts are two different types of written works used to convey information. They both require a high level of accuracy, but they differ in their structure and publication requirements.

• A research paper is an academic piece that focuses on the analysis or interpretation of data collected from relevant sources.
• It should include an abstract summarizing your study’s main points; introduction to the topic, thesis statement, body paragraphs with evidence-based claims supported by research; discussion section for drawing conclusions; endnotes or footnotes providing additional information about cited resources.

In summary, this paper has presented a comprehensive comparison between the two major forms of academic writing: research papers and manuscripts. It is clear that both formats have their advantages and disadvantages when it comes to effectively conveying scholarly work, yet they are very distinct from one another in terms of purpose and structure. While research papers focus on presenting findings or conclusions through an empirical approach, manuscripts provide authors with opportunities to explore theoretical questions and ideas through more creative means.

It is important for aspiring scholars to understand the differences between these two mediums before deciding which format best fits their project objectives. Each form requires different levels of time investment as well as unique challenges during composition. For those wishing to present new knowledge in an innovative way without being bound by strict guidelines may find greater success with manuscript submissions; however if providing quantitative data-driven evidence is desired then a research paper might be better suited.

• Research Paper : Focuses primarily on empirical investigation & reporting results
• Manuscript : Explores theoretical concepts & presents alternative views

Author guidelines

General standards, article type.

Frontiers requires authors to select the appropriate article type for their manuscript and to comply with the article type descriptions defined in the journal's 'Article types' page, which can be found under the 'About journal' menu in 'For authors' on every Frontiers journal page. Please pay close attention to the word count limits.

If working with Word please use our  Word templates . If you wish to submit your article as LaTeX, we recommend our  LaTeX templates . For LaTeX files, please ensure all relevant manuscript files are uploaded: .tex file, PDF, and .bib file (if the bibliography is not already included in the .tex file).

During the  interactive review , authors are encouraged to upload versions using track changes. Editors and reviewers can only download the PDF file of the submitted manuscript.

Manuscript length

We encourage you to closely follow the article word count lengths given in the 'Article types' page of the journals. The manuscript length includes only the main body of the text, footnotes, and all citations within it, and excludes the abstract, section titles, figure and table captions, funding statement, acknowledgments, and references in the bibliography. Please indicate the number of words and the number of figures and tables included in your manuscript on the first page.

Language editing

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

For authors who would like their manuscript to receive language editing or proofreading to improve the clarity of the manuscript and help highlight their research, we recommend the language-editing services provided by the following external partners.

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 proofreading by these partner services or other services.

Editage Frontiers recommends the language-editing service provided by our external partner Editage. These services may be particularly useful for researchers for whom English is not the primary language. They can help to improve the grammar, syntax, and flow of your manuscript prior to submission. Frontiers authors will receive a 10% discount by visiting the following link:  editage.com/frontiers .

The Charlesworth Group Frontiers recommends the Charlesworth Group's author services, who has a long-standing track record in language editing and proofreading. This is a third-party service for which Frontiers authors will receive a 10% discount by visiting the following link:  www.cwauthors.com/frontiers .

Frontiers推荐您使用在英语语言编辑和校对领域具有悠久历史和良好口碑的查尔斯沃思作者服务。此项服务由第三方为您提供，Frontiers中国作者通过此链接提交稿件时可获得10％的特别优惠:  www.cwauthors.com.cn/frontiers .

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 the first page of your manuscript. 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 and search results.

Include a few of your article's keywords in the title of the article

Do not use long article titles

Pick 5-8 keywords using a mix of generic and more specific terms on the article subject(s)

Use the maximum amount of keywords in the first two sentences of the abstract

Use some of the keywords in level 1 headings

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 committed 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.

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 avoid:

titles that are a mere question without giving the answer

unambitious titles, for example starting with 'Towards,' 'A description of,' 'A characterization of' or 'Preliminary study on'

vague titles, for example starting with 'Role of', 'Link between', or 'Effect of' that do not specify the role, link, or effect

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

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

'Corrigendum: [Title of original article]'

General Commentaries: 'Commentary: [Title of original article]' 'Response: Commentary: [Title of original article]'

'Editorial: [Title of Research Topic]'

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 (only for United States, Canada, and Australia), and Country (without detailed address information such as city zip codes or street names).

Example: Max Maximus1 1 Department of Excellence, International University of Science, New York, NY, United States.

Correspondence

The corresponding author(s) should be marked with an asterisk in the author list. Provide the exact contact email address of the corresponding author(s) in a separate section. Example: Max Maximus* [email protected] 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.

Equal contributions

The authors who have contributed equally should be marked with a symbol (†) in the author list of the doc/latex and pdf files of the manuscript uploaded at submission.

Please use the appropriate standard statement(s) to indicate equal contributions:

Equal contribution: These authors contributed equally to this work

First authorship: These authors share first authorship

Senior authorship: These authors share senior authorship

Last authorship: These authors share last authorship

Equal contribution and first authorship: These authors contributed equally to this work and share first authorship

Equal contribution and senior authorship: These authors contributed equally to this work and share senior authorship

Equal contribution and last authorship: These authors contributed equally to this work and share last authorship

Example: Max Maximus 1†, John Smith2† and Barbara Smith1 †These authors contributed equally to this work and share first authorship

Consortium/group and collaborative authors

Consortium/group authorship should be listed in the manuscript with the other author(s).

In cases where authorship is retained by the consortium/group, the consortium/group should be listed as an author separated by a comma or 'and'. The consortium/group name will appear in the author list, in the citation, and in the copyright. If provided, the consortium/group members will be listed in a separate section at the end of the article.

For the collaborators of the consortium/group to be indexed in PubMed, they do not have to be inserted in the Frontiers submission system individually. However, in the manuscript itself, provide a section with the name of the consortium/group as the heading followed by the list of collaborators, so they can be tagged accordingly and indexed properly.

Example: John Smith, Barbara Smith and The Collaborative Working Group. In cases where work is presented by the author(s) on behalf of a consortium/group, it should be included in the author list separated with the wording 'for' or 'on behalf of.' The consortium/group will not retain authorship and will only appear in the author list.

Example: John Smith and Barbara Smith on behalf of The Collaborative Working Group.

Artificial intelligence

These guidelines cover acceptable uses of generative AI technologies such as Large Language Models (ChatGPT, Jasper) and text-to-image generators (DALL-E 2, Midjourney, Stable Diffusion) in the writing or editing of manuscripts submitted to Frontiers.

AI use by authors

Authors should not list a generative AI technology as a co-author or author of any submitted manuscript. Generative AI technologies cannot be held accountable for all aspects of a manuscript and consequently do not meet the criteria required for authorship.

If the author of a submitted manuscript has used written or visual content produced by or edited using a generative AI technology, this use must follow all Frontiers guidelines and policies. Specifically, the author is responsible for checking the factual accuracy of any content created by the generative AI technology. This includes, but is not limited to, any quotes, citations or references. Figures produced by or edited using a generative AI technology must be checked to ensure they accurately reflect the data presented in the manuscript. Authors must also check that any written or visual content produced by or edited using a generative AI technology is free from plagiarism.

If the author of a submitted manuscript has used written or visual content produced by or edited using a generative AI technology, such use must be acknowledged in the acknowledgements section of the manuscript and the methods section if applicable. This explanation must list the name, version, model, and source of the generative AI technology. We encourage authors to upload all input prompts provided to a generative AI technology and outputs received from a generative AI technology in the supplementary files for the manuscript.

As a primary goal, the abstract should make the general significance and conceptual advance of the work clearly accessible to a broad readership. The abstract should be no longer than a single paragraph and should be structured, for example, according to the IMRAD format . For the specific structure of the abstract, authors should follow the requirements of the article type or journal to which they're submitting. Minimize the use of abbreviations and do not cite references, figures or tables. For clinical trial articles, please include the unique identifier and the URL of the publicly-accessible website on which the trial is registered.

All article types require a minimum of five and a maximum of eight keywords.

The entire document should be single-spaced and must contain page and line numbers in order to facilitate the review process. The manuscript should be written using either Word or LaTeX. See above for templates.

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 must be 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.

Italicize gene symbols and use the approved gene nomenclature where it is available. For human genes, please refer to the HUGO Gene Nomenclature Committee ( HGNC ). New symbols for human genes should be submitted to the HGNC here . Common alternative gene aliases may also be reported, but should not be used alone in place of the HGNC symbol. Nomenclature committees for other species are listed  here . Protein products are not italicized.

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

Chemical compounds and biomolecules should be referred to using systematic nomenclature, preferably using the recommendations by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC).

Astronomical objects should be referred to using the nomenclature given by the International Astronomical Union (IAU) provided  here .

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 the 'Code' section of our policies and publication ethics .

The manuscript is organized by headings and subheadings. The section headings should be those appropriate for your field and the research itself. You may insert up to 5 heading levels into your manuscript (i.e.,: 3.2.2.1.2 Heading Title).

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

Introduction Succinct, with no subheadings.

Materials and methods This section may be divided by subheadings and 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 the 'Bioethics' section of our policies and publication ethics .)

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

Discussion This section may be divided by subheadings. Discussions should cover the key findings of the study: discuss any prior research related to the subject to place the novelty of the discovery in the appropriate context, discuss the potential shortcomings 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 check the descriptions defined in the journal's 'Article types' page, in the 'For authors' menu on every journal page.

Acknowledgements

This is a short text to acknowledge the contributions of specific colleagues, institutions, or agencies that aided the efforts of the authors. Should the content of the manuscript have previously appeared online, such as in a thesis or preprint, this should be mentioned here, in addition to listing the source within the reference list.

Scope statement

When you submit your manuscript, you will be required to summarize in 200 words your manuscript's scope and its relevance to the journal and/or specialty section you're submitting to. The aim is to convey to editors and reviewers how the contents of your manuscript fit within the selected journal's scope. This statement will not be published with your article if it is accepted for publication. The information will be used during the initial validation and review processes to assess whether the manuscript is a suitable fit for the chosen journal and specialty. We encourage you to consider carefully where to submit your manuscript, as submissions to an unsuitable journal or specialty will result in delays and increase the likelihood of manuscript rejection. If you are submitting to a Research Topic, please also clarify how your submission is suited to the specific topic.

Figure and table guidelines

Cc-by license.

All figures, tables, and images will be published under a Creative Commons CC-BY license , and 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, follow any citation instructions requested by third-party rights holders, and cover any supplementary charges.

For additional information, please see the 'Image manipulation' section of our policies and publication ethics .

Figure requirements and style guidelines

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 figure is mentioned in the text and in numerical order.

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 replaced during typesetting according to Frontiers' journal style. For graphs, there must be a self-explanatory label (including units) along each axis.

For LaTeX files, 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, JPEG or TIF/TIFF format.

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.'

Please note that figures not in accordance with the guidelines will cause substantial delay during the production process.

Captions should be preceded by the appropriate label, for example 'Figure 1.' Figure captions should be placed at the end of the manuscript. Figure panels are referred to by bold capital letters in brackets: (A), (B), (C), (D), etc.

Image size and resolution requirements

Figures 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 (85 mm) or 2 columns (180 mm).

All images must have a resolution of 300 dpi at final size. Check the resolution of your figure by enlarging it to 150%. If the image appears blurry, jagged, or has a stair-stepped effect, the resolution is too low.

The text should be legible and of high quality. The smallest visible text should be no less than eight points in height when viewed at actual size.

Solid lines should not be broken up. Any lines in the graphic should be no smaller than two points wide.

Please note that 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.

Format and color image mode

The following formats are accepted: TIF/TIFF (.tif/.tiff), JPEG (.jpg), and EPS (.eps) (upon acceptance). Images must be submitted in the color mode RGB.

Chemical structures

Chemical structures should be prepared using ChemDraw or a similar program. If working with ChemDraw please use our  ChemDraw template . If working with another program please follow the guidelines below.

Drawing settings: chain angle, 120° bond spacing, 18% 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.

Table requirements and style guidelines

Tables should be inserted at the end of the manuscript in an editable format. 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.

Table captions must be placed immediately before the table. Captions should be preceded by the appropriate label, for example 'Table 1.' Please use only a single paragraph for the caption.

Ensure that each table is mentioned in the text and in numerical order.

Large tables covering several pages cannot be included in the final PDF for formatting reasons. These tables will be published as supplementary material.

Tables which are not according to the above guidelines will cause substantial delay during the production process.

Accessibility

We encourage authors to make the figures and visual elements of their articles accessible for the visually impaired. An effective use of color can help people with low visual acuity, or color blindness, understand all the content of an article.

These guidelines are easy to implement and are in accordance with the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines ( WCAG 2.1 ), the standard for web accessibility best practices.

Ensure sufficient contrast between text and its background People who have low visual acuity or color blindness could find it difficult to read text with low contrast background color. Try using colors that provide maximum contrast.

WC3 recommends the following contrast ratio levels:

Level AA, contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1

Level AAA, contrast ratio of at least 7:1

You can verify the contrast ratio of your palette with these online ratio checkers:

Avoid using red or green indicators More than 99% of color-blind people have a red-green color vision deficiency.

Avoid using only color to communicate information Elements with complex information like charts and graphs can be hard to read when only color is used to distinguish the data. Try to use other visual aspects to communicate information, such as shape, labels, and size. Incorporating patterns into the shape fills also make differences clearer; for an example please see below:

Supplementary material

Data that are not of primary importance to the text, or which cannot be included in the article because they are too large or the current format does not permit it (such as videos, raw data traces, and PowerPoint presentations), can be uploaded as supplementary material during the submission procedure and will be displayed along with the published article. All supplementary files are deposited to figshare for permanent storage and receive a DOI.

Supplementary material is not typeset, so please ensure that all information is clearly presented without tracked changes/highlighted text/line numbers, and the appropriate caption is included in the file. To avoid discrepancies between the published article and the supplementary material, please do not add the title, author list, affiliations or correspondence in the supplementary files.

The supplementary material can be uploaded as:

data sheet (Word, Excel, CSV, CDX, FASTA, PDF or Zip files)

presentation (PowerPoint, PDF or Zip files)

image (CDX, EPS, JPEG, PDF, PNG or TIF/TIFF),

table (Word, Excel, CSV or PDF)

audio (MP3, WAV or WMA)

video (AVI, DIVX, FLV, MOV, MP4, MPEG, MPG or WMV).

Technical requirements for supplementary images:

RGB color mode.

For supplementary material templates (LaTeX and Word), see our  supplementary material templates .

Submissions to Frontiers must be grounded in relevant and up to date peer-reviewed, academic research, and this should be reflected in the accompanying reference lists.

Authors are welcome to use online referencing tools in preparation of their manuscript. Some useful resources include RefMe , Zotero , and Mendeley .

The citation of non-academic and non-peer-reviewed sources (e.g. blog posts, website content), as well as anonymous sources or commercial websites should be avoided or kept to a minimum

Authors should avoid citing content that is not directly relevant to the scope of the article and the journal

Reference lists should reflect the current status of knowledge in the field, avoid bias, and not include a high proportion of citations to the same authors or sources, school of thought, etc.

The length of the reference list should be appropriate depending on the article type, covering the relevant literature through sufficient referencing

Authors should ensure that references are accurate, that all links are accessible, and that the citations/references adhere to the reference styles outlined below

Frontiers' journals use one of two reference styles, either Harvard (author-date) or Vancouver (numbered). These formats should be adhered to for the in-text citations and the reference lists. Please check our help center  to find the correct style for the journal to which you're submitting.

All citations of published works in the text, figures, or tables must be in the reference list and vice-versa.

The names of the first six authors followed by et al. and the DOI (when available) should be provided.

Given names of authors should be abbreviated to initials (e.g. Smith, J., Lewis, C.S., etc.).

The reference list should only include articles that are published or accepted.

Unpublished data, submitted manuscripts, or personal communications should be cited within the text only, for article types that allow such inclusions. Where additional details are available, these will be included as footnotes.

For accepted but unpublished works use 'in press' instead of page numbers.

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.

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 should clearly reference the original source.

Preprints can be cited provided that a DOI or archive URL is available, and the citation clearly mentions that the contribution is a preprint. If a peer-reviewed journal publication for the same preprint exists, the official journal publication is the preferred source. See the preprints section for each reference style below for more information.

Harvard reference style (author-date)

Reference examples for Frontiers’ journals using the Harvard referencing system can be found below. For examples of other sources, and for general questions regarding the Harvard reference style, please refer to the Chicago Manual of Style .

References should include the full last name and first name initials of the first six authors, followed by et al. and the year of publication in brackets.

Alphabetical order is followed for the reference list.

Vancouver reference style (numbered)

Reference examples for Frontiers’ journals using the Vancouver referencing system can be found below. For more examples of citing other documents and general questions regarding the Vancouver reference style, please refer to Citing Medicine .

In-text citations in the Vancouver reference style should be numbered consecutively in order of appearance in the text and identified by Arabic numerals in parenthesis.

Use square brackets for physics and mathematics articles.

The abbreviation ‘Ref’ should not be used, e.g.: [e.g., (1)] should NOT read [e.g. Ref. (1)].

Style for comparing a citation should follow the number format, e.g. [cf. (1)]. The same applies when using ‘see’, e.g. [see (46)].

References should be numbered and listed chronologically, according to the order they appear in the text.

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• Manuscript preparation
• New submissions – format free
• Revised submissions
• Manuscript length
• File formats
• Article sections
• Preparing the text
• Preparing tables
• Preparing display equations
• General information
• Preparing photographic images
• Preparing graphs and diagrams (line art)
• Image manipulation
• Figure permissions
• Preparing movies
• Supplementary information

1. General information

Journal of Cell Science requires authors to submit their manuscripts online using the Bench>Press manuscript processing system . Authors are required to read our journal policies before preparing their manuscripts, and all manuscripts should adhere to the journal’s terms of submission .

All pre-submission or general editorial queries should be directed to the Editorial Office .

1.1. New submissions – format free

To make manuscript submission as easy as possible for authors, Journal of Cell Science has a format-free submission policy.

At first submission, authors may submit their manuscript in any format; however, we do encourage authors to read the manuscript preparation guidelines below and to consider how easy a manuscript is to read by reviewers and editors (e.g. line spacing, line numbers).

All manuscripts must adhere to our guidelines regarding manuscript length .

1.2. Revised submissions

On Journal of Cell Science, >95% of revised submissions are accepted for publication.

All revised manuscripts should adhere to the guidelines below on preparing text and tables , figures , movies and supplementary information .

Authors should complete and submit our submission checklist with their manuscripts. This form asks authors to confirm that they have followed best practice guidelines regarding experimental subjects, data reporting and statistics. The checklist is based on the NIH Principles and Guidelines for Reporting Preclinical Research and is intended to help ensure high standards for reporting and to aid reproducibility.

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2. Manuscript length

Research articles and Tools and Resources articles : the total length of the article should not exceed 8000 words, including the main text and figure legends, but not the title page, abstract, materials and methods section or reference list (reference citations in the text do count towards the word limit). The total number of display items (Figures and Tables) must not exceed eight (8).

Short reports : the total length of the article should not exceed 3000 words, including the main text and figure legends, but not the title page, abstract, materials and methods section or references (reference citations in the text do count towards the word limit). The total number of display items (Figures and Tables) must not exceed four (4).

Note that final word limits will depend on the paper submitted and are at the discretion of the Editors.

3. Preparing the text and tables

The information below relates to a standard Research Article. For all other article types, please refer to the style and layout guidelines provided on our article types page.

3.1 File formats

For manuscript text and tables, our preferred file format is Microsoft Word .docx (or . doc ). We also accept Pages (rtf format) and LaTeX.

Please include tables as part of the manuscript file. Tables must be editable and not embedded as an image.

Authors working in LaTeX can download and use our template . Please upload a single PDF at first submission and include any component files, such as .st (style file), .cls (class file) and .bib (bibliography file) at revision submission. Please note that LaTeX files will be converted to Microsoft Word files during the production process and that authors will be required to check the conversion of symbols and special characters carefully at the proofing stage.

For mathematical equations, our preferred file format is MathType. We also accept Equation Editor (Microsoft Word) and LaTex.

3.2. Article sections

3.2.1.title page.

This section should include a title of 120 characters or less that clearly and concisely summarises your specific findings and avoids specialist abbreviations, a running title of 32 characters or less, the full names (including middle initials) and affiliations of all authors (including present addresses for authors who have moved), and the corresponding author’s email address . Please note any cases where authors contributed equally to the work. Please also include 3-6 key words for indexing purposes (select key words that will make your manuscript easily searchable).

3.2.2. Summary statement

Provide a brief Summary Statement for use in emailed and online tables of content alerts. The text should be approximately180-200 characters, and should explain, without overstatement, why someone should read the article. Please do not simply repeat the title, and avoid unfamiliar terms and abbreviations, as the text should be comprehensible to non-experts. We reserve the right to edit the text.

3.2.3. Abstract

Provide a brief abstract of no more than 180 words. This should succinctly and clearly introduce the topic of the paper, summarise the main findings and highlight the significance of the data and main conclusions. The abstract is used by abstracting services without modification and is often read more frequently than the full paper and therefore needs to be comprehensible in its own right. Do not include subheadings or references, and avoid any non-standard abbreviations.

3.2.4. Introduction

This section should succinctly provide the background information that is required to set the results into their proper biological context. It should not contain subheadings.

3.2.5. Results

This section should describe the results of the experiments performed and should be broken up by subheadings to organise the findings presented and walk the reader through the results. Reproducibility of results must be included– see our submission checklist for further information. Please ensure that the distinction between new results and published findings/established facts is clear.

3.2.6. Discussion

This section should explain the significance of the results and should place them into the broader context of the current literature. The Discussion may contain subheadings to highlight important areas that are expanded on in the text.

3.2.7. Materials and methods

This section should include sufficient detail to understand and to replicate the experiments performed, in conjunction with cited references. To facilitate detailed description of materials and methods (allowing the reader to fully understand and replicate the experimental protocols), this section does not count towards the word limit for article length. The materials and methods should be divided into sections, and should include subsections detailing reagents, animal models and statistical analysis. Provide names and locations (town, state, country) for ALL equipment and reagent suppliers. Give Latin names and taxonomic authority (e.g. Linnaeus) for all experimental species. Reporting standards should follow those recommended in our journal policies and submission checklist .

Authors who use AI tools in the writing of a manuscript, generation of code or production of images, or in the collection and analysis of data, must disclose this in the Materials and Methods section. They should describe which AI tool was used and how it was used (note that this section does not count towards the word limit for article length). Please note that authors are fully responsible for the content of their manuscript, including those parts produced by an AI tool.

3.2.8. Acknowledgements

This section should mention any individuals or groups that do not qualify for authorship according to our authorship guidelines , but have contributed to the research presented (e.g. in terms of reagents, time, expertise) or writing of the manuscript. Please also include details of support from core facilities (e.g. microscopy, sequencing, proteomics facilities); an example of how this can be done is included below.

“The authors thank the WEHI core facilities for their important contributions to this work, particularly The WEHI Advanced Genomics Facility, The Centre for Dynamic Imaging and the WEHI Bioservices Facility.”

3.2.9. Competing interests

Include a statement to identify any potential influences that readers may need to know about when thinking about the implications of the presented research. For more specific information regarding the affiliations and associations that must be disclosed, please see our journal policies page. Authors without financial or competing interests should explicitly assert this and include the statement ‘No competing interests declared’.

3.2.10. Funding

Details of all funding sources must be provided. It is the responsibility of the corresponding author to provide the relevant funding information from ALL authors. Please provide the official funding agency name as listed on the Crossref Open Funder Registry, i.e. 'National Institutes of Health', not 'NIH', and all relevant grant numbers. If your Funder is not listed in the Registry, please provide the name in full.

Where individuals need to be specified for certain sources of funding, please add initials after the relevant agency or grant number. Please use the following format: This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health [AA123456 to C.S., BB765432 to M.H.]; and the Alcohol & Education Research Council [hfygr667789]. Where no specific funding has been provided for the research, please state ‘This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors’.

3.2.11. Data availability

All publicly available datasets supporting your work should be included in the Data availability section. Details should include repository name, identifier such as accession number or doi and, where possible, include a hyperlink to the URL of the dataset. Datasets should be made publicly available at the time of publication. For more information on our data deposition requirements, see please see our Journal Policies .

Please note that Journal of Cell Science endorses the Force 11 Data Citation Principles and recommends that references to datasets should also be included in the reference list with DOIs/accession numbers and hyperlinks, where available.

If all data are included only within the manuscript itself and/or its Supplementary information, please include a default statement as follows: Data availability: All relevant data can be found within the article and its supplementary information.

3.2.12. Diversity and inclusion statement

Authors may provide a Diversity and inclusion statement in their paper. This can document diversity and inclusion practices relevant to both the scientific content of the paper, and authorship and attribution.

3.2.13. References

All references cited in the text, tables and figure legends should be included in a single reference list at the end of the article. We strongly encourage the citation of the primary literature over review articles wherever possible, and for this reason do not have a limit on the number of references that can be included. For specific information about reference formatting, please see the references section below.

3.2.14. Figure legends

Figure legends should be listed at the end of the manuscript. The first sentence of the legend should summarise the figure and be in bold. Each figure legend should stand alone and should contain enough information to ensure that the figure is understandable without having to refer to the main text. Figure panels should be labelled with uppercase letters (A, B, C, etc.), and each panel should be described in the legend. Any abbreviations not given in the main text should be defined. For further details on what should be included in figure legends, please refer to our submission checklist .

3.3. Preparing the text

3.3.1. general information.

• Prepare manuscripts in English (either US or UK spelling is acceptable but be consistent within the manuscript). Your writing should be comprehensible to editors and reviewers, and your writing style should be concise and accessible. If English is not your first language, please consider using a language editing service prior to submission.
• Ensure that the language in your manuscript is original and does not contain previously published passages of text (including those from your own publications) – see our journal policies for more details. All accepted manuscripts are routinely screened using plagiarism-detection software.
• Use 1.5 line spacing and continuous line numbering throughout the paper in order to facilitate online reviewing.
• Do not embed figures in the text.
• Cite each figure, table and movie in the text in numerical order. Figure or table parts should be labelled with uppercase letters (A, B, C, etc.). Use the following format for citations: Fig. 1A,B or Figs 1, 2 or Table 1 or Movie 1.
• If necessary, display equations should be cited using the following format: Eqn 1.
• For supplementary figures, tables and equations, cite as Fig. S1, Table S1, Eqn S1.
• Define abbreviations at first mention.
• For special characters not available on a standard keyboard (e.g. Greek characters, mathematical symbols), use the Symbol font or the ‘Insert Symbol’ function in Microsoft Word, where possible. For special characters that are not available via this route, please use MathType characters; do not use embedded images (e.g. GIF).

3.3.2. Units and nomenclature

• Units of measurement should follow the SI system, e.g. ml s -1 rather than ml/s. See guidance on using the SI convention from NIST . Type a space between a digit and a unit, e.g. 1 mm (except 1%, 1 o C).
• Use s.e.m. and s.d. for standard errors, etc.
• Taxonomic nomenclature: the Latin names and taxonomic authority (e.g. Linnaeus) should be provided for all experimental species. All species names should be italicized.
• HGNC list of genome databases: https://www.genenames.org/useful/all-links#ovgdb
• Caenorhabditis elegans : https://www.wormbase.org
• Dictyostelium :  https://dictycr.org/
• Chicken:  http://birdgenenames.org/cgnc/guidelines
• Drosophila: https://flybase.org/wiki/FlyBase:Nomenclature
• Human: https://www.genenames.org/about/guidelines
• Maize: https://www.maizegdb.org/maize_nomenclature.php
• Mouse:  http://www.informatics.jax.org/mgihome/lists/lists.shtml
• Saccharomyces cerevisiae : https://www.yeastgenome.org/
• Schizosaccharomyces pombe : https://www.pombase.org/submit-data/gene-naming-guidelines
• Xenopus : https://www.xenbase.org/gene/static/geneNomenclature.jsp
• Zebrafish:  https://zfin.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/general/pages/1818394635/ZFIN+Zebrafish+Nomenclature+Conventions

3.3.3. References

3.3.3.1. references in text.

References in the text should be cited using the Harvard (name, date) referencing system.

Each reference cited in the text must be listed in the Reference list and vice versa: please check these carefully. Where references are cited only in supplementary information, please provide a separate supplementary reference list and do not include these in the main reference list.

Literature citations in text are as follows.

• One author – (Jones, 1995) or (Jones, 1995; Smith, 1996).
• Two authors – (Jones and Kane, 1994) or (Jones and Kane, 1994; Smith, 1996).
• More than two authors – (Jones et al., 1995) or (Jones et al., 1995a,b; Smith et al., 1994, 1995).
• Manuscripts accepted for publication but not yet published: include in Reference list and cite as (Jones et al., in press).
• Manuscripts posted on preprint servers but not yet published: include in Reference list and cite as (Smith et al., 2016 preprint).
• Dataset: we recommend that all publicly available datasets are fully referenced in the reference list with an accession number or unique identifier such as a DOI. Cite as (Jones and Jane, 1994).
• Citation of unpublished work: we discourage citation of unpublished data; if it is necessary, use the format (S. P. Jones, unpublished observations/data). Unpublished data cannot be included in the Reference list.
• PhD theses: include in Reference list and cite as (Smith, 2016 ).
• Website URLs: cite in the text but do not include in the Reference list; provide the URL and, if the website is frequently updated, the date that the site was accessed.
• Personal communications (i.e. the unpublished observations of other scientists): when a person who is not an author on the paper is the source of unpublished data, those data should be cited as a personal communication using the format (full name, institution, personal communication). Personal communications should not be cited in the Reference list and will only be published when substantiated by written permission (e.g. email) from the scientist cited.
• Authors should avoid citing articles from journals that are suspected to be predatory in nature (see https://thinkchecksubmit.org/ for an online resource designed to help researchers identify trusted journals).
• Citation of retracted articles is strongly discouraged. If it is necessary to cite a retracted paper, the notice of retraction must also be cited and it must be obvious to the reader that the article has been retracted. Editors may question why a retracted publication has been cited.

3.3.3.2. Reference List

References are listed in alphabetical order according to surname and initials of first author. Please note that a doi will automatically be inserted for all relevant references at the proof stage.

Rivera, A. R. V., Wyneken, J. and Blob, R. W. (2011). Forelimb kinematics and motor patterns of swimming loggerhead sea turtles ( Caretta caretta ): are motor patterns conserved in the evolution of new locomotor strategies? J. Exp. Biol. 214 , 3314-3323.

Hochachka, P. W. and Somero, G. N. (2002). Biochemical Adaptation: Mechanism and Process in Physiological Evolution. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

Book chapter

Feller, G. (2008). Enzyme function at low temperatures in psychrophiles. In Protein Adaptation in Extremophiles (ed. K. S. Siddiqui and T. Thomas), pp. 35-69. New York: Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

Preprint server

Baillie-Johnson, P., van den Brink, S. C., Balayo, T., Turner, D. A. and Martinez Arias, A. (2014). Generation of aggregates of mouse ES cells that show symmetry breaking, polarisation and emergent collective behaviour in vitro. bioRxiv doi:10.1101/005215.

Jones, A. R. (2016). Title of thesis. PhD thesis , University of Washington, Seattle, WA.

Dataset with persistent identifier

Zheng, L.-Y., Guo, X.-S., He, B., Sun, L.-J., Peng, Y. and Dong, S.-S. (2011). Genome data from sweet and grain sorghum (Sorghum bicolor). GigaScience Database . https://dx.doi.org/10.5524/100012.

Kingsolver, J. G., Hoekstra, H. E., Hoekstra, J. M., Berrigan, D., Vignieri, S. N., Hill, C. E., Hoang, A., Gibert, P. and Beerli, P. (2001). Data from: The strength of phenotypic selection in natural populations. Dryad Digital Repository . https://dx.doi.org/10.5061/dryad.166.

• If there are more than 10 authors, use 'et al.' after the 10th author.
• Within a group of papers with the same first author, list single author papers first, then papers with two authors, then et al. papers. If more than one reference exists for each type, arrange in date order. Use a and b for papers published in the same year.
• 'In press' citations must have been accepted for publication and the name of the journal or publisher included.

3.4. Preparing tables

Prepare tables in ‘cell’ format and include in the same file as the main text. Tables must be editable and not embedded as an image.

The title of the table should be a single sentence and should summarise the contents of the table. Details referring to one or more isolated item(s) in the table are best given in a table footnote. Units should be given in parentheses at the top of each column (do not repeat in the table).

3.5. Preparing display equations

Our preferred file format for equations is MathType. We also accept Equation Editor (Microsoft Word) or LaTex.

Please number all display equations, consecutively. They should take the form:

Units should be defined in the text rather than included in the equation.

4. Preparing figures

4.1. general information.

For best practice and transparency, and to allow better assessment of the quality of the data and whether the data support the conclusions, we strongly recommend that you: 

• Use graphs that allow the reader to see the true data spread (i.e. box-and-whisker plots, super plots, etc. See PMID: 32346721 for more information.). If using box-and-whisker plots, please state what the whiskers represent. See here for helpful information. 
• Use appropriate statistics with the sample size representing biological replicates rather than technical replicates
• Provide, if using western blots, one additional supplementary figure (as a single PDF or TIFF file), named ‘Blot transparency’, that contains the full, uncropped blots or a substantial portion of the blots that highlights where the bands provided in the figures have been taken from. Size/molecular weight markers should be present. This additional file should refer back to the relevant figures. It will not contribute towards your supplementary figure limit.

Figures should be numbered in a single series that reflects the order in which they are referred to in the text.

Figures should be prepared at the smallest size that will convey the essential scientific information; final figure size is at the discretion of the journal. For further information on how to arrange your figures to optimise viewing by reviewers and readers, download our figure layout guidelines.

At initial submission, you may submit a single PDF file containing all text and figures. Once an article has been accepted for publication, you are required to submit separate files for each figure (see below for file formats).

Figure legends should be included in the main text file and not in the figure file.

There are no charges for the use of colour in figures, although gratuitous use of colour in graphs and diagrams should be avoided and colour should only be used to improve scientific clarity.

We strongly encourage the use of colours that are suitable for colour-blind readers, particularly in the preparation of fluorescent microscopy images. Most notably, we discourage the use of red/green for the display of 2-channel images; authors should consider an alternative colour combination (e.g. magenta/green).

4.2. Preparing photographic images

4.2.1. general information.

Photographic images (also known as bitmap images) are made up of pixels (e.g. light, fluorescence and electron microscopy, gels, and traditional photography)

• The maximum figure size, including lettering and labels, is 180 mm x 210 mm.
• Images should be saved at a resolution of 300 pixels per inch. Any image quality option should be set to maximum.
• For figures that contain both photographs and line art or text, 600 pixels per inch preferred.
• For micrographs, use a scale bar to show the magnification and give the length of this in the figure legend.
• Colour: supply images in RGB (not CMYK) mode, as this maximizes colour quality and is how the figures will be displayed online; do NOT use Spot, Pantone or Hex colours and do NOT assign a colour profile.
• Text labelling: use 12 pt bold uppercase letters (A, B, C, etc.) to distinguish figure panels; other labelling should be 8 pt Arial font (sentence case) (headings should be bold); for gene sequences, use Courier font to ensure that each letter is the same width; use Symbol font for Greek characters.

4.2.2. File formats

Accepted file formats are: EPS/PDF/TIFF/JPEG .

• ARIAL or HELVETICA must be the font choice used throughout figure preparation.

PowerPoint images : we do NOT accept PowerPoint files. Instead, please save as PDF using the instructions below.

• Go to ‘print’ and then choose 'Save as PDF' in the print dialogue box

4.3. Preparing graphs and diagrams (line art)

4.3.1. general information.

• The maximum figure size, including lettering and labels, is 180 mm × 210 mm.
• Line thicknesses and symbols should be of sufficient size to ensure clarity if the figure is reduced in size.
• For graphs, our preferred symbols are filled and open circles, triangles, squares, or diamonds; where possible, the same symbol should be used for the same entity in different figures.
• Colour: supply line art in RGB (not CMYK) mode, as this maximizes colour quality and is how the figures will be displayed online; do NOT use Spot, Pantone or Hex colours and do NOT assign a colour profile.

4.3.2. File formats

Authors should submit their source figures in an editable format (vector graphic) that retains font, line and shape information. This format ensures that we can edit where necessary and produce high-quality print and online PDFs.

We accept the following file formats for graphs/line art: EPS, PDF, and WMF.

• Applications such as Adobe Illustrator, Canvas, DeltaGraph, Corel Draw, Freehand, MatLab and SigmaPlot provide these formats.
• Please ensure that you 'export' or 'save' with (text/font) information included
• Save text/font information as ‘text’ not ‘curves’ or ‘outlines’.
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It is the responsibility of the author to obtain permission to use figures from another publication in any article submitted to Journal of Cell Science and to ensure that any such use is credited to the source. Any fees associated with use of the figure are the responsibility of the author. Written permission from the author and/or publisher of the original material, as appropriate, should be provided at the time of submission, otherwise publication may be delayed. If a figure has been modified from a previously published figure, please check with the copyright owners to see whether permission is required and include a complete citation/reference for the original article.

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AI + Machine Learning , Announcements , Azure AI , Azure AI Studio

Introducing Phi-3: Redefining what’s possible with SLMs

By Misha Bilenko Corporate Vice President, Microsoft GenAI

Posted on April 23, 2024 4 min read

• Tag: Copilot
• Tag: Generative AI

We are excited to introduce Phi-3, a family of open AI models developed by Microsoft. Phi-3 models are the most capable and cost-effective small language models (SLMs) available, outperforming models of the same size and next size up across a variety of language, reasoning, coding, and math benchmarks. This release expands the selection of high-quality models for customers, offering more practical choices as they compose and build generative AI applications.

Starting today, Phi-3-mini , a 3.8B language model is available on Microsoft Azure AI Studio , Hugging Face , and Ollama . 

• Phi-3-mini is available in two context-length variants—4K and 128K tokens. It is the first model in its class to support a context window of up to 128K tokens, with little impact on quality.
• It is instruction-tuned, meaning that it’s trained to follow different types of instructions reflecting how people normally communicate. This ensures the model is ready to use out-of-the-box.
• It is available on Azure AI to take advantage of the deploy-eval-finetune toolchain, and is available on Ollama for developers to run locally on their laptops.
• It has been optimized for ONNX Runtime with support for Windows DirectML along with cross-platform support across graphics processing unit (GPU), CPU, and even mobile hardware.
• It is also available as an NVIDIA NIM microservice with a standard API interface that can be deployed anywhere. And has been optimized for NVIDIA GPUs . 

In the coming weeks, additional models will be added to Phi-3 family to offer customers even more flexibility across the quality-cost curve. Phi-3-small (7B) and Phi-3-medium (14B) will be available in the Azure AI model catalog and other model gardens shortly.   

Microsoft continues to offer the best models across the quality-cost curve and today’s Phi-3 release expands the selection of models with state-of-the-art small models.

Azure AI Studio

Phi-3-mini is now available

Groundbreaking performance at a small size

Phi-3 models significantly outperform language models of the same and larger sizes on key benchmarks (see benchmark numbers below, higher is better). Phi-3-mini does better than models twice its size, and Phi-3-small and Phi-3-medium outperform much larger models, including GPT-3.5T.  

All reported numbers are produced with the same pipeline to ensure that the numbers are comparable. As a result, these numbers may differ from other published numbers due to slight differences in the evaluation methodology. More details on benchmarks are provided in our technical paper . 

Note: Phi-3 models do not perform as well on factual knowledge benchmarks (such as TriviaQA) as the smaller model size results in less capacity to retain facts.  

Safety-first model design

Responsible ai principles

Phi-3 models were developed in accordance with the Microsoft Responsible AI Standard , which is a company-wide set of requirements based on the following six principles: accountability, transparency, fairness, reliability and safety, privacy and security, and inclusiveness. Phi-3 models underwent rigorous safety measurement and evaluation, red-teaming, sensitive use review, and adherence to security guidance to help ensure that these models are responsibly developed, tested, and deployed in alignment with Microsoft’s standards and best practices.  

Building on our prior work with Phi models (“ Textbooks Are All You Need ”), Phi-3 models are also trained using high-quality data. They were further improved with extensive safety post-training, including reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF), automated testing and evaluations across dozens of harm categories, and manual red-teaming. Our approach to safety training and evaluations are detailed in our technical paper , and we outline recommended uses and limitations in the model cards. See the model card collection .  

Unlocking new capabilities

Microsoft’s experience shipping copilots and enabling customers to transform their businesses with generative AI using Azure AI has highlighted the growing need for different-size models across the quality-cost curve for different tasks. Small language models, like Phi-3, are especially great for: 

• Resource constrained environments including on-device and offline inference scenarios.
• Latency bound scenarios where fast response times are critical.
• Cost constrained use cases, particularly those with simpler tasks.

For more on small language models, see our Microsoft Source Blog .

Thanks to their smaller size, Phi-3 models can be used in compute-limited inference environments. Phi-3-mini, in particular, can be used on-device, especially when further optimized with ONNX Runtime for cross-platform availability. The smaller size of Phi-3 models also makes fine-tuning or customization easier and more affordable. In addition, their lower computational needs make them a lower cost option with much better latency. The longer context window enables taking in and reasoning over large text content—documents, web pages, code, and more. Phi-3-mini demonstrates strong reasoning and logic capabilities, making it a good candidate for analytical tasks. 

Customers are already building solutions with Phi-3. One example where Phi-3 is already demonstrating value is in agriculture, where internet might not be readily accessible. Powerful small models like Phi-3 along with Microsoft copilot templates are available to farmers at the point of need and provide the additional benefit of running at reduced cost, making AI technologies even more accessible.  

ITC, a leading business conglomerate based in India, is leveraging Phi-3 as part of their continued collaboration with Microsoft on the copilot for Krishi Mitra, a farmer-facing app that reaches over a million farmers.

“ Our goal with the Krishi Mitra copilot is to improve efficiency while maintaining the accuracy of a large language model. We are excited to partner with Microsoft on using fine-tuned versions of Phi-3 to meet both our goals—efficiency and accuracy! ”    Saif Naik, Head of Technology, ITCMAARS

Originating in Microsoft Research, Phi models have been broadly used, with Phi-2 downloaded over 2 million times. The Phi series of models have achieved remarkable performance with strategic data curation and innovative scaling. Starting with Phi-1, a model used for Python coding, to Phi-1.5, enhancing reasoning and understanding, and then to Phi-2, a 2.7 billion-parameter model outperforming those up to 25 times its size in language comprehension. 1 Each iteration has leveraged high-quality training data and knowledge transfer techniques to challenge conventional scaling laws. 

Get started today

To experience Phi-3 for yourself, start with playing with the model on Azure AI Playground . You can also find the model on the Hugging Chat playground . Start building with and customizing Phi-3 for your scenarios using the  Azure AI Studio . Join us to learn more about Phi-3 during a special  live stream of the AI Show.  

1 Microsoft Research Blog, Phi-2: The surprising power of small language models, December 12, 2023 .

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Local News | Movies renew interest in ‘Dune’ author…

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Local News | Movies renew interest in ‘Dune’ author archives at Pollak Library

Frank herbert's notes, letters a popular resource.

Among the archives in the Special Collections of Cal State Fullerton’s Pollak Library, the papers of Frank Herbert, author of the epic 1965 science fiction novel “Dune” have been the most popular, and now even more so since the newly released “Dune” movies.

Interest in Herbert’s typewritten drafts, letters and forward-thinking ideas about the environment is surging once again.

In 1957, Herbert studied the shifting sands of the Oregon coast, a subject that fascinated him — they had been known “to swallow whole cities, lakes, rivers, highways,” he wrote in a letter to his literary agent, pitching it as a magazine article. No editor wanted it, but those dunes later took shape as the landscapes of the planet Arrakis in “Dune.”

The Pollak Library collection includes notes, manuscripts and 20 rejection letters, criticizing the book’s length and complicated plot. (Photo by Nicole Gregory, contributing photographer, courtesy of Willis E. McNelly Science Fiction Collection, Frank Herbert Papers (Collection) SC-06-FH, CSUF University Archives and Special Collections)

The story of “Dune” first appeared in the December 1963 edition of “Analog,” a science fiction journal, where it was printed in serial form. Copies of “Analog” can be found in the archival boxes at the library as well as correspondence Herbert had with his agent and writer friends, reviews of his books, notes, and heartfelt fan letters.

Like most writers, Herbert had his share of rejection. The archival boxes of his papers in Pollak Library contain rejection letters Herbert received for “Dune” from publishers unwilling to bring it out as a book — there were 20 in total — with complaints that the novel was too long and the plot too complicated.

To date, the book has sold approximately 20 million copies worldwide.

Teachers integrate Herbert’s archives in classroom studies, from literature to religion.

The rough manuscript pages for “Dune” — a story many students know only from the movies —reveal the workings of a writer’s imagination. They are filled with scribbled notes and edits.

“It’s very cool,” said Lisa A. Mix, director of the Archives and Special Collections. “You can really get a sense of his process. You can see where he crossed things out and wrote things in. I tell students, ‘This is the primitive version of track change,’ ” she said.

Herbert’s papers also offer a glimpse into the beginnings of the environmental movement in America. “Students are interested in the ‘Dune’ manuscript, but also Herbert’s research materials and notes in relation to the environment and climate change, and how those issues are portrayed in science fiction,” Mix said.

“A professor in anthropology had his students work on an exhibit on the anthropology of religion. Some of the parts of the Herbert papers and ‘Dune’ were a part of that because Herbert invents several religions in ‘Dune,’ ” she said.

The Frank Herbert archives are part of a larger collection called the Willis McNelly Science Fiction Collection, Mix said.

“Willis McNelly was a faculty member here at Cal State Fullerton in the Department of English,” she said. “In the 1960s, he was instrumental in getting science fiction recognized as literature. He was very active in both the Science Fiction Research Association and the Science Fiction Writers of America.”

In 1967, McNelly was a speaker at the Science Fiction Writers of America meeting in Berkeley.

“At that meeting, he met several science fiction writers, including Frank Herbert,” Mix said. “Because he was teaching science fiction as literature, he developed friendships and professional relationships with Frank Herbert, Ray Bradbury, Philip K. Dick and other science fiction writers. He was very aware of the importance of these writers, preserving their manuscripts, as he put it, ‘not just keeping them in boxes in their garage,’ but having them preserved eventually in a library where scholars could come and do research on them.”

Herbert donated original manuscripts and other papers to Cal State Fullerton in his lifetime, and after he died in 1986, his widow donated more. In 2015, Cal State University had a yearlong celebration of the 50th anniversary of the publication of “Dune” in which some of the archival material was included in displays.

Herbert was born in Tacoma, Washington in 1920 and knew early on that he wanted to be a writer. He worked for several newspapers before eventually becoming a freelance writer.

The Pollak Library Special Collections also includes the Freedom Center, which consists of political literature and ephemera “from all aspects of all points on the political spectrum — from the Daughters of the Confederacy to the Bernie Sanders campaign,” Mix said.

There is also a large local history collection, much of it about the growth of the citrus industry in Orange County, as well as the university archives and an extensive map collection, which includes several showing California as an island.

Relics in these collections tell stories of historic moments but also of how people were thinking at the time and shaped their history.

“One thing I like about archives is that you can look at an issue from many sides, and you can find different documentation from different perspectives,” Mix said. “I find that very interesting.”

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