Manuscript preparation guidelines

INSTRUCTIONS TO AUTHORS

Cover Letter

The uploaded covering letter must state the manuscript is original research, has not been already published and has not been submitted for publication elsewhere while under consideration. If the article has been previously considered for publication in any other journal, author must include the previous reviewer comments, to help facilitate the decision by the Editorial team. Conflict of interest statement should also be included.

Title Page

The title page must contain the title of the paper, the full names of all the contributing authors and their affiliations, along with the name, full postal address, telephone and fax numbers and e-Mail address of the authors for correspondence and offprint requests. (This information is also required for on the electronic submission form). Conflict of Interest statement should also be attached with the title page.

 The title should be brief, informative, of 150 characters or less and must not make a statement or conclusion.

• The running title should consist of no more than 50 letters and spaces and should be as brief as possible, convey the essential message of the paper and contain no abbreviations.
• Authors should reveal the sources of any support for the work, received in the form of grants and/or equipment and drugs.
• In case 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.

Abstract

Original Articles must be prepared with an unstructured abstract constructed to summarise the essential features of the paper in a logical and concise sequence.

Materials/Subjects and Methods

This section should contain sufficient detail, so that all experimental procedures can be reproduced, and include references. Methods, which have been published in detail elsewhere, should not be presented in detail. Authors should give the name of the manufacturer and their location for any specifically named medical equipment and instruments, and all drugs should be identified by their pharmaceutical names, and by their trade name if suitable.

Results and Discussion

The Results section should briefly present the experimental data in text, tables or figures. Tables and figures should not be described extensively in the text, either. The discussion should focus on the interpretation and the significance of the findings with concise objective comments that describe their relation to other work in the area. It should not repeat information in the results. The final paragraph should highlight the main conclusion(s), and provide some indication of the direction future research should take.

Acknowledgements

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

References

Those papers which are directly related to the article should be cited. Exhaustive and excessive lists should be avoided. References should follow the Vancouver format. In the text, they should appear as numbers starting at one and at the end of the paper they should be listed (double-spaced) in numerical order corresponding to the order of citation in the text. Where a reference is to appear next to a number in the text, for example following an equation, when writing chemical formula or biological acronym, then citations should be written as (ref. X) and not as superscript.

 All authors should be listed for papers with up to six authors; for papers with more than six authors, the first six only should be listed, followed by et al. Abbreviations for titles of medical periodicals should be used properly. The first and last page numbers for each reference should be provided. Abstracts and letters must be identified as such. Papers in press may be included in the list of references.

 Personal communications must be designated a number and should be included in the list of references in the usual way or simply referred to in the text; the authors may choose which method to use. In either case author must get permission from the individual concerned to quote his/her unpublished work.

 Examples:

 Journal article, up to six authors:

Selk aid Y, Ruse BT. Natural regulatory T cells in infectious disease. Nat Immunol 2012;8: 373–390.

 Journal article, in press:

Fallardo RL, Junja HS, Gardner KH. Normal human marrow stromal cells induce clonal growth of human malignant T-lymphoblasts.Int J Cell Cloning(in press).

 Journal article, e-pub ahead of print:

Ponin M, Mursche S, Dergeman T, Leopold T, Illmer T, Ehninger G et al. F-ara-A pharmacokinetics during reduced-intensity conditioning therapy with fludarabine and busulfan.Bone Marrow Transplant 2006; epub ahead of print 6 January 2010; doi:10.1038/sj.bmt.1706655

 Complete book:

Atjinson K, Champlin S, Ritz J, Fibbe W, Lghujman P, Brrtner MD (eds).Clinical Bone Marrow, 4th edn. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, UK, 2006.

 Chapter in book:

Coccia PF. Hematopoietic cell transplantation for osteopetrosis. In: Blume KG, Forman SJ, Appelbaum FR (eds).Thomas' Hematopoietic Cell Transplantation, 3rd edn. Blackwell Publishing Ltd: Malden, MA, USA, 2012, pp 1543–1554.

 Abstract:

Syrjala KL, Abrams JR, Storer B, Heiman JR. Prospective risk factors for five-year sexuality late effects in men and women after haematopoietic cell transplantation.Bone Marrow Transplant2005;47(Suppl 5): S4 (abstract 117).

 Correspondence:

Caocci G, Pisu S. Overcoming scientific barriers and human prudence [letter].Bone Marrow Transplant 2010; 48: 849–860.

 Tables

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

 Figures

Figures and images should be labelled sequentially and cited in the text. Figures should not be embedded within the text but rather up loaded as separate files. The use of three-dimensional histograms is strongly discouraged when the addition of the third dimension gives no extra information.

 Figure Legends

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

 Supplementary Information

Supplementary information (SI) is peer-reviewed material directly related to the conclusion of an article that cannot be added in the printed version owing to space or format constraints. The article must be absolute and self-explanatory without the SI, which is posted on the journal's website and linked to the article. SI may consist of data files, graphics, revised movies or extensive tables.

 Authors should submit supplementary information files in the FINAL format so, typeset or changed, and will appear online exactly as submitted. When submitting Supplementary information, authors needs to:

 Include a text summary (Which is not more than 50 words) to describe the contents of each file.

• Identify the types of files or file formats submitted.
• Include the text ‚Supplementary information is available at website at the end of the article and before the references.