Author guidelines

Overview

Submission checklist

Preparation of manuscripts

Article types

• Research
• Reviews
• Case Reports
• Editorials
• Letters to the Editor

Supplementary data

Editorial policies

Overview

Submission checklist

• Title page – All submissions must have a title page stating all of the relevant information. See 'General’ for further details.
• Approval – Ensure all authors have seen and approved the final version of the article prior to submission and are aware it is being submitted to European Thyroid Journal.
• Ethical compliance – All articles are required to meet the requirements outlined in our ethical policy. Ensure you have included all relevant ethical approval statements.
• Open access – The appropriate open-access option must be selected on submission. Authors are responsible for ensuring any funder mandates are followed. For further details, please see the open access policy.
• Reported data – Data accuracy is crucial. Authors are strongly encouraged to double-check all reported data for accuracy and to confirm that all units of measurement are correct and consistent.
• Charges – European Thyroid Journal is an open-access journal, and an article publication charge is payable upon acceptance. Full details are available on the publication charges page.
• Author list – All authors must be listed on the title page and entered on the ScholarOne Manuscripts submission in the correct order. Ensure all author email addresses provided are valid. ORCID iDs can be added during the submission process, and will be displayed on the published article. Author information entered into ScholarOne Manuscripts will be used to generate PubMed listings for published papers.
• Language – Non-native English speakers are encouraged to have their manuscript professionally edited before submission. See Bioscientifica’s recommended English language editing services. Manuscripts may be written in either UK or US English.
• File formats – Ensure all files are in the correct format for revised submissions. See ‘General’ for further instructions.

Should an author be found to violate our ethical policy, we reserve the right to reject or withdraw the paper and inform all interested parties including relevant journal editors and authors, the author's department head and/or institutional office of misconduct. Following investigation, if it is found that the authors have knowingly engaged in publication or research misconduct, the authors under investigation may also be at risk of being banned from submitting to all journals published by Bioscientifica in the future.

Preparation of manuscripts

General

• Be concise and clear.
• Be limited to 4000 words for Research submissions. For information on other manuscript types please see the relevant section below.
• Display the word count on the title page.
• Contain no more than 10 figures and 50 references as recommended by the journal.
• Use double line spacing throughout (including reference list and figure legends), and contain continuous line numbering down the left-side of each page. 
• Define all abbreviations when first mentioned.
• Be submitted in the correct file type, ie main document in an editable Word format.
• Be written in either UK or US English.
• Contain a title page.

• Please be aware that the combined size of your files should not exceed 40 MB.
• For article text: txt, doc, docx, rtf. We are unable to accept pdf files for article text for revised manuscripts, but can do so for first submissions.
• For figures: eps, tiff, jpg, pdf.

Article types

Research papers

Please include continuous line numbering on your submitted manuscript, to facilitate reviewer comments.

All research submissions should be formatted with the following sections:

1. Title page

• Title (maximum 85 characters)
• All authors' names and full addresses
• Corresponding author’s postal and email address
• A short title (maximum 46 characters, including spaces)
• A minimum of four keywords describing the manuscript
• Word count of the full article, excluding references and figure legends

2. Abstract

3. Introduction

4. Materials and methods

• Include the source of chemicals, reagents and hormones and give the manufacturer’s name in parentheses.
• Give the generic name, dose and route of administration for drugs.
• Specify the composition of buffers, solutions and culture media.
• Use SI symbols, give concentrations in mol/L and define the term % as w/v or v/v for all solutions. For international units use IU (U should be used for enzyme activity).
• Specify the type of equipment (microscopes/objective lenses, cameras, detectors) used to obtain images.
• RT-PCR methods should broadly follow the MIQE guidelines, see http://miqe.gene-quantification.info/ and Bustin et al 2009 Clin Chem 55:611-622.
• The EQUATOR network provides a database of reporting guidelines, aiming to improve the reliability of published health research literature by promoting transparent and accurate reporting. Authors may find this a useful resource.
• Specify any image acquisition software used, and give a description of specialised techniques requiring large amounts of processing, such as confocal, deconvolution, 3D reconstructions, or surface and volume rendering.

5. Results

6. Discussion

7. Declaration of interest, Funding, Contributions and Acknowledgements

Declaration of interest
Actual or perceived conflicts of interest for all authors must be declared in full.
Please either (a) declare that there is no conflict of interest that could be perceived as prejudicing the impartiality of the research reported; or (b) fully declare any financial or other potential conflict of interest.

• Employment and consultancies
• Grants, fees and honoraria
• Ownership of stock or shares
• Royalties
• Patents (pending and actual)
• Board membership

8. References

Unpublished work
Any unpublished work (personal communications, manuscripts in preparation and manuscripts submitted but not yet accepted for publication) must be referred to in the text and not listed in the references.

Give the full list of authors, including their initials. For example:
(A Stone, J Brown & MR Smith, unpublished observations)
(J Brown, personal communication)

Articles accepted for publication but not yet published may be listed as ‘in press’ in the reference list, using the current year as the publication year. If an ‘in press’ article is included in the Accepted Preprint service or a similar scheme, then the Digital Object Identifier (DOI) should be included; otherwise, provide a copy of the article as a supplementary file for reviewing purposes.

9. Tables

• Number tables in the order they are cited in the text
• Include a title – a single sentence at the head of the table that includes the name of the organism studied
• Use footnotes to provide any additional explanatory material, cross-referenced to the column entries
• Give a short heading for each column
• Do not use internal horizontal or vertical lines, colour or shading
• Explain all abbreviations used in the table in the footnotes

10. Figures

• Number figures in the order they are cited in the text
• Include legends to all figures, giving the figure number, keys to any symbols used, the name of the organism studied, the names of any statistical tests used and the probability levels used for comparisons
• Label figure sections as A, B etc in the top left-hand corner
• Use Arial or a similar sans-serif font for text labels
• Do not enclose figures in boxes
• Indicate magnification by a scale bar in the bottom right-hand corner of the image and give the measurement in the legend
• Use the preferred symbols of closed and open circles, squares and triangles. Ensure that symbols are large enough to be read clearly when the figure is reduced for publication
• Use Courier or a similar non-proportional font for amino acid, DNA, RNA and PCR primer sequences and highlight sections of homology between sequences with grey shading

Reviews

Case Reports

Authors may wish to submit one of the following Case Reports:
Novel Insights: This Case Report is to include highlighted boxes containing one or two bullet points on 'Established Facts' (what is already known) and 'Novel Insights' (what new information has been gained). These should be selected so as to reinforce the novelty of the clinical observation.

Images in Thyroidology: This article may not exceed 400 words to allow sufficient space for pictorial material. Maximum 5 references and 1 figure.

Editorials

Letters to the Editor

• A copy of your abstract (for Review articles only)
• A proposed outline of your article
• A brief explanation as to why the article is timely and would add value to the current literature
• 2 3 key publications from your research group which highlight expertise within the field

Supplementary data

Editorial policies

Human studies

Human subjects

Patient consent

• Images taken from pathology slides
• X-rays
• Laparoscopic images
• Images of internal organs
• Ultrasound images

Clinical trials

Human genotype–phenotype association studies 

• Statistical analyses demonstrating the level of statistical significance of a finding should be published or at least available so that others can attempt to reproduce the reported results.
• Explicit information should be provided about the study’s power to detect a range of effects.
• The study should be epidemiologically sound, with careful accounting for potential biases in selection of subjects, characterization of phenotypes, comparability of environmental exposures (when possible) and underlying population structure in cases and controls.
• Phenotypes should be assessed according to standard definitions provided in the report.
• Associations should be consistent (within the range of expected statistical fluctuation) and reported for the same phenotypes across study subgroups or across similar phenotypes in the entire study group.
• Significance should not depend on altering the quality control methods beyond standard approaches that could change inclusion or exclusion of large numbers of samples or loci.
• Measures to assess the quality of genotype data should include results of known study sample duplicates or publicly available samples.
• The results for concordance between duplicate samples (if applicable) as well as completion and call rates per SNP and per subject should be disclosed, along with rates of missing data.
• A subset of notable SNPs should be evaluated with a second technology that verifies the same result with excellent concordance, because no technology is error-free.
• Associations with nearby SNPs in strong linkage disequilibrium with the putatively associated SNP should be reported (and should be similar).
• The results of replication studies of previous findings should be reported even if the results are not significant.
• Testing for differences in underlying population structure in case and control groups should be performed and reported.
• Appropriate correction for multiple comparisons across all statistical tests examined should be reported. Comparison to genome-wide thresholds should be described. Similarly, for bayesian approaches, the choice of prior probabilities should be described.

Animal studies

• Give the full binomial Latin names for all experimental animals other than common laboratory animals
• State the breed or strain and source of animals, and give details of age, weight, sex and housing
• Detail the procedures and anaesthetics used, including doses given

Experiments with genetically engineered mice

Cell lines

Authentication of cell lines

Genetic association case/control studies

Gene and protein nomenclature

• In gene and protein symbols, substitute Greek letters with the corresponding Roman letter, eg TGFBR2 not TGFβR2
• Avoid hyphens unless they are part of the approved symbol, eg IGF1 not IGF-1
• Please use Arabic rather than Roman numerals, eg BMPR2 not BMPRII

Mice and rats

• Gene symbols should be in italics with only the first letter capitalised, eg Sox2
• Protein designations should be the same as the gene symbols except that all letters should be capitalised and in Roman (ie not italicised), eg SOX2
• Please use symbols approved by the International Committee on Standardized Genetic Nomenclature for Mice and the Rat Genome and Nomenclature Committee, which can be queried at the MGI website.

Humans, non-human primates and domestic species

• Gene symbols should be in italics with all letters capitalised, eg SOX2
• Protein designations should be the same as the gene symbols but not italicised, eg SOX2
• Please use symbols approved by the HUGO Gene Nomenclature Committee (HGNC).

Fish

• Gene symbols should be in italics with all letters in lower case, eg sox2
• Protein designations should be the same as the gene symbols but not italicised and with the first letter capitalised, eg Sox2
• Please use symbols approved by the Zebrafish Nomenclature Committee (ZNC), which can be queried at the ZFIN website.

Digital image integrity

• Band intensity should be quantified from several independent experiments. If only a "typical" experiment is shown in the figure, authors should be prepared to provide unprocessed images of gels or blots at the request of the Editor-in-Chief. 
• Extensively cropped images are not acceptable. Images can be cropped to enhance clarity of presentation, but should always contain at least two markers (one with a smaller, one with a larger molecular size than the band of interest) with their molecular sizes indicated. 
• Producing spliced images by combining lanes from gels or blots from different experimental runs should be avoided. A lane containing markers should be on the same gel for each run. If spliced images are presented, the vertical lanes obtained from gels or blots from different experimental runs should be clearly demarcated with lines. 
• As the validity of immunoblots relies heavily on antibody specificity, an appropriate control (tissue from knockout mice or protein knockdown in cell lines) must be included, or alternatively a reference should be given in the methods section referring to such a control (Saper 2009; Burry 2011).
• The reuse of images of loading controls from other experiments or previous publications is unacceptable.

Statistical analysis

• Describe the numbers of experimental units used and the way in which they have been allocated to treatments
• Justify the omission of any observations from the analysis
• Describe methods of analysis precisely and state any necessary assumptions, as these may affect the conclusions that can be drawn from the experiment

Preprint repositories

Depositing data in public databases

Licence and Copyright

During the submission process the submitting author will need to complete a publication agreement on behalf of the co-authors and the copyright holder for the article. As part of this agreement, the copyright holder will grant the European Thyroid Association and Bioscientifica a non-exclusive licence to publish the article. The copyright is retained by the original copyright holder and is not assigned to the European Thyroid Association or Bioscientifica.

Authors may download a copy of this agreement in advance.

Appeals

Authors are entitled to appeal against a rejection decision made by a journal. Appeals should be submitted to the journal email address. We must receive your valid appeal within four weeks of the original decision, otherwise it will not be considered. An appeal is considered to be an extension of the peer review process and so you should not submit your article to another publication whilst an appeal is ongoing.

To be considered, appeals must directly address the reason(s) given for the initial rejection decision. If reviewer reports were included with the decision letter, then these criticisms must be responded to in the appeal, however you should not prepare and submit a revised version of your article with the appeal. Appeals that are received late, do not address reviewers’ criticisms, are dismissive of the reviewer comments, or contain offensive language will not be considered.

Valid appeals will be sent to a member of the journal’s Editorial Board for consideration. Where possible, an independent member of the Editorial Board who was not connected to the original decision will oversee the appeal.

If successful, an appeal may result in the decision being rescinded and a continuation of the peer-review process. If the appeal is rejected, then the original rejection decision is upheld and no further consideration of that article is possible.

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