Author Role

INSTRUCTIONS FOR AUTHORS

Types of paper

(a) Research Papers: these papers are fully documented, interpreted accounts of significant findings of original research. Authors should aim for no more than eight figures per paper. Any non-essential figures can be included in the Supplementary Material (see Supplementary Material section below). Papers not conforming to these guidelines may be rejected, at the Editor's discretion.

(b) Review Papers: these are critical and comprehensive reviews that provide new insights or interpretation of a subject through thorough and systematic evaluation of available evidence. We would not expect to receive a review paper that is shorter than 8000 words.

(c) Mini Review: these are short, timely articles that summarise recent developments in a field without providing an exhaustive review of all the literature. We encourage Mini-Reviews which propose provocative new ideas or which challenge currently accepted opinions. We would expect a Mini Review to be around 3000 words. Section headings should be short and informative. No more than four figures should be included.

(d) Commentaries should normally take the form of a ‘letter’ and present significant comments or questions about a work published in the Journal. A commentary would normally include substantiated disagreement with, or alternative interpretation of, one or more aspects of a paper. It would also normally discuss associated implications for the conclusions reached. Commentaries should be received within 3 months of the publication date of the paper on which they comment. Authors of potential discussions are encouraged to enter into communication with the Editor-in-Chief before preparation or submission of text. While there is no word limit, commentaries should be brief and tightly focused. A commentary, if accepted, will normally be shared with the authors of the paper concerned who will be provided opportunity to respond.

If needed, a template on how to format your paper can be found here.

American Journal of Case Reports and Clinical Images accept original research articles, reviews, communications, cases reports, case studies, opinions, editorials, perspectives and letters for publication. Authors are requested to follow the guiding principles before submission of the articles to the American Journal of Case Reports and Clinical Images.

Ethics in publishing

You will be required to accept the American Journal of Case Reports and Clinical Images Ethics Statement for Authors when you submit your paper to the journal. The statement covers authorship, originality and conflicts of interest. Please read this statement to ensure your submission complies.

Note that conference proceedings are a form of publication.

CHANGES TO AUTHORSHIP

If you wish to add, delete or rearrange the authors of your accepted paper:

Before online publication: The corresponding author should contact the Journals Manager, and provide (a) the reason for the change, and (b) the written consent of all co-authors, including the authors being added or removed. Please note that your paper will not be published until the changes have been agreed.

After online publication: Any requests to add, delete, or rearrange author names in an article published in an online issue will follow the same policies as noted above and result in a corrigendum.

COPYRIGHT

If your paper is selected for publication you will be expected to sign our copyright assignment form. Where necessary you must obtain permission to publish material protected by copyright. Provision is made on the form for work performed for the United States Government (for which Copyright cannot be assigned) and other extenuating circumstances.

For open access articles: Upon acceptance of an article, authors will be asked to complete an 'Exclusive License Agreement' (for more information see our Rights and Permissions page). Permitted third party reuse of open access articles is determined by the author's choice of user license. More information is available on our Open Access page.

AUTHOR RIGHTS

For the rights of the author to reuse your work, please refer to the Rights and Permissions page.

ROLE OF THE FUNDING SOURCE

You are requested to identify who provided financial support for the conduct of the research and/or preparation of the article and to briefly describe the role of the sponsor(s), if any, in study design; in the collection, analysis and interpretation of data; in the writing of the report; and in the decision to submit the article for publication. If the funding source(s) had no such involvement then this should be stated.

PUBLISHING OPTIONS

If your paper is accepted for publication, you will be able to choose from two publication options.

Open Access papers are freely available on American Journal of Case Reports and Clinical Images

Usage of papers published open access by third parties is defined by the type of Creative Commons user licence selected by the author (see all options on our Open Access page).

A fee is payable to publish your paper Open Access. Please see our Open Access Fees page for more information.

Readers without a subscription can pay a one-off fee to download the paper.

LANGUAGE

Papers must be in good, grammatically correct English. If your paper cannot be understood, it will be rejected. If English is not your native language, you should seek the assistance of a colleague or professional translator.

In addition, you should always have your manuscript read by at least two other people to avoid typing errors before submitting to a journal.

SUBMISSION

Articles should be provided in electronic form (uploaded to our online submission site and comply with the instructions below.

REVIEWERS

You are required to submit, with the manuscript, the names and addresses of 3 potential reviewers that can give an independent review. You should make sure that these reviewers are not within your institution and where possible use reviewers from different countries. If in doubt please look at your references.

REVISION

Major corrections cannot be undertaken by either the editor or the publishers; if your paper is not prepared in accordance with these instructions it may not be considered further. Where requested to do so in the course of the peer review process, authors must revise their papers within one month of the request; otherwise the contribution will be considered withdrawn.

PEER REVIEW PROCESS

All papers that an Editor sends for review, will be peer reviewed, you can see the full process. More information on how to review a paper can be found.

PREPARATION

Use of word processing software

The preferred format for electronic versions is Microsoft Word, though we can accept most other word-processing packages in PC or Macintosh formats; however, please do not supply your typescript as a PDF. Authors should not add their own macros. Please supply only the final version of your file (with no hidden text), to avoid any risk of old versions of the text being used in error.

The source files of figures are required if a paper is accepted and you should embed the figures in the main text (see below).

Article structure

Do not number or letter section headings.

Use line numbering throughout your paper.

Papers should be well structured; they must comprise:

• Title

• Short title of no more than 80 characters

• Author name(s), full postal and email addresses for each author. Please indicate who the corresponding author is.

• Abstract: no more than 200 words briefly specifying the aims of the work, the main results obtained, and the conclusions drawn. Citations must not be included in the Abstract.

• Keywords: up to 6 keywords (in alphabetical order) which will enable subsequent abstracting or information retrieval systems to locate the paper.

• Highlights: up to 5 numbered points which describe the novelty and/or the impact of your research. The highlights should help increase the discoverability of your article. Ensure the highlights are, concise, easy to read, and include key search terms (you should not simply rewrite the abstract).

• Graphical Abstract: this should offer readers an at-a-glance visualisation of your paper via a single, concise image. Graphical abstracts are optional, but helpful for readers and for the promotion of your paper.

Main text: for clarity this should be subdivided into:

• Introduction: describing the background of the work and its aims.

• Methods: a brief description of the methods/techniques used (the principles of these methods should not be described if readers can be directed to easily accessible references or standard texts).

• Results and Discussion: a clear presentation of experimental results obtained, highlighting any trends or points of interest.

• Conclusions: a brief explanation of the significance and implications of the work reported.

• References: these should be to accessible sources. Please ensure that all work cited in the text is included in the reference list, and that the dates and authors given in the text match those in the reference list. References must always be given in sufficient detail for the reader to locate the work cited (see below for formats). Note that your paper is at risk of rejection if there are too few (<10) or too many (>25) references, or if a disproportionate share of the references cited are your own.

Supplementary Material: Appendices and other Supplementary Material are permitted, and will be published online only.

Data: We encourage authors to make the dataset on which their paper is based available to access. Authors may upload all data related to the results reported in the manuscript as supplementary materials with the submission, or provided via a URL to a public repository. Data should be presented in a format that facilitates readability and reuse.

Where restrictions apply, submissions should be accompanied by a statement of the conditions of access and permitted reuse of the data.

For Review Papers the organisation of the paper can be different. It is however important that a review is more than a summary of the literature; an in-depth critical discussion is essential for acceptance of a review paper.

Nomenclature and Units

Please take care that all terminology and notation used will be widely understood. Abbreviations and acronyms should be spelled out in full at their first occurrence in the text. In describing wastewater treatment processes authors should consult Corominas et al. (2010). New framework for standardized notation in wastewater treatment modelling. Water Science & Technology, 61(4), 841-857.

SI units are strongly recommended. If non-SI units must be used, SI equivalents (or conversion factors) must also be given. Please use the spellings 'litre' and 'metre' (a 'meter' is a measuring instrument).

Please use a decimal point rather than a comma in numbers (i.e. 3.142 not 3,142).

Write equations in dimensionless form or in metric units. Please use italic letters to denote variables (in text or in displayed equations).

Artwork

All figures should be embedded and correctly positioned within your Word files, and should also be supplied as separate graphics files in their original formats. EPS, TIFF or PSD formats are preferred.

The journal is printed in black and white, with colour graphics in the online version. Authors can have figures printed in colour at a cost of £350 per figure.

Figures should appear in numerical order, be described in the body of the text and be positioned close to where they are first cited. Each figure should have a caption which describes the illustration, and that can be understood independently of the main text. The caption should be given in the text, and not on the figure itself.

Make sure all figures and tables will fit inside the text area.

Because figures may be resized in the course of production please use scale bars and not magnification factors.

Tables

Please submit tables as editable text and not as images. Number tables consecutively in accordance with their appearance in the text and place any table notes below the table body. Be sparing in the use of tables and ensure that the data presented in them do not duplicate results described elsewhere in the article. Please avoid using vertical rules.

REFERENCES

Citations in text

Use surname of author and year of publication: Jones (2002) or (Jones 2002).

Insert initials only if there are two different authors with the same surname and same year of publication.

Two or more years in parentheses following an author's name are cited in ascending order of year, and two or more references published in the same year by the same author are differentiated by letters a, b, c, etc. For example: Brown (1999, 2002, 2003a, b).

Different references cited together should be in date order, for example: (Smith 1959; Thomson & Jones 2008; Green 2015).

If a paper has been accepted for publication but has not been published the term "(in press)" should be used instead of a date.

If a paper has been submitted but not definitely accepted the term "(submitted)" should be used. If the paper is still being prepared the term "(in preparation)" should be used.

The abbreviation "et al." should be used in the text when there are more than two co-authors of a cited paper.

Please double-check: every citation in the text must match up to an entry in the reference list and vice-versa.

REFERENCE LINKS

We use digital object identifiers (DOIs) to link references to the source material. This can only be done if the data provided in the references are correct. Please be very careful, especially when copying references, to ensure that surnames, journal/book titles, publication year and pagination are all correct. Please include DOIs where available.

LIST OF REFERENCES

References should be listed alphabetically at the end of the paper. Although "et al." is preferable in the text, in the list of references all authors should be given.

JOURNAL REFERENCE STYLE:

Zeng RJ, Lemaire R, Yuan Z, Keller J. A novel wastewater treatment process: simultaneous nitrification, denitrification and phosphorus removal. Water Science and Technology, 2004;50(10):163-170.

Book reference styles - (i) article in compilation; (ii) multi-author work; (iii) standard reference; (iv) report; (v) thesis:

(i) McInerney M. J. 1999 Anaerobic metabolism and its regulation. In: Biotechnology, J. Winter (ed.), 2nd edn, Wiley-VCH Verlag, Weinheim, Germany, pp. 455-478.

(ii) Henze M., Harremoës P., LaCour Jansen J. & Arvin E. 1995 Wastewater Treatment: Biological and Chemical Processes. Springer, Heidelberg.

(iii) Standard Methods for the Examination of Water and Wastewater 1998 20th edn, American Public Health Association/American Water Works Association/Water Environment Federation, Washington DC, USA.

(iv) Sobsey M. D. & Pfaender F. K. 2002 Evaluation of the H2S method for Detection of Fecal Contamination of Drinking Water, Report WHO/SDE/WSH/02.08, Water Sanitation and Health Programme, WHO, Geneva, Switzerland.

(v) Bell J. 2002 Treatment of Dye Wastewaters in the Anaerobic Baffled Reactor and Characterisation of the Associated Microbial Populations. PhD thesis, Pollution Research Group, University of Natal, Durban, South Africa.

SUBMISSION CHECKLIST

The following list will be useful during the final checking of an article prior to sending it to the journal for review. Please consult this Instruction for Authors for further details of any item.

Ensure that the following items are present:

One author has been designated as the corresponding author with contact details:

• E-mail address

• Full postal address

• All co-author E-mail addresses for verification

All necessary files have been uploaded, and contain:

• Keywords

• All figure captions

• All tables (including title, description, footnotes)

FURTHER CONSIDERATIONS

• Manuscript has been 'spell-checked' and 'grammar-checked'

• References are in the correct format for this journal

• All references mentioned in the Reference list are cited in the text, and vice versa

• Permission has been obtained for use of copyrighted material from other sources (including the Internet)

Printed version of figures (if applicable) in colour or black and white

• Indicate clearly whether or not colour or black and white in print is required

• For reproduction in black and white, please supply black and white versions of the figures for printing purposes if necessary

AFTER ACCEPTANCE

Use of the Digital Object Identifier

The DOI is a unique set of letters and numbers which can be used to cite and link to your paper online. The DOI is assigned to your paper when the first proof is generated, and it will not change, meaning you can cite an Uncorrected Proof immediately using the DOI.

Proofs

Proofs will be sent by e-mail to the listed corresponding author. Any corrections must be returned within one week of receipt and should only cover typesetting errors. All corrections must be returned to us in one communication. Proofreading is the sole responsibility of the authors.

Offprints

Upon publication, the Corresponding Author will receive an electronic file of the paper. Additionally, hardcopy offprints can be ordered using the Offprint Order Form, available from Boson Science Publishing on request.