Submissions

Author Guidelines

Before submitting for publication, please check that your manuscript has been prepared in accordance to the step-by-step instructions for submitting a manuscript to our online submission system.

Manuscript Format

Your manuscript should be in MS Word. You are advised to download the template when preparing your submissions to this journal. All manuscripts must be written in clear, comprehensible English. Both British and American English are accepted. Usage of non-English words should be kept to a minimum and all must be italicized, with the exception of “e.g.” and “i.e.” If you have concerns about the level of English in your submission, please ensure that it is proofread before submission by a native English speaker or a scientific editing service.

Cover Letter

All submissions should include a cover letter as a separate file. The cover letter is confidential and will be read only by the editors. It will not be seen by reviewers. A cover letter should contain the following:

• a brief explanation of what was previously known, the conceptual advancement with the findings and its significance to broad readership
• any associated accession numbers or DOIs of the corresponding preprint version of the submission if it has been deposited on a preprint server
• exclusion of individuals who might have conflict of interest from reviewing the work (including name, email address and affiliation)
• a statement that “neither the manuscript nor any significant part of it is under consideration for publication elsewhere or has appeared elsewhere in a manner that could be construed as a prior or duplication of the same work”
• conflict of interest statement
• a list of names of all co-authors of the work who have already seen and approved the manuscript and email addresses of the corresponding author(s)
• optional: recommendations of up to four academically qualified reviewers (including name, email address and affiliation)

Title

The title should capture the conceptual significance for a broad audience. The title should not be more than 50 words and should be able to give readers an overall view of the paper’s significance. Titles should avoid using uncommon jargons, abbreviations and punctuation.

List of Authors

The names of authors must be spelled out rather than set in initials along with their affiliations. Authors should be listed according to the extent of their contribution, with the major contributor listed first. All corresponding authors should be identified with an asterisk. Affiliations should contain the following core information: department, institution, city, state, postal code, and country. For contact, email address of at least one corresponding author must be included. Please note that all authors must view and approve the final version of the manuscript before submitting.

Abstract

Articles must include an abstract containing a maximum of 300 words. The purpose of abstract is to provide sufficient information for a reader to determine whether or not to proceed to the full text of the article. After the abstract, please give 5 keywords; please avoid using the same words as those already used in the title, separate terms with a semi-colon (term1; term2; term3).

Section Headings

Please number the section headings (e.g. 1, 2, 3, 4, etc.) and subheadings (e.g. 1.1, 1.2, 2.1, 2.2, etc.) in boldface. Further subsections of subheadings should be typeset in italics only with the numbers 1.1.1, 1.1.2, 2.1.1, 2.1.2, etc.

Introduction

The introduction should provide a background that gives a broad readership an overall outlook of the field and the research performed. It tackles a problem and states its importance regarding with the significance of the study. Introduction can conclude with a brief statement of the aim of the work and a comment about whether that aim was achieved.

Materials and Methods

This section provides the general experimental design and methodologies used. The aim is to provide enough detail for other investigators to fully replicate the results. It is also required to facilitate better understanding of the results obtained. Protocols and procedures for new methods must be included in detail for the reproducibility of the experiments.

Results

This section can be divided into subheadings and focuses on the results of the experiments performed.

Discussion

This section should provide the significance of the results and identify the impact of the research in a broader context. It should not be redundant or similar to the content of the results section.

Conclusion

Please use the conclusion section for interpretation only, and not to summarize information already presented in the text or abstract.

Author contributions

The contributions of all listed authors should be described here.

Acknowledgments

Authors should declare all financial and non-financial support that have the potential to be deemed as a source of competing interest in relations to their submitted manuscript in this section. Financial supports are generally in the form of grants, royalties, consulting fees and others. Examples of non-financial support could include the following: externally-supplied equipment/biological sources, writing assistance, administrative support, contributions from non-authors, etc.

Conflict of Interest

All authors are required, at the time of submission, to declare all activities that have the potential to be deemed as a source of competing (commercial) interest in relation to their submitted manuscript, as consistent with the recommendations from the International Committee of Medical Editors (ICMJE). Examples of such activities could include personal or work-related relationships, events, etc. The disclosure should also include all sources of revenue paid (or promised to be paid) directly to authors or their institution on your behalf over the 36 months before submission of the relevant work. Authors who have nothing to declare are encouraged to add “No conflict of interest was reported by all authors” in this section.

During submission, the Conflict of Interest statement should be included in both the cover letter and manuscript (beneath the Acknowledgments section).

Authors will be requested to complete ICMJE form for Disclosure of Potential Conflict of Interest when they are invited to submit a revision. Failure to do return a completed form will result in a delay to editorial and peer review progress. If necessary, the initial disclosure statement provided by the authors will be subject to edits for grammar corrections by the editors. Failure to comply with the conflict of interest disclosure statement requirement may result in rejection of the submissions.

References

This section is compulsory and should be placed at the end of all manuscripts, but before the Appendix section. You may wish to refer to the Reference Guidelines file for more information. Do not use footnotes or endnotes as a substitute for a reference list. The list of references should only include works that are cited in the text and that have been published or accepted for publication. Personal communications and unpublished works should be excluded from this section.

For the reference list, only the first three authors are stated, followed by “et al.” in italics. Authors being referenced are listed with their surname followed by their initials. All references should be numbered (e.g. 1, 2, 3, etc.) and sequenced according to the order they appear as the in-text citations. References should follow the following pattern: Author(s). Title of article. Abbreviated Title of Journal_Year; vol(issue): page range. If the DOI is available, please include it after the page range.

Appendix

This section is optional and is for all materials (e.g. advanced technical details) that has been excluded from the main text but remain essential to the readers in understanding the manuscripts. This section is not for supplementary figures. Authors are advised to refer to the section on Supplementary Figures for such submissions. (This section should be placed at the very end, after the reference list.)