Ethics in publishing
For information on Ethics in publishing and Ethical guidelines for journal publication please visit: http://www.elsevier.com/publishingethics and http://www.elsevier.com/journal-authors/ethics
Conflict of interest
All authors are requested to disclose any actual or potential conflict of interest including any financial, personal or other relationships with other people or organizations within three years of beginning the submitted work that could inappropriately influence, or be perceived to influence, their work.
Submission declaration
Submission of an article implies that the work described has not been published previously (except in the form of an abstract or as part of a published lecture or academic thesis or as an electronic preprint)or not under consideration for publication elsewhere that its publication is approved by all authors and by the responsible authorities where the work was carried out, and that, if accepted, it will not be published elsewhere in any form or in any language, without the written consent of the copyright-holder.
Attention for any malpractice
The corresponding author must declare in the Cover Letter that the manuscript has not submitted to any journal for possible publication, or has not published elsewhere (in part or full). If we notice such kind of malpractice, the author(s) will be blacklisted for our journal, and no article from those authors will be processed in future. Besides, the list of authors may be forwarded to the editors of other related journals around the world. For more please visit COPE Guidelines.
Changes to authorship
Authors are expected to consider carefully the list and order of authors before submitting their manuscript. Any addition, deletion or rearrangement of author names in the authorship list should be made only before the manuscript has been accepted and only if approved by the journal Editor.
Copyright
Upon submitting an article, authors should be agreed to abide by an open access Creative Commons license. Under the terms of this license, authors retain ownership of the copyright of their articles. However, the license permits any user to download, print out, extract, reuse, archive, and distribute the article, so long as appropriate credit is given to the authors and the source of the work. The license ensures that the article will be available as widely as possible and that the article can be included in any scientific archive.
Language (usage and editing services)
Please write your text in good English (American or British usage is accepted, but not a mixture of these). Authors who feel their English language manuscript may require editing to eliminate possible grammatical or spelling errors and to conform to correct scientific English may wish to use the English Language Editing service available from our customer support site.
Manuscript Preparation
Manuscript Submission
Please follow the hyperlink “Submit online” on the right and upload all of your manuscript files following the instructions given on the screen.
Peer Review
The submitted papers will pass through initial screening in the editorial office followed by internal review by Internal Board of Reviewing Editors. After this, the paper will be assigned to External Peer Review by two reviewers. After revision, the paper will be checked through the Advanced Plagiarism Detection Software (CrossCheck powered by iThenticate).
Permissions
Authors wishing to include figures, tables, or text passages that have already been published elsewhere are required to obtain written permission (include evidence) from the copyright owner(s) for both the print and online format. Any material received without such evidence will be assumed to originate from the authors.
Title Page
The title page should include:
- A concise and informative title
- The name(s) of the author(s)
- The affiliation(s), postal and email address(es) of all the author(s)
- The telephone/cell phone numbers of the corresponding author
Abstract
For original research articles, FAA requires a compound abstract. This must contain up to 300 words in a four-part format (in a single paragraph) with four uppercase headed sections. BACKGROUND: justification of the study (understandable to a broad audience) and the main objective(s). METHODOLOGY: a brief description of materials used and methodology followed in the study. KEY FINDINGS: description of the main findings with important numerical values. CONCLUSION: a valid conclusion of the study followed by recommendation for future study.
For Other article types (Reviews, Short Notes etc.) the abstract should be simple but must be informative yet concise
Authors should remember that the abstract is usually the only portion of a paper read (as in abstracting journals), therefore, the abstract should not contain any undefined abbreviations or unspecified references.
Keywords
Please provide 4 to 6 keywords which can be used for indexing purposes. It is better to avoid the words used in the title.
Text
Text Formatting
Manuscripts should be submitted in MS Word.
- Use a normal, plain font (e.g., 12-point Times Roman) for text.
- Use the automatic page numbering function to number the pages.
- Use tab stops or other commands for indents, not the space bar.
- Use the table function, not spreadsheets, to make tables.
- Use the equation editor or MathType for equations.
- Save your file in .docx format (Word 2007 or higher) or .doc format (older Word versions).
Headings
Please use no more than three levels of displayed headings.
Abbreviations
Abbreviations should be defined at first mention and used consistently thereafter.
Footnotes
Footnotes can be used to give additional information, which may include the citation of a reference included in the reference list. They should not consist solely of a reference citation, and they should never include the bibliographic details of a reference. They should also not contain any figures or tables.
Footnotes to the text are numbered consecutively; those to tables should be indicated by superscript lower-case letters (or asterisks for significance values and other statistical data). Footnotes to the title or the authors of the article are not given reference symbols.
Always use footnotes instead of endnotes.
Acknowledgments
All acknowledgments (if any) should be included at the very end of the paper before the references and may include supporting grants, presentations, and so forth.
Symbol style
Please always use internationally accepted signs and symbols for units (SI units).
Scientific style
Genus and species names should be in italics.
Formulae style
Please use the standard mathematical notation for formulae, symbols etc.:
- Italic for single letters that denote mathematical constants, variables, and unknown quantities
- Roman/upright for numerals, operators, and punctuation, and commonly defined functions or abbreviations, e.g., cos, det, e or exp, lim, log, max, min, sin, tan, d (for derivative)
- Bold for vectors, tensors, and matrices.
References
Cite references in the text by name and year in parentheses. Some examples:
- Negotiation research spans many disciplines (Thompson 1990).
- This result was later contradicted by Becker and Seligman (1996).
- This effect has been widely studied (Abbott 1991; Barakat et al. 1995; Kelso and Smith 1998; Medvec et al. 1999).
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 only be mentioned in the text. Do not use footnotes or endnotes as a substitute for a reference list.
Reference list entries should be alphabetized by the last names of the first author of each work.
Journal article
Gamelin FX, Baquet G, Berthoin S, Thevenet D, Nourry C, Nottin S, Bosquet L. 2009. Effect of high intensity intermittent training on heart rate variability in prepubescent children. Eur J Appl Physiol, 105:731-738. doi: 10.1007/s00421-008-0955-8
Article by DOI
Slifka MK, Whitton JL. 2000. Clinical implications of dysregulated cytokine production. J Mol Med. doi: 10.1007/s001090000086
Book
South J, Blass B. 2001. The future of modern genomics. Blackwell, London
Book chapter
Brown B, Aaron M. 2001. The politics of nature. In: Smith J (ed) The rise of modern genomics, 3rd edn. Wiley, New York, pp. 230-257.
Online document
Cartwright J. 2007. Big stars have weather too. IOP Publishing PhysicsWeb. http://physicsweb.org/articles/news/11/6/16/1. Accessed 04 January 2016.
Dissertation
Trent JW. 1975. Experimental acute renal failure. Dissertation, University of California
Style of Abbreviations
Always use the standard abbreviation of a journal’s name according to the ISSN list of title word abbreviations. For further information please visit the following links:
(i) http://www.efm.leeds.ac.uk/~mark/ISIabbr/
OR
(ii) https://images.webofknowledge.com/WOK46/help/WOS/A_abrvjt.html
If you are unsure, please use the full journal title.
For authors using EndNote, Springer provides an output style that supports the formatting of in-text citations and reference list.
Tables
- All tables are to be numbered using Arabic numerals.
- Tables should always be cited in text in consecutive numerical order.
- For each table, please supply a table caption (title) explaining the components of the table.
- Identify any previously published material by giving the original source in the form of a reference at the end of the table caption.
- Footnotes to tables should be indicated by superscript lower-case letters (or asterisks for significance values and other statistical data) and included beneath the table body.
Artwork and Illustrations Guidelines
Electronic Figure Submission
- Supply all figures electronically.
- Indicate what graphics program was used to create the artwork.
- For vector graphics, the preferred format is EPS; for halftones, please use TIFF format. MSOffice files are also acceptable.
- Vector graphics containing fonts must have the fonts embedded in the files.
- Name your figure files with “Fig” and the figure number, e.g., Fig1.eps.
Figure Lettering
- To add lettering, it is best to use Helvetica or Arial (sans serif fonts).
- Keep lettering consistently sized throughout your final-sized artwork, usually about 2–3 mm (8–12 pt).
- Variance of type size within an illustration should be minimal, e.g., do not use 8-pt type on an axis and 20-pt type for the axis label.
- Avoid effects such as shading, outline letters, etc.
- Do not include titles or captions within your illustrations.
Figure Numbering
- All figures are to be numbered using Arabic numerals.
- Figures should always be cited in text in consecutive numerical order.
- Figure parts should be denoted by lowercase letters (a, b, c, etc.).
- If an appendix appears in your article and it contains one or more figures, continue the consecutive numbering of the main text. Do not number the appendix figures,
- “A1, A2, A3, etc.” Figures in online appendices (Electronic Supplementary Material) should, however, be numbered separately.
Figure Captions
- Each figure should have a concise caption describing accurately what the figure depicts. Include the captions in the text file of the manuscript, not in the figure file.
- Figure captions begin with the term Fig. in bold type, followed by the figure number, also in bold type.
- No punctuation is to be included after the number, nor is any punctuation to be placed at the end of the caption.
- Identify all elements found in the figure in the figure caption; and use boxes, circles, etc., as coordinate points in graphs.
- Identify previously published material by giving the original source in the form of a reference citation at the end of the figure caption.
Figure Placement and Size
- Figures should be submitted separately from the text, if possible.
- When preparing your figures, size figures to fit in the column width.
- For most journals the figures should be 39 mm, 84 mm, 129 mm, or 174 mm wide and not higher than 234 mm.
- For books and book-sized journals, the figures should be 80 mm or 122 mm wide and not higher than 198 mm.
Accessibility
In order to give people of all abilities and disabilities access to the content of your figures, please make sure that
- All figures have descriptive captions (blind users could then use a text-to-speech software or a text-to-Braille hardware)
- Patterns are used instead of or in addition to colors for conveying information (colorblind users would then be able to distinguish the visual elements)
- Any figure lettering has a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1
Files Required for Online Submission
- Cover Letter
- Authors need their ORCID id (if don't have, create here)
- Title Page (Title of the manuscript, Authors details and Declaration)
- Manuscript (Excluding Authors’ names and Tables & Figures)
- Tables & Figures
- Supplementary Files (if any)