Author Guidelines

Authors submitting manuscripts to Pigment Cell Research do so on the understanding that the work has not been published previously, is not being considered for publication elsewhere, and has been read and approved by all authors. Further, submission of manuscripts means that authors automatically agree to sign an Exclusive License Form, if and when the manuscript is accepted for publication.

Pigment Cell Research publishes manuscripts on all aspects of pigment cells including development, cell and molecular biology, genetics and melanoma. Especially welcome are papers that use the melanocyte system to answer questions of general relevance. Papers that are purely descriptive or make only minor advances to our knowledge of pigment cells are not suitable for this journal.

De-pigmenting agents - The Editorial Office is now receiving many papers on de-pigmenting agents. Since we have limited space in the journal and at the same time need to serve the research community by maintaining the breadth of topics covered, we cannot now publish all papers on de-pigmenting agents that are scientifically sound. As such we will be only sending for review those papers that offer a novel insight into the mode of action of such agents or a new insight into melanocyte biology.

Human Subjects

If the manuscript reports results of studies carried out using either human subjects or materials obtained from human subjects, it must be stated in the METHODS section that the study was approved by the appropriate institutional review board (IRB) or ethics committee, which must be named, and that appropriate informed consent was obtained from all human subjects.

New: Online production tracking is now available for your article through Blackwell's Author Services

Author Services enables authors to track their article - once it has been accepted - through the production process to publication online and in print. Authors can check the status of their articles online and choose to receive automated e-mails at key stages of production. The author will receive an e-mail with a unique link that enables them to register and have their article automatically added to the system. Please ensure that a complete e-mail address is provided when submitting the manuscript. Visit http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/bauthor for more details on online production tracking and for a wealth of resources including FAQs and tips on article preparation, submission and more.

Cover Art

Members of the pigment cell research community are invited to send in suggestions for colour images to be used as cover art for Pigment Cell Research. The images should be visually exciting and should be relevant to any aspect of pigment cell biology including for example, pigmentation phenotypes or patterns, images from cell or developmental biology or related to melanoma. Images should be supplied on CD in TIFF or EPS format at the highest possible resolution together with a brief description of the image provided. From those images selected for PCR covers one will be chosen by the editorial board to be the ‘cover of the year’ and the individual submitting that image will be entitled to a year's free online subscription to the journal.

Online Early

Pigment Cell Research is covered by Blackwell Publishing's OnlineEarly service. OnlineEarly articles are complete full-text articles published online in advance of their publication in a printed issue. Articles are therefore available as soon as they are ready, rather than having to wait for the next scheduled print issue. OnlineEarly articles are complete and final. They have been fully reviewed, revised and edited for publication, and the authors’ final corrections have been incorporated. Because they are in final form, no changes can be made after online publication. The nature of OnlineEarly articles means that they do not yet have volume, issue or page numbers, so OnlineEarly articles cannot be cited in the traditional way. They are therefore given a Digital Object Identifier (DOI), which allows the article to be cited and tracked before it is allocated to an issue. After print publication, the DOI remains valid and can continue to be used to cite and access the article. More information about DOIs can be found at: http://www.doi.org/faq.html. To receive an e-mail alert when your article is published, please visit http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/pdf/email_alert.pdf.

Manuscript Submission

Manuscripts should be submitted in the first instance by e-mail as a PDF to [email protected]. If accepted, the final files should be in .doc or .rtf format (text and tables) and .eps or .tif format (figures). Please see Manuscript Publication section below.

Copyright

Authors will be required to sign an Exclusive Licence Form (ELF) for all papers accepted for publication. Signature of the ELF is a condition of publication and papers will not be passed to the publisher for production unless a signed form has been received. Please note that signature of the Exclusive Licence Form does not affect ownership of copyright in the material. (Government employees need to complete the Author Warranty sections, although copyright in such cases does not need to be assigned). After submission authors will retain the right to publish their paper in various medium/circumstances (please see the form for further details). To assist authors an appropriate form will be supplied by the editorial office. Alternatively, authors may like to download a copy of the form from http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/pdf/pcr_elf.pdf.

Authors who wish for their article to be freely available to everyone can choose to submit the article as an OnlineOpen article. There is a basic fixed fee of £1250/$2500 for OnlineOpen. Excess page charges and colour artwork will need to be paid for separately - more information on this elsewhere on this page. Publication of OnlineOpen articles is conditioned upon the author signing the Open Access Exclusive License Form. This form can be found at http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/pdf/pcr_oof.pdf.

Authors may suggest qualified reviewers and may specify reviewers who should be excluded, although final decision on reviewers used is at the discretion of the Editorial Board. Manuscripts will not be returned to authors, except by prior arrangement.

Types of Manuscripts Considered

• Original Research Articles - This category is self-explanatory; Summary, Introduction, Results, Discussion and Materials and Methods sections are required (Results and Discussion may be combined if the author wishes). Literature cited should be succinct.

• Communications - report data on research projects that have progressed to a point where important preliminary observations should be disseminated; a Summary is required but organization into Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion sections is not required. Communications will be published as quickly as possible within journal production schedules.

• Letters to the Editor - Letters to the Editor will be considered for publication if they address important, topical issues such as an unexpected and novel research finding, or are a response to, or a comment on, a previous publication in Pigment Cell Research.

The following types of articles are usually invited but authors wishing to contribute such manuscripts should contact the Editorial Office in advance to see if the proposed article would be considered by the Editorial Board.

• Review Articles - in which a specific field is reviewed through an exhaustive literature survey; an Abstract is required, but Methods and Results sections are not required.

• Gene Focus Reviews - in which a specific pigment-related gene is reviewed; such articles should briefly review the structure and function of the gene (and its encoded protein) under discussion, and describe how mutations in that gene elicit the clinical phenotype.

• Innovative Technology Reviews - describe novel and innovative approaches to the study of pigmentation.

Author Material Archive Policy

Please note that unless specifically requested, Blackwell Munksgaard will dispose of all hardcopy or electronic material submitted two months after publication. If you require the return of any material submitted, please inform the editorial office or production editor as soon as possible if you have not yet done so.

General Instructions

Manuscripts must be submitted in clear, concise English. They should be double-spaced throughout. All manuscript pages should be numbered consecutively at the top right, beginning with the title page as #1. Manuscripts should have a uniform style and should be submitted in accordance with these instructions. Subdivisions should be provided as appropriate in the following sequence, each starting on a new page: (1) Title page (2) Summary (3) Text (4) Acknowledgments (5) References (6) Tables (7) Figure legends, and (8) Figures. Review Articles and Letters to the Editor can use those sections as appropriate. More detailed instructions for manuscript preparation can be found in the Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biochemical Journals at http://www.icmje.org/index.html.

Page Charges

Original Research Articles should be seven (7) journal pages or less, Communications should be three (3) journal pages or less, and Letters to the Editor should be one (1) journal page or less. Articles longer than those guidelines will be subject to a page charge for excess journal pages above those limits, at GBP100 per page. One journal page will generally contain 2.5–3 pages of double-spaced text (approximately 800 words), 2 or 3 Figures or Tables, or 50 references.

Layout

1) Title Page - The first page of the manuscript should include, in the following order: (a) Title of paper, (b) Full Name of author(s), (c) Institutional Affiliation with complete mailing address, (d) running header of no more than 50 characters, including spaces, (e) a specific mailing address, telephone number, fax number and Email address to whom correspondence concerning the manuscript should be sent and (f) total word count of manuscript, including abstract, text, references and figure legends.
2) Summary - The summary must be a single paragraph of fewer than 200 words, and should summarise the background and rationale for the work, followed by the main conclusions starting with a phrase such as ‘Here we show’ or equivalent. The summary must be less than 200 words, and must be written in complete sentences to succinctly state the objectives and experimental design of the paper, principal observations and conclusions. The summary should be intelligible without reference to the rest of the paper, and nonstandard abbreviations should not be used (cf List of Abbreviations that follows). Skip a line under the summary and list 5 to 7 KeyWords including those in the Title (the Annual Index will be generated from these KeyWords only).
3) Text - The text should be organized in Sections in the following order: (a) INTRODUCTION, (b) RESULTS, (c) DISCUSSION and (d) METHODS (the Results and Discussion sections can be combined into a single section at the author's discretion). Section headings should be bolded and aligned on the left margin. Subheadings should be used where appropriate and should be in Sentence Case and bolded, and also aligned on the left margin. Italics other than that should be used only for gene names, in upper case for human genes (e.g. TYR), and in lower case except initial capital for all other species (e.g. Tyr). Current nomenclature for genes (and gene products) can be found at the Jackson Laboratorys Mouse Genome Informatics site (http://www.informatics.jax.org/) (For color loci, Choose: Genetic and Phenotypic Data, Go to: Genes, Markers and Phenotypes, Search for: Physiological: Color and White Spotting, then Retrieve), the NIHs Online Mendelian Inheritance in Man site (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=OMIM), or the Coat Color Gene Table at the IFPCS InterPig Database (http://ifpcs.med.umn.edu/micemut.htm). Suppliers of materials should be named and their location (town, state/county, country) included.
4) Acknowledgements - should be listed for sources of research reagents used; support by grants and Institutions may also be listed.
5) References - should follow the Harvard style of references, outlined below, and should be cited in the text as: ‘White (2001) has shown...’ or ‘...as shown earlier (Blanc and White, 1999; Weiss et al., 2000)’. When different groups of authors with the same first author and year of publication occur, they should be cited thus, Weiss et al. (2000a,b), to differentiate clearly between them. Multiple citations should be listed alphabetically by author surname. References should be listed at the end of the manuscript in alphabetical order according to the name of the first author and chronologically where several papers by the same author are listed. The list of references should include only articles that have been published or are currently in press and should be cited in the text in author-date format (eg. Barral and Seabra, 2004; Cowan et al., 1997) and listed in alphabetical order in the reference section. Unpublished data, submitted manuscripts, abstracts and personal communications should be cited within the text only. Personal communication should be documented by a letter of permission. If there are more than 10 authors, ‘‘et al.’’ should be used and journal titles should be abbreviated following Index Medicus. Please use the following style for references in the reference list:

Article in a periodical: Barral, D.C., and Seabra, M.C. (2004). The melanosome as a model to study organelle motility in mammals. Pigment Cell Res. 17, 111–118.

Article in a book: Sorenson, P.W., and Caprio, J.C. (1998). Chemoreception. In The Physiology of Fishes, D.H. Evans, ed. (Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press), pp. 375–405.

An entire book: Cowan, W.M., Jessell, T.M., and Zipursky, S.L. (1997). Molecular and Cellular Approaches to Neural Development (New York: Oxford University Press).
6) Tables - Each Table must be cited in the text and must have brief but descriptive title. Information other than that defining the data should be presented as a footnote. Tabular material should be simple and uncomplicated, with as few vertical and horizontal rules as possible. Footnotes in Tables must be typed directly beneath the table and numbered 1, 2, 3, etc, i.e. they are not numbered in sequence with text footnotes.
7) Figure Legends - Figures in the text should be numbered using sequential Arabic numerals, and each should be cited in the text.
8) Figures - To maintain consistency within the journal, figures should be prepared using Helvetica or Arial font and should be largely understandable without reference to the figure legend. Illustrations should be no larger than 203 × 254 mm (8 × 10 inches). Figures should preferably fill a single column (width = 82 mm), but if necessary for clarity and detail, they may span a full page (width = 171 mm). Figures should ideally be submitted in electronic format (see below) but if sufficient resolution is not achieved, original drawings or high-quality photographs may be supplied. The editor recommends using the guidelines below.

Note that for all figures, the original digital images must be acquired at a minimum 300 dpi and the labelling applied at this high resolution. Images acquired at lower resolution, labelled and then subject to a digital resolution increase are not acceptable. This is especially a problem with figures made in PowerPoint which cannot be subsequently processed to yield sufficient resolution. To check the resolution of your image just zoom in 400% and examine whether the text and other components of the image are pixelated. If so it is unlikely the image will be acceptable. Images supplied at the wrong resolution can mean severe delays in publication of the accepted manuscript.

Image manipulation - Digital figures adjusted with computer software are acceptable. However, the final image must remain representative of the original data and cannot be enhanced, obscured or rearranged. Unacceptable modifications include the addition, alteration or removal of a particular feature of an image. All digital images in manuscripts accepted for publication will be examined for any improper modification and if evidence of such inappropriate modification is detected, the Editor of the journal will request the original data to be supplied for comparison to the prepared figures and if necessary revoke acceptance of the article. Cases of deliberate misrepresentation of data will result in revocation of acceptance, and will be reported to the corresponding author's home institution or funding agency.

Guidelines on the submission of electronic artwork are available on-line at http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/authors/digill.asp.

Color Figures - It is the policy of Pigment Cell Research for authors to pay the full cost for the reproduction of their colour artwork, unless in exceptional circumstances the editor decides to accept those costs. The cost of colour printing in this journal has recently gone down, with the first figure costing 150 GBP and all subsequent figures 50 GBP each. Therefore, please note that if there is colour artwork in your manuscript when it is accepted for publication, Blackwell Publishing require you to complete and return a colour work agreement form before your paper can be published. This form can be downloaded as a PDF* from http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/pdf/SN_Sub2000_X_CoW.pdf. If you are unable to download the form, please contact the Production Editor at [email protected] and they will be able to email or FAX a form to you. Once completed, please return the form to the Production Editor by fax to +44 (0)131 226 3803.

Any article received by Blackwell Publishing with colour work will not be published until the form has been returned.

* To read PDF files, you must have Acrobat Reader installed on your computer. If you do not have this program, it is available as a free download from the following web address: http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html

Manuscript Publication

Electronic Manuscript Submission - Please e-mail your MS upon first submission in PDF format to [email protected]. Upon acceptance, a disk or CD should be sent to the Editorial Office (Pigment Cell Research Editorial Office, Marie Curie Research Institute, The Chart, Oxted, Surrey, RH8 0TL, UK) labelled clearly with the first author's name. The CD should contain the text and tables in DOC or RTF format and the figures in EPS or TIFF format (for more information on electronic figure formats, please see above and read our guidelines on this page: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/authors/digill.asp. Each complete figure should be placed in a separate file. Please embed all fonts and avoid using tints if possible.

Supplementary Material

Supplementary material can be published as web materials on the Blackwell Synergy web site at the Editor's discretion. In order to provide long term access to such supplementary information the Editor will generally prefer to see the material mounted on the Blackwell Synergy web site rather than on authors’ sites. Supplementary materials may include details of gene array expression studies or relevant multimedia files. The supplementary material will be accessible by hot links from the on-line version of Pigment Cell Research. Authors are responsible for the preparation of supplementary material, which should be supplied in a format that will be most accessible by readers (e.g. Excel for tables, PDF or Word for text and TIFF/EPS for figures etc).

Proofs

The corresponding author will receive an email alert containing a link to a web site. A working e-mail address must therefore be provided for the corresponding author. The proof can be downloaded as a PDF (portable document format) file from this site. Acrobat 7 will be required in order to read this file. This software can be downloaded (free of charge) from the following web site: http://www.adobe.co.uk/products/acrobat/readermain.html

This will enable the file to be opened, read and corrected on screen. Further instructions will be sent with the proof. Hard copy proofs will be posted if no e-mail address is available. Excessive changes made by the author in the proofs, excluding typesetting errors, will be charged separately.

Offprints

Offprint order forms will be sent with page proofs.

Standard Abbreviations that can be used without definition are:
Amino Acids, 3 letter or 1 letter codes in sequences (Ala or A, alanine; Arg or R, arginine; Asn or N, asparagine; Asp or D, aspartic acid; Asx or B, aspartic acid or asparagine; Cys or C, cysteine; Glu or E, glutamic acid; Gln or Q, glutamine; Glx or Z, glutamic acid or glutamine; Gly or G, glycine; His or H, histidine; Ile or I, isoleucine; Leu or L, leucine; Lys or K, lysine; Met or M, methionine; Phe or F, phenylalanine; Pro or P, proline; Ser or S, serine; Thr or T, threonine; Trp or W, tryptophan; Tyr or Y, tyrosine; Val or V, valine)
Nucleosides and Nucleotides, 3 letter or 1 letter codes in sequences (Ado or A, adenosine; Cyd or C, cytidine; Guo or G, guanosine; Ino or I, inosine; Thd or T, Ribosylthymine; Urd or U, uridine; Xao or X, xanthine)

A, ampere
Å, angstrom (10–10 m)
ACTH, adrenocorticotropin
ADP, adenosine diphosphate
AMP, adenosine monophosphate
ATP, adenosine triphosphate
ATPase, adenosine triphosphatase

b, base
bp, base pair
Bq, becquerel
BrdU, bromodeoxyuridine
BSA, bovine serum albumin

cal, calorie(s)
cAMP, cyclic AMP
CD, circular dichroism
cDNA, complementary DNA
cRNA, complementary RNA
°C, degree Celsius
CHAPS, 3-(3-cholamidopropyl) diethy-ammonio-1 propanesulfonate
Ci, curie(s)
cpm, counts per minute
CTP, cytidine triphosphate

D, dalton
d, day
d, density
DAB, diaminobenzidine
DAG, diacylglycerol
DAPI, 6-diamidino-2-phenylindole
DEAE, diethylaminoethyl
DMEM, Dulbeccos modified Eagles medium
DMSO, dimethyl sulfoxide
DNA, deoxyribonucleic acid
DNase, deoxyribonuclease
DNP, dinitrophenyl
dpm, disintegrations per minute
DTT, dithiothreitol

ECL, enhanced chemiluminescence
EDTA, ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid
EGF, epidermal growth factor
EGTA, ethyleneglycol-bis (beta-aminoethylether)- N,N-tetraacetic acid
ELISA, enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay
EM, electron microscopy
EPR, electron paramagnetic resonance
ER, endoplasmic reticulum
ESR, electron spin resonance
EST, expressed sequence tag

°F, degree Fahrenheit
FACS, fluorescence-activated cell sorter
FBS, fetal bovine serum
FCS, fetal calf serum
FGF, fibroblast growth factor
FISH, fluorescent in situ hybridization
FITC, fluorescein isothiocyanate
FRAP, fluorescence recovery after photobleaching

g, gram
g, unit of gravity
GC, gas chromatography
GLC, gas-liquid chromatography
GSH, glutathione
GTP, guanosine triphosphate

h, hour
HBSS, Hanks balanced salt solution
HEPES, N-2-hydroxyethylpiperazine-N-2-ethane sulfonic acid
HPLC, high performance liquid chromatography
HRP, horseradish peroxidase

IEF, isoelectric focusing
Ig, immunoglobulin
IPTG, isopropyl-ß-D-thiogalactoside
IR, infrared
IU, international unit(s)

k, kilo prefix (10–6), as in kiloliter(s)

l, liter(s)

μ, micro prefix (10–6), as in microliter(s)
m, milli prefix (10–3), as in milliliter(s)
m, meter
M, molar
mAb, monoclonal antibody
MEM, Eagles minimum essential medium
MES, 2-(N-morpholino)ethane sulfonic acid
min, minute
mol, mole(s)
mol wt, molecular weight
MOPS, morpholino propane sulfonic acid
Mr, relative molecular mass
mRNA, messenger RNA
MS, mass spectrometry
mtDNA, mitochondrial DNA
mtRNA, mitochondrial RNA

N, nano prefix (10–9), as in nanoliter(s)
N, normal (concentration of ionizable groups)
n, number in a study or group
NAD, nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide
ND, not determined
NGF, nerve growth factor
NMR, nuclear magnetic resonance
NP-40, Nonidet P-40
NS, not significant
nt, nucleotide

OD, optical density
ORD, optical rotary dispersion
ORF, open reading frame

p, pico prefix (10–12), as in picoliter(s)
P, probability
PAGE, polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis
PBS, phosphate-buffered saline
PCA, perchloric acid
PCR, polymerase chain reaction
PDGF, platelet-derived growth factor
PIPES, [1,4-piperazinebis(ethane sulfonic acid)]
PKA, protein kinase A
PKC, protein kinase C
PLC, phospholipase C
PMA, phorbol myristate acetate
PMSF, phenylmethylsulfonyl fluoride

r, correlation coefficient
RBC, red blood cell
RER, rough endoplasmic reticulum
RIA, radioimmunoassay
RNA, ribonucleic acid
rRNA, ribosomal RNA
RNase, ribonuclease
RNP, ribonucleoprotein
rpm, revolutions per minute
RT PCR, reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction

s, seconds(s)
s, sedimentation coefficient
S, Svedberg unit of sedimentation coefficient
SD, standard deviation
SDS, sodium dodecyl sulfate
SEM, standard error of the mean
sp act, specific activity
SSC, standard saline citrate
SV40, simian virus 40

t test, Students t test
t1/2, half-life, half-time
TBS, Tris-buffered saline
TCA, trichloroacetic acid
TdR, thymidine deoxyribose
TGF, transforming growth factor
TGN, trans-Golgi network
TLC, thin layer chromatography
Tris, tris(hydroxymethyl)aminomethane
tRNA, transfer RNA

U, unit
UDP, uridine diphosphate
UTP, uridine triphosphate
UV, ultraviolet

V, volt
vol, volume

W, watt
wt, weight

yr, year