Flavour and Fragrance Journal

Author Guidelines

Sections

1. Submission and Peer Review Process
2. Article Types
3. After Acceptance

1. Submission and Peer Review Process

Once the submission materials have been prepared in accordance with the Author Guidelines, manuscripts should be submitted online through the Research Exchange platform.

Free Format Submission
Flavour and Fragrance Journal now offers Free Format submission for a simplified and streamlined submission process.

For help with submissions, please contact: [email protected]

This journal does not charge submission fees.

Article Preparation Support

Wiley Editing Services offers expert help with English Language Editing, as well as translation, manuscript formatting, figure illustration, figure formatting, and graphical abstract design – so you can submit your manuscript with confidence.

Also, check out our resources for Preparing Your Article for general guidance about writing and preparing your manuscript.

New submissions should be made via the Research Exchange submission portal https://submission.wiley.com/journal/FFJ. For technical help with the submission system, please review our FAQs or contact [email protected].

Preprint policy:

Please find the Wiley preprint policy here.

This journal accepts articles previously published on preprint servers.

Flavour and Fragrance Journal will consider for review articles previously available as preprints. You may also post the submitted version of a manuscript to a preprint server at any time. You are requested to update any pre-publication versions with a link to the final published article.

Registered Reports

See the Registered Reports Author Guidelines for full details.

Data Sharing and Data Availability

This journal encourages data sharing. Review Wiley’s Data Sharing policy where you will be able to see and select the data availability statement that is right for your submission.

Data Citation

Please review Wiley’s Data Citation policy.

Data Protection

By submitting a manuscript to or reviewing for this publication, your name, email address, and affiliation, and other contact details the publication might require, will be used for the regular operations of the publication. Please review Wiley’s Data Protection Policy to learn more.

Funding

You should list all funding sources in the Acknowledgments section. You are responsible for the accuracy of their funder designation. If in doubt, please check the Open Funder Registry for the correct nomenclature.

Authorship

All listed authors should have contributed to the manuscript substantially and have agreed to the final submitted version. Review editorial standards and scroll down for a description of authorship criteria.

Reproduction of Copyright Material

If excerpts from copyrighted works owned by third parties are included, credit must be shown in the contribution. It is your responsibility to also obtain written permission for reproduction from the copyright owners. For more information visit Wiley’s Copyright Terms & Conditions FAQ.

The corresponding author is responsible for obtaining written permission to reproduce the material "in print and other media" from the publisher of the original source, and for supplying Wiley with that permission upon submission.

Title Page 

The title page should contain: 

1. A brief informative title containing the major key words. The title should not contain abbreviations (see Wiley's best practice SEO tips);
2. A short running title of less than 40 characters;
3. The full names of the authors;
4. The author's institutional affiliations where the work was conducted, with a footnote for the author’s present address if different from where the work was conducted;
5. Acknowledgments.

Main Text File

The main text file should be in Word or PDF format and include:

Manuscripts can be uploaded either as a single document (containing the main text, tables and figures), or with figures and tables provided as separate files. Should your manuscript reach revision stage, figures and tables must be provided as separate files. The main manuscript file can be submitted in Microsoft Word (.doc or .docx) format.

Your main document file should include:

• A short informative title containing the major key words. The title should not contain abbreviations;
• The full names of the authors with institutional affiliations where the work was conducted, with a footnote for the author’s present address if different from where the work was conducted;
• Acknowledgments;
• Abstract with no more than 250 words;
• Up to five keywords;
• Main body: See the section 2. Article Type for specific information about the main text of the different article types;
• References;
• Tables (each table complete with title and footnotes);
• Figure legends: Legends should be supplied as a complete list in the text. Figures should be uploaded as separate files (see below).

Reference Style

References may be submitted in any style or format, as long as it is consistent throughout the manuscript.

Figures and Supporting Information

Figures, supporting information, and appendices should be supplied as separate files. You should review the basic figure requirements for manuscripts for peer review, as well as the more detailed post-acceptance figure requirements. View Wiley’s FAQs on supporting information.

Peer Review

This journal operates under a single-blind peer review model. Papers will only be sent to review if the Editor-in-Chief determines that the paper meets the appropriate quality and relevance requirements.

In-house submissions, i.e. papers authored by Editors or Editorial Board members of the title, will be sent to Editors unaffiliated with the author or institution and monitored carefully to ensure there is no peer review bias.

Wiley's policy on the confidentiality of the review process is available here.

Refer and Transfer Program 

Wiley believes that no valuable research should go unshared. This journal participates in Wiley’s Refer & Transfer program. If your manuscript is not accepted, you may receive a recommendation to transfer your manuscript to another suitable Wiley journal, either through a referral from the journal’s editor or through our Transfer Desk Assistant. 

Guidelines on Publishing and Research Ethics in Journal Articles

The journal requires that you include in the manuscript details IRB approvals, ethical treatment of human and animal research participants, and gathering of informed consent, as appropriate. You will be expected to declare all conflicts of interest, or none, on submission. Please review Wiley’s policies surrounding human studies, animal studies, clinical trial registration, biosecurity, and research reporting guidelines.

This journal follows the core practices of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and handles cases of research and publication misconduct accordingly (https://publicationethics.org/core-practices).

This journal uses iThenticate’s CrossCheck software to detect instances of overlapping and similar text in submitted manuscripts. Read Wiley’s Top 10 Publishing Ethics Tips for Authors and Wiley’s Publication Ethics Guidelines.

2. Article Types

The following types of papers are published in Flavour and Fragrance Journal: Reviews and Research Articles (please, note that mini-reviews and short communications are not accepted). On special occasions only, a Letter to the Editor (e.g. rebuttal letter) can be submitted for consideration.

Research Articles

• Word limit: 3,500 words maximum excluding abstract and references
• Description: Report work which advances the science of flavours and fragrances. Innovation is an important criterion for their acceptance.

In the special case of plant analysis, the work must include more than one sample of plant material and be replicated in terms of sample preparation (e.g. essential oil isolation) and analysis (e.g. gas chromatography). The appropriate statistical analysis must be applied to the resultant data. At the least, authors will need to show variability between plants, analytical uncertainty, and will need to provide concentrations of major components of an essential oil in physical units. Authors might also provide data to describe comparisons between plant families, chemotaxonomy, or other information advancing the science of flavours and fragrances. If any submission does not demonstrate sufficient novelty, it will be returned to the authors.

As a rule, Research Articles should be divided into sections, headed by captions:

• Introduction. Every Article must have a concise introduction which reviews what has been done before on the topic, with appropriate references, and should clearly state the purpose of the work, and what is new in the paper now submitted and how it advances flavour and fragrance science. Authors should refrain to review analytical data or biological properties which do not concern the analyzed sample (e.g. an essential oil).
• Experimental. The Experimental section should contain sufficient information for others to repeat the experiments. New or improved techniques need to be described fully, while known methods must have adequate references. The origin of all materials used must be given. Statistical analysis should be clearly described with references to the methodology used.
• Results and Discussion. The Results should be presented in a clear, concise manner using tables and illustrations for clarity Do not list tabular data in the text. Following their presentation, results should be appropriately discussed and interpreted in the light of existing literature. Do not present data in both figures and tables. Figures and tables should be clearly labeled.

Reviews

• Word limit: 5,000 words
• Description: Reviews are comprehensive analyses of specific topics.

Reviews are invited or proposed in writing to the Reviews Editor, who welcomes suggestions for subjects. An outline of the proposed Review should first be forwarded to the Reviews Editor for preliminary discussion prior to preparation. Reviews provide comprehensive but not necessarily exhaustive description of present literature. Authors of such works should be experts in the field and should critically discuss the cited work.

Best Practices

Best Practices are hands-on articles written upon invitation of the editors that describe key techniques and methodologies in flavour and fragrance science.

Letter to the Editor

• Word limit: 1,000 words
• Description: Letters may be submitted to the Editor on any topic of discussion.

3. After Acceptance

Wiley Author Services

When an accepted article is received by Wiley’s production team, the corresponding author will receive an email asking them to login or register with Wiley Author Services. You will be asked to sign a publication license at this point as well as pay for any applicable APCs.

Copyright & Licensing

You may choose to publish under the terms of the journal’s standard copyright agreement, or Open Access under the terms of a Creative Commons License.

Standard re-use and licensing rights vary by journal. Note that certain funders mandate a particular type of CC license be used.

Self-Archiving Definitions and Policies: Note that the journal’s standard copyright agreement allows for self-archiving of different versions of the article under specific conditions.

Accepted Articles

Please kindly note that substantial changes to the manuscript after acceptance may require a re-evaluation by peer reviewers. If you have any questions or updates after your manuscript’s acceptance, please contact the editorial office at your earliest convenience.

The journal offers Wiley’s Accepted Articles service for all manuscripts. Manuscripts accepted ‘in press’ are published online shortly after acceptance, prior to copy-editing or typesetting and appear in PDF format only. After the final version article is published (the article of record), the DOI remains valid and can still be used to cite and access the article.

Accepted Articles will be indexed by PubMed; submitting authors should carefully check the names and affiliations of all authors provided in the cover page of the manuscript so it is accurate for indexing. The final copyedited and proofed articles will appear in an issue on Wiley Online Library; the link to the article in PubMed will update automatically.

Proofs

Authors will receive an e-mail notification with a link and instructions for accessing HTML page proofs online. Authors should also make sure that any renumbered tables, figures, or references match text citations and that figure legends correspond with text citations and actual figures. Proofs must be returned within 48 hours of receipt of the email.

Early View

The journal offers rapid speed to publication via Wiley’s Early View service. Early View articles are complete full-text articles published online in advance of their publication in a printed issue. Early View 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. Early View articles are given a Digital Object Identifier (DOI), which allows the article to be cited and tracked before allocation to an issue. After print publication, the DOI remains valid and can continue to be used to cite and access the article.

Article Promotion Support

Wiley Editing Services offers professional video, design, and writing services to create shareable video abstracts, infographics, conference posters, lay summaries, and research news stories for your research – so you can help your research get the attention it deserves.

Author Name Change Policy

In cases where authors wish to change their name following publication, Wiley will update and republish the paper and redeliver the updated metadata to indexing services. Our editorial and production teams will use discretion in recognizing that name changes may be of a sensitive and private nature for various reasons including (but not limited to) alignment with gender identity, or as a result of marriage, divorce, or religious conversion. Accordingly, to protect the author’s privacy, we will not publish a correction notice to the paper, and we will not notify co-authors of the change. Authors should contact the journal’s Editorial Office with their name change request.

Appendix

Graphical TOC/Abstract

The journal’s table of contents/abstract will be presented in graphical form with a brief abstract.

The table of contents entry must include the article title, the authors' names (with the corresponding author indicated by an asterisk), no more than 80 words or 3 sentences of text summarizing the key findings presented in the paper and a figure that best represents the scope of the paper.

Table of contents entries should be submitted to ScholarOne as ‘Supplementary material for review’ during the initial manuscript submission process.

The image supplied should fit within the dimensions of 50mm x 60mm and be fully legible at this size.

Additional Guidelines for Cover Pictures, Visual Abstracts, Frontispieces and Table of Contents Graphics

• Concepts illustrated in graphical material must clearly fit with the research discussed in the accompanying text.
• Images featuring depictions or representations of people must not contain any form of objectification, sexualization, stereotyping, or discrimination. We also ask authors to consider community diversity in images containing multiple depictions or representations of people.
• Inappropriate use, representation, or depiction of religious figures or imagery, and iconography should be avoided.
• Use of elements of mythology, legends, and folklore might be acceptable and will be decided on a case-by-case basis. However, these images must comply with the guidelines on human participants when they are present.
• Generally, authors should consider any sensitivities when using images of objects that might have cultural significance or may be inappropriate in the context (for example, religious texts, historical events, and depictions of people).
• Legal requirements:
• All necessary copyright permission for the reproduction of the graphical elements used in visuals must be obtained prior to publication.
• Clearance must be obtained from identifiable people before using their image on the cover or the like and such clearance must specify that it will be used on the cover. Use within text does not require such clearance unless it discloses sensitive personal information such as medical information. In all situations involving disclosure of such personal info, specific permission must be obtained. And images of individuals should not be used in a false manner.

Graphics that do not adhere to these guidelines will be recommended for revision or will not be accepted for publication.

Experimental conditions to be specified

General

• Chemicals. Supplier (city/town, state, country) and degree of purity of all less common chemicals. Optical purity of enantiomers.
• Equipment. Model and manufacturer (city/town, state, country) of commercial instruments. For instruments that are not commercially available, sufficient detail or a reference should be given to allow others to construct their own instrument.
• Sample preparation. Give full details (or a reference) for the method of sample preparation. Injection device and volume and concentration of the injected sample should be specified. 

Essential oils

For full details, please refer to the Technical Editorial on the preparation of essential oils and aromatic extracts (Flavour  Fragr. J. 2018, 33, 133).

• Moisture content should be determined prior to the distillation of essential oils. 
• Amount of "biomass" involved and the approximate number of plants of a random sample should be mentioned, as well as the number of samples and/or repetitions. 
• Apparatus: authors should provide all relevant information about the set-up: Clevenger-like or custom designed glassware, with dry or wet steam, operating pressure, mechanical (or magnetic) stirring in case of classical laboratory hydrodistillation with total immersion of the biomass. 
• Duration: standard durations do not exist. Authors should indicate why they distilled during one, two, three or more hours. 
• Recovery:
  1. If the entire distillate (hydrolate and oil) is extracted with a solvent, the crude product cannot be called any longer an essential oil, but rather a solvent extract from the distillation water.
  2. If the essential oil is recovered by decantation, and the part that remains on the walls of the glassware (Clevenger or oil receiver) is recovered by washing with some milliliters of volatile solvent, it is admitted that an essential oil has been obtained, after total elimination of the solvent. Authors should indicate, the nature of the drying agent, the yield of this step and the residual solvent content.

Column liquid chromatography

• Column. Supplier (city/town, state, country); column dimension (length x internal diameter), packing material, particle size, column temperature.
• Mobile phase. Describe mobile phase composition and procedure for its preparation; pH; flow-rate; gradient program.
• Injection: volume
• Detection: type (UV, DAD,…), settings (wavelength, temperature,…)

Gas chromatography

• Columns: Supplier (city/town, state, country); column dimension (length × internal diameter), type of column (packed, capillary, etc.), support material, stationary phase, film thickness.
• Carrier Gas. Type, purity, flow-rate, inlet pressure and/or pressure programs.
• Temperature. Give all relevant temperatures (and temperature programs).
• Injection: inlet type (Split/Splitless, Programable Temperature Vaporization, Cold On-Column), mode (split, splitless, solvent vent), temperature (or T-program), liner, injection volume
• Detection: type (FID,…), temperature, settings

Planar chromatography

• Chamber. Internal dimensions, manufacturer and location, saturation, temperature, humidity.
• Thin layer plates. Manufacturer and location, material, dimensions, type and thickness of the layer, additives, position of starting line, development mode, method of activation.
• Mobile phase. Composition and volume.
• Sample. Application method, size of spot or streak, solvent, concentration and volume of solution applied.
• Detection. Spray reagent, wavelength, details of colour, RF values. 

Mass spectrometry

• Inlet system. Direct on-line, off-line, post-column splitting.
• Source. Ionisation energy, temperature, trap current, reagent gas (e.g. for chemical ionization). For LC interface, complete description of operating parameters (vaporiser and capillary temperature, nebulising, auxiliary or ionizing gases, source and interface voltage, CID voltage).
• Mass analyser. Accelerating voltage, scan mode, resolution and mass range. For SIM, selected ions and dwell times. For tandem MS, selected transitions and respective collision energies.  For TOF, acquisition rate (and/or transients).
• Detection. Electron multiplier voltage and/or electrometer gain. 

NMR

Specify if ¹H-NMR or ¹³C-NMR. Give frequency of the instrument, solvent used, internal standard added. Chemical shifts should be noted in (ppm) values relative to TMS. The type of signal should also be noted (singlet s, doublet d, triplet t, multiplet m, etc.). 

Chemical nomenclature

Generally accepted chemical nomenclature may be used, either IUPAC or CAS Registry. For example, the use of trivial names for terpenes or other classes of components is acceptable if there is no possibility of confusion.

Species names

Plant material must be adequately and correctly identified and described. The identification of the investigated species must be confirmed by a botanist. A voucher specimen must be deposited in a recognized botanical collection and its number indicated in the experimental section.

Processed natural products (foods, beverages including wines, …):

Such products should be manufactured in the authors’ laboratory, or – at least – under the whole supervision of authors. The process must be described in the experimental section and the addition of any additive must be exhaustively reported.

Identification of compounds

For full details, please refer to the Technical Editorial: “Identification of flavour and fragrance constituents”

The component identification must use at least two methods to validate identity, most commonly, mass spectrometry and gas chromatography (e.g. MS spectra and retention indices (RI)). Assuming that gas chromatographic data are used in identification, the manuscript must include a listing of observed retention indices and reference indices from an authentic or a published source (with its bibliographic reference) for each compound identified. There are special requirements when reporting the identification of a compound in nature for the first time (see the Technical Editorial). An analytical evidence should be provided to support the presence of a specific enantiomer.

A specific Recommend Practice describes the LC-MS identification of non-volatile compounds (Flavour Fragr. J. 2010, 25, 2). 

Composition

The raw GC percentages (obtained by internal normalization, with all response factors set equal to unity) are no longer accepted to report the composition of an essential oil, an aroma, etc. Authors are requested to provide a true quantification, using a recognized technique (internal or external standardization, internal normalization, addition of standards, multiple headspace extraction, etc.) of major components. For more details, refer to the Technical Editorial dedicated to quantification (Flavour Fragr J. 2018;33:337), to the Recommended Practice on GC quantification (Flavour Fragr. J. 2011, 26, 297 and 2012, 27, 224) and the review (Flavour Fragr J. 2008, 23, 382). Simple GC-FID percentages may be used for comparison between essential oils or to facilitate comparison with literature data. For non-commercially available compounds representing less than (10-20%) of the whole composition, the response factors can be measured from one pure standard for each class of similar components (same molecular formula, e.g. monoterpene hydrocarbons). As a rapid quantification procedure without standard compounds, authors are encouraged to predict the response factors as described in Flavour Fragr. J. 2016, 31, 191–194 (An Excel calculation sheet is attached in the supplementary material). In case of new constituents, never found in nature, they should be isolated or re-synthesized for structural confirmation by spectroscopic means (Flavour Fragr J. 2018;33:201–202). Whatever the method of quantitation, all results must be presented with appropriate precision. Give an appropriate number of significant figures, e.g. no more than 2 significant figures in composition data unless greater precision can be demonstrated.

The composition of a volatile fraction resulting from purge-and-trap or sorptive techniques (SPME, SBSE, HSSE) does not directly represent the composition in the investigated material. Therefore, when a paper aims at describing the composition of a volatile fraction, a calibration is required for each of the volatile constituents and using the same matrix (see Flavour Fragr. J. 2010, 25, 404). If the objective is only the monitoring of small variations of the composition versus a given factor (and not between species, chemotypes, etc), purge and trap or sorptive techniques can be accepted (e.g. the study of changes in coffee volatiles under different storage conditions).

The composition of a plant, based on a single sample, cannot justify a publication. Papers should report broader investigations by comparing the composition as a function of one or several given factor(s) (e.g. chemotypes, geographical origin, climatic differences, etc). For each case, several samples should be analyzed starting from different collected plants, and a standard deviation should be provided. For comparative studies, the use of statistical tools is necessary.

The experimental observation that several techniques lead to different compositional results is not enough to support a publication. Authors are encouraged to discuss the results in comparison with a reference method, theoretical modelling or comparison with samples spiked with known amounts.

Sensory analysis

Informal sensory evaluations are less defined, imprecise, difficult to reproduce and often influenced by subjective opinion. The use of trained sensory panels, appropriate evaluation conditions and recognized methods of sensory analysis, e.g. for descriptive analysis and threshold determination are highly recommended. A non-exhaustive list of standards is given below:

• Triangle test: ISO 4120
• Sensory profile: ISO 13299
• Identification and selection of descriptors for establishing a sensory profile by a multidimensional approach: ISO 11035
• Paired comparison: ISO 5495
• Flavour and taste detection thresholds: ISO 13301
• Standard Test Method for Paired Preference Test: ASTM E2263 - 12 

The results should address a measure of the uncertainty in the measurement.

The use of a panel associated to a recognized technique is also required in GC-Olfactometry. Ranking the odorant contribution based on odor activity values (OAV) only has no sensory relevance

Statistical analysis, validation

Give full details (or a reference) of the method and name the software used. When a new quantitative method is proposed, the authors are warmly encouraged to validate their results according to a recognized procedure.

Synthesis

The authors should describe the procedures in following the same guidelines enforced in recognized standard journal in the field (e.g. J. Org. Chem.). The yield must be determined from the amount of the isolated and weighted compound of known purity. Melting points should be reported for crystallized products, and, whenever possible, boiling points for liquids. The atomic composition of new compounds should be checked with appropriate means (e.g. elemental analysis or accurate mass MS), and their structure should be supported by ¹H, ¹³C NMR and MS spectra. Their purity should be determined preferably by ¹H-NMR and internal standard. Alternatively, the purity of volatile substances can be determined using GC-FID and predicted response factors (Flavour Fragr. J. 2016, 31, 191–194). The linear retention indices of volatile substances are required.

Bioactive substances and extracts.

The starting material should be accurately defined (species, sub-species) as well as the extract or essential oil used (qualitative and quantitative composition). The latter should be prepared by the authors themselves, or under their control to ensure its authenticity. In case of wild plants, papers demonstrating the cultivation possibility should be cited to ensure their sustainability. The use several and up-to-date methods is recommended for a given bioactivity study. In addition to the investigated product (the essential oil or the extract in toto) also at least one or two major constituents should be assessed in their bioactivity as well.

To evaluate its efficiency, the investigated product has to be compared to that of a blank (placebo, positive and negative control) and, whenever possible, to that of a medicament in use. Testing several different kinds of bioactivity of a given product is strongly encouraged, as well as a complementary activity to a known medicament. Investigating the bioactivity mechanism is a crucial scientific information to justify a publication.