Paper Submission

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Respective authors should note that only original and previously unpublished manuscripts will be considered. Furthermore, simultaneous submissions are not acceptable. Submission of a manuscript is interpreted as a certification statement that no part of the manuscript is copyrighted by any other publication or under review by any other formal publication. It is the primary responsibility of the author to obtain proper permission for the use of any copyrighted materials in the manuscript before the submission of the manuscript to IJPTT.

Step by step guideline for authors

SSRG publishes original research articles, reviews and short communications. Short communications must address a question of particular interest and reach a definitive conclusion.

Submission of a manuscript implies: that the work described has not been published before; that it is not under consideration for publication anywhere else; that its publication has been approved by all co-authors, if any, as well as by the responsible authorities – tacitly or explicitly – at the institute where the work has been carried out. The publisher will not be held legally responsible should there be any claims for compensation.

Permissions

Authors wishing to include figures, tables, or text passages that have already been published elsewhere are required to obtain permission from the copyright owner(s) for both the print and online format and to include evidence that such permission has been granted when submitting their papers. Any material received without such evidence will be assumed to originate from the authors.

Online Submission

Please follow the hyperlink “Submit manuscript” on the right and upload all of your manuscript files following the instructions given on the screen.

Important notes:
  • In case authors are encouraged to resubmit a revised version of their manuscript, they are required to mark all changes (e.g. using the track changes functionality of their word processing program or by colored text) and the revised version must be accompanied by a cover letter including an itemized response to the reviewer's comments.
  • A submission to SSRG generally implies that materials described in the manuscript (e.g. seeds, genetic stocks, vectors, antibodies) should be freely available to any researcher wishing to use them for non-commercial purposes. Authors are expected to comply with requests for materials within 60 days after receipt of the request. Where appropriate, requestors should be prepared to cover reasonable costs of the request. Furthermore, availability of the materials may be subject to an institutional Material Transfer Agreement that limits their use to non-profit research purposes.

Authors must provide a short description of the contributions made by each listed author (please use initials). This will be published in a separate section in front of the Acknowledgments.

For example: AM and DB conceived and designed research. AM and BB conducted experiments. GR contributed new reagents or analytical tools. AM and GR analyzed data. AM wrote the manuscript. All authors read and approved the manuscript.

The title page should include:

  • The full first name, middle initial, and last name of the author(s)
  • A concise and informative title; avoid use of undefined abbreviations Please limit the title to 180 characters (including spaces).
  • The affiliation(s) and address(es) of all author(s)
  • The e-mail address, telephone and fax numbers of the corresponding author
  • It is desired that you use your institutional e-mail address for correspondence.
Main Conclusion

Please summarize the main achievement of your work, above and beyond what may have been conveyed in the manuscript title. This "Main Conclusion" may not contain more than 30 words.

Abstract

Please provide an abstract of up to 250 words. The abstract should be broadly based to appeal to the general readership of SSRG. Avoid use of undefined abbreviations or unspecified references. Conclude with a sentence on how this work advanced the state of the art in the field.

Keywords

Please provide 4 to 6 keywords, which can be used for indexing purposes. Avoid use of words already appearing in the title of the paper.

Text Formatting

Manuscripts should be submitted in Word.

  • Use a normal, plain font (e.g., 10-point Times Roman) for text.
  • Use italics for emphasis.
  • Use the automatic page numbering function to number the pages.
  • Do not use field functions.
  • 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).

Manuscripts with mathematical content can also be submitted in LaTeX.

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

Acknowledgments of people, grants, funds, etc. should be placed in a separate section on the title page. The names of funding organizations should be written in full. SSRG list of units, symbols and abbreviations Please follow the link to SSRG list of units, symbols and abbreviations in plant sciences.

Genus and species names should be in italics.

Authors must deposit new nucleotide sequences to GenBank prior to submitting a paper for publication in SSRG. An accession number must be given in the manuscript for new genomic DNA, complementary DNA, RNA and other nucleotide sequences discussed in the manuscript.

Statistical analysis of the results:

Authors must indicate, in a subsection at the end of the Materials and Methods section, the reproducibility, or statistical significance of the results, especially as it pertains to figures where error bars are not indicated (e.g. images, blots).

Use of antibodies:

Please provide the antibody product code, if commercially available antibodies have been used.

Citation

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. 1995a, b; Kelso and Smith 1998; Medvec et al. 1999, 2000).
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. Order multi-author publications of the same first author alphabetically with respect to second, third, etc. author. Publications of exactly the same author(s) must be ordered chronologically.

  • 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 ApplPhysiol 105:731-738. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00421-008-0955-8

Ideally, the names of all authors should be provided, but the usage of “et al” in long author lists will also be accepted: Smith J, Jones M Jr, Houghton L et al (1999) Future of health insurance. N Engl J Med 965:325–329

  • Article by DOI

Slifka MK, Whitton JL (2000) Clinical implications of dysregulated cytokine production. J Mol Med. https://doi.org/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 26 June 2007

  • Dissertation

Trent JW (1975) Experimental acute renal failure. Dissertation, University of California Always use the standard abbreviation of a journal’s name according to the ISSN List of Title Word Abbreviations, see

If you are unsure, please use the full journal title.

Important note:

Ideally, the names of all authors should be provided, but the usage of “et al” in long author lists with more than 15 authors will also be accepted. Please always give a minimum of three authors:

  • Smith J, Jones M Jr, Houghton L et al (1999) Future of health insurance. N Engl J Med 965:325–329

  • 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.

For the best quality final product, it is highly recommended that you submit all of your artwork – photographs, line drawings, etc. – in an electronic format. Your art will then be produced to the highest standards with the greatest accuracy to detail. The published work will directly reflect the quality of the artwork provided.

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. MS Office 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.
Line Art
  • Definition: Black and white graphic with no shading.
  • Do not use faint lines and/or lettering and check that all lines and lettering within the figures are legible at final size.
  • All lines should be at least 0.1 mm (0.3 pt) wide.
  • Scanned line drawings and line drawings in bitmap format should have a minimum resolution of 1200 dpi.
  • Vector graphics containing fonts must have the fonts embedded in the files.
Halftone Art
  • Definition: Photographs, drawings, or paintings with fine shading, etc.
  • If any magnification is used in the photographs, indicate this by using scale bars within the figures themselves.
  • Halftones should have a minimum resolution of 300 dpi.
Combination Art
  • Definition: a combination of halftone and line art, e.g., halftones containing line drawing, extensive lettering, color diagrams, etc.
  • Combination artwork should have a minimum resolution of 600 dpi.
Color Art
  • Color art is free of charge for print and online publication.
  • Color illustrations should be submitted as RGB.
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
  • 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.
Permissions

If you include figures that have already been published elsewhere, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner(s) for both the print and online format. Please be aware that some publishers do not grant electronic rights for free and that SSRG will not be able to refund any costs that may have occurred to receive these permissions. In such cases, material from other sources should be used.

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 (color-blind users would then be able to distinguish the visual elements)
  • Any figure lettering has a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1

SSRG accepts electronic multimedia files (animations, movies, audio, etc.) and other supplementary files to be published online along with an article or a book chapter. This feature can add dimension to the author's article, as certain information cannot be printed or is more convenient in electronic form.

Before submitting research datasets as electronic supplementary material. We encourage research data to be archived in data repositories wherever possible.

Submission
  • Supply all supplementary material in standard file formats.
  • Please include in each file the following information: article title, journal name, author names; affiliation and e-mail address of the corresponding author.
  • To accommodate user downloads, please keep in mind that larger-sized files may require very long download times and that some users may experience other problems during downloading.
Audio, Video, and Animations
  • Aspect ratio: 16:9 or 4:3
  • Maximum file size: 25 GB
  • Minimum video duration: 1 sec
  • Supported file formats: avi, wmv, mp4, mov, m2p, mp2, mpg, mpeg, flv, mxf, mts, m4v, 3gp
Text and Presentations
  • Submit your material in PDF format; .doc or .ppt files are not suitable for long-term viability.
  • A collection of figures may also be combined in a PDF file.
Spreadsheets
  • Spreadsheets should be submitted as .csv or .xlsx files (MS Excel).
Specialized Formats
  • Spreadsheets should be submitted as .csv or .xlsx files (MS Excel).
Collecting Multiple Files
  • It is possible to collect multiple files in a .zip or .gz file.
Numbering
  • If supplying any supplementary material, the text must make specific mention of the material as a citation, similar to that of figures and tables.
  • Refer to the supplementary files as “Online Resource”, e.g., "... as shown in the animation (Online Resource 3)", “... additional data are given in Online Resource 4”.
  • Name the files consecutively, e.g. “ESM_3.mpg”, “ESM_4.pdf”.
Captions
  • For each supplementary material, please supply a concise caption describing the content of the file.
Processing of supplementary files
  • Electronic supplementary material will be published as received from the author without any conversion, editing, or reformatting.
Accessibility

In order to give people of all abilities and disabilities access to the content of your supplementary files, please make sure that

  • The manuscript contains a descriptive caption for each supplementary material
  • Video files do not contain anything that flashes more than three times per second (so that users prone to seizures caused by such effects are not put at risk)

SSRG will not publish manuscripts in which the functional significance of changes in gene expression is based on transcript data alone. It is essential to provide supporting evidence for any such interpretation, for example by providing measurement of changes in the corresponding proteins or relevant physiological data.

This journal is committed to upholding the integrity of the scientific record. As a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) the journal will follow the COPE guidelines on how to deal with potential acts of misconduct.

Authors should refrain from misrepresenting research results which could damage the trust in the journal, the professionalism of scientific authorship, and ultimately the entire scientific endeavour. Maintaining integrity of the research and its presentation can be achieved by following the rules of good scientific practice, which include:

The manuscript has not been submitted to more than one journal for simultaneous consideration.

  • The manuscript has not been published previously (partly or in full), unless the new work concerns an expansion of previous work (please provide transparency on the re-use of material to avoid the hint of text-recycling (“self-plagiarism”)).
  • A single study is not split up into several parts to increase the quantity of submissions and submitted to various journals or to one journal over time (e.g. “salami-publishing”).
  • No data have been fabricated or manipulated (including images) to support your conclusions
  • No data, text, or theories by others are presented as if they were the author’s own (“plagiarism”). Proper acknowledgements to other works must be given (this includes material that is closely copied (near verbatim), summarized and/or paraphrased), quotation marks are used for verbatim copying of material, and permissions are secured for material that is copyrighted.

Important note: the journal may use software to screen for plagiarism.

  • Consent to submit has been received explicitly from all co-authors, as well as from the responsible authorities - tacitly or explicitly - at the institute/organization where the work has been carried out, before the work is submitted.
  • Authors whose names appear on the submission have contributed sufficiently to the scientific work and therefore share collective responsibility and accountability for the results.
  • Authors are strongly advised to ensure the correct author group, corresponding author, and order of authors at submission. Changes of authorship or in the order of authors are not accepted after acceptance of a manuscript.
  • Adding and/or deleting authors and/or changing the order of authors at revision stage may be justifiably warranted. A letter must accompany the revised manuscript to explain the reason for the change(s) and the contribution role(s) of the added and/or deleted author(s). Further documentation may be required to support your request.
  • Requests for addition or removal of authors as a result of authorship disputes after acceptance are honored after formal notification by the institute or independent body and/or when there is agreement between all authors.
  • Upon request authors should be prepared to send relevant documentation or data in order to verify the validity of the results. This could be in the form of raw data, samples, records, etc. Sensitive information in the form of confidential proprietary data is excluded.

If there is a suspicion of misconduct, the journal will carry out an investigation following the COPE guidelines. If, after investigation, the allegation seems to raise valid concerns, the accused author will be contacted and given an opportunity to address the issue. If misconduct has been established beyond reasonable doubt, this may result in the Editor-in-Chief’s implementation of the following measures, including, but not limited to:

  • If the article is still under consideration, it may be rejected and returned to the author.
  • If the article has already been published online, depending on the nature and severity of the infraction, either an erratum will be placed with the article or in severe cases complete retraction of the article will occur. The reason must be given in the published erratum or retraction note. Please note that retraction means that the paper is maintained on the platform, watermarked "retracted" and explanation for the retraction is provided in a note linked to the watermarked article.
  • The author’s institution may be informed.

To ensure objectivity and transparency in research and to ensure that accepted principles of ethical and professional conduct have been followed, authors should include information regarding sources of funding, potential conflicts of interest (financial or non-financial), informed consent if the research involved human participants, and a statement on welfare of animals if the research involved animals.

Authors should include the following statements (if applicable) in a separate section entitled “Compliance with Ethical Standards” when submitting a paper:

  • Disclosure of potential conflicts of interest
  • Research involving Human Participants and/or Animals
  • Informed consent

Please note that standards could vary slightly per journal dependent on their peer review policies (i.e. single or double blind peer review) as well as per journal subject discipline. Before submitting your article check the instructions following this section carefully.

The corresponding author should be prepared to collect documentation of compliance with ethical standards and send if requested during peer review or after publication.

The Editors reserve the right to reject manuscripts that do not comply with the above-mentioned guidelines. The author will be held responsible for false statements or failure to fulfill the above-mentioned guidelines.

Authors must disclose all relationships or interests that could have direct or potential influence or impart bias on the work. Although an author may not feel there is any conflict, disclosure of relationships and interests provides a more complete and transparent process, leading to an accurate and objective assessment of the work. Awareness of a real or perceived conflicts of interest is a perspective to which the readers are entitled. This is not meant to imply that a financial relationship with an organization that sponsored the research or compensation received for consultancy work is inappropriate. Examples of potential conflicts of interests that are directly or indirectly related to the research may include but are not limited to the following:

  • Research grants from funding agencies (please give the research funder and the grant number)
  • Honoraria for speaking at symposia
  • Financial support for attending symposia
  • Financial support for educational programs
  • Employment or consultation
  • Support from a project sponsor
  • Position on advisory board or board of directors or other type of management relationships
  • Multiple affiliations
  • Financial relationships, for example equity ownership or investment interest
  • Intellectual property rights (e.g. patents, copyrights and royalties from such rights)
  • Holdings of spouse and/or children that may have financial interest in the work

In addition, interests that go beyond financial interests and compensation (non-financial interests) that may be important to readers should be disclosed. These may include but are not limited to personal relationships or competing interests directly or indirectly tied to this research, or professional interests or personal beliefs that may influence your research.

The corresponding author should be prepared to collect documentation of compliance with ethical standards and send if requested during peer review or after publication.

The corresponding author will include a summary statement in the text of the manuscript in a separate section before the reference list, that reflects what is recorded in the potential conflict of interest disclosure form(s). See below examples of disclosures:

Funding: This study was funded by X (grant number X).

Conflict of Interest: Author A has received research grants from Company A. Author B has received a speaker honorarium from Company X and owns stock in Company Y. Author C is a member of committee Z.

If no conflict exists, the authors should state:

Conflict of Interest: The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

A submission to the journal implies that materials described in the manuscript, including all relevant raw data, will be freely available to any researcher wishing to use them for non-commercial purposes, without breaching participant confidentiality.

The journal strongly encourages that all datasets on which the conclusions of the paper rely should be available to readers. We encourage authors to ensure that their datasets are either deposited in publicly available repositories (where available and appropriate) or presented in the main manuscript or additional supporting files whenever possible General repositories - for all types of research data - such as figshare and Dryad may be used where appropriate.

Datasets that are assigned digital object identifiers (DOIs) by a data repository may be cited in the reference list. Data citations should include the minimum information recommended by DataCite: authors, title, publisher (repository name), identifier.

DataCite

Where a widely established research community expectation for data archiving in public repositories exists, submission to a community-endorsed, public repository is mandatory. Persistent identifiers (such as DOIs and accession numbers) for relevant datasets must be provided in the paper

For the following types of data set, submission to a community-endorsed, public repository is mandatory:

Mandatory deposition Suitable repositories
Protein sequences Uniprot
DNA and RNA sequences Genbank
DNA DataBank of Japan (DDBJ)
EMBL Nucleotide Sequence Database (ENA)
DNA and RNA sequencing data NCBI Trace Archive
NCBI Sequence Read Archive (SRA)
Genetic polymorphisms dbSNP
dbVar
European Variation Archive (EVA)
Linked genotype and phenotype data dbGAP
The European Genome-phenome Archive (EGA)
Macromolecular structure Worldwide Protein Data Bank (wwPDB)
Biological Magnetic Resonance Data Bank (BMRB)
Electron Microscopy Data Bank (EMDB)
Microarray data (must be MIAME compliant) Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO)
ArrayExpress
Crystallographic data for small molecules Cambridge Structural Database
Data availability

The journal encourages authors to provide a statement of Data availability in their article. Data availability statements should include information on where data supporting the results reported in the article can be found, including, where applicable, hyperlinks to publicly archived datasets analysed or generated during the study. Data availability statements can also indicate whether data are available on request from the authors and where no data are available, if appropriate.

Data Availability statements can take one of the following forms (or a combination of more than one if required for multiple datasets):

  • 1. The datasets generated during and/or analysed during the current study are available in the [NAME] repository, [PERSISTENT WEB LINK TO DATASETS]
  • 2. The datasets generated during and/or analysed during the current study are not publicly available due [REASON WHY DATA ARE NOT PUBLIC] but are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
  • 3. The datasets generated during and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
  • 4. Data sharing not applicable to this article as no datasets were generated or analysed during the current study.
  • 5. All data generated or analysed during this study are included in this published article [and its supplementary information files].

Upon acceptance of your article you will receive a link through mail where you can sign the Copyright Transfer Statement and send it back to editor.

Once this procedure has been completed, your article will be processed and you will receive the proofs.

Copyright transfer

Authors will be asked to transfer copyright of the article to the Publisher (or grant the Publisher exclusive publication and dissemination rights). This will ensure the widest possible protection and dissemination of information under copyright laws.

Offprints

Offprints can be ordered by the corresponding author.

Color illustrations

Publication of color illustrations is free of charge.

Proof reading

The purpose of the proof is to check for typesetting or conversion errors and the completeness and accuracy of the text, tables and figures. Substantial changes in content, e.g., new results, corrected values, title and authorship, are not allowed without the approval of the Editor.

After online publication, further changes can only be made in the form of an Erratum, which will be hyperlinked to the article.

Online First

The article will be published online after receipt of the corrected proofs. This is the official first publication citable with the DOI. After release of the printed version, the paper can also be cited by issue and page numbers.

Special Issues

Special Issues allows you to publish open access in SSRG journals, making your research more visible and accessible immediately on publication.

Benefits:
  • Increased researcher engagement: SPECIAL ISSUES enables access by anyone with an internet connection, immediately on publication.
  • Higher visibility and impact: In SSRG journals, SPECIAL ISSUES articles are accessed 4 times more often on average, and cited 1.7 more times on average*.
Copyright and license term – CC BY

Open Choice articles do not require transfer of copyright as the copyright remains with the author. In opting for open access, the author(s) agree to publish the article under the Creative Commons Attribution License.

Find more about the license agreement

For editors and reviewers to accurately assess the work presented in your manuscript you need to ensure the English language is of sufficient quality to be understood. If you need help with writing in English you should consider:

  • Asking a colleague who is a native English speaker to review your manuscript for clarity.
  • Visiting the English language tutorial which covers the common mistakes when writing in English.
  • Using a professional language editing service where editors will improve the English to ensure that your meaning is clear and identify problems that require your review.

If your manuscript is accepted it will be checked by our copyeditors for spelling and formal style before publication.