Instructions for Authors

Online Manuscript Submission: An online submission and tracking service via Internet facilitates a speedy and cost-effective submission of manuscripts. The full manuscript has to be submitted online via Bentham's Content Management System (CMS) at http://bsp-cms.eurekaselect.com View Instructions

Manuscripts must be submitted by one of the authors of the manuscript, and should not be submitted by anyone on their behalf. The principal/corresponding author will be required to submit a Covering Letter along with the manuscript, on behalf of all the co-authors (if any). The author(s) will confirm that the manuscript (or any part of it) has not been published previously or is not under consideration for publication elsewhere. Furthermore, any illustration, structure or table that has been published elsewhere must be reported, and copyright permission for reproduction must be obtained.

For all online submissions, please provide your complete manuscript in the form of a single zipped folder containing soft copies of all the materials (main text in MS Word or Tex/LaTeX), figures/illustrations in TIFF, PDF or JPEG, and chemical structures drawn in ChemDraw (CDX)/ISISDraw (TGF) as separate files, while a PDF version of the entire manuscript must also be included, embedded with all the figures/illustrations/tables/chemical structures etc.

It is imperative that before submission, authors should carefully proofread the files for special characters, mathematical symbols, Greek letters, equations, tables, references and images, to ensure that they appear in proper format.

References, figures, tables, chemical structures etc. should be referred to in the text at the appropriate place where they have been first discussed. Figure legends/captions should also be provided.

A successful electronic submission of a manuscript will be followed by a system-generated acknowledgement to the principal/corresponding author. Any queries therein should be addressed to humaira@benthamscience.org

MANUSCRIPTS PUBLISHED: The Journal accepts mini- and full-length review articles, original research articles and drug clinical trial studies written in English. Single topic/thematic issues may also be considered for publication.

Single Topic Issues: These special issues are peer-reviewed and may contain invited or uninvited review/mini-review articles or a mixture of research articles, reviews/mini-reviews and drug clinical trial studies. A Single Topic Issue Editor will offer a short perspective and co-ordinate the solicitation of manuscripts between 3-5 (for a mini-hot topic) to 6-10 (for full-length hot topic) from leading scientists. Authors interested in editing a single topic issue in an emerging topic of signal transduction therapy may submit their proposal to the Editor-in-Chief at cstt@benthamscience.org for consideration.

MANUSCRIPT LENGTH:

Full-Length Reviews: Full-length reviews should be 8000-40000 words excluding figures, structures, photographs, schemes, tables etc.

Mini-Reviews: Mini-reviews should be 3000-6000 words excluding figures, structures, photographs, schemes, tables etc.

Research Articles: Research articles should be 4000-8000 words excluding figures, structures, photographs, schemes, tables etc.

Randomized Drug Clinical Trial Studies: Trial studies should be 1500 to 40000 words excluding figures, structures, photographs, schemes, tables etc.

There is no restriction on the number of figures, tables or additional files e.g. video clips, animation and datasets, that can be included with each article online. Authors should include all relevant supporting data with each article (Refer to Supplementary Material section).

MANUSCRIPT PREPARATION:

The manuscript should be written in English in a clear, direct and active style. All pages must be numbered sequentially, facilitating in the reviewing and editing of the manuscript.

For further convenience, our contracted service provider Eureka Science can provide assistance to authors for the preparation of manuscripts.

MANUSCRIPT SECTIONS FOR PAPERS: Manuscripts may be divided into the following sections:

Covering letter
Title
Title page
Abstract
Keywords
Text organization
List of abbreviations (if any)
Conflict of interest (if any)
Acknowledgements (if any)
References
Appendices
Figures/illustrations (if any)
Chemical structures (if any)
Tables (if any)
Supportive / supplementary material (if any)

Covering Letter: It is mandatory that a signed covering letter should also be submitted along with the manuscript by the author to whom correspondence is to be addressed, delineating the scope of the submitted article declaring potential competing interests, acknowledging contributions from authors and funding agencies, and certifying that the paper is prepared according to the 'Instructions for Authors'. All inconsistencies in the text and in the reference section and any typographical errors must be carefully checked and corrected before the submission of the manuscript. The article should not contains any such material or information that may be unlawful, defamatory, fabricated, plagiarized, or which would, if published, in any way whatsoever, violate the terms and conditions as laid down in the copyright agreement. The authors acknowledge that the publishers have the legal right to take appropriate action against the authors for any such violation of the terms and conditions as laid down in the copy right agreement. Download Covering Letter

Title: The title of the article should be precise and brief and must not be more than 120 characters. Authors should avoid the use of non-standard abbreviations. The title must be written in title case except for articles, conjunctions and prepositions.

Authors should also provide a short ‘running title’. Title, running title, byline, correspondent footnote and keywords should be written as presented in original manuscripts.

Title Page: Title page should include paper title, author(s) full name and affiliation, corresponding author(s) names complete affiliation/address, along with phone, fax and email.

Abstract: The abstract should not exceed 250 words for review and research papers and 150 words for drug clinical trial studies summarizing the essential features of the article.

Keywords: Provide 6 to 8 keywords in alphabetical order.

Text Organization: The main text should begin on a separate page and should be divided into title page, abstract and the main text. The text may be subdivided further according to the areas to be discussed, which should be followed by the Acknowledgement, List of Abbreviations, Conflict of Interest (if any) and Reference sections. For Research Articles the manuscript should begin with the title page and abstract followed by the main text, which must be structured into separate sections as Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results, Discussion, and Conclusion, Acknowledgements, List of Abbreviations, Conflict of Interest (if any) and References. For Reviews, the manuscript should be divided into title page, abstract and the main text. The text may be subdivided further according to the areas to be discussed, which should be followed by the Acknowledgement (if any) and Reference sections. The Review article should mention any previous important reviews in the field and contain a comprehensive discussion starting with the general background of the field. It should then go on to discuss the salient features of recent developments. The authors should avoid presenting material which has already been published in a previous review.

The authors are advised to present and discuss their observations in brief. The manuscript style must be uniform throughout the text and 10 pt Times New Roman fonts should be used. The full term for an abbreviation should precede its first appearance in the text unless it is a standard unit of measurement. The reference numbers should be given in square brackets in the text. Italics should be used for Binomial names of organisms (Genus and Species), for emphasis and for unfamiliar words or phrases. Non-assimilated words from Latin or other languages should also be italicized e.g. in vivo, in vitro, per se, et al. etc.

Standard Protocol on Approvals, Registrations, Patient Consents & Animal Protection: All clinical investigations must be conducted according to the Declaration of Helsinki principles. Authors must comply with the guidelines of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (http://www.icmje.org) with regard to the patient’s consent for research or participation in a study. Patients' names, initials, or hospital numbers must not be mentioned anywhere in the manuscript (including figures). Editors may request that authors provide documentation of the formal review and recommendation from the institutional review board or ethics committee responsible for oversight of the study.

In addition to the standard patient consent for participation in research, authors are responsible for obtaining patient consent-to-disclose forms for all recognizable patients in photographs, videos, or other information that may be published in the Journal, in derivative works, or on the journal’s web site and providing the manuscript to the recognizable patient for review before submission. The consent-to-disclose form should indicate specific use (publication in the medical literature in print and online, with the understanding that patients and the public will have access) of the patient's information and any images in figures or videos, and must contain the patient's signature or that of a legal guardian along with a statement that the patient or legal guardian has been offered the opportunity to review the identifying materials and the accompanying manuscript.

For research involving animals, the authors should indicate whether the procedures followed were in accordance with the standards set forth in the Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals (published by the National Academy of Science, National Academy Press, Washington, D.C.).

A specific declaration of such approval and consent-to-disclose form must be made in the cover letter and in a stand-alone paragraph at the end of the Methods section especially in the case of human studies where inclusion of a statement regarding obtaining the written informed consent from each subject or subject's guardian is a must. The original should be retained by the guarantor or corresponding author. Editors may request to provide the original forms by fax or email.

Randomized Drug Clinical Trial Studies: Randomized Drug clinical trial studies are biomedical or health-related interventional and/or observational research studies conducted in phases in human beings who will be randomly allocated to receive or not receive a preventive, therapeutic, or diagnostic intervention that follows a pre-defined protocol. The study is intended to find out whether promising approaches to the disease prevention, diagnosis, and treatment are safe and effective.

All randomized clinical trials should include a flow diagram and authors should provide a completed randomized trial checklist (see CONSORT Flow Diagram and Checklist; http://www.consort-statement.org) and a trial protocol. Authors of randomized controlled trials are encouraged to submit trial protocols along with their manuscripts. All clinical trials must be registered (before recruitment of the first participant) at an appropriate online public trial registry that must be independent of for-profit interest. Trial registry name, registration identification number, and the URL for the registry should be included at the end of the abstract and also in the space provided on the online manuscript submission form. If the research article reports the results of a controlled health care intervention, the trial registry should be listed, along with the unique identifying number. Note that there should be no space between the letters and numbers of the trial registration number. Studies designed for other purposes, such as to study pharmacokinetics or major toxicity (e.g., phase 1 trials), are exempt.

Each manuscript should clearly state an objective or hypothesis; the design and methods (including the study setting and dates, patients or participants with inclusion and exclusion criteria, or data sources, and how these were selected for the study); the essential features of any interventions; the main outcome measures; the main results of the study; a comment section placing the results in context with the published literature and addressing study limitations; and the conclusions. Data included in research reports must be original.

Authentication of Cell Lines: The NIH acknowledges the misidentification and/or cross-contamination of cell cultures e.g. HeLa cells being used in a research study as a serious problem. In order to ensure the validation of the work and proper utilization of resources, it is a prerequisite that correct reagents be used in studies dealing with established human (tumor) cell lines that have been cultured for more than 4 years up to the date of submission of the manuscript. Cell lines such as short-term cultures of human tumors, murine cell lines (as a catalog of DNA profiles is not yet available) and tumor cell lines established in the course of the study that is being submitted are presently exempt from this rule. To minimize the risk of working with misidentified and/or contaminated cell lines, tests such as isoenzyme analysis, karyotyping/cytogenetic analysis and, more recently, molecular techniques of DNA profiling may be carried out to authenticate cell cultures. These tests may help confirm or establish to identity profile for a cell line. Bentham Science recommends that all cell lines be authenticated prior to submitting a paper for review. Authors are therefore required to provide authentication of the origin and identity of the cells by performing cell profiling either in their own laboratory or by outsourcing an approved laboratory or cell bank. Authentication is required when a new line is established or acquired, before freezing a cell line, if the performance of the line is not consistent or results are unexpected, if using more than one cell line, and before publication of the study.

The cell lines profile should be cross-checked with the profile of the donor tissue of other continuous cell lines such as provided by the authentic data bank such as http://www.dsmz.de/fp/cgi-bin/str.html, ATCC^® etc.

Greek Symbols and Special Characters: Greek symbols and special characters often undergo formatting changes and get corrupted or lost during preparation of manuscript for publication. To ensure that all special characters used are embedded in the text, these special characters should be inserted as a symbol but should not be a result of any format styling (Symbol font face) otherwise they will be lost during conversion to PDF/XML.

Authors are encouraged to consult reporting guidelines. These guidelines provide a set of recommendations comprising a list of items relevant to their specific research design. Chemical equations, chemical names, mathematical usage, unit of measurements, chemical and physical quantity & units must conform to SI and Chemical Abstracts or IUPAC.

All kinds of measurements should be reported only in International System of Units (SI).

The specific requirements for authorship have been defined by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE; http://www.icmje.org). Examples of authors' contributions are: 'designed research/study', 'performed research/study', 'contributed important reagents', 'collected data', 'analyzed data', 'wrote paper' etc. This information must be included in the submitted manuscript as a separate paragraph under the heading ‘Acknowledgements’. The corresponding author is responsible for obtaining permission from all co-authors for the submission of any version of the manuscript and for any changes in the authorship.

List of Abbreviations: If abbreviations are used in the text either they should be defined in the text where first used, or a list of abbreviations can be provided.

Conflict of Interest: Financial contributions to the work being reported must be clearly acknowledged, as should any potential conflict of interest under the heading ‘Conflict of Interest’. Authors must list the source(s) of funding for the study, for each author, and for the manuscript preparation.

Acknowledgements: All individuals listed as authors must have contributed substantially to the design, performance, analysis, or reporting of the work and are required to indicate their specific contribution. Anyone (individual/company/institution) who has substantially contributed to the study for important intellectual content, or who was involved in the article’s drafting the manuscript or revising must also be acknowledged.

Guest or honorary authorship based solely on position (e.g. research supervisor, departmental head) is discouraged.

The specific requirements for authorship have been defined by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE; http://www.icmje.org). Examples of authors' contributions are: 'designed research/study', 'performed research/study', 'contributed important reagents', 'collected data', 'analyzed data', 'wrote paper' etc. This information must be included in the submitted manuscript as a separate paragraph under the heading ‘Acknowledgements’. The corresponding author is responsible for obtaining permission from all co-authors for the submission of any version of the manuscript and for any changes in the authorship.

References: References must be listed in the numerical system (Vancouver). All references should be numbered sequentially [in square brackets] in the text and listed in the same numerical order in the reference section. The reference numbers must be finalized and the bibliography must be fully formatted before submission.

See below few examples of references listed in the correct Vancouver style:

Typical Paper Reference:
[1] Boehm M, Nabel EG. Angiotensin-converting enzyme 2-a new cardiac regulator. N Engl J Med 2002; 347: 1795-7.

[2] Moses RG, Luebcke M, Davis WS, et al. Effect of a low-glycemic-index diet during pregnancy on obstetric outcomes. Am J Clin Nutr 2006; 84: 807-12.

Typical Chapter Reference:
[3] Stevenson WG, Friedman PL. In: Hennekens CH, Ed. Clinical trials in cardiovascular disease. Philadelphia, WB Saunders Co. 1999; pp. 217-30.

Book Reference:
[4] Carlson BM. Human embryology and developmental biology. 3^rd ed. St. Louis: Mosby 2004.

Edited Book:
[5] Brown AM, Stubbs DW, Ed. Medical physiology. New York: Wiley 1983.

Conference Proceedings:
[6] Harris AH, Ed. Economics and health: 1997: Proceedings of the 19th Australian Conference of Health Economists; 1997 Sep 13-14; Sydney, Australia. Kensington, N.S.W.: School of Health Services Management, University of New South Wales 1998.

Journal Article on the Internet:
[7] Aylin P, Bottle A, Jarman B, Elliott, P. Paediatric cardiac surgical mortality in England after Bristol: descriptive analysis of hospital episode statistics 1991-2002. BMJ [serial on the Internet]. 2004 Oct 9; [cited 2004 October 15]; 329: [about 10 screens]. Available from: http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/329/7470/825

Patent:
[8] Kimura K, Lipeles A. Fuzzy controller component. U. S. Patent 14,860,040, December 14, 1996.

E-citations:
[9] Citations for articles/material published exclusively online or in open access (free-to-view) , must contain the exact Web addresses (URLs) at the end of the reference(s), except those posted on an author’s Web site unless editorially essential, e.g. ‘Reference: Available from: URL’.

Some important points to remember:

• All references must be complete and accurate.
• If the number of authors exceeds six then et al. will be used after three names (the term “et al” should be in italics).
• Online citations should include the date of access.
• Journal abbreviations should follow the Index Medicus/MEDLINE.
• Take special care of the punctuation convention as described in the above-mentioned examples.
• Avoid using superscript in the in-text citations and reference section.
• Abstracts, unpublished data and personal communications (which can only be included if prior permission has been obtained) should not be given in the reference section but they may be mentioned in the text and details provided as footnotes.
• The authors are encouraged to use a recent version of EndNote (version 5 and above) or Reference Manager (version 10) when formatting their reference list, as this allows references to be automatically extracted.

Appendices: In case there is a need to present lengthy, but essential methodological details, use appendices, which can be a part of the article. An appendix must not exceed three pages (Times New Roman, 12 point fonts, 900 max. words per page).The information should be provided in a condensed form, ruling out the need of full sentences. A single appendix should be titled APPENDIX, while more than one can be titled APPENDIX A, APPENDIX B, and so on.

Figures / Illustrations:

All authors must strictly follow the guidelines below for preparing illustrations for publication in Current Signal Transduction Therapy. If the figures are found to be sub-standard, then the manuscripts will be rejected and the authors offered the option of figure improvement professionally by Bentham Publishing Services. The costs for such improvement will be charged to the authors.

The authors should provide the illustrations as separate files, as well as embedded in the text file, numbered consecutively in the order of their appearance. Each figure should include a single illustration. Each figure should be closely cropped to minimize the amount of white space surrounding the illustration.

If a figure consists of separate parts, it is important that a single composite illustration file be submitted, containing all parts of the figure.

Photographs should be provided with a scale bar if appropriate, as well as high-resolution component files.

Scaling / Resolution:

For Line Art image type, which is generally an image based on lines and text and does not contain tonal or shaded areas, the preferred file format is TIFF or EPS, with colour mode being Monochrome 1-bit or RGB, in a resolution of 900-1200 dpi.

For Halftone image type, which is generally a continuous tone photograph and contains no text, the preferred file format is TIFF, with colour mode being or RGB or Grayscale, in a resolution of 300 dpi.

For Combination image type, which is generally an image containing halftone in addition to text or line art elements, the preferred file format is TIFF, with colour mode being or RGB or Grayscale, in a resolution of 500-900 dpi.

Formats:

For illustrations, the following file formats are acceptable:

• Illustrator
• EPS (preferred format for diagrams)
• PDF (also especially suitable for diagrams)
• PNG (preferred format for photos or images)
• Microsoft Word (version 5 and above; figures must be a single page)
• PowerPoint (figures must be a single page)
• TIFF
• JPEG (conversion should be done using the original file)
• BMP
• CDX (ChemDraw)
• TGF (ISISDraw)

Bentham Science does not process figures submitted in GIF format.

If the large size of TIFF or EPS figures acts as an obstacle to online submission, authors may find that conversion to JPEG format before submission results in significantly reduced file size and upload time, while retaining acceptable quality. JPEG is a 'lossy' format. However, in order to maintain acceptable image quality, it is recommended that JPEG files are saved at High or Maximum quality.

Files should not be compressed with tools such as Zipit or Stuffit prior to submission as these tools will in any case produce negligible file-size savings for JPEGs and TIFFs, which are already compressed.

Please do not:

1. Supply embedded graphics in your word processor (spreadsheet, presentation) document;
2. Supply files that are optimized for screen use (like GIF, BMP, PICT, WPG); the resolution is too low;
3. Supply files that are too low in resolution;
4. Submit graphics that are disproportionately large for the content.

Image Conversion Tools:

There are many software packages, many of them freeware or shareware, capable of converting to and from different graphics formats, including PNG.

Good general tools for image conversion include GraphicConverter on the Macintosh, PaintShop Pro, for Windows, and ImageMagick, which is available on Macintosh, Windows and UNIX platforms.

Note that bitmap images (e.g. screenshots) should not be converted to EPS, since this will result in a much larger file size than the equivalent JPEG, TIFF, PNG or BMP, with no increase in quality. EPS should only be used for images produced by vector-drawing applications such as Adobe Illustrator or CorelDraw. Most vector-drawing applications can be saved in, or exported as, EPS format. In case the images have been originally prepared in an Office application, such as Word or PowerPoint, then the original Office files should be directly uploaded to the site, instead of being being converted to JPEG or another format that may be of low quality.

Color Figures / Illustrations:

• The cost for the first published page of color figures is US$ 965; the second additional page will be for US$ 705 and each subsequent page for US$ 480.

• Color figures should be supplied in CMYK not RGB colors.

Chemical structures:

MUST be prepared in ChemDraw/CDX and provided as separate file.

Structure Drawing Preferences:

[As according to the ACS style sheet]

Drawing Settings:

Chain angle         120°

Bond spacing       18% of width

Fixed length         14.4 pt (0.500cm, 0.2in)

Bold width            2.0 pt (0.071cm, 0.0278in)

Line width            0.6 pt (0.021cm, 0.0084in)

Margin width        1.6 pt (0.096cm)

Hash spacing     2.5 pt (0.088cm, 0.0347in)

Text settings:

Font                    Times New Roman

Size                     8 pt

Under the Preference Choose:

Units                    points

Tolerances          3 pixels

Under Page Setup Use:

Paper                  US letter

Scale                   100%

Tables:

• Data Tables should be submitted in Microsoft Word table format.
• Each table should include a title/caption being explanatory in itself with respect to the details discussed in the table. Detailed legends may then follow.
• Table number in bold font i.e. Table 1, should follow a title. The title should be in small case with the first letter in caps. A full stop should be placed at the end of the title.
• Tables should be embedded in the text exactly according to their appropriate placement in the submitted manuscript.
• Columns and rows of data should be made visibly distinct by ensuring that the borders of each cell are displayed as black lines.
• Tables should be numbered in Arabic numerals sequentially in order of their citation in the body of the text.
• If a reference is cited in both the table and text, please insert a lettered footnote in the table to refer to the numbered reference in the text.
• Tabular data provided as additional files can be submitted as an Excel spreadsheet.

Supportive / Supplementary Material: We do encourage to append supportive material, for example a PowerPoint file containing a talk about the study, a PowerPoint file containing additional screenshots, a Word, RTF, or PDF document showing the original instrument(s) used, a video, or the original data (SAS/SPSS files, Excel files, Access Db files etc.) provided it is inevitable or endorsed by the journal's Editor.

Supportive / Supplementary material intended for publication must be numbered and referred to in the manuscript but should not be a part of the submitted paper. In-text citations as well as a section with the heading "Supportive / Supplementary Material" before the "References" section should be provided. Here, list all Supportive / Supplementary Material and include a brief caption line for each file describing its contents.

Any additional files will be linked into the final published article in the form supplied by the author, but will not be displayed within the paper. They will be made available in exactly the same form as originally provided only on our Web site. Please also make sure that each additional file is a single table, figure or movie (please do not upload linked worksheets or PDF files larger than one sheet). Supportive / Supplementary material must be provided in a single zipped file not larger than 4 MB.

Authors must clearly indicate if these files are not for publication but meant for the reviewers'/editors' perusal only.

PERMISSION FOR REPRODUCTION: Published/reproduced material should not be included unless you have obtained written permission from the copyright holder, which should be forwarded to the Editorial Office in case of acceptance of your article for publication.

For obtaining permission for reproducing any material published in an article by Bentham Science Publishers, please fill in the request FORM and send to cstt@benthamscience.org for consideration.

AUTHORS AND INSTITUTIONAL AFFILIATIONS: The author will be required to provide their full names, the institutional affiliations and the location, with an asterisk in front of the name of the principal/corresponding author. The corresponding author(s) should be designated and their complete address, business telephone and fax numbers and e-mail address must be stated to receive correspondence and galley proofs.

PAGE CHARGES: No page charges will be levied to authors for the publication of their article.

LANGUAGE AND EDITING: Manuscripts submitted containing many English typographical errors will not be published. Manuscripts which are accepted for publication on condition that the written English submitted is corrected, will be sent a quote by Eureka Science, a professional language editing company. Authors from non-English language countries who have poor English language written skills, are advised to contact the language editing company prior to submitting their manuscript to the journal. Please contact Eureka Science for a language editing quote at e-mail: info@eureka-science.com stating the total number of words of the article to be edited.

PROOF CORRECTIONS: Authors will receive page proofs of their accepted paper before publications. To avoid delays in publication, proofs should be checked immediately for typographical errors and returned within 48 hours. Major changes are not acceptable at the proof stage. If unable to send corrections within 48 hours due to some reason, the author(s) must at least send an acknowledgement on receiving the galley proofs or the article will be published exactly as received and the publishers will not be responsible for any error occurring in the published manuscript in this regard.

The corresponding author will be solely responsible for ensuring that the revised version of the manuscript incorporating all the submitted corrections receives the approval of all the co-authors of the manuscript.

REPRINTS: Each first-named (corresponding) author will receive electronically five free eprints. Reprints may be ordered from the Publisher prior to publication of the article. First named authors may also order a personal print and online subscription of the journal at 50% off the normal subscription rate by contacting the subscription department at e-mail: subscriptions@benthamscience.org.

OPEN ACCESS PLUS: Accepted articles can be published online for free open access for all to view, and be deposited by the Publishers in PubMed Central. Open access publishing provides the maximum dissemination of the article to the largest audience. Authors must pay for this service. All corresponding authors will be asked to indicate whether or not they wish to pay to have their paper made freely available on publication. If authors do not select the Open Access option, then their article will be published with standard subscription-based access at no charge.

Bentham Science offers authors the choice of open access publication of their articles at a fee of US$ 2,200 per published article which allows indefinite free-to-view online publication with Bentham Science.

For more information please contact us at e-mail: openaccess@benthamscience.org.

FEATURED ARTICLE: Authors may opt to publicize their article(s) published with Bentham Science by highlighting their title(s) both at the journal’s Homepage and the issue Contents page at a cost of US$ 300.

REVIEWING AND PROMPTNESS OF PUBLICATION: All papers submitted for publication are immediately subjected to editorial scrutiny, usually in consultation with members of the journal Editorial Advisory Board and outside independent reviewers. Every effort will be made to peer review submitted papers quickly. Papers which are delayed by authors in revision for more than 30 days will have to be re-submitted as a new submission. Papers accepted for publication are typeset and proofs are dispatched to authors for any corrections prior to final publication.

QUICK TRACK Publication: For this journal, an optional fast publication fee-based service called QUICK TRACK is available to authors for their submitted manuscripts.

QUICK TRACK allows online publication within 2 weeks of receipt of the final approved galley proofs from the authors. Similarly the manuscript can be published in the next forthcoming PRINT issue of the journal. The total publication time, from the date of first receipt of manuscript to its online publication is 10 weeks, subject to its acceptance by the referees and modification (if any) by the authors within one week.

Corresponding authors who opt for QUICK TRACKS will receive 25 free eprint tokens for their manuscripts.

For more information please contact the Editorial Office by e-mail at cstt@benthamscience.org.

COPYRIGHT: Authors who publish in Bentham Science print & online journals will transfer copyright to their work to Bentham Science Publishers. Submission of a manuscript to the respective journals implies that all authors have read and agreed to the content of the Covering Letter or the Terms and Conditions. It is a condition of publication that manuscripts submitted to this journal have not been published and will not be simultaneously submitted or published elsewhere. Plagiarism is strictly forbidden, and by submitting the article for publication the authors agree that the publishers have the legal right to take appropriate action against the authors, if plagiarism or fabricated information is discovered. By submitting a manuscript the authors agree that the copyright of their article is transferred to the publishers if and when the article is accepted for publication. Once submitted to the journal, the author will not withdraw their manuscript at any stage prior to publication.

Plagiarism Prevention: Bentham Science Publisher uses the iThenticate software to detect instances of overlapping and similar text in submitted manuscripts. iThenticate software checks content uploaded by a journal editorial office against a database of periodicals, the Internet, and a comprehensive article database. It generates a similarity report, including the percentage overlap between the uploaded article and published material. Any instances of content overlap are treated according to a journal’s peer review integrity statement and the policies recommended by the editorial Committee. You are assured that the publisher, where you are submitting your manuscript, is committed to actively combating plagiarism and publishing frontier reviews and original research.

E-PUB AHEAD OF SCHEDULE: Bentham Science Publishers are pleased to offer electronic publication of accepted papers prior to scheduled publication. These peer-reviewed papers can be cited using the date of access and the unique DOI number. Any final changes in manuscripts will be made at the time of print publication and will be reflected in the final electronic version of the issue. Articles ahead of schedule may be ordered by pay-per-view at the relevant links by each article stated via the E-Pub Ahead of Schedule. (http://www.benthamscience.com/cstt/E-Pub-Ahead-of-Schedule.htm).

Disclaimer: Articles appearing in E-Pub Ahead-of-Schedule sections have been peer-reviewed and accepted for publication in this journal and posted online before scheduled publication. Articles appearing here may contain statements, opinions, and information that have errors in facts, figures, or interpretation. Accordingly, Bentham Science Publishers, the editors and authors and their respective employees are not responsible or liable for the use of any such inaccurate or misleading data, opinion or information contained of articles in the E-Pub Ahead-of-Schedule.