Instructions for Authors

Copyright Transfer

Material printed in NEOPLASMA is covered and protected by copyright. Authors who wish to publish articles and other material in NEOPLASMA journals must formally transfer copyright to the Cancer Research Institute, SAS. All authors of the manuscript accepted for publication must sign the copyright transfer form before the manuscript can be e-published ahead of print on NEOPLASMA website. Corresponding author is obliged to manage delivery of signed form.

Authors are allowed to post a copy of the accepted, uncopyedited and unformatted version on the author's personal website with a notice that "This is the accepted, uncorrected authors' version of the manuscript e-published ahead of print in NEOPLASMA as DOI“. A hyperlink to this accepted manuscript on NEOPLASMA website must be included; the final published PDF may not be displayed.

Authorship

In general, persons listed as authors should have contributed substantially to the conception and design of the study, acquisition, analysis and interpretation of data; drafting or revising of the article, final approval of the version to be published. It is matter of authors decision or their institutions‘ policies who should be listed as an author. Acquisition of funding, collection of data, or general supervision of the research group alone does not constitute authorship. The corresponding author is responsible for ensuring that all authors have agreed to be authors of the submitted manuscript, to its content, and its submission to NEOPLASMA.

Co-authorship designations: in the collaborative studies, up to two additional corresponding authors may be designated. All corresponding authors should be indicated in the online submission MMPlus system, as well as identified at the title page of manuscript in the Affiliation list as "^$corresponding author". Beyond corresponding author designations, declaration of co-authorship is only permitted for the first author position. There is a limit of 3 authors that can be designated as co-first authors and a description of each author's specific contribution must be provided in the Author contribution section of the manuscript. All co-first authors should be identified as "^#co-first author" in the Affiliation list.

Preparing manuscript for online submission

For peer-review only manuscripts in English are accepted. Authors are welcome to use NEOPLASMA's implemented online Manuscript submission and review system MMPlus as described in Submit section.

Files required for online manuscript submission

• Cover letter a/ provides a brief description of the novelty and significance of the results in the field of oncological research. Authors should confirm that b/ neither the submitted manuscript nor any similar manuscript, in whole or in part, with the exemption of abstract, is under consideration, or published elsewhere, includes the posting of manuscript on the authors' personal or institutional websites. It is the responsibility of corresponding author to state this on behalf of all authors. It is an option c/ to conclude the letter with a "gist" - a concise expression that articulates the main output of the article, using the maximum of 250 characters, including spaces. Authors are encouraged d/ to provide the names of three potential reviewers (together with contact addresses, telephone numbers, and e-mail addresses) and also indicate those who may have a potential conflict of interest.

• Manuscript text (with tables embedded) is a main document file, acceptable in following file formats: doc, docx, odt or rtf format
• Figure files for graphs, diagrams, lineart work as well as photographic type of images use following file formats:  jpg, jpeg, tif, tiff. Each figure should be submitted as a separate file. The minimum acceptable resolution for all figures is 600 dpi at the desired print size. The size of figures: one column width: 84 mm or two columns width: 173 mm, height maximum: 205 mm. When your graphs should be reduced to the size of a single column, the smallest type size on the figure must be at least 2 mm (6 pt) and all symbols must be discernible. DO NOT insert figures/charts created in spreadsheet softwares into the manuscript text file either as embedded objects or as images. When you are using specialized software to create your charts, graphs, diagrams please upload them as high resolution images (600 dpi). In chart/graph use black color for title, axis lines, axis names, and legend text. For graphs, diagrams, lineart work as well as for photographic type images use tif (LZW compressed) or jpeg format of files.

Multipanel composite figures (labeled A, B, C, etc.) should be assembled into a single figure that fits on one page (two column width) and should be provided as a single file.

Any figure submitted in color will be reviewed and processed with the understanding that the figure will be published in color. If you do not intend for your figure to appear in color in the printed version of journal, please ensure that you submit an additional grayscale version for printing purposes. Graph placed in figure should has name for the x and y axis, the legend placed either inside the chart or its graphic marks explained in the Legends to figures. Use black color for graph title, x and y axis lines and names, and legend text. Do not use minor tick marks, the outline around the graph, and horizontal gridlines on the chart.

• Supplementary file (if applicable) contains additional result data, figures and legends to figures, but the article must stand on its own merits and be complete and self-explanatory without them.

When author has completed the submission form, he/she will be able to upload the cover letter, manuscript, and graphics files, and supplementary data (if applicable).

NEOPLASMA limits the number of printed pages for research article to 14, for review article it is a matter of agreement with editor-in-chief.

Manuscript text – should be arranged as title page and main text.

title page provides:

Title – should be short, comprehensible and informative

Author(s) – the complete names of all authors, without academic degrees

Name(s) of institution(s) – the affiliation of all authors

Corresponding authors – the author responsible for resolving of all obligations related to the manuscript and its submission; provide his/her address, zip code, telephone and fax numbers, and e-mail address.

Running title – not to exceed 60 characters including spaces

Abstract – non-structured abstract should describe in short the main topic, methods, results and major findings reported in the manuscript; abbreviations should be kept to an absolute minimum, however, if they are needed, they must be explained at first mention within the abstract

Keywords – minimum of 3 and maximum of 6 keywords suitable for indexing

Abbreviations should be kept at minimum and defined upon first use in the text (except of those which are very common). Authors will only use internationally accepted nomenclature (chemical compounds, enzymes, measures in SI units). If there are numerous abbreviations within manuscript, the list of their explanation should appear at the end of title page.

Main text consists of:

Introduction – it is not necessary to cite all of the background literature as introduction is not an extensive review of the literature, but provides the purpose of the study and its relationship to earlier work in the field.

Material & methods – description of experimental methods should be brief but adequate for repetition by qualified investigators. Detailed information only for a new method or significant modification of previously published procedure are required, when citation of adequate reference is provided. All studies involving human subjects must be conducted in accordance with the guidelines of the World Medical Association's Declaration of Helsinki (most recent revision). Authors have to include in this section a statement that the research was approved by the relevant institutional review boards or ethics committees and that all human participants gave written informed consent. NEOPLASMA requires the most humane treatment of animals in the conduct of scientific studies. A statement that animal studies have been reviewed and approved by an appropriate institutional review committee must be included. Authors are obligated to indicate the significance of their observations by appropriate statistical analysis.

Results – should be sufficient to allow the evaluation of results and conclusions; provide concise summary of the data presented in tables and illustrations.

Discussion – interpretes result data without repeating material already presented in the Results. Avoid extensive citations and discussion of published literature; discussion of the wider implications of the findings is encouraged.

Acknowledgement – in this section the names of others contributing to the work who are not identified as authors are provided.

Author contribution – authors submitting to NEOPLASMA will now be required to indicate the contribution(s) each has made to the manuscript, designated by initials. Potential contributions include but are not limited:

Analysis and interpretation of data
Data acquisition
Design of experiments
Development of methodology
Study supervision
Writing, review and/or revision of the manuscript
Other - specify

Conflict of interest - NEOPLASMA requires all authors to disclose any financial conflict of interest that might be construed to influence the results or interpretation of their manuscript. Financial relationships with industry, for example, through employment, consultancies, stock ownership, honoraria, expert testimony, either directly or through immediate family, are usually considered to be the most important conflicts of interest.

Reference list – use the citations judiciously and keep them below the total number of 40 in the research manuscript, whilst do not exceed 90 references in your review article.

The bibliography must give the names of all authors, title of article, name of journal (quotations using international abbreviations), volume, year, first and last page numbers. For book references, give name(s) of author(s), title of article, editors of book, title of book, city, publisher, year and pages. Any references to unpublished work (unpublished data, personal communication, etc.) should be made in the text only.

Users of Reference Manager© software can download .os file for NEOPLASMA style here and users of EndNote© software an output style file .ens here.

 Examples of correct references

In-text citation should be numbered consecutively in the order in which they are first mentioned in the text; for citation in-text the numbers of the appropriate references should be referred in square brackets, comma separated, i.e. [2-5, 6] or [6, 8, 22]. Unpublished results and personal communications are not recommended in the reference list, but may be mentioned in the text.

Reference list examples:

Articles in journals

Tasso R., Augello A., Carida M., Postiglione F., Tibiletti M.G., Bernasconi B., Astigiano S., Fais F., Truini M., Cancedda R., Pennesi G. Development of sarcomas in mice implanted with mesenchymal stem cells seeded onto bioscaffolds. Carcinogenesis 30, (2009) 150-157.

Blair A., Stewart P.A., Hoover R.N. Mortality from lung cancer among workers employed in formaldehyde industries. Am J Ind Med 17, (1990) 683-699.

Li J., Zhang N., Song L.B., Liao W.T., Jiang L.L., Gong L.Y., Wu J., Yuan J., Zhang H.Z., Zeng M.S., Li M. Astrocyte elevated gene-1 is a novel prognostic marker for breast cancer progression and overall patient survival. Clin Cancer Res 14, (2008) 3319-3326.

Books and monographs

Celis J.E., Carter N., Simons K., Small J.V., Hunter T., Shotton D. (Eds.), Cell Biology, Four-Volume Set, Elsevier Academic Press, Burlington, USA, 2005, p. 2328.

Chapters in a book

May K.F., Jinushi M., Dranoff G. Immunosurveillance: Innate and Adaptive Antitumor Immunity. In: Prendergast G.C. and Jaffee E.M. (Eds.), Cancer Immunotherapy. Immune Suppression and Tumor Growth. Elsevier Science, Academic Press, San Diego, USA, 2014, pp. 101-113.

Tables – should be included at the end of the manuscript. Each table should be numbered and cited in sequence using Arabic numerals (i.e. Table 1., Table 2. etc.). All tables should have a concise title, while footnotes are used to explain abbreviations and are placed below the table. Tables should be part of the manuscript document. You can use tables created in your word processing software with table tools or insert them as embedded object from spreadsheet software. Each column must carry an appropriate heading and, if measurements are given, the units should be given with the column heading. Tables must be editable - do not insert tables into manuscript as images. Tables larger than one printed page can be published as supplementary file.

Laboratory data presented in charts or tables should be provided and rounded off according to the number of digits that reflects the precision of the reported results. Exact P values are preferred whether statistically significant or not. P values should be expressed to 3 digits to the right of the decimal point (e.g. in the case of p = 0.048: instead of "p < 0.05" designation use the value p = 0.048, similarly in the case of p = 0.061: instead of p > 0.05 or "not significant" or "NS" use the value p = 0.061). P values less than 0.001 should be designated as "p < 0.001" rather than using exact values (e.g., for values p = 0.0006 or p = 0.00006 use expression "p < 0.001"). The asterisk sign can be used after provided p values as follows: values ranged (0.050 – 0.010> one aterisk (*); two asterisks for (0.010 – 0.001> values, and three asterisks for p values less than 0.001; e.g p = 0.038*, p = 0.010*, p = 0.008**, p = 0.058, p < 0.001***. For additional rounds of comparison use the number sign #, dagger †, and section sign § (Alt+35, Alt+0134, and Alt+0167), respectively.

Legends to figures – legend should have a short title of 15 words or less; the full legend should have a description of the figure and allow readers to understand the figure without referring to the text. Each figure should be numbered and cited in sequence using Arabic numerals (i.e. Figure 1., Figure 2. etc.).

Supplementary data (text, figures, movie) are directly relevant to the article content, are not essential to understanding the conclusions of the paper. Supplementary data may also be that which cannot be included in the main manuscript text due to space constraints (commonly used precedure or methods description), figures of unnecessary control data or files due to file format restrictions. Data that have been previously published are not acceptable.

Because supplementary data are published online at NEOPLASMA website, the graphs, diagrams, or tables can be placed into the supplementary text file as bitmap or picture-enhanced metafile unless Supplementary text file does not exceed 10 MB. The number of supplementary files per article may not exceed 5 and total of all files should not exceed 20 MB.

Article fees (€)

* - 50% discount for APF in 2016

# - if the Open Access option is selected after acceptance, an additional 150 € fee applies.

In the case of article's fee below 20 €, the invoice will be canceled.