Microbiology Online submission guidelines

Online submission

Instructions for supply of source files for publication

General Information

All papers must be submitted online, via the Bench>Press system. Submissions are not accepted in hard copy or by e-mail.

This page gives brief guidelines on the submission procedure. Authors may find it helpful to read through these guidelines before going to the Bench>Press site to submit a paper. Further details and help pages are available on the Bench>Press site. A PDF version of these instructions is available.

Pre-submission checklist

Authors must read the Instructions for Authors and ensure that their paper complies with these before submission
All the authors must have agreed to the submission and have agreed that the corresponding author may act on their behalf throughout the review and publication process
Authors are strongly encouraged to provide the names and contact details of up to five potential referees
Permission must be obtained for any citations of personal communications or unpublished results
Continuous line numbering should be used throughout the manuscript, to facilitate online reviewing
The contents category for the paper should be indicated on the title page (it should also be entered in the Contents Category field of the online submission form)
Any supplementary material associated with the paper should be uploaded as supplementary file(s) at the time of submission, for reviewing with the paper
If papers that have been accepted for publication but not yet published are cited in the manuscript, these must also be uploaded as supplementary file(s)
If the paper reports results of a genome-wide study, relevant data sets must either be available via a public online database or be provided as supplementary files; see the Instructions for Authors for details
Papers are subject to a length charge if they exceed 4500 words and/or eight figures plus tables; further details are available here

Preparing files for submission

Papers can be submitted initially either as a single PDF file or as separate word-processor and image files, which will be compiled into a PDF by the system. The submission system will also attempt to prepare an HTML version of the reference list with links to papers that it can identify on the PubMed and HighWire databases, for use by the reviewers. This conversion will not work reliably if the reference format is incorrect (see the Instructions for Authors for the correct style) - however, an HTML reference list is not essential for review of the paper to proceed. Supplementary material should be submitted as a separate file(s), rather than being incorporated within the single PDF or word-processor file. Supplementary data files will not be converted from their original format. When submitting the revised version of a paper, authors must supply source files for the text and figures, for use in the published version if the paper is accepted.

Submission as a single PDF

Please refer to the Help pages on the Bench>Press site for guidelines on preparing PDFs for submission, including advice on reducing the size of image files (the submitted PDF should preferably not be much larger than 1 MB).

Submission as separate word-processor and image files

Most standard word-processor files will convert successfully to PDF, but please note that .docx files produced in Word 2007 files must not be used: Word 2007 users should save their files as Word 2003 or Word for Macintosh 2004. Times, Times New Roman, Courier, Helvetica and Arial, and the Symbol font for special characters, are the recommended fonts. Other fonts are not guaranteed to successfully convert to PDF. Tables for the main paper must be prepared as part of the word-processor file; they must not be supplied as images or Excel files. (Excel files are, however, acceptable for supplementary data.)

Word-processor files including inserted image files will normally be converted successfully to PDF by the system, but please note that files using OLE (Object Linking and Embedding) technology to display information or embed files are not supported. If the conversion is not satisfactory, either convert the file to PDF yourself, and submit that, or submit the image files separately.

The file types that are supported for submission of separate image files for conversion to PDF are PDF, GIF, TIFF, EPS, JPEG and PowerPoint. A resolution of 300 d.p.i. at a reasonable size of reproduction is recommended; in other words, an image intended to fit in a single column of the journal should be around 1000 pixels wide and an image intended to fit across two columns should be around 2000 pixels wide. The following file types are not supported at the initial submission stage as they can not be converted to PDF by the system: bitmap (.bmp), PICT (.pict), Excel (.xls), Photoshop (.psd), Canvas (.cnv), CorelDRAW (.cdr) and locked or encrypted PDFs. Image files will be converted to PDF and added to the end of the manuscript PDF produced by the system. If any of the image files are very large, it is advisable to reduce their size before submission if possible: refer to the Help pages on the Bench>Press site for guidelines on how to do this.

Source files intended for publication

Our requirements for files intended for publication are different from those for files that will be converted to PDF by the Bench>Press system as part of an initial submission, as set out below. If you are unsure whether your file formats are suitable, please contact the Editorial Office.

Text	The text (including tables, but without embedded figures) must be supplied as a word-processor file. Word files are preferred, but please note that *.docx files produced in Word 2007 can not* be used as source files: Word 2007 users should save their files as Word 2003 or Word for Macintosh 2004. TeX and LaTeX formats can not be used. Tables. Tables must not be supplied as image files (TIFF, PDF, PowerPoint); files containing tables prepared as images (whether provided separately or pasted into a Word file) will be returned to the author and this may delay publication. Tables should be prepared using your word-processor's table functions, with individual entries in individual table cells. They must not be supplied as tab- or space-separated text or as multiple entries separated by line breaks in single table cells. Tables prepared in Excel can be accepted but are not desirable. Equations. Equations that cannot be represented using the keyboard can be prepared using the Word equation editor (in versions up to Word 2003) or MathType. Word 2007 users should not** use the default equation editor to prepare equations as it is not compatible with any other current software; equations in Word 2007 should be prepared using the MathType equation editor or the 'legacy' equation editor included as part of Word 2007 (i.e. the equation editor included with Word up to and including Word 2003, accessible from 'Insert Object' on the 'Insert' ribbon).
Line figures	Line figures should be produced as vector rather than bitmap (raster) images. Acceptable formats are PDF, EPS, CorelDRAW (.cdr; version 11 or earlier), Adobe Illustrator (.ai), Excel (.xls), Word and PowerPoint. Fonts must be embedded for figures supplied as PDF or EPS. TIFF and other bitmap formats are not recommended for line figures; if their use cannot be avoided, the resolution should be at least 600 d.p.i.
Halftone figures (photographs)	The preferred format for halftones (i.e. photographic images) is TIFF, but PDF, EPS and JPG/JPEG are also acceptable. If image files are pasted into Word, PowerPoint, Photoshop, etc., in order to add lettering or other annotation or to combine line and halftone images, the original unlabelled halftone images should also be supplied. A final print resolution of 300 d.p.i. or more is recommended; i.e. an image intended to fit in a single column of the journal should be around 1000 pixels wide and an image intended to fit across two columns should be around 2000 pixels wide. Colour images should use CMYK colour (which can be reproduced in print) rather than RGB (which cannot be reproduced faithfully using four-colour printing) (this setting can be accessed in Adobe Photoshop via Image:Mode:CMYK Color, for example). For some colour images, such as fluorescence micrographs, it may be useful to submit an RGB version of the image to be mounted online as supplementary material.
Scanning images	If figures must be scanned, a resolution of 300 d.p.i. is usually sufficient for same-size reproduction of halftone (photographic) images without text, whereas 600 or 1200 d.p.i. should be used for figures containing lines and/or text. The scanned image should be cropped to remove as much white space as possible and supplied in TIFF format.
Supplementary material	Files supplied as supplementary material should follow the appropriate guidelines given above. If supplementary files contain material that cannot be represented in print (sound, video, computer programs, etc.), please consult the Editorial Office for advice on suitable formats.

Last modified: 22 August 2007

INT J SYST EVOL MICROBIOL	MICROBIOLOGY	J GEN VIROL
J MED MICROBIOL	ALL SGM JOURNALS