Guide to Authors

Welcome to the electronic manuscript submission website for The Pharmacogenomics Journal. The instructions below are structured so you can quickly and easily answer the following questions:

1. Is my manuscript suitable for The Pharmacogenomics Journal? (Scope + Editorial Note)
2. How do I format my manuscript for The Pharmacogenomics Journal? (Format of Papers)
3. How do I submit my manuscript to The Pharmacogenomics Journal? (Submission of Papers)

OTHER LINKS

• About the journal
• Format of papers
• Preparation of Original Articles
• House style
• Submission of papers
• Editorial policy
• Ethics and bioethics
• Peer review policy
• Corrections
• About npg online services

ABOUT THE JOURNAL

Scope

Topics Covered
Key areas of coverage include:

• Effects of genetic variability on drug toxicity and efficacy


• Identification and functional characterization of polymorphisms relevant to drug action


• Pharmacodynamic variation and drug efficacy


• Pharmacokinetic variation and drug toxicity


• Integration of new developments in the genome project and proteomics into clinical medicine, pharmacology, and therapeutics


• Clinical applications of genomic science


• Identification of novel genomic targets for drug development


• Potential benefits of pharmacogenomics

Editor	Professor Julio Licinio, MD
Frequency	6 issues a year
Abstracted in	BIOSIS Biotechnology Abstracts Cambridge Scientific Abstracts Embase/Excerpta Medica Index Medicus/Medline

Editorial Note

FORMAT OF PAPERS

Article Type	Description	Word Count
Original Article	These are reports whose conclusions represent a substantial advance in the understanding of an important problem.
Review	These survey recent developments in topical areas of scientific research or, on occasion, more wide-ranging subjects. Authors are encouraged to include tables and figures, as well as suitable material to be used in text boxes (to highlight salient points of the paper or expand on certain concepts) and a glossary of specialist terms.	Review articles should have a title; short title; abstract of no more than 150 words; and main text of between 3000 and 5000 words (excluding references)
News and Commentary	Inform readers about new scientific advances, as reported either in recently published papers or at scientific meetings.	The opening paragraph should consist of a precis of 20-30 words. News and Commentary articles should not exceed 1500 words and 15 references. Up to two tables and two figures may be included.
Perspectives	Provide an update on developments in fast-moving areas of interest.	Perspectives articles should not exceed 1500 words and 15 references. Up to two tables and two figures may be included.
Ethical, Economics, Legal and Social (EELS)	Present well-argued, thought-provoking analysis of issues and considerations involved in both basic research and in practice.	EELS articles should not exceed 2000 words and 30 references. Up to two tables and two figures may be included.
Clinical Implications	Are either hypothetical or based on current clinical trials and encourage the transition from basic research to clinical practice by presenting a diagnostic or treatment challenge.	Clinical Implications articles should not exceed 2000 words and 30 references. Up to two tables and two figures may be included.

Preparation of Original Articles

Abstract and Keywords
The abstract should not exceed 200 words and three to six keywords should be included to aid web searches after publication.

References
Only papers directly related to the article should be cited. Exhaustive lists should be avoided. References should follow the Vancouver format. In the text they should appear as numbers starting at one and at the end of the paper they should be listed (double-spaced) in numerical order corresponding to the order of citation in the text. All authors should be quoted for papers with up to six authors; for papers with more than six authors, the first six only should be quoted, followed by et al. Abbreviations for titles of medical periodicals should conform to those used in the latest edition of Index Medicus. The first and last page numbers for each reference should be provided. Abstracts and letters must be identified as such. Papers in press and papers already submitted for publication may be included in the list of references but no citation is required for work that is not yet submitted for publication.

Journal article, up to six authors followed by et al.:
G Casari G, De Fusco M, Ciarmatori S, Zeviani M, Mora M, Fernandez P et al. Spastic paraplegia and OXPHOS impairment caused by mutations in paraplegin, a nuclear-encoded mitochondrial metalloprotease. Cell1998; 93: 973-983.

Journal article, e-pub ahead of print:
Séguin B, Hardy B, Singer PA, Daar AS. Bidil: recontextualizing the race debate. Pharmacogenomics J 2008; e-pub ahead of print 15 January 2008; doi:10.1038/sj.tpj.6500489.

Journal article, in press:
Lesch KP, Gutknecht L. Pharmacogenetics of the serotonin transporter. Prog Neuropsychopharmacol Biol Psychiatry (in press).

Complete book:
Heilman KM, Valenstein E. Clinical Neuropsychology. Oxford University Press: New York, 1995.

Chapter in book:
Schatzberg AF, Schildkraut JJ. Recent studies on norepinephine systems in mood disorders. In: Bloom FE, Kupfer DJ (eds). Psychopharmacology: The Fourth Generation of Progress. Raven Press: New York, 1995, pp 911–920.

Abstract:
Hood E. Pharmacogenomics: the promise of personalized medicine. Environ Health Perspect 2003; 111(Suppl 1): 581 (abstract 123).

Correspondence:
McGinn E. Medical treatment and weight gain [letter]. Prev Chronic Dis 2007; 4: 80.

EndNote users should select the The Pharmacogenomics Journal output style for the correct reference style.

Personal communications must be allocated a number and included in the list of references in the usual way or simply referred to in the text; the authors may choose which method to use. In either case authors must obtain permission from the individual concerned to quote his/her unpublished work.

House Style

Gene Nomenclature
Authors should use approved nomenclature for gene symbols, and use symbols rather than italicized full names (Ttn, not titin). Please consult the appropriate nomenclature databases for correct gene names and symbols. Approved human gene symbols are provided by HUGO Gene Nomenclature Committee (HGNC), e-mail: nome@galton.ucl.ac.uk; see also http://www.gene.ucl.ac.uk/nomenclature. Approved mouse symbols are provided by The Jackson Laboratory, e-mail: nomen@informatics.jax.org; see also http://www.informatics.jax.org/mgihome/nomen. For proposed gene names that are not already approved, please submit the gene symbols to the appropriate nomenclature committees as soon as possible, as these must be deposited and approved before publication of an article. Avoid listing multiple names of genes (or proteins) separated by a slash, as in 'Oct4/Pou5f1', as this is ambiguous (it could mean a ratio, a complex, alternative names or different subunits). Use one name throughout and include the other at first mention: 'Oct4 (also known as Pou5f1)'.

SUBMISSION OF PAPERS

The Pharmacogenomics Journal open

Upon submission of an original research paper, authors can indicate within the manuscript tracking system whether they wish to pay a one off fee to allow their article to become freely available immediately upon publication. The fee is £2,000/$3,000/€2,400 (plus VAT where applicable) and can be paid via credit card or by requesting an invoice be raised.

By paying this fee authors are permitted to post the final, published, pdf of their article on a website, institutional repository or other free public server immediately on publication.

Upon acceptance, authors must fill out and send back a payment form. This is mandatory and failure to send in the payment form along with the License to Publish form will result in the article being published as a standard paper behind access control. The license to publish form has been amended to offer authors the choice of which license to use on their paper and these choices are described below:

The first is the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License and allows readers to download the article and share it with others as long as they mention the author and link back to the original article. The article cannot be changed in any way or used commercially.

The second is the Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial Share Alike 3.0 Unported License and allows readers to alter, transform, or build upon the article and then distribute the resulting work under the same or similar license to this one. The work must be attributed back to the original author and commercial use is not permitted.

For further information please see the The Pharmacogenomics Journal Open FAQs and payment form.

Color charges

Further information
To find out who to contact for advertising, subscriptions, permissions, papers in production or publishing a supplement, please visit our publisher’s contacts page. Alternatively, you can write to: The Pharmacogenomics Journal, Nature Publishing Group, 75 Varick St., 9th Floor, New York, NY 10013 USA.

EDITORIAL POLICY

Statement of Ethics

Peer-review policy

Correction and retraction process

Non-Native Speakers of English
Researchers who are not native speakers of English who submit manuscripts to international journals sometimes receive negative comments from referees or editors about the English-language usage in their manuscripts, and these problems can contribute to a decision to reject a paper. To help reduce the possibility of such problems, we strongly encourage such authors to take at least one of the following steps:

• Have your manuscript reviewed for clarity by a colleague whose native language is English.
• Use one of the many English language editing services that are available, such as that offered by Nature Publishing Group Language Editing. An editor will improve the English to ensure that your meaning is clear and to identify problems that require your review.

Please note that the use of Nature Publishing Group Language Editing is at the author's own expense and in no way implies that the article will be selected for peer review or accepted by an NPG journal (or any other journal). The decisions that the editors of any NPG journal make based on the quality and suitability of a manuscript for that journal are entirely independent of whether that manuscript has been language-edited by Nature Publishing Group Language Editing.

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