Molecular Psychiatry

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Guide to Authors

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

Is my manuscript suitable for Molecular Psychiatry? (Scope + Editorial Note)
How do I format my manuscript for Molecular Psychiatry? (Format of Papers)
How do I submit my manuscript to Molecular Psychiatry? (Submission of Papers)

ABOUT THE JOURNAL

Scope

We define molecular psychiatry broadly, as an interdisciplinary field focused on the elucidation of the fundamental biological mechanisms underlying psychiatric disorders and their treatment. The scope of the journal parallels the breadth of this field, with the goal of providing a forum for integrating molecular medicine with clinical psychiatry. Molecular Psychiatry will publish hypotheses-driven, high-quality work in molecular, cellular or integrative neuroscience as well as clinical research in psychiatry, including genetics, pathophysiology, imaging, and psychopharmacology. In addition to Original Articles, the journal features News & Commentary, Perspectives, Feature Reviews, and Immediate Communications. Given the potential for a high number of negative genetic studies, a strong rationale is required for submissions of negative genetic data.

Topics Covered
Research at the cellular, molecular, integrative, epidemiological, translational, clinical, imaging, psychopharmacology, and treatment outcome levels. Cutting-edge articles are highly cited in the fields of psychiatry, psychology, neuroscience, biochemistry & molecular biology.

Editor Julio Licinio, MD

Frequency 12 issues a year

Abstracted in MEDLINE
Current Contents
Current Contents Life Sciences
Science Citation Index
Neuroscience Citation Index
SciSearch
Research Alert
SciSearch
EMBASE/Excerpta Medica
SCIExpanded
PsycINFO

Editorial Note

Molecular Psychiatryis an independent journal published by Nature Publishing Group, a division of Macmillan Publishers Ltd. All contributions and general correspondence regarding editorial matters should be addressed to the Editor and sent to the editorial office. Manuscripts submitted to the journal must represent reports of original research. Authors will be notified of acceptance, rejection or need for revision within approximately 3 weeks. When a manuscript is returned to the corresponding author for revision, it should be returned to the editor within 2 months, otherwise it may be considered withdrawn. It is understood that by publishing a paper in Molecular Psychiatry, authors agree to make freely available to colleagues in academic research any plasmids, viruses, antibodies, nucleic acids and living materials such as microbial strains and cell lines that were used in the research and that are not available from commercial suppliers. To expedite the review process, authors should recommend five reviewers. Please provide the name, address, telephone and fax number, e-mail address and area of expertise for each. Note that recommended reviewers will be used at the discretion of the editor. Authors are asked to write their manuscripts in English using an easily readable style. Spelling and phraseology should conform either to standard English or to standard American usage and should be consistent throughout the paper.

FORMAT OF PAPERS

Article Types Table

Article Type Description Max Word Count

Original Article These should follow the structure outlined below Non-structured Abstract of 150-250 words, and a brief Introduction that assumes the reader is knowledgeable in the field (no more than 1500 words). The word count is 5000 words maximum, excluding references, with no more that 5 display items (pictures and/or tables) and 75 references.

Feature Review Scholarly reviews of topics within the scope of Molecular Psychiatry are commissioned and will be considered for publication after peer review. We will also consider special review formats such as 'sounding board', 'commentary', 'hypothesis' or 'point of view'. Please send a one-page letter of inquiry to the editor before preparing your manuscript. We recommend 4,000 words max

Letters to the Editor Scientific correspondence meets any of the following criteria: short reports of a novel, topical finding of general interest, usually needing only one small figure or table; comments on original research papers or other technical material published in Molecular Psychiatry (see below); communication of preliminary results of exceptional interest that are particularly topical and relevant, and for which fast publication is essential; or, a scientific perspective on a topical issue of international public interest.
Contributions should contain no more than 700 words, or 900 words if there is no figure or table.

Titles may be changed by the editors for space or other reasons. Authors will be consulted about title changes, but Molecular Psychiatry will make the final decision.

Contributions should start with a two- or three-sentence paragraph that contains the message of the article without specialized terminology.

Contributions should have a simple message that requires only one small figure or table. Figures and tables should be sized so that they can be reduced to single-column width (58mm). They should be presented in a rectangular shape, and should be as simple as possible.

Contributions should not have more than 10 references (ideally fewer); reference style is Vancouver, but do not include titles of articles. All other reference guidelines are as for Original Research (see ‘References’ section below).

Letters to the Editor should not include an Acknowledgments section.

‘Joint first authors' are not allowed.

News & Commentary Short overviews of new original work are published in this section. Text should be preceded by a brief sentence of 20-30 words that summarizes the article.

Perspectives These are summaries of development in fast-moving areas of interest to the readers of Molecular Psychiatry. Perspective articles will be solicited. No more than five printed pages in length.

Immediate Communications These are definitive studies of high merit, exceptional significance and novelty, which warrant rapid dissemination. This format is not for preliminary data, and should be used solely for complete studies of exceptional caliber. Rigorous review according to stringent criteria will be completed whenever possible by members of the editorial board. Immediate Communications are selected from accepted manuscripts at the sole discretion of the Editor. Review and publication of Immediate Communications will be maximally expedited with a goal of publication within 3-10 weeks of submission. Authors who wish to have their papers considered by the Editor as Immediate Communications should indicate thus in their cover letter; however, this in no way ensures the Editor will select the paper for this category.

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.:
Barbosa MDFS, Ngyen QA, Tchernev VT, Ashley JA, Detter JC, Blaydes SM et al. Identification of the homologous beige and Chediak-Higashi syndrome genes. Nature 1996; 382: 262-265.

Journal article, e-pub ahead of print:
Yolken RH, Torrey EF. Are some cases of psychosis caused by microbial agents? A review of the evidence. Mol Psychiatry 2008; e-pub ahead of print 12 February 2008; doi:10.1038/mp.2008.5.

Journal article, in press:
Jeste DV, Blazer D, Casey D, Meeks T, Salzman C, Schneider L et al. ACNP white paper: update on use of antipsychotic drugs in elderly persons with dementia. Neuropsychopharmacology (in press).

Complete book:
Badcock C. Evolutionary Psychology: A Critical Introduction. Polity Press: Cambridge, UK, 2000.

Chapter in book:
Panksepp J. Affective neuroscience: a conceptual framework for the neurobiological study of emotions. In Strongman K (ed). International Reviews of Emotion Research. Wiley: Chichester, UK, 1991, pp 59–99.

Abstract:
Pasanen J. Epigenetics and bipolar disorder. Am J Med Genet C Semin Med Genet 2003; 123(Suppl 1): 45 (abstract 678).

Letter to the Editor
Kyritsis AP, Rao JS. Cloning the differences between two complex genomes [letter]. Science 1993; 259: 946.

EndNote users should select the Molecular Psychiatry 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

First, if you have not done so already, register for an account. HOME http://mts-mp.nature.com/letters/mp_copyright.pdf. US Government employees should use the form at http://mts-mp.nature.com/letters/LTP_gov.pdf . For the Molecular Psychiatry open licence to publish form go to http://mts-mp.nature.com/letters/MPOpen_LTP.pdf.

Molecular Psychiatry 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 Molecular Psychiatry Open FAQs and payment form.

Colour charges

Number of colour illustrations		1	2	3	4	5	6	7+
Cost	Rest of world USA	£494 $987	£735 $1,470	£977 $1,953	£1,124 $2,247	£1,271 $2,541	£1,397 $2,793	£126 $252	per additional colour figure

Page charges
The cost for each printed page of published manuscripts is £60 ($120).

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: Molecular Psychiatry, Nature Publishing Group, The Macmillan Building, 4 Crinan Street, London, N1 9XW, UK.

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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