Submission guidelines

Authorship Policy

Authorship should incorporate and should be restricted to those who have contributed substantially to the work in one or more of the following categories:

• Conceived of or designed study

• Performed research

• Analyzed data

• Contributed new methods or models

• Wrote the paper

Types of papers

Archives of Virology publishes Original Articles, Brief Reports, Brief Reviews, Annotated Sequence Records, and Special Issues.

Please submit your manuscript in the correct format for each article type. Manuscripts in an incorrect format will be immediately returned to the authors for reformatting.

Every submitted manuscript will be examined by the software "ithenticate" for evidence of plagiarism. Manuscripts that are flagged by this software will be returned to the authors for rewriting.

The journal will accept manuscripts with high-quality electron micrographs of viruses representing new taxa. Genomic variants and papers without proof of novelty will not be considered for peer review. Electron micrographs of poor contrast, unsharp and of small size, as well as micrographs without an indication of dimensions or of the methods used will be rejected. Complete particle descriptions, comparisons with viruses of the same host groups, discussion of relationships and evidence of novelty must be presented.

Original Articles

Papers describing sequences only will only be considered for publication as “Original Articles” or “Brief Reports” if the genomic organization derived from the nucleotide sequences determined differs fundamentally from those of typical members of the virus genus/family. Preferably, the biological significance and function of certain sequence differences should also have been experimentally addressed.

If a manuscript only describes the c•o•m•p•l•e•t•e sequence of a virus for which no or only very limited sequence information is available, the manuscript can be considered for submission in the format of an Annotated Sequence Record (see link ‘Annotated Sequence Records’)”. To facilitate a thorough review of any sequence-based manuscript, sequences generated by the author(s) and described in the manuscript must be either available from GenBank or some other public database, or provided as FASTA (or similar) files together with the submitted manuscript.

Original articles should not exceed 20 pages when printed (a manuscript pages with 3600 characters usually results in one printed page).

Their content should be arranged as follows:

• Title Page (see below)
• Abstract (see below)
• Introduction: The Introduction should supply sufficient background information to establish the context of the present study—it should allow the reader to see the rationale for the present work and to understand and evaluate present results—it should not be too general, nor should it take the form of an exhaustive review of the subject. The Introduction should usually end with one or two sentences that capture the essence of the article: e.g., “In this paper we report the discovery of …”

• Materials and methods: The Materials and methods section should provide sufficient information to permit the work to be repeated. For commonly used methods, a brief description (to avoid constant need to refer to previous publications) and citation of a reference are sufficient. New methods should be described completely, giving sources of unusual chemicals, equipment, and supplies. When large numbers of viruses, mutants, etc., are used in a study, a table may be used to identify sources, properties, etc.

• Results: The Results section should include the outcome of experiments; extensive interpretations of experimental data should be reserved for the Discussion section. Data should be presented in text, tables, or figures—the same data should not be repeated in two or three forms.

• Discussion: The Discussion section should not merely restate the experimental results and immediate conclusions. It should be constructive, interpretive, analytical, and it should establish the relationship between the results obtained and previously published work. It should note problems, such as conflicts with the ideas and data of others, and it should indicate the value of the results for future research.

• Acknowledgments: Acknowledgments of personal assistance and financial support should be stated in concise terms.

• References (see below)

Brief Reports

Papers describing sequences only will only be considered for publication as “Original Articles” or “Brief Reports” if the genomic organization derived from the nucleotide sequences determined differs fundamentally from those of typical members of the virus genus/family. Preferably, the biological significance and function of certain sequence differences should also have been experimentally addressed.

If a manuscript only describes the complete sequence of a virus for which no or only very limited sequence information is available, the manuscript can be considered for submission in the format of an Annotated Sequence Record (see link ‘Annotated Sequence Records’)”. To facilitate a thorough review of any sequence-based manuscript, sequences generated by the author(s) and described in the manuscript must be either available from GenBank or some other public database, or provided as FASTA (or similar) files together with the submitted manuscript.

Brief Reports are intended for the presentation of observations that do not warrant a full-length article—they are not meant for preliminary communication of incomplete studies.

• They should not exceed six pages (21000 characters incl. spaces) when printed. This should include all the text, i. e. short Abstract (no more than 100 words), Acknowledgements, References and legends. Division of the text by headings of sections should be omitted, but the general sequence of introduction, materials and methods, results, and discussion may be generally maintained. References should be cited in the same way as in full-length articles. In addition to the text, a maximum of 3 figures or 3 Tables (any combination of 3 such items) can be included.

Annotated Sequence Records

• Annotated Sequence Record papers are intended to draw attention to the availability of c•o•m•p•l•e•t•e viral sequences that are appreciably different from those of known sequenced isolates. Currently, we welcome the molecular description of isolate(s) in the format of an Annotated Sequence Record only if (i) the complete genome sequence of a new or established member of a virus genus is reported for the first time and (ii) the isolate of the virus under study differs substantially in sequence identity (i.e. from already deposited or published type (reference) sequences), genome organization or recombination and/or differs strikingly from other isolates of the virus in biological properties. Importantly, authors should clearly underscore the novelty of their sequence data by using the species and genus demarcation values given by the relevant ICTV study group. Submissions that do not satisfy the above stipulations will be rejected without peer review. Authors are strongly encouraged to characterise the biological properties of the virus isolate under study in more detail so that submission as a brief report or an original article would be more appropriate. Sequences generated by high throughput sequencing must be confirmed by substantial RACE data and the raw HTS data made available in a publically accessible database. Sequences derived from pooled samples of biological specimens will not be accepted for publication. Genome sequences generated by data-mining will not be accepted.
• Division of the text by headings of sections should be omitted.
• To facilitate a thorough review of any sequence-based manuscript, sequences generated by the author(s) and described in the manuscript must be either available from GenBank or some other public database, or provided as FASTA (or similar) files together with the submitted manuscript.
• These papers should not exceed two pages in length, when printed (which equals four manuscript pages with 1800 characters each [incl. spaces], including references and figure legends, but excluding the title page and tables) and should not have more than 2 figures or tables.
• The report should give information on the provenance of the virus material (isolated by whom, when and where; together with a reference if available), a reference to the sequence (accession number), an annotated diagram of the sequence information (ORFs, promoters, control sequences etc.), some biological information (host range, pathogenicity, etc.) and the justification (i.e. a biological reason that can be derived) for considering why the material is different from previously published isolates.
• Submissions for annotated sequence reports containing only the isolation of a bacteriophage and its genome sequence will no longer be accepted. Such reports must also include a thorough characterisation of the bacteriophage (e.g. transmission electron micrograph (TEM), host spectrum, kinetics of replication, etc) and thus qualify as a brief report or an original article.

Review

Reviews are intended to draw together important information from recent publications on subjects of broad interest. They are meant to provide a venue for critical examination and considered opinion of such information.

• Reviews are not meant to be encyclopedic, and should not exceed 20 pages when printed. Reviews may contain figures and tables. References should be cited in the same way as in full-length articles. It is recommended that authors contact a member of the Editorial Board beforehand to determine if a proposed review is likely to be suitable for publication.

Special Issues

• Special issues of Archives of Virology are published to record the proceedings of meetings, symposia, conferences, and congresses on various virologic topics, special issues are also published to record multi-authored treatises and reviews of large, complex virologic topics. In general, special issues are of similar size and page format as the regular issues of Archives of Virology; the number of pages per issue is limited to 240 pages. The Archives of Virology provides full and flexible publishing and marketing services, in timely fashion. Individuals who are organizing a meeting, symposium, conference, or congress, and individuals who would like to organize the writing and publication of a treatise or large review are invited to communicate directly with the Special Issues Editor for further information.

Virology Division News:

Papers published under the rubric Virology Division News (VDN) should describe news and developments that are of interest to the Virology Community, including papers on virus taxonomy, classification, and nomenclature, as well as minutes of IUMS or ICTV committees and obituaries of prominent virologists.

If the authors suggest or discuss novel taxa, the authors should include the following Disclaimer to the article:

• The taxonomic changes suggested/proposed/described here

  (i) have not been endorsed by the ICTV Executive Committee,

  (ii) may differ from any new taxonomy that is ultimately approved by the ICTV, and

  (iii) is presented for discussion only but has no official standing.

Further and if applicable, the authors should add the following sentence: “this article is related to an ongoing taxonomic proposal, submitted to the ICTV but not yet accepted at the time of submission."

Editorial procedure

Disclaimers: Statements disclaiming governmental or any other type of approval or endorsement will be deleted by the publisher.

Manuscript Submission

Manuscript Submission

Submission of a manuscript implies: that the work described has not been published before; that it is not under consideration for publication anywhere else; that its publication has been approved by all co-authors, if any, as well as by the responsible authorities – tacitly or explicitly – at the institute where the work has been carried out. The publisher will not be held legally responsible should there be any claims for compensation.

Permissions

Authors wishing to include figures, tables, or text passages that have already been published elsewhere are required to obtain permission from the copyright owner(s) for both the print and online format and to include evidence that such permission has been granted when submitting their papers. Any material received without such evidence will be assumed to originate from the authors.

Online Submission

Please follow the hyperlink “Submit manuscript” and upload all of your manuscript files following the instructions given on the screen.

Source Files

Please ensure you provide all relevant editable source files at every submission and revision. Failing to submit a complete set of editable source files will result in your article not being considered for review. For your manuscript text please always submit in common word processing formats such as .docx or LaTeX.

Please note:

During the online submission process, authors will be prompted for classifications used by the journal to assign editors and reviewers. These classifications should always contain at least one virus family to support the assignment process.

Authors submitting a manuscript should suggest at least two potential reviewers who are acknowledged to have expertise in the subject of the work. These persons must not be or have been members of the institution(s) of the authors or have been associated with them. Being associated in this regard is referring to authors and suggested reviewers publishing together within the last two years.

The current affiliation e-mail address (i.e. hotmail, gmail, yahoo, addresses are not acceptable) as well as an institutional web page address and area of expertise must be provided for each person suggested. Archives of Virology will use such recommended reviewers at its own discretion.

Authors may also indicate up to three reviewers who should not be invited for assessment of the respective paper.

Title Page

Please make sure your title page contains the following information.

Title

The title should be concise and informative.

Author information

• The name(s) of the author(s)
• The affiliation(s) of the author(s), i.e. institution, (department), city, (state), country
• A clear indication and an active e-mail address of the corresponding author
• If available, the 16-digit ORCID of the author(s)

If address information is provided with the affiliation(s) it will also be published.

For authors that are (temporarily) unaffiliated we will only capture their city and country of residence, not their e-mail address unless specifically requested.

Large Language Models (LLMs), such as ChatGPT, do not currently satisfy our authorship criteria. Notably an attribution of authorship carries with it accountability for the work, which cannot be effectively applied to LLMs. Use of an LLM should be properly documented in the Methods section (and if a Methods section is not available, in a suitable alternative part) of the manuscript. The use of an LLM (or other AI-tool) for "AI assisted copy editing" purposes does not need to be declared. In this context, we define the term "AI assisted copy editing" as AI-assisted improvements to human-generated texts for readability and style, and to ensure that the texts are free of errors in grammar, spelling, punctuation and tone. These AI-assisted improvements may include wording and formatting changes to the texts, but do not include generative editorial work and autonomous content creation. In all cases, there must be human accountability for the final version of the text and agreement from the authors that the edits reflect their original work.

Abstract

Please provide an abstract of 150 to 250 words. The abstract should not contain any undefined abbreviations or unspecified references.

For life science journals only (when applicable)

• Trial registration number and date of registration for prospectively registered trials
• Trial registration number and date of registration, followed by “retrospectively registered” for retrospectively registered trials

Statements and Declarations

The following statements should be included under the heading "Statements and Declarations" for inclusion in the published paper. Please note that submissions that do not include relevant declarations will be returned as incomplete.

• Competing Interests: Authors are required to disclose financial or non-financial interests that are directly or indirectly related to the work submitted for publication. Please refer to “Competing Interests and Funding” below for more information on how to complete this section.

Please see the relevant sections in the submission guidelines for further information as well as various examples of wording. Please revise/customize the sample statements according to your own needs.

Text

Text Formatting

Manuscripts should be submitted in Word.

• Use a normal, plain font (e.g., 10-point Times Roman) for text.
• Use italics for emphasis.
• Use the automatic page numbering function to number the pages.
• Do not use field functions.
• Use tab stops or other commands for indents, not the space bar.
• Use the table function, not spreadsheets, to make tables.
• Use the equation editor or MathType for equations.
• Save your file in docx format (Word 2007 or higher) or doc format (older Word versions).

Manuscripts with mathematical content can also be submitted in LaTeX. We recommend using Springer Nature’s LaTeX template.

Headings

Please use no more than three levels of displayed headings.

Abbreviations

Abbreviations should be defined at first mention and used consistently thereafter.

Footnotes

Footnotes can be used to give additional information, which may include the citation of a reference included in the reference list. They should not consist solely of a reference citation, and they should never include the bibliographic details of a reference. They should also not contain any figures or tables.

Footnotes to the text are numbered consecutively; those to tables should be indicated by superscript lower-case letters (or asterisks for significance values and other statistical data). Footnotes to the title or the authors of the article are not given reference symbols.

Always use footnotes instead of endnotes.

Acknowledgments

Acknowledgments of people, grants, funds, etc. should be placed in a separate section on the title page. The names of funding organizations should be written in full.

Scientific style (including important instructions for nucleotide submission and phylogenetic trees)

Availability of viruses, mutants/variants, cells

Submission of a manuscript implies that all viruses, novel mutants and variants, genes, plasmids, vector constructs, and cell lines described in the manuscript will be made freely available for distribution upon request to all qualified members of the scientific community for research purposes.

Nucleotide sequence data

Only in exceptional circumstances will long sequences be published. New nucleotide data must be submitted and deposited in the DDBJ/EMBL/GenBank databases and an accession number obtained before the paper can be accepted for publication. Submission to any one of the three collaborating databanks is sufficient to ensure data entry in all. The accession number should be included in the manuscript e.g., as a footnote on the title page: ‘Note: Nucleotide sequence data reported are available in the DDBJ/EMBL/GenBank databases under the accession number(s)----’. If requested, the database will withhold release of data until publication. The most convenient method for submitting sequence data is by World Wide Web:

DDBJ via SAKURA

EMBL via WEBIN

GenBankTM via BankIt

or stand-alone submission tool Sequin:

Sequin

For special types of submissions (e.g., genomes, bulk submissions, etc.) additional submission protocols are available from the above sites.

Papers dealing mainly with sequences will be considered for publication as " Original Article " or " Brief Report " only if the genomic organisation derived from the reported nucleotide sequence differs fundamentally from those of typical members of the virus genus/family and, preferably , also if the biological significance and functions of certain sequence differences have been experimentally addressed. In the absence of biological data , manuscripts describing only sequences can be submitted as an Annotated Sequence Record.

Database Contact Information

DDBJ: Center for Information Biology and DNA Databank of Japan. National Institute of Genetics, 1111 Yata, Mishima, Shizuoka 411-8540, Japan; telephone: +81 559 81 6853; fax: +81 559 81 6849; e-mail: ddbj@ddbj.nig.ac.jp; web URL: http://www.ddbj.nig.ac.jp/

EMBL: EMBL Nucleotide Sequence Submissions, European Bioinformatics Institute, Wellcome Trust Genome Campus, Hinxton, Cambridge CB 10 1SD U.K.; telephone: +44 1223494499; fax: +44 1223 494472; e-mail: E-mail: datasubs@ebi.ac.uk ; web URL: http://www.ebi.ac.uk

GenBank: National Center for Biotechnology Information, National Library of Medicine, Bldg. 38A, Rm 8N-803, Bethesda, MD 20894, U.S.A.; telephone: +1 301 496 2475; fax: +1 301 4809241; e-mail: info@ncbi.nlm.nih.gov ; web URL: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Nucleic acid sequences of limited length which are the primary subject of a study may be presented freestyle in the most effective format. In exceptional cases, longer nucleic acid sequences may be presented in the following format to conserve space. Submit the sequence as camera-ready copy in lines of 100 bases, using a nonproportional (monospace) font which is easily legible when published at 100 bases per 16 cm line.

Encoded amino acid sequences m

ay be presented, if necessary, immediately above or below the first nucleotide of each codon, by using the standard single-letter amino acid code.

X-ray crystallographic protein structure data

Manuscripts containing new structure determinations (including X-ray amplitudes and phases and derived atomic coordinates) must be accompanied by (an) accession number(s) from an internationally available depository (such as Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, NY 11973, U.S.A.). If structure determinations have been submitted to a depository, but an accession number has not yet been assigned, the manuscript can be submitted for review, but it will not be published until (an) accession number(s) is available for insertion into the manuscript.

Virus nomenclature

Each virus should be identified at least once, preferably in the Introduction or Materials and methods section, using formal family, genus, and species terms, and where possible by using a precise strain designation term as developed by an internationally recognized specialty group or culture collection. Please note that the word type is not used before species designations that include a number. Formal terms used for virus families, genera, and species should be those approved by the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV): King AMQ, Lefkowitz E , Adams MJ, Carstens EB (eds) (2011) Virus Taxonomy: Ninth Report of the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses, Elsevier, 1338 pages or via http://ictvonline.org/virusTaxonomy.asp. Once formal taxonomic names have been given in a paper, vernacular terms may be used.

Formal taxonomic nomenclature:

In formal taxonomic usage, the first letters of virus order, family, subfamily, genus and species names are capitalized and the terms are printed in italics. Other words in the species name are not capitalized unless they are proper nouns or parts of nouns, for example West Nile virus. In formal usage, the name of the taxon should precede the term for the taxonomic unit; for example: “the family Paramyxoviridae”, “the genus Morbillivirus”. The following represent examples of full formal taxonomic terminology:

1. Order Mononegavirales, family Rhabdoviridae, genus Lyssavirus, species Rabies virus.

2. Family Poxviridae, subfamily Chordopoxvirinae, genus Orthopoxvirus, species Vaccinia virus.

3. Family Picornaviridae, genus Enterovirus, species Enterovirus C.

4. Family Bunyaviridae, genus Tospovirus, species Tomato spotted wilt virus.

Vernacular taxonomic nomenclature:

In formal vernacular usage, virus order, family, subfamily, genus and species names are written in lower case Roman script; they are not capitalized, nor are they printed in italics or underlined. In informal usage, the name of the taxon should not include the formal suffix, and the name of the taxon should follow the term for the taxonomic unit; for example “the picornavirus family”, “the enterovirus genus”.

One particular source of ambiguity in vernacular nomenclature lies in the common use of the same root terms in formal family, genus or species names. Imprecision stems from not being able to easily identify in vernacular usage which hierarchical level is being cited. For example, the vernacular name “paramyxovirus” might refer to the family Paramyxoviridae, the subfamily Paramyxovirinae, or one species in the genus Respirovirus, such as Human parainfluenza virus 1. The solution in vernacular usage is to avoid “jumping” hierarchical levels and to add taxon identification wherever needed. For example, when citing the taxonomic placement of Human parainfluenza virus 1, taxon identification should always be added: “Human parainfluenza virus 1 is a species in the genus Respirovirus, family Paramyxoviridae.” In this example, as is usually the case, adding the information that this virus is also a member of the subfamily Paramyxovirinae and the order Mononegavirales is unnecessary.

It should be stressed that italics and capital letters must be used only when referring to taxonomic categories like species, genera and families. When referring to the virus being studied rather than to the taxonomic group the virus belongs to, the virus name is written in lower case Roman script without capitals, for instance measles virus or tomato chlorosis virus. It is incorrect to write that the species Tobacco mosaic virus has been sequenced or has been isolated from a host plant, since it is only the virus itself, tobacco mosaic virus, that can be handled in this way and has a sequence. Virus species, like genera or families, are man-made taxonomic constructions and do not have hosts, vectors or sequences. On the other hand, it is correct to write that a member (i.e. a virus), a strain or an isolate of the species Tobacco mosaic virus has been isolated or was sequenced. The use of italics when referring to the name of a species signals that it has the status of an official-species recognized by the ICTV.

The 9th ICTV Report (King AMQ, Lefkowitz E , Adams MJ, Carstens EB, Elsevier) or the ICTV web page http://ictvonline.org/virusTaxonomy.asp should be consulted to ascertain which names have been approved as official species names.

Nomenclature of bacteria

Binary names, consisting of a genus and species term (e.g., Escherichia coli), should be used for all bacteria. After the first usage, the genus term should be abbreviated (e.g., E. coli). All taxonomic terms, including genus, species, and subspecies are printed in italics; strain designations are not.

Genetic nomenclature

Where appropriate for viral genetic systems (e.g., phenotypes, genotypes, wild-type alleles), the nomenclature recommendations of Demerec et al. should be used: Demerec M, Adelberg EA, Clark AJ et al (1966) A proposal for a uniform nomenclature in bacterial genetics. Genetics 54: 61–76.

Chemical and biochemical nomenclature

The names used for chemical/biochemical compounds should be those recommended in Chemical Abstracts and its indices (Chemical Abstracts Service, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, U.S.A.), Biochemical Nomenclature and Related Documents (The Biochemical Society, London, U.K.), and the Instructions to Authors of leading biochemistry journals. For enzymes, use terms recommended by The International Union of Biochemistry (1984) Enzyme nomenclature. Academic Press, New York.

Restriction endonucleases

Nomenclature for restriction endonucleases should follow standard convention: Roberts RJ (1977) Restriction endonucleases. In: Bukhari AQI, Shapiro JA, Adhya SL (eds) DNA insertion elements, plasmids, and episomes. Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, New York, pp 757–768.

Nucleotide sequence data

The sequencing strategy employed should be described, and the sequence itself submitted in the form of “camera ready” copy, following standard conventions of the International Union of Biochemistry.

Numerical data

Units of measurement

Standard metric units are used for length, weight, and volume. For these units and for molarity, use standard terms: m, μ, n, and p, for 10–3, 10–6, 10–9, and 10–12, respectively. Use the term k for 103. Avoid compound terms such as mμ or μμ. Avoid the ambiguous term ppm (instead use μg/ml or μg/g). Units of temperature are written as 37°C or 324 K. See standard references for reporting units of illumination, energy, frequency, pressure, etc.

Molecular mass

When indicating the mass of viruses, ribosomes, and other biologically complex entities containing different kinds of molecules, the term molecular mass (Mr), not molecular weight, should be used. (Mr is a dimensionless number representing the ratio of the mass of an entity to onetwelfth the mass of an atom of 12C.) When indicating the mass of proteins, carbohydrates, and other complex molecules, the term Mr is also preferred, but molecular weight may be used. It is acceptable, but not necessary, to use the mass unit dalton with the term Mr, but not with the term molecular weight. For example, it is preferred to state that the Mr of the poliovirus virion is 8.58 × 106 and that the Mr of poliovirus protein VP-1 is 33,521.

Isotopically labeled compounds

For simple molecules, isotopic labeling is indicated in the chemical formula or name (e.g., 14CO2, H235SO4, 14C-amino acids, 131I-labeled protein). For complex molecules, the symbol for the isotope introduced is placed in square brackets directly preceding the part of the name that describes the labeled entity (e.g., [14C]urea, SV-40 [32P]DNA, [a-14C]lysine). See Instructions to Authors of leading biochemistry journals for further details.

Patient identification

When virus isolates are derived from patients in clinical studies, do not identify them by using patients’ names or initials, even as part of a strain designation. Do not use hospital identifiers. Instead, use confidentially coded terms. Note: established designations of some viruses and cells that represent patient initials are acceptable — JC virus, BK virus, HeLa cells, etc. Do not use patient group identifiers pertaining to race, address, occupation, etc., unless relevant to the study.

Phylogenetic analysis and phylogenetic tree presentation

Either within the text or within the figure legend, phylogenetic trees should always state;

- The tree type eg Neighbour joining, Maximum likelihood

- Whether it is an unrooted or rooted tree. If rooted, what outgroup was used or whether it was midpoint rooted

- If a substitution model test was undertaken, what model was used

- The branch support used eg aLRT support, posterior branch support, bootstrap support and the number of replicates.

- It should be stated which programs were used to determine the model and construct the phylogenetic tree.

- If any branches were collapsed due to low support values, the cut-off support value should be stated.

- Sequences used to construct phylogenetic trees should have their accession numbers available – either within the tree or as a code in the tree with reference to a table

Within the figure

- substitutions per site bar should be present

- branch support values should be legible, either with text or with symbols depicting a range of support values

- all text should be legible

When new species are being compared to their closest cousins, a phylogenetic analysis is appropriate (Baysian inference, ML, etc.), whereas when appropriate intra-species comparisons of sequences can be done with a pairwise analysis such as NJ.

References

Citation

Reference citations in the text should be identified by numbers in square brackets. Some examples:

1. Negotiation research spans many disciplines [3].

2. This result was later contradicted by Becker and Seligman [5].

3. This effect has been widely studied [1-3, 7].

Reference list

The list of references should only include works that are cited in the text and that have been published or accepted for publication. Personal communications and unpublished works should only be mentioned in the text.

The entries in the list should be numbered consecutively.

If available, please always include DOIs as full DOI links in your reference list (e.g. “https://doi.org/abc”).

• Journal article

  Gamelin FX, Baquet G, Berthoin S, Thevenet D, Nourry C, Nottin S, Bosquet L (2009) Effect of high intensity intermittent training on heart rate variability in prepubescent children. Eur J Appl Physiol 105:731-738. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00421-008-0955-8

  Ideally, the names of all authors should be provided, but the usage of “et al” in long author lists will also be accepted:

  Smith J, Jones M Jr, Houghton L et al (1999) Future of health insurance. N Engl J Med 965:325–329

• Article by DOI

  Slifka MK, Whitton JL (2000) Clinical implications of dysregulated cytokine production. J Mol Med. https://doi.org/10.1007/s001090000086

• Book

  South J, Blass B (2001) The future of modern genomics. Blackwell, London

• Book chapter

  Brown B, Aaron M (2001) The politics of nature. In: Smith J (ed) The rise of modern genomics, 3rd edn. Wiley, New York, pp 230-257

• Online document

  Cartwright J (2007) Big stars have weather too. IOP Publishing PhysicsWeb. http://physicsweb.org/articles/news/11/6/16/1. Accessed 26 June 2007

• Dissertation

  Trent JW (1975) Experimental acute renal failure. Dissertation, University of California

Always use the standard abbreviation of a journal’s name according to the ISSN List of Title Word Abbreviations, see

ISSN.org LTWA

If you are unsure, please use the full journal title.

Authors preparing their manuscript in LaTeX can use the bibliography style file sn-basic.bst which is included in the Springer Nature Article Template.

Statements & Declarations

The following statements must be included in your submitted manuscript under the heading 'Statements and Declarations'. This should be placed after the References section. Please note that submissions that do not include required statements will be returned as incomplete.

Funding

Please describe any sources of funding that have supported the work. The statement should include details of any grants received (please give the name of the funding agency and grant number).

Example statements:

“This work was supported by […] (Grant numbers […] and […]). Author A.B. has received research support from Company A.”

“The authors declare that no funds, grants, or other support were received during the preparation of this manuscript.”

Competing Interests

Authors are required to disclose financial or non-financial interests that are directly or indirectly related to the work submitted for publication. Interests within the last 3 years of beginning the work (conducting the research and preparing the work for submission) should be reported. Interests outside the 3-year time frame must be disclosed if they could reasonably be perceived as influencing the submitted work.

Example statements:

“Financial interests: Author A and B declare they have no financial interests. Author C has received speaker and consultant honoraria from Company M. Dr. C has received speaker honorarium and research funding from Company M and Company N. Author D has received travel support from Company O. Non-financial interests: Author D has served on advisory boards for Company M and Company N.”

“The authors have no relevant financial or non-financial interests to disclose.”

Please refer to the “Competing Interests” section below for more information on how to complete these sections.

Author Contributions

Authors are required to include a statement that specifies the contribution of every author to the research and preparation of the manuscript.

Example statement:

“All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection and analysis were performed by [full name], [full name] and [full name]. The first draft of the manuscript was written by [full name] and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.”

Please refer to the “Authorship Principles ” section below for more information on how to complete this section.

Data Availability

This journal encourages authors to provide an optional statement of data availability in their article. Data Availability Statements should include information on where data supporting the results reported in the article can be found, including, where applicable, hyperlinks to publicly archived datasets analysed or generated during the study. Data availability statements can also indicate whether data are available on request from the authors and where no data are available, if appropriate.

Example statements:

“The datasets generated during and/or analysed during the current study are available in the [NAME] repository, [PERSISTENT LINK TO DATASETS]”

“The datasets generated during and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.”

Please refer to the “Research Data Policy and Data Availability” section below for more information on how to complete this section.

In addition to the above, manuscripts that report the results of studies involving humans and/or animals should include the following declarations:

Ethics approval

Authors of research involving human or animal subjects should include a statement that confirms that the study was approved (or granted exemption) by the appropriate institutional and/or national research ethics committee (including the name of the ethics committee and reference number, if available). For research involving animals, their data or biological material, authors should supply detailed information on the ethical treatment of their animals in their submission. If a study was granted exemption or did not require ethics approval, this should also be detailed in the manuscript.

“This study was performed in line with the principles of the Declaration of Helsinki. Approval was granted by the Ethics Committee of University B (Date.../No....).”

“This is an observational study. The XYZ Research Ethics Committee has confirmed that no ethical approval is required.”

For detailed information on relevant ethical standards and criteria, please refer to the sections on “Research involving human participants, their data or biological material”, “Research involving animals, their data or biological material”.

Consent to participate

For all research involving human subjects, freely-given, informed consent to participate in the study must be obtained from participants (or their parent or legal guardian in the case of children under 16) and a statement to this effect should appear in the manuscript.

Example statement:

“Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.”

“Written informed consent was obtained from the parents.”

Please refer to the section on “Informed Consent” for additional help with completing this information.

Consent to publish

Individuals may consent to participate in a study, but object to having their data published in a journal article. If your manuscript contains any individual person’s data in any form (including any individual details, images or videos), consent for publication must be obtained from that person, or in the case of children, their parent or legal guardian. This is in particular applicable to case studies. A statement confirming that consent to publish has been received from all participants should appear in the manuscript.

Example statement:

“The authors affirm that human research participants provided informed consent for publication of the images in Figure(s) 1a, 1b and 1c.”

Please refer to the section on “Informed Consent” for additional help with completing this information.

Tables

• All tables are to be numbered using Arabic numerals.
• Tables should always be cited in text in consecutive numerical order.
• For each table, please supply a table caption (title) explaining the components of the table.
• Identify any previously published material by giving the original source in the form of a reference at the end of the table caption.
• Footnotes to tables should be indicated by superscript lower-case letters (or asterisks for significance values and other statistical data) and included beneath the table body.

Artwork and Illustrations Guidelines

Electronic Figure Submission

• Supply all figures electronically.
• Indicate what graphics program was used to create the artwork.
• For vector graphics, the preferred format is EPS; for halftones, please use TIFF format. MSOffice files are also acceptable.
• Vector graphics containing fonts must have the fonts embedded in the files.
• Name your figure files with "Fig" and the figure number, e.g., Fig1.eps.

Line Art

• Definition: Black and white graphic with no shading.
• Do not use faint lines and/or lettering and check that all lines and lettering within the figures are legible at final size.
• All lines should be at least 0.1 mm (0.3 pt) wide.
• Scanned line drawings and line drawings in bitmap format should have a minimum resolution of 1200 dpi.
• Vector graphics containing fonts must have the fonts embedded in the files.

Halftone Art

• Definition: Photographs, drawings, or paintings with fine shading, etc.
• If any magnification is used in the photographs, indicate this by using scale bars within the figures themselves.
• Halftones should have a minimum resolution of 300 dpi.

Combination Art

• Definition: a combination of halftone and line art, e.g., halftones containing line drawing, extensive lettering, color diagrams, etc.
• Combination artwork should have a minimum resolution of 600 dpi.

Color Art

• Color art is free of charge for online publication.
• If black and white will be shown in the print version, make sure that the main information will still be visible. Many colors are not distinguishable from one another when converted to black and white. A simple way to check this is to make a xerographic copy to see if the necessary distinctions between the different colors are still apparent.
• If the figures will be printed in black and white, do not refer to color in the captions.
• Color illustrations should be submitted as RGB (8 bits per channel).

Figure Lettering

• To add lettering, it is best to use Helvetica or Arial (sans serif fonts).
• Keep lettering consistently sized throughout your final-sized artwork, usually about 2–3 mm (8–12 pt).
• Variance of type size within an illustration should be minimal, e.g., do not use 8-pt type on an axis and 20-pt type for the axis label.
• Avoid effects such as shading, outline letters, etc.
• Do not include titles or captions within your illustrations.

Figure Numbering

• All figures are to be numbered using Arabic numerals.
• Figures should always be cited in text in consecutive numerical order.
• Figure parts should be denoted by lowercase letters (a, b, c, etc.).
• If an appendix appears in your article and it contains one or more figures, continue the consecutive numbering of the main text. Do not number the appendix figures,"A1, A2, A3, etc." Figures in online appendices [Supplementary Information (SI)] should, however, be numbered separately.

Figure Captions

• Each figure should have a concise caption describing accurately what the figure depicts. Include the captions in the text file of the manuscript, not in the figure file.
• Figure captions begin with the term Fig. in bold type, followed by the figure number, also in bold type.
• No punctuation is to be included after the number, nor is any punctuation to be placed at the end of the caption.
• Identify all elements found in the figure in the figure caption; and use boxes, circles, etc., as coordinate points in graphs.
• Identify previously published material by giving the original source in the form of a reference citation at the end of the figure caption.

Figure Placement and Size

• Figures should be submitted within the body of the text. Only if the file size of the manuscript causes problems in uploading it, the large figures should be submitted separately from the text.
• When preparing your figures, size figures to fit in the column width.
• For large-sized journals the figures should be 84 mm (for double-column text areas), or 174 mm (for single-column text areas) wide and not higher than 234 mm.
• For small-sized journals, the figures should be 119 mm wide and not higher than 195 mm.

Permissions

If you include figures that have already been published elsewhere, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner(s) for both the print and online format. Please be aware that some publishers do not grant electronic rights for free and that Springer will not be able to refund any costs that may have occurred to receive these permissions. In such cases, material from other sources should be used.

Accessibility

In order to give people of all abilities and disabilities access to the content of your figures, please make sure that

• All figures have descriptive captions (blind users could then use a text-to-speech software or a text-to-Braille hardware)
• Patterns are used instead of or in addition to colors for conveying information (colorblind users would then be able to distinguish the visual elements)
• Any figure lettering has a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1

Generative AI Images

Please check Springer’s policy on generative AI images and make sure your work adheres to the principles described therein.

Supplementary Information (SI)

Springer accepts electronic multimedia files (animations, movies, audio, etc.) and other supplementary files to be published online along with an article or a book chapter. This feature can add dimension to the author's article, as certain information cannot be printed or is more convenient in electronic form.

Before submitting research datasets as Supplementary Information, authors should read the journal’s Research data policy. We encourage research data to be archived in data repositories wherever possible.

Submission

• Supply all supplementary material in standard file formats.
• Please include in each file the following information: article title, journal name, author names; affiliation and e-mail address of the corresponding author.
• To accommodate user downloads, please keep in mind that larger-sized files may require very long download times and that some users may experience other problems during downloading.
• High resolution (streamable quality) videos can be submitted up to a maximum of 25GB; low resolution videos should not be larger than 5GB.

Audio, Video, and Animations

• Aspect ratio: 16:9 or 4:3
• Maximum file size: 25 GB for high resolution files; 5 GB for low resolution files
• Minimum video duration: 1 sec
• Supported file formats: avi, wmv, mp4, mov, m2p, mp2, mpg, mpeg, flv, mxf, mts, m4v, 3gp

Text and Presentations

• Submit your material in PDF format; .doc or .ppt files are not suitable for long-term viability.
• A collection of figures may also be combined in a PDF file.

Spreadsheets

• Spreadsheets should be submitted as .csv or .xlsx files (MS Excel).

Specialized Formats

• Specialized format such as .pdb (chemical), .wrl (VRML), .nb (Mathematica notebook), and .tex can also be supplied.

Collecting Multiple Files

• It is possible to collect multiple files in a .zip or .gz file.

Numbering

• If supplying any supplementary material, the text must make specific mention of the material as a citation, similar to that of figures and tables.
• Refer to the supplementary files as “Online Resource”, e.g., "... as shown in the animation (Online Resource 3)", “... additional data are given in Online Resource 4”.
• Name the files consecutively, e.g. “ESM_3.mpg”, “ESM_4.pdf”.

Captions

• For each supplementary material, please supply a concise caption describing the content of the file.

Processing of supplementary files

• Supplementary Information (SI) will be published as received from the author without any conversion, editing, or reformatting.

Accessibility

In order to give people of all abilities and disabilities access to the content of your supplementary files, please make sure that

• The manuscript contains a descriptive caption for each supplementary material
• Video files do not contain anything that flashes more than three times per second (so that users prone to seizures caused by such effects are not put at risk)

Generative AI Images

Please check Springer’s policy on generative AI images and make sure your work adheres to the principles described therein.

Ethical Responsibilities of Authors

This journal is committed to upholding the integrity of the scientific record. As a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) the journal will follow the COPE guidelines on how to deal with potential acts of misconduct.

Authors should refrain from misrepresenting research results which could damage the trust in the journal, the professionalism of scientific authorship, and ultimately the entire scientific endeavour. Maintaining integrity of the research and its presentation is helped by following the rules of good scientific practice, which include*:

• The manuscript should not be submitted to more than one journal for simultaneous consideration.
• The submitted work should be original and should not have been published elsewhere in any form or language (partially or in full), unless the new work concerns an expansion of previous work. (Please provide transparency on the re-use of material to avoid the concerns about text-recycling (‘self-plagiarism’).
• A single study should not be split up into several parts to increase the quantity of submissions and submitted to various journals or to one journal over time (i.e. ‘salami-slicing/publishing’).
• Concurrent or secondary publication is sometimes justifiable, provided certain conditions are met. Examples include: translations or a manuscript that is intended for a different group of readers.
• Results should be presented clearly, honestly, and without fabrication, falsification or inappropriate data manipulation (including image based manipulation). Authors should adhere to discipline-specific rules for acquiring, selecting and processing data.
• No data, text, or theories by others are presented as if they were the author’s own (‘plagiarism’). Proper acknowledgements to other works must be given (this includes material that is closely copied (near verbatim), summarized and/or paraphrased), quotation marks (to indicate words taken from another source) are used for verbatim copying of material, and permissions secured for material that is copyrighted.

Important note: the journal may use software to screen for plagiarism.

• Authors should make sure they have permissions for the use of software, questionnaires/(web) surveys and scales in their studies (if appropriate).
• Research articles and non-research articles (e.g. Opinion, Review, and Commentary articles) must cite appropriate and relevant literature in support of the claims made. Excessive and inappropriate self-citation or coordinated efforts among several authors to collectively self-cite is strongly discouraged.
• Authors should avoid untrue statements about an entity (who can be an individual person or a company) or descriptions of their behavior or actions that could potentially be seen as personal attacks or allegations about that person.
• Research that may be misapplied to pose a threat to public health or national security should be clearly identified in the manuscript (e.g. dual use of research). Examples include creation of harmful consequences of biological agents or toxins, disruption of immunity of vaccines, unusual hazards in the use of chemicals, weaponization of research/technology (amongst others).
• Authors are strongly advised to ensure the author group, the Corresponding Author, and the order of authors are all correct at submission. Adding and/or deleting authors during the revision stages is generally not permitted, but in some cases may be warranted. Reasons for changes in authorship should be explained in detail. Please note that changes to authorship cannot be made after acceptance of a manuscript.

*All of the above are guidelines and authors need to make sure to respect third parties rights such as copyright and/or moral rights.

Upon request authors should be prepared to send relevant documentation or data in order to verify the validity of the results presented. This could be in the form of raw data, samples, records, etc. Sensitive information in the form of confidential or proprietary data is excluded.

If there is suspicion of misbehavior or alleged fraud the Journal and/or Publisher will carry out an investigation following COPE guidelines. If, after investigation, there are valid concerns, the author(s) concerned will be contacted under their given e-mail address and given an opportunity to address the issue. Depending on the situation, this may result in the Journal’s and/or Publisher’s implementation of the following measures, including, but not limited to:

• If the manuscript is still under consideration, it may be rejected and returned to the author.
• If the article has already been published online, depending on the nature and severity of the infraction:

  - an erratum/correction may be placed with the article

  - an expression of concern may be placed with the article

  - or in severe cases retraction of the article may occur.

The reason will be given in the published erratum/correction, expression of concern or retraction note. Please note that retraction means that the article is maintained on the platform, watermarked “retracted” and the explanation for the retraction is provided in a note linked to the watermarked article.

• The author’s institution may be informed
• A notice of suspected transgression of ethical standards in the peer review system may be included as part of the author’s and article’s bibliographic record.

Fundamental errors

Authors have an obligation to correct mistakes once they discover a significant error or inaccuracy in their published article. The author(s) is/are requested to contact the journal and explain in what sense the error is impacting the article. A decision on how to correct the literature will depend on the nature of the error. This may be a correction or retraction. The retraction note should provide transparency which parts of the article are impacted by the error.

Suggesting / excluding reviewers

Authors are welcome to suggest suitable reviewers and/or request the exclusion of certain individuals when they submit their manuscripts. When suggesting reviewers, authors should make sure they are totally independent and not connected to the work in any way. It is strongly recommended to suggest a mix of reviewers from different countries and different institutions. When suggesting reviewers, the Corresponding Author must provide an institutional email address for each suggested reviewer, or, if this is not possible to include other means of verifying the identity such as a link to a personal homepage, a link to the publication record or a researcher or author ID in the submission letter. Please note that the Journal may not use the suggestions, but suggestions are appreciated and may help facilitate the peer review process.

Authorship principles

These guidelines describe authorship principles and good authorship practices to which prospective authors should adhere to.

Authorship clarified

The Journal and Publisher assume all authors agreed with the content and that all gave explicit consent to submit and that they obtained consent from the responsible authorities at the institute/organization where the work has been carried out, before the work is submitted.

The Publisher does not prescribe the kinds of contributions that warrant authorship. It is recommended that authors adhere to the guidelines for authorship that are applicable in their specific research field. In absence of specific guidelines it is recommended to adhere to the following guidelines*:

All authors whose names appear on the submission

1) made substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data; or the creation of new software used in the work;

2) drafted the work or revised it critically for important intellectual content;

3) approved the version to be published; and

4) agree to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

* Based on/adapted from:

ICMJE, Defining the Role of Authors and Contributors,

Transparency in authors’ contributions and responsibilities to promote integrity in scientific publication, McNutt at all, PNAS February 27, 2018

Disclosures and declarations

All authors are requested to include information regarding sources of funding, financial or non-financial interests, study-specific approval by the appropriate ethics committee for research involving humans and/or animals, informed consent if the research involved human participants, and a statement on welfare of animals if the research involved animals (as appropriate).

The decision whether such information should be included is not only dependent on the scope of the journal, but also the scope of the article. Work submitted for publication may have implications for public health or general welfare and in those cases it is the responsibility of all authors to include the appropriate disclosures and declarations.

Data transparency

All authors are requested to make sure that all data and materials as well as software application or custom code support their published claims and comply with field standards. Please note that journals may have individual policies on (sharing) research data in concordance with disciplinary norms and expectations.

Role of the Corresponding Author

One author is assigned as Corresponding Author and acts on behalf of all co-authors and ensures that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately addressed.

The Corresponding Author is responsible for the following requirements:

• ensuring that all listed authors have approved the manuscript before submission, including the names and order of authors;
• managing all communication between the Journal and all co-authors, before and after publication;*
• providing transparency on re-use of material and mention any unpublished material (for example manuscripts in press) included in the manuscript in a cover letter to the Editor;
• making sure disclosures, declarations and transparency on data statements from all authors are included in the manuscript as appropriate (see above).

* The requirement of managing all communication between the journal and all co-authors during submission and proofing may be delegated to a Contact or Submitting Author. In this case please make sure the Corresponding Author is clearly indicated in the manuscript.

Author contributions

In absence of specific instructions and in research fields where it is possible to describe discrete efforts, the Publisher recommends authors to include contribution statements in the work that specifies the contribution of every author in order to promote transparency. These contributions should be listed at the separate title page.

Examples of such statement(s) are shown below:

• Free text:

All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection and analysis were performed by [full name], [full name] and [full name]. The first draft of the manuscript was written by [full name] and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Example: CRediT taxonomy:

• Conceptualization: [full name], …; Methodology: [full name], …; Formal analysis and investigation: [full name], …; Writing - original draft preparation: [full name, …]; Writing - review and editing: [full name], …; Funding acquisition: [full name], …; Resources: [full name], …; Supervision: [full name],….

For review articles where discrete statements are less applicable a statement should be included who had the idea for the article, who performed the literature search and data analysis, and who drafted and/or critically revised the work.

For articles that are based primarily on the student’s dissertation or thesis, it is recommended that the student is usually listed as principal author:

A Graduate Student’s Guide to Determining Authorship Credit and Authorship Order, APA Science Student Council 2006

Affiliation

The primary affiliation for each author should be the institution where the majority of their work was done. If an author has subsequently moved, the current address may additionally be stated. Addresses will not be updated or changed after publication of the article.

Changes to authorship

Authors are strongly advised to ensure the correct author group, the Corresponding Author, and the order of authors at submission. Changes of authorship by adding or deleting authors, and/or changes in Corresponding Author, and/or changes in the sequence of authors are not accepted after acceptance of a manuscript.

• Please note that author names will be published exactly as they appear on the accepted submission!

Please make sure that the names of all authors are present and correctly spelled, and that addresses and affiliations are current.

Adding and/or deleting authors at revision stage are generally not permitted, but in some cases it may be warranted. Reasons for these changes in authorship should be explained. Approval of the change during revision is at the discretion of the Editor-in-Chief. Please note that journals may have individual policies on adding and/or deleting authors during revision stage.

Author identification

Authors are recommended to use their ORCID ID when submitting an article for consideration or acquire an ORCID ID via the submission process.

Deceased or incapacitated authors

For cases in which a co-author dies or is incapacitated during the writing, submission, or peer-review process, and the co-authors feel it is appropriate to include the author, co-authors should obtain approval from a (legal) representative which could be a direct relative.

Authorship issues or disputes

In the case of an authorship dispute during peer review or after acceptance and publication, the Journal will not be in a position to investigate or adjudicate. Authors will be asked to resolve the dispute themselves. If they are unable the Journal reserves the right to withdraw a manuscript from the editorial process or in case of a published paper raise the issue with the authors’ institution(s) and abide by its guidelines.

Confidentiality

Authors should treat all communication with the Journal as confidential which includes correspondence with direct representatives from the Journal such as Editors-in-Chief and/or Handling Editors and reviewers’ reports unless explicit consent has been received to share information.

Compliance with Ethical Standards

To ensure objectivity and transparency in research and to ensure that accepted principles of ethical and professional conduct have been followed, authors should include information regarding sources of funding, potential conflicts of interest (financial or non-financial), informed consent if the research involved human participants, and a statement on welfare of animals if the research involved animals.

Authors should include the following statements (if applicable) in a separate section entitled “Compliance with Ethical Standards” when submitting a paper:

• Disclosure of potential conflicts of interest
• Research involving Human Participants and/or Animals
• Informed consent

Please note that standards could vary slightly per journal dependent on their peer review policies (i.e. single or double blind peer review) as well as per journal subject discipline. Before submitting your article check the instructions following this section carefully.

The corresponding author should be prepared to collect documentation of compliance with ethical standards and send if requested during peer review or after publication.

The Editors reserve the right to reject manuscripts that do not comply with the above-mentioned guidelines. The author will be held responsible for false statements or failure to fulfill the above-mentioned guidelines.

Competing Interests

Authors are requested to disclose interests that are directly or indirectly related to the work submitted for publication. Interests within the last 3 years of beginning the work (conducting the research and preparing the work for submission) should be reported. Interests outside the 3-year time frame must be disclosed if they could reasonably be perceived as influencing the submitted work. Disclosure of interests provides a complete and transparent process and helps readers form their own judgments of potential bias. This is not meant to imply that a financial relationship with an organization that sponsored the research or compensation received for consultancy work is inappropriate.

Editorial Board Members and Editors are required to declare any competing interests and may be excluded from the peer review process if a competing interest exists. In addition, they should exclude themselves from handling manuscripts in cases where there is a competing interest. This may include – but is not limited to – having previously published with one or more of the authors, and sharing the same institution as one or more of the authors. Where an Editor or Editorial Board Member is on the author list we recommend they declare this in the competing interests section on the submitted manuscript. If they are an author or have any other competing interest regarding a specific manuscript, another Editor or member of the Editorial Board will be assigned to assume responsibility for overseeing peer review. These submissions are subject to the exact same review process as any other manuscript. Editorial Board Members are welcome to submit papers to the journal. These submissions are not given any priority over other manuscripts, and Editorial Board Member status has no bearing on editorial consideration.

Interests that should be considered and disclosed but are not limited to the following:

Funding: Research grants from funding agencies (please give the research funder and the grant number) and/or research support (including salaries, equipment, supplies, reimbursement for attending symposia, and other expenses) by organizations that may gain or lose financially through publication of this manuscript.

Employment: Recent (while engaged in the research project), present or anticipated employment by any organization that may gain or lose financially through publication of this manuscript. This includes multiple affiliations (if applicable).

Financial interests: Stocks or shares in companies (including holdings of spouse and/or children) that may gain or lose financially through publication of this manuscript; consultation fees or other forms of remuneration from organizations that may gain or lose financially; patents or patent applications whose value may be affected by publication of this manuscript.

It is difficult to specify a threshold at which a financial interest becomes significant, any such figure is necessarily arbitrary, so one possible practical guideline is the following: "Any undeclared financial interest that could embarrass the author were it to become publicly known after the work was published."

Non-financial interests: In addition, authors are requested to disclose interests that go beyond financial interests that could impart bias on the work submitted for publication such as professional interests, personal relationships or personal beliefs (amongst others). Examples include, but are not limited to: position on editorial board, advisory board or board of directors or other type of management relationships; writing and/or consulting for educational purposes; expert witness; mentoring relations; and so forth.

Primary research articles require a disclosure statement. Review articles present an expert synthesis of evidence and may be treated as an authoritative work on a subject. Review articles therefore require a disclosure statement. Other article types such as editorials, book reviews, comments (amongst others) may, dependent on their content, require a disclosure statement. If you are unclear whether your article type requires a disclosure statement, please contact the Editor-in-Chief.

Please note that, in addition to the above requirements, funding information (given that funding is a potential competing interest (as mentioned above)) needs to be disclosed upon submission of the manuscript in the peer review system. This information will automatically be added to the Record of CrossMark, however it is not added to the manuscript itself. Under ‘summary of requirements’ (see below) funding information should be included in the ‘Declarations’ section.

Summary of requirements

The above should be summarized in a statement and placed in a ‘Declarations’ section before the reference list under a heading of ‘Funding’ and/or ‘Competing interests’. Other declarations include Ethics approval, Consent, Data, Material and/or Code availability and Authors’ contribution statements.

Please see the various examples of wording below and revise/customize the sample statements according to your own needs.

When all authors have the same (or no) conflicts and/or funding it is sufficient to use one blanket statement.

Examples of statements to be used when funding has been received:

• Partial financial support was received from [...]
• The research leading to these results received funding from […] under Grant Agreement No[…].
• This study was funded by […]
• This work was supported by […] (Grant numbers […] and […]

Examples of statements to be used when there is no funding:

• The authors did not receive support from any organization for the submitted work.
• No funding was received to assist with the preparation of this manuscript.
• No funding was received for conducting this study.
• No funds, grants, or other support was received.

Examples of statements to be used when there are interests to declare:

• Financial interests: Author A has received research support from Company A. Author B has received a speaker honorarium from Company W and owns stock in Company X. Author C is consultant to company Y.

  Non-financial interests: Author C is an unpaid member of committee Z.

• Financial interests: The authors declare they have no financial interests.

  Non-financial interests: Author A is on the board of directors of Y and receives no compensation as member of the board of directors.

• Financial interests: Author A received a speaking fee from Y for Z. Author B receives a salary from association X. X where s/he is the Executive Director.

  Non-financial interests: none.

• Financial interests: Author A and B declare they have no financial interests. Author C has received speaker and consultant honoraria from Company M and Company N. Dr. C has received speaker honorarium and research funding from Company M and Company O. Author D has received travel support from Company O.

  Non-financial interests: Author D has served on advisory boards for Company M, Company N and Company O.

Examples of statements to be used when authors have nothing to declare:

• The authors have no relevant financial or non-financial interests to disclose.
• The authors have no competing interests to declare that are relevant to the content of this article.
• All authors certify that they have no affiliations with or involvement in any organization or entity with any financial interest or non-financial interest in the subject matter or materials discussed in this manuscript.
• The authors have no financial or proprietary interests in any material discussed in this article.

Authors are responsible for correctness of the statements provided in the manuscript. See also Authorship Principles. The Editor-in-Chief reserves the right to reject submissions that do not meet the guidelines described in this section.

Clinical Trials

As defined by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), a clinical trial is any research project that prospectively assigns human subjects to intervention and comparison groups to study the cause-and-effect relationship between a medical intervention and a health outcome. A medical intervention is any intervention used to modify a health outcome and includes but is not limited to drugs, surgical procedures, devices, behavioral treatments, and process-of-care changes. A trial must have at least one prospectively assigned concurrent control or comparison group in order to trigger the requirement for registration. Nonrandomized trials are not exempt from the registration requirement if they meet the above criteria.

When reporting experiments on human subjects, it must be indicated whether the procedures were in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation (institutional or regional) or with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975 (as revised in 1983). Include Institutional Review Board or Animal Care and Use Committee approvals.

All clinical trials must be registered in a public registry prior to submission. Archives of Virology subscribes to the trials registration policy of the ICMJE (www.ICMJE.org) and considers only trials that have been appropriately registered before submission, regardless of when the trial closed to enrollment. Acceptable registries must meet the following ICMJE requirements:

1. Be publicly available, searchable, and open to all prospective registrants
2. Have a validation mechanism for registration data
3. Be managed by a not-for-profit organization

Examples of registries that meet these criteria include (1) the registry sponsored by the United States National Library of Medicine; (2) the International Standard Randomised Controlled Trial Number Registry; and (3) the European Clinical Trials Database.

All clinical trials submitted to Archives of Virology should be accompanied by a completed CONSORT checklist (Please submit as a "Related Manuscript File"). A CONSORT flowchart should also be provided as a Figure or as Supplemental Material. Please find the flowchart at http://www.consort-statement.org/.

Springer Nature endorses the toolkits and guidelines produced by the following bodies:

• Committee on Publication Ethics
• Good Publication Practice
• Medical Publishing Insights and Practices Initiative

Research Data Policy and Data Availability Statements

This journal follows Springer Nature research data policy. Sharing of all relevant research data is strongly encouraged and authors must add a Data Availability Statement to original research articles.

Research data includes a wide range of types, including spreadsheets, images, textual extracts, archival documents, video or audio, interview notes or any specialist formats generated during research.

Data availability statements

All original research must include a data availability statement. This statement should explain how to access data supporting the results and analysis in the article, including links/citations to publicly archived datasets analysed or generated during the study. Please see our full policy here.

If it is not possible to share research data publicly, for instance when individual privacy could be compromised, this statement should describe how data can be accessed and any conditions for reuse. Participant consent should be obtained and documented prior to data collection. See our guidance on sensitive data for more information.

When creating a data availability statement, authors are encouraged to consider the minimal dataset that would be necessary to interpret, replicate and build upon the findings reported in the article.

Further guidance on writing a data availability statement, including examples, is available at:

Data availability statements

Data repositories

Authors are strongly encouraged to deposit their supporting data in a publicly available repository. Sharing your data in a repository promotes the integrity, discovery and reuse of your research, making it easier for the research community to build on and credit your work.

See our data repository guidance for information on finding a suitable repository.

We recommend the use of discipline-specific repositories where available. For a number of data types, submission to specific public repositories is mandatory.

See our list of mandated data types.

The journal encourages making research data available under open licences that permit reuse. The journal does not enforce use of particular licences in third party repositories. You should ensure you have necessary rights to share any data that you deposit in a repository.

Data citation

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See our further guidance on citing datasets.

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See our FAQ page for more information on Springer Nature's research data policy.

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Offprints

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Online First

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Open Choice

Open Choice allows you to publish open access in more than 1850 Springer Nature journals, making your research more visible and accessible immediately on publication.

Article processing charges (APCs) vary by journal – view the full list

Benefits:

• Increased researcher engagement: Open Choice enables access by anyone with an internet connection, immediately on publication.
• Higher visibility and impact: In Springer hybrid journals, OA articles are accessed 4 times more often on average, and cited 1.7 more times on average*.

• Easy compliance with funder and institutional mandates: Many funders require open access publishing, and some take compliance into account when assessing future grant applications.

It is easy to find funding to support open access – please see our funding and support pages for more information.

*) Within the first three years of publication. Springer Nature hybrid journal OA impact analysis, 2018.

Open Choice

Funding and Support pages

Copyright

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Editing Services

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発表に備えて、論文を改善するにはどうすればよいでしょうか？

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To find out more about publishing your work Open Access in Archives of Virology, including information on fees, funding and licences, visit our Open access publishing page.