what is a mini review in research

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Writing a Mini-Review: A Crucial Task in PhD Research

Introduction

One of the research tasks that’s given me a tremendous amount of benefit during my PhD is the writing of a mini-review. I use the term “mini-review” only because this task is something akin to completing a book review (only a little smaller)…and because frankly, I don’t know what else to call what I’m doing.

What is a mini-review

A mini-review (like a book review) is simply the careful summary of a particular scholar’s work. It is usually a 2-3 page articulation of a work’s main thesis, supporting arguments and major points.

After this is complete, a final step in the mini-review is to take the content of 1-2 pages and shrink that down to one paragraph that you place at the top as a summary of the whole review.

Of course, creating a mini-review implies that you’ve actually sat down and spent some time in the book or article. While it may take some time to put it together, the rewards are many (as I will enumerate later on.)

The Why of a Mini-Review

There are at least two major reasons for spending some time on this task:

1) You avoid the temptation to skim a work

Let’s face it, it is often very tempting to superficially skim a work, perhaps combine 2-3 book reviews and think you have an idea of an author’s contribution to your thesis.

It doesn’t take great skill to pull this off. It is quite a different matter to really wrestle with an author’s argument and to reflect on how it fits within your overall thesis.

2) You develop the critical skill of summarizing

There are two skills that are absolutely essentially to the completion of your PhD (these aren’t the only two, but they are pretty important).

One is the ability to summarize an argument the other is the ability to synthesize various works into a cohesive narrative.

One entire chapter of your dissertation (your literature review) is essentially the concise summation (and synthesis) of dozens and dozens of works related to your topic.

But beyond that, every section of your dissertation is an interaction of your ideas with the ideas of other scholars (whose work you must summarize…) Ditto for being able to create rich and meaningful footnotes that capture the essence of a work.

We might even say that summarizing arguments is the work horse of your PhD program around which you create your original contribution.

Benefits of Doing Mini-Reviews

The benefits to doing this kind of leg work early on in your research, and as you work your way through the dissertation are many:

1) You will be completing work for your literature review

Simply take your summary of your mini-review, the final step I mentioned above under “What is a Mini-Review” and you’ve got a pretty good entry to fit somewhere in your literature review.

2) Create expanded bibliographies to provide to your supervisor

Prior to my meetings with my supervisor I would often create a YTD summary of my readings for the time period between our chats. This document often served as a springboard to many of our discussions and it gave my supervisor a quick glance into the scholarship related to my topic.

3) When you sit down to write you will have a wealth of material to draw upon

It is one thing to draw upon someone else’s book review to try to fill in some gaps in your dissertation. It is quite another to have a 1-2 page summary of a work that you have labored to create.

Not only is your knowledge of an author’s work personal and deep, which allows you to have meaningful interactions, but also, your ability to draw connections (both to your thesis and to other related works) is greatly enhanced after completing a mini-review.

4) Your mini-reviews are a great resource for new insights or memory refreshers

Reading your own mini-review is like reading the most salient set of cliff notes on a particular work. If it’s been a while since you’ve picked up a particular work, your mini-review will bring it all to mind.

In addition, reading my mini-reviews has sometimes sparked new ideas and fresh insights for my dissertation if only because some time may have elapsed since the original reading / creation of the book / mini-review.

In the interim, my knowledge and maturity about my topic may have shifted, allowing a fresh re-reading of my mini-review.

5) Writing a mini-review gets you into the groove of writing

If there is one regret I’ve had as I’ve worked on my dissertation it’s been that I’ve done too much research (note-taking) and not enough writing.

While gathering and collating sources is important, the key to a dissertation is output, and the only way of getting output is to slog your way through it.

Mini-reviews get you in the PhD mode. They get you thinking like someone in the academy.

How do you say something concisely, how do you accurately reflect others’ views, what is important and what is not, is this a good argument or not, etc.

A Sample Mini-Review

Click on the link below to see a sample mini-review I created for an article on the Miletus Speech

Lambrecht: Paul’s Farewell Address

While the creation of mini-reviews may take some time, there is often no substitute for an honest wrestling with a particular author’s work.

Endeavoring in such labor, however, pays off rich dividends in your personal knowledge and in the wealth of source material that will be available for different parts of your dissertation.

Happy researching!

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Mini-review

Mini-reviews provide a concise summary of a specific research topic or field relevant to Bioelectronic Medicine . They put previous research and findings in context and present current developments in a critical and focused manner. Key aims of mini-reviews are to provide coverage of mature or emerging subjects, evaluations of progress in specified areas, and/or critical assessments of new technologies. Mini-reviews should be balanced and an excessive focus on the authors’ own work should be avoided. Mini-reviews should be no longer than 3,000 words, contain no more than two figures or tables, and contain about 60 references. The mini-review abstract should not exceed 200 words. Bioelectronic Medicine strongly encourages that all datasets on which the conclusions of the paper rely should be available to readers. We encourage authors to ensure that their datasets are either deposited in publicly available repositories (where available and appropriate) or presented in the main manuscript or additional supporting files whenever possible. Please see Springer Nature’s information on recommended repositories . Where a widely established research community expectation for data archiving in public repositories exists, submission to a community-endorsed, public repository is mandatory. A list of data where deposition is required, with the appropriate repositories, can be found on the Editorial Policies Page .

The Editors of Bioelectronic Medicine welcome authors to send any pre-submission inquiries they might have here . We ask that you please include “Pre-submission inquiry” and the journal name in the subject line of your email and that you include the title and abstract of your proposed submission within the message. Our Editors will do their best to respond to you in a timely manner.

Please note: we ask that you review the sections on this entire page before submitting your work, as omission of any necessary content will delay the processing of your manuscripts. Some information which is often forgotten includes (but is not limited to) the following, but please go through the entire page to make sure you include all necessary sections/information:

Cover letter

Title page ( Bioelectronic Medicine strongly advises having only one Corresponding Author, for ease of communication during the editorial workflow and production of your article)

Conclusions

List of abbreviations, ethics approval and consent to participate, consent for publication, availability of data and materials, competing interests, authors' contributions, acknowledgements.

Authors' information (optional)

Figures, tables and additional files

A note to authors from the Feinstein Institutes: please do not submit a manuscript with a membership code, without being invited to do so by our editors. Feinstein authorship does not automatically warrant use of a membership code.

You may suggest up to three potential reviewers in your cover letter. You should not suggest recent collaborators (people who you wrote with, within the last three years) or colleagues who work in the same institution as yourselves. You should provide institutional email addresses where possible, or information which will help the Editor to verify the identity of the reviewer (for example an ORCID or Scopus ID) as well as a rationale as to why they would be a suitable reviewer. Likewise, for anyone identified as an Opposed Reviewer, please provide a rationale. See our Editorial policies for guidance on suggesting peer reviewers, and Submission Guidelines for further information on what you should include in your cover letter.

Preparing your manuscript

The information below details the section headings that you should include in your manuscript and what information should be within each section.

Please note that your manuscript must include a 'Declarations' section including all of the subheadings (please see below for more information).

The title page should:

"A versus B in the treatment of C: a randomized controlled trial", "X is a risk factor for Y: a case control study", "What is the impact of factor X on subject Y: A systematic review"
or for non-clinical or non-research studies: a description of what the article reports
if a collaboration group should be listed as an author, please list the Group name as an author. If you would like the names of the individual members of the Group to be searchable through their individual PubMed records, please include this information in the “Acknowledgements” section in accordance with the instructions below
indicate the corresponding author (Please note : Bioelectronic Medicine strongly advises having only one Corresponding Author, for ease of communication during the editorial workflow and Production of your article)

The Abstract should not exceed 200 words and should be structured with a background, main body of the abstract and short conclusion. Please minimize the use of abbreviations and do not cite references in the abstract.

Three to ten keywords representing the main content of the article.

The Background section should explain the background to the article, its aims, a summary of a search of the existing literature and the issue under discussion.

This should contain the body of the article, and may also be broken into subsections with short, informative headings.

This should state clearly the main conclusions and include an explanation of their relevance or importance to the field.

If abbreviations are used in the text they should be defined in the text at first use, and a list of abbreviations should be provided.

Declarations

All manuscripts must contain the following sections under the heading 'Declarations':

Availability of data and material

Please see below for details on the information to be included in these sections.

If any of the sections are not relevant to your manuscript, please include the heading and write 'Not applicable' for that section (the sections must be included, even if the content provided is a ‘Not applicable’ statement) .

Manuscripts reporting studies involving human participants, human data or human tissue must:

include a statement on ethics approval and consent (even where the need for approval was waived)
include the name of the ethics committee that approved the study and the committee’s reference number if appropriate

Studies involving animals must include a statement on ethics approval.

See our editorial policies for more information.

If your manuscript does not report on or involve the use of any animal or human data or tissue, please state “Not applicable” in this section (the section must be included, even if the content provided is a ‘Not applicable’ statement) .

If your manuscript contains any individual person’s data in any form (including 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. All presentations of case reports must have consent for publication.

You can use your institutional consent form or our consent form if you prefer. You should not send the form to us on submission, but we may request to see a copy at any stage (including after publication).

See our editorial policies for more information on consent for publication.

If your manuscript does not contain any data from any individual person, please state “Not applicable” in this section (the section must be included, even if the content provided is a ‘Not applicable’ statement) .

All manuscripts must include an ‘Availability of data and materials’ statement. 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. By data we mean the minimal dataset that would be necessary to interpret, replicate and build upon the findings reported in the article. We recognise it is not always possible to share research data publicly, for instance when individual privacy could be compromised, and in such instances data availability should still be stated in the manuscript along with any conditions for access.

Data availability statements can take one of the following forms (or a combination of more than one if required for multiple datasets):

The datasets generated and/or analysed during the current study are available in the [NAME] repository, [PERSISTENT WEB LINK TO DATASETS]
The datasets generated and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
All data generated or analysed during this study are included in this published article [and its supplementary information files].
The datasets generated and/or analysed during the current study are not publicly available due [REASON WHY DATA ARE NOT PUBLIC] but are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
Data sharing is not applicable to this article as no datasets were generated or analysed during the current study.
The data that support the findings of this study are available from [third party name] but restrictions apply to the availability of these data, which were used under license for the current study, and so are not publicly available. Data are however available from the authors upon reasonable request and with permission of [third party name].
Not applicable. If your manuscript does not contain any data, please state 'Not applicable' in this section.

More examples of template data availability statements, which include examples of openly available and restricted access datasets, are available here .

BioMed Central also requires that authors cite any publicly available data on which the conclusions of the paper rely in the manuscript. Data citations should include a persistent identifier (such as a DOI) and should ideally be included in the reference list. Citations of datasets, when they appear in the reference list, should include the minimum information recommended by DataCite and follow journal style. Dataset identifiers including DOIs should be expressed as full URLs. For example:

Hao Z, AghaKouchak A, Nakhjiri N, Farahmand A. Global integrated drought monitoring and prediction system (GIDMaPS) data sets. figshare. 2014. http://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.853801

With the corresponding text in the Availability of data and materials statement:

The datasets generated during and/or analysed during the current study are available in the [NAME] repository, [PERSISTENT WEB LINK TO DATASETS]. [Reference number]

All financial and non-financial competing interests must be declared in this section.

See our editorial policies for a full explanation of competing interests. If you are unsure whether you or any of your co-authors have a competing interest please contact the editorial office.

Please use the authors initials to refer to each author's competing interests in this section. If you are a staff member of The Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research and/or Northwell Health, or a board member for Bioelectronic Medicine , it is required to list this in the Competing Interests statement.

If you do not have any competing interests, please state "The authors declare that they have no competing interests" in this section (the section must be included, even if the only content provided is the aforementioned statement) .

All sources of funding for the research reported should be declared. The role of the funding body in the design of the study and collection, analysis, and interpretation of data and in writing the manuscript should be declared (the section must be included, even if the content provided is a ‘Not applicable’ statement) .

The individual contributions of authors to the manuscript should be specified in this section. Guidance and criteria for authorship can be found in our editorial policies .

Please use initials to refer to each author's contribution in this section, for example: "FC analyzed and interpreted the patient data regarding the hematological disease and the transplant. RH performed the histological examination of the kidney, and was a major contributor in writing the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript."

Please acknowledge anyone who contributed towards the article who does not meet the criteria for authorship, including anyone who provided professional writing services or materials.

Authors should obtain permission to acknowledge from all those mentioned in the Acknowledgements section.

See our editorial policies for a full explanation of acknowledgements and authorship criteria.

If you do not have anyone to acknowledge, please write "Not applicable" in this section (the section must be included, even if the content provided is a ‘Not applicable’ statement) .

Group authorship (for manuscripts involving a collaboration group): if you would like the names of the individual members of a collaboration group to be searchable through their individual PubMed records, please ensure that the title of the collaboration group is included on the title page and in the submission system and also include collaborating author names as the last paragraph of the “Acknowledgements” section. Please add authors in the format First Name, Middle initial(s) (optional), Last Name. You can add institution or country information for each author if you wish, but this should be consistent across all authors.

Please note that individual names may not be present in the PubMed record at the time a published article is initially included in PubMed as it takes PubMed additional time to code this information.

Authors' information

This section is optional.

You may choose to use this section to include any relevant information about the author(s) that may aid the reader's interpretation of the article, and understand the standpoint of the author(s). This may include details about the authors' qualifications, current positions they hold at institutions or societies, or any other relevant background information. Please refer to authors using their initials. Note this section should not be used to describe any competing interests.

Endnotes should be designated within the text using a superscript lowercase letter and all notes (along with their corresponding letter) should be included in the Endnotes section. Please format this section in a paragraph rather than a list.

Examples of the BioMed Central reference style are shown below. Please note- Mini-reviews should contain about 60 references.

See our editorial policies for author guidance on good citation practice.

Web links and URLs: All web links and URLs, including links to the authors' own websites, should be given a reference number and included in the reference list rather than within the text of the manuscript. They should be provided in full, including both the title of the site and the URL, as well as the date the site was accessed, in the following format: The Mouse Tumor Biology Database. http://tumor.informatics.jax.org/mtbwi/index.do. Accessed 20 May 2013. If an author or group of authors can clearly be associated with a web link (e.g. for blogs) they should be included in the reference.

Example reference style:

Article within a journal Smith JJ. The world of science. Am J Sci. 1999;36:234-5.

Article within a journal (no page numbers) Rohrmann S, Overvad K, Bueno-de-Mesquita HB, Jakobsen MU, Egeberg R, Tjønneland A, et al. Meat consumption and mortality - results from the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition. BMC Med. 2013;11:63.

Article within a journal by DOI Slifka MK, Whitton JL. Clinical implications of dysregulated cytokine production. Dig J Mol Med. 2000; doi:10.1007/s801090000086.

Article within a journal supplement Frumin AM, Nussbaum J, Esposito M. Functional asplenia: demonstration of splenic activity by bone marrow scan. Blood 1979;59 Suppl 1:26-32.

Book chapter, or an article within a book Wyllie AH, Kerr JFR, Currie AR. Cell death: the significance of apoptosis. In: Bourne GH, Danielli JF, Jeon KW, editors. International review of cytology. London: Academic; 1980. p. 251-306.

OnlineFirst chapter in a series (without a volume designation but with a DOI) Saito Y, Hyuga H. Rate equation approaches to amplification of enantiomeric excess and chiral symmetry breaking. Top Curr Chem. 2007. doi:10.1007/128_2006_108.

Complete book, authored Blenkinsopp A, Paxton P. Symptoms in the pharmacy: a guide to the management of common illness. 3rd ed. Oxford: Blackwell Science; 1998.

Online document Doe J. Title of subordinate document. In: The dictionary of substances and their effects. Royal Society of Chemistry. 1999. http://www.rsc.org/dose/title of subordinate document. Accessed 15 Jan 1999.

Online database Healthwise Knowledgebase. US Pharmacopeia, Rockville. 1998. http://www.healthwise.org. Accessed 21 Sept 1998.

Supplementary material/private homepage Doe J. Title of supplementary material. 2000. http://www.privatehomepage.com. Accessed 22 Feb 2000.

University site Doe, J: Title of preprint. http://www.uni-heidelberg.de/mydata.html (1999). Accessed 25 Dec 1999.

FTP site Doe, J: Trivial HTTP, RFC2169. ftp://ftp.isi.edu/in-notes/rfc2169.txt (1999). Accessed 12 Nov 1999.

Organization site ISSN International Centre: The ISSN register. http://www.issn.org (2006). Accessed 20 Feb 2007.

Dataset with persistent identifier Zheng L-Y, Guo X-S, He B, Sun L-J, Peng Y, Dong S-S, et al. Genome data from sweet and grain sorghum (Sorghum bicolor). GigaScience Database. 2011. http://dx.doi.org/10.5524/100012.

See General formatting guidelines for information on how to format figures, tables and additional files. Please note- Mini-reviews should contain no more than two figures or tables

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10 Tips: How to Write a Scientific Mini Review

1. Introduction

A scientific mini review is a concise summary of current research in a specific field. It provides an overview of the existing literature, identifies gaps in knowledge, and suggests future research directions. Writing a scientific mini review requires careful planning and organization to ensure clarity and coherence. Here are 10 tips to help you write an effective scientific mini review.

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1.1 What is a scientific mini review?

A scientific mini review is a condensed version of a full- length review article . It focuses on a specific topic and provides a concise summary of the most important findings in the field. Unlike a full-length review, a mini review is typically shorter in length and covers a narrower scope of research.

2. Choose a specific topic

When writing a scientific mini review, it is important to choose a specific topic that is well-defined and focused. This will help you narrow down the scope of your review and ensure that you cover the most relevant research in the field. Avoid broad topics that are too general or have been extensively covered in previous reviews.

2.1 Selecting a research question

Once you have chosen a specific topic, you need to formulate a research question that will guide your review. The research question should be clear, concise, and specific. It should address a gap in knowledge or a problem that needs to be solved in the field.

3. Conduct a comprehensive literature search

To write a scientific mini review, you need to conduct a thorough literature search to identify relevant research articles . Start by searching electronic databases, such as PubMed or Google Scholar, using keywords related to your topic. Review the abstracts and full-text articles to determine their relevance to your research question.

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3.1 Using advanced search techniques

When conducting a literature search, it is important to use advanced search techniques to refine your results. These techniques include using Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT), truncation, and proximity operators. By using these techniques, you can narrow down your search and find the most relevant articles.

4. Organize your review

Before you start writing your scientific mini review, it is important to organize your thoughts and ideas. Create an outline that includes the main sections of your review, such as the introduction, methods, results, discussion, and conclusion. This will help you structure your review and ensure that you cover all the necessary information.

4.1 Structuring your review

When structuring your scientific mini review, it is important to follow a logical flow of information. Start with an introduction that provides background information on the topic and states the research question. Then, present the main findings of the studies you reviewed, followed by a discussion of the implications and limitations of the research. Finally, conclude your review by summarizing the key findings and suggesting future research directions.

5. Summarize the main findings

In a scientific mini review, it is important to summarize the main findings of the studies you reviewed. This can be done by highlighting the key results and conclusions of each study. Use clear and concise language to convey the main points and avoid unnecessary jargon or technical terms.

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5.1 Using tables and figures

To enhance the readability of your scientific mini review, consider using tables and figures to summarize the main findings. Tables can be used to present numerical data, while figures can be used to illustrate trends or patterns in the data. Make sure to provide clear and informative captions for each table or figure.

6. Discuss the implications and limitations

In addition to summarizing the main findings, it is important to discuss the implications and limitations of the research you reviewed. This can include discussing the practical applications of the findings, as well as any potential biases or limitations in the studies. Be objective and provide a balanced assessment of the research.

6.1 Addressing potential biases

When discussing the limitations of the research, it is important to address any potential biases that may have influenced the results. This can include biases in the study design, sample selection, or data analysis . By acknowledging these biases, you can provide a more accurate and objective assessment of the research.

7. Use clear and concise language

When writing a scientific mini review, it is important to use clear and concise language to convey your ideas. Avoid using unnecessary jargon or technical terms that may confuse the reader. Instead, use simple and straightforward language that is easy to understand.

7.1 Writing in the active voice

To enhance the clarity of your scientific mini review, it is recommended to write in the active voice. This means using active verbs to describe the actions or findings of the research. For example, instead of saying "The data were analyzed," you can say "We analyzed the data."

8. Cite your sources properly

When writing a scientific mini review, it is important to cite your sources properly to give credit to the original authors and avoid plagiarism. Use a consistent citation style , such as APA or MLA, and include a reference list at the end of your review. Make sure to cite all the sources you used in your review.

8.1 Avoiding plagiarism

To avoid plagiarism, it is important to properly paraphrase and cite the ideas and findings of other researchers. When paraphrasing, make sure to rephrase the information in your own words and provide a citation to the original source. This will help you avoid unintentional plagiarism and maintain the integrity of your review.

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9. Revise and edit your review

Once you have completed your scientific mini review, it is important to revise and edit your work to ensure clarity and coherence. Read through your review carefully and make sure that each sentence is clear and concise. Check for grammatical errors , spelling mistakes, and punctuation errors. Make sure that your review flows smoothly and is easy to read.

9.1 Seeking feedback

Before submitting your scientific mini review, it is recommended to seek feedback from colleagues or mentors. They can provide valuable insights and suggestions for improving your review. Consider their feedback and make any necessary revisions to enhance the quality of your review.

Writing a scientific mini review requires careful planning, organization, and attention to detail . By following these 10 tips, you can write an effective and informative mini review that contributes to the existing body of knowledge in your field. Remember to choose a specific topic, conduct a comprehensive literature search, organize your review, summarize the main findings, discuss the implications and limitations, use clear and concise language, cite your sources properly, and revise and edit your review. With these tips in mind, you can write a scientific mini review that is clear, concise, and impactful.

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What is a scientific mini review?

A scientific mini review is a concise summary of a specific topic in the scientific field. It provides an overview of the current knowledge, recent advancements, and future directions in a condensed format.

How to structure a scientific mini review?

A scientific mini review typically follows a structured format, including an introduction, methods, results, discussion, and conclusion. It is important to provide a clear and logical flow of information, supported by relevant references.

What are the key elements of a scientific mini review?

The key elements of a scientific mini review include a clear and focused research question, a comprehensive literature review, critical analysis of the findings, and a concise conclusion summarizing the main points and potential implications.

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Geriatr Orthop Surg Rehabil
v.5(2); 2014 Jun

Introduction to Mini-Review

John c. elfar.

Associate Editor

It is my distinct pleasure to announce the beginning of a mini-review section of the Journal of Geriatric Orthopaedics and Rehabilitation . Under the careful and expert leadership of our editor, Stephen Kates, we have been able to expand the journal to include this very necessary contribution to the literature. In this ever-expanding age of electronic access and immediate dissemination of information, often the topics most basic to our field lack adequate review in a short format. In this ever-expanding age of electronic access and information sharing, often the topics most basic to our field lack adequate review. Mini-reviews summarize the most salient concepts related to a topic while reporting the most relevant and current findings. Their short format allows easy digestion of those topics in the literature so that more practitioners can benefit from them.

In the field of geriatric orthopedics and rehabilitation, the need is ever greater for the mini-review format, as it allows for expansion of our literature to include topics that specifically deal with geriatric orthopedics and rehabilitation. We are planning topics spanning from geriatric trauma to spinal degenerative and traumatic conditions as well as topics discussing research methodology and bias.

We hope to allow this section of our journal to rise to the level of importance and contribution established by the other sections, and we encourage your feedback to help us refine our contributions to this end. We also invite contributions along the lines of the instructions for authors to the journal review section, and we thank you for your continued readership and support.

Mini-Reviews

Mini-reviews are summaries of recent insights or advances in specific research areas within the scope of AMB Express . A key aim of mini-reviews is to evaluate recent progress in a specific field, put research findings published in the preceding years into context and explain future directions for research as appropriate.

The journal is interested in publishing excellent Mini-Reviews. These reviews must be short and concise, timely, critical and in-depth, address novel aspects or concepts and must be attractive for readers.

If you are intending to submit a Mini-Review and publish it in this journal, please answer the following questions and provide the following information. This inquiry letter must be sent to the Editor-in-Chief, Dr. Alexander Steinbüchel, by e-mail ( [email protected] ).

This request is mandatory; only if the questions are answered completely, the proposal will be considered.

(1) The title of the proposed Mini-Review (must be short and concise; it must not contain more than 80 characters)

(2) An abstract of the proposed Mini-Review (It must contain no more than 200 words).

(3) Your CV with a publication list, in which original publications that are related to the topic of the proposed Mini-Review, are marked.

It is a strict policy of the journal to consider Mini-Reviews only from authors who have in the past successfully studied the subject of the Mini-Review and who can document this by at least a few original publications.

Literature surveys of advanced students are generally only considered if they have already gained experience and published original papers.

(4) How is the content of the proposed Mini-Review distinguished from previously published Mini-Reviews on various aspects of this topic? Explain the distance of your manuscript to two or three related review articles (please prove reference).

Re-publications of old contents, aspects and concepts are not considered.

(5) Regarding novelty : Please outline the novel aspect of the proposed Mini-Review. Why should a scientist read this Mini-Review? Why is it needed? What is novel?

(6) At least 50% of the cited literature should be not older than 5 years. Can you ensure this?

(7) The references must be balanced according to the geographic regions from which they were published. Relevant literature must be cited. Can you ensure this?

(8) When do you plan to submit the manuscript?

Preparing your manuscript

The title page should:

"A versus B in the treatment of C: a randomized controlled trial", "X is a risk factor for Y: a case control study", "What is the impact of factor X on subject Y: A systematic review"
or for non-clinical or non-research studies: a description of what the article reports
list the full names and institutional addresses for all authors
if a collaboration group should be listed as an author, please list the group name as an author. If you would like the names of the individual members of the group to be searchable through their individual PubMed records, please include this information in the “Acknowledgements” section in accordance with the instructions below
indicate the corresponding author

This should contain the body of the article, and may also be broken into subsections with short, informative headings.

List of abbreviations

If abbreviations are used in the text they should be defined in the text at first use, and a list of abbreviations should be provided.

Declarations

All manuscripts must contain the following sections under the heading 'Declarations':

Ethics approval and consent to participate

Consent for publication, competing interests, authors' contributions, acknowledgements.

Authors' information (optional)

Please see below for details on the information to be included in these sections.

If any of the sections are not relevant to your manuscript, please include the heading and write 'Not applicable' for that section.

Manuscripts reporting studies involving human participants, human data or human tissue must:

include a statement on ethics approval and consent (even where the need for approval was waived)
include the name of the ethics committee that approved the study and the committee’s reference number if appropriate

Studies involving animals must include a statement on ethics approval.

See our editorial policies for more information.

If your manuscript does not report on or involve the use of any animal or human data or tissue, please state “Not applicable” in this section.

If your manuscript contains any individual person’s data in any form (including individual details, images or videos), consent to publish must be obtained from that person, or in the case of children, their parent or legal guardian. All presentations of case reports must have consent to publish.

You can use your institutional consent form if you prefer. You should not send the form to us on submission, but we may request to see a copy at any stage (including after publication).

See our editorial policies for more information on consent for publication.

If your manuscript does not contain data from any individual person, please state “Not applicable” in this section.

All financial and non-financial competing interests must be declared in this section.

See our editorial policies for a full explanation of competing interests. If you are unsure whether you or any of your co-authors have a competing interest please contact the editorial office.

Please use the authors’ initials to refer to each authors' competing interests in this section.

If you do not have any competing interests, please state "The authors declare that they have no competing interests" in this section.

The individual contributions of authors to the manuscript should be specified in this section. Guidance and criteria for authorship can be found in our editorial policies .

Please acknowledge anyone who contributed towards the article who does not meet the criteria for authorship including anyone who provided professional writing services or materials.

Authors should obtain permission to acknowledge from all those mentioned in the Acknowledgements section.

See our editorial policies for a full explanation of acknowledgements and authorship criteria.

If you do not have anyone to acknowledge, please write "Not applicable" in this section.

Group authorship (for manuscripts involving a collaboration group): if you would like the names of the individual members of a collaboration Group to be searchable through their individual PubMed records, please ensure that the title of the collaboration Group is included on the title page and in the submission system and also include collaborating author names as the last paragraph of the “Acknowledgements” section. Please add authors in the format First Name, Middle initial(s) (optional), Last Name. You can add institution or country information for each author if you wish, but this should be consistent across all authors.

Please note that individual names may not be present in the PubMed record at the time a published article is initially included in PubMed as it takes PubMed additional time to code this information.

Authors' information

This section is optional.

Footnotes should be designated within the text using a superscript number. It is not allowed to use footnotes for references/citations.

Examples of the Basic Springer reference style are shown below.

See our editorial policies for author guidance on good citation practice.

Web links and URLs: All web links and URLs, including links to the authors' own websites, should be given a reference number and included in the reference list rather than within the text of the manuscript. They should be provided in full, including both the title of the site and the URL, as well as the date the site was accessed, in the following format: The Mouse Tumor Biology Database. http://tumor.informatics.jax.org/mtbwi/index.do . Accessed 20 May 2013. If an author or group of authors can clearly be associated with a web link, such as for weblogs, then they should be included in the reference.

Example reference style:

Article within a journal

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

Article by DOI (with page numbers)

Slifka MK, Whitton JL (2000) Clinical implications of dysregulated cytokine production. J Mol Med 78:74-80. doi:10.1007/s001090000086.

Article by DOI (before issue publication and with page numbers)

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

Article in electronic journal by DOI (no paginated version)

Slifka MK, Whitton JL (2000) Clinical implications of dysregulated cytokine production. Dig J Mol Med. doi:10.1007/s801090000086.

Journal issue with issue editor

Smith J (ed) (1998) Rodent genes. Mod Genomics J 14(6):126-233.

Journal issue with no issue editor

Mod Genomics J (1998) Rodent genes. Mod Genomics J 14(6):126-233.

Book chapter, or an article within a book

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

Complete book, authored

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

Complete book, edited

Smith J, Brown B (eds) (2001) The demise of modern genomics. Blackwell, London.

Complete book, also showing a translated edition [Either edition may be listed first.]

Adorno TW (1966) Negative Dialektik. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt. English edition: Adorno TW (1973) Negative Dialectics (trans: Ashton EB). Routledge, London.

Chapter in a book in a series without volume titles

Schmidt H (1989) Testing results. In: Hutzinger O (ed) Handbook of environmental chemistry, vol 2E. Springer, Heidelberg, p 111.

Chapter in a book in a series with volume titles

Smith SE (1976) Neuromuscular blocking drugs in man. In: Zaimis E (ed) Neuromuscular junction. Handbook of experimental pharmacology, vol 42. Springer, Heidelberg, pp 593-660.

OnlineFirst chapter in a series (without a volume designation but with a DOI)

Saito, Yukio, and Hyuga, Hiroyuki. (2007) Rate equation approaches to amplification of enantiomeric excess and chiral symmetry breaking. Topics in Current Chemistry. doi:10.1007/128_2006_108.

Proceedings as a book (in a series and subseries)

Zowghi D (1996) A framework for reasoning about requirements in evolution. In: Foo N, Goebel R (eds) PRICAI'96: topics in artificial intelligence. 4th Pacific Rim conference on artificial intelligence, Cairns, August 1996. Lecture notes in computer science (Lecture notes in artificial intelligence), vol 1114. Springer, Heidelberg, p 157.

Article within conference proceedings with an editor (without a publisher)

Aaron M (1999) The future of genomics. In: Williams H (ed) Proceedings of the genomic researchers, Boston, 1999.

Article within conference proceedings without an editor (without a publisher)

Chung S-T, Morris RL (1978) Isolation and characterization of plasmid deoxyribonucleic acid from Streptomyces fradiae. In: Abstracts of the 3rd international symposium on the genetics of industrial microorganisms, University of Wisconsin, Madison, 4-9 June 1978.

Article presented at a conference

Chung S-T, Morris RL (1978) Isolation and characterization of plasmid deoxyribonucleic acid from Streptomyces fradiae. Paper presented at the 3rd international symposium on the genetics of industrial microorganisms, University of Wisconsin, Madison, 4-9 June 1978.

Norman LO (1998) Lightning rods. US Patent 4,379,752, 9 Sept 1998.

Dissertation

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

Book with institutional author

International Anatomical Nomenclature Committee (1966) Nomina anatomica. Excerpta Medica, Amsterdam.

In press article

Major M (2007) Recent developments. In: Jones W (ed) Surgery today. Springer, Dordrecht (in press).

Online document

Doe J (1999) Title of subordinate document. In: The dictionary of substances and their effects. Royal Society of Chemistry. Available via DIALOG. http://www.rsc.org/dose/title of subordinate document. Accessed 15 Jan 1999.

Online database

Healthwise Knowledgebase (1998) US Pharmacopeia, Rockville. http://www.healthwise.org. Accessed 21 Sept 1998.

Supplementary material/private homepage

Doe J (2000) Title of supplementary material. http://www.privatehomepage.com. Accessed 22 Feb 2000.

University site

Doe J (1999) Title of preprint. http://www.uni-heidelberg.de/mydata.html. Accessed 25 Dec 1999.

Doe J (1999) Trivial HTTP, RFC2169. ftp://ftp.isi.edu/in-notes/rfc2169.txt. Accessed 12 Nov 1999.

Organization site

ISSN International Centre (2006) The ISSN register. http://www.issn.org. Accessed 20 Feb 2007.

General formatting information

Manuscripts must be written in concise English. For help on scientific writing, or preparing your manuscript in English, please see Springer's Author Academy .

Quick points:

Use double line spacing
Include line and page numbering
Use SI units: Please ensure that all special characters used are embedded in the text, otherwise they will be lost during conversion to PDF
Do not use page breaks in your manuscript

File formats

The following word processor file formats are acceptable for the main manuscript document:

Microsoft word (DOC, DOCX)
Rich text format (RTF)
TeX/LaTeX (use either BioMed Central's TeX template)

Please note: editable files are required for processing in production. If your manuscript contains any non-editable files (such as PDFs) you will be required to re-submit an editable file if your manuscript is accepted.

For more information, see ' Preparing figures ' below.

Additional information for TeX/LaTeX users

Please use either BioMed Central's TeX template and BibTeX stylefile if you use TeX format. Submit your references using either a bib or bbl file. When submitting TeX submissions, please submit both your TeX file and your bib/bbl file as manuscript files. Please also convert your TeX file into a PDF (please do not use a DIV file) and submit this PDF as a supplementary file with the name 'Reference PDF'. This PDF will be used by our production team as a reference point to check the layout of the article as the author intended. Please also note that all figures must be coded at the end of the TeX file and not inline.

The Editorial Manager system checks for any errors in the Tex files. If an error is present then the system PDF will display LaTex code and highlight and explain the error in a section beginning with an exclamation mark (!).

All relevant editable source files must be uploaded during the submission process. Failing to submit these source files will cause unnecessary delays in the production process.

TeX templates:

BioMedCentral_article (ZIP format) - preferred template
article (part of the standard TeX distribution )
amsart (part of the standard TeX distribution )

Style and language

For editors and reviewers to accurately assess the work presented in your manuscript you need to ensure the English language is of sufficient quality to be understood. If you need help with writing in English you should consider:

Visiting the English language tutorial which covers the common mistakes when writing in English.
Asking a colleague who is a native English speaker to review your manuscript for clarity.
Using a professional language editing service where editors will improve the English to ensure that your meaning is clear and identify problems that require your review. Two such services are provided by our affiliates Nature Research Editing Service and American Journal Experts . SpringerOpen authors are entitled to a 10% discount on their first submission to either of these services. To claim 10% off English editing from Nature Research Editing Service, click here . To claim 10% off American Journal Experts, click here .

Please note that the use of a language editing service is not a requirement for publication in AMB Express and does not imply or guarantee that the article will be selected for peer review or accepted. 为便于编辑和评审专家准确评估您稿件中陈述的研究工作，您需要确保文稿英语语言质量足以令人理解。如果您需要英文写作方面的帮助，您可以考虑：

查看一些有关英语写作中常见语言错误的教程。
请一位以英语为母语的同事审阅您的稿件是否表意清晰。
使用专业语言编辑服务，编辑人员会对英语进行润色，以确保您的意思表达清晰，并提出需要您复核的问题。例如我们的附属机构 Nature Research Editing Service 以及合作伙伴 American Journal Experts 都可以提供此类专业服务。SpringerOpen作者享受首次订单10%优惠，该优惠同时适用于两家公司。您只需点击以下链接即可开始。使用 Nature Research Editing Service的编辑润色10%的优惠服务，请点击这里。使用 American Journal Experts的10%优惠服务，请点击这里。

请注意，使用语言编辑服务并非在期刊上发表文章的必要条件，这也并不意味或保证文章将被选中进行同行评议或被接受。エディターと査読者があなたの論文を正しく評価するには、使用されている英語の質が十分であることが必要とされます。英語での論文執筆に際してサポートが必要な場合には、次のオプションがあります：

英語で執筆する際のよくある間違いに関する英語のチュートリアルを参照する。
英語を母国語とする同僚に、原稿内の英語が明確であるかをチェックしてもらう。
プロの英文校正サービスを利用する。校正者が原稿の意味を明確にしたり、問題点を指摘し、英語を向上させます。 Nature Research Editing Service と American Journal Experts の2つは弊社と提携しているサービスです。SpringerOpenのジャーナルの著者は、いずれかのサービスを初めて利用する際に、10%の割引を受けることができます。Nature Research Editing Serviceの10%割引を受けるには、こちらをクリックしてください。. American Journal Expertsの10%割引を受けるには、こちらをクリックしてください。

英文校正サービスの利用は、このジャーナルに掲載されるための条件ではないこと、また論文審査や受理を保証するものではないことに留意してください。 영어 원고의 경우, 에디터 및 리뷰어들이 귀하의 원고에 실린 결과물을 정확하게 평가할 수 있도록, 그들이 충분히 이해할 수 있을 만한 수준으로 작성되어야 합니다. 만약 영작문과 관련하여 도움을 받기를 원하신다면 다음의 사항들을 고려하여 주십시오:

영어 튜토리얼 페이지 에 방문하여 영어로 글을 쓸 때 자주하는 실수들을 확인합니다.
귀하의 원고의 표현을 명확히 해줄 영어 원어민 동료를 찾아서 리뷰를 의뢰합니다
리뷰에 대비하여, 원고의 의미를 명확하게 해주고 리뷰에서 요구하는 문제점들을 식별해서 영문 수준을 향상시켜주는 전문 영문 교정 서비스를 이용합니다. Nature Research Editing Service 와 American Journal Experts 에서 저희와 협약을 통해 서비스를 제공하고 있습니다. SpringerOpen에서는 위의 두 가지의 서비스를 첫 논문 투고를 위해 사용하시는 경우, 10%의 할인을 제공하고 있습니다. Nature Research Editing Service이용시 10% 할인을 요청하기 위해서는 여기 를 클릭해 주시고, American Journal Experts 이용시 10% 할인을 요청하기 위해서는 여기 를 클릭해 주십시오.

영문 교정 서비스는 게재를 위한 요구사항은 아니며, 해당 서비스의 이용이 피어 리뷰에 논문이 선택되거나 게재가 수락되는 것을 의미하거나 보장하지 않습니다.

What should be cited?

Only articles, clinical trial registration records and abstracts that have been published or are in press, or are available through public e-print/preprint servers, may be cited.

Unpublished abstracts, unpublished data and personal communications should not be included in the reference list, but may be included in the text and referred to as "unpublished observations" or "personal communications" giving the names of the involved researchers. Obtaining permission to quote personal communications and unpublished data from the cited colleagues is the responsibility of the author. Either footnotes or endnotes are permitted. Journal abbreviations follow Index Medicus/MEDLINE.

Any in press articles cited within the references and necessary for the reviewers' assessment of the manuscript should be made available if requested by the editorial office.

Preparing figures

When preparing figures, please follow the formatting instructions below.

Figure titles (max 15 words) and legends (max 300 words) should be provided in the main manuscript, not in the graphic file.
Tables should NOT be submitted as figures but should be included in the main manuscript file.
Multi-panel figures (those with parts a, b, c, d etc.) should be submitted as a single composite file that contains all parts of the figure.
Figures should be numbered in the order they are first mentioned in the text, and uploaded in this order.
Figures should be uploaded in the correct orientation.
Figure keys should be incorporated into the graphic, not into the legend of the figure.
Each figure should be closely cropped to minimize the amount of white space surrounding the illustration. Cropping figures improves accuracy when placing the figure in combination with other elements when the accepted manuscript is prepared for publication on our site. For more information on individual figure file formats, see our detailed instructions.
Individual figure files should not exceed 10 MB. If a suitable format is chosen, this file size is adequate for extremely high quality figures.
Please note that it is the responsibility of the author(s) to obtain permission from the copyright holder to reproduce figures (or tables) that have previously been published elsewhere. In order for all figures to be open access, authors must have permission from the rights holder if they wish to include images that have been published elsewhere in non open access journals. Permission should be indicated in the figure legend, and the original source included in the reference list.

Figure file types

We accept the following file formats for figures:

EPS (suitable for diagrams and/or images)
PDF (suitable for diagrams and/or images)
Microsoft Word (suitable for diagrams and/or images, figures must be a single page)
PowerPoint (suitable for diagrams and/or images, figures must be a single page)
TIFF (suitable for images)
JPEG (suitable for photographic images, less suitable for graphical images)
PNG (suitable for images)
BMP (suitable for images)
CDX (ChemDraw - suitable for molecular structures)

Figure size and resolution

Figures are resized during publication of the final full text and PDF versions to conform to the SpringerOpen standard dimensions, which are detailed below.

Figures on the web:

width of 600 pixels (standard), 1200 pixels (high resolution).

Figures in the final PDF version:

width of 85 mm for half page width figure
width of 170 mm for full page width figure
maximum height of 225 mm for figure and legend
image resolution of approximately 300 dpi (dots per inch) at the final size

Figures should be designed such that all information, including text, is legible at these dimensions. All lines should be wider than 0.25 pt when constrained to standard figure widths. All fonts must be embedded.

Figure file compression

Vector figures should if possible be submitted as PDF files, which are usually more compact than EPS files.

TIFF files should be saved with LZW compression, which is lossless (decreases file size without decreasing quality) in order to minimize upload time.
JPEG files should be saved at maximum quality.
Conversion of images between file types (especially lossy formats such as JPEG) should be kept to a minimum to avoid degradation of quality.

If you have any questions or are experiencing a problem with figures, please contact the customer service team at [email protected] .

Preparing tables

When preparing tables, please follow the formatting instructions below.

Tables should be numbered and cited in the text in sequence using Arabic numerals (i.e. Table 1, Table 2 etc.).
Tables less than one A4 or Letter page in length can be placed in the appropriate location within the manuscript.
Tables larger than one A4 or Letter page in length can be placed at the end of the document text file. Please cite and indicate where the table should appear at the relevant location in the text file so that the table can be added in the correct place during production.
Larger datasets, or tables too wide for A4 or Letter landscape page can be uploaded as additional files. Please see [below] for more information.
Tabular data provided as additional files can be uploaded as an Excel spreadsheet (.xls ) or comma separated values (.csv). Please use the standard file extensions.
Table titles (max 15 words) should be included above the table, and legends (max 300 words) should be included underneath the table.
Tables should not be embedded as figures or spreadsheet files, but should be formatted using ‘Table object’ function in your word processing program.
Color and shading may not be used. Parts of the table can be highlighted using superscript, numbering, lettering, symbols or bold text, the meaning of which should be explained in a table legend.
Commas should not be used to indicate numerical values.

If you have any questions or are experiencing a problem with tables, please contact the customer service team at [email protected] .

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Mini review

The Mini review article type denotes a review with a more concise format compared with a standard review article.

Preparing your manuscript

The title page should:

present a title that includes, if appropriate, the research design or for non-research studies: a description of what the article reports
if a collaboration group should be listed as an author, please list the group name as an author and include the names of the individual members of the group in the “Acknowledgements” section in accordance with the instructions below
indicate the corresponding author

The abstract should briefly summarize the aim, findings or purpose of the article. Please minimize the use of abbreviations and do not cite references in the abstract.

Beginning January 2022, we welcome submissions that include a graphical abstract (GA). This image should be a summary of the findings from the presented research allowing readers to quickly deduce the content in a visual format. The purpose is to highlight your work – draw the readers in quickly so they want to read more.

This graphical abstract figure (drawing, structure, or reaction scheme), preferably in color (free), will be used in the Table of Contents and in the abstract section on the title page of the article. Cover art is often chosen from graphical abstract figures.

For the GA, include a short title and description (about 50 words).The figure should be in one of the following file types: .tiff, .eps, .jpg, .bmp, .doc, or .pdf. It should be 8 cm (3.15 inches) wide x 4 cm (1.57 inches) high when printed at full scale (100%), and should have high quality image and text. Please insure that the illustration maintains this aspect ratio and is still informative upon reduction.

Please supply the GA figure at 100% using the following specifications/sizes:

300 dpi – halftone
600 dpi - with text
600 dpi - combine halftone and text (embedded text)
1200 dpi - bitmap (pure text and lines (b/w))
300/600/1200 dpi - combine embedded images and vector objects
For "rastered" images (.pdf, .doc, .bmp, .jpg), the resolution should be at least 300 dpi.

Keywords

Three to ten keywords representing the main content of the article.

This should contain the body of the article, and may also be broken into subsections with short, informative headings.

List of abbreviations

If abbreviations are used in the text they should be defined in the text at first use, and a list of abbreviations should be provided.

Declarations

All manuscripts must contain the following sections under the heading 'Declarations':

Availability of data and materials

Competing interests, authors' contributions, acknowledgements.

Authors' information (optional)

Please see below for details on the information to be included in these sections.

If any of the sections are not relevant to your manuscript, please include the heading and write 'Not applicable' for that section.

Data availability statements can take one of the following forms (or a combination of more than one if required for multiple datasets):

The datasets generated and/or analysed during the current study are available in the [NAME] repository, [PERSISTENT WEB LINK TO DATASETS]
The datasets used and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
All data generated or analysed during this study are included in this published article [and its supplementary information files].
The datasets generated and/or analysed during the current study are not publicly available due [REASON WHY DATA ARE NOT PUBLIC] but are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
Data sharing is not applicable to this article as no datasets were generated or analysed during the current study.
The data that support the findings of this study are available from [third party name] but restrictions apply to the availability of these data, which were used under license for the current study, and so are not publicly available. Data are however available from the authors upon reasonable request and with permission of [third party name].
Not applicable. If your manuscript does not contain any data, please state 'Not applicable' in this section.

More examples of template data availability statements, which include examples of openly available and restricted access datasets, are available here .

SpringerOpen also requires that authors cite any publicly available data on which the conclusions of the paper rely in the manuscript. Data citations should include a persistent identifier (such as a DOI) and should ideally be included in the reference list. Citations of datasets, when they appear in the reference list, should include the minimum information recommended by DataCite and follow journal style. Dataset identifiers including DOIs should be expressed as full URLs. For example:

Hao Z, AghaKouchak A, Nakhjiri N, Farahmand A. Global integrated drought monitoring and prediction system (GIDMaPS) data sets. figshare. 2014. http://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.853801

With the corresponding text in the Availability of data and materials statement:

The datasets generated during and/or analysed during the current study are available in the [NAME] repository, [PERSISTENT WEB LINK TO DATASETS]. [Reference number]

If you wish to co-submit a data note describing your data to be published in BMC Research Notes , you can do so by visiting our submission portal . Data notes support open data and help authors to comply with funder policies on data sharing. Co-published data notes will be linked to the research article the data support ( example ).

All financial and non-financial competing interests must be declared in this section.

See our editorial policies for a full explanation of competing interests. If you are unsure whether you or any of your co-authors have a competing interest please contact the editorial office.

Please use the authors’ initials to refer to each authors' competing interests in this section.

If you do not have any competing interests, please state "The authors declare that they have no competing interests" in this section.

All sources of funding for the research reported should be declared. If the funder has a specific role in the conceptualization, design, data collection, analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript, this should be declared.

The individual contributions of authors to the manuscript should be specified in this section. Guidance and criteria for authorship can be found in our editorial policies .

Please acknowledge anyone who contributed towards the article who does not meet the criteria for authorship including anyone who provided professional writing services or materials.

Authors should obtain permission to acknowledge from all those mentioned in the Acknowledgements section.

See our editorial policies for a full explanation of acknowledgements and authorship criteria.

If you do not have anyone to acknowledge, please write "Not applicable" in this section.

Authors' information

This section is optional.

Footnotes should be designated within the text using a superscript number. It is not allowed to use footnotes for references/citations.

Examples of the Basic Springer reference style are shown below.

See our editorial policies for author guidance on good citation practice.

Web links and URLs: All web links and URLs, including links to the authors' own websites, should be given a reference number and included in the reference list rather than within the text of the manuscript. They should be provided in full, including both the title of the site and the URL, as well as the date the site was accessed, in the following format: The Mouse Tumor Biology Database. http://tumor.informatics.jax.org/mtbwi/index.do . Accessed 20 May 2013. If an author or group of authors can clearly be associated with a web link, such as for weblogs, then they should be included in the reference.

Example reference style:

Article within a journal

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

Article by DOI (with page numbers)

Slifka MK, Whitton JL (2000) Clinical implications of dysregulated cytokine production. J Mol Med 78:74-80. doi:10.1007/s001090000086.

Article by DOI (before issue publication and with page numbers)

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

Article in electronic journal by DOI (no paginated version)

Slifka MK, Whitton JL (2000) Clinical implications of dysregulated cytokine production. Dig J Mol Med. doi:10.1007/s801090000086.

Journal issue with issue editor

Smith J (ed) (1998) Rodent genes. Mod Genomics J 14(6):126-233.

Journal issue with no issue editor

Mod Genomics J (1998) Rodent genes. Mod Genomics J 14(6):126-233.

Book chapter, or an article within a book

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

Complete book, authored

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

Complete book, edited

Smith J, Brown B (eds) (2001) The demise of modern genomics. Blackwell, London.

Complete book, also showing a translated edition [Either edition may be listed first.]

Adorno TW (1966) Negative Dialektik. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt. English edition: Adorno TW (1973) Negative Dialectics (trans: Ashton EB). Routledge, London.

Chapter in a book in a series without volume titles

Schmidt H (1989) Testing results. In: Hutzinger O (ed) Handbook of environmental chemistry, vol 2E. Springer, Heidelberg, p 111.

Chapter in a book in a series with volume titles

Smith SE (1976) Neuromuscular blocking drugs in man. In: Zaimis E (ed) Neuromuscular junction. Handbook of experimental pharmacology, vol 42. Springer, Heidelberg, pp 593-660.

OnlineFirst chapter in a series (without a volume designation but with a DOI)

Saito, Yukio, and Hyuga, Hiroyuki. (2007) Rate equation approaches to amplification of enantiomeric excess and chiral symmetry breaking. Topics in Current Chemistry. doi:10.1007/128_2006_108.

Proceedings as a book (in a series and subseries)

Article within conference proceedings with an editor (without a publisher)

Aaron M (1999) The future of genomics. In: Williams H (ed) Proceedings of the genomic researchers, Boston, 1999.

Article within conference proceedings without an editor (without a publisher)

Article presented at a conference

Norman LO (1998) Lightning rods. US Patent 4,379,752, 9 Sept 1998.

Dissertation

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

Book with institutional author

International Anatomical Nomenclature Committee (1966) Nomina anatomica. Excerpta Medica, Amsterdam.

In press article

Major M (2007) Recent developments. In: Jones W (ed) Surgery today. Springer, Dordrecht (in press).

Online document

Online database

Healthwise Knowledgebase (1998) US Pharmacopeia, Rockville. http://www.healthwise.org. Accessed 21 Sept 1998.

Supplementary material/private homepage

Doe J (2000) Title of supplementary material. http://www.privatehomepage.com. Accessed 22 Feb 2000.

University site

Doe J (1999) Title of preprint. http://www.uni-heidelberg.de/mydata.html. Accessed 25 Dec 1999.

Doe J (1999) Trivial HTTP, RFC2169. ftp://ftp.isi.edu/in-notes/rfc2169.txt. Accessed 12 Nov 1999.

Organization site

ISSN International Centre (2006) The ISSN register. http://www.issn.org. Accessed 20 Feb 2007.

General formatting information

Manuscripts must be written in concise English. For help on scientific writing, or preparing your manuscript in English, please see Springer's Author Academy .

Quick points:

Use double line spacing
Include line and page numbering
Use SI units: Please ensure that all special characters used are embedded in the text, otherwise they will be lost during conversion to PDF
Do not use page breaks in your manuscript

File formats

The following word processor file formats are acceptable for the main manuscript document:

Microsoft word (DOC, DOCX)
Rich text format (RTF)
TeX/LaTeX

For more information, see ' Preparing figures ' below.

Additional information for TeX/LaTeX users

You are encouraged to use the Springer Nature LaTeX template when preparing a submission. A PDF of your manuscript files will be compiled during submission using pdfLaTeX and TexLive 2021. All relevant editable source files must be uploaded during the submission process. Failing to submit these source files will cause unnecessary delays in the production process.

Style and language

Getting a fast, free online grammar check .
Visiting the English language tutorial which covers the common mistakes when writing in English.
Asking a colleague who is proficient in English to review your manuscript for clarity.
Using a professional language editing service where editors will improve the English to ensure that your meaning is clear and identify problems that require your review. Two such services are provided by our affiliates Nature Research Editing Service and American Journal Experts . SpringerOpen authors are entitled to a 10% discount on their first submission to either of these services. To claim 10% off English editing from Nature Research Editing Service, click here . To claim 10% off American Journal Experts, click here .

Please note that the use of a language editing service is not a requirement for publication in AAPS Open and does not imply or guarantee that the article will be selected for peer review or accepted. 为便于编辑和评审专家准确评估您稿件中陈述的研究工作，您需要确保文稿英语语言质量足以令人理解。如果您需要英文写作方面的帮助，您可以考虑：

获取快速、免费的在线语法检查。
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使用专业语言编辑服务，编辑人员会对英语进行润色，以确保您的意思表达清晰，并提出需要您复核的问题。例如我们的附属机构 Nature Research Editing Service 以及合作伙伴 American Journal Experts 都可以提供此类专业服务。SpringerOpen作者享受首次订单10%优惠，该优惠同时适用于两家公司。您只需点击以下链接即可开始。使用 Nature Research Editing Service的编辑润色10%的优惠服务，请点击这里。使用 American Journal Experts的10%优惠服务，请点击这里。

高速なオンライン文法チェックを無料で受ける。
英語で執筆する際のよくある間違いに関する英語のチュートリアルを参照する。
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プロの英文校正サービスを利用する。校正者が原稿の意味を明確にしたり、問題点を指摘し、英語を向上させます。 Nature Research Editing Service と American Journal Experts の2つは弊社と提携しているサービスです。SpringerOpenのジャーナルの著者は、いずれかのサービスを初めて利用する際に、10%の割引を受けることができます。Nature Research Editing Serviceの10%割引を受けるには、こちらをクリックしてください。. American Journal Expertsの10%割引を受けるには、こちらをクリックしてください。

영어 튜토리얼 페이지 에 방문하여 영어로 글을 쓸 때 자주하는 실수들을 확인합니다.
귀하의 원고의 표현을 명확히 해줄 영어 원어민 동료를 찾아서 리뷰를 의뢰합니다
리뷰에 대비하여, 원고의 의미를 명확하게 해주고 리뷰에서 요구하는 문제점들을 식별해서 영문 수준을 향상시켜주는 전문 영문 교정 서비스를 이용합니다. Nature Research Editing Service 와 American Journal Experts 에서 저희와 협약을 통해 서비스를 제공하고 있습니다. SpringerOpen에서는 위의 두 가지의 서비스를 첫 논문 투고를 위해 사용하시는 경우, 10%의 할인을 제공하고 있습니다. Nature Research Editing Service이용시 10% 할인을 요청하기 위해서는 여기 를 클릭해 주시고, American Journal Experts 이용시 10% 할인을 요청하기 위해서는 여기 를 클릭해 주십시오.

Data and materials

For all journals, SpringerOpen strongly encourages all datasets on which the conclusions of the manuscript rely to be either deposited in publicly available repositories (where available and appropriate) or presented in the main paper or additional supporting files, in machine-readable format (such as spread sheets rather than PDFs) whenever possible. Please see the list of recommended repositories in our editorial policies.

For some journals, deposition of the data on which the conclusions of the manuscript rely is an absolute requirement. Please check the Instructions for Authors for the relevant journal and article type for journal specific policies.

For all manuscripts, information about data availability should be detailed in an ‘Availability of data and materials’ section. For more information on the content of this section, please see the Declarations section of the relevant journal’s Instruction for Authors. For more information on SpringerOpen's policies on data availability, please see our editorial policies .

Formatting the 'Availability of data and materials' section of your manuscript

The following format for the 'Availability of data and materials section of your manuscript should be used:

"The dataset(s) supporting the conclusions of this article is(are) available in the [repository name] repository, [unique persistent identifier and hyperlink to dataset(s) in http:// format]."

The following format is required when data are included as additional files:

"The dataset(s) supporting the conclusions of this article is(are) included within the article (and its additional file(s))."

For databases, this section should state the web/ftp address at which the database is available and any restrictions to its use by non-academics.

For software, this section should include:

Project name: e.g. My bioinformatics project
Project home page: e.g. http://sourceforge.net/projects/mged
Archived version: DOI or unique identifier of archived software or code in repository (e.g. enodo)
Operating system(s): e.g. Platform independent
Programming language: e.g. Java
Other requirements: e.g. Java 1.3.1 or higher, Tomcat 4.0 or higher
License: e.g. GNU GPL, FreeBSD etc.
Any restrictions to use by non-academics: e.g. licence needed

Information on available repositories for other types of scientific data, including clinical data, can be found in our editorial policies .

What should be cited?

Only articles, clinical trial registration records and abstracts that have been published or are in press, or are available through public e-print/preprint servers, may be cited.

Any in press articles cited within the references and necessary for the reviewers' assessment of the manuscript should be made available if requested by the editorial office.

Preparing figures

When preparing figures, please follow the formatting instructions below.

Figure titles (max 15 words) and legends (max 300 words) should be provided in the main manuscript, not in the graphic file.
Tables should NOT be submitted as figures but should be included in the main manuscript file.
Multi-panel figures (those with parts a, b, c, d etc.) should be submitted as a single composite file that contains all parts of the figure.
Figures should be numbered in the order they are first mentioned in the text, and uploaded in this order.
Figures should be uploaded in the correct orientation.
Figure keys should be incorporated into the graphic, not into the legend of the figure.
Each figure should be closely cropped to minimize the amount of white space surrounding the illustration. Cropping figures improves accuracy when placing the figure in combination with other elements when the accepted manuscript is prepared for publication on our site. For more information on individual figure file formats, see our detailed instructions.
Individual figure files should not exceed 10 MB. If a suitable format is chosen, this file size is adequate for extremely high quality figures.
Please note that it is the responsibility of the author(s) to obtain permission from the copyright holder to reproduce figures (or tables) that have previously been published elsewhere. In order for all figures to be open access, authors must have permission from the rights holder if they wish to include images that have been published elsewhere in non open access journals. Permission should be indicated in the figure legend, and the original source included in the reference list.

Figure file types

We accept the following file formats for figures:

EPS (suitable for diagrams and/or images)
PDF (suitable for diagrams and/or images)
Microsoft Word (suitable for diagrams and/or images, figures must be a single page)
PowerPoint (suitable for diagrams and/or images, figures must be a single page)
TIFF (suitable for images)
JPEG (suitable for photographic images, less suitable for graphical images)
PNG (suitable for images)
BMP (suitable for images)
CDX (ChemDraw - suitable for molecular structures)

Figure size and resolution

Figures are resized during publication of the final full text and PDF versions to conform to the SpringerOpen standard dimensions, which are detailed below.

Figures on the web:

width of 600 pixels (standard), 1200 pixels (high resolution).

Figures in the final PDF version:

width of 85 mm for half page width figure
width of 170 mm for full page width figure
maximum height of 225 mm for figure and legend
image resolution of approximately 300 dpi (dots per inch) at the final size

Figure file compression

Vector figures should if possible be submitted as PDF files, which are usually more compact than EPS files.

TIFF files should be saved with LZW compression, which is lossless (decreases file size without decreasing quality) in order to minimize upload time.
JPEG files should be saved at maximum quality.
Conversion of images between file types (especially lossy formats such as JPEG) should be kept to a minimum to avoid degradation of quality.

If you have any questions or are experiencing a problem with figures, please contact the customer service team at [email protected] .

Preparing tables

When preparing tables, please follow the formatting instructions below.

Tables should be numbered and cited in the text in sequence using Arabic numerals (i.e. Table 1, Table 2 etc.).
Tables less than one A4 or Letter page in length can be placed in the appropriate location within the manuscript.
Tables larger than one A4 or Letter page in length can be placed at the end of the document text file. Please cite and indicate where the table should appear at the relevant location in the text file so that the table can be added in the correct place during production.
Larger datasets, or tables too wide for A4 or Letter landscape page can be uploaded as additional files. Please see [below] for more information.
Tabular data provided as additional files can be uploaded as an Excel spreadsheet (.xls ) or comma separated values (.csv). Please use the standard file extensions.
Table titles (max 15 words) should be included above the table, and legends (max 300 words) should be included underneath the table.
Tables should not be embedded as figures or spreadsheet files, but should be formatted using ‘Table object’ function in your word processing program.
Color and shading may not be used. Parts of the table can be highlighted using superscript, numbering, lettering, symbols or bold text, the meaning of which should be explained in a table legend.
Commas should not be used to indicate numerical values.

If you have any questions or are experiencing a problem with tables, please contact the customer service team at [email protected] .

Preparing additional files

As the length and quantity of data is not restricted for many article types, authors can provide datasets, tables, movies, or other information as additional files.

All Additional files will be published along with the accepted article. Do not include files such as patient consent forms, certificates of language editing, or revised versions of the main manuscript document with tracked changes. Such files, if requested, should be sent by email to the journal’s editorial email address, quoting the manuscript reference number.

Results that would otherwise be indicated as "data not shown" should be included as additional files. Since many web links and URLs rapidly become broken, SpringerOpen requires that supporting data are included as additional files, or deposited in a recognized repository. Please do not link to data on a personal/departmental website. Do not include any individual participant details. The maximum file size for additional files is 20 MB each, and files will be virus-scanned on submission. Each additional file should be cited in sequence within the main body of text.

Submit manuscript

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2023 Speed 14 days submission to first editorial decision for all manuscripts (Median) 96 days submission to accept (Median)

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Mini-Review

Mini-reviews covers abreast of advances and trends in biomedical research. This type applies same format as standard Review articles, but main body text should not exceed 2,000 words with no more than 100 references.

Please use this template when preparing your Mini-Review manuscript.

Preparing your manuscript

The information below details the section headings that you should include in your manuscript and what information should be within each section.

Please note that your manuscript must include a 'Declarations' section including all of the subheadings (please see below for more information).

The title page should:

"A versus B in the treatment of C: a randomized controlled trial", "X is a risk factor for Y: a case control study", "What is the impact of factor X on subject Y: A systematic review"
or for non-clinical or non-research studies: a description of what the article reports
if a collaboration group should be listed as an author, please list the Group name as an author. If you would like the names of the individual members of the Group to be searchable through their individual PubMed records, please include this information in the “Acknowledgements” section in accordance with the instructions below
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
indicate the corresponding author

The Abstract should not exceed 350 words. Please minimize the use of abbreviations and do not cite references in the abstract.

Three to ten keywords representing the main content of the article.

The Background section should explain the background to the article, its aims, a summary of a search of the existing literature and the issue under discussion.

This should contain the body of the article, and may also be broken into subsections with short, informative headings.

Conclusions

This should state clearly the main conclusions and include an explanation of their relevance or importance to the field.

List of abbreviations

If abbreviations are used in the text they should be defined in the text at first use, and a list of abbreviations should be provided.

Declarations

All manuscripts must contain the following sections under the heading 'Declarations':

Availability of data and materials

Competing interests

Authors' contributions

Acknowledgements

Authors' information (optional)

Please see below for details on the information to be included in these sections.

If any of the sections are not relevant to your manuscript, please include the heading and write 'Not applicable' for that section.

For all journals, BioMed Central strongly encourages all datasets on which the conclusions of the manuscript rely to be either deposited in publicly available repositories (where available and appropriate) or presented in the main paper or additional supporting files, in machine-readable format (such as spreadsheets rather than PDFs) whenever possible. Please see the list of recommended repositories in our editorial policies.

For some journals, deposition of the data on which the conclusions of the manuscript rely is an absolute requirement. Please check the Criteria section for this article type (located at the top of this page) for journal specific policies.

For all journals, authors must include an “Availability of data and materials” section in their article detailing where the data supporting their findings can be found. If you do not wish to share your data, please state that data will not be shared, and state the reason.

For instructions on how to cite your data and format this section see preparation/style and formatting.

All financial and non-financial competing interests must be declared in this section. See our editorial policies for a full explanation of competing interests. If you are unsure whether you or any of your co-authors have a competing interest please contact the editorial office.

The individual contributions of authors to the manuscript should be specified in this section.

Please acknowledge anyone who contributed towards the article who does not meet the criteria for authorship including anyone who provided professional writing services or materials.

Authors should obtain permission to acknowledge from all those mentioned in the Acknowledgements section.

See our editorial policies for a full explanation of acknowledgements and authorship criteria.

Group authorship: if you would like the names of the individual members of a collaboration Group to be searchable through their individual PubMed records (where applicable), please ensure that the title of the collaboration Group is included on the title page and in the submission system and also include collaborating author names as the last paragraph of the “Acknowledgements” section. Please add authors in the format First Name, Middle initial(s) (optional), Last Name. You can add institution or country information for each author if you wish, but this should be consistent across all authors.

Authors' information

Footnotes should be designated within the text using a superscript number. It is not allowed to use footnotes for references/citations.

Examples of the Vancouver reference style are shown below.

See our editorial policies for author guidance on good citation practice

Web links and URLs: All web links and URLs, including links to the authors' own websites, should be given a reference number and included in the reference list rather than within the text of the manuscript. They should be provided in full, including both the title of the site and the URL, as well as the date the site was accessed, in the following format: The Mouse Tumor Biology Database. http://tumor.informatics.jax.org/mtbwi/index.do . Accessed 20 May 2013. If an author or group of authors can clearly be associated with a web link, such as for weblogs, then they should be included in the reference.

Example reference style:

Article within a journal

Smith JJ. The world of science. Am J Sci. 1999;36:234-5.

Article within a journal (no page numbers)

Rohrmann S, Overvad K, Bueno-de-Mesquita HB, Jakobsen MU, Egeberg R, Tjønneland A, et al. Meat consumption and mortality - results from the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition. BMC Medicine. 2013;11:63.

Article within a journal by DOI

Slifka MK, Whitton JL. Clinical implications of dysregulated cytokine production. Dig J Mol Med. 2000; doi:10.1007/s801090000086.

Article within a journal supplement

Frumin AM, Nussbaum J, Esposito M. Functional asplenia: demonstration of splenic activity by bone marrow scan. Blood 1979;59 Suppl 1:26-32.

Book chapter, or an article within a book

Wyllie AH, Kerr JFR, Currie AR. Cell death: the significance of apoptosis. In: Bourne GH, Danielli JF, Jeon KW, editors. International review of cytology. London: Academic; 1980. p. 251-306.

OnlineFirst chapter in a series (without a volume designation but with a DOI)

Saito Y, Hyuga H. Rate equation approaches to amplification of enantiomeric excess and chiral symmetry breaking. Top Curr Chem. 2007. doi:10.1007/128_2006_108.

Complete book, authored

Blenkinsopp A, Paxton P. Symptoms in the pharmacy: a guide to the management of common illness. 3rd ed. Oxford: Blackwell Science; 1998.

Online document

Doe J. Title of subordinate document. In: The dictionary of substances and their effects. Royal Society of Chemistry. 1999. http://www.rsc.org/dose/title of subordinate document. Accessed 15 Jan 1999.

Online database

Healthwise Knowledgebase. US Pharmacopeia, Rockville. 1998. http://www.healthwise.org. Accessed 21 Sept 1998.

Supplementary material/private homepage

Doe J. Title of supplementary material. 2000. http://www.privatehomepage.com. Accessed 22 Feb 2000.

University site

Doe, J: Title of preprint. http://www.uni-heidelberg.de/mydata.html (1999). Accessed 25 Dec 1999.

Doe, J: Trivial HTTP, RFC2169. ftp://ftp.isi.edu/in-notes/rfc2169.txt (1999). Accessed 12 Nov 1999.

Organization site

ISSN International Centre: The ISSN register. http://www.issn.org (2006). Accessed 20 Feb 2007.

Dataset with persistent identifier

Zheng L-Y, Guo X-S, He B, Sun L-J, Peng Y, Dong S-S, et al. Genome data from sweet and grain sorghum (Sorghum bicolor). GigaScience Database. 2011. http://dx.doi.org/10.5524/100012 .

Figures, tables and additional files

See General formatting guidelines for information on how to format figures, tables and additional files.

Submit manuscript

Sex and Gender in Research

We encourage our authors to include sex and gender considerations where relevant. Authors should use the terms sex (biological attribute) and gender (shaped by social and cultural circumstances) carefully in order to avoid confusing both terms. Article titles and/or abstracts should indicate clearly what sex(es) the study applies to. Authors should also describe in the background, whether sex and/or gender differences may be expected; report how sex and/or gender were accounted for in the design of the study; provide disaggregated data by sex and/or gender, where appropriate; and discuss respective results.

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Laboratory Animal Research is the official journal of the Korean Association for Laboratory Animal Science . KALAS was established in 1985 in order to discuss the knowledge of the experiment, and promote the science and technology in laboratory animal sciences.

2022 Citation Impact 2.9 - 2-year Impact Factor

2023 Speed 15 days submission to first editorial decision for all manuscripts (Median) 108 days submission to accept (Median)

2023 Usage 279,659 downloads 478 Altmetric mentions

Laboratory Animal Research

ISSN: 2233-7660

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How to write a good scientific review article

Affiliation.

1 The FEBS Journal Editorial Office, Cambridge, UK.
PMID: 35792782
DOI: 10.1111/febs.16565

Literature reviews are valuable resources for the scientific community. With research accelerating at an unprecedented speed in recent years and more and more original papers being published, review articles have become increasingly important as a means to keep up to date with developments in a particular area of research. A good review article provides readers with an in-depth understanding of a field and highlights key gaps and challenges to address with future research. Writing a review article also helps to expand the writer's knowledge of their specialist area and to develop their analytical and communication skills, amongst other benefits. Thus, the importance of building review-writing into a scientific career cannot be overstated. In this instalment of The FEBS Journal's Words of Advice series, I provide detailed guidance on planning and writing an informative and engaging literature review.

Publication types

Mini-Review

The Journal of Physiological Sciences publishes peer-reviewed Mini-reviews, based on the principles and theories of modern physiology. Mini-reviews should be no longer than 3,000 words excluding References, providing a short overview of a particular subject. Mini-reviews are usually solicited by the editor.

In the process of online submission, authors are requested to choose a manuscript submission classification from the following 16 categories: Molecular Biology, Gastrointestinal Physiology, Biophysics, Heart and Circulation, Physiome, Endocrinology Metabolisms, Kidney and Body Fluid, Respiration, Adaptation, Exercise Physiology, Muscle Physiology, Autonomic Nervous System, Channels and Membrane Transport, Neurobiology and Behavior, Sensory Physiology, Excitable Membranes.

Graphical abstract

Authors are strongly encouraged to upload a graphical abstract at the time of submission of the revised manuscript. This is a picture which will appear underneath the Abstract on the journal website. It should be relevant to the topic covered and serve to attract readers' attention to the article. The graphical abstract image may be one of the images included in the article or any other image the authors feel to be appropriate. It may be a composite of more than one image. The image should have an aspect ratio of 2:5 and should be uploaded as a JPEG, PNG or SVG file. Please note that graphical abstract images must comply with BMC's copyright policy.

Preparing your manuscript

The information below details the section headings that you should include in your manuscript and what information should be within each section.

Please note that your manuscript must include a 'Declarations' section including all of the subheadings (please see below for more information).

The title page should:

"A versus B in the treatment of C: a randomized controlled trial", "X is a risk factor for Y: a case control study", "What is the impact of factor X on subject Y: A systematic review"
or for non-clinical or non-research studies: a description of what the article reports
if a collaboration group should be listed as an author, please list the Group name as an author. If you would like the names of the individual members of the Group to be searchable through their individual PubMed records, please include this information in the “Acknowledgements” section in accordance with the instructions below
indicate the corresponding author

The Abstract should be 100 to 150 words in length and unstructured. Please minimize the use of abbreviations and do not cite references in the abstract.

Four to six keywords representing the main content of the article.

The Background section should explain the background to the article, its aims, a summary of a search of the existing literature and the issue under discussion.

This should contain the body of the article, and may also be broken into subsections with short, informative headings.

Conclusions

This should state clearly the main conclusions and include an explanation of their relevance or importance to the field.

List of abbreviations

If abbreviations are used in the text they should be defined in the text at first use, and a list of abbreviations should be provided.

Declarations

All manuscripts must contain the following sections under the heading 'Declarations':

Ethics approval and consent to participate

Consent for publication, availability of data and materials, competing interests, authors' contributions, acknowledgements.

Authors' information (optional)

Please see below for details on the information to be included in these sections.

If any of the sections are not relevant to your manuscript, please include the heading and write 'Not applicable' for that section.

Manuscripts reporting studies involving human participants, human data or human tissue must:

include a statement on ethics approval and consent (even where the need for approval was waived)
include the name of the ethics committee that approved the study and the committee’s reference number if appropriate

Studies involving animals must include a statement on ethics approval and for experimental studies involving client-owned animals, authors must also include a statement on informed consent from the client or owner.

See our editorial policies for more information.

If your manuscript does not report on or involve the use of any animal or human data or tissue, please state “Not applicable” in this section.

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. All presentations of case reports must have consent for publication.

See our editorial policies for more information on consent for publication.

If your manuscript does not contain data from any individual person, please state “Not applicable” in this section.

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Data availability statements can take one of the following forms (or a combination of more than one if required for multiple datasets):

The datasets generated and/or analysed during the current study are available in the [NAME] repository, [PERSISTENT WEB LINK TO DATASETS]
The datasets used and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
All data generated or analysed during this study are included in this published article [and its supplementary information files].
The datasets generated and/or analysed during the current study are not publicly available due [REASON WHY DATA ARE NOT PUBLIC] but are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
Data sharing is not applicable to this article as no datasets were generated or analysed during the current study.
The data that support the findings of this study are available from [third party name] but restrictions apply to the availability of these data, which were used under license for the current study, and so are not publicly available. Data are however available from the authors upon reasonable request and with permission of [third party name].
Not applicable. If your manuscript does not contain any data, please state 'Not applicable' in this section.

More examples of template data availability statements, which include examples of openly available and restricted access datasets, are available here .

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Hao Z, AghaKouchak A, Nakhjiri N, Farahmand A. Global integrated drought monitoring and prediction system (GIDMaPS) data sets. figshare. 2014. http://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.853801

With the corresponding text in the Availability of data and materials statement:

The datasets generated during and/or analysed during the current study are available in the [NAME] repository, [PERSISTENT WEB LINK TO DATASETS]. [Reference number]

All financial and non-financial competing interests must be declared in this section.

See our editorial policies for a full explanation of competing interests. If you are unsure whether you or any of your co-authors have a competing interest please contact the editorial office.

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See our editorial policies for author guidance on good citation practice.

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Example reference style:

Article within a journal

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

Article by DOI (with page numbers)

Slifka MK, Whitton JL (2000) Clinical implications of dysregulated cytokine production. J Mol Med 78:74-80. doi:10.1007/s001090000086.

Article by DOI (before issue publication and with page numbers)

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

Article in electronic journal by DOI (no paginated version)

Slifka MK, Whitton JL (2000) Clinical implications of dysregulated cytokine production. Dig J Mol Med. doi:10.1007/s801090000086.

Journal issue with issue editor

Smith J (ed) (1998) Rodent genes. Mod Genomics J 14(6):126-233.

Journal issue with no issue editor

Mod Genomics J (1998) Rodent genes. Mod Genomics J 14(6):126-233.

Book chapter, or an article within a book

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

Complete book, authored

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

Complete book, edited

Smith J, Brown B (eds) (2001) The demise of modern genomics. Blackwell, London.

Complete book, also showing a translated edition [Either edition may be listed first.]

Adorno TW (1966) Negative Dialektik. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt. English edition: Adorno TW (1973) Negative Dialectics (trans: Ashton EB). Routledge, London.

Chapter in a book in a series without volume titles

Schmidt H (1989) Testing results. In: Hutzinger O (ed) Handbook of environmental chemistry, vol 2E. Springer, Heidelberg, p 111.

Chapter in a book in a series with volume titles

Smith SE (1976) Neuromuscular blocking drugs in man. In: Zaimis E (ed) Neuromuscular junction. Handbook of experimental pharmacology, vol 42. Springer, Heidelberg, pp 593-660.

OnlineFirst chapter in a series (without a volume designation but with a DOI)

Saito, Yukio, and Hyuga, Hiroyuki. (2007) Rate equation approaches to amplification of enantiomeric excess and chiral symmetry breaking. Topics in Current Chemistry. doi:10.1007/128_2006_108.

Proceedings as a book (in a series and subseries)

Article within conference proceedings with an editor (without a publisher)

Aaron M (1999) The future of genomics. In: Williams H (ed) Proceedings of the genomic researchers, Boston, 1999.

Article within conference proceedings without an editor (without a publisher)

Article presented at a conference

Norman LO (1998) Lightning rods. US Patent 4,379,752, 9 Sept 1998.

Dissertation

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

Book with institutional author

International Anatomical Nomenclature Committee (1966) Nomina anatomica. Excerpta Medica, Amsterdam.

In press article

Major M (2007) Recent developments. In: Jones W (ed) Surgery today. Springer, Dordrecht (in press).

Online document

Online database

Healthwise Knowledgebase (1998) US Pharmacopeia, Rockville. http://www.healthwise.org. Accessed 21 Sept 1998.

Supplementary material/private homepage

Doe J (2000) Title of supplementary material. http://www.privatehomepage.com. Accessed 22 Feb 2000.

University site

Doe J (1999) Title of preprint. http://www.uni-heidelberg.de/mydata.html. Accessed 25 Dec 1999.

Doe J (1999) Trivial HTTP, RFC2169. ftp://ftp.isi.edu/in-notes/rfc2169.txt. Accessed 12 Nov 1999.

Organization site

ISSN International Centre (2006) The ISSN register. http://www.issn.org. Accessed 20 Feb 2007.

Figures, tables and additional files

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Mini Reviews are concise articles aiming to provide an insight into timely and relevant topics. The aim of these is to act as a 'state-of-the-art' overview of key areas for the journal's readers.

These should cover three aspects - the basis of the subject, the research undertaken so far, and what crucial next steps need to be taken.

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"A versus B in the treatment of C: a randomized controlled trial", "X is a risk factor for Y: a case control study", "What is the impact of factor X on subject Y: A systematic review"
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See our editorial policies for more information.

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See our editorial policies for more information on consent for publication.

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Data availability statements can take one of the following forms (or a combination of more than one if required for multiple datasets):

The datasets generated and/or analysed during the current study are available in the [NAME] repository, [PERSISTENT WEB LINK TO DATASETS]
The datasets used and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
All data generated or analysed during this study are included in this published article [and its supplementary information files].
The datasets generated and/or analysed during the current study are not publicly available due [REASON WHY DATA ARE NOT PUBLIC] but are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
Data sharing is not applicable to this article as no datasets were generated or analysed during the current study.
The data that support the findings of this study are available from [third party name] but restrictions apply to the availability of these data, which were used under license for the current study, and so are not publicly available. Data are however available from the authors upon reasonable request and with permission of [third party name].
Not applicable. If your manuscript does not contain any data, please state 'Not applicable' in this section.