Preparation of Specific Sections
Title
The title should capture the conceptual significance for a broad audience. As a general guideline the most effective titles are no more than 10–12 words and should readily give readers an overall view of the paper's significance rather than the detailed contents of the paper which can be elaborated upon in the Summary. Titles should also avoid use of jargon uncommon abbreviations and punctuation. Titles can occupy no more than three lines of type; each line should contain no more than 50 characters including spaces.
Authors/Affiliations
Author names should be spelled out rather than set in initials. Authors should be footnoted to corresponding affiliations. Affiliations should contain the following core information: department(s)/subunit(s); institution; city state/region postal code; country. Note: Please check author names and affiliations carefully as we cannot amend or correct these sections after publication.
Corresponding Author
The "Correspondence" line should include the e-mail address of the corresponding author(s). One corresponding author is preferred for reasons stated in the Authorship section of Editorial Policies above. But there is no mandatory limit on the number of corresponding authors that may be listed. Corresponding authors may also provide a Twitter handle as a secondary means of contact. Please see the corresponding author responsibilities noted above in the Editorial Policies.
Lead Contact
Every author list must identify one corresponding author as a Lead Contact noted by a footnote in the manuscript. If there is only one corresponding author that author will be listed as the Lead Contact. Please see the Lead Contact responsibilities noted above in the Authorship section of the Editorial Policies.
Additional Footnotes
Footnotes are only allowed on page 1 of the text (and in tables). They may include a Lead Contact (mandatory) or a present address (optional) or they may indicate co-first authorship (optional). For more on designations of author contributions please see the "Authorship" section above under Editorial Policies.
Summary
The Summary consists of a single paragraph of fewer than 150 words. We recommend that effective abstracts include the following elements: (1) a brief background of the question while avoiding common yet information-poor clauses stating that a certain process has not been well understood; (2) a description of the results and approaches/model systems framed in the context of their conceptual interest; and (3) an indication of the broader significance of the work. As the adjective "novel" tends to be overused and rarely adds much meaning to a sentence we generally try to avoid its use. The same applies to priority claims such as "the first" that can also be difficult to verify exhaustively. The description and interpretation of findings should be able to convey the study's interest and importance. References should not be cited in the Summary.
Keywords
Authors are encouraged to include up to ten keywords that will be associated with the article on Cell Press platforms and on PubMed. These keywords should be listed in the manuscript after the Summary separated by commas.
Highlights
Highlights are a short collection of bullet points that convey the core findings of the article. This list of points will be displayed online with the Summary of the article but will not appear in print. Specifications: up to four bullet points can be included; the length of an individual bullet point should not exceed 85 characters (including spaces); only the core results of the paper should be covered.Highlights are required for all research papers and will be displayed online with the article; however they will not appear in print. On the EM page where you are asked to upload your files please choose "Highlights" and upload a Word document including your Highlights.
Introduction
The Introduction should be succinct with no subheadings and should present the background information necessary to provide a biological context for the results.
Results
This section should be divided with subheadings. Footnotes should not be used.
Discussion
The Discussion should explain the significance of the results and place them into a broader context. It should not be redundant with the Results section. This section may contain subheadings and can in some cases be combined with the Results section.
Author Contributions
For primary research papers we ask you to include a dedicated Author Contributions section preceding the Acknowledgments to give information about individual author contributions to the work. Please keep this section as concise as possible and use initials to indicate author identity. All of the authors listed on the paper should be mentioned in this section at least once. We are happy for you to use a traditional format such as “A.B. and C.D. conducted the experiments E.F. designed the experiments and wrote the paper…” but would also encourage you to use
the CRediT taxonomy instead.
Acknowledgments
This section may acknowledge contributions from non-authors and/or list funding sources and it should include a statement of any conflicts of interest. Please check this section carefully as we cannot allow amendments or corrections after publication.
References
References should include only articles that are published or in press. For references to in press articles please confirm with the cited journal that the article is in fact accepted and in press and include a DOI number and online publication date. Unpublished data submitted manuscripts abstracts and personal communications should be cited within the text only. Personal communication should be documented by a letter of permission. Submitted articles should be cited as unpublished data data not shown or personal communication.In-text citations should be written in Harvard style and not numbered e.g. "Smith et al. 2015; Smith and Jones 2015."Please use the style shown below for references. Note that "et al." should only be used after ten authors.Article in a periodical:Sondheimer N. and Lindquist S. (2000). Rnq1: an epigenetic modifier of protein function in yeast. Mol. Cell 5 163–172.Article in a book:King S.M. (2003). Dynein motors: Structure mechanochemistry and regulation. In Molecular Motors M. Schliwa ed. (Weinheim Germany: Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH) pp. 45–78.An entire book:Cowan W.M. Jessell T.M. and Zipursky S.L. (1997). Molecular and Cellular Approaches to Neural Development (New York: Oxford University Press).
Figure Legends
Legends should be included in the submitted manuscript as a separate section. Each figure legend should have a brief title that describes the entire figure without citing specific panels followed by a description of each panel. For any figures presenting pooled data the measures should be defined in the figure legends (for example "Data are represented as mean ± SEM."). Each legend should refer to any supporting items in the Supplemental Information (e.g. "See also Figure S1.").
Tables
When creating a table please use the Microsoft Word Table function. Tables should include a title and footnotes and/or legend should be concise. Include tables in the submitted manuscript as a separate section. Tables not created with the Microsoft Word table function will need to be revised by the author.When creating tables please adhere to the following guidelines:
- Do not submit tables in Excel or PDF format. Do not place an Excel table in a Word document.
- Format tables with Word's Table function; do not use tabs or spaces to create a table.
- Tables should be in black and white; rows and columns should not be shaded.
- Do not use line breaks or spaces to separate data within a cell. Use separate cells for all discrete data elements within a table.
- Number tables as Table 1 Table 2 Table 3 etc. rather than as Table 1a Table 1b Table 1c etc.
- If bold or italic font is used within a table to indicate some feature of the data please give an explanation of its usage in the legend.
- All abbreviations within a table must be defined in the table legend or footnotes.
- Footnotes should be listed with superscript lowercase letters beginning with “a.” Footnotes may not be listed with numbers or symbols.
STAR Methods
The STAR Methods section replaces our Experimental Procedures and Supplemental Experimental Procedures sections. The STAR Methods section should include enough detail to allow the reader to understand the experimental design and to be able to assess the conclusions. STAR Methods also detail what resources and procedures are needed for readers to reproduce experiments using standardized sections and a Key Resources Table. For guidelines on how to structure your paper in the STAR Methods format please visit our
STAR Methods web page for authors. We encourage but do not require authors to follow the STAR Methods format when articles are initially submitted. If accepted articles must adhere to the STAR Methods format. Please see our
Editorial as well as the
STAR Methods launch site to learn how STAR Methods helps align our papers to external reporting guidelines to improve transparency and robust and rigorous reporting of methods details.
Supplemental Information
In general Supplemental Information is limited to data and other materials that directly support the main conclusions of a paper but cannot be included in the main paper for reasons such as space or file format restrictions. SI should not be used to present data that are preliminary or that conceptually go beyond the main point of the paper.Before submitting your supplemental materials please refer to our complete instructions in the
Supplemental Information guidelines. This page also contains information on submitting movie and other multimedia files.