Submission Preparation Checklist

As part of the submission process, authors are required to check off their submission's compliance with all of the following items, and submissions may be returned to authors that do not adhere to these guidelines.

• Scope, article type and writing style are appropriate (if in doubt you have emailed the Editor-in-Chief)
• You have read the Guidelines and Policies and adhered to formatting instructions
• You have appropriately referenced others’ work
• You have obtained ethical clearance where applicable and cited in text
• You have declared any conflicts of interest in your cover letter
• You have obtained any necessary permissions to reuse data, figures or tables
• You have deposited new structures and sequences in databanks and cited the accession numbers
• The submission has not been previously published, nor is it before another journal for consideration (or an explanation has been provided in Comments to the Editor).
• The following file types are ready for upload: Publishing Agreement, Title Page, Main document, Significance of findings, Acknowledgements, Figures, Supplementary material (if applicable), Response to Reviewers [revised manuscripts]
• The following information is ready to be submitted: Title, abstract, [2–5]; Authors’ names, affiliations and ORCIDs, Authors’ contributions, Keywords [3–5]
• Names and emails of three suggested reviewers, Names of funders
• Figures, tables, appendices and supplementary material: If included; have been numbered consecutively and cited in text in numerical order
• References: The correct style has been followed; have been cited in the text and in numerical order at first citation and include DOIs where applicable