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The Journal of Nutrition does not currently have a word limit; however, all authors are urged to be as concise as possible in preparing their manuscripts for submission. The median length for a published research article is about 4800 words, varying from 2800 - 7800, but seldom longer. Manuscripts exceeding 7800 words require a specific justification in the Letter of submission, and may be returned before review for condensation. The Journal is limited in the number of pages that can be published each year and article length is a consideration in the editorial process.
Manuscript Preparation:
Your Manuscript should include:
A) Title Page
C) Introduction
G) Acknowledgement (if applicable)
A) TITLE PAGE: The title page must include:
Conflict of Interest and Funding Disclosure: Any existing financial arrangements between an author and a company whose product figures prominently in the submitted manuscript should be brought to the attention of the Editor in the cover letter that accompanies the manuscript submission. In addition, all authors must declare all sources of funding for research reported in their manuscript and report all potential conflicts of interest in separate footnotes on the manuscript title page. If an author has no conflicts of interest, the footnote should list the author’s name, followed by “no conflicts of interest”. A conflict of interest includes, but is not limited to:
C) INTRODUCTION: Background to the research conducted and specific objectives should be clearly indicated. This should not be a comprehensive review of the literature, however.
D) MATERIALS AND METHODS: Documentation of methods and materials used should be sufficient to permit replication of the research. State the source of specialized materials, diets, chemicals, and instruments and other equipment, with model or catalog numbers, where appropriate. Specify kits, analyzers, and commercial laboratories used. Cite references for methods whenever possible and briefly explain any modifications made.
HUMAN AND ANIMAL RESEARCH. Reports of human studies must include a statement that the protocol was approved by the appropriate institutional committee or that it complied with the Helsinki Declaration as revised in 1983. When preparing reports of randomized, clinical trials, authors should refer to the checklist published in the CONSORT Statement and should include a trial profile summarizing participant flow (2). Research on animals should include a statement that the protocol was approved by the appropriate committee or complied with the Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals (3). Describe how animals were killed. Describe control and experimental subjects giving age, weight, sex, race, and for animals, breed or strain. Include the supplier of experimental animals.
DIETS. Composition of control and experimental diets must be presented. When a diet composition is published for the first time in The Journal of Nutrition, utilize a table or a footnote to provide complete information on all components. If previously described in The Journal of Nutrition or The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, a literature citation may be used. State specifically any modifications made to the published diet compositions. The proximate composition of closed formula diets should be given as amounts of protein, energy, fat, and fiber. Components should be expressed as g/kg diet. Vitamin and mineral mixture compositions should be included using Journal of Nutrition units and nomenclature. For a discussion of the formulation of purified animal diets, refer to Baker (4) and to a series of ASN publications (5-8).
STATISTICAL METHODS. Describe all statistical tests utilized and indicate the probability level (P) at which differences were considered significant. If data are presented in the text, state what they represent (e.g. means ± SEM). Indicate whether data were transformed before analysis. Specify any statistical computer programs used.
Present the results of the statistical analysis of data in the body of each and on figures per se. Use letters or symbols to indicate significant differences; define these in a table footnote or the figure legend. Provide the appropriate statistics of variability. An estimate of the error variance (SD or SEM) of group means should be displayed in figures. Standard ANOVA methodology assumes a homogeneous variance. If error variance is tested and found to be heterogeneous, data should be transformed before ANOVA, or nonparametric tests should be used. For a discussion of variability calculations and curve-fitting procedures, see Baker (4).
E) RESULTS AND DISCUSSION Report the results of the study. Discuss the significance of the findings, interpret the results and conclusions.
F) LITERATURE CITED The Journal of Nutrition reference format will be modified to be consistent with the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) recommended format for bibliographic citations with the following exception: references should include the names of all authors, unless there are more than ten, in which case list the first nine plus "et al." There is no limit on the number of citations allowed; recent literature should be comprehensively cited. The list of references must begin on a new page and should include the heading "Literature Cited." Abbreviate journal names according to the National Library of Medicine (NLM) journal abbreviations list . References should be numbered consecutively in the order in which they are first mentioned in the text.
References should be formatted according to the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) recommended format for bibliographic citations with the following exception: references should include the names of all authors, unless there are more than ten, in which case list the first nine plus "et al." Personal communications, submitted manuscripts and unpublished data cannot be included in the Literature Cited section but should appear parenthetically in the text. Personal communications must be written and the affiliation of the person providing the communication indicated in the text. Articles accepted for publication but not published when final revisions are completed on the current article may be cited as "in press."References in tables and figures: References cited for the first time in tables or figure legends should be numbered in order, based on the placement of the table or figure in text. Identify references in text, tables, and legends for illustrations by arabic numbers in parentheses. See current print issues of The Journal of Nutrition for style.Make sure your Literature Cited section includes a recognized heading and that the heading is not set in all caps (use upper and lower case letters, as shown below). Recognized headings include the following:
- References
- Reference List
- Literature Cited
- References and further reading
- Bibliography
- Literature
G) ACKNOWLEDGMENTS. Technical assistance and advice may be acknowledged in a section at the end of the text. Only named individuals should be included in this section. Authors are responsible for obtaining written permission from everyone acknowledged by name and for providing copies of signed permission statements to The Journal of Nutrition. These statements should be submitted to The Journal along with the manuscript Authors' Statement/Copyright Release Form.
UNITS OF MEASURE. Most measurements must conform to le Systeme Internationale d'Unites (SI) (9). The metric system and the Celsius scale (º C) must be used. Concentrations should be expressed on a molar basis. Except for diet composition, convert to substance concentration, e.g., mol/L. The denominator should be L. Do not use M, mM, N, etc. Use one of three acceptable options to express measurements. (a) Use SI units exclusively. (b) Use SI units and, if appropriate, provide conventional units parenthetically in the text and give conversion factors in table footnotes and figure legends. (c) Use conventional units, if appropriate, and provide SI units parenthetically in the text and give conversion factors in table footnotes and figure legends. Units should not be pluralized.
Useful websites are: SI conversion website: http://www.ex.ac.uk/cimt/dictunit/dictunit.htm Clinical SI conversions: http://www.unc.edu/~rowlett/units/scales/clinical_data.html Clinical SI conversions: http://dwjay.tripod.com/conversion.html
ABBREVIATIONS. Use only standard abbreviations. Table 2 is an abridged list of abbreviations that may be used without definition in Journal of Nutrition articles. Other standard abbreviations are listed in Scientific Style and Format (1).
If there are three or more abbreviations defined in the text, define each the first time it is used in the text and prepare an abbreviation footnote. The footnote should be associated with the first abbreviated term in the text and should be an alphabetized listing of all author-defined abbreviations and their definitions. Abbreviations should not be followed by a period and should not be pluralized (e.g. AA should represent both "amino acid" and "amino acids"). Use the verb (e.g."is" or "are") that is consistent with the context in which the abbreviation is used in the sentence. Units and statistical terms also should not be followed by a period or pluralized. Use the standard abbreviations for SI prefixes found in Young (9) and in Table 3 and those for units of measure in Table 4. Abbreviations used only in tables and figures must be separately defined in the footnotes or legend for each table or figure. Abbreviations that are in the abbreviation footnote should not be redefined in table footnotes or figure legends.
Previous PageNOMENCLATURE. Chemical and biochemical terms and abbreviations and identification of enzymes must conform to the recommended usage of the International Union of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (10). Names for vitamins, related compounds, and abbreviations for amino acids should follow the ASN nomenclature policy (11,12).