Leukemia Research
Clinical and Laboratory Studies

Submission of Manuscripts

All Manuscripts and Material should be submitted on-line via EES - http://ees.elsevier.com/lr/ . Please refer to the 'Tutorial for Authors' located on the EES site for guidance on the electronic submission process.

• Submission Guidelines at a Glance

• Manuscript Submission Checklist

All published papers containing research data are subject to peer-review. It is a condition of publication that manuscripts submitted to this journal implies that the work described has not been published previously and will not be simultaneously submitted or published elsewhere (except in the form of an abstract or as part of a published lecture or academic thesis), that it is not under consideration for publication elsewhere, that its publication is approved by all authors and tacitly or explicitly by the responsible authorities where the work was carried out, and that, if accepted, it will not be published elsewhere in the same form, in English or in any other language, without the written consent of the Publisher.

These guidelines generally follow the "Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals". The complete document appears at http://www.icmje.org

Submitting an Article
Articles should be submitted online at http://ees.elsevier.com/lr/ and the instructions on the site should be closely followed. Authors may submit manuscripts and track their progress to final decision. Reviewers can download manuscripts and submit their reports to the Editors.

The full contact details for the Editorial Office are shown below:
Phoebe A. Downing
University of Rochester Medical Center, Hematology-Oncology and Pathology Laboratory Medicine,
601 Elmwood Avenue, Box 626, Rochester, NY 14642 USA
Tel: +1 585 275 4915, Fax: +1 585 276 2390, Email: leukemiaresearch@urmc.rochester.edu

Types of Contribution
All articles will contain limit on references and word count. Word count limit does not include the references, acknowledgement document, figures and tables.

Original Articles are full-length research papers which have not been published previously, except in a preliminary form. An Original paper usually does not exceed 3,000 words, longer papers may be considered if relevant, limit of 50 references and no limit for figures and/or tables but must justify if requesting more than 4.

Review Articles should be submitted after prior consultation with an Editor. This paper should not exceed 5,000 words but longer papers may be considered if relevant, limit of 100 references and no limit for figures and/or tables but must justify if requesting more than 4.

Commentaries are longer contributions than Editorials and should be submitted after prior consultation with an Editor. Commentaries do not have abstracts and should not exceed 1,500 words, although longer papers may be considered if relevant, limit of 25 references and no limit for figures and/or tables but must justify if requesting more than 4.

Editorials should be submitted after prior consultation with an Editor. Editorials do not have abstracts and should not exceed 1,000 words, limit of 5 references and optional 1-2 figures and/or tables.

The journal will not accept any new submissions of Brief Communications and Preliminary Reports, Case Reports or Letters to the Editors after 31st March 2012. Please contact i.salusbury@elsevier.com if you have any queries on this policy.

Comments on Published Papers are comments on a prior published paper. Mention the title in both the Cover Letter and the References. This paper does not have an abstract and should not exceed 1,500 words; limit 3 references and optional 1-2 figures and/or tables.

Meeting Reports are free reports on one or several sessions of Congress, Workshops or Symposia (also closed ones), signed by the author(s) whose name appears in the List of Contents. Indicate complete information on the meeting covered, including programme. This paper should not exceed 3,000 words, limit 8 references and no limit on figures and/or tables but must justify if requesting more than 4.

Book Review is a review of a specific book. This paper does not have an abstract and should not exceed 1,000 words; limit 3 references.

Open Forum concerns hypotheses, models or experiments which authors wish to see performed but cannot perform themselves. Comments made under this heading engage only the authors and not the Journal, and publication will be at the discretion of the Editor. This paper should not exceed 1,500 words, limit 5 references and optional 1-2 figures and/or tables.

Preparation of Manuscripts
1. Cover Letter. This is a letter explaining why you want to submit your paper to Leukemia Research. Please include the title, and signed by the corresponding author. Also include details of any previous submission.

2. All contributions must be 1.5 spaced except the references which are single spaced with a space between each reference.

3. All Editors request that manuscripts submitted for publication should be written concisely and clearly. Manuscripts will only be accepted when they are written in an acceptable standard of English. Authors whose native language is not English are strongly advised to have their manuscripts be checked by an English-speaking colleague prior to submission. Either the Concise Oxford Dictionary or Webster's New International Dictionary may be used as a standard for English spelling.

Language Editing Available
Authors who require information about language editing and copyediting services pre- and post-submission please visit http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/authorshome.authors/languagepolishing or contact authorsupport@elsevier.com for more information. Please note Elsevier neither endorses nor takes responsibility for any products, goods or services offered by outside vendors through our services or in any advertising. For more information please refer to our Terms and Conditions http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/termsconditions.cws_home/termsconditions

4. Manuscript Document should be organized in the following sequence: All manuscripts must have a title page which is Page 1 of your manuscript. Title Page – Note the Title should be clear, descriptive and brief. Avoid non-specific phrases such as "A study of..." or "The effects of...". Do not give the title a numbered subtitle or series number.
The title page is the first page of the paper and must contain: title name of authors (listed as, first name last name academic degree then superscript the institutional code); institutional has superscript code (1, 2, 3...), Department of .., institution, city and country; the Corresponding Author. Note: No positions like Dr., Professor, or Faculty of, we use academic degrees only).

Role of Corresponding Author.
Please note there is only one corresponding author of the manuscript. The corresponding author is the one that submits the manuscript and is displayed on the Title Page of the manuscript. They have the duty to ensure that all of the named authors have seen and approved the original manuscript and subsequent revisions. Each author should have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for the content. The corresponding author should also ensure that those who have contributed to the research are acknowledged appropriately either as a co-author or in the Acknowledgements. In addition, the corresponding author has the prime responsibility for ensuring the paper is correctly prepared according to the Guide for Authors. Submitted manuscripts not complying with the Guide for Authors may be returned to the authors.

Word Count – does not include the references, acknowledgement document, figures and tables.

Abstract – The abstract should be clear, descriptive and less than 100 words.

Keywords – Keywords are index terms or descriptions for information retrieval systems, normally 6 to 8 items. Words selected should reflect the essential topics of the article and may be taken from both the title and the text.

Abbreviations and units - Generally, avoid abbreviations in the Title and abbreviating single words. Otherwise explain all abbreviations at first mention in the abstract and text, except for: DNA, RNA, AIDS, and HIV. Standard SI abbreviations for units do not need to be spelled out.

Introduction – This should give the reasons for doing the work. As this is a specialist journal a detailed review of the literature is not necessary. The introduction should preferably conclude with a final paragraph stating concisely and clearly the aims and objectives of the investigation.

Materials and Methods – A full technical description of a method should be given in detail only when the method is new.

Results – This need only report results of representative experiments illustrated by tables and figures. Use well-known statistical tests in preference to obscure ones. Consult a statistician or a statistics text for detailed advice.

Discussion (including Conclusions) – This section must not recapitulate results but should relate the authors' experiments to other work and give their conclusions, which may be given in a subsection headed after called Conclusions.

References – References are numbered. All publications cited in the text should be presented in a list of references following the text of the manuscript. In the text refer to references by a number in square brackets on the line (e.g. Since Peterson[1]), and the full reference should be given in a numerical list at the end of the paper. References should be given in the following form:
1. Latagliata R, Concetta Petti M, Mandelli F. Acute myeloid leukemia in the elderly: 'per aspera ad astra'? Leukemia Res 1999;23:603-613. 2. Alfrey V. The isolation of subcellular components. In: Brachet J, Mirsky AE, editors. The cell, biochemistry, physiology, morphology I. New York: Academic Press, 1959. p. 200. Note: Authors are strongly encouraged to check the accuracy of each reference against its original source. Work accepted for publication but not yet published should be referred to as "in press". Authors should provide evidence (such as a copy of the letter of acceptance). References concerning unpublished data, theses, and "personal communications" should not be cited in the reference list but may be mentioned in the text. Do not only put the first author et al. list all authors.

5. Acknowledgements is a separate document and should be organized in the following sequence:
Acknowledgements – All contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship as defined above should be listed in an acknowledgements section. E.g. those who might be acknowledged include a person who provided purely technical help, writing assistance, or a department chair that provided only general support. Authors should disclose whether they had any writing assistance and identify the entity that paid for this assistance.

Role of the funding source All sources of funding should be declared. Authors should declare the role of study sponsors, if any, in the study design, collection, analysis and interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript; and in the decision to submit the manuscript for publication. If the study sponsors had no such involvement, the authors should so state.

Authors' Contributions – All authors should have made substantial contributions to the following: (1) the conception and design of the study, or acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data, (2) drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content, (3) final approval of the version to be submitted. For authors we use initials and if there is more than one author that does the same function put them together. Note: If there is more than one author that contributed equally to the work it goes in this section not on the title page.

Conflict of Interest – All authors must disclose any financial and personal relationships with other people or organisations that could inappropriately influence (bias) their work. E.g. potential conflicts of interest include employment, consultancies, stock ownership, honoraria, paid expert testimony, patent applications/registrations, and grants or other funding. Please see the Elsevier website for further information http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/authorsview.authors/conflictsofinterest

6. Figures and Figure Legends.
Figures should be cited consecutively in the text. Full details for the electronic submission of artwork can be obtained from http://www.elsevier.com/artworkinstructions . All figures have to be uploaded in EES separately.

Colour Illustrations. If, together with your accepted article, you submit colour figures Elsevier will ensure, at no additional charge all figures appear in colour online. For colour reproduction in print, you will receive information regarding the costs after receipt of your accepted article. For further information on the preparation of electronic artwork, please see http://www.elsevier.com/artworkinstructions

Note: Because of technical complications which can arise by converting colour figures to "grey scale" (for the printed version should you not opt for colour in print) please submit in addition usable black and white prints corresponding to all the colour illustrations.

Figure Legend Type the figure legends in order in one word document and starting with the words figure legends; limit 40 words or less. Spacing is 1.5 and if more than one page put a page number in the footer.

7. Table and Table Legends.
Tables should be cited consecutively in the text. Type tables on separate pages with a title. Avoid white spaces in the table by using footnotes, and ensure all symbols or abbreviation are explained. Take care to distinguish between 'zero' and 'not done' as an entry in the table. Tables are uploaded separately.

Table Legend. Type the table legends in order in one word document and starting with the words table legends. Spacing is 1.5 and if more than one page put a page number in the footer.

Footnotes: Footnotes should only be used to provide addresses of authors or to provide explanations essential to the understanding of Tables.

8. Supplementary Data
Elsevier now accepts electronic supplementary material to support and enhance your scientific research. Supplementary files offer the author additional possibilities to publish supporting applications, movies, animation sequences, high-resolution images, background datasets, sound clips and more. Supplementary files supplied will be published online alongside the electronic version of your article in Elsevier web products, including ScienceDirect: http://www.sciencedirect.com . In order to ensure that your submitted material is directly usable, please ensure that data is provided in one of our recommended file formats. Authors should submit the material in electronic format together with the article and supply a concise and descriptive caption for each file. For more detailed instructions please visit: http://ees.elsevier.com/lr/ .

Randomised Controlled Trials
All randomised controlled trials submitted for publication in Leukemia Research should include a completed Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials (CONSORT) flow chart. Please refer to the CONSORT statement website at http://www.consort-statement.org for more information. Leukemia Research has adopted the proposal from the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) which require, as a condition of consideration for publication of clinical trials, registration in a public trials registry. Trials must register at or before the onset of patient enrolment. The clinical trial registration number should be included at the end of the abstract of the article. For this purpose, a clinical trial is defined as any research study that prospectively assigns human participants or groups of humans to one or more health-related interventions to evaluate the effects of health outcomes. Health-related interventions include any intervention used to modify a biomedical or health-related outcome (e.g. drugs, surgical procedures, devices, behavioural treatments, dietary interventions, and process-of-care changes). Health outcomes include any biomedical or health-related measures obtained in patients or participants, including pharmacokinetic measures and adverse events. Purely observational studies (those in which the assignment of the medical intervention is not at the discretion of the investigator) will not require registration. Further information can be found at http://www.icmje.org.

Disclosure of Clinical Trial Results
In line with the position of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors, the Journal is willing to consider manuscripts which include results posted in the same clinical trials registry in which primary registration resides. It will not consider such postings to be prior publication, providing the results are presented in the form of a brief structured (500 words) abstract or table. However, divulging results in other circumstances (e.g., investors' meetings) is strongly discouraged and may jeopardise consideration of the manuscript. Authors should fully disclose all postings in registries of the same or closely related work.

Ethics
Identifying information, including patients images, names, initials, or hospital numbers, should not be included in videos, recordings, written descriptions, photographs, and pedigrees unless the information is essential for scientific purposes and you have obtained written informed consent for publication in print and electronic form from the patient (or parent, guardian or next of kin where applicable). If such consent is made subject to any conditions, Elsevier must be made aware of all such conditions. Written consents must be provided to Elsevier on request.

Even where consent has been given, identifying details should be omitted if they are not essential. If identifying characteristics are altered to protect anonymity, such as in genetic pedigrees, authors should provide assurance that alterations do not distort scientific meaning and editors should so note.

If such consent has not been obtained, personal details of patients included in any part of the paper and in any supplementary materials (including all illustrations and videos) must be removed before submission.

Drug names
Use generic names for drugs. Commercial names may be included in parentheses at first mention in the text. Complicated drug names or regimens may be abbreviated, with the abbreviation in parentheses after first mention.

Revised Manuscript
All manuscripts are peer-reviewed. On receipt of the first decision letter authors should send their revised manuscript as soon as possible in order to ensure that the scientific content of their manuscript is timely and up to date.

We allow up to 6 months making the revisions suggested by our Editors and Reviewers. The revised paper must be submitted without tracking or highlights and 1.5 spaced. A Revision Letter must contain detailed responses to the reviewers and indicate where in the letter you changed the text. Note: If you do not submit your revisions by the 6 month date your paper will be withdrawn.

Author Names
This policy concerns the addition, deletion, or rearrangement of author names in the authorship of accepted manuscripts: Before the accepted manuscript is published in an online issue: Requests to add or remove an author, or to rearrange the author names, must be sent to the Journal Manager from the corresponding author of the accepted manuscript and must include: (a) the reason the name should be added or removed, or the author names rearranged and (b) written confirmation (e-mail, fax, letter) from all authors that they agree with the addition, removal or rearrangement. In the case of addition or removal of authors, this includes confirmation from the author being added or removed. Requests that are not sent by the corresponding author will be forwarded by the Journal Manager to the corresponding author, who must follow the procedure as described above. Note that: (1) Journal Managers will inform the Journal Editors of any such requests and (2) publication of the accepted manuscript in an online issue is suspended until authorship has been agreed. After the accepted manuscript is published in an online issue: Any requests to add, delete, or rearrange author names in an article published in an online issue will follow the same policies as noted above and result in a corrigendum.

Accepted Manuscript
Upon acceptance of your manuscript, authors will be asked to transfer copyright (for more information on copyright see http://ees.elsevier.com/lr/). This transfer will ensure the widest possible dissemination of information. A letter will be sent to the corresponding author confirming receipt of the manuscript. A form facilitating transfer of copyright will be provided. If excerpts from other copyrighted works are included, the author(s) must obtain written permission from the copyright owners and credit the source(s) in the article. Elsevier has pre-printed forms for use by authors in these cases go to: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/authorsview.authors/permissions or e-mail: permissions@elsevier.com

Proofs
One set of page proofs in PDF format will be sent by e-mail to the corresponding author. Elsevier now sends PDF proofs which can be annotated; for this you will need to download Adobe Reader version 7 available free from http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html . Instructions on how to annotate PDF files will accompany the proofs. The exact system requirements are given at the Adobe site: http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/acrrsystemreqs.html#70win. If you do not wish to use the PDF annotations function, you may list the corrections (including replies to the Query Form) and return to Elsevier in an e-mail. Please list your corrections quoting line number. If, for any reason, this is not possible, then mark the corrections and any other comments (including replies to the Query Form) on a printout of your proof and return by fax, or scan the pages and e-mail, or by post.

Please use this proof only for checking the typesetting, editing, completeness and correctness of the text, tables and figures. Significant changes to the article as accepted for publication will only be considered at this stage with permission from the Editor. We will do everything possible to get your article published quickly and accurately. Therefore, it is important to ensure that all of your corrections are sent back to us in one communication: please check carefully before replying, as inclusion of any subsequent corrections cannot be guaranteed. Proofreading is solely your responsibility. Note that Elsevier may proceed with the publication of your article if no response is received.

Enquiries
Authors can keep a track on the progress of their accepted article, and set up e-mail alerts informing them of changes to their manuscript's status, by using the "Track a Paper" feature at: http://www.elsevier.com/trackarticle . For privacy, information on each article is password-protected. The author should key in the "Our Reference" code (which is in the letter of acknowledgement sent by the publisher on receipt of the accepted article) and the name of the corresponding author. In case of problems or questions, authors may contact the Author Service Department, E-mail: authorsupport@elsevier.com

Offprints
The corresponding author, at no cost, will be provided with a PDF file of the article via e-mail. The PDF file is a watermarked version of the published article and includes a cover sheet with the journal cover image and a disclaimer outlining the terms and conditions of use.

© 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
This journal and the individual contributions contained in it are protected under copyright by Elsevier Ltd, and the following terms and conditions apply to their use:
Photocopying Single photocopies of single articles may be made for personal use as allowed by national copyright laws. Permission of the Publisher and payment of a fee is required for all other photocopying, including multiple or systematic copying, copying for advertising or promotional purposes, resale, and all forms of document delivery. Special rates are available for educational institutions that wish to make photocopies for non-profit educational classroom use.
For information on how to seek permission visit www.elsevier.com/permissions or call: (+44) 1865 843830 (UK) / (+1) 215 239 3804 (USA).

Derivative Works
Subscribers may reproduce tables of contents or prepare lists of articles including abstracts for internal circulation within their institutions. Permission of the Publisher is required for resale or distribution outside the institution. Permission of the Publisher is required for all other derivative works, including compilations and translations (please consult www.elsevier.com/permissions).

Electronic Storage or Usage
Permission of the Publisher is required to store or use electronically any material contained in this journal, including any article or part of an article (please consult www.elsevier.com/permissions). Except as outlined above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission of the Publisher.

Notice
No responsibility is assumed by the Publisher for any injury and/or damage to persons or property as a matter of products liability, negligence or otherwise, or from any use or operation of any methods, products, instructions or ideas contained in the material herein. Because of rapid advances in the medical sciences, in particular, independent verification of diagnoses and drug dosages should be made. Although all advertising material is expected to conform to ethical (medical) standards, inclusion in this publication does not constitute a guarantee or endorsement of the quality or value of such product or of the claims made of it by its manufacturer.

Thank you for considering Leukemia Research for your submission.