Article Types
1) Research Article
Manuscripts should be well-structured and organized, with clear headings and subheadings. They should include a title page, abstract and keywords, introduction, materials and methodology, results, discussion, conclusions, acknowledgement and references sections .
Title page
The title page should include: title, authors’ names, author affiliations, short title, corresponding author’s name and e-mail address.
Abstract and Keywords
Abstracts are usually limited to 300 words. Concise abstracts should be written in one paragraph including the background, aims, methods, results and conclusions.
Four to six keywords or short phrases are necessary for editors to identify suitable reviewers for peer review. These are also important to increase the discoverability of your manuscript.
Introduction
The introduction should provide background information on the topic of study and explain why it is important. It should also clearly state the research question or hypothesis that the study aims to answer. This should not be a comprehensive review of the literature.
Materials and Methods
The methods section should describe in detail how the study was conducted, including the participants, materials, and procedures used. This section should be written in enough detail that other researchers could replicate your study.
Results
The results section should present the data from the study in a clear and organized manner. Tables and figures should be used to help illustrate the findings. Do not duplicate data from tables or figures to the text.
Discussion
The discussion section should interpret the results of the study and explain their implications. It is not a repetition of the abstract and main data. The authors should also discuss the limitations of the study and give some suggestions for future research.
Conclusion
The conclusion section should consist of one brief paragraph that states the main conclusions from the study. In this section, references to other works are not allowed.
Acknowledgements
The acknowledgements should acknowledge individuals or organizations that have supported the study.
Authors must indicate their contributions to the manuscript. For example, who is responsible for design, conduction, data analyzation, final content and writing.
Authors must guarantee that all authors have read and approved the manuscript.
Persons who gave valuable suggestions should be included and industries that provided materials free also should be listed.
Please acknowledge all financial supports including grant numbers. For example, this work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant number XXXX).
References
At the end there should be a reference list that includes all sources cited in the manuscript. References are ordered in which they appear in the text. For example, ‘Salmonella and Escherichia coli are two major foodborne pathogens that threaten public health [1]’. Reference is cited more than once should be given the same number.
Author lists which numbers are more than three should be summarized with ‘et al’. Each entry should include the author's last name, the year of publication, and other relevant information such as the title of the article, journal title, volume, issue, page if available. For example,
- O'Neill L.A.J., Artyomov M.N. (2019) Itaconate: the poster child of metabolic reprogramming in macrophage function. NATURE REVIEWS IMMUNOLOGY, 19 (5), 273-281.
- Uematsu S., Matsumoto M., Takeda K. et al（2002）Lipopolysaccharide-dependent prostaglandin E2 production is regulated by the glutathione-dependent prostaglandin E2 synthase gene induced by the toll-like receptor 4/MyD88/NF-IL6 pathway. JOURNAL OF IMMUNOLOGY, 168(11), 5811-5816.
References that have been published online only but not yet in print should include the date of online publication and the Digital Object Identifier (doi) reference. For example,
- Meiliana M., Alexander T., Bloomfield F.H., Cormack B.E. et al. Nutrition guidelines for preterm infants: A systematic review. JOURNAL OF PARENTERAL AND ENTERAL NUTRITION . Published online: NOV 2023. DOI10.1002/jpen.2568.
References to books and monographs should include author last name, first name, year of publication, title of book and publisher. For example,
- Brown, Robert(2017). Understanding the Basics of Environmental Science. University of California Press.
- Smith, John(2019). The impact of climate change on global food security. Springer Publishing.
References to materials found on websites should include the full URL and access date. For example,
- Nationmaster (2005) HIV AIDS – Adult prevalence rate. http://www.nationmaster.com/graph-T/hea_hiv_aid_ad... (accessed June 2013).
2) Review
Editors welcome rigorous, balanced reviews on topics related to the scope of the journal. If the authors have a concern about whether the topic fits within the scope of the journal, please contact the journal’s editorial office ([email protected]). All review articles will undergo the same peer-review and editorial process as original research articles.
3) Short Communication
Short communications should be concise research that present clear and interesting findings related to the scope of the journal. It should be brief, approximately 2000 words, and include all necessary information for the reader to understand the research question, methods, results, and conclusions. All short communications undergo the same peer-review and editorial process as research articles.
4) Commentary
Commentaries should provide an informed and insightful analysis of a current topic related to the journal scope. It should be supported by evidence and should offer a unique perspective or argument. Commentaries should be no longer than 1000 words and contain no more than 2 tables or figures, with less than 20 references.
5) Letter to the Editor
Try to stay objective and avoid expressing personal opinions or biases in your letter. Provide evidence to support your arguments and make them more persuasive. Letters to the Editor should be no longer than 300 words, and contain no more than 1 table or figure, with less than 15 references.
Policy on prior publication
When authors submit manuscripts to this journal, these manuscripts should not be under consideration, accepted for publication or in press within a different journal, book or similar entity, unless explicit permission or agreement has been sought from all entities involved. However, deposition of a preprint on the author’s personal website, in an institutional repository, or in a preprint archive shall not be viewed as prior or duplicate publication. Authors should follow the Cambridge University Press Preprint Policy regarding preprint archives and maintaining the version of record.
Cover letter
The Editors strongly encourage authors to use a cover letter to indicate the novelty or the highlights of their submission.
Language
Use clear and concise language, avoiding excessive jargon and technical terms. Define any specialized terms or abbreviations upon first use. Ensure that the submitted manuscript is free of grammatical and typographical errors. Proofread the document thoroughly before submission.
Tables & Artwork
Please refer to our standard guidance about preparing artwork, tables and graphics for submission. This includes information about how to make images and figures accessible to readers.
Research Integrity and Ethical Standards
The submitted manuscript should be original work that has not been published nor under consideration for publication elsewhere. Any previously published materials, including figures or tables, should be properly cited and attributed.
If the submitted manuscript involved human or animal subjects, the authors have to address an ethics statement that explains how the study was approved by an institutional review board and how the rights and well-being of participants were protected.
Competing Interests
All authors must include a competing interest declaration in their main manuscript file. This declaration will be subject to editorial review and may be published in the article.
Competing interests are situations that could be perceived to exert an undue influence on the content or publication of an author’s work. They may include, but are not limited to, financial, professional, contractual or personal relationships or situations.
If the manuscript has multiple authors, the author submitting must include competing interest declarations relevant to all contributing authors.
Example wording for a declaration is as follows: “Competing interests: Author 1 is employed at organisation A, Author 2 is on the Board of company B and is a member of organisation C. Author 3 has received grants from company D.” If no competing interests exist, the declaration should state “Competing interests: The author(s) declare none”.
English language editing services
Authors, particularly those whose first language is not English, may wish to have their English-language manuscripts checked by a native speaker before submission. This step is optional, but may help to ensure that the academic content of the paper is fully understood by the Editor and any reviewers.
In order to help prospective authors to prepare for submission and to reach their publication goals, Cambridge University Press offers a range of high-quality manuscript preparation services, including language editing. You can find out more on our language services page.
Please note that the use of any of these services is voluntary, and at the author's own expense. Use of these services does not guarantee that the manuscript will be accepted for publication, nor does it restrict the author to submitting to a Cambridge-published journal.
Use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools
We acknowledge the increasing use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools in the research and writing processes. To ensure transparency, we expect any such use to be declared and described fully to readers, and to comply with our plagiarism policy and best practices regarding citation and acknowledgements. We do not consider artificial intelligence (AI) tools to meet the accountability requirements of authorship, and therefore generative AI tools such as ChatGPT and similar should not be listed as an author on any submitted content.
In particular, any use of an AI tool:
- to generate images within the manuscript should be accompanied by a full description of the process used, and declared clearly in the image caption(s)
- to generate text within the manuscript should be accompanied by a full description of the process used, include appropriate and valid references and citations, and be declared in the manuscript’s Acknowledgements.
- to analyse or extract insights from data or other materials, for example through the use of text and data mining, should be accompanied by a full description of the process used, including details and appropriate citation of any dataset(s) or other material analysed in all relevant and appropriate areas of the manuscript
- must not present ideas, words, data, or other material produced by third parties without appropriate acknowledgement or permission
Descriptions of AI processes used should include at minimum the version of the tool/algorithm used, where it can be accessed, any proprietary information relevant to the use of the tool/algorithm, any modifications of the tool made by the researchers (such as the addition of data to a tool’s public corpus), and the date(s) it was used for the purpose(s) described. Any relevant competing interests or potential bias arising as a consequence of the tool/algorithm’s use should be transparently declared and may be discussed in the article.
Author affiliations
Author affiliations should represent the institution(s) at which the research presented was conducted and/or supported and/or approved. For non-research content, any affiliations should represent the institution(s) with which each author is currently affiliated.
For more information, please see our author affiliation policy and author affiliation FAQs.
Authorship and contributorship
All authors listed on any papers submitted to this journal must be in agreement that the authors listed would all be considered authors according to disciplinary norms, and that no authors who would reasonably be considered an author have been excluded. For further details on this journal’s authorship policy, please see this journal's publishing ethics policies.
Author Hub
You can find guides for many aspects of publishing with Cambridge at Author Hub, our suite of resources for Cambridge authors.
ORCID
We require all corresponding authors to identify themselves using ORCID when submitting a manuscript to this journal. ORCID provides a unique identifier for researchers and, through integration with key research workflows such as manuscript submission and grant applications, provides the following benefits:
- Discoverability: ORCID increases the discoverability of your publications, by enabling smarter publisher systems and by helping readers to reliably find work that you have authored.
- Convenience: As more organisations use ORCID, providing your iD or using it to register for services will automatically link activities to your ORCID record, and will enable you to share this information with other systems and platforms you use, saving you re-keying information multiple times.
- Keeping track: Your ORCID record is a neat place to store and (if you choose) share validated information about your research activities and affiliations.
See our ORCID FAQs for more information.
If you don’t already have an iD, you will need to create one if you decide to submit a manuscript to this journal. You can register for one directly from your user account on ScholarOne, or alternatively via https://ORCID.org/register.
If you already have an iD, please use this when submitting your manuscript, either by linking it to your ScholarOne account, or by supplying it during submission using the "Associate your existing ORCID iD" button.
ORCIDs can also be used if authors wish to communicate to readers up-to-date information about how they wish to be addressed or referred to (for example, they wish to include pronouns, additional titles, honorifics, name variations, etc.) alongside their published articles. We encourage authors to make use of the ORCID profile’s “Published Name” field for this purpose. This is entirely optional for authors who wish to communicate such information in connection with their article. Please note that this method is not currently recommended for author name changes: see Cambridge’s author name change policy if you want to change your name on an already published article. See our ORCID FAQs for more information.