Guide for Authors

About the journal

Aims and scope

Landscape Architecture and Sustainability is an international journal that focuses on all innovative theories, policies, and engineering techniques related to landscape and environmental planning, design, construction, and management, which can bring about sustainable natural and human processes, serving as a platform for global researchers, designers, and practitioners in landscape architecture and related disciplines to communicate and share.

Landscape Architecture and Sustainability invites high-quality original research papers, commentaries, news, opinion articles, field experiences, book reviews, and other contributions from various disciplines and fields such as landscape architecture, urban and rural planning, horticulture, urban ecology, landscape ecology, soil science, hydrology, urban planning and design, environmental science, environmental sociology, environmental psychology, public health, and education. Special issues are regularly opened as well.

Submitted manuscripts should focus on one or more of the following aspects:

• Natural-Cultural Landscape Resources,

• Urban Green and Blue Infrastructure

• Urban ecosystem services

• Urban tree management and vegetation construction

• Urban Habitat and Biodiversity Conservation

• Living environment and public health

• Policy, Management and Urban public governance

• Digital Landscape

Editorial Board

Article types

Landscape Architecture and Sustainability publishes:

Article type	Requirements
Research Article	(Word limit: 7000) A complete report on original research and/or clinical studies A structured abstract is required. A clear structure is required, which should contain but not confined to the following sections: - Introduction - Material and methods - Results - Discussion - Conclusions - Authors’ contribution (For details please visit the link.) - Ethic statement - COI - (acknowledgments/clarification) - Bibliography - Appendices (including multimedia components
Review Article	(Word limit: 7000) A substantial overviews present a complete overview of the state of the art with a comprehensive bibliography, generally, also contains a table of contents. It should cover topics that have seen significant development or progress in recent years, with comprehensive depth and a balanced perspective. Review articles should NOT include unpublished material such as unpublished/original data, submitted manuscripts, or personal communication.
Short Communication	(Word limit: 2000) Short report or announcement of research, usually claiming certain results, which present original and significant material for rapid dissemination. Short Communications are expected to have a higher than average impact on the field rather than report on incremental research.

Peer review

This journal follows a double anonymized review process. Your submission will initially be assessed by our editors to determine suitability for publication in this journal. If your submission is deemed suitable, it will typically be sent to a minimum of two reviewers for an independent expert assessment of the scientific quality. The decision as to whether your article is accepted or rejected will be taken by our editors. Authors who wish to appeal the editorial decision for their manuscript may submit a formal appeal request in accordance with the procedure outlined in Elsevier’s Appeal Policy. Only one appeal per submission will be considered and the appeal decision will be final.

Read more about peer review.

Our editors are not involved in making decisions about papers which:

• they have written themselves.

• have been written by family members or colleagues.

• relate to products or services in which they have an interest.

Any such submissions will be subject to the journal's usual procedures and peer review will be handled independently of the editor involved and their research group. Read more about editor duties.

Special issues and article collections

The peer review process for special issues and article collections follows the same process as outlined above for regular submissions, except, a guest editor will send the submissions out to the reviewers and may recommend a decision to the journal editor. The journal editor oversees the peer review process of all special issues and article collections to ensure the high standards of publishing ethics and responsiveness are respected and is responsible for the final decision regarding acceptance or rejection of articles.

Ethics and policies

Ethics in publishing

Authors must follow ethical guidelines stated in Elsevier's Publishing Ethics Policy.

Submission declaration

When authors submit an article to an Elsevier journal it is implied that:

• the work described has not been published previously except in the form of a preprint, an abstract, a published lecture, academic thesis or registered report. See our policy on multiple, redundant or concurrent publication.

• the article is not under consideration for publication elsewhere.

• the article's publication is approved by all authors and tacitly or explicitly by the responsible authorities where the work was carried out.

• if accepted, the article will not be published elsewhere in the same form, in English or in any other language, including electronically, without the written consent of the copyright-holder.

To verify compliance with our journal publishing policies, we may check your manuscript with our screening tools.

Authorship

All authors should have made substantial contributions to all of 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.

Authors should appoint a corresponding author to communicate with the journal during the editorial process. All authors should agree to be accountable for all aspects of the work to ensure that the questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

Changes to authorship

The editors of this journal generally will not consider changes to authorship once a manuscript has been submitted. It is important that authors carefully consider the authorship list and order of authors and provide a definitive author list at original submission.

The policy of this journal around authorship changes:

• All authors must be listed in the manuscript and their details entered into the submission system.

• Any addition, deletion or rearrangement of author names in the authorship list should only be made prior to acceptance, and only if approved by the journal editor.

• Requests to change authorship should be made by the corresponding author, who must provide the reason for the request to the journal editor with written confirmation from all authors, including any authors being added or removed, that they agree with the addition, removal or rearrangement.

• All requests to change authorship must be submitted using this form. Requests which do not comply with the instructions outlined in the form will not be considered.

• Only in exceptional circumstances will the journal editor consider the addition, deletion or rearrangement of authors post acceptance.

• Publication of the manuscript may be paused while a change in authorship request is being considered.

• Any authorship change requests approved by the journal editor will result in a corrigendum if the manuscript has already been published.

• Any unauthorised authorship changes may result in the rejection of the article, or retraction, if the article has already been published.

Declaration of interests

All authors must disclose any financial and personal relationships with other people or organizations that could inappropriately influence or bias their work. Examples of potential competing interests include:

• Employment

• Consultancies

• Stock ownership

• Honoraria

• Paid expert testimony

• Patent applications or registrations

• Grants or any other funding

The Declaration of Interests tool should always be completed.

Authors with no competing interests to declare should select the option, "I have nothing to declare".

The resulting Word document containing your declaration should be uploaded at the "attach/upload files" step in the submission process. It is important that the Word document is saved in the .doc/.docx file format. Author signatures are not required.

We advise you to read our policy on conflict of interest statements, funding source declarations, author agreements/declarations and permission notes.

Funding sources

Authors must disclose any funding sources who provided financial support for the conduct of the research and/or preparation of the article. The role of sponsors, if any, should be declared in relation to the study design, collection, analysis and interpretation of data, writing of the report and decision to submit the article for publication. If funding sources had no such involvement this should be stated in your submission.

List funding sources in this standard way to facilitate compliance to funder's requirements:

Funding: This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health [grant numbers xxxx, yyyy]; the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Seattle, WA [grant number zzzz]; and the United States Institutes of Peace [grant number aaaa].

It is not necessary to include detailed descriptions on the program or type of grants, scholarships and awards. When funding is from a block grant or other resources available to a university, college, or other research institution, submit the name of the institute or organization that provided the funding.

If no funding has been provided for the research, it is recommended to include the following sentence:

This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

Declaration of generative AI in scientific writing

Authors must declare the use of generative AI in scientific writing upon submission of the paper. The following guidance refers only to the writing process, and not to the use of AI tools to analyse and draw insights from data as part of the research process:

• Generative AI and AI-assisted technologies should only be used in the writing process to improve the readability and language of the manuscript.

• The technology must be applied with human oversight and control and authors should carefully review and edit the result, as AI can generate authoritative-sounding output that can be incorrect, incomplete or biased. Authors are ultimately responsible and accountable for the contents of the work.

• Authors must not list or cite AI and AI-assisted technologies as an author or co-author on the manuscript since authorship implies responsibilities and tasks that can only be attributed to and performed by humans.

The use of generative AI and AI-assisted technologies in scientific writing must be declared by adding a statement at the end of the manuscript when the paper is first submitted. The statement will appear in the published work and should be placed in a new section before the references list. An example:

• Title of new section: Declaration of generative AI and AI-assisted technologies in the writing process.

• Statement: During the preparation of this work the author(s) used [NAME TOOL / SERVICE] in order to [REASON]. After using this tool/service, the author(s) reviewed and edited the content as needed and take(s) full responsibility for the content of the published article.

The declaration does not apply to the use of basic tools, such as tools used to check grammar, spelling and references. If you have nothing to disclose, you do not need to add a statement.

Please read Elsevier’s author policy on the use of generative AI and AI-assisted technologies, which can be found in our GenAI Policies for journals.

Please note: to protect authors’ rights and the confidentiality of their research, this journal does not currently allow the use of generative AI or AI-assisted technologies such as ChatGPT or similar services by reviewers or editors in the peer review and manuscript evaluation process, as is stated in our GenAI Policies for journals. We are actively evaluating compliant AI tools and may revise this policy in the future.

Preprints

Preprint sharing

Authors may share preprints in line with Elsevier's article sharing policy. Sharing preprints, such as on a preprint server, will not count as prior publication.

We advise you to read our policy on multiple, redundant or concurrent publication.

Use of inclusive language

Inclusive language acknowledges diversity, conveys respect to all people, is sensitive to differences, and promotes equal opportunities. Authors should ensure their work uses inclusive language throughout and contains nothing which might imply one individual is superior to another on the grounds of:

• age

• gender

• race

• ethnicity

• culture

• sexual orientation

• disability or health condition

We recommend avoiding the use of descriptors about personal attributes unless they are relevant and valid. Write for gender neutrality with the use of plural nouns ("clinicians, patients/clients") as default. Wherever possible, avoid using "he, she," or "he/she."

No assumptions should be made about the beliefs of readers and writing should be free from bias, stereotypes, slang, reference to dominant culture and/or cultural assumptions.

These guidelines are meant as a point of reference to help you identify appropriate language but are by no means exhaustive or definitive.

Reporting sex- and gender-based analyses

There is no single, universally agreed-upon set of guidelines for defining sex and gender. We offer the following guidance:

• Sex and gender-based analyses (SGBA) should be integrated into research design when research involves or pertains to humans, animals or eukaryotic cells. This should be done in accordance with any requirements set by funders or sponsors and best practices within a field.

• Sex and/or gender dimensions of the research should be addressed within the article or declared as a limitation to the generalizability of the research.

• Definitions of sex and/or gender applied should be explicitly stated to enhance the precision, rigor and reproducibility of the research and to avoid ambiguity or conflation of terms and the constructs to which they refer.

We advise you to read the Sex and Gender Equity in Research (SAGER) guidelines and the SAGER checklist (PDF) on the EASE website, which offer systematic approaches to the use of sex and gender information in study design, data analysis, outcome reporting and research interpretation.

For further information we suggest reading the rationale behind and recommended use of the SAGER guidelines.

Definitions of sex and/or gender

We ask authors to define how sex and gender have been used in their research and publication. Some guidance:

• Sex generally refers to a set of biological attributes that are associated with physical and physiological features such as chromosomal genotype, hormonal levels, internal and external anatomy. A binary sex categorization (male/female) is usually designated at birth ("sex assigned at birth") and is in most cases based solely on the visible external anatomy of a newborn. In reality, sex categorizations include people who are intersex/have differences of sex development (DSD).

• Gender generally refers to socially constructed roles, behaviors and identities of women, men and gender-diverse people that occur in a historical and cultural context and may vary across societies and over time. Gender influences how people view themselves and each other, how they behave and interact and how power is distributed in society.

Image manipulation

We accept that authors sometimes need to adjust images for clarity but any manipulation of images for the purpose of deception or fraud will be seen as scientific ethical abuse and will be dealt with accordingly.

Authors must adhere to this journal’s policy for graphical images:

• No specific feature within an image may be enhanced, obscured, moved, removed or introduced.

• Adjustments of brightness, contrast, or color balance are acceptable if, and only as long as, they do not obscure or eliminate any information present in the original image.

• Nonlinear adjustments such as changes to gamma settings must be disclosed in the figure legend.

• We do not permit the use of generative AI or AI-assisted tools to create or alter images in submitted manuscripts. Please read our policy on the use of generative AI and AI-assisted tools in figures, images and artwork, which can be found in Elsevier’s GenAI Policies for Journals.

To verify compliance with the above, this journal may send your images to a third-party service who screen for image irregularities. Our editors may ask you to provide original data or images if any questions arise as a result of the screening. The final decision as to whether images are acceptable will be taken by our editors.

Authors are encouraged to carefully check all images before submission and to connect all the data in any figures to the original, unprocessed data.

Jurisdictional claims

Elsevier respects the decisions taken by its authors as to how they choose to designate territories and identify their affiliations in their published content. Elsevier’s policy is to take a neutral position with respect to territorial disputes or jurisdictional claims, including, but not limited to, maps and institutional affiliations. For journals that Elsevier publishes on behalf of a third party owner, the owner may set its own policy on these issues.

• Maps: Readers should be able to locate any study areas shown within maps using common mapping platforms. Maps should only show the area actually studied and authors should not include a location map which displays a larger area than the bounding box of the study area. Authors should add a note clearly stating that "map lines delineate study areas and do not necessarily depict accepted national boundaries”.  During the review process, Elsevier’s editors may request authors to change maps if these guidelines are not followed.

• Institutional affiliations: Authors should use either the full, standard title of their institution or the standard abbreviation of the institutional name so that the institutional name can be independently verified for research integrity purposes.
  

Studies in humans and animals

Authors must follow ethical guidelines for studies carried out in humans and animals.

Studies in humans

Work which involves the use of human subjects should be carried out in accordance with the World Medical Association Declaration of Helsinki: Ethical principles for medical research involving human subjects. 

Manuscripts should follow the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) recommendations for the conduct, reporting, editing and publication of scholarly work in medical journals and aim to be representative of human populations in terms of sex, age and ethnicity. Sex and gender terms should be used correctly, as outlined by WHO (World Health Organization).

Manuscripts must include a statement that all procedures were performed in compliance with relevant laws and institutional guidelines and have been approved by the appropriate institutional committee(s). The statement should contain the date and reference number of the ethical approval(s) obtained.

Manuscripts must also include a statement that the privacy rights of human subjects have been observed and that informed consent was obtained for experimentation with human subjects.

This journal will not accept manuscripts that contain data derived from unethically sourced organs or tissue, including from executed prisoners or prisoners of conscience, consistent with recommendations by Global Rights Compliance on Mitigating Human Rights Risks in Transplantation Medicine. For all studies that use human organs or tissues, sufficient evidence must be provided that these were procured in line with WHO Guiding Principles on Human Cell, Tissue and Organ Transplantation. The source of the organs or tissues used in clinical research must be transparent and traceable. If your manuscript describes organ transplantation you must additionally declare within the manuscript that:

• autonomous consent free from coercion was obtained from the donor(s) or their next of kin.

• organs and/or tissues were not sourced from executed prisoners or prisoners of conscience.

Studies in animals

All animal experiments should comply with ARRIVE (Animal Research: Reporting of In Vivo Experiments) guidelines. 

Studies should be carried out in accordance with Guidance on the operation of the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986 and associated guidelines, EU Directive 2010/63 for the protection of animals used for scientific purposes or the NIH (National Research Council) Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals (PDF) or those of an equivalent internationally recognized body.

The sex of animals, and where appropriate, the influence (or association) of sex on the results of the study must be indicated and a statement included in your manuscript that such guidelines as listed above have been followed.

Informed consent and patient details

Authors must document in the manuscript that ethics committee approval and informed consent have been obtained for studies involving patients or volunteers (including organ/tissue donors). Key guidelines:

• Appropriate consents, permissions and releases must be obtained if case details, personal information and images of patients or any other individuals are included in a publication, even if anonymized.

• Patient and research subjects’ names, initials, hospital or social security numbers, dates of birth or any other personal or identifying information should never be used, even where consent has been provided.

Written consents must be retained. They should not be provided to this journal unless this is specifically requested in exceptional circumstances, for example, when a legal issue arises. Only then should you provide copies of the consents, or evidence that all relevant consents were obtained.  

Personal details of any patient must only be included in your article or in any supplementary materials (including all images and videos) in cases where written permission has been given by the patient (or, where applicable, the next of kin).

We advise you to review Elsevier’s policy on patient consent prior to preparing your manuscript.

Registration of clinical trials

Clinical trials must be registered in a public trials registry in accordance with International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) clinical trials guidelines and as a condition of publication in this journal. Purely observational studies, in which the assignment of the medical intervention is not at the discretion of the investigator, do not require registration. 

Some key excerpts from the guidelines include: 

• Trials must be registered at or before the onset of patient enrolment.  

• The clinical trial registration number should be included at the end of the article abstract.  

• 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 such as 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.  

Reporting on clinical trials

You are encouraged to follow CONSORT guidelines when presenting randomized controlled trials, and provide the CONSORT checklist at manuscript submission, with an accompanying flow diagram illustrating the progress of patients through the trial - including recruitment, enrolment, randomization, withdrawal, completion and a description of the randomization procedure.

• Read the CONSORT guidelines. 

• Follow the CONSORT checklist. 

Clinical trial results

Authors must disclose all posting in registries of results of the same or closely related work.  

We follow the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) clinical trials guidelines. Editors will not consider results to be a prior publication if they have already been posted in the same clinical trials registry in which primary registration resides, as long as the results are presented in the form of a brief structured abstract (fewer than 500 words) or table.  

Disclosing results in other circumstances, such as in an investors’ meeting, for example, is discouraged and may jeopardise consideration of your manuscript by this journal.

Writing and formatting

File format

We ask you to provide editable source files for your entire submission (including figures, tables and text graphics). Some guidelines:

• Save files in an editable format, using the extension .doc/.docx for Word files and .tex for LaTeX files. A PDF is not an acceptable source file.

• Lay out text in a single-column format.

• Remove any strikethrough and underlined text from your manuscript, unless it has scientific significance related to your article.

• Use spell-check and grammar-check functions to avoid errors.

We advise you to read our Step-by-step guide to publishing with Elsevier.

LaTeX

We encourage you use our LaTeX template when preparing a LaTeX submission. You will be asked to provide all relevant editable source files upon submission or revision. 

Support for your LaTeX submission: 

• LaTeX submission instructions and templates

• Journal Article Publishing Support Center LaTeX FAQs and support

• Researcher Academy’s Beginners’ guide to writing a manuscript in LaTeX

Double anonymized peer review

This journal follows a double anonymized review process which means author identities are concealed from reviewers and vice versa. To facilitate the double anonymized review process, we ask that you provide your title page (including author details) and anonymized manuscript (excluding author details) separately in your submission. 

The title page should include:

• Article title

• Author name(s)

• Affiliation(s)

• Acknowledgements

• Declaration of Interest statement

• Corresponding author address (full address is required)

• Corresponding author email address

The anonymized manuscript should contain the main body of your paper including:  

• References

• Figures

• Tables

It is important that your anonymized manuscript does not contain any identifying information such as author names or affiliations.

Read more about peer review.

Title page

You are required to include the following details in the title page information:

• Article title. Article titles should be concise and informative. Please avoid abbreviations and formulae, where possible, unless they are established and widely understood, e.g., DNA).

• Author names. Provide the given name(s) and family name(s) of each author. The order of authors should match the order in the submission system. Carefully check that all names are accurately spelled. If needed, you can add your name between parentheses in your own script after the English transliteration.

• Affiliations. Add affiliation addresses, referring to where the work was carried out, below the author names. Indicate affiliations using a lower-case superscript letter immediately after the author's name and in front of the corresponding address. Ensure that you provide the full postal address of each affiliation, including the country name and, if available, the email address of each author.

• Corresponding author. Clearly indicate who will handle correspondence for your article at all stages of the refereeing and publication process and also post-publication. This responsibility includes answering any future queries about your results, data, methodology and materials. It is important that the email address and contact details of your corresponding author are kept up to date during the submission and publication process.

• Present/permanent address. If an author has moved since the work described in your article was carried out, or the author was visiting during that time, a "present address" (or "permanent address") can be indicated by a footnote to the author's name. The address where the author carried out the work must be retained as their main affiliation address. Use superscript Arabic numerals for such footnotes.

Abstract

You are required to provide a concise and factual abstract which does not exceed 250 words. The abstract should briefly state the purpose of your research, principal results and major conclusions. Some guidelines:

• Abstracts must be able to stand alone as abstracts are often presented separately from the article.

• Avoid references. If any are essential to include, ensure that you cite the author(s) and year(s).

• Avoid non-standard or uncommon abbreviations. If any are essential to include, ensure they are defined within your abstract at first mention.

Structured abstract

A structured abstract, by means of appropriate headings, should provide the context or background for your research. Some guidelines:

• State the purpose of your research.

• Outline basic procedures followed such as the selection of study subjects or laboratory animals and observational and analytical methods.

• Include your main findings, providing specific effect sizes and their statistical significance, if possible, and your principal conclusions.

• Emphasize new and important aspects of your study or observations.

Keywords

You are required to provide 3 to 8 keywords for indexing purposes. Keywords should be written in English. Please try to avoid keywords consisting of multiple words (using "and" or "of").

We recommend that you only use abbreviations in keywords if they are firmly established in the field.

Highlights

You are encouraged to provide article highlights at submission.

Highlights are a short collection of bullet points that should capture the novel results of your research as well as any new methods used during your study. Highlights will help increase the discoverability of your article via search engines. Some guidelines:

• Submit highlights as a separate editable file in the online submission system with the word "highlights" included in the file name.

• Highlights should consist of 3 to 5 bullet points, each a maximum of 85 characters, including spaces.

We encourage you to view example article highlights and read about the benefits of their inclusion.

Graphical abstract

You are encouraged to provide a graphical abstract at submission.

The graphical abstract should summarize the contents of your article in a concise, pictorial form which is designed to capture the attention of a wide readership. A graphical abstract will help draw more attention to your online article and support readers in digesting your research. Some guidelines:

• Submit your graphical abstract as a separate file in the online submission system.

• Ensure the image is a minimum of 531 x 1328 pixels (h x w) or proportionally more and is readable at a size of 5 x 13 cm using a regular screen resolution of 96 dpi.

• Our preferred file types for graphical abstracts are TIFF, EPS, PDF or MS Office files.

We encourage you to view example graphical abstracts and read about the benefits of including them.

Units, classifications codes and nomenclature

This journal requires you to use the international system of units (SI) which follows internationally accepted rules and conventions. If other units are mentioned within your article, you should provide the equivalent unit in SI.

Please consult IUPAC Nomenclature of Organic Chemistry for further information.

Please consult IUBMB: Recommendations on Biochemical & Organic Nomenclature, Symbols & Terminology for further information.  

Please consult IUPAC Nomenclature of Inorganic Chemistry for further information.

Please consult IUGS: Nomenclature for geological time scales and rock names for further information.

Phonetic transcription

Please adhere to IPA conventions in your choice of phonetic symbols. The Charis SIL IPA font is preferred for the presentation of IPA symbols.

Math formulae

• Submit math equations as editable text, not as images.

• Present simple formulae in line with normal text, where possible.

• Use the solidus (/) instead of a horizontal line for small fractional terms such as X/Y.

• Present variables in italics.

• Denote powers of e by exp.

• Display equations separately from your text, numbering them consecutively in the order they are referred to within your text.

Tables

Tables must be submitted as editable text, not as images. Some guidelines:

• Place tables next to the relevant text or on a separate page(s) at the end of your article.

• Cite all tables in the manuscript text.

• Number tables consecutively according to their appearance in the text.

• Please provide captions along with the tables.

• Place any table notes below the table body.

• Avoid vertical rules and shading within table cells.

We recommend that you use tables sparingly, ensuring that any data presented in tables is not duplicating results described elsewhere in the article.

Figures, images and artwork

Figures, images, artwork, diagrams and other graphical media must be supplied as separate files along with the manuscript. We recommend that you read our detailed artwork and media instructions. Some excerpts:

When submitting artwork:

• Cite all images in the manuscript text.

• Number images according to the sequence they appear within your article.

• Submit each image as a separate file using a logical naming convention for your files (for example, Figure_1, Figure_2 etc).

• Please provide captions for all figures, images, and artwork.

• Text graphics may be embedded in the text at the appropriate position. If you are working with LaTeX, text graphics may also be embedded in the file.

Artwork formats

When your artwork is finalized, "save as" or convert your electronic artwork to the formats listed below taking into account the given resolution requirements for line drawings, halftones, and line/halftone combinations:

• Vector drawings: Save as EPS or PDF files embedding the font or saving the text as "graphics."

• Color or grayscale photographs (halftones): Save as TIFF, JPG or PNG files using a minimum of 300 dpi (for single column: min. 1063 pixels, full page width: 2244 pixels).

• Bitmapped line drawings: Save as TIFF, JPG or PNG files using a minimum of 1000 dpi (for single column: min. 3543 pixels, full page width: 7480 pixels).

• Combinations bitmapped line/halftones (color or grayscale): Save as TIFF, JPG or PNG files using a minimum of 500 dpi (for single column: min. 1772 pixels, full page width: 3740 pixels).

Please do not submit:

• files that are too low in resolution (for example, files optimized for screen use such as GIF, BMP, PICT or WPG files).

• disproportionally large images compared to font size, as text may become unreadable.

Figure captions

All images must have a caption. A caption should consist of a brief title (not displayed on the figure itself) and a description of the image. We advise you to keep the amount of text in any image to a minimum, though any symbols and abbreviations used should be explained.

Provide captions in a separate file.

Color artwork

If you submit usable color figures with your accepted article, we will ensure that they appear in color online.

Please ensure that color images are accessible to all, including those with impaired color vision. Learn more about color and web accessibility.

For articles appearing in print, you will be sent information on costs to reproduce color in the printed version, after your accepted article has been sent to production. At this stage, please indicate if your preference is to have color only in the online version of your article or also in the printed version.

Generative AI and Figures, images and artwork

Please read our policy on the use of generative AI and AI-assisted tools in figures, images and artwork, which can be found in Elsevier’s GenAI Policies for Journals. This policy states:

• We do not permit the use of Generative AI or AI-assisted tools to create or alter images in submitted manuscripts.

• The only exception is if the use of AI or AI-assisted tools is part of the research design or methods (for example, in the field of biomedical imaging). If this is the case, such use must be described in a reproducible manner in the methods section, including the name of the model or tool, version and extension numbers, and manufacturer.

• The use of generative AI or AI-assisted tools in the production of artwork such as for graphical abstracts is not permitted. The use of generative AI in the production of cover art may in some cases be allowed, if the author obtains prior permission from the journal editor and publisher, can demonstrate that all necessary rights have been cleared for the use of the relevant material, and ensures that there is correct content attribution.

Supplementary material

We encourage the use of supplementary materials such as applications, images and sound clips to enhance research. Some guidelines:

• Cite all supplementary files in the manuscript text.

• Submit supplementary materials at the same time as your article. Be aware that all supplementary materials provided will appear online in the exact same file type as received. These files will not be formatted or typeset by the production team.

• Include a concise, descriptive caption for each supplementary file describing its content.

• Provide updated files if at any stage of the publication process you wish to make changes to submitted supplementary materials.

• Do not make annotations or corrections to a previous version of a supplementary file.

• Switch off the option to track changes in Microsoft Office files. If tracked changes are left on, they will appear in your published version.

We recommend you upload research data to a suitable specialist or generalist repository. Please read our guidelines on sharing research data for more information on depositing, sharing and using research data and other relevant research materials.

Video

This journal accepts video material and animation sequences to support and enhance your scientific research. We encourage you to include links to video or animation files within articles. Some guidelines:

• When including video or animation file links within your article, refer to the video or animation content by adding a note in your text where the file should be placed.

• Clearly label files ensuring the given file name is directly related to the file content.

• Provide files in one of our recommended file formats. Files should be within our preferred maximum file size of 150 MB per file, 1 GB in total.

• Provide "stills" for each of your files. These will be used as standard icons to personalize the link to your video data. You can choose any frame from your video or animation or make a separate image.

• Provide text (for both the electronic and the print version) to be placed in the portions of your article that refer to the video content. This is essential text, as video and animation files cannot be embedded in the print version of the journal.

We publish all video and animation files supplied in the electronic version of your article.

For more detailed instructions, we recommend that you read our guidelines on submitting video content to be included in the body of an article.

Research data

We are committed to supporting the storage of, access to and discovery of research data, and our research data policy sets out the principles guiding how we work with the research community to support a more efficient and transparent research process.

Research data refers to the results of observations or experimentation that validate research findings, which may also include software, code, models, algorithms, protocols, methods and other useful materials related to the project.

Please read our guidelines on sharing research data for more information on depositing, sharing and using research data and other relevant research materials.

For this journal, the following instructions from our research data guidelines apply.

Option A: Research data deposit and citation

You are encouraged to:

• Deposit your research data in a relevant data repository.

• Cite this dataset in your article.

Data statement

To foster transparency, you are encouraged to state the availability of any data at submission.

Ensuring data is available may be a requirement of your funding body or institution. If your data is unavailable to access or unsuitable to post, you can state the reason why (e.g., your research data includes sensitive or confidential information such as patient data) during the submission process. This statement will appear with your published article on ScienceDirect.

Read more about the importance and benefits of providing a data statement.

Data linking

Linking to the data underlying your work increases your exposure and may lead to new collaborations. It also provides readers with a better understanding of the described research.

If your research data has been made available in a data repository there are a number of ways your article can be linked directly to the dataset:

• Provide a link to your dataset when prompted during the online submission process.

• For some data repositories, a repository banner will automatically appear next to your published article on ScienceDirect.

• You can also link relevant data or entities within the text of your article through the use of identifiers. Use the following format: Database: 12345 (e.g. TAIR: AT1G01020; CCDC: 734053; PDB: 1XFN).

Learn more about linking research data and research articles in ScienceDirect.

Mendeley data

This journal supports Mendeley Data, enabling you to deposit any research data (including raw and processed data, video, code, software, algorithms, protocols and methods) associated with your manuscript in a free-to-use, open access repository.

Before or during the submission process, you can deposit the relevant datasets to Mendeley Data. Please include the DOI of the deposited dataset(s) in your main manuscript file.

The datasets will be listed and directly accessible to readers next to your published article online.

Learn more about Mendeley Data for journals.

Article structure

Article sections

Divide your manuscript into clearly defined sections covering all essential elements using headings.

Introduction

The introduction should clearly state the objectives of your work. We recommend that you provide an adequate background to your work but avoid writing a detailed literature overview or summary of your results.

Methods

The methods section should provide sufficient details about your materials and methods to allow your work to be reproduced by an independent researcher. Some guidelines:

• If the method you used has already been published, provide a summary and reference the originally published method.

• If you are quoting directly from a previously published method, use quotation marks and cite the source.

• Describe any modifications that you have made to existing methods.

Results

Results should be clear, concise and reproducible. We advise you to read the sections in this guide on supplying tables, artwork, supplementary material and sharing research data.

Discussion

The discussion section should explore the significance of your results but not repeat them. You may combine your results and discussion sections into one section, if appropriate. We recommend that you avoid the use of extensive citations and discussion of published literature in the discussion section.

Conclusion

The conclusion section should present the main conclusions of your study. You may have a stand-alone conclusions section or include your conclusions in a subsection of your discussion or results and discussion section.

Glossary

Please provide definitions of field-specific terms used in your article, in a separate list.

Footnotes

We advise you to use footnotes sparingly. If you include footnotes in your article, ensure that they are numbered consecutively.

You may use system features that automatically build footnotes into text. Alternatively, you can indicate the position of footnotes within the text and present them in a separate section at the end of your article.

Acknowledgements

Include any individuals who provided you with help during your research, such as help with language, writing or proof reading, in the acknowledgements section. Include acknowledgements only in the title page since this journal follows a double anonymized peer review process. Do not add it as a footnote to your title.

Author contributions: CRediT

Corresponding authors are encouraged to acknowledge co-author contributions using CRediT (Contributor Roles Taxonomy) roles:

• Conceptualization

• Data curation

• Formal analysis

• Funding acquisition

• Investigation

• Methodology

• Project administration

• Resources

• Software

• Supervision

• Validation

• Visualization

• Writing – original draft

• Writing – review and editing

Not all CRediT roles will apply to every manuscript and some authors may contribute through multiple roles.

We advise you to read more about CRediT and view an example of a CRediT author statement.

Funding sources

Authors must disclose any funding sources who provided financial support for the conduct of the research and/or preparation of the article. The role of sponsors, if any, should be declared in relation to the study design, collection, analysis and interpretation of data, writing of the report and decision to submit the article for publication. If funding sources had no such involvement this should be stated in your submission.

List funding sources in this standard way to facilitate compliance to funder's requirements:

Funding: This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health [grant numbers xxxx, yyyy]; the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Seattle, WA [grant number zzzz]; and the United States Institutes of Peace [grant number aaaa].

It is not necessary to include detailed descriptions on the program or type of grants, scholarships and awards. When funding is from a block grant or other resources available to a university, college, or other research institution, submit the name of the institute or organization that provided the funding.

If no funding has been provided for the research, it is recommended to include the following sentence:

This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

Appendices

We ask you to use the following format for appendices:

• Identify individual appendices within your article using the format: A, B, etc.

• Give separate numbering to formulae and equations within appendices using formats such as Eq. (A.1), Eq. (A.2), etc. and in subsequent appendices, Eq. (B.1), Eq. (B. 2) etc. In a similar way, give separate numbering to tables and figures using formats such as Table A.1; Fig. A.1, etc.

References

References within text

Any references cited within your article should also be present in your reference list and vice versa. Some guidelines:

• References cited in your abstract must be given in full.

• We recommend that you do not include unpublished results and personal communications in your reference list, though you may mention them in the text of your article.

• Any unpublished results and personal communications included in your reference list must follow the standard reference style of the journal. In substitution of the publication date add "unpublished results" or "personal communication."

• References cited as "in press" imply that the item has been accepted for publication.

Linking to cited sources will increase the discoverability of your research.

Before submission, check that all data provided in your reference list are correct, including any references which have been copied. Providing correct reference data allows us to link to abstracting and indexing services such as Scopus, Crossref and PubMed. Any incorrect surnames, journal or book titles, publication years or pagination within your references may prevent link creation.

We encourage the use of Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) as reference links as they provide a permanent link to the electronic article referenced.

Reference format

This journal does not set strict requirements on reference formatting at submission. Some guidelines: 

• References can be in any style or format as long as the style is consistent.  

• Author names, journal or book titles, chapter or article titles, year of publication, volume numbers, article numbers or pagination must be included, where applicable.  

• Use of DOIs is recommended.  

Our journal reference style will be applied to your article after acceptance, at proof stage. If required, at this stage we will ask you to correct or supply any missing reference data. 

Reference style

All citations in the text should refer to:

• Single author: the author's name (without initials, unless there is ambiguity) and the year of publication.

• Two authors: both authors' names and the year of publication.

• Three or more authors: first author's name followed by 'et al.' and the year of publication.

Citations can be made directly (or parenthetically). Groups of references can be listed either first alphabetically, then chronologically, or vice versa. Examples: "as demonstrated (Allan, 2020a, 2020b; Allan and Jones, 2019)" or "as demonstrated (Jones, 2019; Allan, 2020). Kramer et al. (2023) have recently shown".

The list of references should be arranged alphabetically and then chronologically if necessary. More than one reference from the same author(s) in the same year must be identified by the letters 'a', 'b', 'c', etc., placed after the year of publication.

Abbreviate journal names according to the List of Title Word Abbreviations (LTWA).

Examples:

Reference to a journal publication:

Van der Geer, J., Handgraaf, T., Lupton, R.A., 2020. The art of writing a scientific article. J. Sci. Commun. 163, 51–59. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sc.2020.00372.

Reference to a journal publication with an article number:

Van der Geer, J., Handgraaf, T., Lupton, R.A., 2022. The art of writing a scientific article. Heliyon. 19, e00205. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2022.e00205.

Reference to a book:

Strunk Jr., W., White, E.B., 2000. The Elements of Style, fourth ed. Longman, New York.

Reference to a chapter in a book:

Mettam, G.R., Adams, L.B., 2023. How to prepare an electronic version of your article, in: Jones, B.S., Smith, R.Z. (Eds.), Introduction to the Electronic Age. E-Publishing Inc., New York, pp. 281–304.

Reference to a website:

Cancer Research UK, 2023. Cancer statistics reports for the UK. http://www.cancerresearchuk.org/aboutcancer/statistics/cancerstatsreport/ (accessed 13 March 2023).

Reference to a dataset:

Oguro, M., Imahiro, S., Saito, S., Nakashizuka, T., 2015. Mortality data for Japanese oak wilt disease and surrounding forest compositions [dataset]. Mendeley Data, v1. https://doi.org/10.17632/xwj98nb39r.1.

Reference to software:

Coon, E., Berndt, M., Jan, A., Svyatsky, D., Atchley, A., Kikinzon, E., Harp, D., Manzini, G., Shelef, E., Lipnikov, K., Garimella, R., Xu, C., Moulton, D., Karra, S., Painter, S., Jafarov, E., & Molins, S., 2020. Advanced Terrestrial Simulator (ATS) v0.88 (Version 0.88) [software]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3727209.

Web references

When listing web references, as a minimum you should provide the full URL and the date when the reference was last accessed. Additional information (e.g. DOI, author names, dates or reference to a source publication) should also be provided, if known.

You can list web references separately under a new heading directly after your reference list or include them in your reference list.

Data references

We encourage you to cite underlying or relevant datasets within article text and to list data references in the reference list.

When citing data references, you should include:

• author name(s)

• dataset title

• data repository

• version (where available)

• year

• global persistent identifier

Add [dataset] immediately before your reference. This will help us to properly identify the dataset. The [dataset] identifier will not appear in your published article.

Software references

Cite software (including computational code, scripts, models, notebooks and libraries) in the same way as other sources of information to support proper attribution and credit, reproducibility, collaboration and reuse, and encourage building on the work of others to further research. To facilitate this, useful information is provided in this article on the essentials of software citation by FORCE 11, of which Elsevier is a member.

A reference to software should include the following elements:

• Creator(s): the authors or project that developed the software.

• Title: the name of the software.

• Publication venue: the publication venue of the software, preferably, an archive or repository that provides permanent identifiers.

• Date: the date the software was published. This is the date associated with a release or version of the software, or “n.d.” if the date is unknown.

• Identifier: a resolvable pointer to the software, preferably, a PID that resolves to a landing page containing descriptive metadata about the software, similar to how a Digital Object Identifier (DOI) for a paper that points to a page about the paper rather than directly to a representation of the paper, such as the PDF. DOIs are preferable, and other examples of PIDs include Handles, RRIDs, ASCL IDs, swMath IDs, Software Heritage IDs, ARK Alliance, etc. If there is no PID for the software, a URL to where the software exists may be the best identifier available.

• Version: the identifier for the version of the software being referenced. If the version is unidentified or unknown, the date of access should be used.

• Type: some reference styles (e.g., APA), require a bracketed description of the citation (e.g., [Computer software]) to be included.

If an article exists that describes the software, it should be cited as an additional reference, as well as citing the software itself. Do not cite the article instead of the software.

Preprint references

We ask you to mark preprints clearly. You should include the word "preprint" or the name of the preprint server as part of your reference and provide the preprint DOI.

Where a preprint has subsequently become available as a peer-reviewed publication, use the formal publication as your reference.

If there are preprints that are central to your work or that cover crucial developments in the topic, but they are not yet formally published, you may reference the preprint.

Reference management software

Most Elsevier journals have their reference template available in popular reference management software products. These include products that support Citation Style Language (CSL) such as Mendeley Reference Manager.

If you use a citation plug-in from these products, select the relevant journal template and all your citations and bibliographies will automatically be formatted in the journal style. We advise you to remove all field codes before submitting your manuscript to any reference management software product.

If a template is not available for this journal, follow the format given in examples in the reference style section of this Guide for Authors.

Submitting your manuscript

Submission checklist

Before completing the submission of your manuscript, we advise you to read our submission checklist:

• One author has been designated as the corresponding author and their full contact details (email address, full postal address and phone numbers) have been provided.

• All files have been uploaded, including keywords, figure captions and tables (including a title, description and footnotes) included.

• Spelling and grammar checks have been carried out.

• All references in the article text are cited in the reference list and vice versa.

• Permission has been obtained for the use of any copyrighted material from other sources, including the Web.

• For gold open access articles, all authors understand that they are responsible for payment of the article publishing charge (APC) if the manuscript is accepted. Payment of the APC may be covered by the corresponding author's institution, or the research funder.

After receiving a final decision

Publishing agreement

Authors will be asked to complete a publishing agreement after acceptance. The corresponding author will receive a link to the online agreement by email. We advise you to read Elsevier's policies related to copyright to learn more about our copyright policies and your, and your employer’s/institution’s, additional rights for subscription and gold open access articles.

Permission for copyrighted works

If excerpts from other copyrighted works are included in your article, you must obtain written permission from the copyright owners and credit the source(s) within your article using Elsevier’s permission request and license form (Word).

Proof correction

To ensure a fast publication process we will ask you to provide proof corrections within two days.

Corresponding authors will be sent an email which includes a link to our online proofing system, allowing annotation and correction of proofs online. The environment is similar to Word. You can edit text, comment on figures and tables and answer questions raised by our copy editor. Our web-based proofing service ensures a faster and less error-prone process.  

You can choose to annotate and upload your edits on the PDF version of your article, if preferred. We will provide you with proofing instructions and available alternative proofing methods in our email. 

The purpose of the proof is to check the typesetting, editing, completeness and correctness of your article text, tables and figures. Significant changes to your article at the proofing stage will only be considered with approval of the journal editor.  

DOI link

A Digital Object Identifier (DOI) link to the published version of your open access article on ScienceDirect will be sent by email to the corresponding author. You can share the DOI link via email and within your social networks.

Responsible sharing

We encourage you to share and promote your article to give additional visibility to your work, enabling your paper to contribute to scientific progress and foster the exchange of scientific developments within your field. Read more about how to responsibly share and promote your article.   

Getting help and support

Author support

We recommend that you visit our Journal Article Publishing Support Center if you have questions about the editorial process or require technical support for your submission. Some popular FAQs: 

• How can I track the status of my submitted article? 

• When will my article be published? 

Journal contacts