Development, Growth & Differentiation

Official Journal of the Japanese Society of Developmental Biologists

Edited by:
Harukazu Nakamura

Print ISSN: 0012-1592
Online ISSN: 1440-169X
Frequency: Nine times a year
Current Volume: 52 / 2010
ISI Journal Citation Reports® Ranking: 2008: 97/157 Cell Biology; 22/37 Developmental Biology
Impact Factor: 2.317

TopAuthor Guidelines

Manuscripts should be submitted online via Manuscript Central

AIMS AND SCOPE
Development Growth & Differentiation is the official English journal of the Japanese Society of Developmental Biologists and publishes original research articles dealing with all aspects of developmental phenomena in all kinds of organisms, including plants and microorganisms. Papers in any of the following fields will be considered: developmental genetics, growth, differentiation, morphogenesis, cellular kinetics, gametogenesis, fertilization, cell division, dormancy, germination, metamorphosis, regeneration and pathogenesis, at the molecular biological, biochemical, biophysical and analytically morphological levels. Reports on techniques applicable to the above fields are also considered. Occasional reviews on subjects selected by the Editors will also be published. Brief, complete papers will be accepted, but not preliminary reports.

Acceptance
Manuscripts are accepted whether or not the author is a member of the Japanese Society of Developmental Biologists and on the understanding that the content has not been published or accepted for publication elsewhere. The acceptance criteria for all papers are the quality and originality of the research and its significance to our readership. Except where otherwise stated, manuscripts are peer reviewed by two anonymous reviewers and the Editor. The Editorial Board members reserve the right to refuse any material for publication and advise that authors should retain copies of submitted manuscripts and correspondence as material cannot be returned. Final acceptance or rejection rests with the Editorial Board members. The review process takes approximately one month, after which the author is notified of the decision and provided with copies of the reviewers' comments. Depending on the month of publication of the next available issue, manuscripts will usually be published within three months from the date of receipt of the final version by the Editor-in-Chief.

Review articles
Review articles are usually submitted upon invitation by the Editors, but the Editorial Board welcomes voluntary contributions. Reviews should be a focused, brief treatment of a contemporary development in a single area, and are usually no longer than 6 to 8 printed pages. Authors wishing to contribute review articles should contact the Editor-in-Chief, an Associate Editor or a Review Editor before submission.

Copyright
Authors publishing in the Journal will be asked to sign an Exclusive Licence Form. In signing the form it is assumed that authors have obtained permission to use any copyrighted or previously published material. All authors must read and agree to the conditions outlined in the form, and must sign the form or agree that the corresponding author can sign on their behalf. Articles cannot be published until a signed form has been received.

OnlineOpen
OnlineOpen is a pay-to-publish service from Blackwell that offers authors whose papers are accepted for publication the opportunity to pay up-front for their manuscript to become open access (i.e. free for all to view and download) via the Blackwell Synergy website. Each OnlineOpen article will be subject to a one-off fee of $3000 to be met by or on behalf of the Author in advance of publication. Upon online publication, the article (both full-text and PDF versions) will be available to all for viewing and download free of charge. The print version of the article will also be branded as OnlineOpen and will draw attention to the fact that the paper can be downloaded for free via the Blackwell Synergy service.
Any authors wishing to send their paper OnlineOpen will be required to complete the combined payment and exclusive licence form available from http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/pdf/dgd_oof.pdf. (Please note this form is for use with OnlineOpen material ONLY.)
Once complete this form should be sent to the Editorial Office along with the rest of the manuscript materials at the time of acceptance or as soon as possible after that (preferably within 24 hours to avoid any delays in processing). Prior to acceptance there is no requirement to inform an Editorial Office that you intend to publish your paper OnlineOpen if you do not wish to.
The copyright statement for OnlineOpen authors will read:
© [date] The Author(s)
Journal compilation © [date] Japanese Society of Developmental Biologists

SUBMISSION OF MANUSCRIPTS
Manuscripts should be written so that they are intelligible to the professional reader who is not a specialist in the particular field. Where contributions are judged as acceptable for publication on the basis of scientific content, the Editor or the Publisher reserve the right to modify typescripts to eliminate ambiguity and repetition and improve communication between author and reader. If extensive alterations are required, the manuscript will be returned to the author for revision.

Online submission
Manuscripts should be submitted online. Use of the online system, Manuscript Central, speeds up the review process, improves accuracy, enables immediate distribution of files, and allows authors to track their own manuscripts. If you have any problems using the site or managing a manuscript, please contact Manuscript Central technical support, ScholarOne Inc. (http://mcv3support.custhelp.com/). For authors unable to submit their manuscript online, please consult the Editor-in-Chief at the Editorial Office address below.
Authors must supply an email address as all correspondence will be by email. Two files should be supplied: the covering letter and the manuscript (in Word or rich text format (.rtf)). The covering letter should be uploaded as a file not for review.

All articles submitted to the Journal must comply with these instructions. Failure to do so will result in return of the manuscript and possible delay in publication.
• Submissions should be double-spaced.
• All margins should be at least 30 mm.
• All pages should be numbered consecutively in the top right-hand corner, beginning with the title page.
• Do not use Enter at the end of lines within a paragraph.
• Turn the hyphenation option off; include only those hyphens that are essential to the meaning.
• Specify any special characters used to represent non-keyboard characters.
• Take care not to use l (ell) for 1 (one), O (capital o) for 0 (zero) or ß (German esszett) for Greek beta.
• Use a tab, not spaces, to separate data points in tables. If you use a table editor function, ensure that each data point is contained within a unique cell (i.e. do not use carriage returns within cells).

Each figure should be supplied as a separate file, with the figure number incorporated in the file name. For submission, low-resolution figures saved as .jpg or .bmp files should be uploaded, for ease of transmission during the review process. Upon acceptance of the article, high-resolution figures (at least 300 d.p.i.) saved as .eps or .tif files should be uploaded. Digital images supplied only as low-resolution files cannot be used.

Word 2007
Will authors please note that Word 2007 is not yet compatible with journal production systems. Unfortunately, the journal cannot accept Microsoft Word 2007 documents until such time as a stable production version is released. Please use Word's 'Save As' option therefore to save your document as an older (.doc) file type.

Covering letter and ethics
Papers are accepted for publication in the Journal on the understanding that the content has not been published or submitted for publication elsewhere. This must be stated in the covering letter.

Authors must also state that the protocol for the research project has been approved by a suitably constituted Ethics Committee of the institution within which the work was undertaken and that it conforms to the provisions of the Declaration of Helsinki (as revised in Edinburgh 2000).
All investigations on human subjects must include a statement that the subject gave informed consent, and patient anonymity should be preserved.
Any experiments involving animals must be demonstrated to be ethically acceptable and where relevant conform to the guidelines approved by the institution where the experiments were performed.

Authors should declare any financial support or relationships that may pose conflict of interest.

Pre-submission English-language editing
Authors for whom English is a second language may choose to have their manuscript professionally edited before submission to improve the English. A list of independent suppliers of editing services can be found at www.blackwellpublishing.com/bauthor/english_language.asp. All services are paid for and arranged by the author, and use of one of these services does not guarantee acceptance or preference for publication.

PREPARATION OF THE MANUSCRIPT
The Editors reserve the right to forward accepted manuscripts to an English language consultant for language improvement. The cost of the English revision will be charged to the author.

Style
The journal uses US spelling and authors should therefore follow the latest edition of Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary.
All measurements must be given in SI units as outlined in the latest edition of Units, Symbols and Abbreviations: A Guide for Medical and Scientific Editors and Authors (Royal Society of Medicine Press, London).
Abbreviations should be used sparingly and only where they ease the reader's task by reducing repetition of long, technical terms. Initially use the word in full, followed by the abbreviation in parentheses. Thereafter use the abbreviation.
At the first mention of a chemical substance, give the generic name only. Trade names should not used. Drugs should be referred to by their generic names, rather than brand names.
Upon its first use in the title, abstract and text, the common name of a species should be followed by the scientific name (genus, species and authority) in parentheses. However, for well-known species, the scientific name may be omitted from the article title. If no common name exists in English, the scientific name should be used only.
Nucleotide sequence data can be submitted in electronic form to any of the three major collaborative databases: DDBJ, EMBL or GenBank. It is only necessary to submit to one database as data are exchanged between DDBJ, EMBL and GenBank on a daily basis. The suggested wording for referring to accession-number information is: "These sequence data have been submitted to the DDBJ/EMBL/GenBank databases under accession number U12345."

Parts of the manuscript
Manuscripts should be presented in the following order: (i) title page; (ii) abstract and key words; (iii) text; (iv) acknowledgements; (v) references; (vi) figure legends; (vii) tables (each table complete with title and footnotes); and (viii) figures. Footnotes to the text are not allowed and any such material should be incorporated into the text as parenthetical matter.

Title page
The title page should contain: (i) the title of the paper; (ii) the full names of the authors; (iii) the addresses of the institutions at which the work was carried out together with (iv) the full postal and email address, plus facsimile and telephone numbers, of the author to whom correspondence about the manuscript, proofs and requests for offprints should be sent.
In keeping with the latest guidelines of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors, each author's contribution to the paper is to be quantified.
The title should be short, informative and contain the major key words. A short running title (less than 40 characters, including spaces) should also be provided.

Abstract and key words
Articles must have an abstract that states in 250 words or less the purpose, basic procedures, main findings and principal conclusions of the study. The abstract should not contain references.
Five key words should be supplied below the abstract, in alphabetical order, for the purposes of indexing and should be taken from those recommended by the US National Library of Medicine's browser list.

Introduction
This section should include sufficient background information to set the work in context. The aims of the manuscript should be clearly stated. The Introduction should not contain either findings or conclusions.

Materials and methods
This should be concise but provide sufficient detail to allow the work to be repeated by others. The source of material should be given in detail (i.e. company/institution, state/province, country) where possible.

Results
Results should be presented in a logical sequence in the text, tables and figures; repetitive presentation of the same data in different forms should be avoided. The Results should not contain material appropriate to the Discussion.

Discussion
This should consider the results in relation to any hypotheses advanced in the Introduction and place the study in the context of other work.

Acknowledgements
The source of financial grants and other funding should be acknowledged, including a frank declaration of the authors' industrial links and affiliations. The contribution of colleagues or institutions should also be acknowledged. Thanks to anonymous reviewers are not allowed.

References
We recommend the use of a tool such as EndNote or Reference Manager for reference management and formatting.
EndNote reference styles can be searched for here: http://www.interscience.wiley.com/jendnotes/
Reference Manager reference styles can be searched for here: http://www.refman.com/support/rmstyles.asp

The Harvard (author, date) system of referencing is used. In the text, give the author's name followed by the year in parentheses: Sago (2000). If there are two authors use 'and': Baskin and Baskin (1998); but if cited within parentheses use '&': (Baskin & Baskin 1998). When reference is made to a work by three or more authors, the first name followed by et al. should be used: Powles et al. (1998). If several papers by the same author(s) and from the same year are cited, a, b, c etc. should be used after the year of publication to differentiate between papers.
In the list, references should be listed in alphabetical order. Cite the names of all authors. Do not cite the first three and use et al., even when there are seven or more authors.
Personal communications, unpublished data and publications from informal meetings are not to be listed in the reference list but should be listed in the text (e.g. A. Smith, unpubl. data, 2000).
Authors are responsible for the accuracy of the references.

References should be listed in the following form.

Journal
Okada, M. & Kobayashi, S. 1987. Maternal messenger RNA as a determinant of pole cell formation in Drosophila embryos. Dev. Growth Differ. 29, 185-192.
Powles, S. B., Lorraine-Colwill, D. F., Dellow, J. J. & Preston, C. 1998. Evolved resistance to glyphosate in rigid ryegrass (Lolium rigidium) in Australia. Weed Sci. 46, 604-608.
Sago, R. 2000. [Weed seedbank response to herbicide use in rice paddy fields.] J. Weed Sci. Tech. 45, 81-87 (in Japanese with English abstract).

Book
Baskin, C. C. & Baskin, J. M. 1998. Seeds. Academic Press, London.

Chapter in a book
Wylie, C. C., Scott, D. & Donnovan, P. J. 1986. Primordial germ cell migration. In Developmental Biology, Vol. 2 (Ed. L. W. Browder), pp. 433-448. Plenum Press, New York.

Tables
Tables should be numbered consecutively in Arabic numerals. Each table should be presented on a separate page with a comprehensive but concise legend above the table. Tables should be double-spaced and vertical lines should not be used to separate columns. Column headings should be brief, with units of measurement in parentheses; all abbreviations should be defined in footnotes (using symbols †,‡,§,¶ in that order); and table legend/footnotes should be understandable without reference to the text.

Figures
All illustrations (line drawings and photographs) are classified as figures. Figures should be cited in consecutive order in the text. If it is considered necessary by the author that a figure be cited earlier in the text (i.e. out of numerical order) then the citation should read "cf. Fig. 5". Figures should be sized to fit within the column (80 mm), intermediate text width (117 mm) or full text width (167 mm).
Line figures should be sharp, black and white graphs or diagrams, drawn professionally or with a computer graphics package. Lettering must be included and should be sized to be no larger than the journal text.
Individual photographs forming a composite figure should be of equal contrast, to facilitate printing, and should be accurately squared. When labeling parts of composite figures, authors are encouraged to use lower case letters; however, the labels in the legends will be changed by the Publisher to match that used in the figure. Magnifications should be indicated using a scale bar on the illustration.
Figures should be supplied as high resolution (at least 300 d.p.i.) files, saved as .eps or .tif format. Color figure files should be set up as CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow, black) and not as RGB (red, green, blue) so that colors as they appear on screen will be a closer representation of how they will print in the Journal. Do not embed figures in the Word document - they must be supplied in separate files. Digital images supplied only as low-resolution print-outs cannot be used.

Color figures
While color is a significant and effective vehicle for delivering information in figures, not all people perceive color information in the same way. To ensure that readers with most color-vision types will be able to comprehend your data, the Editor-in-Chief strongly recommends the following guidelines for preparation of color figures:
• Avoid using red characters on a dark background.
• In panels showing fluorescent double-staining micrographs and DNA chips, do not use the combination of red and green; use magenta and green instead.
• In micrographs with three or more channels, include either a grayscale image of each channel or a combination of magenta and green for the two most important channels.
• In color graphs and line drawings, use both color and shape (solid and dotted lines, different symbols, various hatchings etc.) so that communication does not rely on color information alone.
Additional information can be found here.

Color photographs will be published at no charge to the author.

Suggestions for cover photographs are welcomed. Usually one or two photographs are included on the cover. Photographs must appear in a submitted manuscript.

Figure legends
Legends should be self-explanatory and typed on a separate page. The legend should incorporate definitions of any symbols used and all abbreviations and units of measurement should be explained so that the figure and its legend is understandable without reference to the text. (Provide a letter stating copyright authorization if figures have been reproduced from another source.)

PROOFS
It is essential that corresponding authors supply an email address to which correspondence can be emailed while their article is in production. If absent, authors should arrange for a colleague to access their email, and check and return the PDF page proof to the Publisher on their behalf.
Notification of the URL from where to download a Portable Document Format (PDF) typeset page proof, associated forms and further instructions will be sent by email to the corresponding author. The purpose of the PDF proof is a final check of the layout, and of tables and figures. Alterations other than the essential correction of errors are unacceptable at PDF proof stage. The proof should be checked, and approval to publish the article should be emailed to the Publisher by the date indicated, otherwise, it may be signed off on by the Editor-in-Chief or held over to the next issue.

OFFPRINTS
A minimum of 50 offprints will be provided upon request, at the author's expense.

PAGE CHARGES
Authors will be allowed ten (10) printed pages per article without charge. Authors will be charged for excess text and illustrations on a per page basis (¥12 000 per page).

ONLINE EARLY
Development Growth & Differentiation is covered by Blackwell Publishing's OnlineEarly service. OnlineEarly articles are complete full-text articles published online in advance of their publication in a printed issue. Articles are therefore available as soon as they are ready, rather than having to wait for the next scheduled print issue. OnlineEarly articles are complete and final. They have been fully reviewed, revised and edited for publication, and the authors' final corrections have been incorporated. Because they are in final form, no changes can be made after online publication. The nature of OnlineEarly articles means that they do not yet have volume, issue or page numbers, so OnlineEarly articles cannot be cited in the traditional way. They are therefore given a Digital Object Identifier (DOI), which allows the article to be cited and tracked before it is allocated to an issue. After print publication, the DOI remains valid and can continue to be used to cite and access the article. More information about DOIs can be found at http://www.doi.org/faq.html.

BLACKWELL JOURNALS ONLINE
Visit the Development Growth & Differentiation home page for more information, and Blackwell Publishing's web pages for submission guidelines and digital graphics standards. Development Growth & Differentiation is also available online via Blackwell Synergy.

Blackwell Author Services

Author Services enables authors to track their article, once it has been accepted, through the production process to publication online and in print. Authors can check the status of their articles online and choose to receive automated emails at key stages of production so they do not need to contact the production editor to check on progress. Visit www.blackwellpublishing.com/bauthor for more details on online production tracking and for a wealth of resources, including FAQs and tips on article preparation, submission and more.

EDITORIAL OFFICE ADDRESS
Dr H. Nakamura

Department of Molecular Neurobiology

Graduate School of Life Sciences / Institute of Development, Aging and Cancer

Tohoku University

Seiryo-machi 4-1

Aoba-ku

Sendai 980-8575

Japan

Email: dgd@idac.tohoku.ac.jp

Tel: 81 22 717 8550

Fax: 81 22 717 8554