Addiction

Published on behalf of the Society for the Study of Addiction

Edited by:
Editor-in-Chief: Robert West, Associate Editor-in-Chief: Thomas F. Babor

Print ISSN: 0965-2140
Online ISSN: 1360-0443
Frequency: Monthly
Current Volume: 105 / 2010
ISI Journal Citation Reports® Ranking: 2008: 16/101 Psychiatry; 2/11 Substance Abuse; 10/85 Psychiatry (Social Science); 1/21 Substance Abuse (Social Science)
Impact Factor: 4.244

TopAuthor Guidelines

AUTHOR GUIDELINES

1. GENERAL

Addiction is a monthly international journal read in over 60 countries and has been in continuous publication since the Society for the Study of Addiction was founded in 1884.

It welcomes unsolicited research reports, reviews, and letters relating to clinical, epidemiological, human experimental, policy-related and historical aspects of any behaviours that have addictive potential including, but not limited to, use of alcohol, opiates, stimulants, cannabis, tobacco, as well as gambling. The acceptance rate is currently about 20%.

Research reports should present original findings and normally be limited to 3500 words excluding abstract, tables and references. There is no minimum length.

Reviews should normally be 'systematic' (i.e. adopt standard systematic review procedures) and be no longer than 4000 words for the main text.

Letters should normally be no more than 500 words.

We are willing to make exceptions to word length stipulations in rare cases but otherwise we encourage authors to make use of a facility we offer for supplementary material to be stored with the online version of the article.

To submit an article to Addiction please go to http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/addiction. We aim to get a response to authors within 12 weeks.

Authors must not submit articles that have been published elsewhere or are under consideration for publication elsewhere.

Addiction also publishes invited editorials, articles 'for debate', commentaries on articles, interviews with leading figures in the field, and book reviews. Authors who are interested in contributing one of the invited types of article may make a proposal to the commissioning editor (Peter Miller via molly@addictionjournal.org).

For a definition of all article types published by Addiction please click here: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/pdf/add_definitions.pdf

2. REQUIREMENTS FOR SUBMITTED ARTICLES

For information on how to write articles for Addiction, authors should look at recent articles of the type they are proposing to submit. They should pay special attention to the following:

• Research report and review manuscripts must have the following parts in this order: front sheet including title, list of authors, affiliations and addresses, running head, word count* conflict of interest statement (see below), clinical trial registration details (if applicable); abstract, introduction, methods, results, discussion, acknowledgements, references, figures and tables with legends. *A word count is required for the main body of the text only, ie. excluding abstract, references, tables, figures etc.
• Addiction will publish occasional monographs of up to 10,000 words including references. Monographs should be major pieces of writing. The kinds of papers that would qualify might be extensive systematic reviews of a major topic or a series of linked studies addressing a common research question. For full description please view our definition of all article types linked above.
• Abstracts must be structured using the following headings: Aims, Design, Setting, Participants, Measurements, Findings, Conclusions. For Review articles please use: Aims, Methods, Results, Conclusions. Abstracts should generally be no more than 250 words. Any numbers provided in the abstract must match exactly those given in the main body of the text or tables. The conclusion must be written in such a way as to make clear what is the main generalisable statement resulting from the study; i.e. the sentence(s) that someone citing the study might use to describe the findings.
• References should follow the basic numbered Vancouver style. Provide up to the first six authors and then follow by et al. Issue/part numbers are not required. Do not include citations to sources such as conference abstracts or unpublished work.
• Authors should cite exact p values for primary statistical tests. Addiction adopts the conventional 5% value for statistical significance and does not accept terms such as 'trend' for cases where p<0.10.
• Authors are required to archive any web references before citing them using WebCite ® technology (http://www.webcitation.org). This is an entirely free service that ensures that cited webmaterial will remain available to readers in the future.
• Randomised controlled trials should be reported using the CONSORT guidelines available at www.consort-statement.org, and authors should include with their manuscript a completed checklist and flow diagram in accordance with the guidelines.
• Addiction normally requires that clinical trials are registered in a publicly accessible database. The name of the trial register and the clinical trial registration number on the front page of the manuscript. A full list of registers can be found via the WHO International Clinical Trials Registry Platform (ICTRP) http://www.who.int/ictrp/en/.
• Evaluations involving behavioural interventions must include full manuals or protocols, or at least very detailed descriptions, of those interventions as supplementary files to be included as supplementary material published with the online version of the article.
• If English is not the first language of authors, they are advised to have their manuscript edited by a native English speaker before submission. However, we will do our best to accommodate papers from authors in countries where the resources do not exist for this.

A manuscript that does not comply with journal requirements will be unsubmitted and returned to the author centre.

A useful guide to writing up papers for journals such as Addiction can be found in West R (2000) A checklist for writing up research reports. Addiction, 95, 1759-61.

3. ETHICAL PRINCIPLES

The journal supports the ethical principles enshrined in the Farmington Consensus (Addiction, 92(12) pp 1617-1618).

Submissions must be supported by an ethical statement on behalf of all authors. This should be included in the submission covering letter with the corresponding author taking responsibility for having consulted with all the authors. An example is available at http://www.addictionjournal.org/docs/ethicalstatement.rtf. It should be stated that: (a) the material has not been published in whole or in part elsewhere; (b) the paper is not currently being considered for publication elsewhere; (c) all authors have been personally and actively involved in substantive work leading to the report, and will hold themselves jointly and individually responsible for its content; (d) all relevant ethical safeguards have been met in relation to patient or subject protection, or animal experimentation, including, in the case of all clinical and experimental studies review by an appropriate ethical review committee and written informed patient consent. It is expected that the research will comply with the World Medical Association Declaration of Helsinki http://www.wma.net/e/policy/b3.htm

Addiction adheres to the definition of authorship set up by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE). According to the ICMJE authorship criteria, authorship should be based on a) substantial contributions to conception and design of the study, or acquisition of data or analysis and interpretation of data, b) drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content and c) final approval of the version to be published. Authors should meet conditions a, b and c.

A conflict of interest declaration is required for all submissions which should appear after the list of authors and addresses. This should declare sources of funding, direct or indirect, and any connection of any of the researchers with the tobacco, alcohol, pharmaceutical or gaming industries or any body substantially funded by one of these organisations. Any contractual constraints on publishing imposed by the funder must also be disclosed.
As a precaution against fraud and violation of ethical principles, Addiction may ask authors for original data or copies of original supporting paperwork during the review process.

If serious violation of these ethical standards has been found to occur (e.g. fraud, attempts at duplicate publication or failure to declare obvious and major conflicts of interest), Addiction may take action beyond just rejecting the manuscript including barring authors from submitting to the journal or reporting authors to appropriate authorities.

4. ONLINE OPEN PUBLICATION

OnlineOpen is a pay-to-publish service from Wiley Blackwell that offers authors once their papers have been 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 InterScience 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 InterScience service.

Any authors wishing to send their paper OnlineOpen will be required to complete the payment form available by clicking here. Once complete, this form should be sent to the production editor (address below in section 7) 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 you should not inform the editorial office that you intend to publish your paper OnlineOpen.
The copyright statement for OnlineOpen authors will read:
© [date] The Author(s)
Journal compilation © [date] Society for the Study of Addiction

5. OFFPRINTS AND EXTRA COPIES

A PDF offprint of the online published article will be provided free of charge to the corresponding author, and may be distributed subject to the publisher's terms and conditions. Additional paper offprints may be ordered online. The corresponding author will be sent a complimentary copy of the journal in which the paper is published.

6. THE REVIEW PROCESS

Addiction receives 700-800 manuscripts each year and it is not practicable for all of these to undergo full review. Therefore we operate the following system. Each one is read by a Senior Editor and those that are considered clearly uncompetitive or unsuited to this journal will be turned down without going to full review. This happens to approximately 30% of manuscripts. This should take no more than 4 weeks.

Manuscripts that pass this stage are sent to an Assistant Editor who will invite reviews and on the basis of these make a recommendation to the Senior Editor. The Senior Editor will then communicate his or her decision to the authors taking account of the comments and recommendations received. This process should take no more than 12 weeks.

To help us with the review process author are asked to provide contact information for at least two reviewers who in their opinion are expert in the topic area of their article. In order to avoid any conflict of interest, the reviewer should not be a close working colleague of the authors.

If authors are invited to revise a manuscript and resubmit it, they should aim to submit the revised version within 3 months. A decision on the revised version may by taken by the Senior Editor or he or she may consult an Assistant Editor or put the revision through the full review process, depending on the nature of the revisions that had been requested. A decision on the revised version should normally take less time than the original review process.

7. TECHNICAL MATTERS

The manuscript

The manuscript should comprise a single Word file unless it is essential to put figures in other files. It should be double spaced and all the pages numbered. Tables and figures should be cited in the text.

Permissions
If all or parts of previously published material are used, permission must be obtained from the copyright holder concerned. It is the author's responsibility to obtain these in writing and provide copies to Addiction.

Copyright Assignment
It is a condition of publication that authors grant the Society for the Study of Addiction the exclusive license to publish all articles, including abstracts. Papers will not be passed to the publisher for production unless the exclusive license to publish has been granted. To assist authors, an exclusive license form (ELF) is available from the editorial office or by clicking here:
http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/pdf/add_licence.pdf

A completed ELF must be received before any manuscript can be published. Authors must send the completed original ELF by regular mail upon receiving notice of manuscript acceptance - i.e., do not send the ELF at submission. Faxing or e-mailing the ELF does not meet requirements.

The ELF should be mailed to:

Rona Gloag
Senior Production Editor
Addiction
Wiley-Blackwell
John Wiley and Sons
101 George Street
Edinburgh EH2 3ES
UK

Authors are themselves responsible for obtaining permission to reproduce copyright material from other sources.

Figures
should normally be included in the Word document but where necessary they can be sent as additional files. All photographs, graphs and diagrams should be referred to as figures in the text and should be numbered consecutively in Arabic numerals (e.g. 'Fig. 3'). A list of legends for the figures should be submitted on a separate sheet; legends should include keys to any symbols.

In the full-text online edition of the journal, figure legends may become truncated in abbreviated links to the full-screen version. Therefore, the first 100 characters of any legend should inform the reader of key aspects of the figure.

Colour illustrations
It is the policy of Addiction for authors to pay the full cost for the reproduction of their colour artwork. Therefore, please note that if there is colour artwork in your manuscript when it is accepted for publication, Wiley-Blackwell require you to complete and return a colour work agreement form before your paper can be published.

Preparation of Electronic Figures for Publication
Although low quality images are adequate for review purposes, print publication requires high quality images to prevent the final product being blurred or fuzzy. Submit EPS (lineart) or TIFF (halftone/photographs) files only. MS PowerPoint and Word Graphics are unsuitable for printed pictures. Do not use pixel-oriented programmes. Scans (TIFF only) should have a resolution of 300 dpi (halftone) or 600 to 1200 dpi (line drawings) in relation to the reproduction size (see below). EPS files should be saved with fonts embedded (and with a TIFF preview if possible).

For scanned images, the scanning resolution (at final image size) should be as follows to ensure good reproduction: lineart: >600 dpi; half-tones (including gel photographs): >300 dpi; figures containing both halftone and line images: >600 dpi.

Further information can be obtained at Wiley-Blackwell 's guidelines for figures: www.blackwellpublishing.com/bauthor/illustration.asp.

Proof Corrections
The corresponding author will receive an email alert containing a link to a web site. A working email address must therefore be provided for the corresponding author. The proof can be downloaded as a PDF (portable document format) file from this site. Acrobat Reader will be required in order to read this file. This software can be downloaded (free of charge) from the following Web site:
www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html.

This will enable the file to be opened, read on screen, and printed out in order for any corrections to be added. Further instructions will be sent with the proof. In your absence, please arrange for a colleague to access your e-mail to retrieve the proofs. Proofs must be returned to the Production Editor within three days of receipt.

As changes to proofs are costly, we ask that you only correct typesetting errors. Excessive changes made by the author in the proofs, excluding typesetting errors, will be charged separately. Other than in exceptional circumstances, all illustrations are retained by the publisher. Please note that the author is responsible for all statements made in his or her work, including changes made by the copy editor.

Early Online Publication Prior to Print
Addiction is covered by InterScience's Early View service. Early View articles are complete full-text articles published online in advance of their publication in a printed issue. Early View 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 Early View articles means that they do not yet have volume, issue or page numbers, so they articles cannot be cited in the traditional way. They are 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.

Online Production Tracking
Online production tracking is available for your article through Wiley-Blackwell's 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 e-mails at key stages of production. The author will receive an e-mail with a unique link that enables them to register and have their article automatically added to the system. Please ensure that a complete e-mail address is provided when submitting the manuscript. Visit http://authorservices.wiley.com/ for more details on online production tracking and for a wealth of resources including FAQs and tips on article preparation, submission and more.

Author Material Archive Policy
Please note that unless specifically requested, Wiley-Blackwell will dispose of all hardcopy or electronic material submitted two months after publication. If you require the return of any material submitted, please inform the editorial office or production editor as soon as possible if you have not yet done so.

Author Services
For more substantial information on the services provided for authors, please see http://authorservices.wiley.com/.