International Journal of Laboratory Hematology

International Society of Laboratory Hematology

Edited by:
Steve Kitchen, Szu Hee Lee

Print ISSN: 1751-5521
Online ISSN: 1751-553X
Frequency: Bi-monthly
Current Volume: 32 / 2010
Impact Factor: 1.0

TopAuthor Guidelines

International Journal of Laboratory Hematology publishes original articles, review articles and correspondence which are directly related to the practice of haematology and blood transfusion.

Article Submission

Online Submission
Papers (in English) should be submitted online at http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/ijlh. Authors will need their entire manuscript in electronic format. Full instructions, a user ID and password are available at the site. Technical support for submission can be obtained by e-mailing support@scholarone.com or by telephoning +1 434 817 2040 ext 167.

Authors unable to submit their manuscript online should contact the IJLH Editorial Office:

Email: delia@malimrobin.co.uk
Tel: +44 (0)1603 278046

Copyright Transfer Agreement
Authors will be required to sign a Copyright Transfer Agreement (CTA) for all papers accepted for publication. Signature of the CTA is a condition of publication and papers will not be passed to the publisher for production unless a signed form has been received. Please note that signature of the Copyright Transfer Agreement does not affect ownership of copyright in the material. (Government employees need to complete the Author Warranty sections, although copyright in such cases does not need to be assigned). After submission authors will retain the right to publish their paper in various medium/circumstances (please see the form for further details). To assist authors an appropriate form will be supplied by the editorial office. Alternatively, authors may like to download a copy of the form here.

Alternatively authors may wish to take advantage of the OnlineOpen service. OnlineOpen is available to authors of primary research articles who wish to make their article available to non-subscribers on publication, or whose funding agency requires grantees to archive the final version of their article. With OnlineOpen the author, the author's funding agency, or the author's institution pays a fee to ensure that the article is made available to non-subscribers upon publication via Wiley InterScience, as well as deposited in the funding agency's preferred archive. For the full list of terms and conditions, see http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/authorresources/onlineopen.html#OnlineOpen_Terms. Any authors wishing to send their paper OnlineOpen will be required to complete the payment form available from our website at: OnlineOpen Form.

Note to NIH Grantees
Pursuant to NIH mandate, Wiley-Blackwell will post the accepted version of contributions authored by NIH grant-holders to PubMed Central upon acceptance. This accepted version will be made publicly available 12 months after publication. For further information, see www.wiley.com/go/nihmandate.

Types of articles

Original Articles
Articles should be no longer than 5000 words, contain not more than 60 references, not more than six figures/tables and include a structured abstract.

Review Articles
These are normally invited contributions but suitable papers may be submitted to the Editor for consideration for this purpose. Articles should be no longer than 5000 words, contain not more than 60 references, not more than six figures/tables and include a structured abstract.

Letters to the Editor
Correspondence which relates to papers which have recently appeared in the journal may be published. The Editor reserves the right to invite response from the original authors for publication alongside. In addition, letters dealing with more general scientific matters of interest to haematologists will be considered. Letters should be as short as possible (but no more than 1000 words of text, two figures or tables or one of each, and up to 10 references).

Correspondence to the journal is accepted on the understanding that the contributing author licences the publisher to publish the letter as part of the journal or separately from it, in the exercise of any subsidiary rights relating to the journal and its contents.
Please note that Case Reports will not be accepted by the journal unless they are of outstanding quality.

Presentation of Manuscripts

The manuscript should be double-spaced with 30mm margins. Manuscripts must be numbered consecutively in the following sequence: Title Page; Abstract (if required); Main Body of Text; Acknowledgements; Reference List; Tables and Figure caption List.

1. Title page
The title page should contain the authors name(s), initials and place of work. In addition, the name and full postal address including e-mail, of the author who will deal with correspondence and proofs should be supplied. The full title should be accompanied by a short running title where the title exceeds 47 letters and spaces. In the top right hand corner, the number of manuscript pages and illustrations should be marked. Five keywords should be supplied after the Summary.

2. Abstract
A structured abstract of no more than 200 words is required for original or review articles, subdivided into the following sequential sections: Introduction; Methods; Results; Conclusion.

3. Main body of text
The text of original and review articles should be divided into the following sections: Introduction, Materials and methods, Results, Discussion, Tables, Footnotes and Figure legends (including magnifications).

4. Acknowledgments
Acknowledgements should be submitted on a separate sheet.

5. 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.endnote.com/support/enstyles.asp
Reference Manager reference styles can be searched for here: http://www.refman.com/support/rmstyles.asp

The reference list should be in alphabetical order and include the full title thus:

Hughes-Jones N.C. (1973) Lecture Notes on Haematology. 2nd edn. Blackwell Science Ltd, Oxford.

Jacobs A. & Kilpatrick G.S. (1964) The Paterson-Kelly syndrome. British Medical Journal ii, 79.

Varon D., Schulman S., Dardick R., Barzilal A., Bashart D. & Martinowitz U. (1994) High versus ultra-high purity Factor VIII for the treatment of previously untreated patients with haemophilia A. New England Journal of Medicine 328, 453-459.

References in the text should use the Harvard system and be in full on first mention, e.g. (Brown, Smith & Williams 1978), but subsequently abbreviated to (Brown et al. 1978), unless there are more than three authors to a paper, in which case et al. should be used throughout. Authors are responsible for the accuracy of their references.

6. Tables and figures
The preferred position of figures and tables in the text should be indicated in the left-hand margin. Tables should include only essential data. Each table should be typewritten on a separate sheet and must be numbered consecutively with Arabic numerals, e.g. Table 1, and given a short caption. Vertical rules should not be used. Units should appear in parentheses in the column headings and not in the body of the table. All abbreviations should be defined in a footnote.

All tables and figures that are reproduced from a previously published source must be accompanied by a letter of permission from the publisher or copyright owner.

Illustrations: Photographs will be printed unreduced where possible but should not exceed 250 × 170 mm and authors may be asked to contribute to the cost of printing if the space requested for illustrations is considered excessive. In the case of electron micrographs it is desirable that full page width should be utilized.

Authors are encouraged to visit our updated artwork guidelines for more information on preparation of high resolution figures.

Colour: Authors will be asked to contribute towards the cost of reproduction of colour figures. Please note that if there is colour artwork in your manuscript when it is accepted for publication, Blackwell Publishing require you to complete and return a colour work agreement form before your paper can be published. This form can be downloaded as a PDF from the internet. The web address for the form is: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/pdf/SN_Sub2000_F_CoW.Pdf

If you are unable to access the internet, or are unable to download the form, please contact the Production Editor at: clh@wiley.com and they will be able to email or fax a form to you. Any article received by Blackwell Publishing with colour work will not be published until the form has been received.

In the event that an author is not able to cover the costs of reproducing colour figures in colour in the printed version of the journal, International Journal of Laboratory Hematology offers authors the opportunity to reproduce colour figures in colour for free in the online version of the article (but they will still appear in black and white in the print version). If an author wishes to take advantage of this free colour-on-the-web service, they should liaise with the Editorial Office to ensure that the appropriate documentation is completed for the Publisher.

7. Units and Spelling
Spelling should conform to The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Current English and units of measurement, symbols and abbreviations with those in Units, Symbols and Abbreviations published and supplied by the Royal Society of Medicine, 1 Wimpole Street, London W1M 8AE. Units should follow the SI system except where earlier conventions persist (e.g. Hb in g/dl).

Fractions of unity and thousands: The traditional and scientific method for indicating the breakpoint between unity and fractions of unity has been the decimal point. Recently the market trader conversion of using a comma to divide whole monetary units from fractions thereof has begun to pervade some scientific literature. International Journal of Laboratory Hematology will continue to use the scientific convention of a decimal point to indicate the break between unity and decimal fractions.

International Journal of Laboratory Hematology will use the well-established scientific convention of the thin space as a means of dividing large numbers into groups of thousands. Authors should adopt this scientific convention in all manuscripts.

Author Services

Online production tracking for your article
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 so they don't need to contact the production editor to check on progress. 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/bauthor/ for more details on online production tracking and a wealth of resources including FAQs and tips on article preparation, submission and more.

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 http://authorservices.wiley.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.

PDF proofs
The corresponding author will receive an email alert containing a link to a web site where the profos can be downloaded as an Acrobat PDF; in your absence, please arrange for a colleague to access your e-mail to retrieve the proofs. Corrections should be returned within 2 weeks of receipt. Alterations in the text, other than corrections, may be charged to the author.

Offprints
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. Paper offprints of the printed published article may be purchased if ordered via the method stipulated on the instructions that accompany the proofs. Printed offprints are posted to the correspondence address given for the paper unless a different address is specified when ordered. Note that it is not uncommon for printed offprints to take up to eight weeks to arrive after publication of the journal.

Electronic offprints are sent to the first author at his or her first email address on the title page of the paper, unless advised otherwise; therefore please ensure that the name, address and email of the receiving author are clearly indicated on the manuscript title page if he or she is not the first author of the paper.

Early View
IJLH is covered by our Early View service, which means that, once we have received your corrections, your article will be published online without having to wait for inclusion in a print issue. Please note that the version of your paper that appears online is complete and final, except for volume, issue and page numbers, which are added upon print publication. Therefore, there will be no further opportunity to make changes to your article after online publication.

Author material archive policy: Please note that unless specifically requested, Blackwell Publishing will dispose of all hard copy or electronic material submittted two months after publication. If you require the return of the material submitted, please inform the editorial office or production editor as soon as possible if you have not yet done so.

Revised Author Guidelines - 29 Sept 2008