Synapse

Author Guidelines

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Author Guidelines

Please Note: Peer-reviewed, accepted articles are published as Preprints and appear in the Accepted Articles section of Synapse prior to copyediting, author corrections, and pagination. Preprints contain a DOI, are completely citable and appear online within days of acceptance (provided the authors have properly submitted figure files, a signed copyright transfer agreement and permission forms).

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.

ALL MANUSCRIPTS submitted to SYNAPSE must be submitted solely to this journal, may not have been published in any part or form (except as an abstract for a meeting) in another publication of any type, professional or lay, and become the property of the publisher. The publisher reserves copyright, and no published material may be reproduced or published elsewhere without the written permission of the publisher and the author. The journal will not be responsible for the loss of manuscripts at any time. All statements in, or omissions from, published manuscripts are the responsibility of the authors, who will assist the Editor by reviewing proofs before publication. Reprints may be purchased at https://caesar.sheridan.com/reprints/redir.php?pub=10089&acro=syn. No page charges will be levied against authors or their institutions for publication in the journal.

At the time of manuscript submission, authors are required to provide the name(s) of at least one appropriate editorial board member with the requisite expertise to handle the review of their paper, and are also encouraged to suggest other potential referees.  Authors should provide the email address, institutional affiliation, physical address & telephone number for individuals specified who are not on the editorial board.

Submission: SYNAPSE will now use ScholarOne Manuscripts (formerly known as Manuscript Central) for receiving, reviewing, and accepting manuscripts for publication. This exciting feature for SYNAPSE enables authors to submit their manuscripts online to expedite the peer review process. Authors also have the ability to check the status of their manuscripts during the peer review process. ScholarOne Manuscripts will allow us to move manuscripts through the peer review process more expeditiously and will decrease time to publication. In order to submit a manuscript, use the SYNAPSE journal homepage (wileyonlinelibrary.com/syn). There you will find a link for “Online Submission”. Using that link, the corresponding author will be instructed to create a user account. Once that account is created, manuscripts are to be submitted through “Author Center”. Follow all instructions and complete all required fields. Submit your manuscript and all Figures and Tables as separate files. After the manuscript has been successfully submitted, authors will see a confirmation screen with the manuscript number and receive an acknowledgement of successful submission by email.  If that does not happen, please contact the editorial office at synapse@wiley.com

Three types of manuscripts will be considered:

1. Original Research Articles. An abstract, Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results, and Discussion sections are required. The literature review should be succinct. There are no restrictions on the number of pages or figures.
2. Review Articles in which a specific field is reviewed through an exhaustive literature survey. An abstract is required. A Materials and Methods section and a Results section are not required. There are no restrictions on the number of pages or figures. Review articles are usually invited, but submitted review articles will be considered.
3. Short Communications representing data on research projects which have progressed to a point where the preliminary observations should be disseminated. Examples falling into this category would be pilot studies, unanticipated findings that will need replication, initial trials on new clinically significant drugs, etc. The manuscript should consist of six or less manuscript pages, including double-spaced text, references, figures and legends. No subdivisions such as Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results, and Discussion are required. An abstract is not necessary but may be included if desired (it will count as part of the six-page limitation). It is anticipated that short communications will be published as soon as possible within journal production schedules.

Manuscript

General instructions

The manuscript should have a uniform style and be submitted exactly as the author wishes it to appear in print. It should consist of subdivisions in the following sequence: title page; abstract; text; acknowledgments; references; footnotes; tables; figure legends. Start each subdivision on a new page.

Suggested Reviewers: Authors must select at least one member of the Editorial Board, with the requisite expertise to evaluate their article, as a potential reviewer at the time of manuscript submission. Please consult Synapse's Editorial Board directory for a listing of each board member's areas of focus.

• Title of paper
• Full name of author(s)
• Institutional affiliation and complete mailing address
• A running title not to exceed 45 letters and spaces
• Individual, address, telephone number, and fax number to whom correspondence concerning manuscript should be sent.

Key Words. Two to ten key words, which are not in the title, should be included. Try to use key words such as those found in the headings of Index Medicus.

Abstract. Submit an abstract of 250 words or less that will serve in lieu of a concluding summary. The abstract must be written in complete sentences and succinctly state the objectives, experimental design of the paper, and principal observations and conclusions; and be intelligible without reference to the rest of the paper.

Text. The text should be presented in the following order: INTRODUCTION; MATERIALS AND METHODS; RESULTS; DISCUSSION.

References. In the text, references to the literature should be made by author's name followed by year of publication arranged by alphabetical order first, then by year of publication:
...studies by Briggs (1993) reveal...
...studies by Briggs and Porter (1994) reveal...
...an earlier report (Briggs, 1994)...
...earlier reports (Briggs, 1993; Briggs and Porter, 1993, 1994)...
When references are made to more than one paper by the same author, published in the same year, they are to be designated in the text as (Nisenbaum et al., 1992a,b) and in the reference list as shown below. References are to be arranged alphabetically in the following style: Author's name(s), year of publication, complete article title, abbreviated journal title, volume, and inclusive pages as follows:

Kazuhiro K, Shibasaki M, Ohkuma S. 2010. Methamphetamine-induced up-regulation of a ₂/d subunit of voltage-gated calcium channels is regulated by DA receptors. Synapse 64:822-828.

Bowyer JF, Ali S. 2006. High doses of methamphetamine that cause disruption of the blood-brainer barrier in limbic regions produce extensive neuronal degeneration in mouse hippocampus. Synapse 60:521-532.

Nisenbaum ES, Berger TW, Grace AA. 1992a. Presynaptic modulation by GABAB receptors of glutamatergic excitation and GABAergic inhibition of neostriatal neurons. J Neurophysiol 67:477-481.

Nisenbaum ES, Grace AA, Berger TW. 1992b. Functionally distinct subpopulations of striatal neurons are differentially regulated by GABAergic and dopaminergic inputs. II. In vitro analysis. Neuroscience 48:579-593.

Roland PE. 1993. Brain Activation. New York:Wiley-Liss. pp. 365-393.

Steck PA, Nicolson, GL. 1993. Metastases to the central nervous system. In: Levine AJ, Schmidek HH, editors. Molecular Genetics of Nervous System Tumors. New YorK:Wiley-Liss. p. 371-379.

Weissman A, Caldecott-Hazard S. 1991. In utero methamphetamine differentially regulates adult brain monoamine uptake sites. Proc of Society for Neurosci 17:158.

Footnotes. Number footnotes to the text with consecutive arabic numerals. The corresponding reference numbers must be clearly indicated in the text. Additional references to the identical footnote must be numbered with the next consecutive number, for example:

¹ Material used for this experiment was
² Provided by ...
³ See footnote 2, page...

Type table footnotes to a table directly beneath the table and number them 1, 2, 3, etc. They must not be numbered in sequence with text footnotes.

Tables. All tables must be cited in the text and have titles.  Table titles should be complete, but brief.  Number them consecutively with Roman numerals.  Each table should be contained in a separate file, and the files should be named by table number (i.e., Table 1, Table 2...).  Tables that require extensive formatting may be submitted as image files, using .tif format, but should be named by table number.  Information other than that defining the data should be presented as footnotes.

Illustrations. Illustrations should be numbered in one consecutive series using Arabic numerals.  The figures should be uploaded in files separate from the text and tables.  Each file should contain a single figure and be named figure number (i.e., Figure 1, Figure 2, etc.), and should be in TIFF(.tif), EPS (.eps) or PDF (.pdf) format at a resolution of 300 dpi. Authors may submit .pdf type files for figures in the initial review process, but should check that these figures in .pdf format are of excellent quality, so that reviewers may be able to judge the work. However, once a paper is accepted for publication, only 300 dpi .eps or .tif type files will be accepted for the final published version. Please do NOT use JPEG (.jpg), GIF (.gif), PNG (.png), PowerPoint (.ppt), Word (.doc) files, or proprietary file types that are not interchangeable among programs (e.g., Illustrator, Canvas, or Photoshop). 

Each figure should be high-contrast, on a separate page, with the figure number and legend entered in the caption field provided in Manuscript Central, and also included in the main text in a separate Figure Legends section.  All color figures will be reproduced in full color in the online edition of the journal at no cost to the authors.  Authors are requested to pay the cost of reproducing color figures in print.  Authors are encouraged to submit color illustrations that highlight the text and convey essential scientific information.  For best reproduction, bright, clear colors should be used.  Dark colors against a dark background do not reproduce well; please place your color images against a white background whenever possible.

EarlyView . Articles are available online before the print version. Individual articles are published online via Wiley's EarlyView service at wileyonlinelibrary.com/syn, once a corrected proof is received by Wiley from the author. EarlyView significantly reduces publication time, as the article is considered published once it appears online. Each article includes a digital object identifier (DOI) and a collaborative reference linking service through which readers can click on a reference citation and immediately access article content. Once articles are published electronically, it is not possible for authors to make further changes before the print version appears. The print version will indicate the online publication date. Authors may read more about DOIs at www.doi.org . Reference linking information is available at www.crossref.org

Copyright/Licensing Agreements. If your paper is accepted, the author identified as the formal corresponding author for the paper will receive an email prompting them to login into Author Services; where via the Wiley Author Licensing Service (WALS) they will be able to complete the license agreement on behalf of all authors on the paper.
For authors signing the copyright transfer agreement:
If the OnlineOpen option is not selected the corresponding author will be presented with the copyright transfer agreement (CTA) to sign. The terms and conditions of the CTA can be previewed in the samples associated with the Copyright FAQs below:
CTA Terms and Conditions http://authorservices.wiley.com/bauthor/faqs_copyright.asp
For authors choosing OnlineOpen:
If the OnlineOpen option is selected the corresponding author will have a choice of the following Creative Commons License Open Access Agreements (OAA):
Creative Commons Attribution License OAA
Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License OAA
Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial -NoDerivs License OAA
To preview the terms and conditions of these open access agreements please visit the Copyright FAQs hosted on Wiley Author Services http://authorservices.wiley.com/bauthor/faqs_copyright.asp and visit http://www.wileyopenaccess.com/details/content/12f25db4c87/Copyright--License.html
If you select the OnlineOpen option and your research is funded by The Wellcome Trust and members of the Research Councils UK (RCUK) you will be given the opportunity to publish your article under a CC-BY license supporting you in complying with Wellcome Trust and Research Councils UK requirements. For more information on this policy and the Journal’s compliant self-archiving policy please visit: http://www.wiley.com/go/funderstatement.

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