To Accompany a Manuscript at Submission
Each manuscript submission should be accompanied by a covering letter. This letter should be addressed to the Editor-in-Chief and should set out:
- The scientific question asked
- The principal new findings
- The significance of these findings to the field
Each manuscript must also be accompanied by an author signature form. The following form must be completed.
Authorship
* Signatures from each author agreeing to their inclusion in the list of authors in order of appearance on the manuscript, along with a brief description of each author’s role in the study. Molecular Human Reproduction adheres strictly to the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) guidelines regarding ‘Authorship and Contributorship'. All authors must indicate their individual contribution to the paper. Justification of authorship includes 1) substantial contributions to conception and design, 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 published, and 4) agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved. All authors must meet contributions (1), (2), (3) and (4). Authors’ roles must be detailed in the paper in a titled section immediately after the discussion.
* Molecular Human Reproduction is committed to ensuring that all papers submitted to the journal are treated in a fair and unbiased way. As such, authors must declare any interests that they (or others) could consider to lead to a perceived bias. These biases (or perceived biases) can be of a financial, personal or professional nature, including (but not restricted to):
- financial competing interests, such as stock ownership, paid employment, board membership, patent application (pending and actual), research grants (from whatever source), travel grants and honoraria for speaking or participation at meetings and gifts;
- personal competing interests, such as membership of lobbying organizations and relationships with editors of Human Reproduction;
- professional competing interests, such as acting as an expert witness, membership of Government advisory board and organizations and funding bodies.
Competing interest statements should be included in an appropriate position in the manuscript.
The above statements are in line with the recommendations of the World Association of Medical Editors (WAME) with regard to funding of research and competing interests.
All authors must disclose any commercial or financial interest and/or any other relationships with pharmaceutical manufacturers.
Commercial Interest: any proprietary entity producing, re-selling, distributing or otherwise participating in or profiting from the distribution, promotion or sale of goods or services used by or on patients.
Financial interests/relationships: whereby an individual benefits by receiving salary, royalty intellectual property rights, consulting fees, honoraria, ownership interests (stocks, shares, etc) or other financial benefit. Financial benefits are usually, but not exclusively, associates with employment/management status, contractual work, consulting, teaching and speaking, advisory committee membership, review panel and board membership and other activities for which remuneration is expected or awarded. Declaration of such financial relationships covers the preceding 12 month period, and all such financial relationships of a spouse or partner.
Authorship Order: The order of authorship should be a joint decision of the co-authors, and should be agreed upon before submission to the journal. Changes to authorship (order or addition or removal of an author) after initial submission, must be agreed by all authors in writing with signatures provided.
Joint First Authorship: A superscript identifier (*) and footnote declaring joint first authorship is allowed. The joint first authors should be the first names in the list of authors. A footnote containing the statement: "These authors contributed equally to this work" should be added.
* Note that it is the responsibility of the corresponding author to obtain permission to publish previously published material and submit with their manuscript the permission from the copyright holder.
It is a condition of publication that authors assign a 'licence to publish' to ESHRE. Upon acceptance, a 'licence to publish' form must be completed. Authors may use their own material in future publications provided the Journal is acknowledged as the original place of publication and permission agreed.
Molecular Human Reproduction no longer requires authors to cover the cost of printing colour figures. The use of colour in all figures including graphs and schematics is encouraged.
Page charges are NOT levied.
Open Access
Molecular Human Reproduction offers the option of publishing under either a standard licence or an open access licence. Please note that some funders require open access publication as a condition of funding. If you are unsure whether you are required to publish open access, please do clarify any such requirements with your funder or institution.
Should you wish to publish your article open access, you should select your choice of open access licence in our online system after your article has been accepted for publication. You will need to pay an open access charge to publish under an open access licence.
Details of the open access licences and open access charges.
OUP has a growing number of Read and Publish agreements with institutions and consortia which provide funding for open access publishing. This means authors from participating institutions can publish open access, and the institution may pay the charge. Find out if your institution is participating.
