Instructions for authors

Protist publishes papers that report substantial and novel findings in any area of research on protists. Suitable subject areas include: molecular, cell and developmental biology, biochemistry, systematics and phylogeny, and ecology of autotrophic and heterotrophic protists. The journal will not, in general, publish floristic/faunistic accounts, descriptions or redescriptions of taxa which are not based on new original data, taxonomic work which lacks reproducibility or papers that are preliminary or merely confirmatory. The criteria for acceptance of manuscripts are scientific excellence, significance, and interest for a broad readership.

Organization of Manuscripts
Manuscripts should be written in concise, logical, and grammatically correct English, and all pages should be numbered. Poorly written papers will be returned to the authors without further review. Articles should normally be no longer than 10 printed pages including figures and tables (for guidance, a printed page of full text is equivalent to 900 words). Manuscripts that exceed this length will be accepted only at the discretion of the Editors. The manuscript should be organized in the following order: Title Page, Abstract, Keywords, Introduction, Results, Discussion, Methods, Acknowledgements, References, Tables and Figure Legends. The Title Page should include the authors´ full names and affiliations, a running title of less than 40 characters (including spaces), and the telephone and FAX numbers and e-mail address if available of the corresponding author. Any change of address may be given in numbered footnotes. The Abstract should be a single paragraph not exceeding 200 words. It must stand on its own with no reference to the text, and abbreviations and reference citations should be avoided. Up to six Keywords should be given in alphabetical order, following the Abstract. Results and Discussion can be subdivided further if subheadings give the manuscripts more clarity. Methods should reference all standard procedures but must be complete enough to enable the experiments to be reproduced. Scientific names of organisms used (including authorities), and their sources should be provided in this section. Trade names should be capitalized and the manufacturers´names and addresses given. Only SI (Système International d´Unités) units should be used throughout the manuscript.
It is recommended that authors consult a current issue of Protist for guidance on format, organization, and preparation of figures, legends, tables, and references.

Conventions
In general, this journal follows the conventions of the CBE Style Manual (Council of Biology Editors, Inc., 9650 Rockville Pike, Bethesda, MD 20841, 1983, 5th edn). For chemical nomenclature, the Subject Index of Chemical Abstracts should be followed. Genetic loci as well as scientific names of organisms should be italicized (underlined in typed copy); protein products of the loci are not italicized, nor are journal names or foreign phrases. Nonstandard abbreviations should be spelled out on first mention, followed by the abbreviated form in brackets. A footnote of nonstandard abbreviations used in the paper, in alphabetical order, followed by its spelled-out version should be supplied.

Figures and Legends
Each copy of a submitted manuscript should be provided with a set of figures of sufficient quality for reviewers to judge the data. Manuscripts submitted with substandard figures will be returned to the authors without further review. Figures should be cited in numerical order in the text. Arabic numerals should be used for figures and upper case letters for multiple parts of a single figure.
Line drawings. Figures may be prepared as original drawings, laser prints or sharp glossy prints. They will be reduced to one column (8.3 cm) or less whenever practical. Authors should plan the size of numbers, letters and symbols to achieve a height of 1.5-2 mm after reduction of the figure to a width of 8.3 cm.
Gels. Photographs of gels will be reduced to a lane width of 4-5 mm (single column width or less preferred). The letters and numbers labeling these photographs should be planned so that they are 1.5-2 mm high after reduction to the Journal´s specifications.
Micrographs. All halftone photographs should be submitted in the size that they will appear in the journal; they must be printed to fit one column (8.3 cm) or two columns (17.1 cm) in width and no more than 18 cm in length so that the legend will fit on the same page as the illustration. Multiple halftones should be mounted with no spaces separating the prints. Illustrations must be labeled to a professional standard. Only press-on symbols and Helvetica lettering should be used. Magnification bars should be given on electron and light micrographs. All figures must be identified with the figure number and authors´ names in soft pencil or on labels on the back.
Figure Legends. Legends should be typed double spaced in paragraph form on sheets separate to those containing the figures. They should contain sufficient information to be understood without reference to the text and without repeating information presented in the text and should not contain methods. All symbols and abbreviations used in the figures should be explained. Each figure should be provided with a short title.

Digital images
Authors who wish to submit digital images must always submit a high quality hardcopy version from the same file to be used as camera copy and/or comparison for output. The primary criteria for usable files are: the file should be submitted in Encapsulated PostScript (EPS) or Tag Image File Format (TIFF) form that can be brought into Adobe Photoshop and should be at least 300 dpi at final size for halftones and color, 500 dpi for combinations, and 1000 dpi for line shots. The hardcopy output should be the same size as the digital file. For color, the file must be in the CMYK format. Because of variations in output devices, color variations may occur between hardcopy and the printer´s match print. Requests to rescan art to match a color will be charged to the author.

Tables
Tables should be typed double-spaced on separate sheets. They should have a brief descriptive title and be self-explanatory. Tables should be numbered consecutively in Arabic numerals as they are mentioned in the text. No vertical rules should be used. Explanatory material and footnotes should be inserted below the table and designated with lowercase letters in the order in which they are referenced in the table.

References
References should be cited in the text by name and date of publication and not by number (e.g. Cohen and Beisson 1988). Joint authors should be referred to by et al. if there are more than two, e.g. Wilson et al. (1996). More than one paper from the same author(s) in the same year must be identified by the letters a,b,c, etc., placed after the year of publication. Listing of several references in the text should be alphabetical (Falkowski 1995; Simpson and Maslov 1994). References should be typed double-spaced on a separate sheet in alphabetical order and should contain complete titles and inclusive page numbers. The names of journals should be abbreviated as in the Serial Sources for the Biosis Data Base (published annually by Bio-Sciences Information Service of Biological Abstracts, Philadelphia, PA 19103). Unpublished results, including personal communications and submitted manuscripts should be cited in the text only, not in the reference list. Personal communications must be accompanied by permission letters unless they are from the authors´ laboratories. Unpublished work must not be cited in the Methods section. Citation of abstracts in the reference list is not permitted. ´In press´ citations must have been accepted for publication and the name of the journal or publisher included.
In the reference list the following style should be used:

Wilson RJM, Denny PW, Preiser PR, Rangachari K, Roberts K, Roy A, Whyte A, Strath M, Moore DJ, Moore PW, Williamson DH (1996) Complete gene map of the plastid-like DNA of the malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum. J Mol Biol 261: 155-172

Cohen J, Beisson J (1988) The Cytoskeleton. In Görtz HD (ed) Paramecium. Springer-Verlag, Berlin, pp 363-392

Margulis L, Corliss, JO, Melkonian M, Chapman DJ, eds (1990) Handbook of Protoctista. Jones and Bartllott Publ, Boston

Submission of Papers
Three copies of each paper should be submitted. Papers should be typed double-spaced on one side only of A4 or American quarto paper with margins of at least 30 mm all round. Manuscripts will be returned without review if they are submitted with less than double spacing or on a dot matrix printer that does not produce letter quality text. High-quality figures should be provided with each copy of the manuscript (photocopies of halftone figures are unacceptable). The original illustrations and electronic files should not be included initially. These must be sent with the revised manuscript. The disk must contain all final revisions, include operating system and word processing program used and must be accompanied by a hard copy printout. Submission of a manuscript to Protist implies that it has not been submitted for publication elsewhere and that it contains unpublished, new information. Authors are welcome to provide the names, addresses, fax numbers and e-mail addresses of up to five potential referees.
All manuscripts should be submitted to the Editorial Office:
Professor Michael Melkonian, Editor-in-Chief, Protist, Botanisches Institut, Universität zu Köln, Albertus-Magnus-Platz, D-50923 Köln, Germany
e-mail: mmelkon@novell.biolan.uni-koeln.de

Questions regarding submitted manuscripts should be directed to the Editor-in-Chief.

Review Process
Papers submitted to Protist will be reviewed by members of the editorial board and expert ad-hoc reviewers. Decisions will be made as rapidly as possible (in general within four weeks of submission). When a manuscript is returned to authors for revision, the revised version must be submitted within three months of the authors´receipt of the referee reports. Only a single round of revision will be permitted.

Page Proofs
Authors will receive one set of proofs, which should be corrected and returned to the Editorial Office within 48 hours of receipt by express (overnight) mail, or by fax if necessary. With the exception of typographical or printer´s errors, no changes will be made in the manuscript at the proof stage.

Reprints
Twenty-five reprints of each article will be supplied free. Additional reprints may be ordered at the prices shown on the Price List which will be sent to the author together with the reprint order form included with the page proofs. The reprint order form must be returned before the Journal goes to press. As indicated on the forms, an institutional purchase order must be sent to the publisher before reprints will be released.

No Page Charges
There will be no page charges. Color illustrations are reproduced at the authors´ expense.

Registration of Sequences
Papers published in Protist that deal with nucleotide or amino acid sequences must carry a statement that the data have been deposited with an appropriate data bank (e.g. EMBL, GenBank, DDBJ). The data base accession number must be given in the Methods section of the manuscript. Any accepted manuscript that does not have such numbers by the page proof stage will be held until the numbers are provided.

Distribution of Material
Publication of a paper in Protist implies that authors will distribute freely to researchers, for non-commercial purposes, all propagative materials such as protist cultures, cell lines, recombinant plasmids, vectors, viruses and monoclonal antibodies that were used to obtain results presented in the article and that are not available from commercial suppliers.