Instructions for contributors

Editorial Policy

Parasitology Open (PAO) is an exciting new development from Cambridge Journals. It offers Open Access publication combined with rigorous peer-review standards set by an international editorial board of the highest calibre, all backed by Cambridge University Press and our commitment to quality.

PAO is an international, peer-reviewed, online only, open access journal that welcomes high-quality research in all aspects of parasitology. PAO encompasses the full spectrum of parasitology including biochemistry, molecular biology, immunology, genetics, physiology, epidemiology, ecology, vaccine and drug studies, and the control of parasitic infections, the application of new techniques, advances in the understanding of host-parasite relationships, and the economic impact of parasitic diseases.

PAO follows the principle that original research that is judged to be scientifically sound will be published.

All published papers will be freely accessible online to all in perpetuity and all authors will retain copyright of published papers.

Copyright and Publication Charges

Articles will be published under a creative commons attribution (CC BY) licence as standard, but authors may elect to publish under the following alternative licences:

CC-BY-NC-SA (Attribution - Non-Commercial - Share Alike)
CC-BY-NC-ND (Attribution - Non-Commercial - No Derivatives)

For information on what each licence allows, please visit creativecommons.org/licenses

Authors must complete and return a licence to publish form once their article has been accepted for publication.

From 1st January 2018 onwards, an APC applies to all accepted papers, with a continuing waiver scheme for eligible countries. Open access publishing in PAO is funded through levying an APC on each individual author's institution or funding body. Find out more about OA fees from 2018 onwards here.

The decision whether to accept a paper for publication will rest solely with the Editors, and without reference to the funding situation of the authors.

Please note: APC collection is managed by RightsLink, who will contact authors following acceptance of their paper.

Themed Collections

The journal will also regularly publish themed collections of content. If your paper is being submitted in response to a Call for Papers for a themed collection, authors should indicate this upon submission.

Editorial Process

All manuscripts submitted to PAO are received by the Editor-in-Chief, Professor Stephen Phillips, who will make a first assessment of their suitability for the journal. At this stage a very small number of submissions are mmediately rejected. Thereafter the manuscripts deemed appropriate for the journal are passed to one of the Editors or retained by the EiC, to be then sent out to at least two external reviewers for comment and advice. The referees are often members of the Editorial Board and their names and expertise are published on the PAO website, but on occasion, the handling editor may ask external reviewers from the subject community. Invitations are issued until at least two reviews are obtained.

Referees who decline are invited to suggest alternatives. Peer Review is single blind i.e. the peer review process anonymizes the name of the reviewer, but not the author or their affiliation on the paper. The handling Editor detailed will then make the final decision, although he or she might ask for advice from another Editor. An Editor who submits a manuscript to the journal takes no part in the refereeing process and has no access to the names of the referees involved. Accepted articles are then published on Cambridge Core as soon as they are ready.

Submission of Manuscripts

All new submissions should be made through the ScholarOne site. If you are a new author, you will need to register: https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/paropen

All enquiries should be directed to the Editorial Office at parasitology@cambridge.org

Authors must follow these 'Instructions for Contributors' and should refer to a recent issue of PAO for the correct style. Authors of Reviews must follow these instructions with major headings in UPPER CASE and secondary headings in lower case italics.

Manuscripts must be prepared in MS Word in either PC, Macintosh or LaTeX format.

Submission of a manuscript implies that it has been approved in its final form by all the named authors, that it reports on unpublished work and that it has not been published or submitted for publication, in whole or in part, elsewhere. It is the responsibility of the corresponding author to ensure that these conditions are fulfilled. Authors of articles published in the journal grant Cambridge University Press the licence to publish by completing a copyright licence form on acceptance of the paper. On acceptance the corresponding author will be asked to supply a final version of the manuscript. Once a proof has been returned only minor changes will be allowed. Authors should be aware that large numbers of changes may lead to the paper being returned to reviewers for approval, delaying publication, in addition to incurring costs associated with making the changes.

Manuscript Format

Please note that failure to follow the 'Instructions for Contributors' will almost certainly result in the manuscript being returned to the author for correct formatting before it is sent out to the referees and hence there will be an unavoidable delay in the processing of your manuscript.

The manuscript should be organized as follows:

1. TITLE PAGE

The title page should contain (i) a concise and informative full title, (ii) the initials and name(s) of the authors and family names, (iii) the full postal address(es) of the institution(s) where the work was carried out, (iv) a short informative running title and (v) the name and address, telephone and fax numbers, and E-mail address of the corresponding author. Footnotes containing other addresses may be included. Nothing else should appear on the title page.

2. SUMMARY

This should not be more than about 150-200 words and its purpose is to summarize the main aims, results and conclusions in such a way that they could be understood by any interested reader and not only experts in the subject, and could be used by an abstracting journal. References to published or unpublished work and unnecessary abbreviations should be avoided. Appended to the Summary should be 3-10 relevant key words, suitable for indexing. Nothing else should appear on the Summary page.

3. KEY FINDINGS (required for original Research papers only)

Distil the key results and/or conclusions of the study into 3 to 5 short bullet points of less than 90 characters each. These key points will give the editor and referees an immediate overview of the paper and an insight into the importance of your findings.They must be uploaded to Scholar One at the appropriate step in the submission process, but MUST ALSO be included in your main document.

4. INTRODUCTION

This should be as short as possible, normally not more than 2-3 paragraphs, and should simply serve to introduce the reader to the purpose and significance of the work described. It should neither be a mini-review nor should it be so bland as to be uninformative.

When making general statements, reference should be made to recent reviews, and specific references should be cited only if they are particularly relevant.

5. MATERIALS AND METHODS

Sufficient information for the reader to be able to repeat the work must be given, but techniques described in detail in other publications need not be repeated, provided that an adequate reference is cited. Major modifications to methods should be clearly described. The numbers of experiments, replicates, etc. and any statistical tests used should be stated.

The full binomial name should be given for all organisms, except those such as mice, rats and rabbits, commonly used in laboratories and domesticated animals such as cows, dogs and cats.

Generic names should be given in full when first mentioned and subsequently if any confusion is likely to arise. If reference is made to an uncommon taxon the authority for the taxon and date should be stated.

Abbreviations such as An. (for Anopheles) should be avoided unless absolutely essential, for example when referring to two or more generic names beginning with the same letter. Authors should follow International Rules for Nomenclature and, if new names are introduced, the International Code for Zoological Nomenclature. All strains and sources of hosts and parasites should be stated.

Abbreviations should be used sparingly and unambiguously. SI units should be used wherever appropriate and other standard statistical, chemical, biochemical and molecular abbreviations may also be used. In case of any doubt, authors are advised to spell out the term in full, followed by the abbreviation in parenthesis, when it is first used.

6. RESULTS

These should be confined to a factual account of the actual results obtained. Where necessary results should be analysed using an appropriate statistical test. Discussion and reference to other work should be left to the Discussion. Please see the section on Tables and Figures for guidelines as to their inclusion.

7. DISCUSSION (the Discussion section must be separate from the Results section)

The results (including further reference to figures and tables) should neither be repeated in detail nor should new information be introduced. Speculation is encouraged but should not go beyond reasonable and testable hypotheses. The Discussion should not attempt to be a mini-review.

8. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

You may acknowledge individuals or organisations that provided advice, support (non-financial). Formal financial support and funding should be listed in the Financial Support section.

9. REQUIRED STATEMENTS

The three sections below must be included in your manuscript. These statements should be included in the main text of your manuscript, before the References section.

Financial Support

You must include a financial support section. Please provide details of the sources of financial support for all authors, including grant numbers. For example, "This work was supported by the Medical research Council (grant number XXXXXXX)". Multiple grant numbers should be separated by a comma and space, and where research was funded by more than one agency the different agencies should be separated by a semi-colon, with 'and' before the final funder. Grants held by different authors should be identified as belonging to individual authors by the authors' initials. For example, "This work was supported by the Wellcome Trust (A.B., grant numbers XXXX, YYYY), (C.D., grant number ZZZZ); the Natural Environment Research Council (E.F., grant number FFFF); and the National Institutes of Health (A.B., grant number GGGG), (E.F., grant number HHHH)".

Where no specific funding has been provided for research, please provide the following statement: "This research received no specific grant from any funding agency, commercial or not-for-profit sectors."

Conflict of Interest

Authors submitting to journals at Cambridge University Press are required to declare any potential conflicts of interest. Conflicts of interest are those that could be considered or viewed as exerting an undue influence on the presentation, review and publication of their work. Please provide details of all known financial, professional and personal relationships with the potential to bias the work. Where no known conflicts of interest exist, please include the following statement: "None."

Ethical Standards

Where research involves human and/or animal experimentation, the following statements should be included (as applicable): "The authors assert that all procedures contributing to this work comply with the ethical standards of the relevant national and institutional committees on human experimentation and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2008." and "The authors assert that all procedures contributing to this work comply with the ethical standards of the relevant national and institutional guides on the care and use of laboratory animals."

The authors must demonstrate the experimental procedures employed conform to the accepted principles of animal welfare in experimental science. The principles defined and explained in the European Convention for the Protection of Vertebrate Animals used for Experimental and Other Scientific Purposes and its appendix and/or the National Research Council Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals should be followed. A statement acknowledging conformation to these standards and that the authors have involved the minimum number of animals to produce statistically reproducible results must be included in the covering letter to the Editor-in-Chief as well as in the 'Materials and Methods' section of the manuscript. If experimental methodology raises particular ethical or welfare concerns then the Editor will take additional guidance from Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986, when making decisions. The Editor's decision with regard to ethics will be final.

Publication Ethics

and Cambridge University Press take issues of copyright infringement, plagiarism, or other breaches of best practice in publication very seriously. We seek to uphold high standards of research integrity, and expect the same of our authors. Accordingly, we will always investigate claims of plagiarism or other research integrity or publication ethics allegations. Submitted articles may be checked using duplication-checking software. Where an article is found to have plagiarised other work or included third-party copyright material without permission or with insufficient acknowledgement, or where authorship of the article is contested, we reserve the right to take action. Any action would be in accordance with Cambridge University Press’s Research Publishing Ethics Guidelines and may include, without limitation, retracting the article, referring the matter to the author’s institution and/or other relevant academic bodies or societies, or appropriate legal action

For further information on Cambridge's Ethical Guidelines, please visit these pages: Publication Ethics and Ethical Standards.

Informed Consent

Parasitology Open requires that all appropriate steps be taken in obtaining informed consent of any and all human subjects participating in the research comprising the manuscript submitted for review and possibile publication. For those investigators who do not have formal ethics review committees, the principles outlined in the WMA Declaration of Helsinki should be followed. A statement is required with any report of investigations involving human subjects confirming that informed consent was obtained from the subject(s) and/or guardian(s). It should be stated clearly in the manuscript that informed consent was obtained.

Editors or referees may request further documentation confirming that this is the case.

10. REFERENCES

It is essential that the appropriate reference format for Parasitology Open is adhered to precisely. Where using reference management software Endnote, please note that Endnote version 7 is compatible with this journal's formatting.

(i) References in the text.

References should be kept to an essential minimum. Only references to published work or work actually 'in Press' are permitted. Reference to unpublished work is acceptable but only as either 'unpublished results' or 'personal communication' and under no circumstances should references to unpublished work, work in preparation or un-refereed abstracts be included in the Reference List.

Lists of text references should be arranged in ascending date order and then alphabetically, please note the first line of references is no longer indented.

e.g.: Brown and Green, 1961; Black, 1995, 2011; Brown, 1995; Brown et al. 2001, 2002a,b, 2010

For papers with more than two authors et al. should be used.

e.g.: Brown, A et al. (1992a)

When authors are not directly referred to the reference should be in parentheses as follows:

e.g.: All currently known COI sequences of G. salaris from rainbow trout (Hansen et al. 2003; Meinilä et al. 2004) are haplotype F.

(ii) List of References

References, which must be double spaced and listed alphabetically, should begin on a separate page following the Discussion and Acknowledgements. The accuracy and appropriateness of the references are solely the responsibility of the author and are not checked in the editorial office.

The format required by this journal is given below and, if in any doubt, authors should refer to a recent copy of the journal. Please note that the names of all authors should be given in bold font and that the journal name should be italicized and given in full, not abbreviated. Where known, the article Digital Object Identifier (doi) should be included, at the end of the entry (see example below).

Journal References

Higgs, S, Snow, K and Gould, EA (2003) The potential for West Nile virus to establish outside of its natural range: a consideration of potential mosquito vectors in the United Kingdom. Transactions of the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene 98, 82-87. doi: 10.1016/S0035-9203(03)00004-X.

Books

Smyth, JD (1994) Introduction to Animal Parasitology, 3rd Edn. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Chapters in Books

Grenfell, BT, Dietz, K and Roberts, MG (1995) Modelling the immuno-epidemiology of macroparasites in naturally-fluctuating host populations. In Grenfell BT and Dobson AP (eds) Ecology of Infectious Diseases in Natural Populations. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, pp. 362-383.

WHO Publications

World Health Organization (1995). Onchocerciasis and its Control. WHO Technical Report Series No. 852. Geneva, Switzerland: World Health Organization.

When referencing Parasitology Supplements

Jenkins DJ and MacPherson, CNL (2003) Transmission ecology of Echinococcus in wild-life in Australia and Africa. Parasitology 127 (Suppl.), S63-S72. doi: 10.1017/S0031182003003871.

PhD Theses (note: we will not accept MSc theses)

Geets, A (1998) Host-parasite interactions between sympatric Pomatoschistus species (Gobiidae, Teleostei) and their helminth parasites: ecological and phylogenic aspects. PhD thesis, KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium.

Web resources and online publications

Wozniak, RH (1997). Behaviourism: The early years. Retrieved from Bryn Mawr College Psychology Department website: http://www.brynmawr.edu/Acads/Psych/rwozniak/behaviorism.html (accessed 29 January 2018).

If no personal author is visible, you should include the organisation responsible for the web page instead. If no date is visible write (n.d.) which stands for 'no date' instead.

11. SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL

Supplementary files may be submitted. Please note that the Typesetters will not amend these files in any way before publishing; therefore, authors should ensure that they appear exactly as intended when submitted. We will accept a wide variety of files such as PDF, Excel, Word, .jpg, movie and audio files. Please ensure that legends are included in supplementary figures, and that they are of sufficiently high quality.

Reviews and Special Issues

The headings* for papers should be as follows:

Title page as described above
Summary and key words (key words not required for special issue papers)
Introduction
Additional headings and sub-headings as appropriate to each paper
Discussion
Conclusions/Future directions
Acknowledgements
Required Statements
References

* Headings (not in bold) are formatted as follows: primary - UPPER CASE; secondary sub-heading - lower case italics on separate line; tertiary sub-heading - lower case italics running on.

On Acceptance

On acceptance to the journal the final version of the manuscript containing the following should be submitted: Title Page, Summary, Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results, Discussion, Acknowledgements, References, Tables, Figure legends. In particular, each table should occupy a separate page.

Proofs

Proofs Page proofs will be forwarded as PDF files by E-mail to the corresponding author. It is the responsibility of the author to ensure that no errors are present. Only essential corrections should be made and authors will be charged for excessive alterations at the proof stage. If corrections are deemed to be substantial the paper will be rejected and the author asked to resubmit their work for peer review.

Journal Style

Contributors should note the following:

S.I. units should be used throughout in text, figures and tables.
Authors should spell out in full any abbreviations used in their manuscripts.
Foreign quotations and phrases should be followed by a translation.
If necessary, guidelines for statistical presentation may be found in: Altman, DG, Gore, SM, Gardner, MJ and Pocock SJ (1983) Statistical guidelines for contributors to medical journals. British Medical Journal 286, 1489-1493.

Word count

Generally papers should not have text more than 5000 words in length (excluding abstract, tables/figures and references) and should not have more than a combined total of five tables and/or figures. Papers shorter than these limits are encouraged. For papers of unusual importance the editors may waive these requirements.

Figures and Tables

There are no charges for colour publication. Any figure provided in colour will be reproduced in colour online at no extra cost.

All wording within submitted figures must be Arial, point size 8. To ensure your figures are reproduced to the highest possible standards and your article is published as quickly and efficiently as possible, Cambridge Journals recommends the following formats and resolutions for supplying electronic figures. Please note that submitting low quality figures may result in a delay in publishing your valuable research.

(i) Tables. Each table, headed by a self-explanatory title, must be double spaced on a separate page and numbered consecutively. Rules, particularly vertical ones, should be avoided. Each table should be referred to consecutively as Table 1 etc in the text. The use of bold and italic text should be avoided unless absolutely necessary.

(ii) Figures. These may be line drawings or photographs and all should be referred to consecutively in the text as Fig. 1 etc. Component parts of figures should be labelled A, B, C etc. Legends for figures should be self-explanatory and must not contain details of results. They must be submitted as .tif or .eps files. We do not accept files such as PDF, Powerpoint or .jpg.

Line drawings should not be larger than twice the final size and in no circumstances should exceed 170 x 250 mm. Line drawings should be as simple as possible, lines should be bold enough to stand reduction to about 0.25-0.35 mm. Preferred symbols are open and filled circles, squares and triangles, and these should be used consistently. Lettering should be kept to a minimum and should be self-explanatory and unambiguous and of sufficiently high quality and size to be clearly visible after reduction to final size.

Photographs should be the same size as they will appear in the journal and should be selected to fit neatly into one column (80 mm) or two columns (166 mm). Photographs should be labelled and numbered as for line drawings. For microscopical preparations, scale bars with appropriate units (e.g. 50μm) must be provided; statements of magnification are not acceptable.

Please ensure your figures are saved at final publication size and are in our recommended file formats. Following these guidelines will result in high quality images being reproduced in both the print and the online versions of the journal.

Line artwork

Format: tif or eps Colour mode: black and white (also known as 1-bit) Size: please size to final publication size Resolution: 1200 dpi

Combination artwork (line/tone)

Format: tif or eps Colour mode: grayscale (also known as 8-bit) Size: please size to final publication size Resolution: 800 dpi

Black and white halftone artwork

Format: tif Colour mode: grayscale (also known as 8-bit) Size: please size to final publication size Resolution: 300 dpi

Colour halftone artwork

Format: tif Colour mode: CMYK colour Size: please size to final publication size Resolution: 300 dpi

If you require any further guidance on creating suitable electronic figures, please visit the Cambridge Journals Artwork Guide. All graphs and diagrams should be referred to as figures and should be numbered consecutively in Arabic numerals. Captions for figures should be typed double-spaced on separate sheets. Tables should be numbered consecutively in the text in Arabic numerals and each typed on a separate sheet after the References section. Titles should be typed above the table.

Developing country waiver policy

In line with other leading publishers, we grant 100% waivers to papers whose corresponding authors are based in Research4Life 'Group A' countries and 50% waivers to those who are based in 'Group B' countries.

Discretionary waiver policy

(i) The author(s) must request a waiver at or before submission, before an article enters editorial consideration by contacting par@cambridge.org.
(ii) The author(s) must provide documentary evidence for their request.
(iii) The waiver request should be processed by the Proprietor and/or CUP, without the knowledge of the editorial board.
(iv) The waiver request should be processed as quickly as possible before the article moves from submission to editorial consideration
(v) The decision to approve or decline the waiver request should be based on the credibility of the evidence the author provides and the author following the journal's waiver request procedure.

Waiver requests from Dutch authors

Information regarding Cambridge's arrangement with Dutch insitutions and other Cambridge University Press Open Access deals can be found here.

Editorial waiver policy

Waivers will be automatically granted for all:

Editorials
Invited Reviews (only if the author has no funding)
Errata/corrigenda
Correspondence

Full waivers will automatically be granted via RightsLink.

ORCID IDs

Parasitology Open now requires that all corresponding authors identify themselves using ORCID when submitting a manuscript to the journal. Joining ORCID is fast, free and you do not need to have a current affiliation. ORCID provides a unique identifier for researchers and, through integration in key research workflows such as publication and grant applications, provides the following benefits:

Discoverability: ORCID increases the discoverability of your publications, by enabling smarter publisher systems and by helping readers to reliably find work that you’ve authored.
Convenience: As more organisations use ORCID, providing your ID or using it to register for services will automatically link activities to your ORCID profile, and will save you re-keying information multiple times.
Keeping track: Your ORCID profile is a neat place to record and display (if you choose) validated information about your research activities.

If you don’t already have an ID, you’ll need to create one if you decide to submit a manuscript to Parasitology Open. You can register for one directly from your user account on ScholarOne or Editorial Manager or via https://orcid.org/register. If you already have an ID, please use this when submitting by linking it to your ScholarOne user account. Simply log in to your account using your normal username and password. Edit your account by clicking on your name at the top right of the screen and from the dropdown menu, select 'E-Mail / Name'. Follow the instructions at the top of the screen to update your account.

For more information on ORCID please visit: https://www.cambridge.org/using-ORCID

AuthorAID

AuthorAID is a global network that provides free support, mentoring, resources and training to help researchers in low- and middle-income countries to write, publish and otherwise communicate their work.

Key features of AuthorAID are:

discussion and questions where researchers can benefit from advice and insights from members across the globe
documents and presentations on best practice in writing and publication
world-wide training workshops and MOOCs on scientific writing
personal mentoring by highly published researchers and professional editors

For any authors new to publishing research articles, we encourage you to make use of the AuthorAID resources before submitting your paper to Parasitology Open. Through the AuthorAID network, guidance can be found to help researchers through the process of writing and submitting scientific papers, advice about responding to reviewer comments, as well as research design and grant applications.

Please note that seeking support through AuthorAID will not guarantee acceptance for publication in Parasitology Open, or affect the editorial process in any way.

Cambridge Language Editing Service

We suggest that authors whose first language is not English have their manuscripts checked by a native English speaker before submission. This is optional, but will help to ensure that any submissions that reach peer review can be judged exclusively on academic merit. We offer a Cambridge service which you can find out more about here, and suggest that authors contact as appropriate. Please note that use of language editing services is voluntary, and at the author’s own expense. Use of these services does not guarantee that the manuscript will be accepted for publication, nor does it restrict the author to submitting to a Cambridge-published journal.

For further information on this journal, please see the information sheet here.