Information for authors

The journal publishes concise original research reports, authoritative reviews (PERSPECTIVES), and technical developments on the effects produced by low temperatures on a wide variety of biophysical and biological processes, or studies involving low temperature techniques in the investigation of biological and ecological topics. The Journal will accept papers that reach a high standard of scientific endeavour as judged by international peer review.

Contributions are peer-reviewed by an international editorial board and referees. There are no page charges (unless the author opts for Open Access publishing) and we offer a free PDF file to authors. Circulation is world-wide and the journal is abstracted by all major services.

All submissions must include an illustrative image for use on the CryoLetters website. This should ideally be a photographic image but could be, in decreasing order of preference, a diagram, chart, graph or table of data. The image should be full-colour if possible, but black and white is acceptable. The image should be your own or you must have the owner’s permission for it to be used on the CryoLetters website. Often the image will be one that is used in the submitted paper, but this is not a requirement, as sometimes a different image may be more appropriate. For example, if the paper features a particular species or technique then an image of that species or relevant item of equipment may have more impact. The image can be submitted in any image file format (TIFF, PNG or JPG preferred). The minimum dimensions of the image should be 800 × 500 px, but a larger image which we can then resize and/or crop as necessary would be preferred.

Manuscript Layout

  1. Papers will be edited directly from authors’ electronic submissions, which therefore must conform to a standardised house-style, be accurate, clear and well laid out. For speed of publication, no proofs are printed, and final responsibility for accuracy rests with author(s) who may be contacted by the editor for clarification during sub-editing.
  2. Authors have access to downloadable templates – see CryoLetters manuscript templates - which must be used for submission of their article. See instructions below – point 22 onwards.
  3. Research articles must be concise, and preferably around 10 – 12 pages long, including Figures, Tables and References. Longer articles may need prior agreement with the Executive or Associate Editors.
  4. PERSPECTIVE articles are timely, insightful reviews. The topics are agreed with the Executive Editor in advance. These reviews should be about 12+ pages long and include up to 100 references. PERSPECTIVE articles are made available as Open Access at no cost to the authors.
  5. Electronic submission is essential. Manuscripts should use the downloadable templates and be single line spaced with the text in Times (New) Roman 11 point font, except for the text in the Tables and Figures which should be in Arial 10 point font. Manuscripts which do not conform to this specification may be returned for resetting. (In the event of difficulty in conforming to the specification, contact the Editorial Office for help - editor@cryoletters.org). .
  6. Author Open Access. Authors may choose to select the Open Access option at the time of manuscript submission. A modest fee is charged to cover administrative costs. You will be asked to confirm that you will pay the open access fee (600 Euros) when invoiced. You will need to choose the ‘Open Access’ option when you first submit your paper to the Editorial Office. The article will be made available by Ingenta Open Access on receipt of the fee.
  7. The title page should have:
    1. The TITLE (in 13-point font) in BOLD CAPITALS CENTRED on the page with 72 point spacing before (i.e., about a 5 cm top margin). Note that the top margin for all other pages is 2.5 cm, and all pages have a left, right and bottom margin of 3.0 cm, 2 cm and 2.5 cm, respectively.
    2. This should be followed by the Author(s)’ names (regular font) separated from the title by a single line space, centred and indicated by an asterisk* for the author to whom correspondence should be addressed. The last author name should be preceded by ‘and’. To assist information retrieval, titles should be specific and informative. If preferred, the family name of the author(s) can be given in CAPITALS.
    3. The full correspondence address(es) should be left-aligned and separated by a single line space from the author names. Additionally, a valid E-mail contact address must be given. Superscripted numerals1,2,3 should be used to indicate which addresses are associated with which authors.
    4. The Abstract should be no more than 250 words, with a bold heading as shown and be split into sections: BACKGROUND, OBJECTIVE, MATERIALS AND METHODS, RESULTS and CONCLUSIONS. The abstract should be specific and informative to assist retrieval.
    5. Up to six Keywords: (heading left-aligned) continuing the line. Words should be arranged in alphabetical order with a semi-colon between them.
  8. The page layout to the end of the Keywords should be single column. Thereafter, the text (including the REFERENCES) should be twin columns with a width of 7.64 cm and a separation of 0.72 cm.
  9. The text should normally be divided into conventional sub-sections under the following main headings: INTRODUCTION, MATERIALS AND METHODS, RESULTS, DISCUSSION and REFERENCES. These headings should be BOLD, UPPER CASE and CENTRED. Any Acknowledgements: (heading left-aligned) should appear after the text (before the References) continuing the line.
  10. The text should be fully justified and continuous with no spaces between paragraphs. Paragraph first lines should be indented 0.8 cm. Subheadings should be in lower case bold, italic with initial capital. Sub-subheadings should be in regular script underlined with initial capital and conclude with colon or full stop; text should then continue the line. Leave a 24 pt space prior to a main HEADING, and 12 pt afterwards. Leave a 12 pt space before a sub-heading. If you use a font other than Times Roman or Arial to prepare the document, please ensure that all characters are properly converted to Times Roman or Arial before submitting the document to the Editorial Office. Please use the correct characters for degree Celsius (°C) not a superscripted ‘o’. Statistical symbols should be italicised according to this example (P, F, t, χ). The correct formatting is the Author(s) responsibility.
  11. Tables and Figures should be included in the text within the blue boxes available in the template. Within the body of the text, these boxes are adjustable to fit within a single column or across two columns (i.e., across the page).
  12. Labelling to the Tables and Figures (including legends, footnotes, statements on statistics, etc) should be clearly distinguished from the main text by using a sans-serif font, preferably Arial 10-point. Do not include vertical lines in Tables, and keep horizontal lines to the minimum to distinguish the column headings.
  13. Figures, graphs, structural formulae etc., should be prepared by computer using a common spreadsheet or graphics package such as Microsoft Excel. Remove all horizontal scale lines from graphs and do not box in either the axes or the whole figure. Ensure that lines and symbols on graphs are clearly distinguishable, and that histogram bars are wide enough for any labelling to be legible. The font size of the axes labels should be large enough labels to be read easily. The details in Figures and in line drawings should be sufficiently bold to remain clear after conversion of a PDF.
  14. When presenting data in Tables of Figures, please note clearer whether ‘standard deviation’ or standard error of the mean is being used for error bars. Figure legends should carry enough information to be understood without detailed reference to the text. Numbers of replicates for calculation of the statistical significance should be given (in the MATERIALS AND METHODS, and mentioned again in the legend if that helps understanding). Figures should be included directly in the text.
  15. IT IS VERY IMPORTANT THAT YOU CHECK THE APPEARANCE OF THE FONTS USED AFTER IMPORTING THE FIGURE INTO THE TEXT FILE TO ENSURE THEY ARE OF SUFFICIENT SIZE STILL TO BE LEGIBLE IN THE PDF.
  16. Colour (or black and white) photographs / images should embedded in the text like a Figure of data. As for Figures containing data, photographs / images should be grouped together if possible. Good contrast is imperative. Labelling should be black or white as a contrast to the background in Arial 10-point font, or similar. For micrographs (light, transmission, scanning), a scale bar should be shown on the image.
  17. Units: SI units are preferred. Consistency is essential.
  18. References should be referred to in the text by number in parenthesis, starting with (1), (2), etc., for the first ones mentioned. This is the order in which the references should appear in the list at the end of the manuscript (not in alphabetical order). All authors should be listed and the general formatting should be as follows:
    1. Withers LA & Engelmann F (1997) in Agricultural Biotechnology, (ed) A Altman, Marcel Dekker Inc, New York, pp 57-88.
    2. Reed BM (2001) CryoLetters 22, 97-104.
    3. Thurston LM, Watson PF & Holt WV (2003) Theriogenology 60, 101-113.
    4. Songsasen N, Tong J & Leibo S (1998) Journal of Experimental Zoology 280, 189-196.
      Include the doi when possible
  19. The Journal maintains its high standard by means of expert refereeing by an international panel. After review, if considered worthy of publication the manuscript will normally be returned for revision as recommended by the referee(s) and/or editors.
  20. Revised manuscripts must be marked up to show revisions as requested by the Editorial Office. The Executive Editor will work on the draft PDF with the corresponding author. The responsibility for the appearance of the final revised article rests with the Authors
  21. Ethical standards
    1. All experimental work involving animals should conform to European Convention on the use of Experimental Animals and the Directive that seeks to implement it. Where appropriate, authors should state that animal experiments were conducted in accordance with a named National Policy or Licensing Authority and were approved by the Institutional Ethics Committee. Experimental methods should include details of anaesthetic (generic name, dose, route of administration) and surgical procedures. Chilling alone is not an acceptable method for rendering vertebrates insentient; an anaesthetic agent must be used. Work on isolated tissues, including primary cell cultures, must state from where and how the materials were derived.
    2. All work involving humans or human tissues or cells must contain in the text a statement that approval for the study has been obtained from the appropriate National or Institutional Ethics Committee and conforms to the standards set by the Declaration of Helsinki (ETHICAL PRINCIPLES FOR MEDICAL RESEARCH INVOLVING HUMAN SUBJECTS) and that material was obtained only with Informed Consent in writing for each individual in the study.
    3. The editors reserve the right to refuse publication of any work which does not conform to these essential ethical standards.



    22. CryoLetters templates

  22. How to use the CryoLetters templates

    Download templates:

    1. The templates were designed to facilitate the authors of CryoLetters to prepare their ‘camera-ready’ typescripts in a standardised format. These templates makes it easy for authors to layout the text, Figures, Tables, images and legends. They conform to the format of the journal.
    2. The templates are written in Microsoft Office 2010 and are compatible with later versions. Copy the files to C: programs/Microsoft office/templates. To use them, open Word first, go to File, click New, and browse to the templates. Alternatively, you can copy a template to any folder you like and to use it you simply click the template file twice.
    3. Click on any macrobutton [words in the brackets] and start typing (e.g. title, bylines, abstract, introduction, subtitles and etc.). When a macrobutton is clicked, it will be highlighted. When you start to type, the macro will disappear automatically. Macrobuttons specify certain formats, therefore do not delete them before writing. The specification though is fixed (e.g. font type, font size, spacing, margin etc.). Treat the template as a regular file, subscript, superscript, special symbols and other variations could be done just like in any Word document. As long as the template is not altered, the format will be maintained.
    4. Not every manuscript follows the same sequence: Abstract, INTRODUCTION, MATERIALS AND METHODS, RESULTS, and DISCUSSION. Although it is possible to combine the RESULTS, and DISCUSSION sections. In which case a short CONCLUSIONS should be added to the text. Macrobuttons can be copied and pasted to elsewhere.
    5. For references, the number will be listed automatically. The authors can add or delete freely any reference without bothering to change the numbering of the references. If cut/copy and paste functions are used to sort out the alphabetical order of the references, the number of each reference will change automatically. If you are using any reference software to prepare your list of references, convert the plain text file first, you can then use the copy and paste function.
    6. Blue frames are included in the Tables, Photos and Figures template for the layout of figures/tables and their respective legends. You can insert one or more display items into one frame. Should you need more frames, click the frame and point the cursor to the shade border of the frame, use copy/paste function to have more. To save your time, you are advised to finish your text first, and then to layout the display item with frames. Aim the cursor at the border, press the mouse and move the frame to where you wish to place in the paper.
    7. If the display item (including image) is too big and you need to reduce its size, the frame will do it for you. Drag the corner of a blank frame to the required size, copy you over-sized display item and place onto the frame. You will see that your over-sized item is now fitted perfectly. To allow you write a legend, drag the bottom edge of the frame down to have more space (the size of the figure will not change). Note the edge of the frame is different from the edge of the display item. If you drag the edge of a display item, the shape of the display item will change.
    8. If you cannot delete the last page, leave it there

Submission of Manuscripts

Electronic submission is essential to the Editorial Office or the appropriate Regional Associate Editor, together with a completed copy of the Declaration and Copyright Transfer form (Microsoft Word document).

Executive Editor

Associate Editors

  • Dr Florent Engelmann, IRD, Montpelier, France
  • Prof. Glyn N Stacey, International Stem Cell Banking Initiative, Barley, UK & National Stem Cell Resource Centre/Institute of Stem Cells and Regeneration, Beijing, P. R. China
  • Dr Wendell Sun, Beijing, P. R. China

Reprints

A free PDF file will be sent to the author marked by an asterisk*. After the paper has been accepted, the page numbers will be set. A draft PDF will be sent to the author for final checking. Once all changes have been made, the DOI will be added, the paper will be published and the corresponding author will receive the final PDF. This can be shared with co-authors. But to avoid any infringement of copyright, the article should not be put onto a public website until the journal makes the article available as free content. Open Access articles are made freely available when published.