Instructions vary according to manuscript type. Please click the links below for article type specific instructions:
General Guidelines for Manuscript Preparation
There are no restrictions on the length of manuscripts submitted as full-length research papers or on the number of figures or tables. However, papers should be written as clearly and concisely as possible and figures and tables should be kept to the minimum necessary to illustrate the hypothesis being tested and support the conclusions. Authors may be asked to reduce the length of the manuscript or the number of figures by the Reviewing Editor. Please note that there is a revised policy regarding Supporting Information from December 2013.
The usual format for Research Papers is:
Papers deviating from the usual format can be considered for publication if there are obvious and compelling reasons for the variation. Footnotes are not acceptable.
Title. The title should normally contain no more than 150 characters (including spaces). Include the species, tissue, organ or system if this is important in the context of the findings. Avoid abbreviations if possible. For abbreviations and symbols that are acceptable in the title see this list. Titles should be drafted carefully to indicate broadly what the paper is about to all Journal of Physiology readers, including those who are not specialists in the field. See 'Search Engine Optimization: For Authors' for suggestions on how to optimize your title for search engines.
Authors. The Editorial Board endorses the general principles set out in Guidelines on Good Publication Practice produced by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). The author submitting a manuscript must confirm that all persons designated as authors qualify for authorship, and all those who qualify for authorship are listed, and that all authors have approved the final version of the paper. Each author should take responsibility for a particular section of the study and have contributed to writing the paper (see Author contributions). Acquisition of funding or the collection of data does not alone justify authorship; these contributions to the study should be listed in the Acknowledgements. Additional information such as ‘X and Y have contributed equally to this work’ may be added as a footnote on the title page.
If authorship of a manuscript changes during the publication process, notification of the change, signed by all authors must be sent to the Publications Office.
The editorial process cannot proceed until this notification is received.
Additional information. The following information is also required during submission:
Authors should provide a bullet-point summary for a Key points section in their manuscript. This will be published ahead of the abstract. Potentially acceptable manuscripts without a Key points summary will be returned to authors and will be delayed. See Guidelines for writing a Key points summary.
This should be in one unnumbered paragraph that accurately reflects the contents of the paper and makes clear the physiological significance of the work, the problem addressed, the nature of the results, and the principal conclusions; authors are expected to conclude the summary by explaining the conceptual novelty and the broader physiological importance of their work. Results should be presented quantitatively where appropriate, together with the statistical significance, and the conclusions indicated. References may not be cited. Since the Abstract may be used by abstracting services, a limit of 250 words is imposed See 'Search Engine Optimization: For Authors' for suggestions on how to optimize your abstract for search engines.
Authors should not use abbreviations unless they are easily understood and help in reading the paper. Only abbreviations on our list of well-known abbreviations and symbols can be used without definition. All other abbreviations should be defined at their first mention and also in an alphabetical list immediately after the abstract, in the following format:
Abbreviations. ACE2, angiotensin-converting enzyme 2; AMG, α-methyl-glucopyranoside; Ang II, angiotensin II; Ang IV, angiotensin IV; Ang (1-7), angiotensin-(1-7); AT1, angiotensin type 1 receptor; eNOS, endothelial nitric oxide synthase; GAPDH, glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase; L-NMMA, NG-monomethyl-L-arginine; NF-κB, nuclear factor-κB; NOS, nitric oxide synthase; PI3K, phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase; RAS, renin–angiotensin system; ROS, reactive oxygen species; SGLT1, sodium-dependent glucose transporter 1; TNF-α, tumour necrosis factor-α.
The Introduction should make the background and the object of the research clear, indicate the justification for the work and be understandable to the non-specialist. Reference to the authors' previous work is desirable only if it has a direct bearing on the subject of the paper; an extensive historical review is not appropriate.
Please read our policies regarding Animal Experiments and Human Experiments.
A detailed explanation of The Journal’s principles and guidelines on animal experimentation, which includes a checklist for authors, is given in ‘Principles and standards for reporting animal experiments in The Journal of Physiology and Experimental Physiology' by David Grundy, The Journal of Physiology, 593: 2547–2549, doi: 10.1113/JP270818.
Methods should be described once only and should not appear in the legends to figures and tables. Details should be sufficient to allow the work to be repeated by others.
The Methods section should start with a paragraph headed 'Ethical Approval'. Animal studies must meet a minimum set of requirements. A checklist outlining these requirements and detailing the information that must be provided in the paper can be found here.Please note that ether is not an acceptable anaesthetic as it no longer complies with the principle of best practice.
Authors should demonstrate in their Methods section that their experiments comply with the policies and regulations set out in the editorial.
If experiments were conducted on humans, authors must provide confirmation that informed consent was obtained, preferably in writing, that the studies conformed to the standards set by the latest revision of the Declaration of Helsinki (or the version that was in place at the time of the experiments), and that the procedures were approved by a properly constituted ethics committee, which should be named.
Authors working on isolated tissues, including primary cell cultures, must state whether the donor animal was anaesthetised or killed, and give details of the relevant procedures. Where tissues are obtained from an abattoir or similar establishment the method of killing need not be specified unless scientifically important.
Ethical information must be included for each manuscript. It is not sufficient to refer to previous publications for details, unless the paper is one of a series published in the same issue.
Where appropriate, lists of solutions, chemicals and equipment, and an explanation of data handling procedures may be given as separate headed paragraphs. The maker's name should be given for all non-standard chemicals, apparatus and equipment. State sources for antibodies (maker's name, reference code and dilution used) and provide citation and/or evidence of specificity in the system under study. Materials known by a trade name, e.g. Perspex, have the initial letter as a capital. The Latin names as well as the common name of non-mammalian species should be given.
Please state access codes for data deposition (e.g. protein/DNA/RNA sequences, macromolecular structures) and where relevant, indicate where computer source codes can be obtained.
The final paragraph of the Methods section should provide full details of the statistical treatment of the data. Authors will find extensive guidance on study design, data analysis and presentation, along with links to more comprehensive information on our guidelines on study design, data presentation, and statistical analysis. This provides a more complete guide and should be consulted to ensure compliance. The salient points, summarised below, should be followed:
Presenting the data. Data may be better presented graphically than in tables. Where possible, graphs should show individual values, rather than solid bars indicating a mean value. If a plot of individual values obscures some of the data presented, a box and whisker plot can be used to show mean or median, and 95% confidence intervals or quartiles.
Describing the samples. To characterise a normally distributed sample, report the mean (SD), and the number of samples (n). Use an appropriate number of significant figures. If samples are not normally distributed, use median and quartile values, or transform the data to obtain a more normal distribution. We recommend that when describing the precision of estimation of a mean value, 95% confidence limits of the mean should be used, rather than the SEM.
Clearly indicate any inclusion or exclusion criteria. State whether the experimenter was ‘blinded’ to the experimental conditions, if applicable.
Comparing data. To express a difference between a control group and treated group, state the mean values, the estimated difference between the measurements, and the confidence limits of this difference. Since a common significance level for P is taken to be 0.05, the common confidence limits used are the 95% intervals.
Do not state that there is no difference between samples unless you are confident that the test has sufficient power to allow this conclusion. If necessary, indicate the power of the test, to distinguish absence of evidence from evidence of absence.
Statistical tests. Tests of significance should be specified on each occasion and in full, e.g. Student's paired t test. Use the exact P value, to the appropriate number of decimals, particularly when values are near a stated limit. For example, P = 0.051 and P = 0.049 have very similar implications.
The Journal of Physiology has collaborated with several other journals to publish a series of advisory editorials on statistical reporting.
Please note that The Journal of Physiology will ask authors at the revised manuscript stage to submit complete, original gel images if they are not included in the manuscript. This is to confirm that no inappropriate, unethical or misleading image manipulation has occurred. These should be uploaded as ‘Supporting information for review process only’.
The Discussion, which follows the Results section, should be separate from it. The first paragraph should briefly summarize the key results. Then the assumptions involved in making inferences from the experimental results should be reviewed and the relationship of the current results to previously published work explained and discussed. The Discussion should not merely recapitulate the results. Authors should provide a succinct conclusion to their work and are encouraged to express an opinion on the relevance of the results here or in the Authors’ Translational Perspective.
The paper should conclude with a list of the papers and books cited in the text. Authors should avoid an excessive number of references, normally about 50 should be adequate. The order of references is strictly alphabetical, regardless of chronology. The format for references to papers and books, and to chapters in books, is as follows:
Lipp P, Egger M & Niggli E (2002). Spatial characteristics of sarcoplasmic reticulum Ca2+ release events triggered by L-type Ca2+ current and Na+ current in guinea-pig cardiac myocytes. J Physiol 542, 383–393.
Adrian ED (1932). The Mechanism of Nervous Action. Humphrey Milford, London.
Buchan AMJ, Bryant MG, Polak JM, Gregor M, Ghatei MA & Bloom SR (1981). Development of regulatory peptides in the human fetal intestine. In Gut Hormones, 2nd edn, ed. Bloom SR & Polak JM, pp. 119–124. Churchill Livingstone, Edinburgh.
Attention to punctuation is required.
Use only established abbreviated journal titles. See PubMed journals database.
The Journal’s reference style can be downloaded using various citation/reference manager formats, including EndNote, Reference Manager, RefWorks and BibTeX.
DOIs for articles in press. Many journals now publish articles online ahead of print. This initial posting to the web qualifies as publication and the citation of such articles should include the DOI (digital object identifier) if the article's full publication details have not yet been assigned:
Lipp P, Egger M & Niggli E (2002). Spatial characteristics of sarcoplasmic reticulum Ca2+ release events triggered by L-type Ca2+ current and Na+ current in guinea-pig cardiac myocytes. J Physiol; DOI: 10.1113/jphysiol.2001.013382.
In the text, references should be made by giving the author and the year of publication in parentheses, e.g. (Lamb, 1986), except when the author's name is part of the sentence, e.g. 'Lamb (1986) showed that . . . '. Where several references are given together they are in chronological order, separated by semicolons.
When a paper written by two authors is cited, both names are given; for three or more authors only the first name is given, followed by 'et al.'. Unpublished material may be referred to sparingly in the text, by giving the authors' initials and names followed by 'unpublished observations' or 'personal communication'; such citations should not appear in the list of references. References cited as being 'in press' must have been accepted for publication, and the name of the journal or publisher included in the reference list.
All manuscripts must contain a statement regarding Competing interests and Funding. If you have no competing interests or have not receiving funding, statements to this effect must be included. This will be published under a section entitled Additional Information at the end of the paper.
Competing interests.
All manuscripts must contain a statement regarding Competing interests. If there are no competing interests, a statement to this effect must be included. All authors should disclose any conflict of interest in accordance with journal policy.
Author contributions.
This section must state the laboratory where the experiments were performed and list the contribution (in words) of each author (using their initials) to the following aspects of the study:
All authors must have contributed to 1 or 2 AND 3.
This section must also confirm that all authors:
Contributors who do not meet the above criteria for authorship should not be listed as authors, but have their contribution (e.g. acquisition of funding, general supervision of a research group, general administrative support, writing assistance, technical editing, language editing, or proofreading) listed in the Acknowledgements.
Additional information such as ‘X and Y have contributed equally to this work’ may be added as a footnote on the title page.
Funding.
Authors must indicate all sources of funding, including grant numbers. If authors have not received funding, this must be stated.
It is the responsibility of authors funded by RCUK to adhere to their policy regarding funding sources and underlying research material. The policy requires funding information to be included within the acknowledgement section of a paper. The policy also requires all research papers, if applicable, to include a statement on how any underlying research materials, such as data, samples or models, can be accessed. However, the policy does not require that the data must be made open. If there are considered to be good or compelling reasons to protect access to the data, for example commercial confidentiality or legitimate sensitivities around data derived from potentially identifiable human participants, these should be included in the statement.
Acknowledgements.
Acknowledgements should be the minimum consistent with courtesy. The wording of acknowledgements of scientific assistance or advice must have been seen and approved by the persons concerned. This section should not include details of funding.
Authors of potentially acceptable papers are encouraged to include a Translational Perspective paragraph in their revised manuscript if they feel that their paper could be placed in a wider context. Authors may be asked to submit this by the Editor handling their paper, but formal invitation is not necessary if the authors feel that the readership would benefit from the inclusion of this paragraph. This will be published at the end of the paper, after the Acknowledgements, and will consist of a paragraph of no more than 250 words, entitled Translational Perspective, describing the wider translational implications of the work. These could be for researchers in other disciplines or for clinical practice and should therefore be written clearly in plain English for a broad scientific audience.
Please use the following guidelines to prepare a Translational perspective of your paper:
Tables should be used sparingly. They should be referred to in the text by Arabic numerals, e.g. Table 3. Each table should have its own self-explanatory title. The same information should not be presented in both tabular and graphical forms. Tables will be processed as text and therefore should NOT be submitted as figures.
Please see below for information on figures, legends and colour reproduction.
As in any experimental study, results from the model should add new scientific insights. The model should be based on physiological data where the parameters can be directly linked to experimental data. The model should be described in such a way that the results can be reproduced, i.e. all parameters are listed and any computation codes made available. Where possible there should be a detailed sensitivity analysis of the conclusions reached against the parameters proposed within the bounds of the data used to constrain them. Papers that develop integrative physiological models which link functions together or observations across scales would be encouraged.
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Techniques for Physiology is a section in The Journal of Physiology for papers aimed at disseminating exciting new techniques for physiological research. The papers must provide a significant advance in technology or a radical new technique that allows investigators to ask deeper questions about physiology. Papers should be relevant to current subject themes in The Journal.
Papers should follow the format of a full-length research paper. Sufficient physiological data to show the relevance and utility of the technique, as well as new physiological insights that may be gained, must be included. Further information, such as videos, can be shown in 'Supporting information' in the online version.
The Editorial Board may solicit submissions, but unsolicited submissions are also welcomed.
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The Journal of Physiology commissions Topical Reviews, either as stand-alone reviews or as part of a themed Special Issue on a broad topic of current interest. Co-authors are encouraged, allowing an opportunity for involving senior postdocs, for example, to raise their profile under your aegis as senior author. All authors should have been involved in the writing of the paper and approve the final submission. The Journal will occasionally allow the submission of non-invited Topical Review articles. Authors must send an outline justification to the Publications Office for approval prior to submission.
Topical Reviews are expected to provide an accessible synthesis of current information in rapidly developing areas of physiology. Authors are encouraged to express their own opinion on a subject area. The reviews are intended to be succinct and direct, easy to read and attractively presented with explanatory diagrams and summary figures. We encourage authors to be controversial if they wish to be, as we believe science often moves fastest when ideas are challenged.
Full instructions can be found below.
Symposium Reviews are commissioned from speakers at Symposia sponsored or associated with The Journal of Physiology. A set of Symposium Reviews resulting from each symposium is published, along with related papers, in a Symposium Issue of The Journal. Co-authors are encouraged, allowing an opportunity for involving senior postdocs, for example, to raise their profile under your aegis as senior author.
A Symposium Review should elaborate around and beyond the presented topic of the talk given by the speaker at the symposium, providing a succinct, readable account of the proceedings and what is new and exciting in the field. Our intention is to extend the benefit of Symposia to the wider scientific community and to ensure, by publication in The Journal, that those who are unable to attend (especially more junior investigators) can be brought quickly up to date with what field leaders think. We encourage authors to be speculative if they wish – this is an opportunity to put forward arguments freely in order to stimulate debate and further scientific endeavour.
Full instructions can be found below.
Length. The length of the article can be flexible; we aim for between 2000 and up to 4000 words (or more, if the quality of the piece necessitates). The Review should follow journal style, an abstract of up to 250 words should be included with the Review.
Abstract Figure. The Abstract Figure is a piece of artwork designed to give readers an immediate understanding of the Review Article and should summarise the main conclusions. If possible, the image should be easily ‘readable’ from left to right or top to bottom. It should show the physiological relevance of the Review so readers can assess the importance and content of the article. Abstract Figures should not merely recapitulate other figures in the Review. Please try to keep the diagram as simple as possible and without superfluous information that may distract from the main conclusion of the Review. Abstract Figures must be provided by authors no later than the revised manuscript stage and should be uploaded as a separate file during online submission labelled as File Type 'Abstract Figure'. Please ensure that you include a figure legend in the main article file. All Abstract Figures will be sent to a professional illustrator for redrawing so you do not need to make the figure publication quality upon submission. You will be asked to approve the redrawn figure before it is published.
Author profile. Authors are encouraged to submit a short biography (no more than 100 words for one author or 150 words in total for two authors) and a portrait photograph of the two leading authors on the paper. These should be uploaded, clearly labelled, with the manuscript submission. Any standard image format for the photograph is acceptable, but the resolution should be at least 300 dpi and preferably more.
Style. The following are the points that you may find helpful, and which we are asking our review authors to take into account, when writing their article:
Below are examples of good Reviews (well cited and good examples of a reasonable style). Note that we now ask for an Abstract Figure to be included.
Topical Review: G protein-coupled receptor signalling in the cardiac nuclear membrane: evidence and possible roles in physiological and pathophysiological function.
Artavazd Tadevosyan, George Vaniotis, Bruce G. Allen, Terence E. Hebert and Stanley Nattel
J Physiol 590.6 (2012) pp 1313–1330 1313
Symposium Review: Going native: voltage-gated potassium channels controlling neuronal excitability.
Jamie Johnston, Ian D. Forsythe and Conny Kopp-Scheinpflug
J Physiol 588.17 (2010) pp 3187–3200 3187
Topical Review: Regulation of erythropoietin production.
Wolfgang Jelkmann
J Physiol 589.6 (2011) pp 1251–1258 1251
Symposium Review: Ischaemic stroke: a thrombo-inflammatory disease?
Bernhard Nieswandt, Christoph Kleinschnitz and Guido Stoll
J Physiol 589.17 (2011) pp 4115–4123 4115
Upon submission, your manuscript would be assessed by a Reviewing Editor and also by one or two expert referees, who take into account that the review is intended to provide scope for authors to express their own opinion on their area. The reviewers will be asked in particular to ensure that the review article is accessible to researchers in related areas, and they may offer suggestions for further improvement.
Invited articles should be distinct, and not overlap significantly with any other article which the authors may have written for another journal. They should also be highly topical and reach the standard expected by The Journal of Physiology if they are to be accepted. Authors are requested to include with their submission any other review article which they may have under consideration or In Press at the time.
Reproducing material that has been previously published. Articles containing material that has been previously published cannot be published online or in print if permission documents are not received. (See Permissions and use of previously published material)
Unpublished results. Unpublished results should not be included in a review article. Authors who have presented new data at a symposium may refer sparingly to unpublished observations without presenting the data. Their article should focus on describing recent developments in the field.
Illustrations and colour figures. Informative diagrams and figures are strongly encouraged. Reviews without figures are unlikely to be accepted. The use of colour figures where these will enhance the scientific quality of the review is also encouraged. Authors will not be asked to contribute towards the cost of colour reproduction in print.
References. References are limited to 50, with exceptions in special cases. Refer to the References section for our style requirements.
Submission. When a review is part of a series allocated to a Special or Symposium Issue, authors will be given a deadline for submission. It is important to note that deadlines are fixed, and articles submitted after the deadline will probably not appear in the designated issue. They may, however, be included in a subsequent, regular issue of The Journal of Physiology as stand-alone reviews. If the Review is based on a talk or lecture, the title, date and the event at which the talk was presented must be stated during submission. This will appear as a footnote to the published article. Manuscripts should be submitted online as per the instructions provided with the invitation.
The Review process. Each article will be reviewed by a member of the Editorial Board and one or two expert referees. The reviewers will be asked to comment critically on the content and on any areas or statements in the manuscript which they consider to be misleading or inaccurate. They may also suggest improvements to the writing style which they feel will maximize the impact of the published article. The Editorial Board does not guarantee acceptance of any manuscript.
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Perspectives articles are short commentaries commissioned to highlight papers in an issue of The Journal of Physiology that report technical or theoretical advances, or interdisciplinary approaches to questions in physiology, or illustrate new physiological principles of mechanisms. A Perspectives article may focus on one or more articles in an issue of The Journal and should present the wider context of the paper(s) in a style that makes the subject accessible to a broad readership. The authors of the highlighted articles will be asked to comment on the factual accuracy of the articles.
Perspectives articles will appear in the same issue of The Journal as the focus paper(s).
Translational Perspectives are commentaries on selected articles from The Journal of Physiology which report important advances in our knowledge of physiology that can provide insights for researchers working in other areas on the boundaries of physiology and point to applications in clinical practice. Our aim is to engage research scientists in related areas and clinical practitioners with advances in our knowledge of physiological mechanisms and to indicate how the results could inform research in other fields or contribute to new or improved therapies. The articles should be written in a style that makes the subject accessible to a broad readership.
Translational Perspectives articles will appear in the same issue of The Journal as the focus paper.
Length. The article will normally occupy no more than one side of one page of The Journal. Between 600 and 900 words (maximum) is recommended. A small figure may be included, provided the article (including a figure) does not exceed the stip