Technical Instructions to Publish a Paper

Every journal homepage contains a 'Guidelines for Authors' section with detailed requirements to be followed when preparing your manuscript. Follow the general technical instructions for preparation of manuscripts and figures.

Instructions

Software

The preferred word-processing program is MS-Word. Other commonly used text programs are also accepted.

Revisions

Please mark revisions in your manuscript in response to reviewer's or editor's comments clearly. When submitting the revised version, please also enclose a point-to-point reply to the reviewers' comments (page, line, paragraph, etc.) explaining how you have dealt with the comments.

Copy Editing

All manuscripts accepted for publication by Karger Publishers are subject to copy editing. The publisher reserves the right to edit the manuscript and decide on the layout. Changes introduced by the copy editor and / or questions will be marked in the manuscript so please be sure to check the proofs against the manuscript. The copy edited manuscript will be available with the proofs.

Text Formatting

In addition to the individual journal's 'Guidelines for Authors', the following basic rules should be observed:

• Do not use any special page layout.
• Submit your text, tables, and illustrations as separate files.
• Your text should be entered continuously flush left. Do not use hard returns ('enter') within a paragraph. Use a hard return only to mark the end of a paragraph.
• Do not justify text.
• Do not use header and footer functions.
• Do not split words at the end of a line.
• Do not indent text anywhere in your manuscript or in the references.
• Use the automatic line numbering and page numbering functions.
• Headings should be aligned flush left. Do not center them, space them or write them in uppercase letters.
• Headings of the same ranking should appear uniformly throughout the text.
• Use italics as well as sub- and superscript letters/numbers where appropriate. (Do not use superscript numbers for references.)
• Use uppercase letters only for abbreviations. Do not space individual words for emphasis.
• Make a distinction between hyphens and dashes as follows:
    hyphen: e.g. high-resolution screen
    dash: e.g. 2011–2013, the incident – as responses showed – was perceived...
    minus sign: e.g. at a temperature of -75°C
• Use your word-processing program to insert Greek letters, mathematical symbols, etc.

Tables

• Must be prepared in WORD
• PDF or EXCEL files are not accepted
• Must be prepared as separate files; do not integrate tables in the main text
• Components: heading, head and body and, if necessary, footnotes; use a line to separate these parts see examples:
  Example 1 (DOC, 15KB)
  Example 2 (DOC, 23KB)
  Example 3 (DOC, 14KB)
• Do not use spaces; use the tabulator

Illustrations

• Submit original data, especially for line art, if possible.
• Please submit your images in one of the following formats:
• pixel file: psd, tif, jpg, png, bmp, pdf
• vector file: eps, ai, ppt, pdf
• Must be prepared as separate files; do not integrate figures in the manuscript (WORD file).
• Do not use WORD files for halftone images.
• Maximum file size: 25 MB.
• Authors wishing to provide LaTEX files are to contact the Editorial Office prior to submission.

The illustrations in the published work will correspond to the quality of the figures provided.

Depiction of Humans in Images

• The inclusion of an image of a person must comply with our Ethics guidelines as described in the Editorial and Journal policies, please see the journal guidelines for more information.
• It is the author’s responsibility to obtain written informed consent to publish the image from the individual(s) or their guardian/next of kin. In the manuscript, authors must include a statement detailing that consent for publication was obtained and from whom. This should be included after the main body of the text, but before the reference list.

Reproduction of Third-Party Images/Materials

• Karger recommends the use of original images and materials whenever possible. It is the responsibility of the authors to ensure that third-party material reproduced in their manuscript is compliant with any applicable copyright license. The copyright and usage information needs to be checked carefully to avoid copyright infringement. The author(s) is and will remain personally liable for any copyright infringements
• It is the authors’ responsibility to obtain permission from the copyright holder to reuse the material(s), including the payment of any associated licensing fee.
• Most publishers offer a quick and easy way to clear permissions for their content via the built-in website application RightsLink or via CCC’s Pay-Per-Use Permissions on Marketplace. Another widely used licensing tool is PLSClear. Please check the publishers’ websites for the available options and user instructions.

Line Art

• Definition: Black and white graphic with no shading.
• Do not use faint lines and/or lettering and check that all lines and lettering within the figures are legible at final size.
• Vector graphics containing fonts must have the fonts as editable text.
• All lines should be at least 0.15 mm (0.4 pt) wide.

Halftone Images

• If any magnification is used in the photographs, indicate this by using scale bars within the figures themselves.
• The resolution of halftones should be as high as possible and in proportion to the size of the figure (usually a minimum resolution of 300 dpi after scaling is required).

Combination Halftones/Line Arts

• The resolution of combined illustrations should be as high as possible and in proportion to the size of the figure (usually a minimum resolution of 600 dpi after scaling is required).
• Combined illustrations with fonts must have the fonts as editable text.

Flowcharts, Forest Plots, and Combined Tables/Illustrations

• Must be prepared as editable text.
• Preferred formats: ai, WORD, ppt, pdf (no EXCEL).

Color Illustrations

• Color illustrations should be submitted as RGB.

Figure Lettering

• Use Arial or Segoe UI (sans serif fonts) if possible.
• Use consistent sizing of lettering throughout the image (7-11 pt).
• Variance of type size within an illustration should be minimal, e.g., do not use 7-pt type on an axis and 11-pt type for the axis label.
• Avoid effects such as shading, outline letters, etc.
• Do not include titles or captions within your illustrations.

Figure Numbering

• Figure parts should be denoted by bold lowercase letters (a, b, c, etc.).

Figure Size

• The figures should be between 57 and 180 mm wide and not higher than 223 mm at final size (after scaling).

Multimedia Files

Multimedia files should be in MPEG, AVI or QuickTime formats. Files should not exceed 10 MB in size.

CrossRef/DOI

As a member of CrossRef, Karger utilizes Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) in bibliographic data to facilitate unique and persistent identification of research material. Journal article citations contain reference links to source material located on the World Wide Web, when available.

Errors in Medline

We take great care to send Medline/PubMed appropriately encoded data and double-check the spelling of names, particularly with regard to accents and signs not covered by HTML. Despite these efforts, conversion errors can occur.
If the mistake is only in Medline, please go to the Reporting Errors Section of PubMed FAQs for instructions.
If the mistake also shows up on the Karger site and/or in the printed journal, contact us. Please state journal name, volume, issue and page numbers as well as the DOI number if the article has not yet been printed, as well as article title and the nature of the error.

NIH-Funded Research

The U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) mandate under the NIH Public Access Policy that final, peer-reviewed manuscripts appear in the PMC digital database within 12 months of the publication date. As a service to our authors, Karger will submit your manuscript on your behalf to PMC (formerly PubMed Central) upon publication.
For those selecting our premium Author's Choice^TM service, the usual 12-month embargo will be overridden, accelerating the accessibility of your work.
More details are available on the NIH's Public Access Policy page.

Queries on Submitted Papers

If you have a question about a paper you have submitted to one of our journals, please contact us via the journal's homepage. For general matters contact us.

Reference Linking

All references in Karger journal articles (html fulltext) are linked to external resources such as

• PubMed/Medline (NLM)
• CrossRef (DOI)
• Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS)
• Cambridge Scientific Abstracts (CSA)
• ISI Web of Science

Reference Management

Use of EndNote is recommended for easy management and formatting of citations and reference lists.

Self-Archiving

Karger permits authors to archive their accepted manuscripts on their personal or institution's servers, provided the following conditions are met: articles may not be used for commercial purposes, must acknowledge the publisher's copyright and must be linked to the publisher's version at the Karger website. Authors selecting Karger's Author's Choice^TM service are also permitted to archive the final, published version of their articles, which includes copyediting and design improvements as well as citation links.

Contact Us

If you have any questions, just get in touch with us:

+41 61 306 11 11

Editorial Office