Post-registration Abstract Submission Instructions

GENERAL SUBMISSION INFORMATION:

• Upon receiving most abstracts, it is our intention to publish them on BioMed Central.   The instructions below are to insure they are formatted correctly for this process.
• Abstracts will need to be submitted electronically to AHD@shcc.org
• The following word processor file formats are acceptable:
• Microsoft Word (any version)
• WordPerfect (any version)
• Rich text format (RTF)
• Submitted abstracts should be a maximum of 400 words long, clearly and concisely written, and structured where appropriate.
• A sample abstract reflecting the necessary format, as stated in the following instructions is shown at the bottom of the page.
• In order to be considered for a Travel Grant, abstracts must be submitted by no later than May 10, 2006.  

TITLE:

• The title should be in bold, sentence case with no full stop at the end.

AUTHORS:

• Author names should be in regular font, as first name and surname with no full stops. Names should be separated by a comma. The presenting author's name should be underlined. Where authors are from a number of different institutions, the appropriate institution number from the affiliation list should be given as a superscript number immediately after each author's name, e.g.:

Michael Nesheim 1 , John Samis 2, John Walker 1, Timothy Fischer 3,5, Liliana Tejidorp 3, Greg Jones 3, Wim Houdijk 3, Alan Giles 3, Lev Becker 1, Marlys Koschinsky 1, Richard Wenstone 4, Colin Downey 4, Cheng Hock Toh 4

AFFILIATIONS:

• Affiliations should be in italics, and should include department, institute, town and country.

MAIN TEXT:

• Please use regular font
• Please use single line spacing
• Type the text unjustified, without hyphenating words at line breaks
• Use hard returns only to end headings and paragraphs, not to rearrange lines
• Greek and other special characters may be included. If you are unable to reproduce a particular special character, please type out the name of the symbol in full
• SI Units should be used throughout (litre and molar are permitted, however)
• Web links (URLs) should be provided in full, including both the title of the site and the URL, in the following format:
  Mouse Tumor Biology Database [http://tumor.informatics.jax.org/cancer_links.html]
• Abbreviations should be used as sparingly as possible. They should be defined when first used

STRUCTURED ABSTRACTS:

• In structured abstracts, paragraph headings should be typed in bold and immediately followed by a colon. Each heading should be in a separate paragraph

TABLES:

• Tables should be numbered (e.g. Table 1) and titled and should be included in the document where they are to appear.   The table title should be immediately preceded by "Table title:" - please note that this text is necessary for processing purposes and will not appear in the finished version, e.g.:

Table title: Table 1. CRP by indicators of social class in VERA

• Tables should be formatted using the "Table function" in a word processing program to ensure that columns of data are kept aligned when the file is sent electronically for review. This will not always be the case if columns are generated by simply using tabs to separate text. Columns and rows of data should be made visibly distinct by ensuring the borders of each cell display as black lines.
• Table footnotes should be underlined, and immediately preceded by "Table Footnote:" - as above, this text will not appear in the finished version, but is required for processing purposes.

FIGURES:

• Images should be supplied as 300 dpi minimum
• Figures and illustrations should be numbered (e.g. Figure 1) and must be supplied electronically in the body of the text. For processing purposes, the figure number should be immediately preceded by "Figure Title:" though this text will not appear in the finished version, e.g.:

Figure Title: Figure 1

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:

• Brief acknowledgements may be included and should be placed after Conclusions and before the References.

REFERENCES:

• All references should be cited consecutively in the text, using numbers in square brackets. Only papers that have been published, or are in press, or are available through public e-print/preprint servers should be included in the reference list. Submitted manuscripts, personal communications (which can be included only with permission), unpublished manuscripts and unpublished data should not be cited in the reference list, although they may be referred to in the text.
• Journal abbreviations should follow MEDLINE standards.

SAMPLE ABSTRACT:

International Workshop on the Skeletal Growth Plate

William Horton 1 , Rocky Tuan 2, Olena Jacenko 3

1 Research Center, Shriners Hospital for Children, Department of Molecular & Medical Genetics, Oregon Health & Science University, Portland, OR 97239, USA

2 Cartilage Biology & Orthopaedics Branch, National Institute of Arthritis, Musculoskeletal & Skin Diseases, NIH, Bethesda, Maryland 20892-8022

3 Department of Animal Biology, University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine, Philadelphia, PA 40118, USA

Email: wah@shcc.org

The International Workshop on the Skeletal Growth Plate will be held June 11-15, 2006 at the Skamania Lodge near Portland. The address for the workshop is: http://www.growthplate.org .   Please follow these guidelines to facilitate the planned electronic publication of your abstract on BioMed Central.   …

         ..….Please limit to 400 words…………………Thank you…..