ONLINE SUBMISSION AND PEER REVIEW SYSTEM

We are pleased to announce a new electronic submission and peer review system has been implemented for European Journal of Radiology. This is a web-based system with full online submission, review and status update capabilities. This is part of our on-going efforts to improve the efficiency of our editorial procedures, and the quality and timeliness of publication. The system can be accessed at: http://ees.elsevier.com/ejr/

Prior to submitting your paper, please follow the instructions given below. Please note that you must have an e-mail address to use the system.

Please read the "Hints" for information on how to register, and review the "Tutorial for Authors". If you need any further help, please contact our Author Support Department authorsupport@elsevier.com

EDITORIAL POLICY AND TYPES OF CONTRIBUTION

European Journal of Radiology is an international journal which acts as a medium for the exchange of information on the use of radiological and allied imaging and interventional techniques. This also includes information on socio-economics and departmental management. By means of a thematic approach and review and tutorial articles, EJR aims to be a forum for all those who are directly or indirectly involved with actual developments and trends in the various areas of radiology and medical imaging.

Articles in this journal are generally commissioned along specific thematic issues. The issues will be complemented with non-commissioned high quality original research articles which respond to actual developments in the field. Author should note that all manuscripts are subject to peer review, and that an invitation to write an article does not automatically guarantee publication. Non-commissioned articles include:
• Original Research Articles (maximum 20 double spaced text pages)
• Short Communications (maximum 6 double spaced text pages)
• Technical Notes (maximum 5 double spaced text pages)
• Please note that the European Journal of Radiology no longer publishes case reports

PREPARATION OF THE MANUSCRIPT FOR ONLINE
SUBMISSION - GENERAL

We accept text files in most standard word-processing formats but Microsoft Word, Word Perfect and LaTeX are preferred. Graphics should be high-resolution and the preferred formats are TIFF, EPS or PDF.

Please follow the instructions below for guidance on the style of the journal. Most formatting codes are removed or replaced when your article is prepared for publication so there is no need for you to use excessive layout styling. However, please do not use options such as automatic word breaking, justified layout, double columns or automatic paragraph numbering. Do use bold face, italic, subscripts, superscripts, etc., as appropriate. Please ensure that your manuscript is paginated, as this will help both editor and reviewers to process it promptly. An author responsible for corresponding with the Editor and Elsevier will need to be assigned.

Submission of an Article
Submission of an article assumes that:
• The work has not been published previously, except in the form of an abstract, as part of a published lecture or academic thesis
• That, if accepted, it will not be published elsewhere in the same form, in English or in any other language without the written consent of the copyright holder, Elsevier
• All listed authors concur with the submission and have approved the final manuscript
• Articles are written in good English. Authors whose native language is not English are strongly advised to have their manuscript checked by an English-speaking colleague who understands the material

Copyright Information
Authors submitting a manuscript do so on the understanding that if it is accepted for publication, copyright of the paper shall be assigned to Elsevier Ltd (for more information on copyright see http://www.elsevier.com/authors. This transfer will ensure the widest possible dissemination of information. The corresponding author will be asked to complete the copyright form on behalf of all the authors (where applicable). If excerpts from other copyrighted works are included, the author(s) must obtain written permission from the copyright owner and credit the sources(s) in the article. Elsevier has pre-printed forms for use by authors in these cases: contact Elsevier Ltd, Global Rights Department, PO Box 800, Oxford, OX5 1DX; telephone (+44) 1865 843830; fax (+44) 1865 853333; email permissions@elsevier.com

Ethical Policy
Authors should indicate whether the procedures carried out on humans followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the World Medical Association (Declaration of Helsinki) http://www.wma.net/e/policy/b3.htm. In addition, authors should ensure their work complies with local ethical committee standards.

Patient Consent
Studies on patients or volunteers require ethics committee approval and informed consent which should be documented in your paper.

Patients have a right to privacy. Therefore identifying information, including patients¿ images, names, initials, or hospital numbers, should not be included in videos, recordings, written descriptions, photographs, and pedigrees unless the information is essential for scientific purposes and you have obtained written informed consent for publication in print and electronic form from the patient (or parent, guardian or next of kin where applicable). If such consent is made subject to any conditions, Elsevier must be made aware of all such conditions. Written consents must be provided to Elsevier on request.

Even where consent has been given, identifying details should be omitted if they are not essential. If identifying characteristics are altered to protect anonymity, such as in genetic pedigrees, authors should provide assurance that alterations do not distort scientific meaning and editors should so note.

If such consent has not been obtained, personal details of patients included in any part of the paper and in any supplementary materials (including all illustrations and videos) must be removed before submission

Covering letter
The online submission system requires a covering letter to be submitted with the manuscript. This should include the following information:
• Confirmation of the fact that the article is not under consideration for publication elsewhere
• Confirmation of whether any parts i.e. x-rays, of the article have been sent by mail
• Each author should have participated sufficiently in any submission to take public responsibility for its content. Please provide full contact details for each author.
• Publication is approved by all authors and tacitly or explicitly by the responsible authorities where the work was carried out
• That the author(s) or author(s) institutions have no conflicts of interest. This includes financial or personal relationships that inappropriately influence (bias) his or her actions (such relationships are also known as dual commitments, competing interests, or competing loyalties) within 3 years of the work beginning submitted. If there are no conflicts of interest, authors should state that there are none.

Author Form
The corresponding author must submit a completed Author Form with their submission. The form must be signed by the corresponding author and uploaded to EES with the manuscript.

Subject Area
In order to find the most appropriate reviewers for your article, we ask you to choose the subject area(s) which best fit your work from this predetermined list:
3D-Imaging
Abdominal Radiology
Angio
Chest-Radiology
Cardiovascular Radiology
Contrast-media
CT
Digital Radiology
Head-Neck-Radiology
Interventional (therapeutic) radiology
Mamma-Imaging
Molecular Imaging
MRI
Neuroradiology
Optical imaging, new modalities
Other
PACS, IT in Radiology
PET, PET-CT
Radiation
Skeletal Radiology
Training, Education, Research, Specialisation
Ultrasound
Urogential Radioloy


PREPARATION OF THE MANUSCRIPT - SPECIFIC

Sections of the Article
Please ensure your article is in the following order: Title, Authors, Affiliations, Abstract, Keywords, Main text, Acknowledgements, Appendix, References, Figure legends (do not import figure files into the text file) and Tables.

First Title Page
Please create a title page for your article. The title should be clear, informative and not too long. The page should bear names, full postal addresses, telephone and fax and email addresses of all author(s). The contact details of the corresponding author should be highlighted.

Second Title Page
The second page should only bear the title (without information about the authors) for blind peer review.

Abstract
The abstract should concisely describe the content of the article. It should be approximately 200-250 words. Abbreviations and references should be avoided in the abstract. An abstract is often presented separately from the article, so it must be able to stand alone.

Keywords
Between 3 and 6 words should be listed at the end of the abstract

Article Body
The main body of the article should be ordered under the following headings: Introduction (or Objective); Materials and Methods (or Patients); Results; Discussion; and Conclusions.

Illustrations
A detailed guide on electronic artwork is available at the following website http://www.elsevier.com/authors. Authors can submit artwork, such as x-rays, by post even if they submit the rest of their article using the online submission system. If so, they should draw the Editor's attention to this in the covering letter (see below for more details). The best quality figures will be considered for use on the cover of the printed issue. Artwork must be designed to fit either a single column (84mm wide) or the full text width of the page (175mm). Similar images should be consistent in size. Images should be tightly cropped. Lettering used in the artwork must be consistent in size (7-10pt) and font (use Arial, Courier, Helvetica, Times or Symbol). Figures may be reduced in size for publication. Mark the appropriate position of a figure in the article. Number illustrations consecutively in the order in which they are referred to in the text, and provide a caption for each figure. Please note: Because of technical complications which can arise by converting colour figures to greyscale, please submit both black and white prints corresponding to all colour illustrations. Colour artwork will be published online.

Electronic Submission of Artwork
• Files must be in the correct format: preferably TIFF, EPS or MS Office.
• Images should be captured at the following minimum resolutions: halftones and colour (all colour must be RGB) 300 dpi; combination halftones 500 dpi; line art 1000-1200 dpi.
• Annotations to the figure, such as arrows and labels should be embedded in the electronic file.
• File names should be self-explanatory with file extension included, e.g. use filename "fig1.tif" for Figure 1 in TIFF format.
• All illustrations to be provided as separate files.

Tables
Number tables consecutively in Arabic in accordance with their appearance in the text. If no grid is being used, use tabs to align columns instead of spaces. Each table should have a brief and self-explanatory title. Standard abbreviations of units of measurements should be added between parentheses. Place footnotes to tables below the table body and indicate them with superscript lowercase letters. Be sparing with the use of tables and ensure that the data presented in tables does not duplicate results described elsewhere in the article.

Equipment and Drugs
When quoting specific equipment or drugs, authors must state in parentheses the name and address of the manufacturer. Generic names should be used wherever possible.

Units and Abbreviations
Measurements of length, height, weight and volume should be given in metric units (metre, kilogram, litre) or their decimal multiples in terms of the International System of Units http://www.bipm.fr/en/si/. Temperatures should be given in degrees Celsius and blood pressure in mmHg.
Define abbreviations that are not standard in the field at their first occurrence in the article, in the abstract but also in the main text after it. Ensure consistency of abbreviations throughout the text.

Preparation of Supplementary Data
Elsevier accepts supplementary material to support and enhance your scientific research. Supplementary files offer the Author additional possibilities to publish supporting applications, movies, animation sequences, high-resolution images, background datasets, sound clips and more. Supplementary files supplied will be published online alongside the electronic version of your article in Elsevier Web products, including ScienceDirect: http://www.sciencedirect.com. In order to ensure that your submitted material is directly usable, please ensure that data is provided in one of our recommended file formats. Authors should submit the material in electronic format together with the article and supply a concise and descriptive caption for each file. For more detailed instructions please visit our artwork instruction pages at http://www.elsevier.com/authors.

References
Reference lists must be limited to a maximum of 15-20 relevant citations per article. Responsibility for the accuracy of bibliographic citations lies entirely with the authors. They should be numbered consecutively as they appear in the text. All references in the reference list must be cited in the text (and vice versa). Any references cited in the abstract must be given in full. Indicate references by superscript numbers in the text. The actual authors can be referred to, but the reference number(s) must always be given. Abbreviations for titles of medical journals should conform to those used in the latest edition of Index Medicus. Unpublished results and personal communications should not be included in the reference list, but should be cited in the text only (e.g. Smith et al., unpublished results). Citation of a reference as 'in press' implies that the item has been accepted for publication. Citing and listing web references: as a minimum, the full url should be given. Any further information if known (author names, dates, reference to a source publication, etc.) should also be given. Web references can be listed separately (e.g. after the reference list) under a different heading if desired, or can be included in the reference list.
In the reference list, number the references in the order in which they appear in the text, and provide surname and initial of all authors. For references with more than six authors insert 'et al.' after the third name. European references should be stressed. Style and punctuation are shown in the following examples:

Journal article:
[1] Greess H, Nomayr A, Tomandl B, et al. 2D and 3D visualisation of head and neck tumours from spiral-CT data. Eur J Radiol 2000;33(3):170-7.

Book:
[2] Enge I, Edgren J. Patient safety and adverse events in contrast media examinations. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1985.

Chapter in a book:
[3] Gutin PH. Treatment of radiation necrosis of the brain. In: Gutin PH, Leibel SA, Sheline GE, editors. Radiation injury to the nervous system. New York: Raven Press, 1991:271-81

Changes to authorship
This policy concerns the addition, deletion, or rearrangement of author names in the authorship of accepted manuscripts:

Before the accepted manuscript is published in an online issue: Requests to add or remove an author, or to rearrange the author names, must be sent to the Journal Manager from the corresponding author of the accepted manuscript and must include: (a) the reason the name should be added or removed, or the author names rearranged and (b) written confirmation (e-mail, fax, letter) from all authors that they agree with the addition, removal or rearrangement. In the case of addition or removal of authors, this includes confirmation from the author being added or removed. Requests that are not sent by the corresponding author will be forwarded by the Journal Manager to the corresponding author, who must follow the procedure as described above. Note that: (1) Journal Managers will inform the Journal Editors of any such requests and (2) publication of the accepted manuscript in an online issue is suspended until authorship has been agreed.

After the accepted manuscript is published in an online issue: Any requests to add, delete, or rearrange author names in an article published in an online issue will follow the same policies as noted above and result in a corrigendum.

PROOFS

When the manuscript for your accepted article is received, it is considered to be in its final form. Proofs are not to be regarded as 'drafts'. Proofreading is solely your responsibility. One set of page proofs will be sent to the corresponding author to check for typesetting accuracy. Only typesetting and factual errors may be corrected, changes in, or additions to, the accepted (and subsequently edited) manuscript will not be allowed at this stage. Any queries should be answered in full. The Publisher reserves the right to charge authors for the cost of changes made to the text or the figures at proof stage, where such changes are extensive. Please return corrections within 24 hours of receipt. It is important to ensure that all corrections are sent back to us in one communication. Subsequent corrections will not be possible, so please ensure that the first sending is complete. Should there be no corrections, please confirm this. The Publisher reserves the right to proceed with publication if corrections are not communicated. For more information on proofreading go to http://www.elsevier.com/authors. Please note that once your paper has been proofed we publish the identical paper online as in print.

PEER REVIEW PROCESS

The manuscript is sent to two reviewers who are responsible for further evaluation and peer review. The corresponding author will be sent notification that the article has been received and will also be informed of the outcome of the peer review process. All papers are submitted for review without details of the name or source of the paper (as far as possible). Similarly, names of the reviewers are not submitted to authors. Confidentiality is respected throughout the review process. Should authors be requested by the Editor to revise the text, the revised version should be submitted in 4 weeks. After this period, the article will be regarded as a new submission.

AUTHOR SERVICES

The AuthorGateway is Elsevier's online tool for authors.
• Authors can track the status of their paper throughout the review process using http://www.ees.elsevier.com/ejr/
• Authors can track the status of their accepted paper during the production process online at http://authors.elsevier.com/TrackPaper.html using the reference supplied by the Publisher
• Publication in this journal is free of charge
• European Journal of Radiology has an Impact Factor of 1.888
• All articles are published on ScienceDirect within 3-4 weeks of receipt of the corrected proof at Elsevier. These are fully citable using the article's unique Digital Object Identifier


Offprints
The corresponding author, at no cost, will be provided with a PDF file of the article via e-mail. The PDF file is a watermarked version of the published article and includes a cover sheet with the journal cover image and a disclaimer outlining the terms and conditions of use.

Sponsored Articles:
European Journal of Radiology offers authors or their institutions the option to sponsor non-subscriber access to their articles on Elsevier's electronic publishing platforms. For more information please click here.