Instructions to Author
Journal of Forensic Investigation (JFI) provides biannual publication of articles in all areas related to forensic medicine. JFI receives manuscripts that meet the general criteria of significance and scientific excellence. Prior to publication, articles that are in press will be available in open access format at www.avensonline.org/medical/forensic-investigation/articles-in-press-4/
Submit manuscripts online at www.avensonline.org/submit-manuscript/
(OR)
Submit manuscripts as an e-mail attachment to the Editorial Office at editor.jfi@avensonline.org
A manuscript number will be e-mailed to the corresponding author within 72 hours.
Avens Publishers Policy Regarding the NIH Mandate
Avens Publishers will support authors by posting the published version of articles by NIH grant-holders to PubMed Central immediately after publication.
Submission of an Article
Submitted articles should have a summary/abstract, separate from the main text, of up to 300 words.This summary does not include references, numbers, abbreviations or measurements unless essential.The summary should provide a basic-level introduction to the field; a brief account of the background and principle of the work; a statement of the main conclusions; and 2-3 sentences that place the main findings into a general context. The text may contain a few short subheadings of not more than 40 characters each.
Formats for Avens Publishers contributions: Avens Publishers accepts the following:
– Research Articles
– Reviews Articles
– Abstracts
– Article Commentaries
– Book Reviews
– Rapid Communications
– Letters to the Editor
– Case Reports
– Meeting Reports
– Orations
– Product Reviews
– Hypotheses and Analyses.
Manuscript Preparation Guidelines
Manuscripts should be divided into the following sections:
All submissions should be accompanied by a 500 words or less cover letter briefly stating the significance of the research, agreement of authors for publication, number of figures and tables, supporting files, and supplementary information.
Also, include current telephone and fax numbers, as well as postal and E-mail address of corresponding author to maintain communication.
Manuscript title
The title should be limited to 25 words or less and should not contain abbreviations. The title should be a brief phrase describing the contents of the paper.
Author Information
Complete names and affiliation of all authors, including contact details of corresponding author (Telephone, Fax and E-mail address).
Abstract
The Abstract should be informative and completely self-explanatory, briefly present the topic, state the scope of the experiments, indicate significant data, and point out major findings and conclusions. The abstract should summarize the manuscript content in 300 words or less accommodating a description of the study background, methods, results and conclusion. Following the abstract, a list of keywords (3-10) and abbreviations should be included.
Introduction
The introduction should set the tone of the paper by providing a clear statement of the study, the relevant literature on the study subject, and the proposed approach or solution.
Materials and Methods
This section should provide a complete overview of the design of the study. Detailed descriptions of materials or participants, comparisons, interventions and types of analysis should be mentioned. However, only new procedures should be described in detail; previously published procedures should be cited, and important modifications of published procedures should be mentioned briefly. Capitalize trade names and include the manufacturer’s name and address.
Results
The Results section should provide complete details of the experiment that are required to support the conclusion of the study. The results should be written in the past tense when describing findings in the authors’ experiments. Previously published findings should be written in the present tense. Results and Discussion may be combined or in a separate section.
Acknowledgements
This section includes acknowledgment of people, grant details, funds, etc.
Note: If an author fails to submit his/her work as per the above instructions, they are pleased to maintain clear titles namely headings, subheading.
References
Only published or accepted manuscripts should be included in the reference list. Meetings abstracts, conference talks, or papers that have been submitted but not yet accepted should not be cited.
Avens uses the numbered citation (citation-sequence) method. References are listed and numbered in the order that they appear in the text. In the text, citations should be indicated by the reference number in brackets. Multiple citations within a single set of brackets should be separated by commas. Where there are three or more sequential citations, they should be given as a range. Example: “… now enable biologists to simultaneously monitor the expression of thousands of genes in a single experiment [1,5-7,28].”
Authors are requested to provide at least one online link for each reference (preferably PubMed) as all references will be linked electronically as much as possible to the papers they cite. Please use the following style for the reference list:
Examples:
Published Papers
1. Laemmli UK (1970) Cleavage of structural proteins during the assembly of the head of bacteriophage T4. Nature 227: 680-685.
2. Brusic V, Rudy G, Honeyman G, Hammer J, Harrison L (1998) Prediction of MHC class II-binding peptides using an evolutionary algorithm and artificial neural network. Bioinformatics 14: 121-130.
3. Doroshenko V, Airich L, Vitushkina M, Kolokolova A, Livshits V, et al. (2007) YddG from Escherichia coli promotes export of aromatic amino acids. FEMS Microbiol Lett 275: 312-318.
Note: Please list the first five authors and then add “et al.” if there are additional authors.
Books
1. Baggot JD (1999) Principles of drug disposition in domestic animals: The basis of Veterinary Clinical Pharmacology. (1stedn), W.B. Saunders company, Philadelphia, London, Toranto.
2. Zhang Z (2006) Bioinformatics tools for differential analysis of proteomic expression profiling data from clinical samples. Taylor & Francis CRC Press.
Conference
Hofmann T (1999) The Cluster-Abstraction Model: unsupervised learning of topic hierarchies from text data. Proceedings of the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence.
Tables
These should be used at a minimum and designed as simple as possible. We strongly encourage authors to submit tables as .doc format. Tables should be self-explanatory without reference to the text. Note: If the submission is in PDF format, the author is requested to retain the same in .doc format in order to aid in completion of process successfully.
Figures
The preferred file formats for photographic images are PNG, TIFF and JPEG.
Use Arabic numerals to designate figures and upper case letters for their parts (Figure 1). Begin each legend with a title and include sufficient description so that the figure is understandable without reading the text of the manuscript. Information given in legends should not be repeated in the text.
Equations
Equations should be encoded in MathML format.
Supplementary Information
Discrete items of the Supplementary Information (for example, figures, tables) referred to an appropriate point in the main text of the paper.
Summary diagram/figure included as part of the Supplementary Information (optional).
All Supplementary Information should be supplied as a single PDF file, wherever applicable. File size within the permitted limits for Supplementary Information.
Galley Proofs
Electronic proofs will be sent as an e-mail attachment to the corresponding author as a PDF file. Page proofs are considered to be the final version of the manuscript. With the exception of typographical or minor clerical errors, no changes will be made in the manuscript at the proof stage.