Front & Back Matter

The abstract should concisely present the hypothesis being tested, general methods, results and conclusions. Each abstract should contain no more than 200 words. Introduction: This section must contain a clear statement of the aims of the work or of the hypotheses being tested. A brief account of the relevant background, which supports the rationale of the study, should also be given. The length of the introduction should not exceed 750 words. Materials and Methods: This section should contain explicit, concise descriptions of all methods or procedures employed. Descriptions of methods must be sufficient to enable the reader to judge the accuracy, reproducibility and reliability of the experiment(s). Results: Contained in this section are the experimental data, with no discussion of their significance. Sufficient data should be presented to allow for judgement of the variability and reliability of the results. Discussion: Conclusions drawn from the results presented are included in this section. The Discussion must be as concise as possible and should not exceed 1,500 words. Footnotes: Avoid footnotes. When essential, they are to be numbered consecutively and typed at the foot of the appropriate page. Acknowledgements: Including, where relevant, credit to the sources of grant support, should be placed before the references. Tables and illustrations: Tables and illustrations (both numbered in Arabic numerals) should be prepared on separate sheets. Tables require a heading and figures a legend, also prepared on a separate sheet. For the reproduction of illustrations, only good drawings and original photographs can be accepted; negatives or photocopies cannot be used. Due to technical reasons, figures with a screen background should not be submitted. When possible, group several illustrations on one block for reproduction (max. size 180  223 mm) or provide crop marks. On the back of each illustration, indicate its number, the author’s name, and ‘top’ with a soft pencil. Electronically submitted b/w half-tone and color illustrations must have a final resolution of 300 dpi after scaling, line drawings one of 800–1,200 dpi. Color illustrations Online edition: Color illustrations are reproduced free of charge online; however, in the print version, the illustrations are reproduced in black and white, unless color is paid for. Please avoid referring to the colors in the text and figure legends. Print edition: Up to 6 color illustrations per page can be integrated within the text at CHF 800.– per page. References: In the text, identify references by Arabic numerals [in square brackets]. Material submitted for publication but not yet accepted should be noted as ‘unpublished data’ and not be included in the reference list. The list of references should include only those publications which are cited in the text. Do not alphabetize; number references in the order in which they are first mentioned in the text. The surnames of the authors followed by initials should be given. There should be no punctuation other than a comma to separate the authors. Preferably, please cite all authors. Abbreviate journal names according to the Index Medicus system. Also see International Committee of Medical Journal Editors: Uniform requirements for manuscripts submitted to biomedical journals (www.icmje.org). Examples (a) Papers published in periodicals: Sun J, Koto H, Chung KF: Interaction of ozone and allergen challenges on bronchial responsiveness and inflammation in sensitised guinea pigs. Int Arch Allergy Immunol 1997;112:191–195. (b) Papers published only with DOI numbers: Theoharides TC, Boucher W, Spear K: Serum interleukin-6 reflects disease severity and osteoporosis in mastocytosis patients. Int Arch Allergy Immunol DOI: 10.1159/000063858. (c) Monographs: Matthews DE, Farewell VT: Using and Understanding Medical Statistics, ed 3, revised. Basel, Karger, 1996. (d) Edited books: Parren PWHI, Burton DR: Antibodies against HIV-1 from phage display libraries: Mapping of an immune response and progress towards antiviral immunotherapy; in Capra JD (ed): Antibody Engineering. Chem Immunol. Basel, Kar ger, 1997, vol 65, pp 18–56. Reference Management Software: Use of EndNote is recommended for easy management and formatting of citations and reference lists. Digital Object Identifier (DOI) S. Karger Publishers supports DOIs as unique identifiers for articles. A DOI number will be printed on the title page of each article. DOIs can be useful in the future for identifying and citing articles published online without volume or issue information. More information can be found at www.doi.org. Supplementary Material Supplementary material is restricted to additional data that are not necessary for the scientific integrity and conclusions of the paper. Please note that all supplementary files will undergo editorial review and should be submitted together with the original manuscript. The Editors reserve the right to limit the scope and length of the supplementary material. Supplementary material must meet production quality standards for Web publication without the need for any modification or editing. In general, supplementary files should not exceed 10 MB in size. All figures and tables should have titles and legends and all files should be supplied separately and named clearly. Acceptable files and formats are: Word or PDF files, Excel spreadsheets (only if the data cannot be converted properly to a PDF file), and video files (.mov, .avi, .mpeg). Author’s ChoiceTM Karger’s Author’s Choice service broadens the reach of your article and gives all users worldwide free and full access for reading, downloading and printing at www.Karger.com. The option is available for a one-time fee of CHF 3000.–, which is a permissible cost in grant allocation. More information can be found at www.karger.com/authors_choice. NIH-Funded Research The U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) mandates under the NIH Public Access Policy that final, peer-reviewed manuscripts appear in its digital database within 12 months of the official publication date. As a service to authors, Karger submits the final version of your article on your behalf to PubMed Central. For those selecting our premium Author’s Choice service, we will send your article immediately upon publishing, accelerating the accessibility of your work without the usual embargo. More details on NIH’s Public Access Policy is available at http://publicaccess.nih.gov/policy.htm Self-Archiving Karger permits authors to archive their pre-prints (i.e. prerefereeing) or post-prints (i.e. final draft post-refereeing) on their personal or institution’s servers, provided the following conditions are met: Articles may not be used for commercial purposes, must be linked to the publisher’s version, and must acknowledge the publisher’s copyright. Authors selecting Karger’s Author’s Choice feature, however, are also permitted to archive the final, published version of their article, which includes copyediting and design improvements as well as citation links. Proofs Unless indicated otherwise, a PDF for correction is sent to the corresponding author and should be returned with the least possible delay. Alterations other than the correction of printer’s errors are charged to the author. Reprints Order forms and a price list are sent with the proofs. Orders submitted after the issue is printed are subject to considerably higher prices.