Instructions for authors

Scope

Gut Microbiome accepts research on the following subjects:

• Collections and descriptions of gut human microbiomes, as well as their genomes and metabolomes, in healthy and diseased human populations;

• How the gut microbiome is seeded and changes through the various life stages;

• External factors that interact with and influence the gut microbiota, including nutrition, prebiotics, probiotics, and pharmaceuticals including antibiotics;

• Mechanisms of disruption and implications for autoimmune disorders and chronic diseases like rheumatoid arthritis, inflammatory bowel disease, irritable bowel syndrome, diabetes and metabolic syndrome;

• The gut-brain axis, with emphasis on the role of the gut microbiome, e.g. how gut microbes produce a range of neurotransmitters, which may vary under different conditions and can affect mood, appetite, and cognitive function; whether the gastrointestinal microbiome shifts in response to severe stress, differences in microbial composition in depressed vs. non-depressed subjects.

• Influence of the gut microbiome composition on other physiological systems;

• Interactions between the gut microbiome and internal organs in diseased states, including cancer;

• Lessons for the pharmaceutical and nutrition industries. Studies on animals will be welcomed when relevant to understanding the human microbiome and its interactions. Datasets and methodologies will also be considered on their own merit if they provide a significant benefit. Submission of research linking microbiology with systems biology and computational metagenomics will be encouraged. We do not envisage that this journal will publish clinical research, such as patient case reports or clinical trials as such. However, articles may involve human dietary interventions or use of data from patient cohorts of population studies provided they support new biological findings.

Submission of Manuscripts and Peer Review

All new submissions should be submitted online here.

Gut Microbiome uses a single-blind peer review process. Submitted manuscripts are reviewed by a member of the Editorial Board and at least two reviewers. Final decisions are approved by the Editor-in-Chief.

Format-neutral submission

GMB has now introduced format-neutral submission for original submissions only. This means that authors do not need to format their article to journal style at this stage; and figures and tables can be kept in their original locations in the text. We do ask however that your article is line-numbered and is in an easily readable layout, which will aid our Editors and Reviewers in reviewing your paper. Please note that revised manuscripts will be subject to full formatting requirements of the journal, which can be found below.

Types of articles

Guidelines for each article type, including word limits, are included below. All word counts given here are discounting references.

Article Type	Limits	Description
Original research article	The main text of an original research article, excluding the abstract, tables, figures and references, should be no longer than necessary (up to 5000 words for a long-form article). Articles should contain no more than five display items (figures or tables).	A research article is an original piece of research with strong, well-supported conclusions that mark a significant advance in understanding. The text should be divided into the following sections: introduction, methods, results and discussion.
Registered Reports	The same as an original article	See Registered Reports information here.
Reviews (Reviews are commissioned but brief proposals will be welcomed.)	The length of the review article will depend on the scope of the subject area and its topicality, but generally articles should not exceed 8000 words for the main text, and 150 references.	Reviews provide a comprehensive assessment of a particular topic or research area. They may provide interdisciplinary syntheses and can provide conclusions and insights relevant to future research, methodology or societal implications. The journal accepts both narrative and systematic reviews. Review submissions do not need to be formally divided into sub categories but should contain the same information as required for an original research article (introduction, results and discussion) within the main body of the text.
Mini Reviews	The length of the review article will depend on the scope of the subject area and its topicality, but generally articles should not exceed 5000 words for the main text, and 50 references.	Mini reviews follow the same structure as reviews but should be more focused and succinct.
Perspectives	The length of the Perspective article will depend on the scope of the subject area and its topicality, but generally articles should not exceed 4,000 words for the main text and should be lightly referenced.	Perspectives will provide a personal view of aspects of the interdisciplinary understanding of the gut microbiome and in particular the translation of microbiome science.
Research Protocols / Methods Papers	Generally articles should be 3,000-4,000 words long	See more information here.
Commentaries on recently published papers	Commentaries are flexible in format but should generally be limited to 500 words, without figures.	Commentaries responding any of the article types above published by the journal are always welcome and readers are encouraged to submit these as soon as possible. Commentaries will be subject to review by the editor responsible for the publication of the original article.

ORCID IDs

Gut Microbiome requires that all corresponding authors identify themselves using ORCID when submitting a manuscript to the journal. Joining ORCID is fast, free and you do not need to have a current affiliation. ORCID provides a unique identifier for researchers and, through integration in key research workflows such as publication and grant applications, provides the following benefits:

Discoverability: ORCID increases the discoverability of your publications, by enabling smarter publisher systems and by helping readers to reliably find work that you’ve authored.
Convenience: As more organisations use ORCID, providing your ID or using it to register for services will automatically link activities to your ORCID profile, and will save you re-keying information multiple times.
Keeping track: Your ORCID profile is a neat place to record and display (if you choose) validated information about your research activities.

If you don’t already have an ID, you’ll need to create one if you decide to submit a manuscript to Gut Microbiome. You can register for one directly from your user account on ScholarOne or via https://orcid.org/register. If you already have an ID, please use this when submitting by linking it to your ScholarOne user account. Simply log in to your account using your normal username and password. Edit your account by clicking on your name at the top right of the screen and from the dropdown menu, select 'E-Mail / Name'. Follow the instructions at the top of the screen to update your account.

For more information read this.

Manuscript Preparation

Title page

The title page should include:

The title of the article, which should be short but informative and accurately reflect the content.
Authors’ names and contact details: please list a brief affiliation for each author including the town or city and country (assigned with superscript numbers) below the author names, and in addition, indicate the corresponding author with an asterisk and in this case provide an email address
Word count, including all text but excluding tables, figures and references.

Abstract

Abstracts (200 words max) should summarize the background, findings, and implications of the work.

Graphical abstracts

A Graphical Abstract is a single image that summarises the main findings of a paper, allowing readers to gain quickly an overview and understanding of your work. Well-designed and prepared graphical abstracts are an important way to publicise your research, attracting readers, and helping to disseminate your work to a wider audience. Ideally, the graphical abstract should be created independently of the figures already in the paper but it could include a (simplified version of) an existing figure. Graphical abstracts are displayed at article level, and on the article landing page online. Submission of a graphical abstract is not mandatory but we welcome authors to submit one alongside their paper.

The graphical abstract should be submitted separately from the main paper using the ‘Graphical Abstract’ file designation on ScholarOne at revised submission stage. Graphical abstracts should be clear and easy for the viewer to read, and should illustrate one main point only. Permission to reuse images should be sought by the authors before submitting a graphical abstract.

We recommend that only TIFF, EPS or PDF formats are used for electronic artwork. Other non-preferred but usable formats are JPG, PPT and GIF files and images created in Microsoft Word. For further information about how to prepare your figures, including sizing and resolution requirements, please see our artwork guide. The image will be scaled to fit the appropriate space on Cambridge Core, so please ensure that any font used is clear to read, and that any text is included as part of the image file (although text should ideally be kept to a minimum). There is also no need to include the title ‘Graphical Abstract’ in your image.

Social Media summary (final draft only)

Please include a summary of your article in 120 characters or less for use in social media promotion.

Image for thumbnail

Please suggest one of the images from your article or an alternative to be used in social media as well as an identifier of your paper on the volume page online

Text

For all types of articles, please make sure the manuscript is presented with figures incorporated in roughly the correct place if possible, with legends. Also please submit a document with numbered lines. All these requests are made to facilitate the reviewing process.

Figures and tables

For guidance on producing figures and tables, please visit the Cambridge Journals Artwork Guide.

References

As per GMB's new policy on format-neutral submission for original submissions, please note that the below applies to revised papers only.

References in text should be cited by the author(s) surname(s) and the year of publication (e.g. Smith, 2012). References with two authors should be cited with both surnames (e.g. Smith and Wright, 2013). References with three or more authors should be cited with the first author followed by et al. (in italics; e.g. Smith et al.).

‘Unpublished observations’ and ‘personal communications’ may not be used as references, although references to written, not oral, communications may be inserted (in parentheses) in the text. Include among the references articles accepted but not yet published, or published online only (please supply Digital Object Identifier [DOI] reference, if known); designate the journal and add ‘(in press)’. For in press citations, an acceptance letter from the publisher will be required. Information from manuscripts submitted but not yet accepted should be cited in the text as ‘unpublished observations’.

The references must be verified by the author(s) against the original documents.

The references section should be in alphabetical order by the first author's surname.

Please follow the APA citation style. Research articles should not exceed 75 references in the main text, and reviews should not exceed 150 references.

Footnotes

This journal does not accept footnotes.

Required Statements

The five sections below must be included. Please check you have included all of these statements at the end of the manuscript, before the References section.

1) Acknowledgements

You may acknowledge individuals or organisations that provided advice, support (non-financial). Formal financial support and funding should be listed in the Financial Support section (see below).

2) Author Contributions

In the process of submitting an article to GMB, the corresponding author is prompted to provide further details about contributions to the article using the CRediT taxonomy. People who have contributed to the article but do not meet the full criteria for authorship should be recognised in the acknowledgements section; their contribution can also be described in terms of the CRediT taxonomy.

3) Financial Support

Please provide details of the sources of financial support for all authors, including grant numbers. For example, "This work was supported by the National Science Foundation (grant number XXXXXXX)". Multiple grant numbers should be separated by a comma and space, and where research was funded by more than one agency the different agencies should be separated by a semi-colon, with 'and' before the final funder. Grants held by different authors should be identified as belonging to individual authors by the authors' initials. For example, "This work was supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (A.B., grant numbers XXXX, YYYY), (C.D., grant number ZZZZ); the Natural Environment Research Council (E.F., grant number FFFF); and the Australian Research Council (A.B., grant number GGGG), (E.F., grant number HHHH)".

Where no specific funding has been provided for research, please provide the following statement: "This research received no specific grant from any funding agency, commercial or not-for-profit sectors."

4) Conflicts of Interest declarations in manuscripts

• Authors should include a Conflicts of Interest declaration in their manuscript. If authors do not include this, their submission will not proceed to peer review.

• Conflicts of Interest are situations that could be perceived to exert an undue influence on an author’s presentation of their work. They may include, but are not limited to, financial, professional, contractual or personal relationships or situations.

• Conflicts of Interest do not necessarily mean that an author’s work has been compromised. Authors should declare any real or perceived Conflicts of Interest in order to be transparent about the context of their work.

• If the manuscript has multiple authors, the author submitting the manuscript must include Conflicts of Interest declarations relevant to all contributing authors.

• Example wording for a Conflicts of Interest declaration is as follows: “Conflicts of Interest: Author A is employed at company B. Author C owns shares in company D, is on the Board of company E and is a member of organisation F. Author G has received grants from company H.” If no Conflicts of Interest exist, the declaration should state “Conflicts of Interest: Author A and Author B declare none”.

5) Research Transparency and Reproducibility

Authors must follow the journal’s policy for supporting research transparency and reproducibility. Authors must make all data, materials, protocols and software available to readers without undue barriers to access.

A data availability statement should be included and provide URLs for any available datasets or code.

Publishing Ethics

Gut Microbiome considers all manuscripts on the strict condition that:

The manuscript is your own original work, and does not duplicate any other previously published work;
The manuscript has been submitted only to the journal - it is not under consideration, accepted for publication or in press elsewhere. Manuscripts may be deposited on pre-print servers;
All listed authors know of and agree to the manuscript being submitted to the journal; and
The manuscript contains nothing that is abusive, defamatory, fraudulent, illegal, libellous, or obscene.

The journal adheres to the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) guidelines on research and publications ethics.

Text taken directly or closely paraphrased from earlier published work that has not been acknowledged or referenced will be considered plagiarism. Submitted manuscripts in which such text is identified will be withdrawn from the editorial process.

Please visit here for information on our ethical guidelines.

Ethical Standards

All Cambridge journals adhere to a set of Ethical Standards, as laid out here.

Where research involves human and/or animal experimentation, the following statements should be included (as applicable): "The authors assert that all procedures contributing to this work comply with the ethical standards of the relevant national and institutional committees on human experimentation and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2008." and "The authors assert that all procedures contributing to this work comply with the ethical standards of the relevant national and institutional guides on the care and use of laboratory animals."

We take issues of copyright infringement, plagiarism, or other
breaches of best practice in publication very seriously. Text taken
directly or closely paraphrased from earlier published work that has not
been acknowledged or referenced will be considered plagiarism.
Submitted manuscripts in which such text is identified will be withdrawn
from the editorial process. If a concern is raised about possible
plagiarism in an article submitted to or published in the journal, this
will be investigated fully and dealt with in accordance with the COPE
guidelines. If needed the manuscript can be processed by iThenticate.

PREPRINT POLICY

A 'preprint' is an early version of an article prior to the version accepted for publication in a journal. We encourage authors to include details of preprint posting, including DOI or other persistent identifier, when submitting to GMB.

For full details, please see our preprint policy here.

Supplementary Material

Additional material (e.g. data sets, large tables) relevant to the article can be submitted with your manuscript for publication online, where they are made available via a link from the article. Supplementary material can take the form of a Word document, Excel file or image. The article should stand alone without these data. Supplementary Material must be cited in a relevant place in the text of the article.

Please note that (unlike figures included in the printed article) captions or legends should be included for all figures and tables in Supplementary Material. You should number figures or tables with the prefix ‘S’, e.g. Supplementary Figure S1, Supplementary Table S1. Colour images for online publication as Supplementary Material must be saved in RGB format (not CMYK).

Supplementary Material is not checked, copyedited or typeset after acceptance and it is loaded onto the journal’s website exactly as supplied. You should check your Supplementary Material carefully to ensure that it adheres to journal styles. Corrections cannot be made to the Supplementary Material after acceptance of the manuscript. Please bear this in mind when deciding what content to include as Supplementary Material.

Journal Style

Authors should note the following:

S.I. units should be used throughout in text, figures and tables.
Authors should spell out in full any abbreviations used in their manuscripts.
Foreign quotations and phrases should be followed by a translation.

Copyright & Open Access

Please visit tab here for more information.

The policy of Gut Microbiome is that authors (or in some cases their employers) retain copyright and grant the Nutrition Society and Cambridge University Press a non-exclusive licence to publish their work. Authors must complete and return an author publishing agreement form as soon as their article has been accepted for publication; the journal is unable to publish the article without this. Please download the appropriate publishing agreement here.

The form also sets out the Creative Commons licence under which the article is made available to end users: a fundamental principle of open access is that content should not simply be accessible but should also be freely re-usable. Articles will be published under a Creative Commons Attribution license (CC-BY) by default. This means that the article is freely available to read, copy and redistribute, and can also be adapted (users can “remix, transform, and build upon” the work) for any commercial or non-commercial purpose, as long as proper attribution is given. Authors can, in the publishing agreement form, choose a different kind of Creative Commons license (including those prohibiting non-commercial and derivative use) if they prefer.

Author Language Services

Cambridge recommends that authors have their manuscripts checked by an English language native speaker before submission; this will ensure that submissions are judged at peer review exclusively on academic merit. We list a number of third-party services specialising in language editing and/or translation, and suggest that authors contact as appropriate. Use of any of these services is voluntary, and at the author's own expense.

Production - Further Details

For further information on this journal, please see our Production FAQs.

Digital Preservation Policy

Cambridge University Press publications are deposited in the following digital archives to guarantee long-term digital preservation:

CLOCKSS (journals)
Portico (journals and books)