Marine Drugs — Instructions for Authors

Please first read the section 'Aims & Scope' to have an overview, and to assess if your manuscript is suitable for this journal.

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Please use a template file to prepare your paper.

Submission of Manuscripts

  • Submission: Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form.
  • Accepted File Formats:
    • MS Word: Manuscript prepared in MS Word must be converted into a single file before submission. When preparing manuscripts in MS Word, the Marine Drugs Microsoft Word template file must be used. Please do not insert any graphics (schemes, figures, etc.) into a movable frame which can superimpose the text and make the layout very difficult.
    • LaTeX: ensure to send a copy of your manuscript as a PDF file also, if you decided to use LaTeX. When preparing manuscripts in LaTeX, please use the MDPI LaTeX template files.
  • Coverletter: Check in your cover letter whether you supplied at least 5 referees. Check if the English corrections are done before submission.

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Correct Identification of Components of Natural Products

The correct identification of the various components of extracts from natural sources is of key importance, and as publishers we are keenly aware of our responsibility to the scientific community in this area. Consequently, for papers on this topic, we have adopted the recommendations of the Working Group on Methods of Analysis of the International Organization of the Flavour Industry (IOFI), as published in Flavour Fragr. J. 2006, 21, 185. These recommendations may be summarized as follows:

Any identification of a natural compound must pass scrutiny by the latest forms of available analytical techniques. This implies that its identity must be confirmed by at least two different methods, for example, comparison of chromatographic and spectroscopic data (including mass, IR and NMR spectra) with those of an authentic sample, either isolated or synthesized. For papers claiming the first discovery of a given compound from a natural source, the authors must provide full data obtained by their own measurements of both the unknown and an authentic sample, whose source must be fully documented. Authors should also consider very carefully potential sources of artifacts and contaminants resulting from any extraction procedure or sample handling.

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Manuscript Preparation

  • Manuscripts should be prepared in English using a word processor. The MS Word template file should be used. MS Word for Macintosh or for Windows .doc or .rtf files are preferred. Manuscripts may be prepared with other software, provided that the full document (with figures, schemes and tables inserted into the text) is exported to a MS Word format for submission. Times or Times New Roman font is required. The font size is 12 pt and the line spacing "at least" 17 pt. Although our final output is in .pdf format, authors are asked to not send manuscripts in this format as editing them is much more difficult.
    Special Notes regarding MS Word files:
    • Please do not insert any graphics (schemes, figures, etc.) into a movable frame which can superimpose the text and make the layout very difficult.
    • Most formatting codes will be removed or replaced on processing your article so there is no need to use excessive layout styling. In addition, options such as automatic word breaking, double columns, footnotes or automatic numbering should not be used. However, bold face, italic, subscripts, superscripts, etc. may be used for emphasis as needed. Authors from countries where right-to-left writing is used should ensure their manuscripts have Western style (left-to-right) formatting.
  • The standard style of Marine Drugs should be followed. Prospective authors should consult any current issue of Marine Drugs for examples of this style.
  • Authors' full mailing addresses, homepage addresses, phone and fax numbers, e-mail addresses and homepages can be included in the title page and these will be published in the manuscripts and the Table of Contents. The corresponding author should be clearly identified. It is the corresponding author's responsibility to ensure that all co-authors are aware of and approve of the contents of a submitted manuscript.
  • All authors who contributed significantly to the manuscript (including writing a section) should be listed on the first page of the manuscript, below the title of the article. Other parties, who provided only minor contributions, should be listed under Acknowledgments only. A minor contribution might be a discussion with the author, reading through the draft of the manuscript, or performing English corrections.
  • A brief (about 200 words) Abstract should be provided. The use in the Abstract of numbers to identify compounds should be avoided, unless these compounds are also identified by name.
  • A list of three to five keywords must be given, and placed after the Abstract. Keywords may be single words or very short sentences.
  • Although variations in accord with a manuscript's contents are permissible, in general all papers should have the following sections: Introduction, Results and Discussion, Conclusions, Acknowledgments (if applicable), Experimental and References (or References and Notes, if applicable).
  • Authors are encouraged to prepare figures and schemes in color. Full color graphics will be published free of charge. Conference slides, video sequences, software, etc., can also be included and will be published as supplementary material.
  • Tables should be inserted into the main text, and numbers and titles supplied for all tables. All table columns should have an explanatory heading. To facilitate layout of large tables, smaller fonts may be used, but in no case should these be less than 10 pt. in size. Authors should use the Table option of MS Word to create tables, rather than tabs, as tab delimited columns are often difficult to format in .pdf for final output.
  • Figures and schemes should also be placed in numerical order in the appropriate place within the main text. Numbers, titles and legends should be provided for all schemes and figures. These should be prepared as a separate paragraph of the main text and placed in the main text before the figure or scheme.
  • Physical and spectroscopic data should be prepared according to "Preparation and Submission of Manuscripts" of ACS journals (page 4). Tables for NMR data should also be prepared according to the above instruction.
  • Chemical structures and reaction schemes should be drawn using an appropriate software package designed for this purpose. As a guideline, these should be drawn to a scale such that all the details and text are clearly legible when placed in the manuscript (i.e. text should be no smaller that 8-9 pt.). To facilitate editing we recommend the use of any of the software packages widely available for this purpose: MDL® Isis/Draw, ACD/ChemSketch®, CS ChemDraw®, ChemWindow®, etc. Free versions of some of these products are available for personal or academic use from the respective publishers. If another less common structure drawing software is used, authors should ensure the figures are saved in a file format compatible with of one of these products.
  • Experimental data. To allow for correct abstracting of the manuscripts all compounds should be mentioned by correct chemical name, followed by any numerals used to refer to them in the paper. The use of the IUPAC nomenclature conventions is preferred, although alternate naming systems (for example CAS rules) may be used provided that a single consistent naming system is used throughout a manuscript. For authors perhaps unfamiliar with chemical nomenclature in English we recommend the use of compound naming software such as AutoNom. Full experimental details must be provided, or, in the case of many compounds prepared by a similar method, a representative typical procedure should be given. The general style used in the Journal of Organic Chemistry is preferred. Complete characterization data must be given for all new compounds. For papers mentioning large numbers of compounds a tabular format is acceptable. For known compounds appropriate literature references must be given.
  • References. See the Reference Preparation Guide. References should be numbered according to the order in which they appear in the text.
  • Reference Preparation: References should preferably be prepared with EndNote®, ReferenceManager™ or a similar bibliography software package. If references are prepared manually they must be checked for integrity and correctness (you may use ISI Web of Knowledge, PubMed/MEDLINE or Google Scholar). The Editorial Office will charge additional CHF 10 per citation for which extensive corrections must be made.
  • Abstract/Table of Contents Graphic: Authors are encouraged to provide a graphical representation of the paper (in either JPEG, GIF, PNG or PDF format) to be used as a graphic of the paper, along with the abstract, on the Table of Contents. The graphic should not exceed 500 pixels width/height. As an example, authors may review the abstract graphic of following papers:
    - http://www.mdpi.com/1424-8220/9/1/490
    - http://www.mdpi.com/1420-3049/14/1/378
  • Electronic Supplementary Information (ESI): Conference slides, video sequences, software, etc., can be included with the submission and published as supplementary material. Please read the information about Supplementary Material Deposit beneath.

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Review / Referees

Authors should suggest at least five potential referees with the appropriate expertise, although the Editor will not necessarily approach them. Please provide as detailed contact information as possible (address, homepage, phone, e-mail address). The proposed referees should be experts in the field who can provide an objective report - they should not be current collaborators of the authors nor have published with any of the authors of the manuscript within the last 5 years. Proposed referees should be from different institutions than the authors. You may identify appropriate Editorial Board members of the journal as potential referees. Another possibility is to select referees from among the authors that you frequently cite in your paper.

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English Corrections

This journal is published in English, so it is essential that for proper refereeing and quick publication all manuscripts are submitted in grammatically correct English. For this purpose we ask that non-native English speakers ensure their manuscripts are checked before submitting them for consideration. We suggest that for this purpose your manuscript be revised by an English speaking colleague before submission. Authors can also use the services of American Journal Experts (AJE) for this purpose. Authors of articles submitted to MDPI journals benefit of a one-time 10% discount on AJE's charges. Simply follow the above link to make use of the referral discount.

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MDPI Publication Ethics Statement

Marine Drugs is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). MDPI enforces a rigorous peer-review process that adopts strict ethical policies and standards to ensure that we contribute high-quality scientific works to the field of scholarly publication. Unfortunately, cases of plagiarism, data falsification, inappropriate authorship credit, etc., occasionally arise. MDPI takes such publishing ethics issues very seriously and our editors are trained to proceed in such cases with a zero tolerance policy.

CrossCheck/iThenticate

Marine Drugs is a member of CrossCheck powered by iThenticate. iThenticate is a plagiarism screening service that verifies the originality of content submitted before publication. iThenticate checks submissions against millions of published research papers, and billions of web content. Authors are encouraged to use iThenticate to screen their work before submission by visiting www.ithenticate.com.

Supplementary Material Deposit

  • We wish to encourage the submission of supplementary data in electronic formats, so that important chemical, structural or scientific information is retained in full. Spectral data (NMR, IR, Raman, ESR, etc) can be submitted in JCAMP (.jdx) format.
  • 3D coordinate structures (in pdb, mol, xyz or other common formats), if available, should also be submitted.
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Mar. Drugs EISSN 1660-3397 Published by MDPI AG, Basel, Switzerland RSS E-Mail Table of Contents Alert