Information for Authors

This page describes our policies and provides information that we think will be helpful to you as you prepare manuscripts for submission and publication. If you have submitted a paper and want information about the status of the paper, please log in to our online manuscript submission system, Editorial Manager (EM). If you run into any problems or if you have specific questions, you can always e-mail us at [email protected] or call +1-617-397-2825.

Cell was launched in 1974 as the "journal of exciting biology." Now a part of Cell Press, a family of scientific journals, Cell is committed to building on the journal's legacy and reputation for publishing need-to-know conceptual advances in biomedical science and to providing authors with a fast, fair, informed, and responsive review process. Cell maintains editorial independence from its sister journals. Our Ph.D.-trained scientific editors work with authors, reviewers, and editorial board members with the goal of publishing the most interesting discoveries in biology every year, including an annual Review Issue. Every paper published in Cell is freely available starting 12 months after publication.

We have the utmost respect for you and your work and want your experience working with us at Cell to be positive and worth your valuable time. All of us—editors, journal associates, copyeditors, managing editors, illustrators, and press officers—are available to e-mail or speak with you at any time during the process. You’ll find our email addresses on our website contact page. E-mail us and we’ll set up a call.

We’re looking for papers across the breadth of biology and biomedical sciences that report results that prompt new thinking about a biological problem or therapeutic challenge—work that will inspire others to want to build on it. Our scope continually expands and evolves as biology does. We'd like to challenge your perception of what a Cell paper looks like. The way we see it, Cell papers come in many shapes and sizes. Not all papers will have seven figures, and not all papers will have complete molecular mechanisms. If you have interesting and significant conclusions that you can support in a few figures, submit it. If you have made a significant and unexpected discovery that does not include mechanistic insight, submit it. Not convinced? Send us an e-mail describing your findings and why you think they are significant and we'll set up a phone call. We love to talk about science.

When you submit your paper, we'll send you an e-mail with your manuscript number. Within the next 3–7 business days, you'll either receive an e-mail letting you know that your paper has been sent out for review and how to contact your editor or you'll receive an e-mail explaining why we've decided not to send your paper for review. During this initial evaluation phase, our editorial team discusses your paper and your handling editor reads the entire paper. If your paper is rejected without review and our rationale is unclear or you think we've missed something important, please feel free to contact your editor by e-mail, explaining your concerns, and we will continue a conversation by e-mail or schedule a phone call. Our goal is to publish the best, most exciting thought-provoking science and to provide you with our best assessment of whether we think a full review process will be worth your and the reviewers' time. If we have missed something fundamental in evaluating your paper, it doesn't serve you or the journal not to correct that. Keep in mind though that not every negative decision will be reversed with further discussion, and if there isn't a major misunderstanding in our evaluation of your work, your time might be better spent submitting to another journal. If you would like to submit to another Cell Press journal, we can help you with this.

If your paper is sent for review, we aim to get back to you with reviews and a decision within 3–4 weeks. If after review we invite you to revise your paper, we will communicate to you in the decision letter what revisions we think are necessary and what aren't. We don't want you to spend time and money performing unnecessary experiments. The letter will also invite you to schedule a phone conversation with your handling editor to discuss the concerns raised in review and come to agreement on a revision plan. Our intention is to limit consideration to two rounds of review at most and to only one whenever possible. If we take some of the reviewers' suggestions off the table, we will communicate this to the reviewers if we send the revised paper out for re-review.

If we reject your paper after review, it is likely for one of two reasons: being a strong candidate would require expansion of the current conceptual scope of the paper or being a strong candidate would require so much additional support for the current claims that we think that a single revision of 2–3 months is not likely to result in publication. We think it's not reasonable to send you off to generate a mountain of additional data for a revision. If you think we've missed something important, feel free to contact your handling editor explaining your concerns, and s/he will continue a conversation by e-mail or schedule a phone call. We aim to get back to you about a rebuttal within 2 weeks. As this process takes some time and not all conversations will result in reversing a decision, we ask that you please be judicious in considering whether we and the reviewers really did miss something fundamental before taking this route. If you do decide to rebut, we consider that your paper is still under consideration and that you won't submit to another journal during this time. So if you have written to us and requested reconsideration of your paper, and while you are waiting to hear from us you decide that you'd prefer to submit the paper to another journal, please let us know. This is important because consideration at two journals at once is considered dual submission and a breach of publication ethics.

We appreciate that there are lots of frustrations and concerns around the publishing process in general, and we are eager to be a good partner for authors in setting consistent, fair, and understandable editorial standards and then doing everything we can to help you get your paper published quickly in the best venue.

We read and evaluate every submission, and we try our best to get back to you quickly. We are mindful of how long it can take to publish a paper, so we work with authors and reviewers to minimize that time. Here’s how long each step in the process usually takes:

Unsure if your paper is suitable for Cell? Send us a presubmission inquiry at [email protected], and we'll let you know what we think in 3–5 business days. Please include a title, an abstract, and an explanation of why your paper is significant and broadly interesting. You can also submit a presubmission inquiry using this form.

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If you think your paper might be suitable for two Cell Press journals, you can submit the paper for joint consideration. To do this, upload your manuscript to one of the journals. In your cover letter, indicate that you are seeking co-consideration and mention the name of the other journal. Each journal will evaluate the paper independently. If both journals decide to review the paper, they will agree on reviewers and will make independent decisions based on feedback from those reviewers.

We know it can be time consuming to serially submit your paper to multiple journals, restarting the review process each time. Cell Press publishes many journals, and we give you the opportunity to transfer your paper, along with the reviews and the reviewers' identities, from one journal to another. If you have questions about the suitability of your paper for transfer, please contact the editor of the receiving journal. If you have general questions about the transfer process, please refer to our FAQs on article transfers. Often, the Editor of the target journal will be able to reach a decision based on the existing reviews. Occasionally, the Editor may seek comments from additional reviewers. If you transfer your paper using our online system, you will have a chance to edit your files before they are sent to the receiving journal. You can always submit your paper to another Cell Press journal without mentioning the first review process. In this case, the manuscript will be evaluated as a regular new submission.

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We will consider papers previously posted on preprint servers like arXiv, bioRxiv, BioRN, ChemRxiv, or ChemRN. We are very interested to hear from researchers about their motivations for posting and to discuss with them whether it is the best approach for their paper, so we strongly encourage authors who are planning to submit to us to contact the editors first to discuss their specific paper and situation. This policy only applies to the original submitted version of the paper; we do not support posting of revisions that respond to editorial input and peer review or posting of the final published version to preprint servers. Also, our prepublication publicity policies with regard to coverage in the broader media still apply to studies posted on preprint servers. For more information about preprint servers and the discussions related to them, please see this blog post.

If you or your coauthors have any related papers submitted or in press elsewhere, you need to let us know and include them with your initial submission (or with your revision if they were submitted during revision). We ask this because having access to related papers often helps us (and reviewers) to assess the submitted work, and it can help prevent potentially difficult scenarios down the road. Failure to provide copies of related manuscripts may delay the review process and may be grounds for rejection. As a matter of publishing ethics, we cannot consider any paper that contains data that have been published or submitted for publication elsewhere.

Our authorship policy accommodates diverse types of research, providing a framework that makes clear the contributions of each author.

Author Contributions Section: To make author contributions transparent, all research articles should include an Author Contributions section. Please describe the contributions concisely and use initials to indicate author identity. We encourage you to use the CRediT taxonomy, which offers standardized descriptions of author contributions. An Authors Contributions section is not required for front-matter articles.

Corresponding Author and Lead Contact: You must designate at least one corresponding author and only one lead contact.

Corresponding Author: We prefer that each paper have a single corresponding author because we think that the ownership and responsibility that are inherent in corresponding authorship will promote best practices in design and performance of experiments, analysis of results, organization and retention of original data, and preparation of figures and text.

That said, we understand that, for some studies, particularly for interdisciplinary ones, multiple authors may bear the responsibilities of a corresponding author. If you feel strongly and have compelling reasons, you may include additional corresponding authors. We may ask you to explain your rationale and to verify that all corresponding authors understand their responsibilities (listed below). We ask that you describe each corresponding author's specific contributions in the Author Contributions section.

Lead Contact: The lead contact is the corresponding author who is also responsible for communicating with the journal (before and after publication) and accountable for fulfilling requests for reagents and resources and for arbitrating decisions and disputes. For research papers with multiple corresponding authors, please designate one (and only one) corresponding author as the lead contact. If there is only one corresponding author, then that author is automatically also the lead contact. You should denote the lead contact with a footnote in the author list (e.g., "⁵Lead Contact").

Responsibilities of the Corresponding Author and Lead Contact: All corresponding authors bear responsibilities 1–8 below; the lead contact additionally bears responsibility 9.

1. Supervising the work

2. Being responsible for all data, figures, and text

3. Ensuring that authorship is granted appropriately to contributors

4. Ensuring that all authors approve the content and submission of the paper

5. Ensuring adherence to all editorial and submission policies

6. Identifying and declaring conflicts of interest on behalf of all authors 

7. Identifying and disclosing related work by any co-authors under consideration elsewhere

8. Archiving unprocessed data and ensuring that figures accurately present the original data (see Data Archiving section)

9. Communicating with the journal (before and after publication), being accountable for fulfilling requests for reagents and resources, and arbitrating decisions and disputes

Equal Contributions: The lead contact is the only designation that we strictly limit to one author. In addition to noting corresponding authors with an asterisk, you may use numbered footnotes to designate senior authors and otherwise equally contributing authors. The following footnote should be used for authors who have made equal contributions: “⁶These authors contributed equally”. Senior authors can be designated with a footnote, e.g., “⁶Senior author”. Please use the Author Contributions section of the manuscript to more fully describe each author’s specific contributions.  

Authorship Disputes: All authors should discuss and agree on author order and authorship designations. We expect that everyone listed as an author contributed substantively to the paper.

We do not adjudicate authorship disputes. These disputes should be resolved by the researchers involved and/or their institutions. If we become aware of a dispute we will suspend consideration of the paper until the dispute is resolved. In this case (and when authors request changes to authorship) authorship should be approved in writing by all authors.

Transparency is essential for a reader’s trust in the scientific process and for the credibility of published articles. At Cell Press, we feel that disclosure of competing interests is a critical aspect of transparency. Therefore, we ask that all authors disclose any financial or other interests related to the submitted work that (1) could affect or have the perception of affecting the author’s objectivity, or (2) could influence or have the perception of influencing the content of the article.

Prior to acceptance, author groups of all article types (front or back matter) are asked to complete and submit a “Declaration of Interests” form. We also ask that authors disclose any competing interests in the article in a dedicated Declaration of Interests section (see below).

Complete details of our Declaration of Interests policy and additional author instructions are available here.

Data processing is sometimes necessary. When it is, please keep it minimal and ensure that the final figures accurately reflect the original data. In general, please make all processing transparent. Here are some specific guidelines:

1. Any alterations should be applied to the entire image. When this is impossible (e.g., when a single color channel on a microscopy image is altered), please clearly explain the alteration in the figure legend.

2. If you remove lanes from gels and blots or consolidate your data in any way, you must make the alterations obvious.

3. Only compare data that are appropriate to compare (e.g., data from the same experiment).

4. Individual images should not be used in multiple figures unless the figures describe different aspects of the same experiment (e.g., multiple experiments were performed simultaneously with a single control experiment). If an image is used in multiple figures, please clearly state the reason in the legend.

We screen all accepted papers for image irregularities. If there is a question about a figure, either throughout this process or during the review process, we will work with the lead contact to resolve the issue. This is done on a case-by-case basis, but generally, we’ll ask you to supply the original, unprocessed data, along with descriptions of how the experiments were performed and how the figures were prepared. Based on this, we will let you know if the current form of the figure is OK or if we’ll need a revised figure. If the problem is more serious, we may need to delay publication while we work through the issues, or we may decide not to publish the paper. Before you submit a new paper, a revision, or the final paper, it is critically important that you check the original data and make sure you know and are happy with how the figures were prepared from them. We view this as the responsibility of the corresponding author(s). As the final step before submission, we encourage you to go over all of the figures once more and connect all of the data in the figures to the original, unprocessed data. You might find our blog post on avoiding common mistakes in figure preparation helpful.

We may ask you for your original, unprocessed data, so please take appropriate steps to preserve your data. We recommend that you save all unprocessed data related to your paper and distribute copies of that data to all co-authors. We also strongly encourage you to upload your original data to Mendeley Data, Dryad, or other appropriate figure/data repositories, because access to original data can increase reader confidence in the findings. If issues with your findings arise, failure to produce original data will make resolving those issues much more difficult and can be grounds for retraction.

We will thoroughly investigate any issues with data or figures that we publish. While we do not monitor the internet or social media, we follow up on all clearly documented concerns that are directly brought to our attention (from authors or concerned readers, named and anonymous). If we think that there is reason to investigate, we will discuss the concerns with the lead contact. This process generally involves asking for the original, unprocessed data, along with descriptions of how the experiments in question were performed and how the figures were prepared. We will assess these materials, and we may consult with reviewers or other experts. There are several potential outcomes of the process. First, we may take no further action; in this case, we may publish an Editorial Note to describe the process and explain why we are taking no further action. Second, if we think the issues are resolvable with a Correction, we may ask the authors to prepare a Correction statement. Third, if we uncover serious issues, we may ask the authors to retract the paper and we will work with them to prepare a Retraction statement. Fourth, if the timeline to a potential resolution seems long, we might publish an Editorial Expression of Concern to alert the community that an investigation is ongoing. At any point during this process, if our analysis uncovers potentially serious issues, we will generally ask authors to alert their institution and funding bodies. 

Correcting the scientific record is a priority for us. Because we consider the investigation process confidential, we don’t report back in detail to the person who contacted us with the concern. As the process can include gathering and evaluating original data, discussing with authors, and collaborating with institutional investigations, it can take some time. We are committed to making sure that the investigation moves forward quickly, but as these are serious and important matters, we prioritize reaching the outcome that best serves the scientific community over reaching the fastest outcome.

For manuscripts reporting studies involving human subjects, statements identifying the committee approving the studies and confirming that informed consent was obtained from all subjects must appear in the STAR Methods section. All experiments on live vertebrates or higher invertebrates must be performed in accordance with relevant institutional and national guidelines and regulations. In the manuscript, a statement identifying the committee approving the experiments and confirming that all experiments conform to the relevant regulatory standards must be included in the STAR Methods section. The sex and gender, or both, must be reported for human subjects, and the sex of animal subjects and cells must be provided. In cases where this is appropriate, the influence (or association) of sex, gender, or both on the results of the study must be reported. We also require reporting of the age or developmental stage of subjects. If there are technical or scientific reasons why sex/gender and age/development stage cannot be reported, a statement must be provided to disclose this and the reasons why. The editors reserve the right to seek comments from reviewers or additional information from authors on any cases in which concerns arise. We suggest that researchers carrying out experiments with animals refer to the ARRIVE guidelines and recommendations from an NIH-sponsored workshop regarding experimental design and reporting standards. 

If your paper reports a new chemical compound, you must provide the exact structure of the compound. We also encourage you to provide data to support the reported structure. If the compound was synthesized, please include details of the synthesis in the STAR Methods. You should submit small-molecule crystallographic data to the Cambridge Structural Database (CSD) and deposit relevant information to PubChem. Database IDs should be included in the final version of the manuscript.

In naming chemical compounds, you can use either IUPAC conventions or informal common names like rapamycin, cholesterol, and penicillin. For displaying chemical structures, please follow the IUPAC conventions. Chemical structures should be included as high-resolution files according to Cell Press Figure Guidelines.

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If you publish at Cell Press, you must be willing to distribute materials and protocols to qualified researchers, with minimal restrictions and in a timely manner. Any restrictions must be disclosed in the cover letter and in the STAR Methods at the time of submission. You may request reasonable payment for maintenance and transport of materials. Materials include but are not limited to cells, DNA, antibodies, reagents, organisms, and mouse strains or, if necessary, the relevant ES cells.

We encourage you to provide one-click access to your data by linking your article with external databases. When you provide accession numbers for your data, please use the following format: "Database: xxxx" for single accession numbers and "Database: xxxx, yyyy, zzzz" for multiple accession numbers (e.g., "Genbank: NM_000492"; "GEO: GSE6364"; "PDB: 1TUP, 1KW4, 3H5X"). See http://www.elsevier.com/books-and-journals/content-innovation/data-base-linking for more information and a full list of supported databases.

Datasets must be made freely available to readers from the date of publication and must be provided to editors and peer reviewers at submission for the purposes of evaluating the manuscript. We also encourage you to use Mendeley Data to share any underlying data that are not included in the paper or deposited in a public database. For more detailed instructions, click here.

For the following types of data, submission of the full dataset to a community-endorsed, public repository is mandatory. Accession numbers must be provided in the Key Resources Table and in the Data and Software Availability section of the STAR Methods text. Examples of appropriate public repositories include:

Protein Sequences: Uniprot

DNA and RNA Sequences: Genbank/European Nucleotide Archive (ENA)/DDBJ,Protein DataBank,UniProt

DNA Sequencing Data (traces and short reads): NCBI Trace and Short-Read Archive, ENA's Sequence Read Archive

Deep Sequencing Data: Deposit in GEO or ArrayExpress upon submission to the journal

The sequences of all RNAi, antisense, and morpholino probes must be included in the paper or deposited in a public database with the accession number provided in the paper.

Human Genomic Data Reporting Newly Described SNPs and CNVs Identified in Control Samples: dbSNP, the Database of Genomic Variants Archive (DGVa), or the Database of Genomic Structural Variation (dbVAR)

Human Sequence Data: dbGaP or similar repository. If, due to IRB restrictions, data collected for the paper cannot be made accessible in a public repository or shared upon legitimate request, please let us know in the cover letter at the stage of submission. If there are no IRB restrictions to sharing, we expect data deposition in a public repository.

Microarray Data: GEO or ArrayExpress upon submission to the journal. Data must be MIAME compliant, as described at the MGED website specifying microarray standards.

Structures of Biological Macromolecules: The atomic coordinates and related experimental data (structure factor amplitudes/intensities and/or NMR restraints) must be deposited at a member site of the Worldwide Protein Data Bank. Electron microscopy-derived density maps must be deposited into the EMDB through one of the partner sites (Protein Data Bank in Europe or EMDataBank). Atomic coordinates fitted to EM maps must also be deposited to a wwPDB member site. The corresponding database IDs must be included in the manuscript. Authors must agree to release the atomic coordinates and experimental data when the associated article is published. Additionally, when your paper is selected for external peer review, we will ask you to provide the PDB Validation Report(s) if your paper reports any structure(s) determined by X-ray crystallography before we contact reviewers. We will use these reports for peer review purposes, and they will not be part of the final published paper. You can read more about this requirement here.

We encourage you to submit the following types of data to public databases. Some of these databases allow anonymous referees the ability to access the data. When there is no public repository or if your dataset is too large to submit to the journal online, please contact us for advice.

Proteomics Data: PRIDE, PeptideAtlas

Protein Interaction Data: IMEx consortium of databases, including DIP, IntAct, and MINT

Chemical Compound Screening and Assay Data: PubChem

Flow Cytometry Data: Flow Repository

Cell is pleased to be part of the Resource Identification Initiative, a project aimed at clearly identifying the key resources used in the course of scientific research. This project helps address concerns of reproducibility by providing unique searchable identifiers, Research Resource Identifiers (RRIDs), for critical reagents and tools. RRIDs can be used to link readers to external resources, and they also enable search engines to return all papers in which a particular antibody, organism, or tool was used. We see these as important steps toward ensuring reproducible methods and providing critical data to help researchers identify suitable reagents and tools. 

At this stage, we are asking authors to please include RRIDs for antibodies and genetically modified organisms in the Key Resources Table of the STAR Methods sections. Fortunately, obtaining an RRID is fairly simple. The Resource Identification Portal allows you to search for antibodies and organisms and obtain the appropriate identifiers. Once you have located the RRID, please insert "RRID:" plus the identifier in the appropriate location in the manuscript. For example:

• Antibodies: "Sections were stained with a rabbit polyclonal antibody against ERK1 (Abgent Cat# AP7251E, RRID: AB_2140114)."
• Genetically modified organisms: "Subjects in this study were Fgf9Eks/Fgf9+ mice (RRID: MGI_3840442)..."

For more information on how to find an RRID, how to include RRIDs in your paper, and how to request an RRID, please consult our RRID page. For search tips and help, contact [email protected]. With any other questions, contact [email protected].

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An overview of the rights that Cell Press authors retain, the options for sharing articles at various stages, and the duration of embargo periods, as well as open access options, is available at http://www.cell.com/rights-sharing-embargoes.

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We have worked with institutions and funding bodies to help authors comply with open access policies. Please see our Funding Body Policies page for complete information on gold and green open access options for each funding body, as well as information about deposition to PubMed Central. Publishing gold open access in Cell Press subscription journals is only available to authors covered by a funding body agreement; the gold open access fee for funding bodies is $5,000. Content of all Cell Press research journals is free, in final published form, on our website 12 months after publication; the embargo period for green open access and deposition of the author-accepted manuscript in an institutional or subject repository is 12 months. More details about open access options and embargo periods for each Cell Press journal are available at http://www.cell.com/rights-sharing-embargoes.

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You do not need to ask our permission to use images or information that you have previously published in a Cell Press journal; we ask only that you cite the original publication. For information on how to request permission to use previously published work, please see our Permissions page. If excerpts from other copyrighted works are included in your manuscript, you must obtain written permission from the copyright owners and credit the sources in the article. To obtain permission to use material from Cell Press and Elsevier journals and books, e-mail [email protected]. If you have adapted a figure from a published figure, please check with the copyright owners to see if permission is required and include a complete citation/reference for the original article. Obtaining permissions can take up to several weeks. As lack of appropriate permissions can delay publication, we recommend that you request permission at the time of submission.

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Part of our role as a scientific publisher is to help ensure that the work you publish with us reaches the broadest possible readership within both the research community and the broader public.  We understand that effective communication of the advances you have made helps promote public appreciation of science, and we want to do what we can to further that goal. We also take seriously our responsibility to support informed scientific journalism, and look to encourage balanced and accurate coverage that avoids inappropriate hype.  To assist with these aims, we operate an embargoed press release system, which allows reporters a protected window to develop their stories. All Cell Press papers are made available to the media up to 7 days before publication and are under media embargo until 12 PM NOON (US, ET) on their date of publication. The embargo date and time should be clearly communicated in any materials distributed about them. 

Work intended for submission to a Cell Press journal, currently under consideration at a Cell Press journal, or in press at a Cell Press journal may not be discussed with the media or other scientific journals until one week before publication.  If authors choose to make their work available to the scientific community before publication, through presentation at a scientific meeting or posting online, we ask that they and their institutions refrain from actively seeking media attention for the work and avoid participating in interviews about it. Coverage that results from pre-publication communication can impact media interest in a paper at the time of publication and affect our ability to support responsible scientific journalism.  

Please contact our press office ([email protected]) if you or your press officer need embargo information for your paper, you plan on hosting a press conference, or if there are special circumstances that you would like to discuss.

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You can submit your manuscript using our online submission system, Editorial Manager (EM). For assistance, please contact us at [email protected] or +1-617-397-2825.

Editorial Manager will send all communications (including the request for final approval and the confirmation of submission) to the person who is selected as corresponding author at submission or, if no name is designated, to the person whose account is used to submit the manuscript. If you want to specify a different author for correspondence after submission, please contact the Journal Associate at [email protected].

In your cover letter, please explain what was previously known, the conceptual advance provided by your work, and the significance to a broad readership. You may suggest appropriate reviewers and make up to three requests for reviewer exclusions. Please use the cover letter to notify us of information that is relevant to our handling and evaluation your paper (e.g., related work, time constraints, competition). The cover letter is confidential and will not be seen by reviewers.

For initial submissions, you do not need to strictly adhere to our formatting guidelines below. You also do not need to provide a graphical abstract, highlights, or an eTOC paragraph. However, we do ask that you stay close to our length restrictions, adhere to figure limitations, and use page numbers. For information about length/figure restrictions for specific article types, please see our Article Types page.

Also, for initial submissions, you can upload your paper as a single PDF (using the "combined manuscript file" designation in EM). In doing this, you can intersperse the figures and figure legends within the Results section to aid evaluation of your paper. If you choose the single PDF option, please keep the PDF under 20 MB, and please separately upload the cover letter and any special file types such as videos and spreadsheets. If you do not choose the single PDF option, EM will build a composite PDF file of individually uploaded items. This PDF will contain links that editors and reviewers can use to download individual high-resolution files. The composite PDF will not contain the cover letter.

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All research article formats at Cell Press generally contain the following sections in this order: title, authors, affiliations, author list footnotes, corresponding author(s) e-mail address(es), Summary, Introduction, Results, Discussion, Acknowledgments, Author Contributions, Declaration of Interests, References, figure titles and legends, tables with titles and legends, STAR Methods, and Supplemental Information titles and legends. The text (title through supplemental legends) should be provided as one document. Figures, Supplemental Information, Graphical Abstract, and the Key Resources Table should be provided separately.

Gene symbols should be italicized; protein products of the loci are not italicized. Nonstandard abbreviations should be defined when first used in the text. Use of abbreviations should be kept at a minimum.

The title should capture the conceptual significance for a broad audience. The most effective titles are no more than 10–12 words and provide an overall view of the paper's significance rather than the detailed contents of the paper, which can be elaborated upon in the Summary. Titles should avoid use of jargon, uncommon abbreviations, and punctuation. They should be no more than 150 characters total, including spaces, and must be able to be separated onto three lines of no more than 50 characters each (including spaces).

Author names should be spelled out. Institutional affiliations should be signified with footnotes. Affiliations should contain the following information: department(s)/subunit(s); institution; city, state/region, postal code; country. Please check author names carefully, as we cannot amend or correct these sections after publication without publishing a formal Correction.

Footnotes are only allowed on page 1 of the text (and in tables). The only required footnote is the Lead Contact footnote. Additional footnotes may note a present address or may indicate equally contributing or senior authors. For more on designations of author contributions, please see the Authorship section.

Corresponding authors should be noted with an asterisk in the author list. The e-mail address(es) of the corresponding author(s) should be listed after the author list footnotes, e.g., "*Correspondence: [email protected]."

The Summary is a single paragraph no longer than 150 words. An effective Summary includes the following elements: (1) a brief background of the question that avoids statements about how a process is not well understood; (2) a description of the results and approaches/model systems framed in the context of their conceptual interest; and (3) an indication of the broader significance of the work. We discourage novelty claims (e.g., use of the word “novel”) because they are overused, tend not to add meaning, and are difficult to verify. Please do not include references in the Summary. 

Good introductions are succinct, presenting only the background information needed for readers to understand the motivation for the study and the results. No subheadings, please.

This section should be divided with subheadings. In our view, good subheadings convey information about the findings, so we encourage you to be specific. For example, say "Factor X requires Factor Y to function in Process Z" rather than "Analysis of Factors X and Y using Approach Q."  We recommend that you use similar language in your figure titles for clarity and structural harmony. 

The Discussion should explain the significance of the results and place them into a broader context. It is often helpful to the reader to indicate the directions in which the work might be built on going forward. It should not be redundant with the Results. The Discussion may contain subheadings and can be combined with the Results section.

Use this section to acknowledge contributions from non-authors, list funding sources, and declare any conflicts of interest. As this section contains important information and many funding bodies require inclusion of grant numbers here, please check it carefully.

This section is required for all papers. Please use it to concisely describe each author’s contributions, using initials to indicate each author’s identity. We encourage you to use the CRediT taxonomy, but you can also use a traditional format (e.g., "A.B. and C.D. conducted the experiments; E.F. designed the experiments and wrote the paper.").

This section is required for all papers. Please use it to disclose any competing interests, in accordance with Cell Press's Declaration of Interests policy. If there are no interests to declare, please note that with the following wording: "The authors declare no competing interests." The text in this section should match the text provided in the Declaration of Interests form.

References should include only articles that are published or in press. For references to in press articles, please confirm with the cited journal that the article is in fact accepted and in press, and include a DOI number and scheduled online publication date. Unpublished data, submitted manuscripts, abstracts, and personal communications should be cited within the text only and not included in the References list. Personal communication should be documented by a letter of permission. Submitted articles should be cited as unpublished data, data not shown, or personal communication.

In-text citations should be written in Harvard style and not numbered, e.g., "Smith et al., 2015; Smith and Jones, 2015." 

Please use the style shown below for references. Note that "et al." should only be used after ten authors.

Article in a periodical: Sondheimer, N., and Lindquist, S. (2000). Rnq1: an epigenetic modifier of protein function in yeast. Mol. Cell 5, 163–172.

Article in a book: King, S.M. (2003). Dynein motors: Structure, mechanochemistry and regulation. In Molecular Motors, M. Schliwa, ed. (Weinheim, Germany: Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH), pp. 45–78.

An entire book: Cowan, W.M., Jessell, T.M., and Zipursky, S.L. (1997). Molecular and Cellular Approaches to Neural Development (New York: Oxford University Press).

Legends should be included in the submitted manuscript as a separate section. Each figure legend should have a brief title that describes the entire figure without citing specific panels, followed by a description of each panel. In writing the figure title, we encourage you to re-use the subheadings of the Results section to make the relationship clear. For any figures presenting pooled data, the measures should be defined in the figure legends (for example, "Data are represented as mean ± SEM."). Each legend should refer to any supporting items in the Supplemental Information (e.g., "See also Figure S1.").

Please use the Microsoft Word Table function to make tables; you may need to revise any tables that are not created using this function. Tables should include a title, and footnotes and/or legend should be concise. Include tables in the submitted manuscript as a separate section. 

When creating tables, please adhere to the following guidelines:

• Do not submit tables in Excel or PDF format. Do not place an Excel table in a Word document.

• Format tables with Word's Table function; do not use tabs or spaces to create a table.

• Tables should be in black and white; rows and columns should not be shaded.

• Do not use line breaks or spaces to separate data within a cell. Use separate cells for all discrete data elements within a table.

• Number distinct tables as Table 1, Table 2, Table 3, etc., rather than as Table 1a, Table 1b, Table 1c, etc.

• If bold or italic font is used within a table to indicate some feature of the data, please give an explanation of its usage in the legend.

• All abbreviations within a table must be defined in the table legend or footnotes.

• Footnotes should be listed with superscript lowercase letters, beginning with “a.” Footnotes may not be listed with numbers or symbols.

The STAR Methods section replaces our Experimental Procedures and Supplemental Experimental Procedures sections. The STAR Methods section should include enough detail to allow the reader to understand the experimental design and to be able to assess the conclusions. STAR Methods also detail what resources and procedures are needed for readers to reproduce experiments, using standardized sections and a Key Resources Table. For guidelines on how to structure your paper in the STAR Methods format, please visit our STAR Methods web page for authors. We encourage but do not require authors to follow the STAR Methods format when articles are initially submitted. If accepted, articles must adhere to the STAR Methods format. Please see our Editorial, as well as the STAR Methods launch site, to learn how STAR Methods helps align our papers to external reporting guidelines to improve transparency and robust and rigorous reporting of methods details.

In general, please limit Supplemental Information to data and other materials that directly support the main conclusions of your paper but cannot be included in the main paper due to space or file format restrictions. SI should not be used to present data that are preliminary or that conceptually go beyond the main point of the paper.

Before submitting your supplemental materials, please refer to our complete instructions in the Supplemental Information guidelines. This page also contains information on submitting movie and other multimedia files.

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In addition to the sections required for initial submissions, revised manuscripts must also contain a detailed point-by-point response to the comments of the reviewers and/or editors. The cover letter should briefly summarize how the revised manuscript addresses these comments. In general, we allow 2–3 months for revision; if you think you might need more time, please contact the handling editor for guidance.

The final submission should also contain Highlights, an eTOC blurb, and a Graphical Abstract. These items will appear with the online version of the paper and on the PDF cover page. We have provided a handy checklist for preparing the final version of your paper.

Highlights are bullet points that convey the core findings of your paper. You may include up to four highlights. The length of each highlight cannot exceed 85 characters (including spaces).

The eTOC blurb is a short summary that describes the context and significance of the findings for the broader readership. Please see the "In Brief" links in the Table of Contents for examples. The blurb should be 80 words or less.

On the EM page where you are asked to upload your files, please choose "Highlights and eTOC Blurb" and upload a single Word document containing both items.

A graphical abstract is an image that summarizes the main findings of a paper. It adds a rich, visual component to the start of a paper, helping readers to quickly appreciate and understand the central message.

Graphical abstracts may be submitted at any stage but are only required with the final submission. The image should be 5.5 inches square at 300 dpi, using Arial font with a size of 10–16 points; smaller fonts will not be legible online. Please refer to our graphical abstract guidelines for more details and recommendations.

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Digital figure files submitted through Editorial Manager must conform to our digital figure guidelines or you will be asked to revise them. Please be aware that we may resize figures during the production process. The cost for color figures is $1,000 for the first color figure and $275 for each additional figure.

If you have any questions about figures, please contact Trina Arpin, Managing Editor of Cell, at [email protected]. 

Authors are also encouraged to submit Figure360 videos to accompany their static figures. Each F360 video focuses on one figure from the article and is published alongside that figure. There is no limit to the number of figures that can be accompanied by a F360 video; however, each video must focus on only one figure. Videos are generally 2 to 3 minutes long and give readers a fun way to quickly and effectively grasp the major points of that figure. For additional information, examples, and instructions on how to create a Figure360 video, please visit our Figure360 page for authors.

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After acceptance, authors are welcome to submit potential cover images related to their manuscript. Cover submissions should be informative and may be based on or resemble figures in the article. But they should be creative and artistic. Authors may submit several different images for consideration. The editors make their selection based on the aesthetic quality of the image and the scientific scope of the study. For more information, see our Cover Submission Guidelines.

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