The Scandinavian Journal of Infectious Diseases is committed to research in the field of infectious diseases and publishes original articles, short communications, case reports and, following agreements with the Editors, review articles. Contributors should submit their papers online via Scandinavian Journal of Infectious Diseases Manuscript Central author center site to facilitate rapid accessibility of your work to the readers. New users should first create an account. Once a user is logged onto the site submissions should be made via the Corresponding Authors Centre.

Further information about Scandinavian Journal of Infectious Diseases can be found on the journal's homepage.

PREPARING FOR SUBMISSION
Submitted manuscripts should be arranged according to the rules stated in "Uniform requirements for manuscripts submitted to biomedical journals" Ann Intern Med 1997; 126: 36-47, or JAMA 1997; 277: 927-34. The full document is available at www.icmje.org

When submitting a paper, the author should always make a full statement to the editor about all submissions and previous reports that might be regarded as redundant or duplicate publication of the same or very similar work.

Conflict of interest and funding: Authors are responsible for recognising and disclosing financial and other conflicts of interest that might bias their work. They should acknowledge in the manuscript all financial support for the work and other financial or personal connections to the work.

Statistic validity: If statistical data are provided the authors are requested to submit an official statement issued by a certified statistician (with a proper affiliation) regarding the validity of methods used.

Ethics and consent: When reporting experiments on human subjects, indicate whether the procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 1983. Do not use patients' names, initials, or hospital numbers, especially in illustrative material. Papers including animal experiments or clinical trials must be accompanied by an approval by the local ethics committee. Please give date of issue and registration number.

Identifying information should not be published in written descriptions, photographs, and pedigrees unless the information is essential for scientific purposes and the patient (or parent or guardian) gives written informed consent for publication. Informed consent for this purpose requires that the patient be shown the manuscript to be published.

SUBMISSION
The Scandinavian Journal of Infectious Diseases' Manuscript Central, web-based manuscript submission and handling system is now available.

Please submit all manuscripts online via The Scandinavian Journal of Infectious Diseases' Manuscript Central site. Here either create an account or enter an existing account to log in your "author center" to upload manuscripts.

If you have difficulties in submitting your manuscript electronically, contact ScholarOne via "Get Help Now" on any screen

Your submission will be acknowledged by an e-mail which includes the Manuscript ID number for your paper. Remember to refer to this number in the subject line of any correspondence with the Editorial Office. You can also view of the status of your manuscript via your author center.

Please use the following guidelines when preparing your electronic manuscript:

Guidelines: (i) Key elements consistently throughout. (ii) Do not break words at the ends of lines. Use a hyphen only to hyphenate compound words. (iii) One word space only at the ends of sentences. (iv) Do not use underlining; use the italics feature instead. (v) Leave the right-hand margin unjustified. (vi) Use a double hyphen to indicate a dash. (vii) Do not use the lower case "ell" for 1 (one) or the upper case O for 0 (zero). (viii) When indenting paragraphs or separating columns in tables, use the TAB key, not the spacebar.

Please upload your manuscript text as a Microsoft Word file and illustrations as separate files.

Acceptable formats: TIFF, EPS, JPEG, PDF, Word documents, Excel, Powerpoint

Manuscript layout: Doubl-space the entire manuscript - even the referencelist - and leave generous margins. Organise the paper: title page, abstract page, introduction, material and methods, results, discussion, acknowledements, list of references.

Language: Papers will be published in English. The journal accepts both British English and American English.

Length: Length is calculated as 6500 signs (incl. spaces) per page. Each illustration should be calculated as 1000 signs for tables and 500 signs for art. Case reports, short communications and letters should not exceed two printed pages. For original articles the maximum length are 6 printed pages and the maximum numbers for illustrations is 2. Review articles may be up to 8 printed pages. All the above limitations include text, illustrations and references.

Title page: The title page should carry (1) title of article (sub-title if wanted), which should be concise and contain the words necessary for correct indexing; (2) short running headline; (3) first and last name of each author; (4) name of each author's department, institution or hospital, location and country; (5) statement on all financial support for the project reported (it must be stated if no support was received); (6) statement on possible conflict of interest, mainly ownership or employment in an organisation supporting the project financially; (7) statements (when applicable) on approval by research ethics committee and the informed consent has been obtained.

Abstract: Abstracts must not exceed 200 words for full articles and reviews and 50 words for case reports and short communications. No abstract are required for letters. The abstract, which should not have subheadings, should state the objectives of the investigation, the material studied, the methods used, the main findings and the principal conclusions. State the name and address of the author to whom correspondence and request for reprints should be sent below the abstract.

Text: Full articles and short communications should be divided into Introduction, Material and Methods, Results, Discussion and References. For case reports Material and Methods and/or Results can be replaced by "Case Report". Review articles may use other formats. To clarify the text, sub-headings may be needed. An attempt should be made to avoid footnotes. Abbreviations according to the Vancouver style should be used. Please note that the journal does not use italics for Latin/Greek names of bacteria or other microorganisms.

References: The Vancouver system must be applied. No more than 25 references are accepted. Please cite all authors up to 6, if more than 6 authors cite 6 followed by et al. Number the references consecutively in the order in which they are first mentioned in the text. Identify references in the text and in the reference list by arabic numerals [in square brackets]). Papers accepted but not yet published should be designated as (in press). Information from papers in manuscript but not yet accepted should be cited in the text as "unpublished observation(s)" or "personal communication".

Abbreviations of journal titles; please consult the List of Journals Indexed in Index Medicus, published annually as a list in the January issue of Index Medicus, also accessible at www.nlm.nih.gov

Reference to periodicals:
[1]. Meyer CN, Skinhøj P, Prag J. Bacteremia in HIV-positive and AIDS patients: incidence, species distribution, risk-factors, outcome, and influence of long-term prohylactic antibiotic treatment. Scand J Infect Dis 1994; 26: 635-42.

Reference to monographs:
[2]. Paterson PY. 1980. Central nervous system infection: general considerations. In: Youmans GP, Paterson PY, Sommers HM, eiditors. The biologic and clinical basis of infectious diseases. Philadelphia: WB Saunders. p. 583-95.

For journal article in electronic format use the following style: Morse SS. Factors in the emergence of infectious diseases. Emerg Infect Dis [serial online] 1995 Jan-Mar [cited 1996 Jun 5]; 1(1): [24 screens]. Available from: URL: http://www.cdc.gov\ncidod\EID\eid.htm

Illustrations: Since illustrations must usually be reduced from the size submitted, authors should ensure that numerical and alphabetical notations within illustrations are large enough to be fully legible after reduction. List all captions on separate sheet. Any colour illustration must be paid for by the author.

Tables: Tables should be numbered (roman numerals) with a heading. Use a, b, c etc. for footnotes; indicate significance levels with asterisks.

General: Original articles, short communications and review articles are peer reviewed by one or more referees; decisions on acceptance or rejection are taken by the Editors. Normally, the corresponding author should receive feedback from the Editors within 3 months after receipt of the manuscript. Case reports are in most cases reviewed by the Editors only and can often be processed in shorter times. Authors will normally receive one set of page proofs in duplicate. One copy should be returned without delay to the Editorial Office. Authors should consult the instructions for proofreading accompanying the printer's proof and use pencil for corrections. Corrections against the manuscript must be avoided.

For further information and support, please send mail to: INFECTIOUS@se.tandf.no

Supplements: Publication of supplements will be arranged after contact with the Editors.