Methodology

Criteria

Methodologies should present a new experimental or computational method, test or procedure. The method described may either be completely new, or may offer a better version of an existing method. The article must describe a demonstrable advance on what is currently available. The method needs to have been well tested and ideally, but not necessarily, used in a way that proves its value.

Cancer Nanotechnology strongly encourages that all datasets on which the conclusions of the paper rely should be available to readers. We encourage authors to ensure that their datasets are either deposited in publicly available repositories (where available and appropriate) or presented in the main manuscript or additional supporting files whenever possible. Please see Springer Nature’s information on recommended repositories.

Authors who need help depositing and curating data may wish to consider uploading their data to Springer Nature’s Research Data Support or contacting our Research Data Support Helpdesk.

Springer Nature’s Research Data Support provides data deposition and curation to help authors follow good practice in sharing and archiving of research data, and can be accessed via an online form. The services provide secure and private submission of data files, which are curated and managed by the Springer Nature Research Data team for public release, in agreement with the submitting author. These services are provided in partnership with figshare. Checks are carried out as part of a submission screening process to ensure that researchers who should use a specific community-endorsed repository are advised of the best option for sharing and archiving their data.

Use of Research Data Support is optional and does not imply or guarantee that a manuscript will be accepted.

Preparing your manuscript

The information below details the section headings that you should include in your manuscript and what information should be within each section.

Please note that your manuscript must include a 'Declarations' section including all of the subheadings (please see below for more information).

Title page

The title page should:

present a title that includes, if appropriate, the study design
list the full names and institutional addresses for all authors
- if a collaboration group should be listed as an author, please list the Group name as an author. If you would like the names of the individual members of the Group to be searchable through their individual PubMed records, please include this information in the “Acknowledgements” section in accordance with the instructions below
indicate the corresponding author

Abstract

The Abstract should not exceed 350 words. Please minimize the use of abbreviations and do not cite references in the abstract. The abstract must include the following separate sections:

Background: the context and purpose of the study
Results: the main findings
Conclusions: a brief summary and potential implications

Keywords

Three to ten keywords representing the main content of the article.

Background

The Background section should explain the background to the study, its aims, a summary of the existing literature and why this study was necessary.

Results

This should include the findings of the study including, if appropriate, results of statistical analysis which must be included either in the text or as tables and figures.

Discussion

For research articles this section should discuss the implications of the findings in context of existing research and highlight limitations of the study. For study protocols and methodology manuscripts this section should include a discussion of any practical or operational issues involved in performing the study and any issues not covered in other sections.

Conclusions

This should state clearly the main conclusions and provide an explanation of the importance and relevance of the study to the field.

Methods

The methods section should include:

the aim, design and setting of the study
the characteristics of participants or description of materials
a clear description of all processes, interventions and comparisons. Generic names should generally be used. When proprietary brands are used in research, include the brand names in parentheses
the type of statistical analysis used, including a power calculation if appropriate

List of abbreviations

If abbreviations are used in the text they should be defined in the text at first use, and a list of abbreviations can be provided.

Examples of the Basic Springer reference style are shown below.

See our editorial policies for author guidance on good citation practice.

Web links and URLs: All web links and URLs, including links to the authors' own websites, should be given a reference number and included in the reference list rather than within the text of the manuscript. They should be provided in full, including both the title of the site and the URL, as well as the date the site was accessed, in the following format: The Mouse Tumor Biology Database. http://tumor.informatics.jax.org/mtbwi/index.do. Accessed 20 May 2013. If an author or group of authors can clearly be associated with a web link, such as for weblogs, then they should be included in the reference.

Example reference style:

Article within a journal

Smith J, Jones M Jr, Houghton L (1999) Future of health insurance. N Engl J Med 965:325-329.

Article by DOI (with page numbers)

Slifka MK, Whitton JL (2000) Clinical implications of dysregulated cytokine production. J Mol Med 78:74-80. doi:10.1007/s001090000086.

Article by DOI (before issue publication and with page numbers)

Slifka MK, Whitton JL (2000) Clinical implications of dysregulated cytokine production. J Mol Med. doi:10.1007/s001090000086.

Article in electronic journal by DOI (no paginated version)

Slifka MK, Whitton JL (2000) Clinical implications of dysregulated cytokine production. Dig J Mol Med. doi:10.1007/s801090000086.

Journal issue with issue editor

Smith J (ed) (1998) Rodent genes. Mod Genomics J 14(6):126-233.

Journal issue with no issue editor

Mod Genomics J (1998) Rodent genes. Mod Genomics J 14(6):126-233.

Book chapter, or an article within a book

Brown B, Aaron M (2001) The politics of nature. In: Smith J (ed) The rise of modern genomics, 3rd edn. Wiley, New York.

Complete book, authored

South J, Blass B (2001) The future of modern genomics. Blackwell, London.

Complete book, edited

Smith J, Brown B (eds) (2001) The demise of modern genomics. Blackwell, London.

Complete book, also showing a translated edition [Either edition may be listed first.]

Adorno TW (1966) Negative Dialektik. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt. English edition: Adorno TW (1973) Negative Dialectics (trans: Ashton EB). Routledge, London.

Chapter in a book in a series without volume titles

Schmidt H (1989) Testing results. In: Hutzinger O (ed) Handbook of environmental chemistry, vol 2E. Springer, Heidelberg, p 111.

Chapter in a book in a series with volume titles

Smith SE (1976) Neuromuscular blocking drugs in man. In: Zaimis E (ed) Neuromuscular junction. Handbook of experimental pharmacology, vol 42. Springer, Heidelberg, pp 593-660.

OnlineFirst chapter in a series (without a volume designation but with a DOI)

Saito, Yukio, and Hyuga, Hiroyuki. (2007) Rate equation approaches to amplification of enantiomeric excess and chiral symmetry breaking. Topics in Current Chemistry. doi:10.1007/128_2006_108.

Proceedings as a book (in a series and subseries)

Zowghi D (1996) A framework for reasoning about requirements in evolution. In: Foo N, Goebel R (eds) PRICAI'96: topics in artificial intelligence. 4th Pacific Rim conference on artificial intelligence, Cairns, August 1996. Lecture notes in computer science (Lecture notes in artificial intelligence), vol 1114. Springer, Heidelberg, p 157.

Article within conference proceedings with an editor (without a publisher)

Aaron M (1999) The future of genomics. In: Williams H (ed) Proceedings of the genomic researchers, Boston, 1999.

Article within conference proceedings without an editor (without a publisher)

Chung S-T, Morris RL (1978) Isolation and characterization of plasmid deoxyribonucleic acid from Streptomyces fradiae. In: Abstracts of the 3rd international symposium on the genetics of industrial microorganisms, University of Wisconsin, Madison, 4-9 June 1978.

Article presented at a conference

Chung S-T, Morris RL (1978) Isolation and characterization of plasmid deoxyribonucleic acid from Streptomyces fradiae. Paper presented at the 3rd international symposium on the genetics of industrial microorganisms, University of Wisconsin, Madison, 4-9 June 1978.

Patent

Norman LO (1998) Lightning rods. US Patent 4,379,752, 9 Sept 1998.

Dissertation

Trent JW (1975) Experimental acute renal failure. Dissertation, University of California.

Book with institutional author

International Anatomical Nomenclature Committee (1966) Nomina anatomica. Excerpta Medica, Amsterdam.

In press article

Major M (2007) Recent developments. In: Jones W (ed) Surgery today. Springer, Dordrecht (in press).

Online document

Doe J (1999) Title of subordinate document. In: The dictionary of substances and their effects. Royal Society of Chemistry. Available via DIALOG. http://www.rsc.org/dose/title of subordinate document. Accessed 15 Jan 1999.

Online database

Healthwise Knowledgebase (1998) US Pharmacopeia, Rockville. http://www.healthwise.org. Accessed 21 Sept 1998.

Supplementary material/private homepage

Doe J (2000) Title of supplementary material. http://www.privatehomepage.com. Accessed 22 Feb 2000.

University site

Doe J (1999) Title of preprint. http://www.uni-heidelberg.de/mydata.html. Accessed 25 Dec 1999.

FTP site

Doe J (1999) Trivial HTTP, RFC2169. ftp://ftp.isi.edu/in-notes/rfc2169.txt. Accessed 12 Nov 1999.

Organization site

ISSN International Centre (2006) The ISSN register. http://www.issn.org. Accessed 20 Feb 2007.

Figures, tables and additional files

See General formatting guidelines for information on how to format figures, tables and additional files.

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