General Information 

Originality and copyright

To be considered for publication in J DOHaD, a manuscript cannot have been published previously, nor can it be under review for publication elsewhere. (Previously published figures may be sparingly used in Reviews, with appropriate permission.) The posting of a brief summary of clinical trial outcomes on a pharmaceutical website (such as the PhRMA-sponsored database www.clinicalstudyresults.org) will not necessary count as prior publication nor impede full consideration of a manuscript: J DOHaD will look at this on a case-by-case basis to determine the extent of overlap between the trial data posted and the manuscript as submitted, and will decide whether the manuscript contains a sufficiently new perspectives or sufficient additional data for it to count as original. Authors should declare when submitting manuscripts that such data have already been posted and J DOHaD will review this sympathetically.

Papers with multiple authors are reviewed with the assumption that all authors have contributed materially to the research reported, have approved the submitted manuscript and concur with its submission to J DOHaD. 

Author Publication Agreement

The policy of Developmental Origins of Health and Disease is that authors (or in some cases their employers) retain copyright and grant the International Society for Developmental Origins of Health and Disease a licence to publish their work. In the case of gold open access articles this is a non-exclusive licence. 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.

For open access articles, 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.

Authorship

All individuals included as authors of papers must have contributed substantially to the scientific process leading up to the writing of the paper. Such contribution includes the conception and design of the project, the performance of experiments and the analysis and interpretation of data. In addition the author should have made a substantial contribution to drafting or critical revision of the manuscript for important intellectual content.

We are aware that authors sometimes receive assistance from technical writers, language editors and/or writing agencies in preparing manuscripts for publication. Such assistance must be noted in the cover letter and in the Acknowledgements section along with a declaration that the author(s) are entirely responsible for the scientific content of the paper.

Failure to acknowledge assistance from technical writers, language editors and/or writing agencies in preparing manuscripts for publication in the Acknowledgements section may lead to disqualification of the paper.

Under no circumstances will J DOHaD accept submissions by writing or editorial agencies on behalf of authors and there will be no correspondence with writing or editorial agencies regarding submitted or revised manuscripts. 

Manuscript preparation and style

The manuscript should be typed double-spaced throughout on 'Letter' or A4 paper. Pages should be numbered sequentially beginning with the Title Page. Margins should not be less than 2.5cm on all sides and the font should be clearly legible and uniform throughout.

A Short Title of up to forty-five characters should be provided on the title page and should be repeated at the top right of every following page. The names of the authors (e.g. Smith et al. or Smith and Jones) should be given at the top left of every page besides the title page.

The Abstract should be unstructured (i.e., no sub-headings) but must provide the reader with a self-contained summary of the paper. It should include a brief introduction to the paper, the method, the key findings, and the conclusions. A list of 3–5 key words or terms for indexing should follow the abstract.

The Body of the Manuscript should begin on page 3. For Regular Original Articles, Brief Reports, the formal should include: Introduction, Method, Results, Discussion and Acknowledgements. These should be followed on a new page by the References.

Tables should be consecutively numbered as they appear in the text (Table 1, etc.). Each Table should be typed on a separate sheet with the Table number and heading above and any note below.

Figures should be consecutively numbered as they appear in the text (Figure 1, 2 etc). Use italic letters for parts a, b, c etc. Use abbreviation (Fig), except where starting a new sentence. Legends should be provided for each Figure. Scale bars should be added to photomicrographs and other similar images. Figures (scale bars, pie charts, etc) should be presented in two dimensions only.

All figures submitted to Journal of Developmental Origins of Health and Disease will be published in colour on Cambridge Core Online free of charge.

How to Ensure Colour Online

To maximize the probability that figures will be published in colour, authors are encouraged to follow these figure submission guidelines:

• Submit a colour graphic as either TIFF or EPS files

• Submit figures at approximately the size at which they are to reproduce so that reduction or enlargement is not necessary.

• Line artwork should be supplied in black and white mode at a resolution of 1200 dpi; combination artwork (line/tone) at a resolution of 800 dpi; black and white halftone artwork should be saved in ‘grayscale’ mode at a resolution of 300dpi; colour halftone artwork should be saved in CMYK mode at a resolution of 400 dpi.

• Submit multipart figures in one single electronic file.

Author Requirements

It is not necessary for authors to indicate that a figure should be displayed in colour. Cambridge Core will assume that any author who submits figures in colour wants and agrees to their being produced in colour online. It is the author’s responsibility to declare otherwise. Colour figures must be submitted before the paper is accepted for publication, and cannot be received later in the process.

Exceptions to Free Colour:

• Colour figures submitted to Journal of Developmental Origins of Health and Disease will be published in colour free of charge with the following exceptions:

• The colour figure file is deemed unusable due to production standards or poor colour quality and must be converted to black and white.

• The author gives explicit instructions to convert the colour figure to black and white.

What to Expect

Authors will see these colour figures when viewing their author page proofs on screen. Authors will NOT be allowed to submit colour figures to replace black and white figures in the page proof stage.

The use of Abbreviations, except those that are widely used, is strongly discouraged. They should be used only if they contribute to better comprehension of the manuscript. Acronyms should be spelled out at first mention. Metric system (SI) units should be used.

J DOHaD encourages submissions from all over the world. Authors who are not fluent in written English are encouraged to seek assistance in this regard before submitting their manuscripts.

Acknowledgements

Here you may acknowledge individuals or organisations that provided advice and/or support (non-financial). Formal financial support and funding should be listed in the following section.

The Acknowledgements should be placed after the main body of the text before Financial Support. If there are no Acknowledgements, the title should be inserted followed by "None". Papers that do not include an Acknowledgements section will not be reviewed.

Financial Support

Please provide details of the sources of financial support for all authors, including grant numbers. This is particularly important in the case of research that is supported by industry. Support from industry not only includes direct financial support for the study but also support in kind such as provision of medications, equipment, kits or reagents without charge or at reduced cost and provision of services such as statistical analysis. For example, "This work was supported by the Medical research Council (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 Wellcome Trust (A.B., grant numbers XXXX, YYYY), (C.D., grant number ZZZZ); the Natural Environment Research Council (E.F., grant number FFFF); and the National Institutes of Health (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."

The Financial Support statement should be placed after the Acknowledgements and before the Conflicts of Interest section. Papers that do not include a Financial Support statement will not be reviewed.

Conflicts of Interest

Conflict of interest exists when an author has interests that might inappropriately influence his or her judgement, even if that judgement is not influenced. Because of this, authors must disclose potentially conflicting interests so that others can make judgements about such effects. At the time of submission authors should disclose any financial arrangements or connections they may have that are pertinent to the submitted manuscript and that may be perceived as potentially biasing their paper. Non-financial interests that could be relevant in this context should also be disclosed. If no relevant interests exist, this should be stated. This requirement applies to all the authors of a paper and to all categories of papers including letters to the editor.

The Conflicts of Interest section should be placed after Financial Support. If there are no interests to declare, the title should be inserted followed by "None".

Papers that do not include a Conflicts of Interest section will not be reviewed.

Ethical Standards

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 guidelines on human experimentation (please name) and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2008, and has been approved by the institutional committees (please name) ." and "The authors assert that all procedures contributing to this work comply with the ethical standards of the relevant national guides on the care and use of laboratory animals (please name) and has been approved by the institutional committee (please name)."

The Ethical Standards statement should be placed after the Conflicts of Interest section before the References. If the research does not involve human and/or animal experimentation, this statement should be omitted. Papers reporting the results of human and/or animal experimentation that do not contain an Ethical Standards statement will not be reviewed. For more information on the ethical standards and procedures of Cambridge Core, please visit https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/authors/publishing-ethics.

The requirements of DOH are in accordance with the Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals produced by the ICMJE, and authors are encouraged to consult the latest guidelines, which contain useful, general information about preparing scientific papers.

For more specialised instances of the type of trials used in your paper, please see more specific guidelines below.

Animal studies

For studies involving laboratory animals, authors should consult the Animal Research: Reporting of In Vivo Experiments (ARRIVE) guidelines (http://www.nc3rs.org.uk/arrive-guidelines).

Systematic Review/Meta-Analyses

For systematic reviews and meta-analyses, authors should consult the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) Statement (www.prisma-statement.org/). This policy includes all systematic reviews, including those for observational studies.

Randomised trials

For reporting results of randomised trials, authors should consult the CONSORT Statement (http://www.consort-statement.org/), which is an evidence-based, minimum set of recommendations for reporting randomized trials.

Supplemental on-line material

The online platform gives authors the opportunity to include data that would be impossible or impractical to include in the printed version. These data might substantially enhance the importance of the research and might also be of benefit to readers. Authors may include tables and figures as well as data such as videos, 3-D structures/images, extensive datasets and any other supplementary material not suitable for print duplication. All supplementary material must be submitted with the original manuscript. Supplementary data should be referred to in the text with the prefix "S" (e.g. Supplementary Table S1, Supplementary Figure S1). Supplementary files will not be copy-edited, and will be published as supplied.

References

References should be numbered consecutively (in superscript) as they appear in the text. Type the reference list with double-spacing on a separate sheet. References (using Index Medicus abbreviations) should appear in the style as demonstrated below. Please note that if six authors or more, the first three authors should be listed and then ‘et al.’. Examples:

1. Burdge GC, Slater-Jefferies J, Torrens C, et al. Dietary protein restriction of pregnant rats in the F0 generation induces altered methylation of hepatic gene promoters in the adult male offspring in the F1 and F2 generations. Br J Nutr. 2007; 97, 435-439.

2. Gilbert JS, Nijland MJ. Sex differences in the developmental origins of hypertension and cardiorenal disease. Am J Physiol Regul Integr Comp Physiol. 2008; 295, 1941-1952.

3. Mitchell M, Schulz SL, Armstrong DT, Lane M. Metabolic and Mitochondrial Dysfunction in Early Mouse Embryos Following Maternal Dietary Protein Intervention. Biol Reprod. 2009 [Epub ahead of print].

4. Gluckman PD, Hanson MA. The developmental origins of health and disease: an overview. In Developmental Origins of Health and Disease (eds. Gluckman P, Hanson M), 2006; pp. 1-5. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

For work that is 'in press' i.e., accepted for publication but not yet published, '(In Press)' should be written in parenthesis and not the year of expected publication.

Proofs

The publisher reserves the right to copy-edit manuscripts. The corresponding author will receive page proofs for final proofreading. These should be checked and returned within 2 days of receipt. The publisher reserves the right to charge authors for excessive correction of non-typographical errors.

Offprints

The corresponding author will receive a PDF file of the article when it is published.