Guidelines for preparation of meeting abstracts

Abstracts should be submitted in the format set out below in order that the material can be easily prepared for online publication. As further guidance we supply a sample Word document showing how to use BioMed Central's meeting abstract format.

All abstracts should be in English. Spelling should be US English or British English, but not a mixture.

Files may be submitted in Microsoft Word (any version), WordPerfect (any version) or in universal Rich Text Format (.RTF), which allows for insertion of graphics.

Title

The title should be in bold, sentence case with no full stop at the end, e.g.:

The formation of a Ca²⁺-dependent complex of C-reactive protein and very low density lipoprotein causes the biphasic transmittance waveform

Authors

Author names should be in regular font, as first name and surname with no full stops. Names should be separated by a comma. The corresponding author's name should be underlined. Where authors are from a number of different institutions, the appropriate institution number from the affiliation list should be given as a superscript number immediately after each author's name, e.g.:

Michael Nesheim¹, John Samis², John Walker¹, Timothy Fischer^3,5, Liliana Tejidorp³, Greg Jones³, Wim Houdijk³, Alan Giles³, Lev Becker¹, Marlys Koschinsky¹, Richard Wenstone⁴, Colin Downey⁴, Cheng Hock Toh⁴

If the authors are presenting an abstract on behalf of a study group, this information should not be included in the author list, but should appear in an Acknowledgements section towards the end of the abstract.

Affiliations

Affiliations should be in italics, and should include department, institute, town and country. Where there are multiple affiliations, each should be listed as a separate paragraph. Each institute should appear in the order used against the author names (see above paragraph) and show the appropriate superscript number, e.g.:

¹ Department of Biochemistry, Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada, K7L 3N6
² Department of Pathology, Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada, K7L 3N6
³ Organon Teknika Corporation, Durham, NC 27712, USA
⁴ Department of Haematology, Royal Liverpool University Hospital, Liverpool L7 8XP, UK
⁵ Current address, Ventana Medical Systems, Tucson, Arizona, USA

Author contact details

If you supply e-mail addresses, please provide them in the following format with "E-mail:" preceding the address:

E-mail: me@bmc.com

Main text

• Please use regular font (but see notes about Structured Abstracts below)
• Please use single line spacing
• Type the text unjustified, without hyphenating words at line breaks
• Use hard returns only to end headings and paragraphs, not to rearrange lines
• Use the BioMed Central reference format (see below)
• Greek and other special characters may be included. If you are unable to reproduce a particular special character, please type out the name of the symbol in full
• SI Units should be used throughout (litre and molar are permitted, however)
• Web links (URLs) should be provided in full, including both the title of the site and the URL, in the following format:
  Mouse Tumor Biology Database [http://tumor.informatics.jax.org/cancer_links.html]
• Abbreviations should be used as sparingly as possible. They should be defined when first used

Structured abstracts

In structured abstracts, paragraph headings should be typed in bold and immediately followed by a colon. Each heading should be in a separate paragraph, e.g.:

Background:
Followed by regular text, on a new line and in the same format as shown above for main text.
Materials and Methods:
Results:
Conclusions:

Tables

Tables should be numbered (e.g. Table 1) and titled and should be included in the document where they are to appear. The table title should be immediately preceded by "Table title:" - please note that this text is necessary for processing purposes and will not appear in the finished version, e.g.:

Table title: Table 1. CRP by indicators of social class in VERA

Tables should be formatted using the "Table function" in a word processing program to ensure that columns of data are kept aligned when the file is sent electronically for review. This will not always be the case if columns are generated by simply using tabs to separate text. Columns and rows of data should be made visibly distinct by ensuring the borders of each cell display as black lines.

Table footnotes should be underlined, and immediately preceded by "Table Footnote:" - as above, this text will not appear in the finished version, but is required for processing purposes, e.g.:

Table Footnote: #a=worker and farmers; b=clerks and civil servants, c=employers, freelancer; *p for difference between upper and bottom category; § adjusted for age, sex, smoking status, BMI, physical activity, and HDL-cholesterol

Figures

Images should be supplied as 300 dpi minimum (600 dpi if abstracts are to be printed). Figures and illustrations should be numbered (e.g. Figure 1) and must be supplied electronically in the body of the text. For processing purposes, the figure number should be immediately preceded by "Figure Title:" though this text will not appear in the finished version, e.g.:

Figure Title: Figure 1

Figure captions should be underlined, and preceded with the words "Figure Caption", e.g.

Figure Caption: Immunoblot of monoclonal antibodies against IROMPs of A. baumannii ATCC 19606 Immunoblot of monoclonal antibodies with OMP of A. baumanni grown in CDM-Fe medium.

Acknowledgements

Brief acknowledgements may be included and should be placed after Conclusions and before the References. If the abstract is being presented on behalf of a study group, this information should be noted here rather than in the author list.

References

All references should be cited consecutively in the text, using numbers in square brackets. Only papers that have been published, or are in press, or are available through public e-print/preprint servers should be included in the reference list. Submitted manuscripts, personal communications (which can be included only with permission), unpublished manuscripts and unpublished data should not be cited in the reference list, although they may be referred to in the text (e.g. J Smith, personal communication, 2001).

Journal abbreviations should follow MEDLINE standards. For each reference, name all authors unless there are more than ten, in which case name the first ten followed by et al. Page numbers for journal articles should be given in full (e.g. 5672-5679, not 5672-9). References should be laid out at the end of the abstract in BioMed Central style (see below) and preceded by the relevant reference number in square brackets.

Journal article

P Chomczynski, N Sacchi: Single-step method of RNA isolation by acid guanidinium thiocyanate-phenol-chloroform extraction. Anal Biochem 1987, 162: 156-159.

Complete book

J Sambrook, EF Fitsch, T Maniatis: Molecular Cloning: A Laboratory Manual. Cold Spring Harbor, Cold Spring Harbor Press 1989.

Article or chapter in a book

S Wessely, F Wood: Peer review of grant applications: a systematic review. In: Peer review in Health Sciences (Edited by Godlee F, Jefferson T). London, BMJ Books 1999, 14-31.

Book with institutional author

Advisory Committee on Genetic Modification: Annual Report London 1999.