Manuscript Pre-submission Checklist

INCOMPLETE WORK IN PROGRESS

• Check that the submission includes the ORCIDs for all authors (usually listed on the title page, some journals request these during the submission process).
• All article submissions with a University of Exeter author or co-author must include set text in the acknowledgements section of the manuscript and in any covering letter: ‘For the purpose of open access, the author has applied a ‘Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) licence to any Author Accepted Manuscript version arising’    
• Ensure that there are continuous line numbers (to facilitate the review process)
• Confirm that all figures and tables are mentioned in the main text, in the correct order.
• Confirm that there is an Open Research statement (rather than an outdated ‘Data Availability’ statement) at the end of the manuscript, if appropriate (it usually is!), explaining where data and code can be accessed with unique identifiers (such as DOIs and hyperlinks).
• Confirm that any multi-authored manuscript includes an explicit statement of contribution for all authors using the Contributor Role Taxonomy (CRediT) (see recent TESS Lab outputs for examples).
• Author first names should normally be written out in full (rather than provided as initials).
• Each affiliation must normally include the institution, city (separate from the institution), and country. The name of the city is usually required separately from the institution, even if it is a part of the institution’s name (e.g. ‘University of Exeter, Exeter, UK’).
• At least one corresponding author must be designated, and an email address must be provided for each corresponding author along with their affiliations.
• Ensure that the Acknowledgements section acknowledges all funding and other material assistance.
• If you include a Supplementary Information document (often appropriate), ensure that all items in it are explicitly referred to in the main text.
• Avoid use of the word “significant” unless referring to the results of a statistical test.
• Embed display items (e.g., figures and tables) within the manuscript, as this presentation is preferred by most editors and reviewers for efficient review.
• In any tables, numeric values should normally be right-justified to facilitate visual comparison.
• Carefully check the journal’s Guidance to Authors for further instructions.
• Ensure that you have communicated with all co-authors, including giving them a reasonable time to review and approve the manuscript prior to submission (normally a minimum of two weeks, often more).
• For the first submission, render a PDF version of the Manuscript and Supplementary Information files, to reduce the risk of document formatting errors during the submission process.