Submissions

Author Guidelines

Formatting

The preferred format for text is Microsoft Word.

Use of a ‘standard’ font, preferably 12-point Times New Roman. For mathematical symbols, Greek letters and other special characters, use normal text or Symbol font. Word Equation Editor/MathType should be used only for formulae that cannot be produced using normal text or Symbol font.

Cover letter. Please supply a cover letter with your initial submission. This is an opportunity to discuss the importance of the submitted work and why it is appropriate for the journal. Please avoid repeating information that is already present in the abstract and introduction. The cover letter is not shared with the referees and should be used to provide confidential information such as conflicts of interest and to declare any related work that is in-press or submitted elsewhere.

Articles

Title. Titles must have <110 characters including spaces and should avoid technical terms, abbreviations, and active verbs.

Authors. Corresponding author(s) should be identified with an asterisk. The primary author must be an undergraduate researcher. Senior authors should be limited to one or two and must represent mentorship only in the project.

Author’s Biography. Please include a short biography of the primary (student) author to be included in the publication. Approximately 50 words identifying your program and what your future plans are (either professionally, with respect to your research, or both).

Abstract. Provide a general introduction to the topic and a brief non-technical summary of your main results and their implication. Approximately 250 words, unreferenced.

Articles: Main text of no more than 2,500 words (excluding counts listed below) and 4 display items (figures, tables); as a guideline, up to 30 references. Required headings are ‘Results’, ‘Discussion’, and ‘Future Directions.' Subsection headings may be used as appropriate.

Methods. The Methods section should contain all elements necessary for the interpretation and replication of the results. Methods should be written as concisely as possible and typically do not exceed 1,000 words but may be longer if necessary. References to methods performed in other papers are acceptable.

Reviews

Reviews will be accepted on a general topic identified for each issue. Reviews should be authored solely by undergraduate science students.

Title. Titles must have <110 characters including spaces and should avoid technical terms, abbreviations, and active verbs.

Author. The author must be an undergraduate student. It is expected that authors write under the mentorship of an instructor, however, authorship should be restricted to one student.

Review Guidelines.

• Reviews focus on one topical aspect of a field rather than providing a comprehensive literature survey.
• All Reviews start with a 200-word maximum preface, which should set the stage and end with a summary sentence. It is important that the preface contains essential keywords.
• Reviews vary in length depending on the topic and should not generally be more than 3 pages long. As a guideline, most reviews should include no more than 20 references. Display items and explanatory boxes (used for explanation of technical points or background material) are welcomed. As a guideline, 1000 words, 1 display items (figures/tables/boxes) and a modest citation list (no more than 20 references) will occupy 3 pages.
• Highlighted references:
  • For papers highlighting a single reference, please include a single sentence, in bold text, beneath the review's title, identifying the main reference for this review.
  • For papers highlighting more than a single reference, please include a single sentence, in bold text, beneath each of what you consider to be the most important or relevant 3 to 5 references in your list, to explain the significance of the work.
• The author is responsible for ensuring that the necessary permission has been obtained for the re-use of any figures previously published elsewhere.

For all Submissions

References. List only one publication with each number. Include the title of the cited article or dataset formatted according to the guidelines of Nature magazine.

Acknowledgments (optional). Keep acknowledgments brief (<100) and do not include thanks to anonymous referees or editors, or effusive comments. Grant or contribution numbers may be acknowledged (these are excluded from the word count).

Author contributions. Authors must include a statement that specifies the individual contributions of each co-author. For example: "A.P.M. ‘contributed’ Y and Z; B.T.R. ‘contributed’ Y,” etc. Senior authors should have contributed to the design of experimental work, writing, or substantial revision of the submission, but not to substantial experimental work.

Author contribution statements

Authorship provides credit for a researcher’s contributions to a study and carries accountability.

Each author is expected to have made substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data; or the creation of new software used in the work; or have drafted the work or substantively revised it

Authors will have approved the submitted version (and any substantially modified version that involves the author's contribution to the study);

Finally, authors have agreed to both be personally accountable for the author's own contributions and to ensure that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work, even ones in which the author was not personally involved, are appropriately investigated, resolved, and the resolution documented in the literature.

Competing interests. The Midwestern Journal of Undergraduate Sciences requires that any competing interests be declared in the cover letter accompanying the submission

Materials & Correspondence. Indicate the author to whom correspondence and material requests should be addressed.

Tables. Each table should be accompanied by a short title sentence describing what the table shows. Further details can be included as footnotes to the table.

Figures

High-resolution image files are required, please ensure images are of sufficient resolution for readers, referees, and editors to properly assess the data. We prefer the figures to be supplied as separate image files rather than incorporated into the document.

Guidelines for final figure preparation are included below and here if you wish to minimize later revisions and possible delays.

• Provide images in RGB color and at 300 dpi or higher resolution.
• Use the same typeface (Arial or Helvetica) for all figures. Use symbol font for Greek letters.
• Use distinct colors with comparable visibility and avoid the use of red and green for contrast. Recoloring primary data, such as fluorescence images, to color-safe combinations such as green and magenta or other accessible color palettes, is strongly encouraged. Use of the rainbow color scale should be avoided.
• Figures are best prepared at the size (or larger than what) you would expect them to appear in print. At this size, the optimum font size is 7pt.
• We prefer vector files with editable layers. Acceptable formats are: .ai, .eps, .pdf, .ps, .svg for fully editable vector-based art; layered .psd or .tif for editable layered art; .psd, .tif, .png or .jpg for bitmap images; .ppt if fully editable and without styling effects; ChemDraw (.cdx) for chemical structures.
• Please refer to the Nature Research chemical structures style guide for the formatting of chemical structures.

Figure legends of <250 words each should begin with a brief title sentence for the whole figure and continue with a short statement of what is depicted in the figure, not the results (or data) of the experiment or the methods used. Legends should be detailed enough so that each figure and caption can, as far as possible, be understood in isolation from the main text.

Statistical information

Comprehensive information on the statistical analyses used must be included in the paper. The Methods must include a statistics section where you describe the statistical tests used and whether they were one- or two-tailed. Please ensure that the error bars are defined throughout the figures. For all statistics (including error bars), provide the EXACT n values used to calculate the statistics (reporting individual values rather than a range if n varied among experiments). For representative results, report the number of times that the measurements were repeated. Where relevant, provide exact values for both significant and non-significant P values. For ANOVAs, provide F values and degrees of freedom. For t-tests, provide t-values and degrees of freedom. Please specifically define the replicates.

Supplementary information

This should be limited to material that is essential background (for example, large data sets and calculations), but which is too large, impractical, or specialized to justify inclusion in the printed version of the article. Any figures or small tables should ideally be supplied as Extended Data, not Supplementary Information.

Computer code

Any previously unreported custom computer code used to generate results reported in the manuscript and that is central to the main claims must be made available to editors and referees upon request.

For all studies using custom code that is deemed central to the conclusions, a statement must be included in the Methods section, under the heading "Code availability", indicating whether and how the code can be accessed, including any restrictions.