Nutrimentum et curae (Nutr Cur – ISSN 2974-6663) is a multidisciplinary, open access, peer-reviewed, online journal that publishes articles related to the field of nutrimentum and clinics. Topics covered by the journal include basic research, prevention, translational research, public health, cancer and nutrimentum, pharmacology and pharmacogenomics aspects, treatment, alternative therapies, psychology of eating disorders, innovative aspects regarding diagnosis and pathology.

Nutrimentum et curae (Nutr Cur) publishes Editorials, Reviews, Original articles/Research articles, Meta-analyses, Brief communication, Short reports, Case reports, and Scientific Correspondence on subjects regarding all areas of nutrimentum.

Nutr Cur does not accept for the publication “data not shown” or “unpublished data”.

Articles are posted online as soon as they have completed the review and layout process in a fully citable form and associated with a universal digital object identifier (DOI). All articles can be viewed and downloaded for free without subscription and/or login. The journal applies the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license to articles.

This journal does not charge APCs or submission charges. No fee is required to publish in our Journal.

Original Articles
Original Articles must present novel work that makes a significant impact within the aims and scope of the journal, and which provides an important advancement in the field. Supporting data or additional experimental details can be submitted as Supplementary Information. The Abstract must not exceed 300 words and must be structured (Background or Objective, Materials and Methods, Results, and Conclusions).

Meta-analyses
Meta-analyses use statistical methods to combine data from multiple and systematically selected studies. These manuscripts must be based on a rigorous methodological and statistical approach described in detail in the methods section applied to a relevant basic or clinical issue. This contribution may also undergo statistical revision. Meta-Analyses should be conducted according to the recommendations of PRISMA (http://www.prisma-statement.org/).

Review Articles
Reviews are comprehensive or narrative appraisals of research in a particular field of current interest. Reviews highlight recent advances in research, current challenges and unmet needs. Authors are also encouraged to provide their perspective on current progress and goals to achieve. The Abstract must not exceed 200 words.

Systematic Reviews
Systematic Reviews must systematically include, appraise and summarize evidence on a specific topic. For Systematic Reviews, PRISMA recommendations must be followed (http://www.prisma-statement.org/).

Clinical Trial
Clinical Trial are articles that describe the results of interventional studies related to health. They can include pilot studies, safety and efficacy trials, surrogate endpoint studies, and proof-of concept studies.

Case Reports
Case Reports present a notable medical case or series of related cases of particular interest to the field of regenerative medicine. It is recommended, but not mandatory, that the Case Reports are accompanied by a review of the literature on the subject covered in the manuscript. The abstract must not exceed 200 words.

Brief Reports/Communications
Brief Reports/Communications are short manuscripts that have preliminary data on a specific issue (no more than 5 authors). The Abstract must not exceed 75 words, the manuscript 700 (excluded references), maximum 2 tables or figures, and maximum 15 references.

Editorials
Editorials are short articles that provide an insight into issues of topical importance. The articles should provide an expert perspective on a topical topic. This contribution is usually solicited by the Editorial team. If you wish to propose an unsolicited editorial, authors are advised to contact our editorial team (nutritionemdirection@gmail.com). The text must not exceed 1500 words and the number of the references must not exceed 15.

Letters to the Editor
Letters to the Editor consists of comments on an article published in Nutr Cur. Inclusion of Letters to the Editor in the journal is at the discretion of the Editor-in-Chief, and they may undergo external peer review. All Letters to the Editor will be subsequently sent to the author of the original article, who will have 45 days to provide a Reply to be published alongside the Letter.

Letters are restricted to the discussion of papers already published in the journal, with a maximum of 500 words, one table or figure and up to 10 references.

Manuscript Submission
Authors should submit manuscripts, including supporting documents, Tables and figures to the Submission System.

Authors must submit manuscripts that are not published, in press, or submitted to other scientific journals, or other venues that could be considered formal publication (including preprints), or on the authors’ own website. The correspondence will be received by the Corresponding Author. The submission procedure requires a declaration of personal interests and funding interests of all authors; these details should also be included in the manuscript (see below).

Supporting Documents
Upon submission all manuscripts should include the following documents:

Authorship and Copyright
Authors must fulfill the following criteria:

• She/He must have made a substantial contribution to research design, or to the acquisition, analysis or interpretation of data;
• She/He must have drafted the paper or revised it critically;
• She/He must have given approval of the submitted and final versions.

Copyright Transfer Agreement (CTA): Nutr Cur Authors will be required to sign a Copyright Transfer Agreement (click to download PDF) for all papers submitted or accepted for publication. Signature of the CTA is a condition of publication, and papers will not be passed to the publisher for production unless a signed form has been received. After submission, Authors cannot submit their manuscripts to other journals. After acceptance, the Publisher got the rights and became the owner of the paper. The original completed Copyright Transfer Agreement must be signed by the corresponding Author. The Editors retain the right to modify the style and length of a contribution (major changes being agreed with the corresponding Author) and to decide the time of publication.

Permissions
To reproduce any third-party material, such as figures or tables, authors must request, obtain and show permission from the copyright holder.

A statement indicating that permission has been obtained must be included in the relevant legend/footnote.

General Information
The manuscript should be typed with a wide margin. Authors should retain one copy of all files, as the Editors cannot accept responsibility for loss of, or damage to, a manuscript.

The text should start with a structured Abstract, not exceeding 300 words, organized into sections using all of the following headings INTRODUCTION or BACKGROUND or OBJECTIVE, PATIENTS AND METHODS or MATERIALS AND METHODS, RESULTS, CONCLUSIONS, REFERENCES.

Pages should be numbered consecutively in Arabic numerals, including acknowledgments, and declaration of interests. In a separate file must be submit tables, figures, figures’ legends (with magnifications if needed).

Abbreviations should be defined at the first use and should be kept to a minimum.

Language editing: if English is not your first language, language editing is required before submission to ensure that the academic content of your paper is fully understood by journal editors and reviewers.

References should be numbered in the order in which they are first mentioned in the text, and should be identified in the text, tables, and legends by Arabic numbers in superscript. The US National Library of Medicine and used in Index Medicus applies (for more details see the section “References”). References must be verified by the Authors against the original documents.

Authors should observe the following guidelines.

• Do not attempt to make your output approximate or match the typeset page.
• Be consistent in style (i.e., text formatting, units, abbreviations).
• End paragraphs in a uniform manner, and in a different manner from line endings within paragraphs. A frequently used paragraph ending is simply two carriage returns.
• Use standard spacing in your document. Do not add extra line spacing (except as a normal paragraph ending indication) above or below titles, subheads, or between paragraphs.
• Avoid using multiple spaces (horizontal) in your electronic manuscript. End sentences with only one space. Never use multiple spaces for horizontal positioning of text.
• Tables and figure captions should be prepared in separate files. Authors must indicate where to place Tables and Figures within the text with a reference at the end of the relevant sentence.

Additional tables or figures and/or extra methodological detail can be included in a separate Supplementary Appendix.

Authors who want to publish in our Journal must follow the guidelines on Good Publication Practice as reported in COPE and Council of Science Editors. These guidelines aim to ensure that articles are published in a responsible and ethical manner.

Cover Letter
Authors who submit manuscripts to Nutrimentum et curae (Nutr Cur) must provide a Cover Letter which briefly details the article relevance and the news that it brings to the readers of the journal. The Cover Letter must include contact information (affiliation, postal address, e-mail address, telephone number) for all authors. Authors should indicate a Corresponding Author to whom all correspondence regarding the manuscript will be sent. In the Letter, authors must confirm that the manuscript has been submitted solely to this journal and is not published, in press, or submitted elsewhere (including preprint servers). Authors must confirm that all the research meets the ethical guidelines, including adherence to the legal requirements of the country where the study was conducted. Authors must confirm that the manuscript has been read and approved by all included authors and that there are no other persons who claim authorship. Cover Letter must be signed by the Corresponding Author on behalf of all the other authors. Additionally, all authors must sign the Copyright Transfer Agreement (click to download PDF).

Papers must be submitted exclusively to the Journal, and are accepted on the understanding that they have not been, and will not be, published elsewhere.

Title page
The Authors’ names, appointments and work address at the relevant time, plus the full contact details of the Corresponding Author including their current e-mail address must be reported.

A full and a short running title.

Key words for indexing purposes (3-7).

Abstract
The abstract of original article must be structured (Introduction or Background, Patients and Methods or Materials and Methods, Results, Conclusions, and References) and not exceed 300 words. The abstract of brief communication (75 words) and review (200 words) must be unstructured.

Manuscript
The paper should then proceed conventionally:

• Introduction or Background or Objective
• Materials and Methods or Patients and Methods
• Results
• Discussion
• Conclusions
• References

All references should be numbered consecutively in order of appearance and should be as complete as possible. In text citations should cite references in consecutive order using Arabic superscript numerals;

When reporting the reference numbers in the text, you have to follow these rules: “1-2” must be written as “1,2” and so on. You have to put “-” just in case you have many consecutive numbers. For example: “1,2,3,4,5,6” must be written as “1-6”;

References’ numbers must follow a chronological order within the text and must be inserted before the punctuation (YES “12.” NO “.12”);

Complete all the references in accordance with the Instructions for the authors (see at nutrimentumetcurae.com). List as many authors as possible; name of the journal: write the international acronyms; you must put a space after semicolon and colon (NOT 2014;2014:907915, YES 2014; 2014: 907915); moreover, initial and final pages must be entirely reported (NOT 135-46; YES 135-146); Example 1: Bowcock NL, Shapiro AJ, Lemberg DA, Leach ST. The paediatric gut microbiome: a year in review. Microb Health Dis 2021; 3: e582. DOI: 10.26355/mhd_20219_582.

Example 2: Daniel J Raiten, Fayrouz A Sakr Ashour, A Catharine Ross, Simin N Meydani, Harry D Dawson, Charles B Stephensen, Bernard J Brabin, Parminder S Suchdev, Ben van Ommen, the INSPIRE Consultative Group. Inflammation and Nutrimentumal Science for Programs/Policies and Interpretation of Research Evidence (INSPIRE). J Nutr. 2015 May; 145(5): 1039S-1108S. DOI: 10.3945/jn.114.194571.

In the references, you must substitute “and” with “,” (comma) before the last author’s name;

In the references, all the authors must be written with the same character size. You must write only the first letter in capital letter, without change the size of them.

Example (NOT): IANIRO G, DEL VECCHIO LE, FIORANI M, PORCARI S, BIBBÒ S, CAMMAROTA G. The mutual relationship between COVID-19 and gut microbiota. Microbiota in Health and Disease 2021; 3: e578. DOI: 10.26355/mhd_20219_578

Example (YES): Ianiro G, Del Vecchio LE, Fiorani M, Porcari S, Bibbò S, Cammarota G. Microb Health Dis 2021; 3: e578. DOI: 10.26355/mhd_20219_578

Illustrations
The authors are encouraged to send the highest-quality figures possible. For the accepted file format, see below:

Document files

• Word

Graphic files

• GIF
• TIF (or TIFF)
• EPS
• PNG
• JPG (or JPEG)
• BMP

Movies

• QuickTime
• MPEG
• AVI

Figures and Tables
The figure resolution/specification for various types of original figures, at their final size, should be as follows: Line art – Minimum 600 dpi, measuring preferably 13 by 18 cm and no more than 20 by 25 cm in size. Halftone (i.e., both B/W and Color photographs) – Minimum 300 dpi, measuring preferably 13 by 18 cm and no more than 20 by 25 cm in size. Line and tone (line art and halftone combined) – Minimum 600 dpi, measuring preferably 13 by 18 cm and no more than 20 by 25 cm in size.

For line figures, the lines should be solid, the text in a standard font and not blurred, and the overall image should be sharp and clear. As a guide, if the electronic files are viewed at 400% on the computer screen and they look blurred or pixelated in any way then they will NOT be of sufficient quality for printing.

Tables should be self-contained and complete; they must not duplicate the information already contained in the text. They should be supplied as editable files (preferably word files), not pasted as images. All abbreviations must be defined in footnotes. Footnote symbols: †, ‡, §, ¶, should be used (in that order) and *, **, *** should be reserved for p-values. Statistical measures such as SD or SEM should be identified in the headings.

Figure and table legends must be able to stand alone in the text and thus full descriptive legends for all figures and tables should be supplied.

Drug Names
In general, generic names should be used. If an Author desires, brand names may be inserted in parentheses. Drug names are spelled out according to the European Pharmacopoeia, but the American spelling should be used after the first use of a drug name.

Genetic Nomenclature
Sequence variants should be described in the text and tables using both DNA and protein designations whenever appropriate. Sequence variant nomenclature must follow the current HGVS guidelines; see http://varnomen.hgvs.org/

Statistics
Methods should be referenced. Two-tailed significance tests should be used unless explicitly stated. Controls should be described as completely as experimental subjects. Measures of location should be accompanied by measures of variability (e.g., mean and confidence intervals) as well as conventional probability values. Clinical trial reports should include the power of the study design.

Ethics, Institutional Review Boards and Informed Consent
Submitted clinical studies must include a reference to the appropriate Ethics Committee / Institutional Review Board (IRB) and have an appropriate Consent Form approved by the Ethics Committee / IRB before enrollment of the research subjects in the reported study. Appropriate review process and approval should be also documented for all pre-clinical experimental studies submitted. When reporting experiments on human subjects, authors should indicate whether the procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation (institutional and national) and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2000. If doubt exists whether the research was conducted in accordance with the Helsinki Declaration, the authors must explain the rationale for their approach, and demonstrate that the institutional review body explicitly approved the doubtful aspects of the study.

Animal Ethics
When reporting experiments on animals, authors must indicate whether institutional and national standards for the care and use of laboratory animals were followed. Should any questionable approval process emerge, the Editors reserve the right to reject any submitted paper.

Informed Consent
Appropriate consents, permissions and releases must be obtained where authors wish to include case details or other personal information or images of patients and any other individuals in their publication. This is to comply with all applicable laws and regulations concerning the privacy and/or security of personal information, including the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) (EU) 2016/679.

Patients have a right to privacy that should not be violated without informed consent. Identifying information, including names, initials, or hospital numbers, should not be published in written descriptions, photographs, or pedigrees unless the information is essential for scientific purposes and the patient (or parent or guardian) gives written informed consent for publication. Informed consent for this purpose requires that an identifiable patient be shown the manuscript to be published. Authors should disclose to these patients whether any potential identifiable material might be available via the Internet as well as in print after publication.

The following statement must be included in each manuscript submitted to our journal:

Informed consent – Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

Some important things to know

• Images of patients or research subjects should not be used unless the information is essential for scientific purposes and explicit permission has been given as part of the consent.
• If identifying characteristics are altered to protect anonymity, authors should provide assurances that such alterations do not distort scientific meaning.
• Formal consents are not required for the use of entirely anonymized images from which the individual cannot be identified – for example, x-rays, ultrasound images, laparoscopic images etc.
• If consent has not been obtained, it is generally not sufficient to anonymize a photograph simply by using eye bars or blurring the face of the individual concerned.

Plagiarism or other types of unethical publication practice
Authors who want to publish in our Journal must follow the guidelines on Good Publication Practice as reported in COPE and Council of Science Editors. These guidelines aim to ensure that articles are published in a responsible and ethical manner.

The first thing we do is conduct an early investigation using our anti‐plagiarism software (Grammarly and iThenticate). Our Journal makes a plagiarism checker by a certificate program on all the articles. Our anti‐plagiarism software, however, will not identify “manipulated illustrations”.

Nutr Cur disapproves any kind of malpractice and unethical practice.

Clinical trials
For reporting Clinical Trials Conducted by Pharmaceutical Companies Please ensure that clinical trials sponsored by pharmaceutical companies follow the guidelines on Good Publication Practice: https://publicationethics.org/resources/code-conduct and http://www.gpp-guidelines.org

These guidelines aim to ensure that such trials are published in a responsible and ethical manner. The guidelines cover companies’ responsibility to endeavor to publish results of all studies, companies’ relations with investigators, measures to prevent redundant or premature publication, methods to improve trial identification, and the role of professional medical writers. Moreover, authors are requested to register the clinical trial presented in the manuscript in a public trials registry and include the trial registration number at the end of the abstract or manuscript. See also http://www.icmje.org/about-icmje/faqs/icmje-recommendations/ found in ICMJE’s Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals.

Funding
All funding sources for the study must be reported in a section entitled “Funding.” This should appear at the end of the manuscript.

Acknowledgments
Any assistance in preparing the manuscript must be stated. Personal acknowledgment must precede those of institutions of agencies.

Authorship
Authors must fulfill the following criteria:

• She/He must have made a substantial contribution to research design, or to the acquisition, analysis or interpretation of data;
• She/He must have drafted the paper or revised it critically;
• She/He must have given approval of the submitted and final versions.

Revised Articles
Revised articles must be submitted again within 3 months, or else will be considered as retired.

Galley Proofs
The corresponding Author will receive an e-mail with a pdf file of the galley proof. For this reason, please ensure that the name, address and email address of the corresponding Author are clearly indicated on the manuscript title page if she/he is not the first author of the paper. The galley proof can be downloaded as a PDF (portable document format) file. Acrobat Reader will be required in order to read this file. This will enable the file to be opened, read on screen and printed out in order for any corrections to be added. Excessive changes (i.e., over 100 characters) made by the Author to the proofs, excluding typesetting errors, are not permitted. Changes to figures and tables have an extra cost. Please check carefully the galley proof (especially for what concerns the name of Authors, affiliations and corresponding Authors) as after its approval no further change will be possible.

Reprints
Paper reprints shall be charged. Electronic offprints are sent to the first Author at her/his first email address on the title page of the paper, on request.

Supplements
Before proposing a Special issue or a Supplement, read and follow the new DOAJ (https://doaj.org/apply/guide/#special-issues) criteria and COPE guidelines (https://publicationethics.org/sites/default/files/article-collections-best-practice.pdf).

Please also read the instructions below.
The proposal must include some information. (1) The title and topic of the proposed special issue. (2) An index of titles and a list of authors (even if temporary and lightly editable). (3) The Guest Editor’s name (may be more than one), including current affiliations, personal information, institutional email, short CV, and ORCID ID (if available). Guest Editors can only participate as authors in 20% of the articles. (4) Submission deadline and hypothesized revision deadline.

The Editor in Chief and the editorial team will evaluate the proposal. They also reserve the right to evaluate the quality of the articles and their suitability for the journal’s aims before publication.

Preservation and Archiving
Our Journal is committed to the permanent availability and preservation of scholarly research and to ensure accessibility by upgrading digital file formats to comply with new technology standards.

Open Access Policy
All articles published in Nutrimentum et curae (Nutr Cur) are fully open access: immediately freely available to read, download and share. Articles are published under the terms of a Creative Commons license which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium (not for commercial use), provided the original work is properly cited. Articles can be freely downloaded from our website and no subscription and/or login is required.

A complete version of the work and all supplemental materials in a suitable standard electronic format is deposited immediately.

Description of Peer Review
All contributions are initially handled by the Editor-in-Chief (EiC), who together with Associate Editors (AE) make the initial evaluation of the manuscript by verifying whether it falls within the aims of the journal; therefore, the manuscript can be submitted for peer review or rejected if it is not within the scope of the journal. To speed up the review process, only documents that meet our editorial criteria are submitted for formal peer review. Those papers judged by the editors as inappropriate are rejected promptly without external review. After this step, the EiC or an AE assigns the manuscript to 2 or 3 reviewers, among the editorial board members or external expert reviewers in the field. To be selected, reviewers must not have published papers in the last 6 years with none of the authors of the manuscript, must belong to different institutions from authors and must not have any conflict of interest with the content of the manuscript. Following the recommendations from the reviewers, the EiC, or the AE will evaluate them and have final authority on acceptance, revision or rejection. In the final editorial decision, we try to evaluate the strength of the arguments raised by each reviewer and by the authors. We may return to reviewers for further advice, particularly in cases where they disagree with each other, or where the authors believe they have been misunderstood. We take reviewers’ criticisms seriously. In cases where one reviewer alone opposes publication, we may consult the other reviewers.

Reviewer’ selection is critical to the publication process, and we base our choice on expertise, reputation and our own experience on the reviewer’s characteristics.

Reviewers must know that these messages contain confidential information and must be treated as such.

Nutrimentum et curae adopts single-blind peer review. Reviewers are anonymous, unless they want to identify themselves by including their names in the review on our submission system. To proceed with the review process, the selected reviewers need to declare the absence of conflict of interest.

Licensing
Nutrimentum et curae applies the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license to articles. If you submit your paper for publication to our journal, you agree to have the CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license applied to your work as follows:

1. BY) Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.
2. NC) NonCommercial — You may not use the material for commercial purposes.
3. SA) ShareAlike — If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you must distribute your contributions under the same license as the original.

No additional restrictions: you may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.

Notices: you do not have to comply with the license for elements of the material in the public domain or where your use is permitted by an applicable exception or limitation.

No warranties are given. The license may not give you all of the permissions necessary for your intended use. For example, other rights such as publicity, privacy, or moral rights may limit how you use the material.

Authorship
Submission of a manuscript to Nutrimentumem et curae assumes that all the listed authors have agreed on all of the contents, including the author list and author contributions statements. The corresponding author is responsible for this agreement; in detail, all authors have agreed to the submission of the manuscript and have established that he is responsible for managing all communication between the journal and all co-authors, before and after publication. Any changes to the author list after submission, need to be approved by every author.

The author list must include all appropriate researchers and no others. Authorship provides credit for a researcher’s contributions to a study and carries accountability. Nutrimentum et curae does not prescribe the kinds of contributions that warrant authorship but encourage transparency and publication of an authors’ contribution statement since the Journal is not in a position to investigate or adjudicate authorship disputes before or after publication.

The primary affiliation for each author should be the institution where the majority of their work was done.

Author Contributions Statements
Authors are encouraged to include a statement of responsibility in the manuscript that specifies the contribution of every author.

Corresponding Authors’ Responsibilities
The corresponding author is solely responsible for communicating with the journal and with managing communication between coauthors. Before submission, the corresponding author ensures that all authors are included in the author list, its order has been agreed by all authors, and that all authors are aware that the paper was submitted.

At submission, the corresponding author must include written permission from the authors of the work about the mention of any unpublished material included in the manuscript. The corresponding author also must clearly identify any material within the manuscript that has previously been published elsewhere by other authors (for example, figures) and provide written permission from those authors and/or publishers for the re-use of such material.

After acceptance, the proof is sent to the corresponding author, who shares it with all coauthors and deals with the journal on their behalf; the journal will not necessarily correct errors after publication if they result from errors that were present on a proof that was not shown to coauthors before publication. The corresponding author is responsible for the accuracy of all contents in the proof, in particular, that names of coauthors are present and correctly spelled, and affiliations are right.

The name and e-mail address of the corresponding author are published in the paper.

Authors of published material have a responsibility to inform the journal promptly if they become aware of any part that requires correcting. Any published correction requires the consent of all co-authors, so it is preferable that requests for corrections are accompanied by a signed agreement by all authors. In cases where one or some authors do not agree with the correction, the coordinating author must include correspondence to and from the dissenting author(s).

Confidential Process
Nutrimentum et curae editors treat the submitted manuscript and all communication with authors and referees as confidential. Authors must also treat communication with the journal as confidential: correspondence with the journal, reviewers’ reports and other confidential material must not be posted on any website or otherwise publicized without prior permission from the editors, whether or not the submission is eventually published.

Plagiarism or Other Unethical Publication Practice
About plagiarism or other types of unethical publication practice, we follow the COPE and PERK guidelines.

The first thing we do is conduct an early investigation using our anti‐plagiarism software. Our Journal makes a plagiarism checker by a certificate program on all the articles. Also, articles that are related to the suspected case of plagiarism or other unethical practice are accurately checked by either the reviewer feedback and observations or the Editor’s own observations. Our anti‐plagiarism software, however, will not identify “manipulated illustrations”. It is therefore the responsibility of the authors to ensure that the illustrations are their property or have permission to be reused.

Nutrimentum et curae disapproves any kind of malpractice or unethical practice.

Duplicate Publication
Material submitted to Nutrimentum et curae must be original and not published or submitted for publication elsewhere. If part of a contribution that an author wishes to submit to Nutrimentum et curae has appeared or will appear elsewhere, the author must specify the details in the cover letter accompanying the submission. Consideration by the Nutrimentum et curae is possible if the main result, conclusion, or implications are not apparent from the other work, or if there are other factors, for example, if the other work is published in language other than English.

If an author of a submission is re-using a figure or figures published elsewhere, or that is copyrighted, the author must provide documentation that the previous publisher or copyright holder has given permission for the figure to be re-published. The editors of Nutrimentumem et curae consider all accompanying material in good faith and have full permission to publish any part of the submitted material, including illustrations.

Image integrity
Images submitted with a manuscript for review should be minimally processed (for instance, to add arrows to a micrograph). Authors should retain their unprocessed data and metadata files, as editors may request them to aid in manuscript evaluation. All digitized images submitted with the final revision of the manuscript must be of high quality.

Positive and negative controls, as well as molecular size markers, should be included on each gel and blot – either in the main figure or an expanded data supplementary figure.

The authors should provide the editors with original data on request. Cells from multiple fields should not be juxtaposed in a single field; instead multiple supporting fields of cells should be shown as Supplementary Information. Threshold manipulation, expansion or contraction of signal ranges and the altering of high signals should be avoided. If “pseudo-coloring” and nonlinear adjustment (for example “gamma changes”) are used, this must be disclosed. Adjustments of individual color channels are sometimes necessary on “merged” images, but this must be stated in the legend of the figure.

Conflict of interest (COI)
At the time of submission, Nutrimentum et Curae policy requires that authors reveal any COI, including financial interests or connections, direct or indirect, or any other situations that could raise questions of bias in either the reported work or the conclusions. Disclosed potential COIs should include any relevant commercial or other sources of funding for either author(s), or the sponsoring institution, the associated department(s) or organization(s).

As an integral part of the online submission process, corresponding authors are required to confirm whether they or their co-authors have any conflicts of interest to declare, and to provide details of these. If the corresponding author is unable to confirm this information on behalf of all co-authors, the authors in question will then be required to submit a completed COI form to the Editorial Office. It is the corresponding author’s responsibility to ensure that all authors adhere to this policy.

If the manuscript is submitted, COI information needs to be communicated in a statement within the paper (e.g., the authors declare they have no conflict or financial interests).

Regarding unethical publication practice, we follow the COPE and PERK guidelines.

Definition
Competing interests are defined as those of a financial nature that, through their potential influence on behavior or content or from the perception of such potential influences, could undermine the objectivity, integrity or perceived value of a publication.

Funding: Research support (including salaries, equipment, supplies, reimbursement for attending symposia, and other expenses) by organizations that may gain or lose financially through this publication.

Employment: Recent (while engaged in the research project), present or anticipated employment by any organization that may gain or lose financially through this publication.

Personal Financial Interests: Stocks or shares in companies that may gain or lose financially through publication; consultation fees or other forms of remuneration from organizations that may gain or lose financially; patents or patent applications whose value may be affected by publication.

COI in Industry-Sponsored Research
Authors whose manuscripts are submitted for publication must declare all relevant sources of funding in support of the preparation of a manuscript. Nutrimentum et curae requires full disclosure of financial support as to whether it is from the tobacco industry, the pharmaceutical or any other industry, government agencies, or any other source. This information should be included in the Acknowledgements section of the manuscript.

Authors are required to specify sources of funding for the study and to indicate whether or not the text was reviewed by the sponsor prior to submission, i.e., whether the study was written with full investigator access to all relevant data and whether the sponsor exerted editorial influence over the written text. This information should be included in the cover letter. In addition to the disclosure of direct financial support to the authors or their laboratory and prior sponsor-review of the paper, submitting authors are asked to disclose all relevant consultancies within the 12 months prior to submission, since the views expressed in the contribution could be influenced by the opinions they have expressed privately as consultants. This information should be included in the Acknowledgments section of the manuscript.

In the event that a previously undisclosed potential competing interest for an author of a published paper comes to the attention of the editors and is subsequently confirmed with the authors, the undeclared interest will be published as an erratum in a future issue.

COI: Application to Reviewers and Editors
Reviewers must disclose to editors any conflicts of interest that could bias their opinions of the manuscript, and they should disqualify themselves from reviewing specific manuscripts if they believe it to be appropriate. Reviewers must therefore also be asked to state explicitly whether conflicts do or do not exist. Reviewers must not use knowledge of the work, before its publication, to further their own interests. COI for a given manuscript exists when a participant in the peer review and publication process – author, reviewer, and editor – has ties to activities that could inappropriately influence his or her judgment, regardless of whether the judgment is affected. Financial relationships with industry (for example, employment, consultancies, stock ownership, honoraria, expert testimony), either directly or through immediate family, are usually considered the most important conflicts of interest. However, conflicts can occur for other reasons, such as personal relationships, academic competition, and intellectual passion. External peer reviewers must disclose to editors any conflicts of interest that could bias their opinions of the manuscript and they must disqualify themselves from reviewing specific manuscripts if they believe it appropriate. The editors must be made aware of reviewers’ COI to interpret the reviews and judge for themselves whether the reviewer should be disqualified.” (From the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors Annals of Internal Medicine 118, (8) 646-647).

Submission by an Editor – A paper submitted by an editor will be handled by one of the other editors who does not have a conflict with the review and who is not at the same institution as the submitting editor. The other editor will select referees and make all decisions on the paper.

Submission by the author at the same institution as one of the editors. A paper submitted by an author for which there is a potential conflict with who is at the same institution as one of the editors will be handled by one of the other editors. The other editor will select referees and make all decisions on the paper. Submission by a family member of the editor or by an author whose relationship with the editor might create the perception of bias. A paper submitted by a family member of one of the editors, or by an author whose relationship with one of the editors might create the perception of bias (e.g., in terms of close friendship or conflict/rivalry), will be handled by another editor. The other editor will select referees and make all decisions on the paper. If in doubt, the editors will consult with the Journal editor.

Potential COI for Reviewers – The invitation letter to reviewers will include the following paragraph: If you know or think you know the identity of the author, and if you feel there is any potential COI in your refereeing this paper because of your relationship with the author (e.g., in terms of close friendship or conflict/rivalry) or for any other reason, please declare it. By accepting this invitation, it is assumed there is no potential COI. Standard policy will be not to use a referee if a COI has been declared, but the editors may use their discretion after consulting with one another.

COI: Application to Publishing Policy
For Nutrimentum et curae, its independence is essential. Our strict policy is that editorial independence, decisions and content should not be compromised by commercial or financial interests, or by any specific arrangements with advertising clients or sponsors.

Advertising
Advertising is rarely allowed and and has no influence on the editorial decisions or the journal aims.

Confidentiality
Editors, authors and reviewers are required to keep confidential all details of the editorial and peer review process on submitted manuscripts. The peer review process is confidential and conducted anonymously; the identities of reviewers are not released. Reviewers must maintain the confidentiality of manuscripts. Correspondence with the journal, referees’ reports and other confidential material must not be published, disclosed or otherwise publicized without prior written consent. It is our policy to keep their names confidential and that we do our utmost to ensure this confidentiality. We cannot, however, guarantee to maintain this confidentiality in the face of a successful legal action to disclose identity.

Pre-publicity
Authors of papers that contain taxonomy should be aware that it is possible for third parties to exploit the prior publication of nomenclature at any time between the online posting of a preprint and the print publication date in a journal. Nutrimentum et curae takes no responsibility for such assertions of priority in the case of manuscripts that it publishes if the content of those manuscripts has previously appeared in the public domain as online preprints or other forms of online posting.