Instructions for Review Submissions

The qualifying exam review is to be 5 pages in length (including figures and tables, but excluding references, acknowledgements, and further information), single-spaced with 11pt Arial font and 1” margins. It must have a title. It must include an abstract of no greater than 250 words. A concluding paragraph would also be nice before the References section. The file must be in Microsoft Word *.doc or *.docx format or similar for submission.

• Key words: Under the abstract, please include a list of 5-10 keywords that apply to your review.
• Glossary terms: Please include footnotes with the definition of any important items that come up in your review (when they first appear). For an example, please see Stephanie Bronson’s review in VRN (Bronson & Konradi, 2009, pp. 17-22), but they should appear as footnotes at the bottom of the page (The editors will take care of journal formatting later).
• Figures are strongly encouraged, may be of any size, and should be original work (unless you have permission from the source—please indicate this in your legend) placed in text with an appropriate figure legend. TIFF format is preferable. Please submit your original figures (as separate TIFF files) along with your review. Enumerated figure legends should appear below the figure or, in some cases, beside the figure. Legends should include all the necessary orienting devices (what are the error bars, asterisks, color-codes, scale bars, etc.).
• Tables may be of any size, and should be original work (unless you have permission from the source—please indicate this in your title) placed in text with an appropriate title. Any non-image format is acceptable. Enumerated titles should appear at the top of the table.
• Citations are to appear in text as a superscript number:

Mary had a little lamb1. Its fleece was white as snow2-3. Everywhere that Mary went, the      lamb was sure to go1,3-5,9.

Citation numbers should be assigned by their order of appearance in the document, and      there should be no space between the superscript number and the previous word, or            between citations. All textual punctuation should follow the citation. See VRN for further        examples.

References
References include the citation number (in order of appearance in the document) (followed by a TAB), the names of all authors (NOT et al), a complete title, the Journal name (typical abbreviations are okay), volume and issue numbers and finally the page range. They must be in the following format for journals:

Ref#.[tab]Last Initials, Last Initials and Last Initials (Year). Title. Journal. Vol (Issue): page-page.

Examples:

1. Abrahamson EE and Moore RY (2001). Suprachiasmatic nucleus in the mouse: retinal innervation, intrinsic organization and efferent projections. Brain Res. 916 (1-2): 172-191.
2. Ibata Y, Takahashi Y, Okamura H, Kawakami F, Terubayashi H, Kubo T and Yanaihara N (1989). Vasoactive intestinal peptide (VIP)-like immunoreactive neurons located in the rat suprachiasmatic nucleus receive a direct retinal projection. Neurosci Lett. 97 (1-2): 1-5.
3. Tanaka M, Ichitani Y, Okamura H, Tanaka Y and Ibata Y (1993). The direct retinal projection to VIP neuronal elements in the rat SCN. Brain Res Bull. 31 (6): 637-640.

For Books:
Authors (Year). Title, Edition. City: Publisher.

For Book Sections:
Authors (Year). Title. In: Book Title, Edition (Editor), Pages. City: Publisher.

For Edited Books:
Editors, (Year). Title, Edition. City: Publisher.

Generic:
Author (Year). Title. In: Secondary Title, Edition (Secondary Author), Pages. Place Published: Publisher.

Note that there is no comma (,) before the “and” in the author list.

Four references were used as starting-points for the oral qualifying phase, so these 4 references may be highlighted in the references section with a bolded 2-3 sentence description of why the paper was an important element of the review.

The editors of VRN highly recommend the use of Endnote or some other referencing software (there are some open source versions available; see here) as it makes life MUCH easier when writing.

• Acknowledgements: please include any necessary acknowledgements after the References section.
• If there is a lab website for the author and/or the author’s PI, please include this in a “Further Information” section after Acknowledgements.