Electronic Medicinal Chemistry Journal (EMCJ) seeks to publish articles and experimental or theoretical research results of outstanding significance and timeliness in the fields of medicinal chemistry, organic chemistry, biochemistry, and related disciplines. Journal Editorial Policy : The language of submission is English only. Authors not fully fluent in idiomatic English are urged to seek assistance with manuscript preparation. Referees are not requested to correct any grammatical errors and deficiencies in this respect may affect the speed of the review process. All papers are submitted to at least two Referees who will advise the editorial board on the matter of acceptance or rejection. Furthermore, the manuscripts are considered on the understanding that the particular subject matter has not been previously published, and is not under consideration, elsewhere. Referees are also asked to differentiate between contributions meeting the above requirements and having an element of novelty and timeliness. As such, the editorial board requests Referees to select articles which possess interest to a wide audience and to highlight manuscripts covering narrower aspects of the field. Referees' names are not normally disclosed but their views are forwarded to the authors for consideration, however, it is the policy of the journal that should an author request the names of the referees, they will be provided [Referees' by signing their names to the report, and acceptance of the reviewing fee, will waive their right to anonymity]. Authors accept full responsibility for the factual accuracy of the data presented and should obtain any authorisation necessary for publication - the journal will not accept any responsibility for manuscripts where author's have not obtained authorisation for publication. The contents of the papers are the sole responsibility of the authors and publication does not imply the concurrence of the Publisher or the editorial board towards the publication. To aid the editorial process, authors are encouraged to suggest names of suitable Referees when submitting manuscripts.


Types of manuscripts

Communications to the editor : Communications are intended for the rapid publication of preliminary reports on important findings of novel and timeliness. The referees will be requested to consider the manuscript in great detail and to consider whether the have justified its inclusion in the Journal. As such, the concept(s) of the paper should not have been published previously, or under consideration elsewhere. Although there is no page limit, manuscripts exceeding 2000 words will require further justification. Detailed experimental procedures need not appear although sufficient information should be included so as to facilitate rapid refereeing. Authors reporting synthetic work are strongly encouraged to submit supporting data (e.g., elemental analyses, spectral data). For manuscripts reporting biochemical activity, a brief description of the experimental procedure should be included - preliminary screening data may be included so as to show the biochemical activity. Articles: Articles should describe original research of high quality and timeliness. The format of the manuscript is suggested below in 'Preparation of Manuscripts', however, it shloud be noted that in the introductory section, the author should strive to define the significance of the work and the justification for its publication. Background discussion should be as brief as possible and restricted to pertinent material. Reviews: Reviews are commissioned in appropriate fields (of topical importance) by the Editor-in-Chief and the editorial board. Authors wishing to submit a non-solicited review article are requested to contact the Editor-in Chief in the first instance. When submitting a review, authors should include biographical information for each author which should consist of one paragraph (approximately 150-200 words) and should include: date and place of birth, universities attended, and degrees obtained, principal professional posts held, present title, a line or two about the major research interests, and anything else professionally relevant that is of special interest.


PREPARATION OF MANUSCRIPTS

Papers may be submitted either electronically or as conventional hardcopy, but accepted papers will have to be made available in electronic form. In general, the manuscript should be compiled in the following order: title, authors' names, abstract, keywords, text, experimental, references, acknowledgements, tables, figures legends and figures. Each section should be clearly marked with a separate heading in uppercase and bold (as shown below). Furthermore, to speedup the editing and reviewing procedure, the text and diagrams should be in separate files, e.g. a new file will be required for each scheme (plus legend), preferably with an appropriate filename. If submission is electronic, text should be submitted as .rtf (rich text format) files, and diagrams in EPS, or TIFF formats. If the following suggestions are followed exactly, publication times of three to four weeks can be achieved. Failure to follow the guidelines may result in a slow publication or rejection of the manuscript without consulting any referees.


The Title

The title should be centred on the width of page one. Capitalise main words only. The title should be brief, specific, and contain only informative words. Authors: After one line of space from the title, the authors' full names (with initials being used for middle names) and mailing address(es), including mail codes, telephone number, facsimile number, and e-mail address should be provided on separate lines. The names of authours should be centred on the width of the page. The principal author to whom correspondence should be addressed by the Editor-in-Chief and readers of the journal should be indicated with an asterisk (*). Use roman numerals as superscripts to identify the address of each author if different from the principal author, the numerals being placed after the co-authors name, e.g.:

Synthesis and Biochemical Evaluation of Imidazole based inhibitors of Aromatase

Sabbir Ahmed*, Caroline P Owen, Paul J Davis1

School of Applied Chemistry, Kingston University, Penrhyn Road, Kingston upon Thames, Surrey, KT1 2EE. E-Mail : CH_S534@KINGSTON.AC.UK; Telephone : +44 181 547 2000; Facsimile : +44 181 547 7562. 1Department of Pharmacy, Brighton University, Lewes Road, Brighton, BN2 4GJ.

Abstract: Authors must include an abstract in regular typeface - references should be omitted from the abstract. The abstract should be placed, if possible, after the authors' address and before the text, preferably on the first page. The abstract should state as briefly as possible the purpose of the research, the principal results, and major conclusions.

Keywords: Authors are asked to provide up to five key words, which will be used for indexing purposes.

Experimental Section: Although page limit as such is not imposed, authors should be as concise as possible in their description of experimental procedures. Long winded manuscripts will be returned by the Editor-in-Chief to the principal author and will not be forwarded to reviewers. The procedures (with weight, volume, mol, etc. in parenthesises) should be written in the past tense and include all relevant information required for others to reproduce the work. General reaction conditions should be given only once and the title of an experiment should include the chemical name and compound number of the product prepared; subsequently this compound should only be identified by its number and should be in bold. Details of the workup procedure must be included together with physical and spectroscopic data (this may be included in the experimental section or presented in tables). For all principal or new compounds, full characterisation with relevant spectroscopic data should be provided. Microanalyses should also be included whenever possible, however, under certain circumstances high resolution mass spectra may be acceptable in lieu of microanalysis, if accompanied by suitable proton and carbon NMR criteria (using machines with frequencies equal to or greater than 90Mhz). If biological procedures are to be included within the experimental section, the synthetic procedure is required to be given a sub-heading which should be italicised.

It is the responsibility of the authors to provide correct nomenclature. Chemical names for drugs are preferred, however, if this is not practical, generic names, names approved by the World Health Organisation (or other similar bodies) may be used. If a generic name is used, its chemical name or structure should be provided at the point of first citation following which the appropriate structure number should be used.

Authors are urged to draw attention to hazards by adding the phrase CAUTION ! on a separate line below the specific procedure and to include a brief description of the hazard and any appropriate action required to avoid any danger to the worker.

Biological Data: Biological test methods must be described in sufficient detail to allow the experiments to be repeated by others. Standard compounds should also be tested in the same system so as to allow comparison, however, preliminary results may consist of percentage inhibition at specified inhibitor concentrations without standard compounds. Statistical limits (statistical significance) for the biological data (IC50, Km, Ki, etc.) will usually be required. If statistical limits cannot be provided, the number of determinations and an indication of the variability and reliability of the results should be given. Doses and concentrations should be expressed in molar quantities. For inactive agents, the highest concentration or dose level tested should be indicated. Detailed descriptions of biological methods should be placed in the Experimental section with separte italicised heading.

Trademarks: Authors are required to acknowledge trademark protection in the standard fashion (i.e. � or �).

X-Ray Crystallographic Data: Manuscripts reporting X-ray crystallographic data must be accompanied by lists of refined co-ordinates (including R value), bond distances, bond angles, torsion angles with esd's for deposition by the Editor-in-Chief at the Cambridge Crystallographic Data Centre and for access by readers as supplementary data.

Software: Software used as part of computer-aided drug/agent design (e.g. molecular modeling, QSAR, conformational analysis) should be readily available from accepted sources and the authors may specify where the software can be obtained. Assurance of the quality of the parameters employed for the relevant potential functions should be detailed in the manuscript.

Abbreviations: Standard ACS journal abbreviations should be used throughout the manuscript. All non-standard abbreviations should be defined following the first use of the abbreviation.

Acknowledgement: Following the manuscript text and preceding the references an acknowledgement section may be included.

References and Notes:References to the literature should follow the format outlined for ACS publications. Titles of journals are abbreviated according to Chemical Abstracts Service Source Index. References should be numbered consecutively as they appear throughout the text, and be indicated consecutively in the text with unparenthesized superscript numbers. Authors are expected to check the original source reference for accuracy.

Scientific Articles:

1. Ahmed, S. and Davis, P. J., Bioorg. Med. Chem. Lett., 1995, 5, 1673-1678, 1995.

Books:

2. Testa, B., 'Burger's Medicinal Chemistry and Drug Discovery', Vol. 1, 5th edition, pp. 129-180, Wolff, M. E., Ed.; Wiley; New York, 1994.

Figures, Formulae and Structural Drawings: Authors are asked to use whatever resources are available to them to produce graphics that are of extremely high quality. Illustrations should be submitted as original drawings in separate files together with the legend. For hard copy submissions, formulae and other graphical material should be drawn with special care on separate sheets of paper, and indicated on the manuscripts where they should appear. Freehand illustrations will not be accepted under any circumstances. The size of the formulae may vary according to the nature of the illustration but these should be neither overpowering nor so small that they are hard to read. Diagrams should, in general, be submitted as TIFF or EPS which will then be transferred into GIf or JPEG. Authors also have the option of formatting text as HTML if they so desire but this is not a requirement.

Formula/reaction schemes should be a representation of the reactions performed, therefore it is preferable to use a flow diagram approach and not individual structures. Reaction conditions should be included for each reaction sequence, and should be placed as footnotes to the scheme. Compounds should be numbered in sequence as they appear in the schemes.

Illustrations should be labelled with Arabic numerals (using the font which is used within the main text) and any abbreviations used must have been previously defined. A legend must accompany each illustration. The Editor may return otherwise acceptable manuscripts for modification if the quality of the figures or structural formulae is poor or the overall layout is not carefully composed.

Tables: All tables must have a title appearing at the bottom and contain sufficient information to justify publication. Tables should be placed as separate files. Column headings should be as brief as possible, using abbreviations where necessary. Indicate placement of all tables at the relevant point in the text. Tables must be numbered in order of appearance with Arabic numerals. Footnotes to tables should be given letter designations and cited in the table by unparenthesized superscript letters. The sequence of letters should proceed by row rather than by column. If a footnote is cited both in the text and in a table, a lettered footnote should be inserted in the table to refer to the numbered footnote in the text. Each table should be provided with a descriptive heading which, together with the individual column headings, should make the table, as nearly as possible, self-explanatory. In setting up tabulations, authors are requested to keep in mind the typical area of the journal page (which should not exceed 17.5 cm by 23 cm) and to make their table conform to these limits.

Mailing of Manuscripts: For paper submissions, the original and three copies of the manuscript, should be sent to the Editor-in-Chief provided below. In order to achieve the most rapid publication authors may wish to FAX a copy (supplying their own telephone and FAX numbers) at the time that they mail the manuscript.

Manuscript Production from Diskette Files: To help expedite publication of manuscripts authors are asked to supply their manuscript versions both in hardcopy format and on diskette (text files and graphical files). The editorial office can accept most word processor programs, in either Mac or DOS format. In all cases, the text should also be saved as an ASCII file in the event that the editorial team cannot easily translate a particular file. It is therefore imperative that files on the disk and printout are identical. Before the disk is sent in appropriate packaging, it should be ensured that the following information is supplied on the disk label, or a separate sheet: name of journal, name of author(s), name(s) of file(s) on disk, computer used (IBM or Mac), format of disk and the name and version number of program used. If graphics are provided on disk, they should be saved as an EPS or TIFF and the program the graphic was originally drawn in should also be stated. If tabular material is present, the column alignment should have been obtained with either the word-processing program's column utility or tabs or spaces, but not a mixture of both. Graphic material should not be integrated into the text file. When preparing the manuscript text, a simple, full-width format with no page-formatting other than margin definitions should be used and page numbers or other running material should be omitted. All characters should be correctly represented throughout the manuscript: for example, 1 (one) and l (ell), 0 (zero) and O (oh), x (ex) and * (multiply sign).

As stated above, submissions may be made in any electronic format (including submissions on diskettes) or paper format, authors sholud note that the reviewing process may be slower in the case of paper submissions. Manuscripts should be mailed to :

Dr. Sabbir Ahmed
Editor-in-chief, Electronic Medicinal Chemistry Journal
School of Applied Chemistry
Kingston University
Kingston upon Thames
Surrey, KT1 2EE
United Kingdom

Telephone: +44 (0)181 547 2000; FAX: +44 (0)181 547 7562
E-mail Sabbir Ahmed

Corrections: Authors are reminded that it is their responsibility to check the manuscript thoroughly for accuracy and that where extensive errors are discovered, publication may be greatly delayed and author charged for 'correction' service(s). However, if errors of consequence in the published paper are discovered, a notification of the error should be sent to the publishing team or to the Editor-in-Chief for correction.

Page Limit : None, however extensive manuscripts (greater than 20 pages in total) will require justification prior to the reviewing procedure.

Copyright Transfer : Papers must be accompanied by a signed copy (sent by conventional mail or facsimile) of the copyright transfer form that is available on the EJL's webpage or can be requested from the editorial office.

Author's Manuscript Submission Checklist

The following checklist should be used prior to 'mailing' the manuscript to the Editor-in-Chief :

1. Corresponding author's mailing address, phone number, fax number and e-mail address. 2. Complete set of files relevant to the publication. Text, tables, graphics, PDB or XYZ-file etc. must be in separate files with appropriate names. 3. Signed Copyright Transfer form. 4. Structures and figures corresponding to the guidelines. 5. Supplementary material, if appropriate. 6. Description of packages used in manuscript preparation and data file(s) format. 7. Printed listing, in duplicate, of submitted files indicating operating system and file format.