Cover letter

Include a cover letter with your submission to introduce your manuscript to the editor and encourage its peer review:

• Keep it short (ideally less than one page) and focused.
• Be concise. Clearly articulate the study's aim and main findings without unnecessary details.
• Explain how your study fits the journal’s aim and scope.
• Emphasize the research's novelty and broader implications to demonstrate its potential impact on the field.
• If you have been invited to submit, acknowledge this in the letter.

A cover letter should not include funding information, author declarations, or suggested or opposed reviewers. If these details are needed, they will be requested separately.

You may be required to submit a cover letter with your submission. Individual journals may have specific requirements regarding the cover letter's contents, so please consult the individual journal's Guide for Authors.

If the Guide for Authors does not specify what to include in your cover letter, you may wish to include some of the following items:

• Specify special considerations that should be given to the paper (if any).
• A brief background regarding the research involved or how the data was collected.
• Details of any previous or concurrent submissions.
• It's also useful to provide the Editor-in-Chief with any information that will support your submission (e.g. original or confirmatory data, relevance, topicality).

Please note: When your manuscript is received at Elsevier, it's considered to be in its 'final form' ready to be reviewed, so please check your manuscript carefully before you submit it to the Editor.

A guide to the publication process and getting your article published in an Elsevier journal is available on the Elsevier Publishing Campus.