Type of the Paper (Original Paper, Review, etc.)

Title The title should be concise and informative

Firstname Lastname 1, Firstname Lastname 2 and Firstname Lastname 2,*

1	The affiliation(s) of the author(s), i.e. Affiliation 1; institution, (department), city, (state), country

2	Affiliation 2

*	Correspondence: email@address.com

Abstract: Please provide an abstract of 150 to 250 words. The abstract should not contain any undefined abbreviations or unspecified references.

Keywords: Please provide 4 to 6 keywords which can be used for indexing purposes

Papers must be formatted according to the Springer instructions to be found here (https://www.springer.com/journal/42401/submission-guidelines). Instructions are provided for preparing the document using MS Word and LaTeX - you may use either method. Sections that are not mandatory are listed as such. The section titles given are for articles. Review papers and other article types have a more flexible structure.

A well-structured article helps readers find the information it communicates and to easily follow the authors’ methodologies and arguments. To help this, most articles follow a common pattern and structure called IMRaD. IMRaD refers to the standard structure of the body of research manuscripts (after the Title and Abstract). This consists of:

Introduction

Materials and Methods

Results

Discussion and Conclusions

Not all journals use these section titles in this order, but most published articles have a structure similar to IMRaD. This standard structure:

Gives a logical flow to the content

Makes journal manuscripts consistent and easy to read

Provides a “map” so that readers can quickly find content of interest in any manuscript

Reminds authors what content should be included in an article

Provides all content needed for the work to be replicated and reproduced

1 Introduction

The Introduction should provide readers with the background information needed to understand your study, and the reasons why you conducted your experiments. The Introduction should answer the question: what question/problem did you study? References should be numbered in order of appearance and indicated by a numeral or numerals in square brackets—e.g., [1] or [2,3], or [4–6]. See the end of the document for further details on references.

2 Materials and Methods

This Methods and Materials section provides the reader with all the details of how you conducted your study. You should:

Use subheadings to separate different methodologies

Describe what you did in the past tense

Describe new methods in enough detail that another researcher can reproduce your experiment

Describe established methods briefly, and simply cite a reference where readers can find more detail

State all statistical tests and parameters

3. Results

In the Results section, simply state what you found, but do not interpret the results or discuss their implications. As in the Methods and Materials section, use subheadings to separate the results of different experiments. Results should be presented in a logical order. In general, this will be in order of importance, not necessarily the order in which the experiments were performed. Use the past tense to describe your results; however, refer to figures and tables in the present tense.

Do not duplicate data among figures, tables, and text. A common mistake is to re-state much of the data from a table in the text of the manuscript. Instead, use the text to summarize what the reader will find in the table, or mention one or two of the most important data points. It is usually much easier to read data in a table than in the text.

Include the results of statistical analyses in the text, usually by providing p values wherever statistically significant differences are described.

3.1 Subsection

3.1.1 Sub-subsection

Bulleted lists look like this:

•	First bullet;

•	Second bullet;

•	Third bullet.

3.2 Equations

If you want to insert equations, please use the button Equation in the toolbars. Detailed operations are as follows. Press the Tab key, then insert the equation, which will be centered. To insert the equation number, press Tab again. Number the equations consecutively. For example,

,	(1)

the text following an equation need not be a new paragraph. Please punctuate equations as regular text.

3.3 Tables and Figures

All tables and figures are to be numbered using Arabic numerals, and they should always be cited in text in consecutive numerical order. All tables and figures should be placed in the main text near to the first time they are cited.

Table 1 For each table, please supply a table caption (title) explaining the components of the table. Identify any previously published material by giving the original source in the form of a reference at the end of the table caption.

Parameters	Value
Parameter 1	0.4
Parameter 2	0.45
Parameter 3	5
Parameter 4	2

1 Footnotes to tables should be indicated by superscript lower-case letters (or asterisks for significance values and other statistical data) and included beneath the table body.

Fig. 1 Each figure should have a concise caption describing accurately what the figure depicts.

Figure captions begin with the term Fig. in bold type, followed by the figure number, also in bold type. No punctuation is to be included after the number, nor is any punctuation to be placed at the end of the caption. Figure parts should be denoted by lowercase letters (a, b, c, etc.). Identify previously published material by giving the original source in the form of a reference citation at the end of the figure caption. If you include figures that have already been published elsewhere, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner(s) for both the print and online format. Please be aware that some publishers do not grant electronic rights for free and that Springer will not be able to refund any costs that may have occurred to receive these permissions. In such cases, material from other sources should be used.

If an appendix appears in your article and it contains one or more figures, continue the consecutive numbering of the main text. Do not number the appendix figures,"A1, A2, A3, etc." Figures in online appendices [Supplementary Information (SI)] should, however, be numbered separately.

When preparing your figures, the figures should be 84 mm wide and not higher than 234 mm.

4 Discussion and Conclusions

Or

4 Discussion

5 Conclusion

Your Discussion and Conclusions sections should answer the question: What do your results mean?

In other words, the majority of the Discussion and Conclusions sections should be interpretation of your results. You should:

Discuss your conclusions in order of most to least important.

Compare your results with those from other studies: Are they consistent? If not, discuss possible reasons for the difference.

Mention any inconclusive results and explain them as best you can. You may suggest additional experiments needed to clarify your results.

Briefly describe the limitations of your study to show reviewers and readers that you have considered your experiment’s weaknesses. Many researchers are hesitant to do this as they feel it highlights the weaknesses in their research to the editor and reviewer. However doing this actually makes a positive impression of your paper as it makes it clear that you have an in depth understanding of your topic and can think objectively of your research.

Discuss what your results may mean for researchers in the same field as you, researchers in other fields, and the general public. How could your findings be applied?

State how your results extend the findings of previous studies.

If your findings are preliminary, suggest future studies that need to be carried out.

Acknowledgements

In this section, you can acknowledge any support given which is not covered by the author contribution or funding sections. This may include administrative and technical support, or donations in kind (e.g., materials used for experiments).

Author Contributions

Examples of such statement(s) are shown below:

• Free text:

All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection and analysis were performed by [full name], [full name] and [full name]. The first draft of the manuscript was written by [full name] and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Example: CRediT taxonomy:

Conceptualization: [full name], …; Methodology: [full name], …; Formal analysis and investigation: [full name], …; Writing - original draft preparation: [full name, …]; Writing - review and editing: [full name], …; Funding acquisition: [full name], …; Resources: [full name], …; Supervision: [full name],… Please turn to the CRediT taxonomy for the term explanation.

For review articles where discrete statements are less applicable a statement should be included who had the idea for the article, who performed the literature search and data analysis, and who drafted and/or critically revised the work.

For articles that are based primarily on the student’s dissertation or thesis, it is recommended that the student is usually listed as principal author:

A Graduate Student’s Guide to Determining Authorship Credit and Authorship Order, APA Science Student Council 2006

Funding: Examples of statements to be used when funding has been received:

Partial financial support was received from [...]

The research leading to these results received funding from […] under Grant Agreement No[…].

This study was funded by […]

This work was supported by […] (Grant numbers […] and […]

Examples of statements to be used when there is no funding:

The authors did not receive support from any organization for the submitted work.

No funding was received to assist with the preparation of this manuscript.

No funding was received for conducting this study.

No funds, grants, or other support was received.

Data Availability: Please provide details regarding where data supporting reported results can be found, including links to publicly archived datasets analyzed or generated during the study. If the study did not report any data, you might add “Not applicable” here. Authors who need help understanding our data sharing policies, help finding a suitable data repository, or help organising and sharing research data can access our Author Support portal for additional guidance.

Declarations

Conflict of interest

Authors are required to disclose financial or non-financial interests that are directly or indirectly related to the work submitted for publication. Interests within the last 3 years of beginning the work (conducting the research and preparing the work for submission) should be reported. Interests outside the 3-year time frame must be disclosed if they could reasonably be perceived as influencing the submitted work.

Examples of statements to be used when there are interests to declare:

Financial interests: Author A has received research support from Company A. Author B has received a speaker honorarium from Company Wand owns stock in Company X. Author C is consultant to company Y.

Non-financial interests: Author C is an unpaid member of committee Z.

Financial interests: The authors declare they have no financial interests.

Non-financial interests: Author A is on the board of directors of Y and receives no compensation as member of the board of directors.

Financial interests: Author A received a speaking fee from Y for Z. Author B receives a salary from association X. X where s/he is the Executive Director.

Non-financial interests: none.

Financial interests: Author A and B declare they have no financial interests. Author C has received speaker and consultant honoraria from Company M and Company N. Dr. C has received speaker honorarium and research funding from Company M and Company O. Author D has received travel support from Company O.

Non-financial interests: Author D has served on advisory boards for Company M, Company N and Company O.

Examples of statements to be used when authors have nothing to declare:

•	The authors have no relevant financial or non-financial interests to disclose.

•	The authors have no competing interests to declare that are relevant to the content of this article.

•	All authors certify that they have no affiliations with or involvement in any organization or entity with any financial interest or non-financial interest in the subject matter or materials discussed in this manuscript.

•	The authors have no financial or proprietary interests in any material discussed in this article.

Where an Editor or Editorial Board Member is on the author list they must declare this in the competing interests section on the submitted manuscript.

Example

XX is an editorial board member for XXX and was not involved in the editorial review, or the decision to publish, this article. All authors declare that there are no competing interests.

References

Reference citations in the text should be identified by numbers in square brackets. Some examples:

1. Negotiation research spans many disciplines [3].

2. This result was later contradicted by Becker and Seligman [5].

3. This effect has been widely studied [1-3, 7].

The list of references should only include works that are cited in the text and that have been published or accepted for publication. Personal communications and unpublished works should only be mentioned in the text.

The entries in the list should be numbered consecutively.

If available, please always include DOIs as full DOI links in your reference list (e.g. “https://doi.org/abc”).

Journal article

Gamelin FX, Baquet G, Berthoin S, Thevenet D, Nourry C, Nottin S, Bosquet L (2009) Effect of high intensity intermittent training on heart rate variability in prepubescent children. Eur J Appl Physiol 105:731-738. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00421-008-0955-8

Ideally, the names of all authors should be provided, but the usage of “et al” in long author lists will also be accepted:

Smith J, Jones M Jr, Houghton L et al (1999) Future of health insurance. N Engl J Med 965:325–329

Article by DOI

Slifka MK, Whitton JL (2000) Clinical implications of dysregulated cytokine production. J Mol Med. https://doi.org/10.1007/s001090000086

Book

South J, Blass B (2001) The future of modern genomics. Blackwell, London

Book chapter

Brown B, Aaron M (2001) The politics of nature. In: Smith J (ed) The rise of modern genomics, 3rd edn. Wiley, New York, pp 230-257

Online document

Cartwright J (2007) Big stars have weather too. IOP Publishing PhysicsWeb. http://physicsweb.org/articles/news/11/6/16/1. Accessed 26 June 2007

Dissertation

Trent JW (1975) Experimental acute renal failure. Dissertation, University of California

Always use the standard abbreviation of a journal’s name according to the ISSN List of Title Word Abbreviations, see

ISSN.org LTWA

If you are unsure, please use the full journal title.