This journal uses ScholarOne (https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/flow) for online submission and peer review. ScholarOne is a “comprehensive workflow-management system for scholarly journals, books and conferences”. Further information on ScholarOne can be found here, and queries can be directed to the Editorial Office (flowadmin@cambridge.org).
Authors are prompted to provide a short cover letter to the Editors through a form in the ScholarOne system. Authors should declare there if their manuscript had previously been considered for publication in Flow. You will be asked during submission to confirm that the manuscript has been submitted solely to Flow and is not published, in press, or submitted elsewhere.
You must include a 150-word or less Impact Statement beneath the abstract in your article and will be asked to confirm this is included during submission.
Keywords must be chosen by the author during the online submission process from the ‘Attributes’ page. A maximum of 6 Keywords can be chosen but there must be at least one fundamental and one application keyword. You can enter your own keywords or choose from the lists below:
For the initial submission please upload a PDF or MS Word file and select file designation “Main Document”, all figures and tables should be embedded within the Main Document file and should not exceed 6MB. Movie files should be uploaded separately using the file designation “Movie”. A reference to the movies will need to be included in the main document either as a separate caption list at the end of the paper before the Reference section or within the text, for example “See supplementary movie file movie 1”. The file designation “Supplementary Material” should be reserved for material to be published online alongside the article, this material will be made available to reviewers. You can transfer files directly from the arXiv archive by entering your e-print number in on the ‘File Upload’ page during submission; please include your E-print Number when requested. More information on file types and supplementary materials can be found in the Preparing your materials page.
You are required to submit a Graphical Abstract which should be uploaded and given the file designation “Graphical Abstract”.
Please do not upload any Production Files at this stage (LaTeX source files, separate figure files, etc.) more details on what happens after acceptance can be found on the Production process after acceptance page.
Disclosure statements
Detailed information on the options for the below disclosure statements are on the Preparing your Materials page. All statements should be added at the end of the manuscript before the Reference section.
- Acknowledgements
- Funding statement (compulsory)
- Competing Interests (compulsory)
- Data availability statement (compulsory)
- Author contributions
- Ethical guidelines
The Competing Interests declaration is compulsory and during submission you will be asked to confirm it is included in the manuscript.
You will also be asked to confirm funding details during submission and it is compulsory to add a Funding statement to your manuscript. If the research discussed in your manuscript has been funded by the NIH or other participating US-based funders, or by any of the participating European funding institutions, you are required to deposit the accepted paper in PubMed Central / Europe PubMed Central. Cambridge University Press can support you with this by removing some of the manual steps and automatically transferring the accepted manuscript to the PubMed Central / Europe PubMed Central system. You will be asked about this during submission.
The overarching policy of Flow is that research articles should contain sufficient information to allow others to understand, replicate and verify findings, and compare them with alternative studies; for more information see our Research transparency policy. We therefore require authors to include a Data availability statement in their manuscript. More guidance on data availability statements can be found here and guidance on how to make resources accessible here.
In the process of submitting the article, the corresponding author is asked to provide further details about contributions to the article using the CRediT taxonomy. People who have contributed to the article but do not meet the full criteria for authorship should be recognised in the acknowledgements section; their contribution can be described in terms of the CRediT taxonomy.
You will be asked during submission to confirm that your research meets the required Ethical Guidelines, including adherence to the legal requirements of the study country. You must include any relevant disclosures relating to Ethics.
ORCID
We require all corresponding authors to identify themselves using ORCID when submitting a manuscript to this journal. ORCID provides a unique identifier for researchers and, through integration with key research workflows such as manuscript submission and grant applications, provides the following benefits:
- Discoverability: ORCID increases the discoverability of your publications, by enabling smarter publisher systems and by helping readers to reliably find work that you have authored.
- Convenience: As more organisations use ORCID, providing your iD or using it to register for services will automatically link activities to your ORCID record, and will enable you to share this information with other systems and platforms you use, saving you re-keying information multiple times.
- Keeping track: Your ORCID record is a neat place to store and (if you choose) share validated information about your research activities and affiliations.
See our ORCID FAQs for more information.
If you don’t already have an iD, you will need to create one if you decide to submit a manuscript to this journal. You can register for one directly from your user account on ScholarOne, or alternatively via https://ORCID.org/register.
If you already have an iD, please use this when submitting your manuscript, either by linking it to your ScholarOne account, or by supplying it during submission using the "Associate your existing ORCID iD" button.
ORCIDs can also be used if authors wish to communicate to readers up-to-date information about how they wish to be addressed or referred to (for example, they wish to include pronouns, additional titles, honorifics, name variations, etc.) alongside their published articles. We encourage authors to make use of the ORCID profile’s “Published Name” field for this purpose. This is entirely optional for authors who wish to communicate such information in connection with their article. Please note that this method is not currently recommended for author name changes: see Cambridge’s author name change policy if you want to change your name on an already published article. See our ORCID FAQs for more information.
Preprint deposit during submission
When you submit your manuscript in Scholar One, you will be presented with the option to simultaneously submit a preprint to Cambridge Open Engage, Cambridge University Press’s early and open research platform. Posting a preprint enables faster dissemination of your work ahead of peer review. Preprints are citeable and accrue view and download metrics, allowing your research to gather attention ahead of formal publication.
If you and your co-authors opt in to this service during the submission process, your manuscript will be automatically deposited on Cambridge Open Engage, and made openly available in perpetuity. If your work goes on to be published in the journal, or elsewhere, we will add the link to the version of record to your preprint page so that readers are able to find the peer-reviewed version. You will also be able to log in to Cambridge Open Engage to claim your preprint, upload new versions, and see view and download metrics.
Please note:
- Preprints submitted to Cambridge Open Engage are subject to the Cambridge Open Engage Terms of Submission and Terms of Use.
- We will post the preprint using the exact manuscript and metadata that you submit the journal, so please make sure you are happy to share this version of the manuscript publicly, and have the rights to share any copyrighted material held within it before opting in.
- You must have all co-authors' permission to post a preprint.
- Preprints are not removed from Cambridge Open Engage except in very rare circumstances.
To participate, simply opt in during the ScholarOne submission process.
Review process
Flow uses a single-anonymous model of peer review. The author does not know the identity of the reviewers, but the reviewers know the identity of the author. Initial feedback on your submission prior to peer review will be provided rapidly (usually within 10 days). For more information see the Review process page
If a revision is requested, you should upload revised files following the same procedure as for submitting a new paper.
Licence to publish
Before Cambridge can publish your manuscript, we need a signed licence to publish agreement. Under the agreement, certain rights are granted to the journal owner which allow publication of the article. The original ownership of the copyright in the article remains unchanged. For full details see the publishing agreement page.