Information for Authors

Include an abstract (semi-structured summary), with five paragraphs (Background, Methods, Findings, Interpretation, and Funding), not Information for Authors www.thelancet.com December 2020 exceeding 250 words. Our electronic submission system will ask you to copy and paste this section at the “Submit Abstract” stage For randomised trials, the abstract should adhere to CONSORT extensions: abstracts (see Lancet 2008; 371: 281–83) For intervention studies, the abstract should include the primary outcome expressed as the difference between groups with a confidence interval on that difference (absolute differences are more useful than relative ones). Secondary outcomes can be included as long as they are clearly marked as secondary and all such outcomes are reported


How to submit your paper Manuscript submission
Manuscript submission to all Lancet journals is free. Payment of article processing fees is made after acceptance (see Article Processing Charges section). Manuscripts should be submitted online via the EBioMedicine's online submission and peer review website (known as EM) at www.editorialmanager.com/ebiom • Simply log on to EM and follow the on-screen instructions for all submissions • If you have not used EM before, you will need to register first. In EM, the corresponding author is the person who enters the manuscript details and uploads the submission files • Inclusion of illustrations (eg, photographs, graphs, diagrams) is a prerequisite for many publication types. Submission of original and editable artwork files is encouraged. Digital photography files should have a resolution of at least 300 dpi and be at least 107 mm wide . Before and after images should be taken with the same intensity, direction, and colour of light • In almost all cases, if you have a finished manuscript, you should submit it, rather than contacting EBioMedicine to enquire whether an unseen manuscript is likely to be accepted. Unless you have been asked by the Editor to submit by email, you should use the online system for all types of submission

Covering letter
• You should upload your covering letter at the "Enter Comments" stage of the online submission process • Use the covering letter to explain why your paper should be published in EBioMedicine. In the letter, please briefly describe any relevant literature to provide context for the work, as well as a summary of the main findings of the paper-with a clear indication of how the work advances the field. In particular, a brief description of how the study relates to human health, as well as the translationally-relevant insights provided by the work, can be helpful of the main text within the manuscript (in addition to the Author statements form, below) • We require that more than one author has verified the underlying data. The contributors statement should state who those authors are. • We encourage collaboration and coauthorship with colleagues in the locations where the research is conducted • The Lancet Group takes a neutral position with respect to territorial claims in institutional affiliations • When choosing coauthors, we ask lead authors to be mindful of the benefits of diversity in authorship and to consider inviting coauthors who reflect diversity in every sense, including (but not limited to) background, career-stage, gender, geography, and race • If a collaborator or study group has been used and they wish to be indexed on PubMed, please provide a separate word document including a table of first initials and surnames of all members

Forms and signatures
For Reviews, Commentaries, and Letters, we require you to upload your forms at submission. For original Research papers, if forms have not been included in the initial submission, we will request them after peer review. The following signed statements are a prerequisite for acceptance and publication in EBioMedicine: • Authors' contributions and signatures (Author statements form). EBioMedicine will not publish any paper unless we have the signatures of all authors • Conflicts of interest statements (ICMJE forms) • Statements of role, if any, of medical writer or editor • Acknowledgments-written consent of cited individual • Personal communications-written consent of cited individual • Use of copyright-protected material-signed permission statements from author and publisher These statements can be scanned and submitted electronically with your submission. Please note that The Lancet journals will accept hand-signed and electronic (typewritten) signatures.

Declaration of interests
A conflict of interest exists when professional judgement concerning a primary interest (such as patients' welfare or validity of research) may be influenced by a secondary interest (such as financial gain). Financial relationships are easily identifiable, but conflicts can also occur because of personal relationships or rivalries, academic competition, or intellectual beliefs. A conflict can be actual or potential, and full disclosure to the Editor of all relationships is a requisite. Purposeful failure to disclose conflicts is a form of misconduct and might lead to publication of a correction or even to retraction. All submissions to EBioMedicine must include disclosure of all relationships in which there is a potential or actual conflict of interest, even if it not directly relevant to the submitted work. The Editor may use such information as a basis for editorial decisions and will publish all disclosures that authors declare on their conflict of interests form. Agreements between authors and study sponsors that interfere with authors' access to all of a study's data, or that interfere with their ability to analyse and interpret the data and to prepare and publish manuscripts independently, may represent conflicts of interest, and should be avoided. Authors may be required to provide the journal with any such agreements in confidence. an author, within the past 3 years, and with a relevant company or competitor, has any stocks or shares, equity, a contract of employment, or a named position on a company board; or has been asked by any organisation other than EBioMedicine to write, be named on, or to submit the paper (see Lancet 2004; 363: 2-3) • For any Review, the use of medical writers is not permitted unless they have been paid and instructed directly by an author, or their institution, and their role is purely technical (eg, editing a first draft for language and grammar). If you are contemplating use of a medical writer, please contact the journal immediately to ensure it complies with our policies

Role of the funding source
• All sources of funding should be declared as an acknowledgment at the end of the text • At the end of the Methods section, under a subheading "Role of the funding source", authors must describe the role of the study sponsor(s), if any, in study design; in the collection, analysis, and interpretation of data; in the writing of the report; and in the decision to submit the paper for publication • If there is no Methods section, the role of the funding source should be stated as an acknowledgment. If the funding source had no such involvement, the authors should so state • All authors should confirm that they had full access to all the data in the study and accept responsibility to submit for publication

Role of medical writer or editor
• If a medical writer or editor was involved in the creation of your manuscript, we need a signed statement from the corresponding author to include their name and information about funding of this person • This information should be added to the Acknowledgments or Contributors section • We require signed statements from any medical writers or editors declaring that they have given permission to be named as an author, as a contributor, or in the Acknowledgments section

Patient and other consents
• Appropriate written consents, permissions, and releases must be obtained where you wish to include any case details, personal information, and/or images of patients or other individuals in The Lancet journals in order to comply with all applicable laws and regulations concerning privacy and/or security of personal information. Studies on patients or volunteers need approval from an ethics committee and informed consent from participants. These should be documented in your paper. • Since the consent form needs to comply with the relevant legal requirements of your particular jurisdiction, we do not provide sample forms; this is your responsibility. Your affiliated institution should be able to provide an appropriate form. • For the purposes of publishing in The Lancet journals, a consent, permission, or release should include, without limitation, publication in all formats (including print, electronic, and websites), in sublicensed and reprinted versions (including translations), and in other works and products. • To respect your patient's and any other individual's privacy, please do not send signed forms to EBioMedicine. Please instead complete the patient consent section of the Author statements while retaining copies of the signed forms in the event they should be needed. • If consent, permission, or release is made subject to any conditions, EBioMedicine must be made aware in writing of all such conditions before publication. • For more information about our policy, please visit https:// www.elsevier.com/about/our-business/policies/patientconsent.

Manuscript types and formats
Please ensure that all submissions to EBioMedicine follows the guidelines provided for each article type. For instruction on how to format the text of your paper, including tables, figures, panels, and references, please see our Formatting guidelines.

Title page
Titles should be informative but not excessively detailed or heavy on jargon. Please avoid abbreviations in title. Please either define functionally (eg, "the influenza viral HA protein") or spell out ("influenza viral hemagglutinin"). A brief title, author name(s), preferred degree (one only), affiliation(s), and full address(es) of the authors must be included. Full names for all authors must be included in the format Julie M. Moore, not Moore J.M. or J.M. Moore. The name and address of the corresponding author should be separately and clearly indicated with email and telephone details.

Abstract
Include an abstract (semi-structured summary), with five paragraphs (Background, Methods, Findings, Interpretation, and Funding), not exceeding 250 words. Our electronic submission system will ask you to copy and paste this section at the "Submit Abstract" stage For randomised trials, the abstract should adhere to CONSORT extensions: abstracts (see Lancet 2008; 371: 281-83) For intervention studies, the abstract should include the primary outcome expressed as the difference between groups with a confidence interval on that difference (absolute differences are more useful than relative ones). Secondary outcomes can be included as long as they are clearly marked as secondary and all such outcomes are reported

Keywords
Please provide a short list of keywords

Research in context
All research papers (including systematic reviews/meta-analyses) submitted to EBioMedicine must include a panel putting their research into context with previous work in the format outlined below (see Lancet 2014; 384: 2176-77, for the original rationale). This panel should not contain references. Editors will use this information at the first assessment stage and peer reviewers will be specifically asked to check the content and accuracy. This should contain a full description and discussion of the context. This should be written not only for scientists and clinicians, but also for curious members of the general public. Therefore, please use clear and simple language, avoiding jargon and abbreviations.

Introduction
Please include a clear explanation for the rationale of the study, and sufficient scientific background information. The general reader (i.e., non-specialist) should have a clear sense for why the study was undertaken, and how the current study advances translational goals relative to the published literature. Define all abbreviations first time even if they have been defined in the Abstract.

Methods
Provide sufficient detail to allow the work to be reproduced by an independent researcher. Methods that are already published should be summarised, and indicated by a reference. If quoting directly from a previously published method, use quotation marks and also cite the source. Any modifications to existing methods should also be described.

Replicates
Authors should report how often each experiment was performed and whether the results were substantiated by repetition under a range of conditions. Sufficient information about sample collection must be provided to distinguish between independent biological data points and technical replicates.

Statistics
Statistics should be fully reported in the paper, including the statistical test used, exact value of N, definition of centre, dispersion and precision measures (e.g., mean, median, SD, SEM, confidence intervals).

Sample-size estimation
Authors should state whether an appropriate sample size was computed when the study was being designed and include the statistical method of computation. If no power analysis was used, include how the sample size was determined.

Randomisation
Authors should state whether the samples were randomised and specify method of randomisation, for all experiments.

Blinding
Authors should state whether experimenters were blind to group assignment and outcome assessment, for all experiments. Inclusion and exclusion criteria: authors should clearly state the criteria that were used for exclusion of any data or subjects. Include any similar experimental results that were omitted from the reporting for any reason, especially if the results do not support the main findings of the study. Describe any outcomes or conditions that were measured or used and are not reported in the results section.

Ethics statement
Include a statement to indicate approval by appropriate ethics committee on animal and human experimentations.

Reagent identification
In an effort to support reproducibility, we request that you pleasewhenever available-include a Research Resource Identifier (RRID) for any biological reagents used in the study. These include, for example, antibodies, genetically modified organisms and cell lines. To find an RRID, please visit https://scicrunch.org/resources and enter your search term(s) there. For search tips and help, contact rii-help@scicrunch.org. Once you have located an RRID, please insert "RRID:" plus the identifier in the appropriate location in the manuscript. For example:

Research in context Evidence before this study
This section should include a description of all the evidence that the authors considered before undertaking this study. Authors should briefly state: the sources (databases, journal or book reference lists, etc) searched; the criteria used to include or exclude studies (including the exact start and end dates of the search), which should not be limited to English language publications; the search terms used; the quality (risk of bias) of that evidence; and the pooled estimate derived from metaanalysis of the evidence, if appropriate.

Added value of this study
Authors should describe here how their findings add value to the existing evidence. Implications of all the available evidence Authors should state the implications for practice or policy and future research of their study combined with existing evidence. In particular, for EBioMedicine, please describe why the findings are relevant to human health (for the more basic research papers), and/or how the findings can help improve our understanding of the disease mechanisms (for the more clinical papers). Research in context panels should not contain references; key studies mentioned here should be referenced in the main text.

Data deposition and materials sharing
EBioMedicine requires and enables you to share data that supports your research publication and enables you to interlink the data with your published articles. Research data refers to the results of observations or experimentation that validate research findings. To facilitate reproducibility and data reuse, we also encourage you to share your protocols, models, reagents and other useful materials related to the project, to qualified researchers for their own use upon written request. Datasets must be made freely available to readers from the date of publication and must be provided to editors and peer reviewers at submission for the purposes of evaluating the manuscript. We acknowledge the need to respect the regulations and guidelines of relevant review boards and national bodies, and laws related to patient privacy and personal data. If there are restrictions to the availability of any materials or data, these must be disclosed in the cover letter and in the Methods at the time of submission. Elsevier collaborates with a number of repositories to link articles on ScienceDirect with relevant repositories, giving readers one-click access to underlying data that give them a better understanding of the research described. Mendeley Data is a secure online repository for research data, permitting archiving of any file type and assigning a permanent and unique digital object identifier (DOI) so that the files can be easily referenced. If authors wish to share their supporting data, and have not already made alternative arrangements, a Mendeley DOI can be referred to in a section entitled "Data sharing" at the end of the Methods section. If authors have already deposited their data in another repository, or have made other arrangements for data to be shared (e.g., by means of an adjudication process or contacting the authors), they should use this section to elaborate.
For supported data repositories, including Mendeley Data, a repository banner will automatically appear next to your published article on ScienceDirect.
Newly described data sets must be deposited to a public repository, and accession numbers must be clearly identified under a separate subheading at the end of the Methods section. Please refer to relevant database identifiers using the following format in your article: "Database: xxxx" for single accession numbers and "Database: xxxx, yyyy, zzzz" for multiple accession numbers (e.g., "Genbank: NM_000492"; "GEO: GSE6364"; "PDB: 1TUP, 1KW4, 3H5X"

Results
Subheadings should be fewer than 100 characters including spaces. Please describe the experiments clearly and what each figure shows. All figures and tables must be called out in sequential order. Tables should be provided in an editable Word or Excel format (so individual numbers/texts can be copied). Please ensure that each table fits within one A4-sized page.

Discussion
Please include discussion on limitations, generalisability, and interpretation of results. The Discussion should be no longer than 5 pages of A4 paper. Please do not include subheadings in the Discussion, and please do not repeat a description of the results.
Please conclude with a brief paragraph highlighting main points of study, including a statement regarding the translational value of the work. As with the Introduction and Abstract, please make sure the language is clear to the general audience, including nonspecialists.

Data sharing
From September 21, 2020, all submitted research Articles must contain a data sharing statement, to be included at the end of the manuscript. Data sharing statements must include: • Whether data collected for the study, including individual participant data and a data dictionary defining each field in the set, will be made available to others ("undecided" is not an acceptable answer); • What data will be made available (deidentified participant data, participant data with identifiers, data dictionary, or other specified data set); • Whether additional, related documents will be available (eg, study protocol, statistical analysis plan, informed consent form); • When these data will be available (beginning and end date, or "with publication", as applicable); • Where the data will be made available (including complete URLs or email addresses if relevant); • By what access criteria data will be shared (including with whom, for what types of analyses, by what mechanismeg, with or without investigator support, after approval of a proposal, with a signed data access agreement -or any additional restrictions). See table for examples. Clinical trials that begin enrolling participants on or after Jan 1, 2019, must include a data sharing plan in the trial's registration. If the data sharing plan changes after registration, this should be reflected in the statement submitted and published, and updated in the registry record. Mendeley Data is a secure online repository for research data, permitting archiving of any file type and assigning a permanent and unique digital object identifier (DOI) so that the files can be easily referenced. If authors wish to share their supporting data, and have not already made alternative arrangements, a Mendeley DOI can be referred to in the data sharing statement.
comments. Acknowledgements can contain grant and contribution numbers.

Declaration of interests
At the end of the text, under a subheading "Declaration of interests", all authors must disclose any financial and personal relationships with other people or organisations that could inappropriately influence (bias) their work. Examples of financial conflicts include employment, consultancies, stock ownership, honoraria, paid expert testimony, patents or patent applications, and travel grants, all within 3 years of beginning the work submitted. If there are no conflicts of interest, authors should state that none exist

Contributors
Please list here the contribution each author made to the manuscript-eg, literature search, figures, study design, data collection, data analysis, data interpretation, writing etc. If all authors contributed equally, please state this. The information provided here must match that of the Author statements form.

References
All references must be in Vancouver style formatting. Please see more detailed information below in Formatting section.

Figure legends
Please provide titles for all figures. Legends should briefly describe the experiment and clearly describe the display item. There should be no discussion or statement (conclusion) about the results. Each part of the display item should be clearly defined and explained, e.g., numbers in the quadrant indicate the percentage of cells. Statistical tests should be clear. Error bars should be defined. The number of independent experiments must be indicated. Please be sure to include number of subjects used for each experiment.

Patent Applications
If you intend to file a patent related to the findings presented in this manuscript, please ensure your patent application is submitted as soon as possible, in some cases before submitting the manuscript. Please check with the patent agencies within your institute to determine specific timelines for applications within your country. Please note that if/once a paper is accepted by the Editor, the accepted (uncorrected proof) version will appear online fairly quickly-usually within 48 hours of acceptance. This online version is accessible to the public, and may affect patent applications in certain countries.

All Research papers should, as relevant:
• We encourage researchers to enrol women and ethnic groups into clinical trials of all phases, and to plan to analyse data by sex and by race • For all study types, we encourage correct use of the terms sex (when reporting biological factors) and gender (when reporting identity, psychosocial, or cultural factors). Where possible, report the sex and/or gender of study participants, and describe the methods used to determine sex and gender. Separate reporting of data by demographic variables, such as age and sex, facilitates pooling of data for subgroups across studies and should be routine, unless inappropriate. Discuss the influence or association of variables, such as sex and/or gender, on your findings, where appropriate, and the limitations of the data. • Please avoid priority claims such as "first", "new" or "novel". • Define all abbreviations.

Commentaries
• This section contains Commentaries that accompany papers published in EBioMedicine, or to issues of wide-reaching concern in translational research. Most Commentaries are commissioned, but unsolicited Commentaries are also welcome. Commentaries may be peer reviewed • Commentaries should be no more than 750 words, 10 references, and one figure, panel, or small

Letters
• Letters should be written in response to previous content published in EBioMedicine • Letters for publication must reach us within 4 weeks of publication of the original item and should be no longer than 250 words and 5 references • Letters of general interest, unlinked to items published in the journal, can be up to 400 words long • Letters are not usually peer reviewed, but we might invite replies from the authors of the original publication, or pass on letters to these authors • Only one table or figure is permitted, and there should be no more than 5 references and five authors • All accepted letters are edited. Proofs will be sent out to authors before publication

Corrigendum
• Any substantial error in any article published in EBioMedicine should be corrected as soon as possible. Blame is not apportioned; the important thing is to set the record straight • The Lancet journals have a policy for types of errors that we do and do not correct. We will always correct any error affecting a non-proprietary drug name, dose, or unit, any numerical error in the results, or any factual error in interpretation of results • Other corrections are at the Editor's discretion

Reviews
At EBioMedicine, it is our aim to curate concise and informative reviews of topical interest to researchers from both basic science and clinical realms. Reviews should be focused on a specific biomedical topic with timely translational relevance.
Reviews for EBioMedicine should provide a clear and logical synthesis of the literature on a potentially complex topic, so that it can be easily understood by the general readership of the journal regardless of their expertise. Please avoid jargon, but do not oversimplify: be accurate and precise throughout. A good Review also provides a fresh point of view or a new conceptual framework on recent literature and proposes future directions in the field of study. Authors are encouraged to give their subjective opinion of the topics discussed, yet it is important that a fair and balanced representation of alternative viewpoints is presented. Although Reviews do allow room for some speculation and debate, it should be made clear where the authors' own opinions are being presented.

Title
Title of the Review should be short and enticing (<10 words).

Authorship
We prefer the Review to have no more than 5 authors. Full names for all authors must be included in the format Julie M. Moore, not Moore J.M. or J.M. Moore.

Abstract
With a maximum of 150 words, briefly explain the necessary background and encapsulate the take-home message for a nonspecialist reader. Please emphasise the recent developments or novel conclusions, concepts, or models that make your Review timely.

Main text
Because we place an emphasis on concise and timely Reviews, the main text of the Review should be no more than 3500-4000 words (excluding references and tables). Please provide a synthesis, not a summary, of recent developments. Use concise, informative subheadings and provide clear links between sections. Unpublished data should not be included.

Figures and Tables (Reviews)
The Review can contain up to 5 additional items (Figures, Tables, Text Boxes), to enhance the understanding and the interest level of the readers. Each item should have a short explanatory title, and be cited in the main text. If any item has been published previously, the original source must be acknowledged, and the Review authors are responsible to obtain copyright permission as necessary.
Figures should preferably be in colour. If you have visually outstanding figures or images that are related to but not necessarily presented in the Review, we would be happy to consider it for our cover art.

Outstanding Questions
Please provide a short paragraph highlighting important questions for future research. This section provides an excellent opportunity to offer input and guidance on new directions for the field.

Search strategy and selection criteria
Transparency about the choice of material included is important to any Review paper. Therefore, the Review should include a brief section entitled "Search strategy and selection criteria" stating the sources of the material covered, and the criteria used to include or exclude studies. Citations to papers published in non-peer-reviewed supplements are discouraged. Example:

References (Reviews)
No more than 75 references, with particular emphasis on literature published in the past 5 years.
Citations and reference format should be in Vancouver referencing style.

General Formatting guidelines Language
• Manuscripts should be submitted in British English. Authors writing in Chinese, Portuguese, or Spanish may wish to use the Webshop (http://webshop.elsevier.com/languageservices) to provide an English translation of their manuscript for submission.

Formatting of text
• Type a single space at the end of each sentence • Do not use bold face for emphasis within text • We use a comma before the final "and" or "or" in a list of items • Type decimal points midline (ie, 23·4, not 23.4). To create a midline decimal on a PC: hold down ALT key and type 0183 on

Search strategy and selection criteria
Data for this Review were identified by searches of MEDLINE, Current Contents, PubMed, and references from relevant articles using the search terms "sentinel node", "breast cancer", and "axilla". Abstracts and reports from meetings were included only when they related directly to previously published work. Only articles published in English between 1980 and 2006 were included. the number pad, or on a Mac: ALT shift 9 • Numbers one to ten are written out in words unless they are used as a unit of measurement, except in figures and tables • Use single hard-returns to separate paragraphs. Do not use tabs or indents to start a paragraph • Do not use the automated features of your software, such as hyphenation, endnotes, headers, or footers (especially for references). Please use page numbering

References
• Cite references in the text sequentially in the Vancouver numbering style, as a superscripted number after any punctuation mark. For example: "…as reported by Saito and colleagues. 15 " • Two references are cited separated by a comma, with no space.
Three or more consecutive references are given as a range with an en rule. To create an en rule on a PC: hold down CTRL key and minus sign on the number pad, or on a Mac: ALT hyphen • References in tables, figures, and panels should be in numerical order according to where the item is cited in the text • Here is an example for a journal reference (note the use of tab, bold, italic, and the en rule or "long" hyphen):

Guidelines for supplementary material
All material should be submitted as one PDF (with numbered pages) with the paper and will be peer reviewed. Material will be published at the discretion of The Lancet journals' editors. For clinical trials, we encourage authors to include a copy of the study protocol. All material should be provided in British English. How EBioMedicine handles your paper Acknowledgment Receipt of your paper will be acknowledged by an email containing a reference number, which should be used in all future communications

Peer review process
EBioMedicine offers a transparent and expeditious editorial process. Every Research article published at EBioMedicine has been peer reviewed. Occasional contributions (e.g., Commentaries) are accepted without peer review. The peer review process is handled by the editorial team. Upon submission to EBioMedicine, your manuscript will first be read by one or more of the journal's staff of scientists. This is an important feature of our selection process and many papers are turned away on the basis of in-house assessment alone. That decision will be communicated quickly. Peer review is single blind, with a minimum of two reviews required per article. Once review reports are received, the editors make the final decision on a manuscript, based in part on these reviews.

Submission declaration
Submission of an article implies that the work described has not been published previously (except in the form of an abstract, a published lecture or academic thesis, see 'Multiple, redundant or concurrent publication' for more information), that it is not under consideration for publication elsewhere, that its publication is approved by all authors and tacitly or explicitly by the responsible authorities where the work was carried out, and that, if accepted, it will not be published elsewhere in the same form, in English or in any other language, including electronically without the written consent of the copyright-holder.
has been accepted. While the Editor considers the request, publication of the manuscript will be suspended. If the manuscript has already been published in an online issue, any requests approved by the Editor will result in a corrigendum.

Ethics in publishing
For information on Ethics in publishing and Ethical guidelines for journal publication see http://www.elsevier.com/publishingethics and http://www.elsevier.com/journal-authors/ethics.

Human and animal rights
If the work involves the use of human subjects, the author should ensure that the work described has been carried out in accordance with The Code of Ethics of the World Medical Association (Declaration of Helsinki) for experiments involving humans; Uniform Requirements for manuscripts submitted to Biomedical journals. Authors should include a statement in the manuscript that informed consent was obtained for experimentation with human subjects. The privacy rights of human subjects must always be observed.
All animal experiments should comply with the ARRIVE guidelines and should be carried out in accordance with the U.K. Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act, 1986 and associated guidelines, EU Directive 2010/63/ EU for animal experiments, or the National Institutes of Health guide for the care and use of Laboratory animals (NIH Publications No. 8023, revised 1978) and the authors should clearly indicate in the manuscript that such guidelines have been followed.

Decision
Submissions that have undergone in-house and peer review may be referred back to authors for revision. This is an invitation to present the best possible paper for further scrutiny by the journal; it is not an acceptance Two copies of the revised version should be sent back, one of which should be highlighted to show where changes have been made. Detailed responses to reviewers' comments, in a covering letter, are also necessary

The Lancet journals and other Elsevier journals
• If your paper is rejected by EBioMedicine, we might judge it suitable to pass to other editors in the Lancet-group for consideration or to editors of other relevant journals within Elsevier's portfolio

Appeals
• Sometimes editors make mistakes. When we do, we like to hear about them. If an author believes that an editor has made an error in declining a paper, we welcome an appeal. In your appeal letter, which should be sent to ebiom@lancet.com, please state why you think the decision is mistaken, and set out your specific responses to any peer reviewers' comments if those seem to have been the main cause of rejection • At least two editors will decide whether to invite a revised manuscript and whether re-review, or otherwise, is indicated

Proofs
• Corresponding authors will receive an e-mail with a link to our online proofing system, allowing annotation and correction of proofs online. The environment is similar to MS Word: in addition to editing text, you can also comment on figures/tables and answer questions from the Copy Editor. Web-based proofing provides a faster and less error-prone process by allowing you to directly type your corrections, eliminating the potential introduction of errors. • If preferred, you can still choose to annotate and upload your edits on the PDF version. All instructions for proofing will be given in the e-mail we send to authors, including alternative methods to the online version and PDF. • We will do everything possible to get your article published quickly and accurately. Please use this proof only for checking the typesetting, editing, completeness and correctness of the text, tables and figures. Significant changes to the article as accepted for publication will only be considered at this stage with permission from the Editor. It is important to ensure that all corrections are sent back to us in one communication. Please check carefully before replying, as inclusion of any subsequent corrections cannot be guaranteed.

Open access policy
Article processing charges • No subscription or pay-per-view charges will apply to any content published in EBioMedicine. An article processing fee of $3500 will be charged upon acceptance of submitted full-length papers (no fee will apply to Commentaries or Letters). The fee reflects the anticipated low ratio of acceptance to submission • Authors whose main funder is located either in group A or B countries of the Health Inter Network Access to Research Initiative (HINARI) or in a country with a low UNDP human development index will be eligible to payment concessions. • Payments are processed by a department unconnected to EBioMedicine's editorial department

Copyright and reuse
• Articles are published under Creative Commons licensing, which enables authors to retain copyright while allowing others to copy, distribute, and make some uses of their work, provided full credit is given to them as originators. Articles with commercial funding only (eg, from a drug or device manufacturer or other for-profit organisation) are required to use a CC BY-NC-ND licence. Authors with funding from another source (or no funding) can choose either CC BY-NC-ND or CC BY (please check with your funder whether a specific creative commons license is preferred). Authors will be asked to sign an exclusive licence (or non-exclusive licence for government employees) to permit our publisher, Elsevier, to publish the work. • For Creative Commons licensing see http://creativecommons. org/licenses/

Ombudsman
For information about what our ombudsman can and cannot investigate, articles about past ombudsmen, and how to contact the current ombudsman see https://www.thelancet.com/ombudsman.

What happens after publication? Press release
Press releases are issued by The Lancet journals' press office for selected content published in our journals. You will be advised in advance if your paper has been selected for press release. The Lancet journals' media relations team will contact you with detailed instructions about the embargo for your paper, and will provide a draft press release for your comments ahead of the publication date. If your institution would like to issue a press release for your paper, please inform pressoffice@lancet.com.

Author interview
Your paper may be selected for a podcast. If so, the Web Editor will contact you to arrange a pre recorded interview to discuss your paper. For more information, see Audio

Data storage
Authors may be required to provide the raw data for research papers when they are under review and up to 10 years after publication in EBioMedicine

Responsible sharing
The Lancet supports responsible sharing. We recognise that authors want to share their papers and we encourage this. Find out how you can share your paper here