Taylor & Francis

Prepare your manuscript for Clinical and Experimental Optometry.

Review the checklist, choose your article type, and turn your draft into a cleaner submission package.

Checked 2026-08-01

Check readiness free Prepare this manuscript

Article types

Review

Systematic Review

Editorial

Viewpoint

Letter to the Editor

Book Review

Review Article

Protocol

Clinical Trial

Case Report

Lectio

Readiness requirements

Review the key details below, or download the complete checklist with every stored source-backed requirement.

Abstract length

Use a structured abstract.
An Original Research Paper must contain a structured abstract.

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Since there is no abstract the title should convey the key message of the paper.
Profile, Obituary or Historical Overview: These submissions do not include an abstract.
Since a Clinical Communications does not have an abstract, the title and the introductory paragraph should convey the key message of the communication.
Since a Clinical Picture does not have an abstract, the title and the introductory paragraph should convey the key message of the communication.
Abstract: The abstract should be divided into five paragraphs that begin with the bolded words: Clinical relevance, Background, Methods, Results, Conclusion.
The abstract should not contain abbreviations and should only contain a reference when that reference is the key starting point for the study.
Your abstract should focus on what your research is about, what methods have been used, and what you found out.
The instructions for authors for each journal will give specific guidelines on what’s required here, including whether it should be a structured abstract or graphical abstract, and any word limits.

Keywords

Include or confirm the keywords required by the journal. Articlo checks this item and flags anything that still needs author input.

Reference style

Articlo formats your supplied references in Vancouver style and checks that citations match the reference list; source validity is not verified.
In the text, references should be cited using superscript Arabic numerals, not in brackets, and numbered in the order in which they appear in the text.

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References to tables in the manuscript should be written as ‘Table 1’ if part of a sentence, or ‘(Table 1)’.
Guidance on preparing effective figures: References to figures in the manuscript should be written as ‘Figure 1’ if part of a sentence, or ‘(Figure 1)’.
Avoid citing “personal communication”; if necessary the reference should be cited in the text only, for example, (Smith A, 2000, unpublished data).
Manuscripts, including references, must be formatted in accordance with these Author Guidelines.
Reference to the Supplement should be made at appropriate places in the text of the main paper.
An appendix must not be extensive and should be placed before References.
Tables: All tables should be placed after the references.
Superscripted references numbers must be set AFTER punctuation marks.
Submitted manuscripts must not contain automatic numbering of references and footnotes.
Each table should be submitted on a separate page at the end of the text, after the references.
Tables should be comprehensible without reference to the text.
Do not use ibid. or op cit. (abbreviations indicating that the citation is from the previous reference).
Data should be cited in the same way as article, book, and web citations and authors are required to include data citations as part of their reference list.
Review / Systematic Review / Protocol: The Methods section of the paper should state whether a protocol existed for the systematic review, and ideally reference the published protocol or provide a copy of the protocol as supporting information.
Provide direct references to original research sources whenever possible, avoid excessive referencing (not exceeding the number of references stipulated in the table above).
Viewpoint: When many sources can be used to support a statement of fact, a generalisation or a viewpoint, a selection of suitable references should be made rather than citing them all.
Any links between superscripted numbers in the text and references, or between figure or table designations and the figure or table captions, must be removed prior to submitting the final version of the manuscript.
Full biographical details must be given for all references, including authors names, the title of the paper, name of the journal, year of publication, volume number, start page and finish page (not abbreviated), as per the examples below.
If automatic EndNote reference numbering is used when writing the paper (or other bibliographic software), all automated links between the citations in the body of the manuscript, and the list of references, must be removed prior to submitting the final version of the manuscript.
When citing or making claims based on data, authors must refer to the data at the relevant place in the manuscript text and in addition provide a formal citation in the reference list.
The format, as proposed by the Joint Declaration of Data Citation Principles, should be adopted: Authors; Year; Dataset title; Data repository or archive; Version (if any); Persistent identifier (e.g. DOI).
A declaration must be included within the submission stating: Confirmation the authors take full responsibility for the integrity of the whole content, including accuracy of references.
Review: Submissions that exceed the limits outlined in the table below, are deficient in English grammar, do not have the manuscript and references formatted correctly, or fail to comply with any other aspect of these Author Guidelines, will be rejected immediately without proceeding to peer review.

Figure and table rules

Keep every figure and table numbered, captioned, and cited in the manuscript. Keep figures embedded; Articlo also extracts numbered source files for the package.
Group figures at the end of the manuscript.

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Group tables at the end of the manuscript.
Simple graphs and drawings should be sized to fit in 1 column although most figures will take 2 columns.
Guidance on preparing effective figures: Two or three related figures should be drawn so they can be grouped to fit across 2 or 3 columns.
Type size should be 9 point when reduced: if the original figure is to be reduced to half size when printed, use 18 or 20 point type in the original.
Guidance on preparing effective figures: Photographs and scanned illustrations must have a minimum resolution of 300 dpi in a width of at least 12 cm.
Tables and figures Show clearly in your article text where the tables and figures should appear, for example, by writing [Table 1 near here].
Guidance on preparing effective figures: Line drawings and graphs should be sized so they can be reduced in size to fit in 1 column (58 mm), a half-page (89 mm), 2 columns (120 mm) or across the page (3 columns) (182 mm), while retaining clarity and readability of all key elements of the drawing.
Results should be presented in tables and figures as far as possible.
Figures should be saved separately from the text.
If you do not use a Table function always use a tab, NOT space bar spaces, to separate data.
Do not submit tables as separate files to the body of the manuscript.
They must not duplicate information contained in the text, although the text may pick out key points in a Table.
Table legends should be concise but clear in their meaning and placed at the top of the table.
Use horizontal lines sparingly at the top and bottom of the Table, to mark out rows of totals or to separate different groups of data.
Tables that include graphics must be submitted as Figures.
Related figure parts must be labelled as A, B, C etc.
Guidance on preparing effective figures: Line figures should be black and white.
Guidance on preparing effective figures: Do not use three-dimensional bars and columns in graphs.
Guidance on preparing effective figures: If the graph is simple, do not use any grid lines.
Guidance on preparing effective figures: All figures must be submitted as individual files in TIF, PDF, PPTX or JPEG format.
Do not include figures within the body of the manuscript.
It’s very important that you have been given permission to use any tables or figures you are reproducing from another source before you submit.
The text should not duplicate results shown in tables and figures can draw attention to, or summarise, key features of the results and key outcomes of statistical analysis.
Check the instructions for authors to see how you should supply tables and figures, whether at the end of the text or in separate files, and follow any guidance given on the submission system.
Do not format tables to sit within the body of the manuscript.
Tables cannot be typeset with graphical content and will only be considered as Figures.
You do not need to reload figures unless they have been revised.
Place (or start) each table on a new page.

Funding statement

You should declare only the acquired funds and grants that are directly relevant to the work reported in your article; for example, This work was supported by the [Funding Agency #1] under Grant [number xxxx]; [Funding Agency #2] under Grant [number xxxx]; and [Funding Agency #3] under Grant [number xxxx].
Acquisition of funding, data collection or general supervision alone do not justify authorship.

Competing interests

Add or confirm the author-written Competing interests statement; Articlo flags it if author input is still needed.
Authors must disclose in the manuscript any actual or perceived competing interests.

Data availability statement

Include or confirm the data availability statement required by the journal. Articlo checks this item and flags anything that still needs author input.

Ethics statement

Add or confirm the author-written Ethics statement; Articlo flags it if author input is still needed.
Projects involving human participants or the use of animals must have been approved by an institutional ethics committee and this must be reported in the manuscript.

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Service evaluations or views or opinions of practitioners may not require ethics committee approval depending on the jurisdiction.
There must be nothing in the text to allow re-identification of a participant or patient.
Written informed consent must be obtained if anonymity cannot be maintained, such as the face or any part of the face of the participant or patient is in any photograph.
Retrospective case studies from clinical records usually require ethics approval, and case studies where an individual could be identified should be shown the manuscript prior to being published.
Authors must certify in writing that they hold written participant or patient consent to publish if they are in any way able to be identified through the photograph or where the unique nature of the incident reported makes it possible for the participant or patient to be identified.
Informed consent must have been obtained from all adult participants in an investigation and from parents or legal guardians of participating minors and this must be stated in the manuscript.

Blinded manuscript

Include or confirm the blinded manuscript required by the journal. Articlo checks this item and flags anything that still needs author input.

Cover letter

Using Third-Party Material in your Paper You must obtain the necessary permission to reuse third-party material in your article.
A paper accepted for publication by Clinical and Experimental Optometry must not be published in any other publication without the written permission of the publisher of Clinical and Experimental Optometry.

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Review: The use of short extracts of text and some other types of material is usually permitted, on a limited basis, for the purposes of criticism and review without securing formal permission.
If you wish to include any material in your paper for which you do not hold copyright, and which is not covered by this informal agreement, you will need to obtain written permission from the copyright owner prior to submission.

Author contributions

Submitting authors should be prepared to submit CRediT roles for themselves and their co-authors (where applicable) as part of the submission process.

Supplementary files

Include every cited supplementary file and use matching labels in the manuscript.
Review: Embed or attach the author-supplied supplementary material so Articlo can extract and label it for the package.

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Protocol: Embed or attach the author-supplied supplementary material so Articlo can extract and label it for the package.

Title page and author information

Provide the author, affiliation, and correspondence details for the separate title page; Articlo creates the editable companion file.
Authors should structure their manuscript as follows: Title page: As per the above guidelines under the heading ‘Structure and Format of Title Page for All Submissions’.

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The title page should be formatted as per the information provided above under the heading ‘Structure and Format of Title Page for All Submissions’.
All authors of a manuscript should include their full name and affiliation on the cover page of the manuscript.
Running title: An abbreviation of the title of no more than 40 characters.
Structure and Format of Title Page for All Submissions Authors should structure the title page for all submissions by including the following elements in the order indicated below, all left justified: Type of submission: The type of submission should be stated in all-upper-case, not bold, at the top of the page.
Contact author: One author will need to be identified as the corresponding author, with their email address normally displayed in the article PDF (depending on the journal) and the online article.

Article structure and word limits

Visual acuity measurements must be stated in metric units (i.e. 6/60, not 20/200).
Title: The title should be stated in ‘Sentence case’, bold, and must not exceed 15 words.

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All dioptric powers should be expressed to 2 decimal places, i.e. -6.00D (NOT 6D).
Use 1.5 line spacing of text with 30 mm page margins.
Margins Margins should be at least 2.5cm (1 inch).
Review: These instructions will ensure we have everything required so your paper can move through peer review, production and publication smoothly.
The word “Guideline” or “Standard” should appear in the title.
Papers from individuals proposing guidelines or standards that have not been adopted by some peak body should be attributed to individual authors.
Case Report: A report of a single clinical case should be reported as a Clinical Communication (otherwise knows as a 'case report') or a Clinical Picture.
The title for profiles or obituaries should include a phrase that conveys the special attributes or contributions of the person.
Case Report: A Clinical Communication (otherwise known as a 'case report') should report original or novel observations of interest to an optometric audience.
Review: It should not be a literature review based on a single case.
It should report original or novel observations of interest to an optometric audience.
Review / Book Review: Book Review: A Book Review should provide a succinct account of the purpose of a book and its overall content.
Any special or interesting content should be highlighted.
Your research funder or your institution may require you to publish your article open access.
Use our APC finder to view the APC for this journal.
Non-essential identifying details must be omitted, such as names or initials on photographs or visual field charts.
If other mechanisms of consent are used, this must also be indicated.
If you require assistance with conforming your manuscript to these standards, Taylor and Francis offers editing services for all potential authors.
Apostrophes: Apostrophes must not be used, with the exception of known phrases (e.g. Leber's hereditary optic neuropathy).
Use the more formal long form of expression (e.g. instead of “the subject’s age”, write “the age of the subject”).
Acronyms: A maximum of two acronyms can be included in a manuscript.
All other terms must be written out in full each time they are used.
Latin and other foreign terms should be italicised, except those in common usage (such as pizza, baguette).
Units: All measurements must be given in SI or SI-derived units.
Trade names: Chemical substances should be referred to by their generic name.
Commercially available equipment should be identified by the type of instrument, its maker and the model number.
Review: Do not use the word 'review' in the title of a review paper.
Do not include titles before names, such as Dr or Professor, or degrees after names.
The 'Clinical relevance' paragraph must be a generic statement relating to the clinical importance of the general area of your research.
It should be a concise and pertinent account of previous related work, the rationale for the study and its aim(s).
This must be succinct yet sufficiently detailed to enable replication of the experiment.
Include the implications of the findings and their limitations.
They should be written to best summarise the paper with the fewest words.
The manuscript should be submitted in Microsoft Word (.docx), preferably using Times or Arial font.
Vertical lines should not be used to separate columns.
The symbols *, **, *** should be reserved for p-values.
Use horizontal and vertical grid lines sparingly.
In more complex graphs where the reader may wish to read off values, use a minimum number of horizontal grid lines.
Review: A paper deficient in any aspect of the required formatting will be rejected without proceeding to peer review.
Most papers require revision in response to the comments made by the Editor and the reviewers.
Revised manuscripts must be submitted through ScholarOne.
The original manuscript must be deleted and the revised version uploaded.
Do NOT submit a revised paper as a new paper.
Such an error should not be confused with inadequacies exposed by the emergence of new scientific information in the normal course of research.
Should you have any queries, please visit our Author Services website or contact us here.
A declaration must be included within the submission stating: Originality and accuracy of content has been confirmed by the authors.
Authors must provide full methodological details and adhere to relevant reporting guidelines where applicable.
Authors must retain the original and revised versions which must be shared upon request.
The PLSP guidelines for authors must be followed at all times.
Before you submit your article, make sure you’ve checked the instructions for authors for your chosen journal, so you are aware of everything required.
Most journals create image descriptions during the production process, but a minority may require authors to provide image descriptions.
Review: Running heads and received dates These aren’t required when submitting a manuscript for review.
Submit your manuscripts to http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/ceoptom.
Clinical Guidelines and Clinical Standards adopted by a peak body should be authored by the adopting body, although the individual authors of the document can be identified in the text or in acknowledgements.
Review / Systematic Review: At a minimum, the systematic review should be prospectively registered (e.g., in PROSPERO: https://www.crd.york.ac.uk/PROSPERO/ ).
Review / Systematic Review: Unlike a systematic review, a scoping review aims to encompass all available evidence regardless of quality, and therefore does not require a formal quality assessment or risk of bias assessment.
All papers must present original ideas, viewpoints or data that have not been published by or submitted to another journal, except in special cases as described in the next paragraph.
A paper that draws on the same database as that used in another paper that has or will be published in this or another journal must cite the other publication and clearly describe the relationship between the submitted paper and the other publication.
Authors adopting this approach should include a data accessibility statement, including a link to the repository they have used, in order that this statement can be published alongside their paper.
Manuscripts should be written in a clear, concise and explanatory style so that they are intelligible to the professional scientific reader who is not necessarily a specialist in the particular field.
Do not use the ‘first person’.
Trade names should not be used.
Use letters 'a', 'b', 'c', etc.
Do not include laboratory name, or faculty.
Submissions must include line numbers.
Use left hand alignment of text.
Do not use ‘Enter’ within cells.
Do not use patterned fills.
Do not use bold face.
Do not include issue number of journals.
Names of journals should be abbreviated in the according to the style used for MEDLINE ( www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nlmcatalog/journals ) For books, name the place of publication, publisher, and date of publication.
Special characters If you are preparing your manuscript in Microsoft Word and your article contains special characters, accents, or diacritics, we recommend you follow these steps: European accents (Greek, Hebrew, or Cyrillic letters, or phonetic symbols): choose Times New Roman font from the dropdown menu in the “Insert symbol” window and insert the character you require.
Special characters If you are preparing your manuscript in Microsoft Word and your article contains special characters, accents, or diacritics, we recommend you follow these steps: Asian languages (such as Sanskrit, Korean, Chinese, or Japanese): choose Arial Unicode font from the dropdown menu in the “Insert symbol” window and insert the character you require.
In general, manuscripts should follow the style detailed in the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors' revised Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals (ICMJE Recommendations), found at https://www.nlm.nih.gov/bsd/uniform_requirements.html (previously referred to as Vancouver style).
Do not italicise punctuation unless it is part of the whole clause or sentence.
Review: Abstracts for Review Articles, Clinical Guidelines, Clinical Standards and Systematic Reviews do not have to be structured.
If you haven't submitted a paper to this journal before, you will need to create an account in ScholarOne.
This generally improves papers even if the authors do not always agree with the comments and suggestions of the reviewers.
The latter requires no corrections or withdrawals.
If you are at the early stage of your research, you may also need to read how to start writing a journal manuscript.
Image descriptions are typically used by systems such as pronouncing screen readers to make images accessible to people that cannot read or see the object due to a visual disability.
Do not italicise ad hoc.
Book Review: Editorials, Viewpoints, Profiles, Obituaries, Historical Overviews, Clinical Communications, Clinical Pictures, Letters to the Editor and Book Reviews do not have abstracts.
Do NOT justify text.
Do NOT outline every cell, row and column.

Reporting guidelines

Include or confirm the reporting guidelines required by the journal. Articlo checks this item and flags anything that still needs author input.

Statistical reporting

For studies that include numerical data and statistical inference, a section should be included in the Methods that clearly describes this methodology.

Preprints and prior publication

In this last case the paper must be re-written to place it in context for an ophthalmic audience and must cite the prior publication and explain the relationship between it and the new paper.

Artificial intelligence disclosure

Add or confirm the author-written Artificial intelligence statement; Articlo flags it if author input is still needed.
Please include a statement disclosing whether and how generative AI has been used in the research and manuscript preparation process.

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Use of AI tools as part of ethical research studies is permitted.
A declaration must be included within the submission stating: The name and version number of the AI tool used.
Systematic Review: Use of AI tools as part of ethically conducted literature reviews, systematic reviews, meta-analysis and bibliometrics studies is permitted.
Use of AI tool assisted plain language summaries (PLS) of authors own work is permitted.
Please read our guidance on using AI tools in your research and manuscript preparation to understand scenarios where their use may be permissible, and the required information that must be disclosed.
A declaration must be included within the submission stating: Confirmation the authors have checked terms of use for the specific AI tool used, and therefore confirm suitability for publication.

Language and text style

Submitted papers must exhibit a very high standard of English grammar, spelling, punctuation, sentence and paragraph construction.
Spelling: The Journal uses UK spelling and authors should therefore follow the latest edition of the Concise Oxford Dictionary.

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If used, sub-headings should be written in bold and italics in ‘ Sentence case ’.
Use ‘English Equation Editor’ for equations in the document.
All abbreviations must be defined in footnotes.
Headings This will show you the different levels of the heading section in your article: Fourth-level headings should be in bold italics, at the beginning of a paragraph.
Headings This will show you the different levels of the heading section in your article: Fifth-level headings should be in italics, at the beginning of a paragraph.
It should not include abbreviations.
Headings This will show you the different levels of the heading section in your article: Second-level headings should be in bold italics, with an initial capital letter for any proper nouns.
Headings This will show you the different levels of the heading section in your article: Third-level headings should be in italics, with an initial capital letter for any proper nouns.

Authorship and originality

All authors must have made a substantial contribution to (1) at least one of conception or design, the acquisition, analysis or interpretation of data; (2) drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content; and (3) final approval of the version to be published.
Review / Review Article: A Review Article may present results from original work of the author, and sufficient information must be included in respect of the methodology adopted.

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All who qualify for authorship should be listed as authors.
Deciding authorship and its order must be a joint decision of the authors and must be justifiable.
Authors are required to sign a declaration of authorship before their paper can be published.
Papers from a large multi-centre group may be attributed to the group (as ‘author’) but must identify the individual authors who meet the criteria above; others in the group who do not qualify for authorship may be acknowledged in “Acknowledgements”.

Study reporting guidelines

Research with humans must have been conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki as revised in 2013, and both human research and that involving care and use of animals must have been in accordance with institutional and national guidelines in the country of the author, and this must be stated in the manuscript.
Authors must provide full methodological details and adhere to relevant reporting guidelines where applicable (e.g. CONSORT-AI, STARD-AI, GAMER, TRIPOD-AI, etc).

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Review / Systematic Review: A research paper that is a systematic review and/or meta-analyses needs to adhere to the PRISMA Statement ( http://www.prisma-statement.org ), or an equivalent reporting guideline (e.g., MOOSE for meta-analyses of observational studies or ENTREQ for synthesis of qualitative research) and include the relevant completed checklist and flow diagram.

Article type and manuscript length

The registration number should be included in the Methods section of both the Abstract and the main text.

Manuscript structure

The ‘Clinical relevance’ paragraph should be a brief statement (maximum 50 words) highlighting the relevance of the work to a practising clinical optometrist; it must not refer to your own study, its aims, results or conclusion.
The title should be informative to give a clear indication of the purpose, scope or conclusion of the paper.

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The present address of any author, if different from that where the work was carried out, should be supplied in a footnote.
Do NOT include any data or conclusions from the work you are reporting.
Provide a clear description of the methods used in the study.
Column headings should be brief but comprehensible, with units of measurement in parentheses.
Footnote symbols: †, ‡, §, ¶, should be used (in that order).
Use sub-headings if the discussion is long.
Authors must retain full records of the methods undertaken, including full descriptions and records of the prompts used, which must be shared with the journal upon request.
Headings This will show you the different levels of the heading section in your article: First-level headings (e.g. Introduction, Conclusion) should be in bold, with an initial capital letter for any proper nouns.
Case Report: A Clinical Communication should be formatted to contain the following sections: Introduction (but do not use the heading ‘Introduction’), Case Report (or ‘Case Series’ if more than once case is being reported) and Discussion.
Do not repeat in detail data or other material given in the Results.
This is to avoid associating persons with a paper and its conclusions when they may not wish to be so associated.
However, do NOT start papers with the heading ‘Introduction’ or ‘Background’.

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What your package checks

References: Vancouver

Title page: separate file

Declarations: Competing interests, Ethics, Acknowledgements, Artificial intelligence

Format: Times New Roman

Source transparency

This preparation guide uses published journal-specific author requirements. Journal instructions can change, so authors should complete a final review before submission.

Open official guideline source