Dear All, Thank you for going through the manuscript and providing corrections/suggestions. We have already started addressing a number of these. From tomorrow noon I will take the manuscript offline to implement these properly with references and modified figures. If you have not yet entered your affiliation and email please do not forget to do so before Monday morning in the excel doc. Here is the link again: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1YP-5kgcZcC3FViogO44GN-vm7JDSmjZk/edi... Also IMPORTANTLY, I completely forgot, I will also need a statement if you have any conflicts of interests. I created an extra column in the above excel file to enter if you do. Please enter a full sentence explaining any conflicts of interest you think relevant to report. If you do not have any, then no action is needed here. The specific statement on the submission pages reads as follows: the authors have competing interests as defined by Nature Portfolio, or other interests that might be perceived to influence the results and/or discussion reported in this paper. These interests are listed in a paragraph at the end of the manuscript. You can find a list of what Nature consider constitutes conflicts of interests here: https://www.nature.com/nature-portfolio/editorial-policies/competing-interes... I paste the relevant section from this webpage at the bottom of this message. Also do not forget to send me any updated reporting tables by Sunday. Very finally, I received a lot of requests to include additional references to people’s work (both per email and as comments in document). It may not be possible to include all due to space. We will prioritize the ones that are needed to illustrate/justify an already discussed point and relevant to the concept of journal/article and its expected readership… ….while, when possible, trying to respect contributions from different labs. I ask for your understanding in advance though, that we likely cannot include every suggested reference. If you have any important comments, please feel free to write ofcourse. I may spontaneously contact some of you over the weekend if there are any burning questions. But I think we are good for the most part, and you will probably hear next from me when we submitted on Monday! All the best, Kareem CONFLICTS OF INTEREST: In the interests of transparency and to help readers form their own judgements of potential bias, Nature Portfolio journals' require authors to declare any competing financial and/or non-financial interests in relation to the work described. The corresponding author is responsible for submitting a competing interests' statement on behalf of all authors of the paper. Definition For the purposes of this policy, competing interests are defined as financial and non-financial interests that could directly undermine, or be perceived to undermine the objectivity, integrity and value of a publication, through a potential influence on the judgements and actions of authors with regard to objective data presentation, analysis and interpretation. Financial competing interests include any of the following: Funding: Research support (including salaries, equipment, supplies, and other expenses) by organizations that may gain or lose financially through this publication. A specific role for the funder in the conceptualization, design, data collection, analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript, should be disclosed. Employment: Recent (while engaged in the research project), present or anticipated employment by any organization that may gain or lose financially through this publication. Personal financial interests: Stocks or shares in companies that may gain or lose financially through publication; consultation fees or other forms of remuneration (including reimbursements for attending symposia) from organizations that may gain or lose financially; patents or patent applications (awarded or pending) filed by the authors or their institutions whose value may be affected by publication. For patents and patent applications, disclosure of the following information is requested: patent applicant (whether author or institution), name of inventor(s), application number, status of application, specific aspect of manuscript covered in patent application. It is difficult to specify a threshold at which a financial interest become significant, but note that many US universities require faculty members to disclose interests exceeding $10,000 or 5% equity in a company (see, for example, B. Lo et al. New Engl. J. Med. 343, 1616-1620; 2000). Any such figure is necessarily arbitrary, so we offer as one possible practical alternative guideline: "Any undeclared competing financial interests that could embarrass you were they to become publicly known after your work was published." We do not consider diversified mutual funds or investment trusts to constitute a competing financial interest. Non-financial competing interests: Non-financial competing interests can take different forms, including personal or professional relations with organizations and individuals. We would encourage authors and referees to declare any unpaid roles or relationships that might have a bearing on the publication process. Examples of non-financial competing interests include (but are not limited to): Unpaid membership in a government or non-governmental organization Unpaid membership in an advocacy or lobbying organization Unpaid advisory position in a commercial organization Writing or consulting for an educational company Acting as an expert witness From: Kareem Elsayad <kareem.elsayad@meduniwien.ac.at> Date: Tuesday, 5. November 2024 at 12:29 To: "consensus@biobrillouin.org" <consensus@biobrillouin.org> Subject: Consensus Statement on Brillouin Light Scattering Microscopy of Biological Materials Dear All, You are receiving this email as you are part of the author list of the BLS consensus statement we are now finalizing for Nature Photonics. We have finally managed to cut the manuscript down (by a factor of >5) to fit into the required format and tried our best to make it into a somewhat coherent story, while accommodating most requests. We would like to submit it on Monday next week. Please take a read through the Manuscript (Main Text) and Supplementary Text here and add any comments you see relevant. When doing so, remember we are tight on space, and we can have at times up to almost 40 different opinions (approx. number of authors), but we will do our best to accommodate. It would be really great if you could provide your comments before the weekend so we can implement course of Sat & Sun. Here are the main files, which you should also have access to edit: Main Text: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mdSDVePGOB8y0B4mCZpiKr_pFvF5WDeZ/edit?us... Supplementary Text: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1d5wA-QFlYJNiVtgA20ENMZnhJUSRzjO5/edit?us... Also, for the submission we will have to enter all your affiliations and any requested mentions of funding sources, etc. To not write everyone individually, could you please be sure to fill in the following online excel sheet before Monday: Affiliation and funding .xlsx file: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1YP-5kgcZcC3FViogO44GN-vm7JDSmjZk/edi... If you submitted any data (and especially if you see your image in the manuscript) please double check the completeness of the Minimum Reporting Table you submitted with the data, and as needed send me an updated version. These will be provided with the manuscript as Supplementary Data. Neither we (nor the journal) will edit what you entered further, so please make sure it is as you would like to see it in print online. (FYI the Minimum Reporting Table file is still available here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1i-bz6QJ0l3LZl8YUgCw7b3hkzdWrtW_v/edi...) Last but not least, since there are so many authors (and I cannot send to all at once in cc/bcc using my University account – it thinks I have been hacked!), I created this mailing list consensus@biobrillouin.org If you would like to write all the authors you may also post to this, but please do not send files to this mailing list or everybody gets them (and it will clog everyones mailbox). If you share any files, the best option is to upload here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1zBkQajxKTgjzUju19fdrFPFZC1r5O5Kq?usp... and send me a quick email stating you have uploaded something and what it is you have uploaded. All the best, Kareem