Originality

Authors may submit manuscripts in PDF format online at the submissions page.

Submission of a manuscript acknowledges that the manuscript is original and has neither previously, nor simultaneously, in whole or in part, been submitted elsewhere. Information regarding the preparation of manuscripts is provided below. Correspondence by email is requested for convenience and speed. For further information, write to production@msp.org

Language

Manuscripts must be in English. A brief abstract of about 150 words or less must be included. The abstract should be self-contained and not make any reference to the bibliography. Also required are keywords and subject classification for the article, and, for each author, postal address, affiliation (if appropriate), and email address. A homepage URL is optional.

Format

Authors can use their preferred manuscript-preparation software, including for example Microsoft Word or any variant of TeX. The journal itself is produced in LaTeX, so accepted articles prepared using other software will be converted to LaTeX at production time. Authors wishing to prepare their document in LaTeX can follow the example file below (but the use of other class files is acceptable). At submission time only a PDF file is required. After acceptance, authors must submit all source material (see especially “Figures” below).

• LaTeX template
• PDF output of LaTeX template

References

Bibliographical references should be complete, including article titles and page ranges. All references in the bibliography should be cited in the text. The use of BibTeX is preferred but not required. Tags will be converted to the house format (see a current issue for examples), however, for submission you may use the format of your choice. Links will be provided to all literature with known web locations; authors can supply their own links in addition to those provided by the editorial process.

Figures

Figures must be of publication quality. After acceptance, you will need to submit the original source files in vector format for all diagrams and graphs in your manuscript: vector EPS or vector PDF files are the most useful. (EPS stands for Encapsulated PostScript.)

Most drawing and graphing packages — Mathematica, Adobe Illustrator, Corel Draw, MATLAB, etc. — allow the user to save files in one of these formats. Make sure that what you're saving is vector graphics and not a bitmap. If you need help, please write to graphics@msp.org with as many details as you can about how your graphics were generated.

Please also include the original data for any plots. This is particularly important if you are unable to save Excel-generated plots in vector format. Saving them as bitmaps is not useful; please send the Excel (.xls) spreadsheets instead.

Bundle your figure files into a single archive (using zip, tar, rar or other format of your choice) and upload on the link you been given at acceptance time.

Each figure should be captioned and numbered so that it can float. Small figures occupying no more than three lines of vertical space can be kept in the text ("the curve looks like this:"). It is acceptable to submit a manuscript with all figures at the end, if their placement is specified in the text by means of comments such as "Place Figure 1 here". The same considerations apply to tables.

White Space

Forced line breaks or page breaks should not be inserted in the document. There is no point in your trying to optimize line and page breaks in the original manuscript. The manuscript will be reformatted to use the journal's preferred fonts and layout.

Proofs

Page proofs will be made available to authors (or to the designated corresponding author) at a Web site in PDF format. Failure to acknowledge the receipt of proofs or to return corrections within the requested deadline may cause publication to be postponed.

Peer Review

This journal operates a single-anonymized review process (the names of the reviewers are hidden from the author). All contributions will be initially assessed by an editor for suitability for the journal. Papers deemed suitable are then typically sent to a minimum of one independent expert reviewer to assess the scientific quality of the paper. The editors are responsible for the final decision regarding acceptance or rejection of articles. The editors’ decisions are final. Editors are not involved in decisions about papers which they have written themselves.

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