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).
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.