Information for Contributors[ Where to Submit Your Manuscript | How to Prepare Your Manuscript | Statement of Ethics and Responsibilities of Authors | How to Transmit Your Accepted Manuscript Electronically | Estimates of Finished Length | Manuscript Preparation Checklist ]
Where to Submit Your ManuscriptSend manuscripts (3 copies) by conventional mail to:Editor Telephone: 630-252-4200 Please do not send manuscripts to the Editorial Office electronically. A covering letter should specify authors, title, Journal, the corresponding author's e-mail address, and any special requests. Unless otherwise stated, submission of a manuscript will be understood to mean that the paper has been neither copyrighted, classified, published, nor is being considered for publication elsewhere. We welcome suggestions of possible reviewers. To help protect the reviewer's anonymity, we ask for at least four names, with full information on postal & e-mail addresses, telephone number, and fax number. The referee selected by the Editor may, of course, not necessarily be from the list. The Editor strongly prefers to correspond directly with the author rather than through the reports division or through executives of the author's laboratory. Manuscripts sent to authors for revision should be returned to the Editor within three months. A manuscript returned later than this will generally be regarded as newly submitted and will receive a new receipt date. Authors whose manuscripts have been accepted for publication will receive correspondence informing them of the issue for which it is tentatively scheduled. This correspondence includes instructions for sending accepted manuscripts to AIP Production electronically. Proofs and all subsequent correspondence pertaining to papers in the production process should be addressed to: Editorial Supervisor Telephone: 516-576-2408/2417 Reference must be made to the AIP identification number, title, author, and scheduled issue date. A limited number of alterations in proof are unavoidable, but the cost of making extensive alterations after the article has been typeset may be charged to the author. Please do not address correspondence about proofs, reprints, artwork, publication charges, etc., to the Editor. To do so simply delays the appropriate action and response. Accepted Manuscript Status Inquiry System (AMSIS): Through the AMSIS homepage, authors may access information about significant milestones for their accepted manuscript during the production process at AIP. AMSIS can be used only by authors of accepted manuscripts; direct requests about papers still in the review process to the Editorial Office. General information regarding publication charges, copyrights, and similar material may be found on the Journal Masthead page, following the Table of Contents.
How to Prepare Your ManuscriptFor general format and style, consult recent issues of the Journal and the 1990 Fourth Edition of the AIP Style Manual, published by the American Institute of Physics and available free-of-charge for downloading in Adobe's Portable Document Format (PDF). The Manuscript, including the abstract, references, and captions, should be neatly typed in English, double-spaced, on one side only of 21.6 x 28 cm (8-1/2 x 11 in. or A4) white paper with ample margins. It should be carefully proofread by the author. The manuscript must be in good scientific American English; this is the author's responsibility. Unclear or excessive handwritten insertions are not acceptable. Number all pages in single sequence beginning with the title and abstract page. Authors should submit three clear copies of the manuscript, including original (high-quality) illustrations, and, if necessary for the reviewer's use, a second set of high-quality illustrations. Manuscripts must never exceed three journal pages. An abstract limited to about 100 words is required. In addition to the title, abstract, and references, the three-page length permits about 2000 words of text, reduced, however, by allowances for equations, tables, and figures. An average one-column figure with its caption will displace about 220 words of text. Authors are cautioned that discovery of excess length might not occur until a late stage in publication and would then result in delay and expense. Circumvention of the length limitation by division of a long article into small parts is considered to be contrary to the purpose of this journal. A section on Comments is available for criticism or additions to Letters already in print. A Response will normally be solicited to a critical Comment. Both Comments and Responses should contain 1000 words or less. The Title should be concise but informative enough to facilitate information retrieval. Acronyms are not allowed in the title. They should be used with considerate moderation elsewhere. The Abstract should be limited to about 100 words and should be self-contained (contain no footnotes). It should be adequate as an index (giving all subjects, major and minor, about which new information is given) and as a summary (giving the conclusions and all results of general interest in the article). It must appear on its own sheet(s) separate from the text. Authors' names should preferably be written in a standard form for all publications to facilitate indexing and avoid ambiguities. Equations should be neatly typed, punctuated and aligned to bring out their structure, and numbered on the right. Mathematical operation signs indicating continuity of the expression should be placed at the left of the second and succeeding lines. Use × rather than a centered dot, except for scalar products of vectors. The solidus (/) should be used instead of built-up fractions in running text, and in display wherever clarity would not be jeopardized. Use "exp" for complicated exponents. Notation must be legible, clear, compact, and consistent
with standard usage. All unusual or handwritten symbols whose identity
may not be obvious must be identified in the margin the first time
they appear, and at all subsequent times when confusion might arise.
Superscripts are normally set directly over subscripts; authors
should note where readability or the meaning requires a special
order. If there is any possibility of confusion, indicate superscripts
by a black penciled References and footnotes are treated alike. They must be numbered consecutively in order of first appearance in the text and should be given in a separate double-spaced list at the end of the text material. Reference should be made to the full list of authors rather than to first author followed by an abbreviation such as et al. References within tables should be designated by lowercase Roman letter superscripts and given at the end of the table. For the proper form, see the AIP Style Manual and recent issues of this journal. The number of a grant or contract is meaningless to our readers and should be omitted unless its inclusion is required by the agency that supports the research. Preprints of cited unpublished work by the authors should be sent with the manuscript. Separate Tables (numbered in the order of their appearance by Roman numerals) should be used for all but the simplest tabular material; they should have captions that make the tables intelligible without reference to the text. The structure should be clear, with simple column headings giving all units. Unaltered computer output and notation are generally unacceptable. Electronic Physics Auxiliary Publication Service (EPAPS): EPAPS is a low-cost electronic depository for material that is supplemental to a journal article. Appropriate items for deposit include multimedia (e.g., movie files, audio files, 3D rendering files), color figures, data tables, and text (e.g., appendices) that are too lengthy or of too limited interest for inclusion in the printed journal. Retrieval instructions are footnoted in the related published paper. Prominent links in the online journal article allow users to navigate directly to the associated EPAPS deposit. EPAPS deposits may also be retrieved by users free of charge via command-line FTP or via the EPAPS homepage. Authors are encouraged to deposit multimedia files with EPAPS, and should consider depositing in EPAPS color versions of illustrations that will appear in black & white in the journal. All deposits to EPAPS must be approved by the Journal Editor as part of a manuscript's normal review cycle and require a nominal deposit fee. Obtain deposit forms from the Journal Editor. For additional information about depositing or retrieving EPAPS files, see the EPAPS homepage. Illustrations: Authors must submit high-quality (publication quality) hardcopies of all illustrations to the Editorial Office. Upon acceptance of your manuscript, authors are strongly encouraged to send electronic graphics files to AIP. You will receive electronic submission instructions with your acceptance notification. Please adhere to the following guidelines when preparing your illustrations for submission:
Submission of Electronic Graphics Files to AIP
Statement of Ethics and Responsibilities of Authors Submitting to AIP JournalsThis journal is published as part of the charter of its publisher, the American Institute of Physics (AIP), to advance and diffuse knowledge of the science of physics and its applications to human welfare. To that end, it is essential that all who participate in producing the journal conduct themselves as authors, reviewers, editors, and publishers in accord with the highest level of professional ethics and standards.A detailed statement of what this journal expects is available here. By submitting a manuscript to this journal, each author implicitly confirms that it meets the highest ethical standards. How to Transmit Your Accepted Manuscript ElectronicallyCompuscripts: AIP accepts the following author-prepared electronic text files for use in the production: REVTeX, LaTeX, Microsoft Word, or WordPerfect. If you are interested in submitting an electronic file, please indicate so in the cover letter that accompanies your original submission. Also include an e-mail address. Do not send an electronic text file to AIP Production until your manuscript has been accepted. Details and instructions may be found here. AIP uses translation software to convert REVTeX, LaTeX, MS Word or WordPerfect files into Xyvision composition files for production. Each file will be evaluated for appropriateness; authors will receive notice with their galley proofs as to whether or not their file was used, along with a feedback form detailing any problems encountered in processing the file. The REVTeX Toolbox and the Word Author Toolkit, as well as general information regarding AIP's compuscript program, are accessible here.
Estimates of Finished LengthAs an aid to the author, we provide two guidelines for estimating the finished length of an article. The first is very simple and approximate, and can be used for rough estimates. Usually this will suffice. The second is more complex and considerably better. Neither is guaranteed. Regardless of estimates, the final journal article must be no longer than three pages. (1) Rough estimate Disregard the title, authors' names and institutions, abstract, and list of references. Limit the remainder to 2000 words, or its equivalent. One "word" is seven characters. This will produce a paper of 2 to 3 journal pages most of the time. The typical figure, with its caption, is reduced to the width of a single column, and displaces about 220 words of text. Reduce the 2000-word limit accordingly. If there are figures of unusual size, many authors from different institutions, a lengthy abstract or list of references, many equations, or several tables, etc., the author is advised to use guideline (2) below. (2) Refined estimate All calculations are made in terms of single-column lines; 118 lines equal one page. Whenever a rule gives a line equivalent for a number of words, the phrase "or fraction thereof" is to be understood. Again, one "word" is 7 characters. (a) The title takes 3 lines for every 7 words. Manuscript Preparation ChecklistUse this checklist to avoid the most common mechanical errors in submitted manuscripts.(1) The manuscript must be one-sided only and must be double-spaced
throughout. |
underneath the superscript and subscripts by a black penciled
over the subscript.
