Archives: Questions

Reviewer of the Year: Dr Jialei Song, Royal Veterinary College, United Kingdom

Outstanding Reviewers

Dr Oscar Bautista, Instituto Politécnico Nacional, Mexico
Dr Federico Bosia, Universita degli Studi di Torino Scuola di Scienze della Natura, Italy
Dr Qu Cao, The MathWorks Inc, United States
Dr Steve Davis, University of Salford Manchester, United Kingdom
Dr Matteo Di Luca, Brown University, United States
Dr Matt Haberland, University of California Los Angeles, United States
Dr Xinghua Jia, ULC Robotics, United States
Professor Gwangpil Jung, Seoul National University of Science and Technology, Korea
Dr Surya Nurzaman, Monash University, Malaysia
Dr Hoang Vu Phan, Konkuk University, Korea
Dr Cesare Stefanini, Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, Italy
Dr Fangbao Tian, University of New South Wales Canberra, Australia
Dr Huichan Zhao, Tsinghua University, China
Dr Qiang Zhu, University of California – San Diego, United States

Reviewer of the Year: Dr Shantanu Pradhan, Indian Institute of Technology Madras, India

Outstanding Reviewers
Dr Jan Bruder, Max Planck Institut fur molekulare Biomedizin, Germany
Dr Yeong-Jin Choi, Korea Institute of Materials Science, Korea
Dr Bin Duan, University of Nebraska Medical Center, United States
Dr Daniela Duarte Campos, RWTH Aachen University Hospital, Germany
Dr Monika Hospodiuk-Karwowski, University Grenoble Alpes, CEA, INSERM, IRIG, BGE, France
Dr Bae Hoon Lee, Wenzhou Institute of Biomaterials and Engineering, China
Dr Xiang Li, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, United States
Dr Monica Moya, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, United States
Dr Liliang Ouyang, Imperial College London, United Kingdom
Dr Pujiang Shi, Singapore Centre for 3D Printing, Singapore
Professor Dr Mark Tibbitt, ETH Zürich, Switzerland
Dr Marie Weinhart, Freie Universitat Berlin, Germany
Dr Yang Wu, Penn State, United States
Professor Jun Yin, Zhejiang University, China

Reviewer of the Year: Dr Bing Li, Imperial College London, United Kingdom

His research interests  at Imperial include the study of chemical and physical properties of advanced materials (graphene, carbon nanotube, piezo materials etc) using nanotechnology, the assembly of different chemical and biological wearable/implantable sensors (DNA, antigen, bacteria, pH, moisture, glucose) as well as an interest in the design of functional micro 3D structures and the adoption of micro 3D structures in enhancing the sensing performance and drug delivery.

Outstanding Reviewers

Professor Long Ba, Southeast University, China
Dr Yusong Bai, Columbia University, United States
Dr Jérôme Borme, INL-International Iberian Nanotechnology Lab, Portugal
Dr Wai-Lun Chan, University of Kansas, United States
Dr Francesco Colangelo, ETH Zürich, Switzerland
Dr Johann Coraux, Institut NEEL, France
Dr Jiang Cui, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong
Mr Adolfo De Sanctis, University of Exeter, United Kingdom
Professor Zengfeng Di, Shanghai Institute of Microsystem and Information Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China
Mr Robin Dolleman, Kavli Institute of Nanoscience Delft, Netherlands
Dr Yun Dong, Lanzhou University of Technology, China
Dr José H Garcia, Catalan Institute of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology, Spain
Dr Jhon W González, Universidad Técnica Federico Santa María , Chile
Dr Yufeng Hao, Nanjing University, China
Dr Chenhao Jin, Cornell University, United States
Assistant Professor Minsu Jung, Dong-Eui University, Korea
Dr Łukasz Kłopotowski, Intitute of Physics, Polish Academy of Sciences, Poland
Professor Jang-Yeon Kwon, Yonsei University, Korea
Dr Yanyong Li, Hong Kong Polytechnic University Faculty of Applied Sciences and Textiles, Hong Kong
Professor Jingbo Li, Chinese Academy of Sciences – Beijing, China
Dr Lu Li, School of Science, China
Dr Yuxuan Lin, University of California, Berkeley, United States
Dr Xizheng Liu, Tianjin University of Technology, China
Dr Mingsheng Long, Shanghai Institute of Technical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China
Dr Zhongyuan Lu, University of California Berkeley Research, United States
Dr Maciej Molas, Faculty of Physics, University of Warsaw, Poland
Professor Fabien Picaud, Universite de Bourgogne-Franche-Comte, France
Dr Grazia Politano, Università della Calabria dipartimento di Fisica, Italy
Professor Dr Guangcun Shan, Beihang University, China
Dr Alexander Steinhoff, University of Bremen, Germany
Dr Khalid Thebo, University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, China
Dr Gang Wang, University of Cambridge, United Kingdom
Professor Shaoqing Xiao, Jiangnan University, China
Miss Qilin Xiong, Huazhong University of Science & Technology, China
Professor Guowei Yang, Sun Yat-Sen University, China
Dr Yu Ye, Peking University School of Physics, China
Dr Yifei Yu, North Carolina State University, United States
Professor Dr Xing Wang Zhang, Institute of Semiconductors, CAS, China
Dr Guanyu Zhou, University of Notre Dame, United States
Dr Peng Zhou, Fudan University, China

IOP-EKB Open Access Agreement

The open access agreement between IOP Publishing (IOP) and the Egyptian Knowledge Bank (EKB) came to an end on 31 Dec 2020, and any articles accepted after this date will not be eligible for inclusion in the agreement. IOP  is no longer identifying articles for funding, and authors choosing to publish open access will now be invoiced directly.

Please contact your library for further information on open access funding options at your institution.

Caveat

IOP ebooks are flexible regarding styling requirements; consistency within the book is most important.

AAS ebooks follow different styling conventions; details can be found here: https://journals.aas.org/author-resources/

Acronyms

• Define acronyms at their first occurrence in each chapter. After this, use the acronym only.
• Do not use an acronym if the definition or phrase is used only once.
• If an acronym is used in a chapter, it must be re-defined at its first occurrence in any other chapter where it appears. Alternatively, a definition list can be provided.
• The definition should be lower case, unless it contains proper nouns, e.g.: electron energy distribution function (EEDF).
• Acronyms that are very familiar to readers of a particular topic or community do not need to be expanded.

Mathematics

• Punctuate equations (inline and displayed) as part of the sentence. Consistency is more important here though, so we will follow the author’s preference.
• Make the following notation consistent (preferably roman): differential ‘d’, exponential ‘e’, complex ‘i’, sin, cos, tan, etc.
• Use italic for subscripts and superscripts that are variables and roman for those that are labels.
• Write units in index notation, e.g. m s⁻¹.
• Do not use hyphens between a number and its unit; use, e.g. 5 m thick barrier (not ‘5-m thick barrier’, or ‘5-m-thick barrier’).
• In numbers, include a thin space every three digits from the decimal, e.g. 15 000, 0.000 0001, etc.
• Use a full space between numbers and units, e.g. 1 m s⁻¹. Apply the same rule for numbers with mathematical operators, e.g. 1 = x.
• Displayed equations should follow naming convention within each chapter in chronological order, e.g. (1.1), (1.2), (2.1), etc. In appendices, equations should also be chronologically numbered, e.g. (A1), (A2), etc.

Footnotes

Number footnotes sequentially within each chapter.

Denote table footnotes with lower case superscript roman letters, e.g. ‘a’, ‘b’, ‘c’, etc, and then list the footnotes underneath the table. Write each new footnote on a separate line.

Miscellaneous styling

• Use single quotation marks for quotations and double quotation marks for quotations within quotations.
• Use a lower case ‘x’ in ‘x-ray’, except at the beginning of a sentence.
• Use a single space after a full stop.
• En dashes (–) can denote a range or relationship between two nouns. Em dashes (—) can be used in place of commas or brackets. Do not use spaces between em dashes or en dashes.

Figures and tables

Place figures and graphics at the top of the page where possible and do not embed within the text. Size and position figures to achieve consistent font size and information display. Figures and tables will be placed as close as possible to their first citation within the text (ideally on the same page) when typesetting; however, sometimes the number or size of figures does not allow for this.

Number all figures and tables in numerical order by chapter. If this is not the case, they will be renumbered as part of the production process. Use labels, e.g. ‘(a)’, ‘(b)’, etc where a figure has several parts. Explain all parts in the caption.

If the figure has been previously published elsewhere, obtain permission from the original publisher and include the appropriate permissions wording in your figure caption, even if it is your own work.

The style in the text for referring to tables and figures is, for example, ‘table 1.1’ and ‘figure 1.1’ (or ‘Table 1.1’ and ‘Figure 1.1’ if at the beginning of a sentence), respectively. Contractions (e.g. ‘tab. 2’, ‘fig. 1’) are not allowed.

Reference styling

We encourage the use of the Harvard or Vancouver reference systems. However, you can use any reference system providing it is sensible and consistent throughout the paper. We will ensure your references adhere to house style during the production process, whatever format you submit them in.

Each chapter should have its own reference list at the end of the chapter. References repeated in multiple chapters should be in each list. A separate bibliography can be provided at the book level as a further reading list.

A reference should give your reader enough information to locate the article, and you should take care to ensure that the information is correct so that links can be made.

For more than ten authors, the name of the first author should be given followed by et al.

For examples of common reference types, see below.

Journals

References to journal works should include:

• Author(s): surname(s) and initial(s)
• Year
• Standard abbreviated journal title (in italics)
• Part of journal (e.g. A, B, etc, if appropriate)
• Volume number (in bold)
• Page number, page range or article number

Example:

Cantillano C, Mukherjee S, Morales-Inostroza L, Real B, Cáceres-Aravena G, Hermann-Avigliano C, Thomson R R and Vicencio R A 2018 New J. Phys. 20 033028

Books

References to a book should include:

• Author(s): surname(s) and initial(s)
• Year
• Full title (in italics, the initial letter of each significant word should be upper case; note that if a word is hyphenated then both parts should have an initial capital letter; for example, Non-Classical Mechanics)
• Town of publication
• Publisher

Example:

Whelan C T 2018 Atomic Structure (Bristol: IOP Publishing)

Conference proceedings

References to conference papers should include:

• Author(s): surname(s) and initial(s)
• Year of publication
• Title of conference (in italics, initial letter of each significant word should be upper case)

Example:

Mahanta N K and Abramson A R 2012 13th Intersociety Conf. on Thermal and Thermomechanical Phenomena in Electronic Systems

Web links in references

Only permanent or persistent web links should be used in reference lists. Examples of acceptable links include:

• Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
• PubMed identifier (PMID)
• PubMed Central reference number (PMCID)
• SAO/NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS) Bibliographic Code
• arXiv e-print number

Non-bibliographic text

References that do not contain bibliographic information (i.e. they do not refer to other pieces of work) should be set as a footnote within the text and cited at the appropriate location.

Citations

Please ensure that all references are cited in the text and that all citations have a corresponding reference.

IOP Publishing (IOP) has a transformative agreement with the ICM consortium in Poland to enable a transition to open access publishing.

Who can benefit?
All corresponding authors that are current staff members, researchers (permanent, temporary and visiting), or students at one of the institutions below at the point of submission, can publish open access at no cost to themselves. The corresponding author is the person listed as Corresponding Author at the time of submission, and is the person responsible for communicating with the journal during the peer review and publication process.

What’s included?

• Articles accepted will be eligible for transformative agreement funding to enable authors to publish open access with no cost to themselves
• Research paper, Focus Collection, letter and review article types
• Included journals are those in lists A, B, C and D. Click here for a full title list of eligible journals.

Please note

You may find our author guide for submitting under a transformative agreement helpful located in our Transformative Agreement hub.

Institutions included

Akademia Górniczo-Hutnicza im. Stanisława Staszica	AGH University of Science and Technology
Centrum Fizyki Teoretycznej PAN	Center for Theoretical Physics PAS
Instytut Chemii Fizycznej PAN	Institute of Physical Chemistry PAS
Instytut Fizyki Jądrowej im. H. Niewodniczańskiego PAN	Institute of Nuclear Physics PAS
Instytut Fizyki Molekularnej PAN	Institute of Molecular Physics PAS
Instytut Fizyki PAN	Institute of Physics PAS
Instytut Fizyki Plazmy i Laserowej Mikrosyntezy	Institute of Plasma Physics and Laser Microfusion
Instytut Matematyczny PAN	Institute of Mathematics PAS
Instytut Niskich Temperatur i Badań Strukturalnych PAN	Institute of Low Temperature and Structure Research PAS
Instytut Wysokich Ciśnień PAN	Institute of High Pressure Physics PAS
Narodowe Centrum Badań Jądrowych	National Centre for Nuclear Research
Politechnika Gdańska	Gdansk University of Technology
Politechnika Łódzka	Lodz University of Technology
Politechnika Śląska	Silesian University of Technology
Politechnika Warszawska	Warsaw University of Technology
Politechnika Wrocławska	Wroclaw University of Science and Technology
Sieć Badawczą Łukasiewicz – Instytut Chemii Przemysłowej im. Profesora Ignacego Mościckiego	Łukasiewicz Research Network – Institute of Industrial Chemistry Prof. I. Mościcki
Sieć Badawcza Łukasiewicz – Instytut Mikroelektroniki i Fotoniki	Łukasiewicz Research Network – Institute of Microelectronics and Photonics
Uniwersytet Gdański	University of Gdansk
Uniwersytet im. Adama Mickiewicza w Poznaniu	Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan
Uniwersytet Jagielloński – Wydział Fizyki, Astronomii i Informatyki Stosowanej	Jagiellonian University in Krakow
Uniwersytet Łódzki	University of Lodz
Uniwersytet Marii Curie-Skłodowskiej w Lublinie	Maria Curie-Sklodowska University in Lublin
Uniwersytet Mikołaja Kopernika w Toruniu	Nicolaus Copernicus University
Uniwersytet Opolski	University of Opole
Uniwersytet Rzeszowski	University of Rzeszow
Uniwersytet Śląski w Katowicach	University of Silesia in Katowice
Uniwersytet w Białymstoku	University of Bialystok
Uniwersytet Warszawski	University of Warsaw
Uniwersytet Wrocławski	University of Wroclaw
Wojskowa Akademia Techniczna im. Jarosława Dąbrowskiego	Military University of Technology

IOP Publishing (IOP) has a transformative agreement with CERN to enable a transition towards open access publishing.

Who can benefit?
All corresponding authors that are current staff members, researchers (permanent, temporary and visiting), or students at CERN at the point of submission, can publish open access at no cost to themselves. The corresponding author is the person listed as Corresponding Author at the time of submission, and is the person responsible for communicating with the journal during the peer review and publication process.

CERN experimental collaborations can also benefit from this Transformative Agreement. Inclusion may need to be requested by the author(s) if the article is not automatically picked up through our standard article processing. Please send requests for inclusion to open-access-questions@cern.ch.

What’s included?

• Articles accepted will be eligible for transformative agreement funding to enable authors to publish open access with no cost to themselves
• Research papers, Focus Collection, letters and review article types
• Included journals are those in lists A, B, C and D in the title list of eligible journals.

Please note

You may find our author guide for submitting under a transformative agreement helpful located in our Transformative Agreement hub.

For more information or if you wish to publish Open Access in a journal not listed as part of this agreement, please contact open-access-questions@cern.ch.

Journal of Instrumentation

• CERN Corresponding Authors (as described above) will now receive Open Access funding through the Transformative Agreement terms.
• CERN co-authors can select the ‘CERN open access’ option and notify Journal of Instrumentation of their intention to publish Open Access during the submission process. Authors will not need to sign the copyright form, as CERN research articles are covered by a collective license agreement.

IOP Publishing (IOP) has a transformative agreement with EISZ consortium in Hungary to enable a transition to open access publishing.

Who can benefit?
All corresponding authors that are current staff members, researchers (permanent, temporary and visiting), or students at one of the institutions below at the point of submission, can publish open access at no cost to themselves. The corresponding author is the person listed as Corresponding Author at the time of submission, and is the person responsible for communicating with the journal during the peer review and publication process.

What’s included?

• Articles accepted will be eligible for transformative agreement funding to enable authors to publish open access with no cost to themselves
• Research paper, Focus Collection, letter and review article types
• Included journals are those in lists A, B, and D. Click here for a full title list of eligible journals.

Please note
You may find our author guide for submitting under a transformative agreement helpful located in our Transformative Agreement hub.

Eligible institutions
Centre for Energy Research
ELI-HU Non-profit Ltd
Institute for Nuclear Research
Research Centre for Astronomy and Earth Sciences
University of Miskolci
University of Szeged
Wigner Research Centre for Physics

Is your institution not listed here? Recommend open access funding to your library.

If your work involves live subjects (human or animal) you must provide an appropriate ethical statement when submitting your paper. The most suitable location for this is normally the methods section of the manuscript. However, to preserve anonymity in double-anonymous journals please do not add the ethical statement to the manuscript, instead complete the relevant section on the submission system.

Our editorial team checks all ethical statements are appropriate for the study being reported. Any manuscript submitted without a suitable ethical statement will be returned to the authors and will not be considered further until an appropriate and explicit statement is included.

Authors should include the following points in the ethical statement (if applicable) when submitting a paper:

• The institutional or national research ethics committee /review board that approved the research must be named. Include the approval number/ID if one was given. If the research received a waiver of approval from the ethics committee/review board or did not require approval for some other reason please state this and explain why.
• For investigations involving animal experimentation you should state which institutional and/or national animal care and use guidelines were followed.
• For investigations involving human participants:
  • You should state that the research was conducted in accordance with the principles embodied in the Declaration of Helsinki and in accordance with local statutory requirements.
  • You should state that all participants (or their parent or legal guardian in the case of children under 16) gave written informed consent to participate in the study
  • For research which involves identifiable human subjects (including donors of cells or tissues) you must include a statement confirming that consent was given for publication by all participants (or their parent or legal guardian in the case of children under 16). In order to protect participant anonymity, authors do not need to send proof of this consent to us at IOP Publishing. Where a donor has deceased prior to the research and is therefore unable to grant consent but is still identifiable (e.g. HeLa cells), their origin and lack of consent should be acknowledged.
• Articles relying on clinical trials should quote the trial registration number at the end of the abstract. IOP also encourages the registration of such studies in a public trials registry prior to participants being enrolled.

Ethics Gen Tool

Our free Ethics Generator Tool helps authors to provide correctly worded ethics statements to match the statement criteria of an author’s journal of choice. EthicsGen enhances the publishing experience for our authors, reviewers and readers, increase efficiency and speed, and supports our commitment to deliver the highest integrity standards.

When a statement is complete, the user can copy the text to the clipboard or download it as a file, then paste into the appropriate section on the submission form.

Double-anonymous submissions

• In double-anonymous journals please do not add the ethical statement to the manuscript, instead please complete the relevant section on the submission system. This information is not shared with reviewers and therefore does not need to be anonymised.
• If a reviewer feels they need to see an ethical statement, they are advised to contact the journal to discuss.

We have partnered with a number of institutions and consortia from across the globe to centrally manage the cost of article publication charges (APCs) and enable authors to publish research Open Access at no cost to themselves (specific terms and conditions vary).

Use IOPP Journal Finder to see if you might be covered by a transformative agreement.

Go to IOPP Journal Finder

For more information and to see how to take advantage of these agreements, please see the individual web pages below. You may also find our author guide for submitting under a transformative agreement helpful.

• Australia
• Austria
• Botswana
• Bulgaria
• Canada
• CERN
• Chile
• China
• Colombia
• Czechia
• Denmark
• Finland
• France
• Germany
• Greece
• High energy physics and instrumentation
• Hong Kong, SAR
• Hungary
• India
• Ireland
• Israel
• Italy
• Japan
• Lebanon
• Lithuania
• Macau
• Malaysia
• Max Planck Institutes in Germany
• Mexico
• New Zealand
• Norway
• Peru
• Poland
• Portugal
• Romania
• The Netherlands
• Saudi Arabia
• Slovakia
• Slovenia
• South Africa
• South Korea
• Spain
• Sweden
• Switzerland
• Taiwan
• Tunisia
• Turkey
• United Kingdom
• United States

The Electrochemical Society (ECS) Journals

If you are submitting an article to a journal from The Electrochemical Society, you may be entitled to free open access under an institutional ECS Plus agreement. View the list of participating institutions and how to take advantage of this.