Archives: Questions

If we receive an article that is not quite right for a journal, our Editors work with you to help find a more suitable home for your research. We will assess your article to see if it is meets the requirements for a different IOP Publishing journal and if it does, we will offer you the chance to transfer your article to the selected journal(s).

Benefits of transferring to another IOP Publishing journal

• For authors – transferring your manuscript can save you time as you do not need to complete a new submission elsewhere. As previous reviews can also be transferred, and the same reviewers used again, the time to acceptance can be shorter for transferred articles.
• For reviewers – transferring reports means that no review is a wasted effort: a decision can be made by the Editors using the existing reviews, removing the need to restart the entire peer review process again.

Our Editors have an expert knowledge of the requirements for each journal we publish. As a result, we only offer a transfer if we know the article has the potential to be published by another IOP Publishing journal. If you do not want to transfer to the selected journal(s), you can simply decline the offer and can then submit your work elsewhere. The choice is entirely yours.

I’ve been offered a transfer: what happens next?

1. You need to decide whether you want to accept the transfer offer. The email we sent you will contain information about the journal(s) we have suggested, and we recommend you visit the ‘About the Journal’ information on our website to help make your decision.
2. If you would like to accept the offer, the article, along with all relevant submission information and reviewer reports (if present), will be transferred to the new journal by the IOP Editor.
3. The Editor on your chosen journal will then do one of two things, which depend on whether we have already received reviewer reports or not. They will either:
   • send it for peer review
   • allow you to revise the manuscript based on the existing reviewer comments
4. Once the reviewer reports or revisions have been received, the Editor makes a final decision on the manuscript.

It’s important to note: a transfer is not a guarantee of acceptance. The Editor on the new journal may decide that the article needs further rounds of review to ensure suitability for the journal.

 

For more information on copyright and open access licensing, refer to our open access rights and licence information page.

Reprints of a journal article can be purchased directly from the article abstract page in IOPscience, via the ‘Buy this article in print’ link within the Article information section (circled in red in the screenshot). For orders in excess of 250 copies, please email pod@ioppublishingpublishing.org.

To create a DOI link, add the DOI of the article (located alongside the citation information) to the following url: https://doi.org/.  For example, an article with the doi 10.1088/1367-2630/1/1/001 could be found at https://doi.org/10.1088/1367-2630/1/1/001.

Yes. Authors retain copyright in any supplementary material, granting IOP a non-exclusive licence to reproduce it. You may reuse supplementary material to which you own the rights.

Once you have sent your proof corrections, they will be carried out in accordance with the journal style. The paper will then be published online as quickly as possible, typically around a week after the corrections have been received. For journals that are printed, print publication may not happen for some time depending on the frequency of the journal. You will be informed by email when your paper is published online and invited to provide feedback on the publication process via a survey.

The published article has both HTML and PDF versions. As with the proof, there may be cosmetic differences between the two versions, such as figure position and the font used for mathematics, although the content itself will be the same.

For articles published under a CC BY-NC-SA licence, you—in common with all third parties—may reuse the article for non-commercial purposes only and may post the article to non-commercial repositories and non-commercial websites so long as you include attribution to the authors and the journal citation, indicate if changes were made and distribute the article under the same CC BY-NC-SA licence. For full licence terms and attribution requirements, please refer to the CC BY-NC-SA licence on the Creative Commons website.

For articles published under a CC BY licence, authors—in common with all third parties—may deal with the gold open access article in any way you wish (such as posting it to your institutional repository, another repository or website, or sharing it with others), so long as you include attribution to the authors, the journal citation and notice of the CC BY licence. For full licence terms and attribution requirements, please refer to the CC BY licence on the Creative Commons website.

You will be contacted by email when the proof of your article is ready for you to check. Most journals use an online proofing tool, a few use PDF proofing.

The ultimate responsibility for ensuring the accuracy of the published article rests with you, the author. If you are likely to be absent during the proof review period, then please let us know so that we can contact your co-authors (if applicable) or extend the deadline accordingly. In the unlikely event that we do not hear from you for a prolonged period, we may publish the article without your corrections.

When checking your proof, you should take particular care to check the mathematics, tables and references. Only essential corrections should be made at this stage. You should provide new files if figures need correction.

Please do not supply a new source file because it is difficult to identify corrections, and some could be missed. The only exception is if the wrong version of the source file has been used to create the proof; in this case, please contact the journal team who will arrange to have a new proof prepared.

Online proofing

You should check your proof carefully and make corrections directly through our online proofing tool, which is quick and avoids transcription errors. Simply click into the content and make changes, as you would with a word-processing program like Microsoft Word, Google Docs or Pages for Mac. Respond to all queries and, if required, add comments to the Production team.

The online (HTML) version of the proof should be used to check and amend the content of the article. The reference PDF version of the proof (available via the online proofing tool) should be used to check the layout, for example, of figures, tables and mathematics. Please make your corrections directly to the online proof.

The reference PDF version is static and reflects the article content at the time it was loaded into the online tool. Note that the two versions will not be identical in terms of layout. For example, the figures may appear in different positions; in the PDF version they will appear at the top of the page as close as possible to their first citation, whereas in the online version they will appear below the paragraph in which they are first cited. There may also be differences in the fonts used between the text and mathematics in the two versions. These cosmetic variations should not be a cause for concern and do not need to be corrected/noted.

If you have problems using the online tool, then please download the reference PDF proof (available via the online proofing tool) and annotate it using the instructions below. You can then either upload the corrected PDF using the ‘attach’ option in the interface and finalize/submit the article, or return it via email to the journal team.

PDF proofing

For PDF proofs, annotate the article with strikethrough, replacement text and insert text tools in Adobe Reader (or equivalent). To add production comments, use a sticky note. Please ensure that all changes are visible in the ‘Comments’ list, so that your corrections are not missed.

Alternatively, you can supply a list of changes that clearly indicates where amendments are required.