Archives: Questions

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.

Once the article has been published, you are free to post the Final Published Version to arXiv.org or another repository. You should add a link, via DOI, to the Version of Record, along with the following wording: ‘This article is published under a CC BY licence. The Version of Record is available online at [insert DOI]‘. You should include a link to the CC BY licence.

Yes, both the Accepted Manuscript and the Final Published Version of articles published under a CC BY licence can be shared elsewhere online. This includes submitting either article version to arXiv.org, or another repository. When sharing an article that is subject to a CC BY licence, you must make sure 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. When sharing the Accepted Manuscript version, the following wording should also be included:

‘This is the Accepted Manuscript version of an article accepted for publication in [NAME OF JOURNAL].  IOP Publishing Ltd is not responsible for any errors or omissions in this version of the manuscript or any version derived from it.  This Accepted Manuscript is published under a CC BY licence. The Version of Record is available online at [insert DOI].’

After acceptance, your article will be typeset into our house style (see our Style guide for journal articles) using the source files that you have provided. This includes conversion of figure files and sizing them to fit the journal template. A proof will then be produced, which you will be asked to check.

Most IOP Publishing journals offer the option to make the Accepted Manuscript version available within 24 hours of acceptance. At this point, you can start to promote your paper to your peers (see the ‘After publication’ section for more details). For further information on the ‘Accepted Manuscript’ process, and which of our journals offer this option, please see our Accepted Manuscripts page.

Please note that, in exceptional circumstances, we reserve the right to withdraw an article at any time before publishing.

1. Citation details of the Version of Record;
2. A link from the preprint to the Version of Record via DOI (digital object identifier); and
3. The wording as set out below: 

Our preprint policy applies to both subscription and gold open access articles. Under this policy, authors are permitted to share a Preprint of their article anywhere at any time, as long as copyright in the Preprint is not transferred, and as long as an exclusive licence is not granted to a third party. For more information, please see our preprint policy.

Our preprint policy applies to both subscription and gold open access articles. Under this policy, authors are permitted to share a Preprint of their article anywhere at any time, as long as copyright in the Preprint is not transferred, and as long as an exclusive licence is not granted to a third party. For more information, please see our preprint policy.

IOP grants back certain rights to authors to make limited use of an article published under the subscription model.

Authors have varying depositing rights for the Author’s Original/Preprint as set out expressly in the preprint pre-publication policy, copyright form you signed and also the author rights policy which applies to the particular journal in which the article was published.

Authors also have varying depositing rights for the Accepted Manuscript in non-commercial repositories and non-commercial scientific social networks. The rights you have as an author are those rights set out expressly in the copyright form you signed and also the author rights policy which applies to the particular journal in which the article was published.

Some of these rights only apply after the end of the applicable Embargo Period.

For specific information on your depositing rights as an author, as well as any reuse rights, ensure you check the copyright form you signed for the article and also the journal’s author rights policy. Please refer to our Author Rights Policy page.  If this does not answer the author rights query you have, please contact permissions@ioppublishing.org.

IOP Publishing (IOP) supports the posting of preprints of articles. Please refer to our preprint policy. The policy applies to all articles submitted to or published by IOP, whether on a subscription or on a gold open access basis.