Archives: Questions

We encourage you to submit supplementary data files with your manuscript. If you are submitting video files, most standard file formats are suitable: animated GIF, AVI, MPG, etc. However, we strongly recommend video files be delivered in the MPEG-4 container, encoded with the H264 codec. Other formats are permitted, but using MPEG-4 will provide the most faithful rendering of your video in the HTML journal article.

Video files should be a maximum of 10 MB file size each. Exceptions can be made in cases where larger files are essential for the science being presented.

The recommended settings are:

• Frame size: 480 x 360 pixels
• Frame rate: 15 frames/s
• Data rate: 150 kB/s.

Some of our journals encourage authors to submit video abstracts. Read more about video abstracts here.

Reviewer of the Year: Dr Jianyu Liang, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, United States

Outstanding Reviewer: Dr Hartmut Wiggers, Universitaet Duisburg-Essen, Germany

Outstanding Reviewers:

• Dr Christian Greiner, Karlsruhe Institut fuer Technologie, Germany
• Mr Xuejian Wu, University of California, Berkeley, United States

If you are an early career researcher you may find our PDF guides (available in both English and Chinese) helpful.

Please submit all new articles via the ‘Submit an article‘ link for the relevant journal. If you are a new author, you will need to set up an account before submitting your first article. Before submitting your article please read ‘What we look for in your article’.

Please ensure that you enter all the required information about your article. You will first be asked to select an article type for your manuscript, to enter the title and abstract, and then to select some keywords. Please note that, if your article is accepted for publication, we will display these keywords on the published article.

Author information:

You will then be asked to enter your author information. Please include all the authors (if there are less than 10). Please see Author roles and responsibilities for guidelines on who qualifies/should be included as a coauthor. We recommend you use authors’ full names and ORCID identifiers to avoid ambiguity. Please note: we require the submitting author to provide their ORCID. You can check if a co-author already exists in the journal’s database by entering the author’s e-mail address. You should ensure that all author e-mail addresses are correct to the best of your knowledge.

For papers with 20 authors or fewer, please add information for all authors. For papers with more than 20 authors, please add information for at least the first 10 authors. 

The information you provide will be used by the journal to correspond with yourself and your co-authors, to maintain accurate records, and to detect and manage any potential conflicts of interest.  

If your article is accepted, the information you provide will also be used to display the author names and affiliations with the Accepted Manuscripts. Please ensure that author names, email addresses, and affiliations are accurate, with correct spelling and punctuation. 

Follow these steps to add your co-authors in the Author Information page: 

• Check whether your co-author exists in IOP’s ScholarOne database; enter the co-author’s e-mail address and click ‘Search’. If you have authored an IOP article in the recent past, you can also use the ‘Your Recent Co-Authors’ menu at the bottom of the page to add any available authors. 
• If your co-author is found after searching, their information will appear in a pop up window; click ‘Add Author’ to include these details in the author list. 
• If your co-author cannot be found by searching, please add them using the ‘create a new author’ link that appears. The journal team will then create a full account for your co-author, using the information you provide, once your article has been submitted.  

Troubleshooting: 

• If you need to add a co-author with Chinese, Korean, or Japanese characters in their name, please enter the author’s first name in the ‘First (Given) Name’ field, and their family name in the ‘Last (Family) Name’ field. 
• If you cannot find your co-author after searching for them, please consider whether they may have recently changed their email address.  
• If you find a co-author using an old email address or institution, please inform the journal team of their correct details once you have submitted your article. Please do not create a new account for the co-author. The journal email address can be found via this page.

Note that you may not need to search for all your co-authors if the journal you are submitting to offers ‘submission pre-fill’ at the start of the submission process. If this is the case, please click ‘Select’ and then ‘Edit’ to add the required email addresses for each available co-author. 

Recommended & opposed reviewers

You may also propose preferred (and non-preferred) reviewers on submission. The suggested referees should have suitable subject expertise and not have any conflicts of interest (please see the IOP ethical policy for journals for further information on conflict of interest). These suggestions will be considered, but the editorial staff and/or Editorial Board will make the final decision regarding reviewer selection.

Policies & information

Any pertinent information that could affect the way the manuscript is handled may be provided in a cover letter. This may include highlighting anything particularly notable or significant about their research, and information about previous versions of this manuscript submitted to the current journal or to other journal(s).

You will be asked to provide information on all funders associated with your work. It is vital that you enter this information as it helps you to meet your funder requirements as well as to make your research more discoverable. Please search the Open Funder Registry for your funding institutions, and provide grant numbers.

Finally, before submitting your article, you are required to confirm that you have read and understood the IOP ethical policy for journals, and that your submission complies with its terms.

Open Access

If you have submitted to a hybrid open access journal you are then required to choose between publishing under a gold open access licence or on a subscription basis. You may change your decision at a later stage in the review process e.g. when completing Copyright. If you have submitted to a fully open access journal then you must agree to publish under a gold open access licence. You must also state whether or not you have reproduced any previously published material in your submission, and to confirm that you would like your accepted manuscript to be made available online within 24 hours of acceptance.

File uploads

File upload: to make submission as easy as possible for you,when submitting a new article, we only require you to upload a single PDF file (and any relevant supplementary data) for your article. The PDF should contain your complete manuscript, including any embedded figures and tables. You may upload your article from the arXiv directly by entering the arXiv e-print number. Please also submit any permissions that you have already obtained at this stage.

If you experience any problems submitting your article online, please contact the journal for assistance.

Please note, IOP journals do not charge you to submit an article. If there are any publication fees to pay (for open access, colour printing or page charges), these will be made clear to you at the point of submission, and are payable on acceptance for publication.

Reviewer of the Year: Professor Dr Kazumasa Iida, Nagoya University, Japan

A professor at Nagoya University, Japan, Dr Kazumasa lida sees reviewing for Superconductor Science and Technology as an excellent opportunity to learn more about research relating to superconductivity—his field of study.

When reviewing papers, Dr Iida looks forward to uncovering ‘fascinating results’ that are new to him, and an article by Weiss et al stands out to him for this very reason: Demonstration of an iron-pnictide bulk superconducting magnet capable of trapping over 1 T. There are many articles published in Superconductor Science and Technology that have interested him, but the research set out in this paper has, and will, stimulate further investigations by the bulk superconductor community.

Putting himself in authors’ shoes, Dr Iida understands that they will be wondering whether the referee finds their paper interesting—and how long it will take the reviewer get back to them. He believes that reviews should take no longer than two weeks and that researchers should always agree to act as a reviewer, unless the paper falls outside of their sphere of expertise.

Dr Iida advises first-time reviewers to reflect on the main points within the article and to think about how best to present them. It is important that they not only identify data or scientific interpretations that are unsound, but also offer suggestions on how to improve the quality of the manuscript.

In spite of his obvious dedication to the peer review process, Dr Iida is astonished that he has been identified as Reviewer of the Year.

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Reviewer of the Year: Dr Jochen Moll, Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany

Dr Jochen Moll believes that peer review is essential for a functioning scientific community, and therefore feels it his duty to contribute to the scientific quality assurance of publications.

Before recommending a paper, Dr Moll likes to see a detailed literature review that discusses the latest, most relevant articles. Taking the time to compile one automatically leads to a statement of novelty, he says. Similarly, articles that have a theoretical or numerical focus should include an experimental validation.

Reviewing for Smart Materials and Structures provides Dr Moll with the opportunity to be at the forefront of new developments in his field, and therefore broadens the range of his knowledge. For example, he recently enjoyed reading Guided wave based structural health monitoring: a review, which investigates many of the important elements of materials and structures research, such as modelling, experimental analysis and applications in real-life structures.

In addition, Dr Moll appreciates the social aspects of refereeing, understanding that authors will have taken months, perhaps years, to prepare their paper. For him, peer review is a balancing act between a robust critique and an encouraging evaluation. Certainly, Dr Moll is gratified when authors take on board his suggestions and is delighted to have been recognized for his efforts by the Reviewer of the Year award.

Reviewer of the Year: Dr G Sai Saravanan, Gallium Arsenide Enabling Technology Centre, India

Considering Semiconductor Science and Technology to be one of the most respected and leading journals in the area of semiconductor research, Dr G Sai Saravanan feels privileged to be associated with the publication.

The articles published within Semiconductor Science and Technology are of high quality, relevant and cover a wide range of topics, says Dr Saravanan. For example, he found the Special Section on Microscopy of Semiconducting Materials 2015 particularly informative and enjoyable.

Dr Saravanan feels honoured to have been named Reviewer of the Year. He finds it rewarding to be party to thoroughly edited manuscripts, and to have access to feedback from the Editorial Board as well as other reviewers’ comments. He views the peer review process as an excellent opportunity to benefit from the experience of others.

In the manuscripts he reviews, Dr Saravanan looks for relevant and meaningful discussions, and wants to see clear and concise presentations of the research. He therefore advises first-time reviewers to insist on clarity of expression and appropriate correlations—and to ensure that the discussion is relevant to the subject matter.

Dr Saravanan  looks forward to making further contributions to Semiconductor Science and Technology in the form of reviews.

Reviewer of the Year: Dr Joe Thompson, Los Alamos National Laboratory, United States

According to Dr Joe Thompson, peer review serves an essential purpose and must remain an integral part of the scientific endeavour. Its continued success, however, rests on the availability of a sufficiently broad, responsive and informed pool of referees upon which journals can call.

Serving as a referee is a professional obligation that should not be taken lightly, says Dr Thompson. He recognizes that it can be frustrating and time-consuming, but on the whole he sees the process as very rewarding. Reviewers have an opportunity to be exposed to the most recent developments, approaches to problems and concepts, and to remain aware of trends in their field. More importantly, peer review gives robust credibility to the scientific enterprise.

Reports on Progress in Physics attracts high-quality manuscripts that Dr Thompson finds enjoyable to review. He particularly liked a recent focused issue on strongly correlated electron systems. One especially ‘aspirational’ article that resonated with him was by Mike Norman on the subject of materials by design: Materials design for new superconductors. Describing it as an atypical scientific paper, Dr Thompson appreciated the fact that it was not bogged in superfluous detail.

Dr Thompson urges first-time reviewers not to approach the task with bias. Open-mindedness and considerate rigour, he says, are key to a review that benefits the manuscript’s authors and the health of the scientific enterprise as a whole.

Reviewer of the Year: Dr Dmitry Monin, Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics, Canada

An instrumentation astronomer, Dr Dmitry Monin finds Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific informative and pertinent. The journal publishes high quality papers on subjects ranging from pure astronomy to instrumentation, the latter being of particular interest to Dr Monin. He is full of praise for the journal’s Editorial Board, which is doing an ‘incredible job’, he says.

Dr Monin is modest about the ‘small contribution’ he makes to the journal, stating that he finds it rewarding to be working alongside highly knowledgeable referees. He does not consider himself to be an experienced reviewer and is delighted to have been awarded the 2016 Reviewer of the Year accolade.

A self-proclaimed perfectionist, Dr Monin enjoys applying his critiquing skills to the task of reviewing and is pleased to be able to use his tendency towards perfectionism as a force for good. He also likes uncovering novel, original research that offers interesting facts and findings. One article that springs to his mind is The BRITE Constellation Nanosatellite Mission: Testing, Commissioning, and Operations. The paper claims to serve as a template for effectively planning, building and operating future low-cost, niche-driven, space astronomy missions.

Viewing the current peer review process as straightforward and efficient, Dr Monin’s advice to those who are reviewing for the first time is to pay attention to detail. Even the best scientists make mistakes, he says, and it is up to reviewers to spot them.

Reviewer of the Year: Dr Andrey Starikovskiy, Princeton University, United States

Based at Princeton University’s Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department, Dr Andrey Starikovskiy is an applied physics specialist whose research spans a wide range of problems within plasma science, from nonequilibrium plasma aerodynamics to kinetics of low-temperature plasma. He has a longstanding interest in the subject, having received his Doctor of Science degree from the Institute for High-Temperature Studies at the Russian Academy of Science in 2000 and his PhD from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (State University) in 1991.

In Dr Starikovskiy’s opinion, the peer review process offers an excellent opportunity for the transfer of knowledge. He also sees it as a ‘good mechanism’ for maintaining high standards and improving the quality of papers overall. Not only does Plasma Sources Science and Technology sit well within his sphere of expertise, Dr Starikovskiy feels it his duty to uphold the quality of publications in his field and stop ‘garbage’ from being published.

Similar to the majority of reviewers, Dr Starikovskiy is looking for both novelty and excellence. The authors’ results must be clearly presented and offer something original to the research community. Certainly, for Dr Starikovskiy the most rewarding aspect of refereeing is having access to the latest, high-quality papers and new ideas.

Surprised to have been recognized for his efforts, Dr Starikovskiy feels it is a great honour to be named Reviewer of the Year. His short but straightforward advice to first-time reviewers is to avoid reading the authors’ names and to read the paper itself.