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Language

All papers should be written in English.

Writing

Articles should be clearly and concisely written, and be accessible to an international audience. It is important to avoid colloquial terms and sayings that may not be widely understood. Short sentences and paragraphs make for easier reading. You should aim for consistency within your article in matters such as hyphenation and spelling. All acronyms and abbreviations should be clearly explained when they first appear in the text. Introduce any ideas that may be unfamiliar to readers early in the paper so that your results can be easily understood. IOP Publishing follows Guidelines on Inclusive Language and Images in Scholarly Communication to ensure that journal articles use bias-free and culturally sensitive communication. We ask authors to please follow these guidelines in their manuscript submissions.

Editing

On completion of the first draft, carefully re-read your paper and make any amendments that will improve the content. When complete, send the paper to colleagues and co-authors, and use their feedback to improve the clarity of the text. When all co-authors are satisfied that the draft is ready to be submitted to a journal, carry out one final spelling and grammar check before submission.

IOP Editing Services, in partnership with Editage, provides editorial support if you need it. We also have support for authors based in China with our China IOP Editing Services.

You can choose from a range of options, including:

  • English-language editing
  • Translation services
  • Plagiarism checking
  • Technical review.

Visit our language editing service to find out more.

Can I submit an article that has been posted as a Preprint?

IOP’s Preprint pre-publication policy allows authors to share a Preprint of their article anywhere at any time, subject to two restrictions.

This means that IOP will consider articles which have already been posted as a Preprint anywhere online, provided that (i) you did not and do not transfer (assign) ownership of its copyright, and (ii) you did not and do not grant an exclusive licence to it.

Additionally, IOP will also consider articles that have been included as a preprint in a thesis or dissertation, provided (i) you did not and do not transfer (assign) ownership of its copyright, and (ii) you did not and do not grant an exclusive licence to it.

Materials Research Express: 2016 Reviewer Awards

Reviewer of the Year: Dr Christopher Jeynes, University of Surrey, UK

Professor Chris Jeynes believes there is no perfect peer review method, but that however it comes we need it to discourage ‘bad’ papers and to improve ‘good’ ones.

He has some candid advice for reviewers (first-time and experienced), authors and editors alike.  He says:

‘Reviewers:  you are the gate-keepers!  You must insist on sound arguments and data, informative titles, accurate abstracts, and fluent and masterly introductions. It is up to the author to persuade you that their research is both valid and valuable.

Authors:  remember that reviewers are not God:  it is good practice to argue your point!  But also remember, it is your job to persuade reviewers—who are hard pressed for time—that your paper is worthy.  You should conduct your own internal review before submitting it, and then welcome tough reviews since it is a paper’s legacy that is guaranteed by careful reviewers.

Editors:  remember that your reviewers are not God, no one has a monopoly on truth just as no one is free from error!  It is your job to oversee the peer review process so that better papers result.  You should encourage creative argument between reviewers and authors!

In all this, of course sound science is essential, as is a good command of the literature.  Reviewing papers that offer a coherent, timely, interesting and important story make it all worthwhile!’

Outstanding Reviewers:

  • Dr Mohd Yusri Abd Rahman, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, Malaysia
  • Dr Rachid Baghdad, Universite Ibn Khaldoun de Tiaret, Algeria
  • Dr Debashis Bandyopadhyay, Birla Institute of Technology and Science Pilani, India
  • Dr Rajasekhar Bhimireddi, Indian Institute of Science, India
  • Dr R Bolmaro, Instituto de Física Rosario, CONICET, Argentina
  • Dr Gunther Brunklaus, Westfalische Wilhelms Universitat Munster, Germany
  • Dr Abhijeet Budruk, Intel Corp Hillsboro, United States
  • Professor Gloria Buendia, Universidad Simon Bolivar, Venezuela
  • Dr Yanping Cao, Tsinghua University, China
  • Professor Dr Jian Chen, Southeast University, China
  • Dr Houyang Chen, University at Buffalo – SUNY, United States
  • Dr B H Y Corcoran, University of Sydney, Australia
  • Dr Rodolfo Cruz-Silva, Shinshu University, Japan
  • Dr Albert Dato, University of California – Berkeley, United States
  • Professor Kentaro Doi, Osaka University, Japan
  • Dr Yong-Hua Duan, Kunming University of Science and Technology, China
  • Professor Jiyang Fan, Southeast University, China
  • Dr Martin Friak, Institute of Physics of Materials, Germany
  • Dr Fethullah Gunes, Izmir Katip Celebi University, Turkey
  • Professor Masataka Hakamada, Kyoto University, Japan
  • Dr Baoshan Hu, Chongqing University, China
  • Dr Chuan-Lei Jia, China University of Mining and Technology, China
  • Dr Shaohua Jiang, Bayreuth University, Germany
  • Dr Itaru Kamiya, Toyota Technological Institute, Japan
  • Professor Dong-Hau Kuo, National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, Taiwan
  • Dr Jianmin Li, Zhejiang University, China
  • Dr Lingyan Liang, Chinese Academy of Sciences – Ningbo Institute of Materials Technology and Engineering, China
  • Dr Jinyun Liu, Chinese Academy of Sciences – Intelligent Machines Institute, China
  • Professor Chee Liu, National Taiwan University, Taiwan
  • Dr Enzhou Liu, Northwest University, United States
  • Dr Roberto López, UAEM, Mexico
  • Dr Magdalena-Valentina Lungu, National Institute for Research and Development in Electrical Engineering ICPE-CA, Romania
  • Dr Jie Ma, Tongji University, China
  • Dr M Mahdi, University Sains Malaysia, Malaysia
  • Mrs Sarita Mann, Panjab University, India
  • Dr Ambrose Melvin, NCL, India
  • Professor Dionysios Mouzakis, University of Athens, Greece
  • Dr Shaibal Mukherjee, Indian Institute of Technology – Indore, India
  • Dr Ghulam Murtaza, Government College University Lahore, Pakistan
  • Professor Li Nu, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China
  • Professor Alessio Perrone, Universita del Salento, Italy
  • Professor Kandasamy Prabakar, PUnited Statesn National University, Republic of Korea
  • Dr Kakarla Raghava Reddy, The University of Sydney, Australia
  • Professor Dr Erwan Rauwel, Tallinn University of Technology, Estonia
  • Professor Guenter Reiss, Universitat Bielefeld, Germany
  • Professor Georgeta Salvan, Technische Universitat Chemnitz, Germany
  • Dr S M Sapuan, University Putra Malaysia, Malaysia
  • Dr Maheshwar Shrestha, Michigan State University, United States
  • Dr Piyush Solanki, Saurashtra University, India
  • Dr Marin Tadic, Institut za nuklearne nauke Vinca, Serbia
  • Dr L Tang, Academia Sinica, Taiwan
  • Dr Joseph P Thomas, Univ. of Waterloo, Canada
  • Dr M V Ulybyshev, University of Regensburg, Germany
  • Dr Guanglei Wang, Arizona State University, United States
  • Dr Hua Wei, Radiation Monitoring Devices, Inc, United States
  • Dr Humphrey Yiu, Heriot-Watt University, UK
  • Dr Nadia Zurba, Universidade de Aveiro, Portugal

Journal of Physics: Condensed Matter: 2016 Reviewer Awards

Reviewer of the Year: Dr Daniel Errandonea, Universidad de Valencia, Spain

Considering peer review a vital element of scientific professionalism, Dr Daniel Errandonea feels it his duty to contribute his time to refereeing and sees it as a means of maintaining high standards across journals such as Journal of Physics: Condensed Matter. In his opinion, peer review not only improves the quality of ‘good science’ but stops ‘bad science’ from being published.

Dr Errandonea gains much satisfaction from knowing that his scientific expertise is valued, and is pleased to have his efforts recognized by the Reviewer of the Year award. He takes the view that he is also an author, and understands that peer review is not a perfect process. He is wary of the possibility that original, pertinent research can be unnecessarily blocked or delayed, and advocates removing authors’ names from manuscripts in the interests of impartiality.

His advice to first-time reviewers is to ask for guidance from more experienced scientists and to follow journal guidelines—and not to take too long to respond.

When refereeing, Dr Errandonea looks for originality, high quality and reliable data, and rigorous science. He also considers the importance of the questions addressed and evaluates the implications of the conclusions. An article on iron oxides at high pressures—Computational searches for iron oxides at high pressures—springs to his mind, due to the authors’ interesting theoretical predictions.

Outstanding Reviewers:

  • Dr Joel Ager, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, United States
  • Dr Andres Aguado, Universidad de Valladolid, Spain
  • Professor Vladimir Ajaev, Southern Methodist University, United States
  • Dr Remi Arras, CEMES, France
  • Dr Elias Assmann, Technische Universitat Graz, Austria
  • Dr Remi Avriller, Universite de Bordeaux I, France
  • Professor Petre Badica, Institutul National de Cercetare – Desvoltare pentru Fizica Materialelor, Romania
  • Dr Yaroslaw Bazaliy, University of South Carolina – Columbia, United States
  • Professor Bogdan Bulka, Polish Academy of Sciences, Poland
  • Dr Giovanni Cantele, CNR, Italy
  • Professor Robert Cava, Princeton University, United States
  • Dr Wei Chen, ETH Zurich, Switzerland
  • Dr Yaomin Dai, Los Alamos National Laboratory, United States
  • Dr Pierre Dalmas de Reotier, SPSMS, France
  • Dr Fabrizio Dolcini, Politecnico di Torino, Italy
  • Professor Shuai Dong, Southeast University, China
  • Dr Manuel dos Santos Dias, Forschungszentrum Julich Peter Grunberg Institut, Germany
  • Dr Charles Downing, Universite de Strasbourg, France
  • Dr James Drewitt, University of Bristol, UK
  • Dr Chunhui Du, Harvard University, United States
  • Professor Morten Eskildsen, University of Notre Dame, United States
  • Dr Lucia Galisova, Technical University, Slovakia
  • Dr S Gallego, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas, Spain
  • Dr D Giuliano, Universita della Calabria, Italy
  • Dr Moshe Goldstein, Tel Aviv University, Israel
  • Dr Igor Golosovsky, Petersburg Nuclear Physics Institute, NRC “Kurchatov institute”, Russia
  • Dr Quanmin Guo, University of Birmingham, UK
  • Dr Joel Helton, National Institute of Standards and Technology, United States
  • Professor Dr Joachim Hemberger, Universitat zu Koeln, Germany
  • Professor Shinya Hosokawa, Kumamoto University, Japan
  • Professor Qing-Miao Hu, Chinese Academy of Sciences – Institute of Metal Research, China
  • Professor Zi-Xiang Hu, ChongQing University, China
  • Dr Chen Huang, Florida State University, United States
  • Dr Ethirajulu Kannan, Birla Institute of Technology and Science – Goa Campus, India
  • Dr Pranchanan Khuntia, University of Paris-Sud 11, France
  • Mr Joon-Seok Kim, University of Texas at Austin, United States
  • Professor Tsuyoshi Kimura, Osaka University, Japan
  • Dr Tomasz Kostyrko, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poland
  • Professor Peter Kratzer, Universitaet Duisburg-Essen, Germany
  • Dr Tom Lancaster, Durham University, UK
  • Dr Jing Li, Penn State Univeristy, United States
  • Dr Xiao Li, University of Texas at Austin, United States
  • Dr Zi Li, California State University Northridge, United States
  • Dr Jianmin Li, Zhejiang University, China
  • Professor Yang Li, Universidad de Puerto Rico – Recinto Universitario de Mayaguez, Puerto Rico
  • Dr Yong Liu, Ames Laboratory, United States
  • Dr Zhe Luo, Purdue University System, United States
  • Mr Eric Yue Ma, Stanford University, United States
  • Dr Roland Mathieu, Uppsala University, Sweden
  • Professor Yoshiaki Nakamura, Osaka University, Japan
  • Dr T Odagaki, Tokyo Denki University, Japan
  • Dr Lin Peng, Shanghai University of Electrical Power, China
  • Professor Julian Poulter, Srinakharinwirot University, Thailand
  • Professor Vlad Pribiag, University of Minnesota, United States
  • Dr Matt Probert, University of York, UK
  • Professor Dr Rui Qiao, Virginia Tech, United States
  • Dr Richard Qiu, The Ohio State University, United States
  • Professor Luciano Reatto, Universita degli Studi di Milano, Italy
  • Dr Clemens Ritter, Institut Laue-Langevin, France
  • Dr Kostas Sarakinos, Linkoping University, Sweden
  • Dr David Scanlon, University College London, UK
  • Dr Matthias Schmidt, University of Bayreuth, Germany
  • Professor Walter Selke, Rheinisch – Westfalische Technische Hochschule Aachen, Germany
  • Dr Igor Solovyev, National Institute for Materials Science, Japan
  • Dr Cheng Song, Tsinghua University, China
  • Professor Yan Song, Harbin Institute of Technology, China
  • Dr Pawel Strak, Institute of High Pressure Physics of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Poland
  • Dr Gloria Subias, CSIC-Universidad de Zaragoza, Spain
  • Dr Mengtao Sun, Chinese Academy of Sciences – Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, China
  • Dr Y Takagaki, Paul-Drude-Institut fuer Festkoerperelektronik, Germany
  • Dr Keisuke Takahashi, Hokkaido University, Japan
  • Dr Naoyuki Tateiwa, Japan Atomic Energy Agency, Japan
  • Dr Trevor Tyson, New Jersey Institute of Technology, United States
  • Professor Shin-ichi Uchida, The University of Tokyo, Japan
  • Mr Bernard van Heck, Universiteit Leiden, Netherlands
  • Dr Taras Verkholyak, Ukraine National Academy of Sciences – Institute for Condensed Matter Physics, Ukraine
  • Dr Andrew Walter, Brookhaven National Laboratory, United States
  • Dr Haijing Wang, Chevron Energy Technology Company, USA
  • Dr Yun-Peng Wang, University of Florida, United States
  • Dr Qun Wei, Arizona State University, United States
  • Dr D Wolverson, University of Bath, UK
  • Professor Toshishige Yamada, Santa Clara University, United States
  • Dr Li-Chang Yin, Tohoku University, Japan
  • Dr Kai Zhang, Yale University, United States
  • Professor Xiaoguang Zhang, University of Florida, United States
  • Professor Han Zhang, National University of Singapore, Singapore
  • Dr Taishan Zhu, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, United States
  • Dr Zhen Zhu, Michigan State University, United States
  • Dr Rok Zitko, Jozef Stefan Institute, Slovenia
  • Dr Elena Zvereva, M V Lomonosov Moscow State University, Russia

What we look for in your article

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

You can also watch our guide on How to Write and Publish a Scientific Paper

IOP Publishing (IOP) considers for publication in our journals articles that:

1

Report original science and add significantly to research already published

2

Are of interest to the community

3

Are scientifically rigorous

4

Have sound motivation and purpose

5

Have not been published previously in the peer reviewed literature

6

Are not under consideration for publication in any other peer reviewed journal or book available through a library or by purchase

7

Comply with our preprint pre-publication policy (see below), and

8

Comply with our ethical policy.

It is particularly important for you to consider whether you have enough new results before starting to plan and write a paper for submission to an IOP journal. Reporting incremental steps forward from previous work is usually not sufficient.

Articles based on theses for higher degrees may be submitted. You should take care to ensure that such articles are prepared in the format of a research paper, which is more concise than is appropriate for a thesis.

Articles reporting work that was originally presented at a conference may be submitted, provided these articles do not appear in substantially the same form in a conference proceeding and provided that the journal paper would add some new contribution. Again, you should ensure the format of a research paper is used. The article length should also be appropriate to the content. In case of doubt, please enquire with the relevant journal.

Reports that are not available to the general public are not regarded by IOP as prior publications. Many journals published by IOP consider a range of different article types in addition to regular research papers, including Focus Collection articles, topical reviews, comments and replies. However, please check via the journal homepage that your article is of an acceptable article type and suitable scope before submission.

All articles are judged solely on their scientific merits. Unbiased consideration is given to all manuscripts offered for publication, regardless of whether or not the authors request publication on a gold open access basis and regardless of the race, gender, religious belief, ethnic origin, citizenship, political philosophy, sexual orientation, age or reputation of the authors.

IOP Publishing reserves the right to refuse to publish any content that, in its opinion, could be deemed distasteful or illegal including, but not limited to, libellous, defamatory, offensive or hate speech.

We treat all submitted articles as confidential until they are published and they will only be shared with those reviewers, board members, editors and IOP staff who are directly involved in the peer review of the article. (An exception to this would be if it is felt necessary to share the article with additional external parties in order to investigate a possible breach of the ethical policy.)

Post-publication corrections to journal articles

Corrections to Accepted Manuscripts
Once an accepted manuscript or published article is available online, it is considered to be a part of the permanent scholarly record. As such, we take requests to make changes very seriously. Only minor, essential corrections to your article can be made at proof stage, and these will only be visible in the Version of Record. Minor changes are those that do not significantly affect either the scientific meaning of the article or its bibliographic identity. No changes can be made to authorship (other than those covered by our Name change policy, which is available at https://publishingsupport.iopscience.iop.org/questions/name-change-policy/) and references cannot be added or removed unless in response to a specific proof query. We reserve the right to deny correction requests from authors which we deem in breach of our ethical policy.

Corrections to Version of Record
Once the Version of Record is published, only major essential corrections can be made at this stage. There are a number of ways to make a correction, depending on the type and severity of change required.

If you notice an error in your published article, several courses of action are available:

A corrigendum
should be published when you (the author) have made an error in your article.
An erratum
should be published when we (IOP Publishing) have made an error in your article.
A post-publication change to the original article
can only be made where the error affects the discoverability, visibility and citability of the article. For example, corrections can be made to author names, titles and abstracts. We only allow changes to affiliations, footnotes and/or acknowledgments in order to meet the requirements of a funding body, or those related to legal issues. Please contact the journal email address to request changes in these categories.

If you have changed your name and would like to update previously published articles, please refer to our specific policy relating to name changes in the related links below, which includes instructions on how to make a request.

In the case of a corrigendum or erratum, the PDF of the correction article will be attached to the online version of the original article, and a link created between the corrigendum/erratum article and the original article to make readers and other users/systems aware of the correction.

When submitting a corrigendum, the article title should be in the following format: “Corrigendum: “original article title” (“original article reference”)”

If a post-publication change is made, the online version of the article will be replaced and a dated note added to highlight the amendment that was made. Please note that in some cases it will not be possible to also correct any print versions.

Please contact us in the first instance and we can provide guidance on the most suitable course of action. Please note you may be required to provide reasonable proof that you are the author of the article. The majority of post publication changes require agreement from all co-authors to proceed.

In cases where serious errors are identified, we may publish a retraction or expression of concern:

A retraction
should be published as a way to correct the scientific record by bringing fundamental flaws/errors in a paper to the attention of the readership. They are usually reserved for cases where there is clear evidence the findings are unreliable due to misconduct or honest error. When articles are retracted they are not removed from IOPScience, instead they are retained with a clear notice of retraction and bibliographic databases are notified, as per COPE guidelines.
An expression of concern
should be issued when concerns about publications have not been conclusively proven but are sufficiently serious to warrant warning potential readers.

My order is ‘Pending’. What does this mean?

Some orders require review and approval by  IOP’s rights and permissions team, and you will be quoted a ‘TBD’ (to be determined) price. Please note that you will be provided with a full quote before being asked to pay, and you may accept or decline the order at this stage. The rights and permissions team aims to provide an initial response to all pending orders within two working days.

Author rights policy for copyright forms signed prior to 26 April 2016

For authors who submitted a copyright form for a subscription article prior to 26 April 2016, please refer to our previous author rights policy page.

Please note this applied to all IOP-owned journals and some journals published on behalf of our partners. Please refer to the policy for a full list of journals to which it applied. If the journal you are publishing in is not listed, please refer to the ‘Alternative author rights policies’ below.’

 

Current author rights policy

For authors who submitted a copyright form for a subscription article from 26 April 2016, this author rights policy applies to the article.

Please note this applies to all IOP-owned journals and some journals published on behalf of our partners. Please refer to the policy for a full list of journals to which it applies. If the journal you are publishing in is not listed, please refer to the ‘Alternative author rights policies’ below’.