Archives: Questions

Can you write your report by the deadline in the invitation email (between 7 and 28 days, depending on the journal and type of article you are reviewing)? Some reports take longer than others, depending on how complex the work is. The authors will want a decision quickly, so you should let the journal know as soon as possible if you can or cannot report.

You can ask for more time if you need it, but give the journal a realistic timeframe for preparing your report. You can decline a request if you are already working on several referee tasks. In that case, it is very helpful if you can suggest alternative referees.

If you are unavailable for a period of time (months), or would like to avoid receiving any more review requests, please send this information with your decline response. We will update your contact record as appropriate.

Published titles must be the authors’ own work. Plagiarism constitutes unethical scientific behaviour and is never acceptable. Plagiarism ranges from the unreferenced use of others’ ideas to presenting someone else’s work or ideas as your own, by incorporating it into your work without full acknowledgement.

The following information is intended to provide an overview of how to cite articles published in the IOP Conference Series titles. Please note that the full publication record for all IOP journals and proceedings can be found in IOPscience.

• All proceedings in IOP Conference Series are published as a single volume of the relevant title. Typically, each volume has just a single issue but very large volumes may be split into two or more issues for ease of reading and navigation.
• Papers published in IOP Conference Series titles use an article numbering system that means that papers should be cited by using the six-digit article number in place of a page number (see examples below).
• Every article has its own unique identifier called a Digital Object Identifier (DOI).
• Articles can be linked via the Crossref system.
• The pages in the PDF file of each article are numbered from 1. These page numbers should not normally be included in a reference. However, if it is desirable to indicate the length of an article, this can be done by including the number of pages, in parentheses, after the article number.

Examples of citations to conference proceedings

References to conference papers should include:

• Author(s)
• Year of publication
• Title of conference (in italics, initial letter of each significant word should be capital)

Example:

• Mahanta N K and Abramson A R 2012 Thermal conductivity of graphene and graphene oxide nanoplatelets 13th Intersociety Conf. on Thermal and Thermomechanical Phenomena in Electronic Systems

Examples of citations to conference series

• Barry R Holstein 2009 J. Phys.: Conf. Ser. 173 012019
• V V Kramarenko et al 2016 IOP Conf. Ser.: Earth Environ. Sci. 43 012029
• S Adarsh et al 2016 IOP Conf. Ser.: Mater. Sci. Eng. 149 012141

IOP Publishing endeavours to publish every open access article on the terms agreed with the authors and without delay. If you or your institution are unhappy with any aspect of the open access publishing service, you should contact the journal or the dedicated open access support team. Every effort will be made to respond to any deficiencies in service without delay. Where service fails to meet our high standards, you may be offered, on request and at the publisher’s discretion, a refund of part of the APC or a credit towards future publications.

Do you know the field well enough to be able to assess the scientific rigour, novelty, quality and importance of the research?

If the answer to any of these questions is ‘no’, then you should decline the task and tell the journal that this is not your area of expertise (in which case, if you know of another expert in the field, then please suggest them to us when you decline). If you are an expert in only part of the paper, you can still write a report and send it to the journal. However, you must make it clear which parts you are not able to assess.

The peer review of papers published in the IOP Conference Series titles is managed by the organizers and proceedings editors.

The detailed procedures will vary from event to event according to the custom and practice of each community. Our publishing agreements require peer review to be undertaken in accordance with the principles outlined below. 

All organizers/editors must complete a form describing how the papers were peer reviewed. This information will be published as part of the proceedings.  

Peer review must be conducted through our platform unless another method is agreed with the journal team. IOP Publishing reserves the right to request peer review reports at any time. 

All conferences are requested to adhere to the following minimum standards:

• Unbiased consideration is given to all papers. Papers are considered regardless of the race, gender, religious belief, ethnic origin, citizenship or political philosophy of the authors
• No terminology will be used that, in the opinion of IOP Publishing, is offensive or might be perceived to be offensive to others
• Authors and Editors agree to comply with our ethical policy
• IOP Publishing has the right to investigate any suspicions and/or allegations of misconduct
• Submission and peer review must be conducted in English.
• Reviewers shall give a clear statement of recommendation for each paper. Comments must be included to support their recommendation. These comments should be suitable for transmission to the author 
• Editors and Organisers shall only accept papers where there is clear support from the reviewers

Conference papers must meet all the usual standards of quality for an IOP Publishing publication. However, reviewers will take into account the nature of conference papers. Review papers are also welcomed and accepted. Reviewers will consider background papers more favourably than would be normal for a regular paper. These allowances shall not go so far as to approve papers of low scientific standard. Papers that have been published in written form elsewhere should not be considered.  

Reviewers should consider the following key points related to scientific content, quality and presentation of the papers:

Technical Criteria

• Scientific merit: notably scientific rigour, accuracy and correctness
• Clarity of expression; communication of ideas; readability and discussion of concepts
• Sufficient discussion of the context of the work, and suitable referencing

Quality Criteria

• Originality: Is the work relevant and novel?
• Motivation: Does the problem considered have a sound motivation? All papers should clearly demonstrate the scientific interest of the results
• Repetition: Have significant parts of the manuscript already been published?
• Length: Is the content of the work of sufficient scientific interest to justify its length?

Presentation Criteria

• Title: Is it adequate and appropriate for the content of the article?
• Abstract: Does it contain the essential information of the article? Is it complete? Is it suitable for inclusion by itself in an abstracting service?
• Diagrams, figures, tables and captions: Are they essential and clear?
• Text and mathematics: Are they brief but still clear? If you recommend shortening, please suggest what should be removed
• Conclusion: Does the paper contain a clear conclusion. The conclusion should summarise what has been learned and why it is interesting and useful? 

To help you preparing your manuscript for submission, our Author Handbook provides full guidance to assist you, including artwork and video preparation, copyright and permissions, file formats and manuscript structure, and much more. The Handbook is intended to help you more easily prepare a manuscript that will be as close as possible to a standard format so that we can achieve the most effective use of resources when your ebook enters production. Some essential points concerning manuscript preparation are:

• Do not focus on the look and feel of your manuscript. There is no need to try and make the material look like a book page, or introduce excessive formatting. As we have our own set house style all this will be removed during production, creating extra work for the production editors in removing the unnecessary extra effort you have spent on the material. For more details on our house style, see our Style guide for ebooks.
• We accept manuscripts written using MS Word or LaTeX. If you are intending on using different software please discuss this with your commissioning editor.
• If you are writing in LaTeX you can use the generic book class, or our template (zip file) and for authors using Word simply type into a plain new document.
• Include an abstract of up to 150 words for each chapter.
• Figures can be embedded in the manuscript if you find that helps, but alternatively place the caption in the text. We will take care of their exact placement in the finished publication.
• Even if you embed figures in the manuscript, please also submit separate electronic files for each one, using a naming convention that refers to the figure number. Do take note of the minimum resolutions for figures and animations listed in the Handbook.
• Tables can be included in the appropriate place in the text, or collected at the end of each chapter.
• Remember to include a ‘call out’ to each figure and table in the text; i.e. ensure they are referred to in the body text by number, e.g. ‘… figure 2.3 shows the relationship between …’ not ‘…as you can see in the following figure …’.
• Please include references at the chapter level, not at the end of the book
• Ensure the Permission Clearance Form and all permissions are included with your manuscript, and all credits for material from third parties are included.
• If your book references or makes use of MATLAB®, Simulink®, and other MathWorks® products you are encouraged to sign up to MathWorks® Book Programme which offers a range of services and promotional tools for authors.

Sponsored open access journals allow immediate access to the content of the journal without the payment of a subscription fee or licence. Authors pay no article publication charge and all the costs of publishing the journal are met by one or more sponsoring organizations.

IOP publishes the following sponsored open access journals on behalf of partners:

• China Academy of Engineering Physics: International Journal of Extreme Manufacturing
• Songshan Lake Materials Laboratory: Materials Futures

IOP Publishing works with all major abstracting and indexing (A&I) services to facilitate the ongoing discoverability of all published content. However please be aware that each A&I service applies its own editorial policy to content supplied for indexing. While IOP Publishing will make every reasonable effort to comply with the requirements of our A&I partners, we are unable to guarantee content will be indexed in any particular database, neither are we able to guarantee indexing in a particular time frame.

The content in IOP Publishing’s Conference Series journals are all published on a gold open access basis.

All of our conference series articles are currently published under a CC BY licence. For further information on what the CC BY licence allows, please refer to this page.

Older conference series articles (published from around prior to November 2012), were not published under a CC BY licence.

You should check the licence on the article itself prior to use. If the article was not published under a CC BY licence or the article does not state what licence the article was published under, please contact permissions@ioppublishing.org to request permission if you wish to reuse any content from the article.