Journal Author Instructions

These are abridged instructions to get you pointed in the right direction. For further information please consult ACerS Publication Central (https://ceramics.onlinelibrary.wiley.com) for complete and specific instructions.

Simplified Author Instructions

Our journals follow similar formats and instructions.  However, there are places where each journal has individual choices. Such places will be noted and you should consult the journal’s manuscript submission page for more information.

Aims and Scopes

The first decision you should make is which ACerS journal is the best fit for your work.  Each journal has a specific range of topics and depth of scholarly inquiry, which can be found in each’s Aims and Scopes.  Go to each journal’s page to review their Aims and Scopes.

Publication Ethics

ACerS only accepts original work not submitted elsewhere for publication.  Even review articles should include new analyses and new insights. Furthermore, we seek to promote diversity and inclusion and avoid conflicts of interest with authors, reviewers and editors. We take this responsibility seriously, so please consult the Publications Ethics page for information about ethical submission and ACerS actions when it uncovers potential ethical issues.

Types of Manuscripts

Our four journals allow different types of manuscripts to fulfill different levels of scholarly communication.  These are the basic types of manuscripts, though each journal has slightly different wording for them.

  • Articles: standard manuscripts reporting new work, typically 4-8 typeset pages
  • Review Articles: Typically invited, review articles provide an overview of the state of a specific topic along with recent advances and analysis that provides insights into future work
  • Comments, Corrections, Replies: Brief items documenting the dialog among authors and readers to make certain the scientific record is the best it can be
  • Communications: Short papers, typically 3-4 typeset pages, that are designed to report important information rapidly and are often followed-up with submissions of in-depth articles
  • Special Issues and Feature Articles are normally solicited by editors to address multiple aspects of a singular challenge or topic; the submission procedure is different for each journal

Manuscript Title

Titles should be short and highly descriptive of the work.  Avoid unqualified generic terms such as properties, behavior, performance, structure.  Rather describe the reasons for the interesting issues.

Example: Lower density and increased toughness exhibited in XYZ material sintered at high temperatures.

Abstract

Your abstract serves two purposes.  Your abstract must be informative and inviting so that a potential reader will be sufficiently interested to download your article. Your abstract must also contain appropriate number and frequency of keywords to be correctly indexed using artificial intelligence.

Your abstract should tell the reader what you worked on, what you did to the item(s), the results, and why the results are important for our field and for the broader society (if possible). Only use the most important details.  Use the 2-3 keywords/phrases that are most important for your work and repeat them 2-3 times within the abstract.

Initial Manuscript Submissions (and submissions following major revisions)

The following are the formats, length, etc. for your initial submission of a manuscripts.

  • A single (main) document containing text, figures, tables and bibliography/reference in .doc, .docx, .pdf, or .rtf format
  • Text must contain title, authors, affiliations, abstract, body sections appropriate to your work (introduction, methods, data, etc.), and bibliography/references
  • Abstract and body sections must be double spaced with NO line numbers
  • To achieve the desired article lengths, Articles should have 4000-8000 equivalent words, (3000 for Communications) which includes word counts plus equivalent words for images and tables ranging from 150 words up to 1000 words depending on the size of the image or table.
  • All references must be complete and must include article titles. All author names should be included, up to the first 6. More than 6 should be truncated with et al. according to the VANCOUVER reference format.
  • Figures with captions and tables with titles should be placed near the text referencing them
  • Remove all “machine” identifications from images; make certain micrographs include a scale marker and graphs have readable axes with appropriate titles
  • Graphical Abstracts are recommended. Consult the specific journal on how to identify or submit figures and descriptive text for online display. The text should describe the most important point of the manuscript and not just the figure of the graphical abstract.
  • Systéme International (SI) units are to be used. Non-SI measurements can be included, but they should follow the SI measurement in parentheses. An example is 2.54 cm (1.00 inch).  Scientific notation should be avoided when SI prefixes are available.  The SI prefix should be chosen so that the numerical value is less than 1000.  For example 2.98 x 10-5 N should be written as 29.8 µN
  • Submissions of revised documents must contain and display revision tracking from the version immediately preceding the current submission.

Supplemental Materials

Supplemental materials contains resources for readers but these are not critical to understand the article. Supplemental materials are optional but must be provided at the time of submission as separate file(s). They are subject to peer review. Supplemental materials must contain only the author’s original work and each item must be referred to in the main text of the article. Figures and tables in the supplemental materials must be labeled and referred to as Fig. S1, Fig. S2, Table S1, Table S2, and so forth. The final publication of supplemental materials is at the discretion of the Editors, who discourage the inclusion of superfluous information. Supplemental materials are not typeset and are available only online via links from the article.

Authors and Institutes

List only authors that had significant contributions to the manuscript being submitted.  Inappropriately giving or withholding credit is unethical.  The list of authors and institutions provided during submission must match the listing on the manuscript.  Submitting and Corresponding authors must be identified. Submitting author must have an ORCID number.  The list of authors is considered final upon submission and can only be changed prior to transfer for online publication and with the approval of the journal's editor-in-chief.

Reviewers

Select reviewers that will not have conflicts of interest such as working in the same group as one (or more) of the authors.

Cover Letter

A well-written letter helps the Editor decide whether your manuscript proceeds into the review cycle or it is rejected without review.  The cover letter should contain only a 2-3 sentence statement describing the importance, novelty, significance and impact of your work on the ceramics and glass community, the overall scientific community or the general population. Do not copy your abstract or conclusions.

Submissions After Minor Revisions or After Acceptance

Uploading fully formatted documents and figures should occur after minor revisions and MUST occur after acceptance of the manuscript for publication.  Here are the major differences from the initial submissions.

  • Main document must NOT contain images, figures or tables in the body of the text.
  • The main document is double-spaced and contains/displays tracking from previous revision (remove all tracking if submitting after acceptance)
  • Bibliography/references immediately follow the conclusion and are fully formatted according to the Vancouver reference style.
  • Following the bibliography are the figure captions labeled (Figure 1, Figure 2..) and in order
  • Tables can appear in the main document following the figure captions or in a separate main document.
  • Figures are each submitted as a separate file. Figures must have resolution of 300 dpi and the width must be 85 mm (1000 pixel) for one-column figures and 170 mm (2000 pixel) for full-page figures. Tiff with LZW compression is preferred file type, but uncompressed jpeg, png, or other bitmap files are acceptable.
  • Line graphs should be submitted as vector graphics (e.g. XLS, PPT, DOC) where possible
  • When submitting figures, include the figure number in the file name and enter the information in the meta-data on the file submission page.

Ready to Submit Your Manuscript?

These links will take you to the submission site for each ACerS journal