Instructions for Authors

Types of article

All articles should be written in English and will be subject to a blind peer refereeing process. Letters may be accepted for publication following review by an Editor alone.

Original research papers should report, in detail, the results of the author(s)’s work in a particular area of research. This work should have been completed or a substantial and identifiable part of it should have been completed. There is no length limit, but papers are usually between 4000 and 8000 words in length.

Short communications can be used to report significant results from incomplete work and to report completed work which does not require the full coverage of a research paper. Short communications should be restricted to 1500 words in length.

Review articles will normally be commissioned by one of the Editors. However, should you be interested in reviewing a particular area, you are welcome to discuss this with an Editor. Review articles should provide a comprehensive coverage of the area reviewed with extensive references to published work.

Letters can either express the view of the author on a particular aspect of spectroscopy imaging that they wish to comment on, or can very briefly report an interesting aspect of the author’s work: perhaps details of a chemometric routine or a sampling procedure.

Technical Notes may report new instrumental designs or modifications to existing instrumentation, improvements to chemometric analysis, new applications of spectral imaging, new Open Source software routines or programs, and novel findings which will stimulate discussion and more extensive investigation within the spectral imaging community. Authors must demonstrate the advantages of the new idea, apparatus or software over those already available. When details of software are published, the source code will be published alongside the paper and authors are encouraged to include sample data. Descriptions of software must be accompanied by an illustrative application of its use, ideally using the sample data published with the paper.

The manuscript

All manuscripts should be submitted via our online manuscript submission system at papers.impublications.com. If this is difficult, we will accept manuscripts sent directly to us provided electronic versions of the manuscript and figures are provided.

In your covering letter, a separate document or the manuscript itself, please include contact details for at least two independent, appropriate referees. We may not use them or they may be unable to undertake the review, but this can help speed up the review process for your paper.

It is important to remember that the manuscript is going to be read by referees. Please assist them by observing the following specification.

Use Times or Times New Roman with a font size of at least 12 with double line spacing and generous margins. Please number the pages and use the line number option if your word processor has it.

Illustrations should be embedded in the word processor (preferably Word) document to help the review process. You are encouraged to also upload high-resolution versions (using the Supplementary files option in the submission process). We can accept PDF, TIFF, AI or EPS format. Please ensure that the highest quality settings are used for their creation and that any fonts are embedded or converted to outlines. Bitmaps should be at least 300 dpi for tone images and at least 1200 dpi for line work. Please avoid JPGs, because they are a lossy format: each time you save a file as a JPG it loses quality. If you do not save with the highest quality settings, your figure will be very blurry.

Labels on the axes should be clear and of sufficient size that they will be legible when reduced to fit on the page, i.e. a font size of at least 8 pt when produced at one column width. (This requires a font size of at least 20 pt if the figure is drawn full size on A4 paper. Please use Helvetica or Arial font. The amount of text on the illustration should be kept to a minimum. Keys for different line styles etc. should be given in the caption; not on the illustration.

Illustrations should be numbered in the text with Arabic numerals as Figure 1, Figures 4 and 5 etc.; they should be in a separate sequence from any tables. Captions should be provided for all figures and these should appear at the end of the manuscript.

Colour illustrations are welcomed.

ORCID iDs

Please supply ORCID iDs for all authors that have one. This not only uniquely identifies the author now and in the future, but we can automatically update your ORCID profile with your paper on publication. For more information, see our blog post. If an author does not have an ORCID iD, we recommend that they register one.

Other media

Since JSI is an electronic journal, we encourage authors to include illustrations and files in other media. These could include Adobe Flash, movies, animated graphics and sound files. If you have a particularly demanding format in mind, please contact us for a test.

Datasets

If you would like to make a dataset available with your paper, you can either choose to host it yourself and provide us with a link to it or, within certain size restrictions, we will host it for you. Please let the Editor know if you wish to make a dataset available.

Chemometric routines

If you wish to make any code or calibrations available, these can be linked to your paper and dataset. Again, please let the Editor know.

Symbols, mathematics and formulae

You should use SI units whenever possible. Please use the following conventions: all symbols which are variables should be italicised, all constants should be normal (Roman) text and vectors and matrices should be bold.

Units

Units of measurement should be separated from the number by a space. Please avoid the use of the solidus (/) or “per” and use a superscript –1, i.e. 5  mg  L–1, not 5  mg/L.

References

References should be cited in the text by a superscript Arabic number, i.e. spectroscopy,1 and listed at the end of the article (styles for this are available on the Downloads page). Please give full bibliographical information, including the title of all papers and book chapters, as in the examples below. If you know the Digital Object Identifier (DOI) for the reference, please include it following the convention below.

For edited books:
  1. G.D. Batten, A.B. Blakeney and C.R. Blatt, “Sample preparation procedures for use in near infrared analysis of fruit and vegetable crops”, in Near Infrared Spectroscopy: The Future Waves, Ed by A.M.C. Davies and P. Williams. NIR Publications, Chichester, UK, p. 107 (1996).
For journals:
  1. T. Næs, K. Kvaal, T. Isaksson and C. Miller, “Artificial neural networks in multivariate calibration”, J. Near Infrared Spectrosc. 1, 1 (1993). doi: 10.1255/jnirs.1
For authored books:
  1. B. Osborne, T. Fearn and P.H. Hindle, Practical NIR Spectroscopy with Applications in Food and Beverage Analysis. Longman Scientific and Technical, Harlow, UK (1993).


It is the responsibility of the author to ensure that permission is obtained from the copyright holder to reproduce copyright material. The copyright holder is usually the publisher of the work. Forms for this purpose can be downloaded. Copies of any signed Permission Forms should be sent to the Editor when the manuscript is submitted, and the necessary wording of acknowledgement requested by the copyright holder should be included in the caption.

Abstract

A short abstract not exceeding 350 words should be included. This should describe the scope of the article and highlight any significant areas.

Please note that Letters should also contain an abstract and keywords.

Keywords

Up to 10 Keywords should be included.

Tables

Tables should be numbered in a separate sequence from the illustrations as Table 1 etc. Please consider the size of the page when compiling your Table. Tables should not be split width-wise across pages, although if they exceed a page in length they can be continued on subsequent pages.

Tables should be provided on separate pages of the document and not included in the text. Each Table should have a caption.

Copyright

Authors retain copyright and other rights. You should complete a Publishing Licence and include this with your submission; see our Copyright page for more information.

Submission process

Please submit your article online at papers.impublications.com. Please ensure that you suggest two independent, potential referees/reviewers who can assess the paper competently. These can be given in your covering letter or in the Comments to Editor box.

You will receive an automated acknowledgement from the system on successful completion of the submission. Within a few days your manuscript will be reviewed by the Editor-in-Chief and assigned to an Editor to see it through the review process. You can track this by logging into your account on the Manuscript Submission system and viewing the details of the relevant paper.

The manuscript will then be sent to referees and you will receive anonymised copies of their comments along with any others that the Editor wishes to make. Please respond to these quickly to avoid delays in publication. If substantial changes are required and you do not upload a revised version within the three months, the original submission will be deemed to have been withdrawn and the revised version will be treated as a new submission.

However, in all other cases please ensure that you upload your revised file within the original submission. Please do NOT start a new submission, since this will cause significant delay for you and work for the Editor.

After acceptance, your article will be copy-edited, typeset and proofed to the first named author (unless otherwise requested). The proof should be checked carefully for typographical errors and to answer any questions raised by the Copy Editor. The proof stage is not an opportunity for the author to make changes to the article. Any significant changes from the original accepted manuscript may only be accepted on payment of the correction costs.

Plagiarism

The Committee for Publication Ethics (COPE), whose guidelines we follow, defines plagiarism as “When somebody presents the work of others (data, words or theories) as if they were his/her own and without proper acknowledgment”.

We screen all submissions using CrossRef’s SimilarityCheck and, if plagiarism is indicated, we will follow COPE’s guidelines.

Check list

  • Are pages and lines numbered?
  • Is the text double line spaced?
  • Are illustrations prepared according to the instructions?
  • Is there an abstract?
  • Are there keywords?
  • Are all the figures referred to in the text?
  • Are all the references referred to in the text, and in numerical order according to their first citation?
  • Are the reference citations formed according to the instructions?
  • Are the tables prepared according to the instructions?
  • Is there a signed copyright form?
  • Have you provided full contact information for the corresponding author: mailing address, telephone and e-mail address? E-mail addresses and affiliations must be entered online for all authors?
  • Have you provided ORCID iDs for all authors that have one?
  • Have you provided contact details for at least two appropriate referees?