Information for Authors

At IM Publications we value our partnership with our authors and try to make the process of publishing with us as easy as possible.

Our journals have highly respected teams of editors and editorial board members who ensure that the papers published are of the highest quality. Each journal is peer reviewed and independently edited by acknowledged experts in the field.

For information on a particular journal or specific online submission, please go to the individual journal’s page:

European Journal of Mass Spectrometry

Journal of Near Infrared Spectroscopy

NIR news

Preparation of manuscript

Below you will find a step by step guide to preparing papers for publication. The following list of instructions has been designed to ensure papers are published as quickly and easily as possible.

• Download your journal’s Instruction for Authors.
• Documents should be formatted following the guidelines in the Instructions for Authors.
• Graphics should be prepared as detailed in the Instructions for Authors.
• Draft a covering letter. All submissions should be accompanied by a covering letter.
• Manuscripts should be checked thoroughly for errors.
• Manuscripts should be submitted according to individual journal instructions.

Whilst our copy editors will work with you to ensure that your paper is published with the clearest language, referees may not have the time to spend trying to understand unclear language. If English is not your first language, consider asking a native English speaker to read your paper before submission. This may help improve the likelihood of your paper being accepted and speed its progress through the peer review process. This is not a requirement, and if it is difficult for you to arrange we will do our best to assess your paper fairly, however, you should understand that this may take a little longer.

Assigning copyright

IM Publications wants to ensure that it has the exclusive distribution rights for all media to ensure that your article can be made available as widely as possible. Copyright transfer eliminates any ambiguity or uncertainty about our ability to distribute, sub-license and protect the article from unauthorised copying or alteration. We therefore ask authors to assign copyright to IM Publications by signing a Copyright Transfer and Publishing Agreement. This can be found at the back the Instructions for Authors, and is available from an Editor or from IM Publications. This should be signed by ALL authors and sent to the Publisher with the manuscript. A paper cannot be published without a signed agreement.

Submission of manuscript

For information on how to submit a manuscript please go to your individual journal page as the procedures are different for each journal.

Listed below is a general checklist for submitting a manuscript.

• Authors should ensure that the name of the designated corresponding author is provided, together with their full postal address, e-mail address, telephone and fax numbers.
  An abstract and keywords should be included with the manuscript.
• Ensure that text files for online submission or by e-mail are in a standard Word format.
• Graphics should be high-resolution and should be in either TIF, EPS or PDF format.
• Check that disks are enclosed where applicable and that they have been labelled.
• Make sure that text pages, graphics and tables are enclosed and that graphics and tables have captions.
• Check that references are in the correct format for the journal, that all references cited in the Reference list are listed in the text and vice versa and that they appear in the order cited in the text.
• Permission must be obtained for use of copyrighted material from other sources (including the Web). Any Permission Forms must accompany the manuscript.
• A Copyright Transfer and Publishing Agreement, signed by ALL authors should be sent with the manuscript.

Accepted papers

Once a paper has been accepted it enters the production system and a copy editor will be assigned.

Copy editing

The copy editor will check the manuscript to ensure that it is complete and an acknowledgement will be sent, together with any queries there may be concerning the manuscript. The copy editor will work to ensure that your paper uses consistent terminology and spelling, that the language is clear and unambiguous. The copy editor may need to raise questions with you, either before proofing or on the proofs themselves.

Proofs

When the manuscript has been copy-edited and typeset a PDF of the proofs will be sent to the corresponding author. The corrected proofs should be returned to the Production Department as soon as possible.

Publication

When corrections have been made, individual papers will be published on our website. A hard copy will be published when the corrections for all papers in an issue have been received.

Copyright permissions

If you are reproducing figures or tables from previously published work or otherwise need to obtain permission to use copyrighted material, you must apply for and obtain permission before submitting your paper. You should ensure that the required permission wording is included in your manuscript. Forms for requesting permission are available from each journal's web page. A generic form can be downloaded below:

Generic Permission Form (PDF).

If you wish to request permission from IM Publications to reproduce our copyrighted material, please address your request to:

Gill Stockford
IM Publications
6 Charlton Mill
Charlton
Chichester
West Sussex PO18 0HY
UK

Fax: +44-1243-811711
E-mail: gill@impublications.co.uk

Books

If you are interested in publishing a book with IM Publications, please e-mail us at info@impub.co.uk. Please note that, normally, will only consider books related to one of our main areas of speciality: analytical chemistry or nanotechnology.