Information for Authors

Bulletin of Materials Science

Authors may communicate their research work as papers and rapid communications to the Bulletin of Materials Science. They may also submit topical reviews.

We have now switched over to an Editorial Management System.

Manuscript Submission

Authors are required to submit manuscripts online to
http://www.editorialmanager.com/boms

Please note the journal ‘strongly recommends’ the author to provide ORCID Ids of all the authors. If ORCID is provided it will help in quick processing of the article.

It will have the advantage that the author(s) would be able to track their paper through the refereeing process. If you have any difficulty, you may contact the editorial office and they will be happy to answer any questions that you may have.

Submission of a manuscript will be held to imply that the work reported in it is original, that the results have not been previously published (either in part or whole) and are not under consideration for publication elsewhere; and further, that if accepted, will not be published elsewhere.

The decision of the Editor/Editorial Board on the suitability of a paper for publication will be FINAL.

The jurisdiction for all disputes concerning submitted articles, published material, subscription and sale will be at courts/tribunals situated in Bengaluru City only.

Preprint Submissions

Indian Academy of Sciences journals permit the submission of manuscripts that are already posted as preprints on servers like arXiv.org, etc. The guidelines for submission are the same as for original submissions, and the submitted manuscript will undergo the same review process as “non-preprint” manuscripts.

II. Form of the presentation

Authors should give a paragraph in the covering letter describing

1. what is the back-ground or previous work, and what is the question tackled in the submitted manuscript,
2. what is the main finding in the present manuscript, and
3. which physical problems or theories are related to the work, and may be impacted by the present work.

This paragraph should convince the editors that the paper should be peer-reviewed.

(This is only for regular submission, and not for conference proceedings/Theme issues).

The paper should be written in grammatically correct English and presented in the format of a BoMS template. Papers with trivial errors in the language and/or non-standard format will not be sent out for review.

Upon submission of a manuscript for publication, the author, or in the case of multiple authors the corresponding author, is required to complete, sign and send to the editorial office of the journal by e-mail the following

• Submission Form to be completed when a paper is submitted to the journal (MANUSCRIPT SUBMISSION FORM)
• Authorship Confirmation and Copyright Transfer, to be completed upon acceptance of a paper for publication (Authorship Confirmation and Copyright Transfer).

Upon submission of a manuscript for publication by the corresponding author, an email intimation is sent to all co-authors with a link to submit their consent to submission. Unless the consent is received from each co-author, the manuscript will not be further processed.

Typescript

Papers must be typed double spaced with ample margin on all sides. Text with embedded graphics should be in Microsoft Word Format.

Word Template for Authors

Title page

1. The title of the paper must be brief but informative. Serial titles are to be avoided.
2. The names with initials of authors and the name and address of the institution where the work was done must be given.
3. An abbreviated running title of not more than 50 letters and spaces must also be given.
4. Authors are requested to provide e-mail and fax addresses while submitting the script online.

Abstract

Papers must have a brief abstract of the significant results reported in the paper.

Authors are encouraged to submit video/graphical abstract of the accepted paper, though it is not mandatory.

Keywords

Between 3 and 6 keywords must be provided for indexing and information retrieval.

The Text

The paper must be divided into sections starting preferably with 'Introduction' and ending with 'Conclusions'.

The main sections should be numbered 1, 2 etc, the sub-sections 1.1, 1.2, etc, and further sub-sections (if necessary) 1.1a, 1.1b, etc.

In lists of three or more items, do not place a comma after the penultimate item (red, blue and green), except where necessary to avoid ambiguity (e.g. genetics, neuroscience, molecular and cell biology, and scuba diving).

Use preferably British spellings and single quote.

Tables

All tables must be numbered consecutively in Arabic numerals (1, 2, 3 .....) in the order of occurrence in the text; they should be self-contained and have a descriptive title.

Figures

All figures, including photographs should be numbered consecutively in Arabic numerals in the order of occurrence in the text. Figure captions must be typed on a separate sheet. Curves should be drawn sufficiently thick to permit reduction to one half or even one third of the original size. The axes and letterings must be about 0.3 mm thick and curves 0.6 mm thick. Whenever computer outputs are directly submitted as figures, they should conform to the same specifications given earlier for drawings.

Decide if the figure is to be a one-column figure (maximum width 8.5 cm, including all labels and legends) or a two-column figure (maximum width 17.5 cm, including all labels and legends). An obvious advantage of doing this is that it helps reduce the work to be done when revising the manuscript or communicating the final version to the publishing office of the journal. A more subtle advantage, however, is that the reviewers (and the editor) see exactly what the reader will see in the printed journal, making it possible for them to spot potential difficulties that a reader may face in interpreting the figures. Preparing figures initially to the expected final size also avoids the need for the publisher to enlarge or reduce the figure to fit the journal requirements, thereby maintaining the original quality. Given the quality of modern laser printers and the relative ease, compared to even a few years ago, of obtaining laser printouts of figures, providing the publisher with camera-ready figures or electronic copies ensures better figures in print.

Use Helvetica as the font for legends and labels. Ensure that no label or legend is smaller than 8 pt. All lines must be at least 0.5 pt (no hairline rules).

Artwork Preparation

Electronic Figure Submission

• Supply all figures electronically.
• For vector graphics, the preferred format is EPS; for halftones, please use TIFF format. MS Office files are also acceptable.
• Vector graphics containing fonts must have the fonts embedded in the files.
• Name your figure files with "Fig" and the figure number, e.g., Fig1.eps.

Line Art

• Definition: Black and white graphic with no shading.
• Do not use faint lines and/or lettering and check that all lines and lettering within the figures are legible at final size.
• All lines should be at least 0.1 mm (0.3 pt) wide.
• Line drawings should have a minimum resolution of 1200 dpi.

Halftone Art

• Definition: Photographs, drawings, or paintings with fine shading, etc.
• If any magnification is used in the photographs, indicate this by using scale bars within the figures themselves.
• Halftones should have a minimum resolution of 300 dpi.

Combination Art

• Definition: a combination of halftone and line art, e.g., halftones containing line drawing, extensive lettering, colour diagrams, etc.
• Combination artwork should have a minimum resolution of 600 dpi.

Colour Art

• If the figures will be printed in black and white, do not refer to colour in the captions.
• Colour illustrations should be submitted as RGB (8 bits per channel).

Figure Lettering

• To add lettering, it is best to use Helvetica or Arial (sans serif fonts).
• Keep lettering consistently sized throughout your final-sized artwork, usually about 2-3 mm (8-12 pt).
• Variance of type size within an illustration should be minimal, e.g., do not use 8-pt type on an axis and 20-pt type for the axis label.
• Avoid effects such as shading, outline letters, etc.
• Do not include titles or captions within your illustrations.

Figure Numbering

• All figures are to be numbered using Arabic numerals.
• Figures should always be cited in text in consecutive numerical order.
• Figure parts should be denoted by lower case letters (a, b, c, etc.).
• If an appendix appears in your article and it contains one or more figures, continue the consecutive numbering of the main text. Do not number the appendix figures, “A1, A2, A3, etc."

Figure Captions

• Each figure should have a concise caption describing accurately what the figure depicts.
• Figure captions begin with the term Figure in bold type, followed by the figure number, also in bold type.
• Identify all elements found in the figure in the figure caption; and use boxes, circles, etc., as coordinate points in graphs.
• Identify previously published material by giving the original source in the form of a reference citation at the end of the figure caption.
• Figure Placement and Size
• When preparing your figures, size figures to fit in the column width.

Permissions

If you include figures that have already been published elsewhere, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner(s) for both the print and online format. Please be aware that some publishers do not grant electronic rights for free and that Springer will not be able to refund any costs that may have occurred to receive these permissions. In such cases, material from other sources should be used.

Units

Unit dimensions should not be expressed using a solidus but using negative integers or the word ‘per’. That is, do not use mm/min but mm min^–1. Do not use units mg protein^–1, which is unclear but use as mg per protein.

Units and associated symbols must invariably follow SI practice.

References

References are numbered consecutively in the order in which they are first mentioned in the text. Identify references in text, tables, and legends by square bracketed numbers [1], and provide a list of references at the end of the article in numerical order using square brackets for the numbers. Reuse the original number assigned to the reference each time the reference is cited in the text, regardless of its previous position in the text. Insert the citation numbers at the relevant place in the text. As a general rule, reference numbers should be placed inside full stops, commas, colons and semicolons.

When citing multiple references, use commas (without spaces) to separate them. Use an en-dash to join inclusive first and last numbers, e.g. [2,3,4,5,7,10] would be abbreviated to [2–5,7,10].

If a reference has more than 6 authors, provide the first six author names followed by et al.

Journal article

[1] Pelino Mario and Cantalini Carlo 1994 Active and Passive Elec. Comp. 16 69

[2] Wang C, Yin L, Zhang L, Xiang D and Gao R 2010 Sensors 10 2088

Book chapter

[3] Sudesh K and Doi Y 2005 in C Bastioli (ed) Handbook of biodegradable polymers (Shawbury: Rapra Technology Ltd) p 219

Book

[4] Nickel N H and Terukov E 2005 (eds) Zinc oxide—a material for micro- and optoelectronic applications (Netherlands: Springer)

Online document

[5] Thermoset polymer-based capacitive sensors, application sheet. Available: www.honeywell.com (accessed on 11 April 2016)

Conference Proceedings

[6] Pang Y and Lodewijks G 2012 Proceedings of 9th IEEE international conference on networking, sensing and control p 79

Thesis

[7] Andrew N M 2016 Ph D Thesis (St. Louis: Washington University)

Article by DOI

[8] Al Bosta M, Ma K J and Chien H H 2013 J. Ceram. Article ID 350931 doi: 10.1155/2013/350931

Footnotes

Footnotes must be avoided if possible but when necessary should be numbered consecutively, and typed on a separate sheet.

Proofs

Authors are requested to prepare the manuscript carefully before submitting it for publication to minimize corrections and alterations in the proof which increase publication costs. PDF proof will be sent to the author by email. The author should send it back with corrections/clarifications, if any, by email.

For information on:

• Academy's Policy on Plagiarism
• Manuscript Submission Form
• Authorship Confirmation and Copyright Transfer