All articles published in Scipedia's peer-reviewed journals must follow international editorial standards in style and content. The content of the articles must at least include the following sections: title, abstract, content, conclusions and references. When possible, these standards should also be followed in non-peer reviewed publications.
The vast majority of scientific and technical documents today are published in English. And English will also be the main language in Scipedia. Nevertheless, specific journals in other languages can be created. The documents published in other languages must have an abstract written in English.
Some general guidelines that should be followed in your manuscripts are:
- Write your manuscript in American or British English, but not a mixture of these.
- Avoid hyphenation at the end of a line.
- Symbols denoting vectors and matrices should be indicated in bold type. Scalar variable names should normally be expressed using italics.
- Use decimal points (not commas); use a space for thousands (10 000 and above).
- Follow internationally accepted rules and conventions. In particular, use the international system of units (SI). If other quantities are mentioned, give their equivalent in SI.
A brief description of the recommended structure and format of Scipedia papers is given next:
- Title. Concise and descriptive of the content. Titles are often used in information-retrieval systems. Avoid abbreviations and formulae where possible. Capitalize the first word of the title.
- Abstract: An abstract is required for every paper; it should succinctly summarize the reason for the work, the main findings, and the conclusions of the study. The abstract is often presented separately from the article, so it must be able to stand alone. For this reason, references and hyperlinks should be avoided. If references are essential, then cite the author(s) and year(s). Also, non-standard or uncommon abbreviations should be avoided, but if essential they must be defined at their first mention in the abstract itself.
- Keywords: Provide a maximum of 6 keywords, avoiding general and plural terms and multiple concepts (avoid, for example, 'and', 'of'). Be sparing with abbreviations and acronyms: only those firmly established in the field should be used. These keywords will be used for indexing purposes.
- Subdivision. Divide your article into clearly defined and numbered sections. Subsections should be numbered 1.1 (then 1.1.1, 1.1.2, ...), 1.2, etc. (the abstract is not included in section numbering). Use this numbering also for internal cross-referencing: do not just refer to 'the text'. Any subsection may be given a brief heading. Capitalize the first word of the headings.
- Acknowledgements: Acknowledgments should be inserted at the end of the paper, before the references section. List here those individuals who provided help during the research (e.g., providing language help, writing assistance or proof reading the article, etc.).
- Figures:
- Number the figures according to their sequence in the text (Fig. 1, Fig.2, etc.).
- Ensure that each illustration has a caption. A caption should comprise a brief title (not on the figure itself) and a description of the illustration. Keep text in the illustrations themselves to a minimum but explain all symbols and abbreviations used.
- Try to keep the resolution of the figures to a minimum of 500 dpi.
- Tables: Please insert tables as editable text and not as images. Tables should be placed next to the relevant text in the article. Number tables consecutively in accordance with their appearance in the text (Table 1, Table 2, etc.) and place any table notes below the table body. Be sparing in the use of tables and ensure that the data presented in them do not duplicate results described elsewhere in the article.
- In-text references (citations): Citations will follow a citation-sequence system (i.e. sources are numbered by order of reference so that the first reference cited in the paper is [1], the second [2], and so on) with the number of the reference in square brackets. Once a source has been cited, the same number is used in all subsequent references. If the numbers are not in a continuous sequence, use commas (with no spaces) between numbers. If you have more than two numbers in a continuous sequence, use the first and last number of the sequence joined by a hyphen (e.g. [2,3] or [2-4]).
- References: Complete bibliographic information for all cited references must be given following the standards in the field (IEEE and ISO 690 standards are recommended). Ensure that every reference cited in the text is also present in the reference list (and vice-versa). Any references cited in the abstract must be given in full. References should preferably refer to papers published in Scipedia. Unpublished results are not recommended in the reference list, but may be mentioned in the text. If these references are included in the reference list they should include a substitution of the publication date with 'Unpublished results'. The reference data must be updated with date of publication once it is known.
- Supplementary material: Scipedia accepts supplementary material to support and enhance your scientific publication. This includes video material, animation sequences, background datasets, computational models, sound clips and more. In order to ensure that your material is directly usable, please provide the files with a preferred maximum size of 50 MB. Please supply a concise and descriptive caption for each file.
References: Complete bibliographic information for all cited references must be given following Scipedia’s standards. You should ensure that every reference cited in the text is also present in the reference list (and vice-versa). If possible, a hyperlink to the referenced publication should be given.
Any references cited in the abstract used to create the metadata information of the document must be given in full. References should preferably refer to papers published in Scipedia. Unpublished results should not be included in the reference list, but can be mentioned in the text. The reference data must be updated once publication is ready.
See examples below for citations of Scipedia’s articles [1], other journal’s articles [2] , books [3] , book chapter [4] , conference proceedings [5], and online documents [6].
[1] A. Author and B. Author, “Title of the article”, Title of the Journal (Year), http://www.scipedia.com/ucode.
[2] A. Author, B. Author and C. Author. “Title of the article” Title of the Journal. Volume number (-optionally- Issue) (Year) first page-last page.
[3] C. Author, “Title of work: Subtitle”, -optionally- Edition, -optionally- Volume, Publisher, Place of publication, Year.
[4] D. Author of Part, “Title of chapter or part” in: A. Editor & B. Editor (Eds.), “Title: Subtitle of book”, -optionally- Edition, -optionally- Volume, Publisher, Place of publication, Year.
[5] E. Author, “Title of the article”, in: Title of published proceeding, Place, Country, Month initial date-final date.
[6] Institution or author, “Title of the document” (-optionally- Year) (-optionally- last accessed: month, day and year), http://www.scipedia.com/document.pdf.