Surface and Interface Analysis

Author Guidelines

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• Permission Request Form
• The National Institutes of Health Public Access Initiative

Author Guidelines

• General
• Manuscript Submission
• Online Open
• Copyright and Permissions
• English Editing
• Presentation of Papers
• Reference style
• Citing EarlyView Articles
• Chemdraw rules
• Colour Policy
• Conventions used by SIA
• Article types published in SIA
• Further Information

General

Surface and Interface Analysis [SIA] is devoted to the publication of papers dealing with the development and application of techniques for the characterization of surfaces, interfaces and thin films. Papers dealing with standardization and quantification are particularly welcome, and also those which deal with the application of these techniques to industrial problems. Papers dealing with the purely theoretical aspects of the technique will also be considered. Review articles will be published; prior consultation with one of the Editors (see below) is advised in these cases. Papers must clearly be of scientific value in the field and will be submitted to two independent referees. Contributions must be in English and must not have been published elsewhere, and authors must agree not to communicate the same material for publication to any other journal. Authors are invited to submit their papers for publication to John Watts (UK only), Jose Sanz (Rest of Europe), John T. Grant (all non-European countries, except Japan, South-East Asia and China), Ryuichi Shimizu (Japan only) or Andrew T. S. Wee (Southeast Asia and China). It is in the author's interest to ensure accurate and consistent presentation and thus avoid publication delays. There are no page charges.

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Manuscript Submission

SIA operates an online submission and peer review system that allows authors to submit articles online and track their progress via a web interface.

Please read the remainder of these instructions to authors and then click http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/sia to navigate to the SIA online submission site. IMPORTANT: Please check whether you already have an account in the system before trying to create a new one. If you have reviewed or authored for the journal in the past year it is likely that you will have had an account created.

All papers must be submitted via the online system.

File types. Preferred formats for the text and tables of your manuscript are .doc, .rtf, .ppt, .xls. LaTeX files may be submitted provided that an .eps or .pdf file is provided in addition to the source files. Figures may be provided in .tiff or .eps format.

INITIAL SUBMISSION

NON-LATEX USERS: Upload your manuscript files. At this stage, further source files do not need to be uploaded.
LATEX USERS: For reviewing purposes you should upload a single .pdf that you have generated from your source files. You must use the File Designation "Main Document" from the dropdown box.

REVISION SUBMISSION

NON-LATEX USERS: Editable source files must be uploaded at this stage. Tables must be on separate pages after the reference list, and not be incorporated into the main text. Figures should be uploaded as separate figure files.

LATEX USERS: When submitting your revision you must still upload a single .pdf that you have generated from your now revised source files. You must use the File Designation "Main Document" from the dropdown box. In addition you must upload your TeX source files. For all your source files you must use the File Designation "Supplemental Material not for review". Previous versions of uploaded documents must be deleted. If your manuscript is accepted for publication we will use the files you upload to typeset your article within a totally digital workflow.

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION

Surface and Interface Analysis encourages authors to upload supplementary information together with submissions to the journal. To upload supplementary material upload your files within the online submission site and choose the "Supplementary Material for Review" file designation.

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Online Open

OnlineOpen is available to authors of primary research articles who wish to make their article available to non-subscribers on publication, or whose funding agency requires grantees to archive the final version of their article. With OnlineOpen, the author, the author's funding agency, or the author's institution pays a fee to ensure that the article is made available to non-subscribers upon publication via Wiley Online Library, as well as deposited in the funding agency's preferred archive. For the full list of terms and conditions, see http://wileyonlinelibrary.com/onlineopen#OnlineOpen_Terms.

Any authors wishing to send their paper OnlineOpen will be required to complete the payment form available from our website at: https://authorservices.wiley.com/bauthor/onlineopen_order.asp.

Prior to acceptance there is no requirement to inform an Editorial Office that you intend to publish your paper OnlineOpen if you do not wish to. All OnlineOpen articles are treated in the same way as any other article. They go through the journal's standard peer-review process and will be accepted or rejected based on their own merit.

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Copyright and Permissions

If your paper is accepted, the author identified as the formal corresponding author for the paper will receive an email prompting them to login into Author Services; where via the Wiley Author Licensing Service (WALS) they will be able to complete the license agreement on behalf of all authors on the paper.

For authors signing the copyright transfer agreement

If the OnlineOpen option is not selected the corresponding author will be presented with the copyright transfer agreement (CTA) to sign. The terms and conditions of the CTA can be previewed in the samples associated with the Copyright FAQs below:

CTA Terms and Conditions http://authorservices.wiley.com/bauthor/faqs_copyright.asp

For authors choosing OnlineOpen

If the OnlineOpen option is selected the corresponding author will have a choice of the following Creative Commons License Open Access Agreements (OAA):

Creative Commons Attribution License OAA

Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License OAA

Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial -NoDerivs License OAA

To preview the terms and conditions of these open access agreements please visit the Copyright FAQs hosted on Wiley Author Services http://authorservices.wiley.com/bauthor/faqs_copyright.asp and visit http://www.wileyopenaccess.com/details/content/12f25db4c87/Copyright--License.html.

If you select the OnlineOpen option and your research is funded by The Wellcome Trust and members of the Research Councils UK (RCUK) you will be given the opportunity to publish your article under a CC-BY license supporting you in complying with Wellcome Trust and Research Councils UK requirements. For more information on this policy and the Journal’s compliant self-archiving policy please visit: http://www.wiley.com/go/funderstatement.

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English Editing

Papers must be in English. Oxford English Dictionary or American spelling is acceptable, provided usage is consistent within the manuscript.

Manuscripts that are written in English that is ambiguous or incomprehensible, in the opinion of the Editor, will be returned to the authors with a request to resubmit once the language issues have been improved. This policy does not imply that all papers must be written in "perfect" English, whatever that may mean. Rather, the criterion will require that the intended meaning of the authors must be clearly understandable, i.e., not obscured by language problems, by referees who have agreed to review the paper.

Authors for whom English is a second language may choose to have their manuscript professionally edited before submission to improve the English. A list of independent suppliers of editing services can be found at http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/bauthor/english_language.asp Japanese authors can also find a list of local English improvement services at http://www.wiley.co.jp/journals/editcontribute.html All services are paid for and arranged by the author, and use of one of these services does not guarantee acceptance or preference for publication.

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Presentation of papers

Manuscript style. Use a standard font of the 12-point type: Times, Helvetica, or Courier is preferred. It is not necessary to double-line space your manuscript.

Tables must be on separate pages after the reference list, and not be incorporated into the main text. Figures should be uploaded as separate figure files and include captions.

• During the submission process you must enter (1) the full title, (2) the short title of up to 70 characters, (3) names and affiliations of all authors and (4) the full address, including email, telephone and fax of the author who is to check the proofs.
• Include the name(s) of any sponsor(s) of the research contained in the paper, along with grant number(s).
• Enter an abstract of no more than 250 words for all articles. An abstract is a concise summary of the whole paper, not just the conclusions. It must convey the importance of the work and be understandable without reference to the rest of the manuscript. It should not contain any citation to other published works.
• Include up to ten keywords that describe your paper for indexing purposes.

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Reference Style

References should be cited by superior numbers and listed at the end of the paper in the order in which they appear in the text. Authors should cite available published work. If necessary, cite unpublished or personal work in the text but do not include it in the references list. Journal titles should be italicized and abbreviated in accordance with the Chemical Abstracts Service Source Index (CASSI).

Examples for Journals

[1] R. K. Harris, A. Nordon, K. D. M. Harris, Rapid. Commun. Mass Spec. 2007 ; 21 , 15.

Examples for Books

[2] K. Schmidt-Rohr, H.W. Spiess, Multidimensional Solid-State NMR and Polymers, Academic Press, London, 1994 .

[3] V. Sklenar, in NMR Applications in Biopolymers (Eds: J.W. Finley, S. J. Schmidt, A. S. Serianni), Plenum, New York, 1990 , pp. 63-70.

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Citing EarlyView Articles

To include the DOI in a citation to an article, simply append it to the reference as in the following example:

R. K. Harris, A. Nordon, K. D. M. Harris, Rapid. Commun. Mass Spec. 2007, DOI: 10.1002/RCM.21464.

To link to an article from the author’s homepage, take the DOI (digital object identifier) and append it to "http://dx.doi.org/" as per following example:

DOI 10.1002/hep.20941, becomes http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/hep.20941

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Illustrations

Upload each figure as a separate file in either .tiff or .eps format, with the figure number and the top of the figure indicated. Compound figures (e.g. 1a, b, c) should be uploaded as one figure. Tints are not acceptable. Lettering must be of a reasonable size that is still be clearly legible upon reduction, and consistent within each figure and set of figures. Where a key to symbols is required, please include this in the artwork itself, not in the figure legend. All illustrations must be supplied at the correct resolution:

• Black and white and colour photos - 300 dpi
• Graphs, drawings, etc - 800 dpi preferred; 600 dpi minimum
• Combinations of photos and drawings (black and white and colour) - 500 dpi

Tables should be part of the the main document and should be placed after the references. If the table is created in excel the file should be uploaded separately.

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Chemical structures

Chemical structures should be prepared in ChemDraw in either 80 mm (one-column) or175 mm (two-column) widths. However, the one-column format should be used whenever possible as this allows greater flexibility in the layout of the manuscript. Use this ChemDraw Download or use the following settings:

Drawing settings		Text settings
chain angle	120°	font	Arial
bond spacing	18% of length	size	12 pt
fixed length	17 pt
bond width	2 pt	Preferences
line width	0.75 pt	units	points
margin width	2 pt	tolerances	5 pixels
hash spacing	2.6 pt
Bold width	2.6 pt

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Colour policy

Colour illustrations supplied electronically in either TIFF or EPS format will be used in the online version of the paper at no cost to the author. Colour will be used in the print version only when authors can justify the inclusion of colour to the editor (on submission). In the print version, one colour page will be charged at £350 for industrial and government authors, or at no charge for academic authors. Each additional colour illustration will be charged at a fixed tariff to all authors. When submitting your manuscript please indicate clearly to the Editor in your cover letter if you wish to use colour versions of your illustrations in the print version. Additionally, reprint costs will vary from the standard figures quoted for the journal based on the number of colour pages in your paper.

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Conventions used by SIA

Nomenclature. Authors should conform to nomenclature, symbols, abbreviations and procedures adopted by ASTM. SI units are preferred; if more commonly used units are adopted, conversion factors should be given at their first occurrence.

Description of Experimental Methods. The Experimental section should be precise and give all details necessary for repeating the work. Particular attention should be given to methods used for calibration of instruments and spectra when electron spectroscopic data are presented.

Abbreviations. All abbreviations should be defined the first time they are used. The following terms are acceptable without definition: XPS, UPS, ESCA, SIMS, AES, ISS, SEM, RBS.

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Article types published in SIA

• Rapid communication
• Account of research
• Research article
• Review article
• Short communication
• Letter to the Editor

Rapid Communication This is devoted to the publication of new work which the scientific community would recognise as novel and/or timely and therefore worthy of accelerated publication. In most cases it is the prelude to a more detailed and extended work to be published at a later time in the normal way. It is NOT a quick route to publication of short but complete papers - these will continue to be published as Short Communications. The maximum length is 4 journal pages (about 4000 words) including figures and tables (counted as 250 words equivalent each at normal size). Accepted papers will be published in the next available issue of SIA, giving a publication time of 1-2 months. To achieve this, the manuscript submission process will be different from that used for regular papers:

1. The author identifies and agrees a 'sponsor' who will read the manuscript, make suggestions for improvement etc., and check the revisions to his/her satisfaction. The sponsor's relevant expertise should be recognised by the community and he/she must agree to their details being published with the paper.

2. The author contacts the Editor-in-Chief by e-mail with a proposed title, a few words of justification and the details of the sponsor (including e-mail address). In most cases the 'go ahead' should be received in a day or two.

3. Following completion with the help of the sponsor, the final manuscript is submitted to the Editor-in-Chief via the online submission system, with at least the text in electronic formalso.

4. The paper is then given priority in the production pipeline at all stages, to produce the rapid publication time. Tutorials. The aim of the tutorial is to provide instruction on a particular methodology or technique. It should present the topic at a level that is accessible by non-experts.

Account of research. Reviews a significant body of work from the research group of the principal author. The aim is to report the development of a research group or institution from its early beginnings through to the development and practice of a particular technique or significant discovery. A paper should report the ‘highs and lows’ encountered throughout the research period and provide a historical context. (For an example see Surf. Interface Anal. 2003; 35, 859)

Research Article. There are no formal limits on the page extent for Research Articles.

Review article. Review articles are encouraged; prior consultation with one of the Editors is advised.

Short Communication. This category is for communications which are not intended for publication as full papers. They are to be presented in the same style as a Research Article.

Letter to the editor. Letters will be published in SIA at the discretion of the Editor-in-Chief.

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Further Information

For accepted manuscripts the publisher will supply proofs to the submitting author prior to publication. This stage is to be used only to correct errors that may have been introduced during the production process. Prompt return of the corrected proofs, preferably within two days of receipt, will minimise the risk of the paper being held over to a later issue. Free access to the final PDF offprint of your article will be available via Author Services only. Please therefore sign up for Author Services if you would like to access your article PDF offprint and enjoy the many other benefits the service offers. To purchase reprints, please visit http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/aboutus/ppv-articleselect.html. Restrictions apply to the use of reprints – if you have a specific query, please contact permissions@wiley.co.uk. Corresponding authors are invited to inform their co-authors of the reprint options available. There is no page charge to authors.

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