Submissions

Login or Register to make a submission.

Submission Preparation Checklist

As part of the submission process, authors are required to check off their submission's compliance with all of the following items, and submissions may be returned to authors that do not adhere to these guidelines.
  • The submission has not been previously published, nor is it before another journal for consideration (or an explanation has been provided in Comments to the Editor).
  • The submission file is in OpenOffice, Microsoft Word, or RTF document file format.
  • Where available, URLs for the references have been provided.
  • The text is single-spaced; uses a 12-point font; employs italics, rather than underlining (except with URL addresses); and all illustrations, figures, and tables are placed within the text at the appropriate points, rather than at the end.
  • The text adheres to the stylistic and bibliographic requirements outlined in the Author Guidelines.

Author Guidelines

Journal of Condensed Matter covers the whole of condensed matter physics. Papers may report experimental, theoretical and simulation studies. 

JCM Publishing considers for publication in our journal articles that:

  • Report original science and add significantly to research already published

  • Are of interest to the community, scientifically rigorous and have sound motivation and purpose

  • Have not been published previously in the peer reviewed literature

  • Are not under consideration for publication in any other peer reviewed journal or book available through a library or by purchase

Articles reporting work that was originally presented at a conference may be submitted, provided these articles do not appear in substantially the same form in a peer reviewed, published conference proceeding. Again, you should ensure the format of a research paper is used. 

We treat all submitted articles as confidential until they are published and they will only be shared with those referees, board members, editors who are directly involved in the peer review of the article.

Language

All papers should be written in English.

Article length

There is a no maximum or minimum article page limit.  

Article structure

You should consider the best way to structure your article before you begin writing. Your article should follow the Introduction, Methods, Results and Discussion system, and usually consist of the following sections:

Title

The title should be concise, informative and meaningful to the whole readership of the journal. It should include key terms, to help make it more discoverable when people search online. 

Authors

You need to list all authors’ full names and institutions.  We encourage authors to make specific attributions of contribution and responsibility in the acknowledgements of the article, otherwise all co-authors will be taken to share full responsibility for all of the paper. 

Keywords

When you submit an article, you will be asked to supply some keywords relevant to your work. If your article is accepted for publication, we will display these keywords on the published article, and they will be used to index your article, helping to make it more discoverable. When choosing keywords, think about the kinds of terms you would use when searching online for related articles.

Abstract

Your abstract should give readers a brief summary of your article. It should concisely describe the contents of your article. The abstract should be complete in itself; it should not contain undefined acronyms/abbreviations and no table numbers, figure numbers, references or equations should be referred to. The abstract should be suitable for direct inclusion in abstracting services and should not normally be more than 300 words. 

Introduction

This should be concise and describe the nature of the problem under investigation and its background. It should also set your work in the context of previous research, citing relevant references. Introductions should expand on highly specialised terms and abbreviations used in the article to make it accessible for readers.

Method

This section should provide sufficient details of the experiment, simulation, statistical test or analysis carried out to generate the results such that the method can be repeated by another researcher and the results reproduced.

Results

The results section should detail the main findings and outcomes of your study. You should use tables only to improve conciseness or where the information cannot be given satisfactorily in other ways such as histograms or graphs. Tables should be numbered serially and referred to in the text by number (table 1, etc.). Each table should have an explanatory caption which should be as concise as possible.

Discussion

This should discuss the significance of the results and compare them with previous work using relevant references.

Conclusion

This section should be used to highlight the novelty and significance of the work, and any plans for future relevant work.

Acknowledgements

For single-anonymous please include an acknowledgements section before the References section in your anuscript.

Figures

Carefully chosen and well-prepared figures, such as diagrams and photographs, can greatly enhance your article. You are encouraged to prepare figures that are clear, easy to read and of the best possible quality and resolution.

Figures should be numbered in the order in which they are referred to in the text, using sequential numerals (e.g. figure 1, figure 2, etc.).

If there is more than one part to a figure (e.g. figure 1(a), figure 1(b), etc.), the parts should be identified by a lower-case letter in parentheses close to or within the area of the figure.

Figure captions

Captions should be included in the text. Figure captions should contain relevant key terms and be self-contained (avoiding acronyms) so that a reader can understand the figure without having to refer to the text. Figure captions should also reference the source of the figure if the figure has been reused from elsewhere.

References

It is vitally important that you fully acknowledge all relevant work. 

A reference should give your reader enough information to locate the article concerned, and you should take particular care to ensure that the information is correct so that links to referenced articles can be made successfully.

Reference labelling systems

In the Vancouver numerical system, references are numbered sequentially through the text. The numbers should be given in square brackets, e.g. [1], [4-7] etc., and one number can be used to refer to several instances of the same reference. The reference list at the end of the article then lists the references in numerical order, not alphabetically.

 

Preparing your files for journal articles

The guidelines below provide the essential information you need to prepare your article source files.

Microsoft Word

  • Articles can be prepared using Microsoft Word for Windows or Mac
  • Fonts used should be restricted to the standard font families (Times, Helvetica, Courier or Symbol)
  • If special symbols are needed (e.g. Greek characters, accented characters or mathematical symbols), these should be typed using the appropriate TrueType font. Do not use the Symbol facility on the ‘Insert’ menu as this often results in font conversion problems
  • Equations must be prepared using Microsoft Word Equation Editor or the full commercial MathType package.

Article format and templates

You can format your paper in the way that you choose! It is not necessary to try to produce pages that look like published journal pages, as the detailed design (typesetting) work will be undertaken by JCM as part of the production process.

If you would prefer to work from a template, we do provide this for both LaTeX and Word.

LaTeX template
Word template

JCM follow the single-anonymous peer review model. So your manuscript will need to contain the names and institutes of authors at the start of the text. Figures and tables also need to be included within the text. 

Articles

This section includes articles in the field of Condensed Matter & Applied Physics.

Privacy Statement

The names and email addresses entered in this journal site will be used exclusively for the stated purposes of this journal and will not be made available for any other purpose or to any other party.