Author Guide The Journal of Engineering

Contact information
If you cannot find the information you are looking for on this page, please contact one of the
journal's editorial assistants Emma Boxer and Hayley Faulkner at joe@theiet.org.
The Journal of Engineering is an open access, peer reviewed journal providing a forum for the
publication of original primary research findings across a broad spectrum of engineering. All
articles are peer reviewed with a binary accept or reject decision being made on the basis of
the validity of the research being reported, including the soundness of the research methods
employed and the analysis undertaken to reach conclusions.
This is a gold open access journal which means an Articl e Processing Charge (APC) of
$1,150 USD i s payable on acceptance of your paper.

Contents
1. Manuscript submissions
2. Multiple submissions
3. Manuscript presentation
4. Permissions
5. Appendices and supplementary material
6. Review process
7. Payment upon acceptance
8. Proof corrections
9. Complimentary copies
10. Creative Commons Licences
11. Checklist




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1. Manuscript submissions
Manuscripts submitted to The Journal of Engineering should:
contribute to existing research;
be original, and not have been published previously;
present findings clearly and concisely;
state the potential engineering applications;
make reference to the state-of-the-art.
Manuscripts should not:
be under consideration for publication in any other journal, book or conference
proceedings available through a library or by purchase.
contravene the IET Policy in Relation to Plagiarism, Infringement of Copyright and
Infringement of Moral Rights and Submission to Multiple Publications.

All submissions to The Journal of Engineering should be uploaded using Scholarone
Manuscripts. Papers should be submitted in their source file format (.doc or .tex files for text
and .eps, tif, jpg and pdf files for figures). If your paper has been prepared using LaTeX,
please also upload a single .pdf file of the paper together with the LaTeX source file and the
figures.

Authors are encouraged to submit the names and contact details of possible reviewers
(although the reviewers selected may not be from this list). These suggestions should be
impartial. Authors may also indicate non-preferred reviewers if they are working in competition
or have conflicts of interest with individuals or organisations. This information should be
included in a cover letter for the editorial office which can be uploaded with your manuscript.

You should not make any requests for fee waivers or reductions to your Article Processing
Charges in your cover letter. Should your manuscript be accepted for publication you will
have an opportunity to include your request at that time. Any information regarding the
funding of research should be put in a cover letter and in the acknowledgements section of
your submitted paper.

2. Multiple submissions
Your manuscript must not be under consideration for any other publication while it is being
considered by the IET. Please read the IET Research J ournals multiple submission
policy carefully, or contact the relevant editorial assistant if you are in any doubt.

If your manuscript has been considered and rejected by any other publication, it is imperative
that this is stated in the cover letter.

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The source files of your paper are required at submission as this will speed up the publication
of your paper, should it be accepted. Your paper will not be sent for review until source files
have been received.

3. Manuscript Presentation
Length: original research papers submitted to The Journal of Engineering should
be between 1200 and 6000 words. As this is an online only publication we are
more flexible with the length of papers and it will be at the discretion of the in-
house editorial team to make a decision on appropriateness. The abstract,
references and appendices are included in the word count, whereas the figure
labels and table content is not.
Format: papers must be typed in a font size no smaller than 10 pt. All pages
should be numbered. Authors should not copy the format of the published journal.
All accepted papers will be edited into The Journal of Engineering house-style.
Please double space and put your paper in a single column when submitting. All
papers should be submitted in source file format.
Language, spelling and grammar: all papers must be written in UK English. If
English is not your first language, you should ask an English-speaking colleague to
proofread your paper. Papers that fail to meet basic standards of literacy are likely
to be declined immediately by the editors.
Author affiliations: these should immediately follow the title. For multiple-
authored articles, list the names of all the authors, followed by the full postal and
email addresses, using identifiers to link an author with an address where
necessary. If an author's present address is different from the address at which the
work was carried out, this should be given as a footnote. All co-authors must be
listed on ScholarOne Manuscripts as part of the submission process.
Abstract: This should be informative and suitable for direct inclusion in abstracting
services as a self-contained article. It should not exceed 200 words. It should
indicate the general scope and also state the main results obtained, methods used,
the value of the work and the conclusions drawn. No figure numbers, table
numbers, references or displayed mathematical expressions should be included.
Figures and figure captions
o Figures will be reproduced exactly as supplied, with no redrawing or
relabelling. It is therefore imperative that the supplied figures are of the
highest possible quality. The preferred format is encapsulated postscript
(.eps) for line figures and .tif for halftone figures with a minimum resolution
of 300 dpi (dots per inch).
o Colour figures are encouraged. As this is an online only journal there will
be no charge for colour publishing.
o Each figure should be explicitly referred to in numerical order and should
be embedded within the text at the appropriate point.
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o A maximum of four subfigures will be allowed per figure.
Tables
o Tables should be referred to explicitly in the text. Tables should be referred
to in numerical order.
Mathematics and equations
o When writing mathematics, avoid confusion between characters that could
be mistaken for one another, e.g. the letter 'l' and the figure one.
o Vectors and matrices should be in bold italic and variables in italic.
o If your paper contains superscripts or subscripts, take special care to
ensure that the positioning of the characters is unambiguous.
o Numbers in scientific notation should be written using superscript notation,
i.e. 5x10
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not 5E03. A multiplication sign should be used, not a dot.
o Refer to equations using round brackets, e.g. (1)
References
o The IET uses the Vancouver (numerical) system for references. You
should number your references sequentially through the text, and each
reference should be individually numbered and enclosed in square
brackets (e.g. [1]).
o Please ensure that all references in the Reference list are cited in the text
and vice versa. Failure to do so may cause delays in the production of your
article.
o Please also ensure that you provide as much information as possible to
allow the reader to locate the article concerned. This is particularly
important for articles appearing in conferences, workshops and books that
may not appear in journal databases. If a DOI is available, please include
this in your references.
o Do not include references for papers that have been submitted and not
accepted for publication. Papers that have been accepted for publication
are allowed as long as all information is provided.
o Please provide all author name(s) and initials, title of the paper, date
published, title of the journal or book, volume number, editors (if any), page
range and finally the DOI if there is one. For books and conferences, the
town of publication and publisher (in parentheses) should also be given.
o An average research paper should reference between 20 and 30 works,
the bulk of which should be recently published (i.e. within the last 5 years)
leading-edge articles in the field, preferably from top journals or
conferences.




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Examples of the ways in which references should be cited are given below:
Journal articl e
Smith, T., and J ones, M.: The title of the paper, IET Syst. Biol., 2007, 1, (2), pp. 17,
doi: XXXX
Conference paper
J ones, L., and Brown, D.: The title of the conference paper. Proc. Int. Conf. Systems
Biology, Stockholm, Sweden, May 2006, pp. 17
Book, book chapter and manual
Hodges, A., and Smith, N.: The title of the book chapter, in Brown, S. (Ed.):
Handbook of Systems Biology (IEE Press, 2004, 1st edn.), pp. 17
Harrison, E.A., and Abbott, C.: The title of the book (XYZ Press, 2005, 2nd edn.
2006)
Patent
Brown, F.: The title of the patent (if available). British Patent 123456, J uly 2004
Smith, D., and Hodges, J .: British Patent Application 98765, 1925
Thesis
Abbott, N.L.: The title of the thesis. PhD thesis, XYZ University, 2005
Standard
BS1234: The title of the standard, 2006
Website
http://www.theiet.org, accessed April 2006

4. Permissions
Please note that any permissions you may require for text or figures must be cleared before
publication. If you unable to clear the permissions under the same licence you wish to use for
your paper, please include the permissions copyright statement under any relevant figures.
Confirmation and any relevant details of permissions should be clearly stated in your cover
letter when submitting a paper to The Journal of Engineering.

5. Appendices and supplementary material
Additional material, e.g. mathematical derivations that may interrupt the flow of your paper's
argument should form a separate Appendix section. Do not, however, use appendices to
lengthen your article unnecessarily. If the material can be found in another work, cite this work
rather than reproduce it.

Authors are encouraged to submit additional material as online supplementary material. This
should be uploaded as an additional file during submission.

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6. Review process
All manuscripts are sent out for review to independent experts in the field, and the decision
made by the editors is based on these reports. To maintain the speed of publication,
reviewers are permitted to make a binary decision without providing comments to authors,
and we are therefore not normally able to provide authors with feedback on rejected
manuscripts, or give any opportunity for revision. Authors should therefore prepare their
manuscript very carefully. The average time between submission and decision is six weeks.

7. Payment upon acceptance
Upon acceptance of your paper you will need to pay your Article Processing Charge of $1,150
USD. The IET has partnered with Copyright Clearance Center, Rightslink who will facilitate
the fee collection process. Once your paper is accepted for publication you will be contacted
by Rightslink with instructions on how to pay your fees. All fees must be paid within 3 weeks
of acceptance; failure to pay your fees in a timely fashion may result in your being debarred
from publishing open access with the IET.

IET members are eligible for a 15% discount on their fees. The IET also offers fee waivers for
researchers in developing countries, determined using the criteria* set by Research4Life,
which provides free or low-cost access to scientific journals, books and databases for
scientists, practitioners, students and faculty in the developing world. Researchers in other
territories who can demonstrate a genuine need will also be considered for waivers. They
should contact the editorial office once their paper has been accepted to make their appeal.

8. Proof Corrections
You will receive an email notifying you that you can view the proof of your paper via your
ScholarOne Manuscripts Author Centre. We ask you to return your corrections within 3 days.
Major changes-of-mind, e.g. rewriting of whole sections, are not permitted at this stage.

Do not supply an original manuscript, an updated manuscript nor an edited proof at the
corrections stage. Corrections should be indicated in list form by giving the precise location of
each correction (page and line number). This should be limited to 2 A4 pages.

We work to a tight production schedule and for this reason may publish your paper without
your corrections if the proof reaches you during an absence of which we have not been
informed or if the corrections are not returned sufficiently quickly. Alternatively, your paper
may be postponed.

Requests for last-minute corrections, i.e. amendments to the original manuscript, may be
denied at the editorial assistants discretion, particularly if these are likely to delay publication.

You will not be able to view the final proof, after your corrections have been submitted.
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9. Complimentary copies
Once the paper has been published, we will send the corresponding author a PDF copy of
their paper. This PDF is for your records. No further corrections or amendments can be
submitted at this stage.

10. Creative Commons Licences
Authors who have their papers accepted for publication in The Journal of Engineering will
be asked to sign a Creative Commons Licence as opposed to a copyright form. In this way,
the author retains the copyright to their work. As we offer a number of different licence
options for authors it is advised that authors take some time to consider which licence they
would like to use when they submit their paper so as not to delay the publication of the
paper on acceptance. Authors whose work is funded by the Wellcome Trust or Research
Councils UK must sign the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY). Other licences
available are: Attribution-NoDerivs (CC BY-ND), Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC)
and Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs (CC BY-NC-ND). For more information on these
options please see below.

Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) This licence lets others distribute, remix, tweak,
and build upon your work, even commercially, as long as they credit you for the original
creation. This is the most accommodating of licences offered. Recommended for maximum
dissemination and use of licenced materials. (If your work is funded by The Wellcome Trust or
Research Councils UK you must use this licence.)
Preview licence

Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs (CC BY-ND) This licence allows for redistribution,
commercial and non-commercial, as long as it is passed along unchanged and in whole, with
credit to you.
Preview licence

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) This licence lets others
remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-commercially, and although their new works must
also acknowledge you and be non-commercial, they dont have to licence their derivative
works on the same terms.
Preview licence

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs (CC BY-NC-ND) This licence is
the most restrictive licence we offer, only allowing others to download your works and share
them with others as long as they credit you, but they cant change them in any way or use
them commercially.
Preview licence
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11. Checklist
Please use this checklist to help you ensure that your paper meets the standards we
expect from submitted papers:
Scientifi c merit: is the work scientifically rigorous, accurate and correct?
Originality and justification: is the work relevant? Does the work contain additional
material to that already published and has its value been demonstrated?
Referencing: has reference been made to the most recent and most appropriate
work? Is the present work set in the context of the previous work?
Appropriateness: is the material appropriate to the scope of the journal?
Clarity: is the English clear and well-written? Poorly written English may obscure the
scientific merit of your paper and can lead to rejection. Are the ideas expressed
clearly and concisely? Are the concepts understandable? Is the discussion written in
a way that is easy to read and understand?
Title: is it adequate and appropriate for the content of the article?
Abstract: does it contain the essential information of the article? Is it complete? Is it
suitable for inclusion by itself in an abstracting service?
Diagrams, figures, tabl es and captions: are they clear and essential? Are all
figures and tables labelled and referred to in the text?
Graphs and tabl es: are these clear and necessary? Are the numbers in the tables
readily understandable? Explanations should be in the caption, or in the immediately
surrounding text.
Mathematics: is the mathematics necessary? Does it use commonly understood
symbols? Are equations numbered if referred to in the text?
Conclusion: does the paper contain a carefully written conclusion, summarising what
has been learned and why it is interesting and useful?