Instructions to Authors

Please carefully read all instructions before submitting a manuscript to JMR. Manuscripts not prepared according to JMR specifications may be returned to the author and may experience significant delays in review and time to publication.

1. Electronic Manuscript Submission
2. Types of Manuscripts
3. Abstracts
4. Required Forms
5. Illustrations
6. Style
7. Mathematics
8. References   Note JMR reference style has changed. See below for details.
9. Tables
10. Proofs of Articles

1. Electronic Manuscript Submission
All manuscripts must be submitted via the JMR online submission site located at http://www.mrs.org/publications/jmr/esubmission.html. Electronic submission expedites the review process and allows authors to track the status of their manuscripts at any time.

Manuscripts must be prepared using a word processing program and saved as a .doc, .pdf, .rtf or .ps files. For review purposes, please submit the entire manuscript, including figures, in one file. You may also upload .xls or .ppt supplemental files as part of the manuscript submission process. All of these files will be converted to .pdf format. Image files such as .gif, .jpg, .eps, .png, and .tif may be uploaded. These will be converted to small .jpg files. Detailed uploading instructions are available on the submission web site. After conversion, be sure to verify that no special characters or formatting are lost in the conversion, as the version of the PDF that is submitted is the one that editors and reviewers will see.

During submission, authors must enter all coauthor names and e-mail addresses. Manuscripts will not be considered for peer review until this information is provided. Authors must also enter manuscript keywords chosen from the JMR Keyword List. These keywords are used for the Contents by Topic that appears in each issue of JMR. When finished uploading and approving their papers, authors must click "Submit Manuscript" or the Editorial Office will not know that it is in the system.

Electronic manuscripts must be in English and formatted to fit 8 1/2 x 11 in. paper. Authors who are not fluent in English must have their manuscript edited for correct English grammar and sentence structure before submission.

To check manuscript status, the corresponding author can log on to the JMR Manuscript Central site, select the Author Center, and current status information will be listed for all of that author's articles.

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2. Types of Manuscripts
JMR publishes new research that demonstrates a significant scientific impact or advance of scientific understanding of interest to the materials research community. Engineering studies and applications to commercial products are beyond the scope of JMR and should be submitted elsewhere. Manuscripts that report data without giving an analysis, interpretation, or discussion are only acceptable if the data are sufficiently important that publication is expected to lead to significant new studies or advancements in science or technology.

Manuscripts are accepted with the understanding that they represent original research, except for review articles, and that they have not been copyrighted, published, or submitted for publication elsewhere. To expedite the review process, authors may provide names and contact information for up to four possible reviewers.

Articles. Journal of Materials Research publishes original research reports that include complete, detailed, self-contained descriptions of research efforts. All articles must contain an abstract (see item 3) and section headings.

Rapid Communications. Journal of Materials Research also publishes Rapid Communications, which are brief preliminary reports of unusual urgency, significance, and interest to the materials research and development community. These submissions may not exceed four published pages including the abstract. Since they are brief in length, section headings are not to be used.

Commentaries and Reviews. Journal of Materials Research occasionally publishes commentaries on topics of current interest or reviews of the literature in a given area. If an author proposes a review, the title, abstract, and a brief outline should be submitted to the USA Editorial Office, via e-mail, for prior consultation on the appropriateness of the topic.

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3. Abstracts
An abstract must accompany each manuscript. Abstracts for Articles should be 150 words or less; abstracts for Rapid Communications should be 100 words or less. The abstract should be adequate as an index and as a summary, and should outline all subjects related to the new information being presented, as well as conclusions and all numerical results of general interest. The abstract should avoid the use of jargon and other terminology that would render its content inaccessible to the nonspecialist. Abstracts must be in past tense when referring to experiments but present tense when referring to scientific law. The abstract is usually reprinted verbatim in abstract journals, and is listed in the JMR Abstracts. located on the MRS web site. The American Institute of Physics (AIP) provides Physics and Astronomy Classification Scheme (PACS) index categories, which yield machine searchable labels compatible with the physics literature.

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4. Required Forms
Please be sure the manuscript number and corresponding author's name appear on all forms. Papers cannot be published if the JMR Editorial Office does not have completed copies of these required forms. To avoid delaying publication, fax the completed forms to the Editorial Office upon submission of a manuscript.

Publication Charge Form. Publication charges, which are widely used and accepted throughout the scientific publishing community, are financial contributions from authors and authors' institutions to the cost of disseminating research results. They should be regarded as an essential and proper part of research budgets. Consequently, authors and their institutions are urged to pay a publication charge of $100 per printed page (with a one-page minimum). Papers for which publication charges have been accepted receive priority in publication order because they subsidize production of the journal. Please fax a completed publication charge form to the USA Editorial Office upon submission of your manuscript.

Copyright Form. Under U.S. copyright law, the transfer of copyright from the author(s) should be explicitly stated to enable a publisher to disseminate a work to the fullest extent. A Copyright Transfer form must be faxed upon submission of a manuscript.

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5. Illustrations
Figures should be submitted electronically with the text of the manuscript. JMR cannot be responsible for the loss of materials while they are in transit, so authors should not mail their only copies of figures.

Every illustration must be referred to in the main text in consecutive numerical order. A caption (legend) must be provided for each illustration. Captions must be placed on a separate page at the end of the manuscript.

Color figures may be considered. However, in advance of publication, the author or the author's institution must agree to accept all additional costs incurred in publishing color photographs. Contact the Editorial Office for further information.

Line drawings and graphs must have a resolution of at least 1200 dpi. Photographs and micrographs must have resolution of at least 350 dpi. Lower-resolution images will not reproduce properly when the journal is printed and will not be accepted. The Editorial Office will provide instructions for ftp of electronic figure submission on an as-needed basis.

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6. Style
Authors are expected to follow the conventional writing, notation, and illustration style prescribed in Scientific Style and Format, The CBE Manual for Authors, Editors, and Publishers, Cambridge University Press, 1994. Authors should also study the form and style of printed material in this journal. SI units should be used. Authors should use an identical format for their names in all publications to facilitate use of citations and author indexes.

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7. Mathematics
Special care should be given to make equations and formulas clear to the typesetter. Variables should appear in italic text. Vectors should appear in bold text. Capital and lower-case letters should be distinguished clearly where there could be confusion. Fractional exponents should be used to avoid root signs. Extra symbols should be introduced to avoid complicated exponents or where it is necessary to repeat a complicated expression a number of times. The slash (/) should be used wherever possible for fractions. Mathematical derivations that are easily found elsewhere in the literature should not be used. Rather, the references should be cited.

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8. References
NOTE: Instructions for References:
All journal article references must include the TITLE of the article and all authors.

References should be double-spaced, numbered consecutively, placed on a separate page, and arranged thus:

The phrases et al. and ibid. should not be used in any reference. Instead, all authors of the reference should be listed.
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9. Tables
All but the simplest tabular material should be organized into separate tables. Tables should be numbered with Roman numerals on separate pages at the end of the manuscript. Captions should be sufficiently descriptive to make the data in the table intelligible without referring to the text. Complicated column headings in the body of the table should be avoided. If necessary, symbols that are explained in the caption should be used.
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10. Proofs of Articles accepted for publication will be sent to the author for review electronically and must be returned promptly as instructed. A few alterations in proof are unavoidable, but the cost of making extensive alterations or of correcting mistakes caused by careless preparation of the manuscript will be charged to the author. If proofs are not returned, the manuscript will be published as it appears in the final accepted version, with necessary corrections in grammar and spelling in compliance with standard American English and accepted Journal style.
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