Instructions for authors

Download Matériaux & Techniques instructions to authors in PDF format.

1. General

1.1 Conditions of acceptance of a submission

Submission of a manuscript implies that the work has not been published and is not submitted for publication anywhere else. Publication must be approved by all co-authors. Authors should accept publication fees (when applied). For ethics in publishing consult the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) recommendations.

Should a paper turn out to have been submitted to other journals concurrently, or to have been published in essentially the same form in a journal other than Matériaux & Techniques, this paper will be rejected categorically and immediately, and the editorial office(s) of the other journal(s) will be informed about this case. The authors concerned will not be allowed to publish in the journal concerned for two years.

1.2 Authorship

All the authors must meet the criteria described at http://www.icmje.org/recommendations/browse/roles-and-responsibilities/. Those contributors who do not meet all these criteria shall be acknowledged.

The list of co-authors should remain unchanged from submission to final decision. It is acceptable to add to the list the names of new co-authors who contributed to the revisions. A mandatory written agreement is required from authors whose names have been deleted from the revised version.

1.3 Conflict of interest

Authors must disclose whether they have a financial relationship with the organization that sponsored the research. They should also state that they have full control of all primary data and that they agree to allow the journal to review their data if requested.

1.4 Publication ethics and protection of research participants

All laws and regulations should be strictly followed. If required, authors are requested to indicate ethical declarations issued by their institution and concerning their research, including permit numbers, in the Material and Methods section.

1.5 Open Access Option (OAO)

EDP Sciences proposes an open access option to publish in many journals that are not full open access. Authors may be required or may choose to make their paper freely available to all readers as soon as their article is published online, in exchange for a fee which covers the cost of open access publication.

In the case thy choose the Open Access Option, Authors are the copyright holders of their articles and they sign the Creative Commons Attribution CC-by 4.0 Licence Agreement which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

1.6 Publication fees

The open access fee (also known as APC, Article Processing Charges) covers the costs involved in the open access publication (when the Author has chosen the ‘Open Access Option’), such as editorial handling, copyediting, data management, proofs, administrative overheads and technologies in order to make your article findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable. For more information please refer to the Article-processing charges.

1.7 Data sharing policy

Data sharing is the practice of making data used for scholarly research available to other investigators. The need to share data quickly has been pointed out, for example, in medicine, in the case of the development of new medicines and vaccines.

Many funding agencies, institutions, and publication venues have policies regarding data sharing because transparency and openness are considered by many to be part of the scientific method.

The Matériaux & Techniques authors are invited to upload supplemental datasets related to their research to an online repository, making it available for both human and machine reading in order to further aid the acceleration of scientific discovery.

Authors are invited to prepare and deposit their data according to the FAIR data principles. FAIR stands for Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Re-usable. The principles are available here.

The dataset should be findable through a complete set of metadata, including a license for re-use and a data identifier (DOI or other). The dataset is accessible when access is open. Interoperable means that the data can be used and combined with other datasets in a format that is sufficiently widely distributed. Re-usability is achieved when the dataset is deposited with a corresponding Creative Commons open license and is downloadable. Further, re-usability includes that parameters how this dataset has been collected and machine and experimental conditions are documented.

2. Types of papers

Below are listed the types of publications are considered:

1. Research Article
2. Review Article
3. Editorial
4. ‘Comment on’ and ‘Reply to Comment on’
5. Erratum
6. Short Communication

3. Presentation of manuscripts

Manuscripts should be written in English or in French. For authors not fluent in one of these languages, we recommend having the manuscript carefully read by a native speaker before submission or consider using third-party English language editing services.

Use Times 12 with 1.5 interline throughout the manuscript and avoid unnecessary formatting. Number pages. Use up to three subheading levels in total. SI units should be used throughout the manuscript. Manuscripts may be submitted in WORD format as well as in Latex.

3.1 Title and authors

3.1.1 Title

Title should be simple, concise and informative. A shortened version of the title consisting of a maximum of 75 characters (including spaces) for running headers should also be provided.

Author(s) name(s) and affiliations

All author names should be listed in the following order:

• First names (written in full),
• Middle names,
• Last names (surname, family name).

Each author should list an associated department, university, or organizational affiliation and its location, including city, state/province and country. One author should be appointed as the corresponding author. The email addresses of all authors should be provided at submission.

ORCID identifiers

Matériaux & Techniques encourages corresponding authors and reviewers to identify themselves using ORCID when submitting a manuscript or reviewing a manuscript for the journal. Joining ORCID is fast, free and you do not need to have a current affiliation. ORCID provides a unique identifier for researchers and, through integration in key research workflows such as publication and grant applications, provides the following benefits:

Authors who don’t have an ID, can register directly on the ORCID website.

3.2 Order of parts

Manuscripts should be prepared according to the following order:

• Abstract and 4-6 keywords
• Introduction
• Material and Methods
• Results
• Discussion
• Conflict of interest
• Acknowledgements
• Tables
• Figure Legends
• References
• Funding Information (see funding information section for more information)

3.3 Abstract

An abstract should accompany each manuscript; it should be completely self-contained, not exceeding 250-300 words and written as a single paragraph. Mathematical expressions should be avoided.

Abstracts of articles publishing results of clinical trials shall be compliant with the CONSORT checklist regarding all items of reporting. The registration number of the clinical trial shall be included at the end of the abstract, when available.

3.4 Main text

Introduction

No subsection. This section is headed "Introduction".

Materials and Methods

This part may be presented as several subsections (up to two levels of subheadings). All information regarding deposit of data and code underlying the published research should be mentioned in this section, by indicating especially by hyperlinks where the information can be found.

Results

This section may be presented as a single part or as several subsections; maximum of two subheading levels.

Discussion

This section may be presented as a single part or as several subsections; maximum of two subheading levels. The last subsection can be "Conclusions". Follow instructions for citations. In certain cases, it might be appropriate to mix the results and discussion in a single section, headed "Results and discussion".

Conflict of Interest

This section, mandatory in articles in the disciplines of life sciences and medicine must be inserted before the Acknowledgements. This section shall describe whether yes or no, each individual author must disclose any kind of conflict of interest.

Depending on the type of conflict, the following sentences are recommended to be added for each author (please use the authors' initials here):

• For author AA receiving personal funding please state: "AA has received funding from" and note the source.
• In case BB's institution received any sort of support, state: "The institution of BB has received funding from…" and note the source.
• If CC received no financial support please state, "CC certifies that he or she has no financial conflict of interest (eg., consultancies, stock ownership, equity interest, patent/licensing arrangements, etc.) in connection with this article."
• If DD has received or may receive any personal payment or other benefit from a commercial entity (eg., serve as a consultant), please note: "DD has or may receive payments or benefits from … (note the source) related to this work."

Acknowledgements

This section must be concise. No subdivisions. Mention here colleagues and grants. See also the above section about authorship and mention here all those persons not meeting all the criteria necessary for authorship.

Funding Information

Please provide details of the sources of financial support for all authors, including grant numbers in the Acknowledgments section. Grants held by different authors should be identified as belonging to individual authors.

If there is no specific funding, then this should be stated.

Author Contributions

A short statement should be provided indicating how each author contributed to the work.

References

This section should be arranged according to the precise format detailed below. Only works cited in the text should appear here. Citation of unpublished papers and grey literature should generally be avoided. Software cited in the Material and Methods should have a citation. Papers may be cited as "in press" only when they have been accepted for publication (in this case, include the DOI).

3.5 Tables

Tables (numbered as Table 1, Table 2, etc.) should be presented as one per page. Avoid complex formatting and use the basic Table format in Word or Excel.

3.6 Figures

Figure numbers and legends

Figures should be numbered as Figure 1, Figure 2, etc. They are referred to in the text as Figure 1, Figure 2, etc. Legends are grouped on a separate page.

Technical information

All figures are published free of charge (i.e. they are included in the publication fee), including color photographs and diagrams. However, only photographs of scientific interest and pertaining to the subject of the article should be included. Color illustrations, especially diagrams, should be understandable even, if they are printed as grey levels.

Figures should be prepared to be of good quality both when they are viewed onscreen as HTML and when the PDF is printed. Figures may be arranged as "plates", but keep in mind that PDFs are prepared to be printed on A4 pages.

The electronic submission system will accept PNG (preferred), TIFF (with compression), and EPS files, with appropriate resolution (300 dpi for colour photographs, 600 dpi for halftone work, 1200 dpi for line work). JPG format is not recommended - PNG is preferred.

Manuscripts with figures of insufficient technical quality will be immediately sent back for revision by the editorial team and will not begin the review process before correct files are uploaded.

3.7 Supplementary online material

Supplementary online material may include data too long to be included in the manuscript, additional illustrations and movies. Online material is subjected to strict refereeing. Formats accepted are: PDF, graphic formats for supplementary figures, MPEG for videos. Files should preferably be less than 20 Mb.

3.8 Mathematical material

A standard typesetting procedure is followed by the production staff. Authors should observe the following simple rules to help clarify the content of mathematical material. The text should make clear distinctions between physical variables, mathematical symbols, units of measurement, abbreviations, chemical formulas, etc. Hand-written Greek letters should be written fully in the margin at the first place of mention. Equations must be typewritten in papers submitted as hard copy and be sequentially numbered. The number should appear in parentheses at the right-hand side of the page and be referred to in the text as, e.g. (7).

Caution: Mathematical expressions often need to be displayed on two or more lines (“broken”) because of the line length limitation of IJMQE's two-column layout. There are situations where breaking an equation is not possible or appropriate (long fractions or matrices). The production department reserves the possibility of placing unbroken equations at the bottom or at the top of the page(s) concerned, according to the page layout to be defined by the production staff, with an appropriate citation in the text. For example:

See equation (8) below (above)

Authors who have access to italic and boldface should use these to identify physical or mathematical variables. Variables are to be set in normal italic. Physical constants such as the speed of light or the Boltzmann constant are also set in normal italic.

• Italic type should be avoided for the following:
• Units of measurement (e.g., km, g, K, cm², s¹).
• Mathematical signs such as sin, cos, log, exp, etc.
• Chemical formulas.

3.9 References

Authors are encouraged to use a reference manager software.

References in the text

References are numbered as [1], [2,3,7] or [5-9]. The use of numbered references does not mean that author names and dates of cited papers are prohibited in the text, but this should be used only if necessary.

Example: Many studies [1-9] have addressed … (no special need to indicate authors here). In 2013, Smith [10] claimed that … but Dupont [11,12] later demonstrated that… (names of authors and dates are useful here).

Presentation of references

References are numbered in the order of appearance in the text. Words in titles are not capitalised. No journal name begins with "The".

Journal articles

1. K. Krynicki, C.D. Green, D.W. Sawyer, Pressure and temperature dependence of self-diffusion in water, Faraday Discuss. Chem. Soc. 66, 199 (1978)
2. J. Abadie, E. Piat, S. Oster, M. Boukallel, Sens. Actuat. A 173, 227–237 (2012)

Book

3. N. Storey, Electronics: A System Approach, 4th edn. (Pearson Education, 2009)

Data citation

The data (including original and archival data) used in a paper must be appropriately cited in the ‘References section’ reference list.

3.10 Electronic submission

Authors should submit their manuscripts electronically, only through the web at the following address: https://mattech.nestor-edp.org

Before you begin submission, prepare the following:

• A list of full names of all authors and a valid email address for each of them (copy and paste from first page of manuscript);
• A Word/Latex file of the manuscript;
• A Word/Latex file of the covering letter. This letter must be a concise and clear statement about the novelty or originality aspects of the scientific work and why it fits the scope of the journal. This statement should point out the original features of the work, not just say that it is new. Any prior submissions of the manuscript to EDP Sciences journals must be acknowledged. This statement should also specify the current professional position of the authors, for instance if they are PhD Student, Engineer, Researcher, Doctor, Post Doc, Professor, Head of Research Dept., Head of Technical or Production Dept, or other. The names of proposed and excluded reviewers should be provided in the submission system, not in the cover letter.
• The electronic files of all figures, with appropriate resolution and technical quality.

The submission system will produce a PDF from these elements, which will be submitted for your approval, and will eventually be sent to the referees after evaluation by the Editors.

Authors who wish to send confidential comments about their manuscript to the Editor should send a separate email.

3.11 Proofs

It is important to note that no modifications can be made to the text or the figures after the manuscript has been sent to production.

The galley proofs will be sent to the corresponding author in .pdf format and should be returned promptly.

Should the author be absent during that period, it is preferable to delegate proofreading to a collaborator.

Proofs can be handled electronically only. In the proofs, only minor changes and corrections of typos or mistakes that occurred in the production process itself are permitted. If the corrections go beyond what can be normally accepted, regarding either the form or the content, they will be submitted to the Editor for approval, which will definitely delay the publication of the paper.

3.12 Evaluation in the first instance

The Editors-in-Chief reserve the right to decide whether or not a new submission should be sent to the referees. They can also reject a manuscript which does not meet the publication criteria (poor quality of presentation, inappropriate subject matter or errors). The paper should be:

• Basically correct and sound;
• A significant advance and not just a minor improvement on earlier work;
• Accessible to the general readership of the journal.

Regarding the scientific contents, a part covering the scientific developments and/or industrial applications in the domain should be developed.

The following questions/criteria will be addressed to referees for further judgment:

• Is the subject matter within the scope of the journal?
• Does the paper contain enough original results to warrant publication?
• Is the paper technically sound and free of errors?
• Is the work clearly and concisely presented? Is it well organized?
• Are the industrial applications developed enough?
• Are the scientific developments investigated enough?
• Does the title clearly and sufficiently reflect its contents?
• Is the abstract informative? Are the main results and conclusions mentioned?
• Is the scientific discussion sound and not misleading?
• Are the illustrations of adequate quality, relevant and understandable?
• Does the bibliography give a clear view of the current state-of-the-art in the domain?
• Is the quality of the language satisfactory?
• Should the paper be shortened (material irrelevant or redundant)?
• Is the paper expected to have a high impact?

3.13 Peer review

Referees are invited to submit their report within a period of 3 weeks.

The editor usually collects two independent reports. However, in the case of a clear-cut final decision, the editor can reject or accept the manuscript on the basis of a single report.

In cases where the referees cannot agree, an independent expert can be asked to act as an adjudicator.

Deadline for revision

The revised version should be received within 2 months from the editorial decision and resubmission after that date will be dealt with as a new manuscript. However, should the revisions require more time it is possible to request an extended deadline from the editorial office.

3.14 Withdrawal of a paper

Papers can be withdrawn from the journal after submission on the condition that they are accompanied by a letter of explanation giving the reasons for the withdrawal. After the withdrawal, the article file is closed immediately, and the authors’ letter of explanation is sent to the referees. It is against the journal's editorial policy and ethical standards in publishing to submit elsewhere a version of the paper which has been improved based on the recommendations of the contacted referees.

3.15 Appeals

An appeal can be considered in the event of a disagreement with the final editorial decision provided that there are grounds for complaint. The editor reserves the right to accept or reject the appeal for consideration. Please note that the journal will consider only one appeal.