ARIES-AT Final Report -- Guideline for Papers

Everyone agrees that ARIES-RS report being published as a special issue of FED Journal was a great success. The problem we ran into was that copies of journal issues very extremely expensive ($400 each) and the number of free reprints that we get was small. So the papers did not get as wide a distribution as we would like.

Starting with ARIES-ST, I'd like to ensure that we have the last version of the paper (after changes suggested by the referee) so that we can publish them as final report of ARIES-AT for wide distribution. The guidelines below not only help speedy progress through Journal submission but allow us to print a large number of our final-refereed papers as "preprints" and distribute them widely and earlier than the FED Journal.

Papers are due at UCSD by Jan. 1, 2001. Papers not submitted by that date will be dropped from the Journal. (This is the hard lesson of ARIES-ST as I waited for one of the papers for over 9 months.)

I prefer that you submit your papers in latex format. If you are kind enough to submit a latex file, please use the latex sources of ARIES-ST papers as a guide on how to prepare your latex file. Talk to me if you need help.

I will also accept (reluctantly) MS Word documents. E-mail your papers and I will convert them to Latex. If you send your paper made by MSWord on a Mac, please send me a hard copy and/or pdf file as well. A lot of fonts do not translate correctly from Mac to PC in addition to totally screwed up pagination, margins, etc.

Please follow the FED instruction to authors at Elsevier (look under Guide for Authors / Manuscript preparation). The editors will ask you to follow it at some point during the publication process. Better do it up front than when you get galley proofs.

Section Headings. Please follow the format.

References. Please follow the format. It is easier than trying to correct them on the galley proof and find the author list, titles, page numbers, etc. at the short time available to return the proofs.

Figures. The Guideline from Elsevier says that they want figures on original ink or glossy prints. Electronic figures are acceptable but format is: 1) tiff at 1000 dpi (which make each figure to be 50 MB at a minimum), 2) postscript at 300 dpi minimum, that will be small if made properly, 3) pdf convertible to ps at 300 dpi minimum (do not do this if you do not know what you are doing). As such, I need you to send the figure to me either as glossy prints or electronically as a postscript file. (Do not scan your figures please).

No-Nos:

A lot of people send me postscript files that are made by sending their figure to a "postscript printer" such as apple laser writer and save the output as a file (instead of printing it). This is wrong. It make junk files. Don't do it. Making good postscript files is easy. See below.

Please do not import your figures from one software to another by copy/paste functions of your desktop machine. Do not make jpeg or gif files. Your screen resolution is 72 dpi. Figures that are 8 inches wide on the screen look like a postage stamp when it is printed on a 300 or 600 dpi printer. This is really a case what you see is NOT what you get! In addition, copy/paste on these machines generate bitmap files from vector files. Bitmap files are huge. For ARIES-ST I have postscript files generated by ANSYS embedded in WORD files and then pulled out as postscript and look awful and are ten times bigger than the original!

How to make postscript files:

1. Go to Adobe Web site (support -> download), click on "printer drivers" (choose Mac or PC) and download the latest version of "postscript driver" (make sure to download English language). Install this driver on your machine but do not attach it to any printer . It will install as a "generic postscript printer." From then on, whenever, you want to make a postscript file, just print to this "generic postscript printer." You may want to check the properties of this printer to ensure that it is set at 300 dpi or better and also generating an encapsulated postscript file (eps).

2. If you are lazy to do the above, check with me to see if we at UCSD have the graphic software that you are using. Most probably we do. Then send me your graphic software file.