Information for Contributors

Read JMP's General Editorial Policies

Where to Submit Your Manuscript

Submit manuscripts via Peer X-Press^®, the journal's online manuscript submission system, located at http://jmp.peerx-press.org.

Author instructions are available through a link after you successfully log into Peer X-Press^®. After registering and submitting information and files, you may use Peer X-Press to check on the status of your manuscript throughout the peer review process.

A cover letter should specify authors, title, Journal, corresponding author's e-mail address, and any special requests.

Authors who wish their manuscript to be handled by a specific member of the Editorial Board should include a note to that effect in the cover letter as well as in the "Submission Comments" box at the bottom of the online manuscript submission form.

Unless otherwise stated, submission of a manuscript will be understood to mean that the paper has been neither copyrighted, classified, published, nor is being considered for publication elsewhere.

A duly signed transfer of copyright agreement form is required for publication in this journal. No claim is made to original U.S. Government works. Upload a signed AIP Transfer of Copyright Agreement Form when submitting your original or revised manuscript to the journal's online submission site (http://jmp.peerx-press.org). See Editorial Office contact information below.

There is no publication charge.

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Contact the Editorial Office

Contact the Journal of Mathematical Physics Editorial Office at:

Bruno L. Z. Nachtergaele, Editor
Journal of Mathematical Physics
Department of Mathematics
3125 MSB
University of California, Davis
Davis, CA 95616
USA

Telephone: 530-752-0268
E-mail: jmp@math.ucdavis.edu

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Statement of Ethics and Responsibilities of Authors Submitting to AIP Journals

This journal is published as part of the charter of its publisher, the American Institute of Physics (AIP), to advance and diffuse knowledge of the science of physics and its applications to human welfare. To that end, it is essential that all who participate in producing the journal conduct themselves as authors, reviewers, editors, and publishers in accord with the highest level of professional ethics and standards.

A detailed statement of what this journal expects is available here.

By submitting a manuscript to this journal, each author implicitly confirms that it meets the highest ethical standards.

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Open Access

Through participation in Author Select^®, authors may choose open access for their published article. By supporting both publication and archiving costs through payment of a $1500 fee, authors may instruct the journal to provide free online access to the published article, in perpetuity, to any online user. A subscription to the online journal will not be required to access full-text versions of these open access articles. See details about Author Select and look for information during manuscript submission.

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Accepted Manuscripts

Authors whose manuscripts have been accepted for publication will receive correspondence informing them of the issue for which it is tentatively scheduled. Date of publication may be before the cover date of the issue. Authors may access publication data for their manuscripts online through AIP's AMSIS service.

Proofs and all subsequent correspondence pertaining to papers in the production process should be addressed to:

Editorial Supervisor
Journal of Mathematical Physics
American Institute of Physics
Suite 1NO1
2 Huntington Quadrangle
Melville, NY 11747-4502, USA

Telephone: 516-576-2251
Fax: 631-396-0060
E-mail: jmp@aip.org

Reference must be made to the AIP identification number (e.g., 001901JMP), title, author, and scheduled issue date. A limited number of alterations in proof are unavoidable, but the cost of making extensive alterations after the article has been typeset may be charged to the author. Please do not address correspondence about proofs, reprints, artwork, color printing charges, etc., to the Editor. To do so simply delays the appropriate action and response.

Through AIP's Accepted Manuscript Status Inquiry System (AMSIS), authors may access information about significant milestones for their accepted manuscript during the production process at AIP. AMSIS can be used only by authors of accepted manuscripts; authors will use Peer X-Press^® to monitor their submitted manuscripts during peer review.

Authors generally give serious consideration to the content of a paper; however, in preparing a manuscript, they sometimes fail to follow certain basic rules required for speedy publication and a more satisfactory appearance of the published paper. The speed with which papers are processed in the Editorial Office and prepared for publication by the American Institute of Physics can be increased considerably by authors' care in the preparation of manuscripts.

General information regarding color printing charges, copyrights, and similar material may be found on the inside front cover of each issue and following the table of contents.

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How to Prepare Your Manuscript

English-Language Editing. Journals published by the American Institute of Physics (AIP) are not able to provide free English-language editing services to authors, but those services are available to authors from several commercial vendors, including American Journal Experts ( http://www.journalexperts.com ) and SPi Professional Editing Services ( http://www.prof-editing.com ). Interested authors should contact these service providers directly. Since the AIP Journals have not used either of these commercial services, we cannot attest to the quality of their work.

For general format and style, consult recent issues of the journal. Link to the journal's General Editorial Policies here. For authors who use LaTeX, REVTeX 4.1 is now available and includes style files for AIP journals and associated instructions. REVTeX 4.1 is available here.

The Manuscript, including the abstract, references, and captions, should be set up for 21.6 × 28 cm (8-1/2 × 11 in. or A4) pages with ample margins. It should be carefully proofread by the author. The manuscript must be in good scientific American English; this is the author's responsibility. Number all pages in single sequence. The title page should contain the title of the article, the names of the authors, a suitable byline, and a short abstract. Parts of the manuscript should be arranged in the following order: title, author, affiliation, abstract, text, acknowledgments, appendices, and references. Papers should not be lengthened by unnecessary descriptions and repetitions, but neither should authors use a telegraphic style detrimental to the clarity and understanding of the paper.

The Title should be as concise as possible but sufficiently informative to describe the subject under discussion.

The Abstract should be self-contained (contain no footnotes). One should not have to read the paper to understand the abstract. It should be about 5% of the length of the article, but less than 500 words. The abstract should be written as one paragraph and should not contain displayed mathematical equations or tabular material.

Authors' names should preferably be written in a standard form for all publications to facilitate indexing and avoid ambiguities.

Beginning on 1 January 2009, authors with Chinese, Japanese, or Korean names may choose to have their names published in their own language alongside the English versions of their names in the author list of their publications. For Chinese, authors may use either Simplified or Traditional characters. Chinese, Japanese, or Korean characters must be included within the author list of the manuscript when submitting or resubmitting. The manuscript must be prepared using Microsoft Word or using the CJK LaTeX package. Specific guidelines for each authoring tool are given here. To ensure that we have processed the manuscript files correctly, you must proof the PDF of the manuscript as produced by the Peer X-Press^® system on first submission. In addition, it is essential that you check carefully any production proofs you receive prior to the publication of your paper.

The manuscript should have an Introduction that places the work in a context, beginning with the general physical or mathematical problem to which it is directed, following with the motivation for the particular approach taken, and summarizing the principal results.

Equations should be well aligned and should not be crowded; only the more important ones should be numbered on the right-hand side of the manuscript. Equations should be numbered consecutively throughout, i.e., (1), (2), (3), etc. [The form (1.1), (1.2), etc., in Sec. I, (2.1), (2.2), etc., in Sec. II, and so on is acceptable, but not preferred.] Several equations grouped together may be given letters to distinguish them [for example, (2a), (2b), (2c)]. A later, somewhat changed version of an earlier equation may be labeled with a prime [for example, (1), (2), (3), (1'), (4), etc.]. Other numbering schemes are unacceptable and will be changed. Use center dot only to indicate dot products and a boldfaced cross (×) to indicate a cross product. Use a lightface cross product (×) to indicate multiplication which is continued to the next line. The solidus (/) should be used instead of built-up fractions in running text, and in display wherever clarity would not be jeopardized. Use "exp" for complicated exponents. Avoid repetition of a complicated expression by representing it with a standard, commonly used symbol.

Notation must be legible, clear, compact, and consistent with standard usage. All unusual symbols whose identity may not be obvious must be identified the first time they appear, and at all subsequent times when confusion might arise. Superscripts are normally set directly over subscripts; authors should note where readability or the meaning requires a special order.

Major section headings should be numbered consecutively with Roman numerals. The Introduction is to be numbered as Sec. I. Unless a paper is very short, it should be broken up into sections, and all sections must have headings.

Acknowledgments should appear under that heading at the end of the main text (before the appendices, footnotes, tables, figure captions, and figures, if any). Acknowledgment of financial support should appear as the last paragraph under the same heading.

Appendices should have a short title, and equations in them should be numbered consecutively [(A1), (A2), etc., for Appendix A (or the only appendix); (B1), (B2), etc., for Appendix B, and so on].

References and footnotes should be in the form shown in recent issues of this journal. There should be no reference to classified publications even if their titles are unclassified. In every case, where a reference to a published (or "submitted to") paper can be used, "unpublished" references must be omitted. In all other cases, references to "unpublished" papers should be avoided; however, reference to a thesis is appropriate. The names, including initials, of all authors in each reference should be given (in the text the use of et al. is permissible). For footnotes to title and bylines use a), b), c), etc. Avoid lengthy footnotes by inserting them in the text.

References to books and journal articles, listed at the end of the paper, are to be in one of these formats:

Every article has to be consistent in the use of one of these citation styles; they should not be mixed.

Each table must have a caption that will make the data in the table intelligible without reference to the text. Complicated column headings should be avoided. Footnotes to the table should be indicated by superscripts, a, b, c, etc., and begun anew for each table. The tables should be numbered with Roman numerals in the order in which they are referred to in the text.

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AUTHOR GUIDELINES FOR MULTIMEDIA SUBMISSIONS

Multimedia files can be included in the online version of published papers. These multimedia files can be viewed by simply clicking on a link in the paper, provided the reader has a video player, such as Windows Media Player^TM, QuickTime Player^TM, or RealOne Player^TM installed.

Please adhere to the following guidelines when preparing multimedia files for submission:

• When incorporating multimedia, note that the paper should be written so that the print version can be understood on its own.
• Submit all multimedia files initially with the manuscript.
• Treat all multimedia files as figures, numbered in sequence as they are referred to in text. (Multimedia files will not have a numbering scheme separate from the figures.)
• All multimedia files must be cited in the text, referred to by their figure number.
• For each multimedia file, provide a figure, which is a static representation of the multimedia file. Also provide an accompanying caption. At the end of the caption, include the phrase, "(enhanced online)."
• Video and other enhanced files should be in a format that the majority of readers can view without too much difficulty. See the multimedia guidelines below for specific submission requirements.

Video Submissions

Acceptable file formats include QuickTime nonstreaming video (.qt or .mov), MPEG (.mpg), and DV (.dv). The preferred formats are .mov, and .mpg. Details about each of these file formats are outlined below. Note that AVI files are no longer a recommended file format, because the wide variety of AVI codecs cannot be reliably archived.

Authors must insert a representative “still” image, taken from the video, in the manuscript as a figure. This still image is not intended to convey meaning about the content of the video; rather it will be used as a static representation of the video file, which will be linked online after acceptance. Care should be taken to extract an image from the video which has reasonable clarity of fine lines and details. Acceptable file formats for still images are JPEG (.jpg) and GIF (.gif).

Audio Submissions

Acceptable file formats include PCM (.pcm), WAV (.wav), AIFF (.aif), and MP3 (.mp3) at 128 KB or greater.

General Guidelines for All Multimedia Submissions

Authors are strongly encouraged to adhere to the following guidelines when preparing multimedia files:

• The acceptable file formats outlined above are playable using standard media players, such as QuickTime and Windows Media Player. Media players should be used to check file properties and image/sound quality prior to submission. For video submissions, fonts, lines, and image details should be of sufficient size and weight to be visible when played at half size.
• Attention should be paid to the file size to make download time reasonable since streaming formats are not acceptable for submission at this time. A recommended target size for each multimedia file is 3–5 MB.
• Authors are encouraged to use one of the accepted compression codecs to minimize file sizes.
• Animations must be formatted into a standard video file.

Multimedia Metadata

Authors will be asked to provide some information about their multimedia files. A caption or description of the content of the media file is required (similar to a typical figure caption). Additional metadata as outlined below will also be requested. This information is optional.

Metadata Elements:

• Caption/ description: Textual caption/description of the content of media object. Required.
• Type: The nature or genre of the content of the media, such as video or audio. Optional.
• Format: This should describe the media filetype, such as QuickTime, DV, MPEG, PCM, or WAV. Optional.
• Duration: This is the duration of the media object playing time, in units of seconds. It is applicable to video or audio media. Optional.
• Frame size: For video only (not still images), the size of the video image, as height × width in pixels. Optional.
• Producer: Information about the software used to create the media object. It should include the name and version of the software (e.g., Adobe Premiere Elements v. 2.0). Optional.

Multimedia Detailed Specifications

Acceptable Video File Formats:

• QuickTime nonstreaming (.qt or .mov)
  • 24 bit (millions) color
  • Video Compressor/Codec
    • Uncompressed/None
    • Animation
    • Motion JPEG (MJPEG)
    • DV—NTSC
    • DV—PAL
  • Audio
    • 48,000 samples per second
    • 16 bit
    • Uncompressed/PCM
    • Stereo or Mono
• MPEG
  • Video Compressor/Codec
    • MPEG2 (.mpg)
    • MPEG4 (.mpg or .mp4)
  • Video data rate 6 MB or greater
  • Audio
    • 48,000 samples per second
    • 16 bit
    • Uncompressed (PCM) or MPEG Audio at 224 KB or greater
• DV (.dv)
  • DV NTSC
  • DV PAL

NTSC Video Parameters:

• Image size (H:V) 720:480 pixels
• Frame rate 29.97 frames per second

PAL Video Parameters:

• Image size (H:V) 720:576 pixels
• Frame rate 25 frames per second

Acceptable Audio File Formats:

• PCM, WAV, AIFF, MP3 (at 128 KB or greater)
  • Audio Parameters
    • 44,100 or 48,000 samples per second
    • 16 bit
    • Stereo or Mono

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Supplemental Material

Supplemental files may be of two types:

• Files to aid the reviewer and not for publication.
• Supplementary information for publication alongside the manuscript (as an EPAPS deposit).

Electronic Physics Auxiliary Publication Service (EPAPS) is a free electronic depository for material that is supplemental to a journal article. Appropriate items for deposit include multimedia (e.g., movie files, audio files, 3D rendering files), data tables, and text (e.g., appendices) that are too lengthy or of too limited interest for inclusion in the article. Links (URLs) in the online (printed) journal article allow users to navigate directly to the associated EPAPS deposit.

All deposits to EPAPS must be approved by the Journal Editor as part of a manuscript’s normal review cycle, and must be listed in the reference section as follows: “See EPAPS supplementary material at [URL will be inserted by AIP] for [give brief description of material].”

For additional information about depositing or retrieving EPAPS files, see the EPAPS homepage.

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Free Color Online

If authors supply usable color graphics files in time for the production process, color will appear in the online journal free of charge. A usable color graphics file must be in one of the following formats: Encapsulated PostScript (.eps), PostScript (.ps), Tagged Image File Format (.tif), and Portable Document Format (.pdf). No other type of color illustration is acceptable, and only one version of each graphics file will be accepted.

In order to maintain online color as a free service to authors, the journal cannot accept multiple versions of the same graphics file. Authors may not submit two versions of the same illustration (e.g., one for color and one for black & white). When preparing illustrations that will appear in color in the online journal and in black & white in the printed journal, authors must ensure that: (i) colors chosen will reproduce well when printed in black & white and (ii) descriptions of figures in text and captions will be sufficiently clear for both print and online versions. This is the author's responsibility.

If usable color graphics files are received in time for the production process, authors will see color versions of those illustrations when viewing their author proofs. (The Corresponding Author will receive e-mail notification from AIP when the proof, as a PDF file, is available for downloading.) At the proof stage, authors must insert the phrase, "(Color online)," into the captions of figures that will appear in color in the online journal and in black & white in the printed journal. This is the author's responsibility. An example of an amended figure caption appears below:

FIG. 10. (Color online) Experimental (dotted curve) and simulated (solid curve) x-ray diffraction spectra.

The procedures for obtaining color in the printed journal remain unchanged. Authors or their institutions must bear the cost of any color they wish to use in print. See information about color printing charges here.

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How to Prepare Your Illustrations

Please adhere to the following guidelines when preparing your illustrations for submission:

General Guidelines for Preparing Illustrations:

• Number figures in the order in which they appear in text.
• Label all figure parts with (a), (b), etc. Avoid any large disparity in size of lettering and labels used within one illustration.
• Prepare illustrations in the final published size, not oversized. The maximum published width for a one-column illustration is 3-3/8 inch (8.5 cm). Each illustration should be prepared for 100% reproduction in order to avoid problems arising from large reductions in size.
• In cases where reduction is required, avoid small open symbols that tend to fill in and avoid small lettering; ensure that, in the final published illustration, there is a minimum of 8-point type size (2.8 mm high; 1/8 inch high) for lettering and 0.5-point width for lines.
• Ensure that lettering and lines are dark enough, and thick enough, to reproduce clearly, especially if reduction is necessary. Remember that fine lines tend to disappear upon reduction.

Additional Guidelines for Preparation of Electronic Graphics Files:

• Acceptable formats: PostScript (.ps), Encapsulated PostScript (.eps, using either Arial or Times Roman fonts), Tagged Image File Format (.tif, lzw compressed), or Portable Document Format (.pdf). Application files (e.g., Corel Draw, Microsoft Word) are not acceptable.
• When submitting your manuscript, submit ALL illustrations for your paper, including line art.
• Make sure there is only ONE figure per file. Each figure file should contain all parts of the figure. For example, if Figure 1 contains three parts (a, b, c), then all parts should be combined in a single file for Figure 1.
• Set the correct orientation for each graphics file.
• Settings: Set the graphic for 600 dpi resolution for line art, 264 dpi for halftones, and 600 dpi for combinations (line art + halftone).
• Save line art as black/white bitmap, not grayscale.
• Save halftones and combinations as grayscale, not black/white bitmap.
• Submit color files at 300 dpi TIFF, PS, or EPS format. If selecting a file mode, use CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow, black) or RGB (red, green, blue).

Special Instructions for Creating a Production-Ready PDF Illustration:

For accepted manuscripts, PDF as the source file for illustrations is not preferred. However, properly prepared PDF illustration files may be used in the production process of your accepted manuscript if you adhere to the following guidelines:

• PDF should only be used as the source file for illustrations when the preferred formats (PS, EPS, or TIF) cannot be generated.
• In the PDF illustration, the resolution of any shaded or photographic images must be 600 pixels per inch (PPI).
• Within the PDF illustration, resolution of line art with no shading should be 1200 pixels per inch (PPI).
• All fonts must be embedded in the PDF
• When creating a PDF through your application's print command, select "High Quality Print".
• Link to more detailed instructions here.

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Manuscript Preparation Checklist

Use this checklist to avoid the most common mechanical errors in submitted manuscripts:

1. The manuscript must use 12-point type and wide spacing throughout.
2. Number all pages in single sequence.
3. Type references in the style used by this journal.
4. Submit cover letter, manuscript file, illustration files, and any supplemental files via Peer X-Press^®, the journal's online submission system, located at http://jmp.peerx-press.org.
5. The original figures must be in the final published size, not oversized.
6. Upload a signed AIP Transfer of Copyright Agreement Form when submitting your original or revised manuscript to the journal's online submission site (http://jmp.peerx-press.org). A blank copyright form is available here.

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