Author information pack

Types of article

The journal will publish papers covering all aspects of astronomical computing that make a valuable contribution to the field and that display an appropriate familiarity with previous work in the area and alternative approaches to the same problem. A variety of classes of article may satisfy these general requirements, and for some there will be additional criteria to be applied in considering whether an article is suitable for publication in the journal.

The following types of article are currently identified within the submission and refereeing process.

Standard Article
Standard ArticleThis is the most general category of paper and the one into which most papers published in the journal will fall. Articles are expected to describe an innovative piece of work in astronomical computing. This could relate to either a discrete project - a new algorithm, system or application of technique or technology - or a substantial change to an established system, such as the restructuring of a major pipeline. Examples of types of article within this category are:

(i) Software Release Papers. To be suitable for publication in the journal, these should do more than just describe a new or updated software package. They should emphasize innovative factors like the intellectual contribution represented by a new algorithm or the use of a new technology, and should make clear the ways in which the software is of significant value to the community. The editors anticipate that software releases that merit a journal publication will be professionally packaged and documented, and made available from a stable URL, preferably with the source code available in a public repository: see supplementary data for a list of suggested repositories. We encourage authors to register their software with the Astronomy Source Code Library ASCL, and to refer to it, and to existing software, via its ASCL identifier (for example, the text ...using Aladin ascl:1112.019 ...). Such references are detected during the production process, and are extracted and stored with the paper's metadata, by both the publisher and by the NASA Astrophysics Data System ADS.

(ii) Data Release Papers. These should emphasize the technical aspects of the design, development and delivery of a new dataset, and will be naturally complementary to an astronomy-focused data-release paper in another journal. As with the release of an update to a software package, it will not always be true that papers detailing subsequent data releases from a project will merit publication in the journal even if the first release did. Similarly, authors should describe the releases' value to the community and the ways in which they will adopt community standards (e.g. those of the International Virtual Observatory Alliance) for the description and publication of the data.

Notes on Practice
These articles will focus on the lessons learned in the course of an astronomical computing project, often the first (or an early) application of a particular approach or technology within the field. Their value will not rely on the project having been scientifically or technically successful, but, rather, on the usefulness to the community of the analysis of the project presented in the paper: for example, an unsuccessful project may yield a very valuable paper if it convincingly explains why a seemingly attractive choice of technology proved to inappropriate and if it clearly identifies the characteristics of possible future projects in which the same choice is likely to prove unwise.

Review Paper
In common with review papers in existing journals, these are expected to provide a comprehensive, possibly chronological, overview of a topic in astronomical computing or of a subject from computer science or the commercial IT sector with clear applicability to astronomy. Review papers will be pedagogical in tone, and not required to present new material of their own.

White Paper
The journal may occasionally publish White Papers, which will summarise some aspect of the state of the domain or present ideas for its future. Like all other papers, these must be authoritative and well grounded in relevant expertise, but they may be expressed in a more partial, possibly even polemical, tone than would be appropriate for a Review Paper.

Target Article
Over time, the literature provides a discussion of a topic, through a series of papers with differing views, but sometimes it is desirable to accelerate that debate by seeking contrasting contributions that are then published together and that thereby present a fuller coverage of an issue than would be possible in a single paper. The journal will adopt this practice by occasionally identifying a Target Article (often a paper submitted to the journal as a Standard Article, and only after consultation with the article's author) and soliciting related papers, to be published alongside. These responding papers will be shorter than usual, but must satisfy the same quality criteria as all other articles appearing in the journal.

Special Issues
The journal will publish Special Issues that collect together papers resulting from a specific conference, relating to a particular major project, marking some substantial milestone or event, or which, through some other connection, comprise a coherent whole that is greater than the sum of its parts.

The editors encourage unsolicited submission of Standard Articles and Notes on Practice, but authors wishing to submit a Review Paper, a White Paper or to propose a Special Issue should contact one of the Editors of the journal or its Publisher in the first instance, as these classes of paper will only be accepted in response to an invitation from the Editorial Board. Potential Target Articles will generally be identified by the Editorial Board and related contributions solicited by them, but the board encourages authors to draw their attention to potential Target Articles, during the submission process.

Ethics in publishing

For information on Ethics in publishing and Ethical guidelines for journal publication see http://www.elsevier.com/publishingethics and http://www.elsevier.com/ethicalguidelines.

Conflict of interest

All authors are requested to disclose any actual or potential conflict of interest including any financial, personal or other relationships with other people or organizations within three years of beginning the submitted work that could inappropriately influence, or be perceived to influence, their work. See also http://www.elsevier.com/conflictsofinterest. Further information and an example of a Conflict of Interest form can be found at: http://elsevier6.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/286/p/7923/.

Submission declaration

Submission of an article implies that the work described has not been published previously (except in the form of an abstract or as part of a published lecture or academic thesis or as an electronic preprint, see http://www.elsevier.com/postingpolicy), that it is not under consideration for publication elsewhere, that its publication is approved by all authors and tacitly or explicitly by the responsible authorities where the work was carried out, and that, if accepted, it will not be published elsewhere including electronically in the same form, in English or in any other language, without the written consent of the copyright-holder.

Changes to authorship

This policy concerns the addition, deletion, or rearrangement of author names in the authorship of accepted manuscripts:
Before the accepted manuscript is published in an online issue: Requests to add or remove an author, or to rearrange the author names, must be sent to the Journal Manager from the corresponding author of the accepted manuscript and must include: (a) the reason the name should be added or removed, or the author names rearranged and (b) written confirmation (e-mail, fax, letter) from all authors that they agree with the addition, removal or rearrangement. In the case of addition or removal of authors, this includes confirmation from the author being added or removed. Requests that are not sent by the corresponding author will be forwarded by the Journal Manager to the corresponding author, who must follow the procedure as described above. Note that: (1) Journal Managers will inform the Journal Editors of any such requests and (2) publication of the accepted manuscript in an online issue is suspended until authorship has been agreed.
After the accepted manuscript is published in an online issue: Any requests to add, delete, or rearrange author names in an article published in an online issue will follow the same policies as noted above and result in a corrigendum.

Copyright

Upon acceptance of an article, authors will be asked to complete a 'Journal Publishing Agreement' (for more information on this and copyright see http://www.elsevier.com/copyright). Acceptance of the agreement will ensure the widest possible dissemination of information. An e-mail will be sent to the corresponding author confirming receipt of the manuscript together with a 'Journal Publishing Agreement' form or a link to the online version of this agreement.
Subscribers may reproduce tables of contents or prepare lists of articles including abstracts for internal circulation within their institutions. Permission of the Publisher is required for resale or distribution outside the institution and for all other derivative works, including compilations and translations (please consult http://www.elsevier.com/permissions). If excerpts from other copyrighted works are included, the author(s) must obtain written permission from the copyright owners and credit the source(s) in the article. Elsevier has preprinted forms for use by authors in these cases: please consult http://www.elsevier.com/permissions.

Retained author rights

As an author you (or your employer or institution) retain certain rights; for details you are referred to: http://www.elsevier.com/authorsrights.

Role of the funding source

You are requested to identify who provided financial support for the conduct of the research and/or preparation of the article and to briefly describe the role of the sponsor(s), if any, in study design; in the collection, analysis and interpretation of data; in the writing of the report; and in the decision to submit the article for publication. If the funding source(s) had no such involvement then this should be stated. Please see http://www.elsevier.com/funding.

Funding body agreements and policies

Elsevier has established agreements and developed policies to allow authors whose articles appear in journals published by Elsevier, to comply with potential manuscript archiving requirements as specified as conditions of their grant awards. To learn more about existing agreements and policies please visit http://www.elsevier.com/fundingbodies.

Open access

This journal does not ordinarily have publication charges; however, authors can now opt to make their articles available to all (including non-subscribers) via the ScienceDirect platform, for which a fee of US $3000 applies (for further information on open access see http://www.elsevier.com/about/open-access/open-access-options). Please note that you can only make this choice after receiving notification that your article has been accepted for publication, to avoid any perception of conflict of interest. The fee excludes taxes and other potential costs such as color charges. In some cases, institutions and funding bodies have entered into agreement with Elsevier to meet these fees on behalf of their authors. Details of these agreements are available at http://www.elsevier.com/fundingbodies. Authors of accepted articles, who wish to take advantage of this option, should complete and submit the order form (available at http://www.elsevier.com/locate/openaccessform.pdf). Whatever access option you choose, you retain many rights as an author, including the right to post a revised personal version of your article on your own website. More information can be found here: http://www.elsevier.com/authorsrights.
Your publication choice will have no effect on the peer review process or acceptance of submitted articles.

Language (usage and editing services)

Please write your text in good English (American or British usage is accepted, but not a mixture of these). Authors who feel their English language manuscript may require editing to eliminate possible grammatical or spelling errors and to conform to correct scientific English may wish to use the English Language Editing service available from Elsevier's WebShop http://webshop.elsevier.com/languageediting/ or visit our customer support site http://support.elsevier.com for more information.

Submission

Submission to this journal proceeds totally online and you will be guided stepwise through the creation and uploading of your files. The system automatically converts source files to a single PDF file of the article, which is used in the peer-review process. Please note that even though manuscript source files are converted to PDF files at submission for the review process, these source files are needed for further processing after acceptance. All correspondence, including notification of the Editor's decision and requests for revision, takes place by e-mail removing the need for a paper trail.

Submit your article
Please submit your article via http://ees.elsevier.com/ascom.

Referees

Please submit, with the manuscript, the names, addresses and e-mail addresses of three potential referees. Note that the editor retains the sole right to decide whether or not the suggested reviewers are used.

Use of wordprocessing software
A&C will also accept submissions formatted using a word-processor. It is important that the file be saved in the native format of the wordprocessor used. The text should be in single-column format. Keep the layout of the text as simple as possible. Most formatting codes will be removed and replaced on processing the article.

LaTex
Articles should generally be formatted in LaTeX, using the elsarticle.cls class with the 5p documentclass option (in most circumstances this will allow proofs to be produced without rekeying the text), but the article submission system can cope with some other classes. The elsarticle-template-2-harv.tex template illustrates the use of the class in this mode. This class may already be available in your LaTeX distribution, but if not, it may be obtained, along with its documentation, at http://www.elsevier.com/latex, where you can also find further details about using LaTeX with Elsevier journals.

General advice:

1.Figures may be inserted in the usual way using an \includegraphics command, at the position in the article where they are cited.

2.Be consistent. If you use a macro for a phrase, use it throughout.

3.Use standard LaTeX mark-up. Do not hardcode your own layout for e.g. section headings, but use the usual LaTeX macro for this purpose.

4.Keep it simple. Do not define macros that accomplish complicated layout. They will also make the input process complicated.

To avoid referencing errors, you should usually prepare your bibliography using BibTeX . Use the model2-names bibliography style; this is an author-date style, so use \citet for 'textual' citations (where the citation is of the form "Jones et al (2000)") and \citep for 'parenthetical' citations (of the form "(Jones et al, 2000)"). See the documentation of the natbib package for more details. Ideally, you should upload your .bib file as part of the article submission (note that many BibTeX reference managers allow you to extract a subset of your .bib file based on the article's .aux file). Note that this bibliography style supports both the eprints={} field for referring to arXiv IDs, and the doi={} field for citing article DOIs.

Article structure
Subdivision - numbered sections

Subdivision: Divide your article into clearly defined sections and subsections using the standard \section and \subsection commands, and make cross references using \label and \ref (or the equivalent document styles and cross-referencing methods if using a word processor). Any appendices should be separated from the main body text using the \appendix command.

Essential title page information

• Title. Concise and informative. Titles are often used in information-retrieval systems. Avoid abbreviations and formulae where possible.
• Author names and affiliations. Where the family name may be ambiguous (e.g., a double name), please indicate this clearly. Present the authors' affiliation addresses (where the actual work was done) below the names. Indicate all affiliations with a lower-case superscript letter immediately after the author's name and in front of the appropriate address. Provide the full postal address of each affiliation, including the country name and, if available, the e-mail address of each author.
• Corresponding author. Clearly indicate who will handle correspondence at all stages of refereeing and publication, also post-publication. Ensure that phone numbers (with country and area code) are provided in addition to the e-mail address and the complete postal address. Contact details must be kept up to date by the corresponding author.
• Present/permanent address. If an author has moved since the work described in the article was done, or was visiting at the time, a 'Present address' (or 'Permanent address') may be indicated as a footnote to that author's name. The address at which the author actually did the work must be retained as the main, affiliation address. Superscript Arabic numerals are used for such footnotes.

Abstract

A concise and factual abstract is required. The abstract should state briefly the purpose of the research, the principal results and major conclusions. An abstract is often presented separately from the article, so it must be able to stand alone. For this reason, References should be avoided, but if essential, then cite the author(s) and year(s). Also, non-standard or uncommon abbreviations should be avoided, but if essential they must be defined at their first mention in the abstract itself.

Graphical abstract

A Graphical abstract is optional and should summarize the contents of the article in a concise, pictorial form designed to capture the attention of a wide readership online. Authors must provide images that clearly represent the work described in the article. Graphical abstracts should be submitted as a separate file in the online submission system. Image size: Please provide an image with a minimum of 531 × 1328 pixels (h × w) or proportionally more. The image should be readable at a size of 5 × 13 cm using a regular screen resolution of 96 dpi. Preferred file types: TIFF, EPS, PDF or MS Office files. See http://www.elsevier.com/graphicalabstracts for examples.
Authors can make use of Elsevier's Illustration and Enhancement service to ensure the best presentation of their images also in accordance with all technical requirements: Illustration Service.

Highlights

Highlights are a short collection of bullet points that convey the core findings of the article. Highlights are optional and should be submitted in a separate file in the online submission system. Please use 'Highlights' in the file name and include 3 to 5 bullet points (maximum 85 characters, including spaces, per bullet point). See http://www.elsevier.com/highlights for examples.

Keywords

Immediately after the abstract, provide a maximum of 6 keywords, using American spelling and avoiding general and plural terms and multiple concepts (avoid, for example, 'and', 'of'). Be sparing with abbreviations: only abbreviations firmly established in the field may be eligible. The journal intends to use the forthcoming Unified Astronomy Thesaurus when it is released, but until then authors should choose astronomical keywords from the astronomy journal keywords list and select computing keywords from the ACM Computing Classification System. These keywords will be used for indexing purposes.

Abbreviations

Define abbreviations that are not standard in this field in a footnote to be placed on the first page of the article. Such abbreviations that are unavoidable in the abstract must be defined at their first mention there, as well as in the footnote. Ensure consistency of abbreviations throughout the article.

Acknowledgements

Collate acknowledgements in a separate section at the end of the article before the references and do not, therefore, include them on the title page, as a footnote to the title or otherwise. List here those individuals who provided help during the research (e.g., providing language help, writing assistance or proof reading the article, etc.).

Units

Follow internationally accepted rules and conventions: use the international system of units (SI) or those recognised astronomical units recommended for use by the IAU

Math formulae

Present simple formulae in the line of normal text where possible and use the solidus (/) instead of a horizontal line for small fractional terms, e.g., X/Y. In principle, variables are to be presented in italics. Powers of e are often more conveniently denoted by exp. Number consecutively any equations that have to be displayed separately from the text (if referred to explicitly in the text).

Footnotes

Footnotes should be used sparingly. Number them consecutively throughout the article, using superscript Arabic numbers. Many wordprocessors build footnotes into the text, and this feature may be used. Should this not be the case, indicate the position of footnotes in the text and present the footnotes themselves separately at the end of the article. Do not include footnotes in the Reference list.
Table footnotes
Indicate each footnote in a table with a superscript lowercase letter.

Artwork

Electronic artwork
General points
• Make sure you use uniform lettering and sizing of your original artwork.
• Embed the used fonts if the application provides that option.
• Aim to use the following fonts in your illustrations: Arial, Courier, Times New Roman, Symbol, or use fonts that look similar.
• Number the illustrations according to their sequence in the text.
• Use a logical naming convention for your artwork files.
• Provide captions to illustrations separately.
• Size the illustrations close to the desired dimensions of the printed version.
• Submit each illustration as a separate file.
A detailed guide on electronic artwork is available on our website:
http://www.elsevier.com/artworkinstructions
You are urged to visit this site; some excerpts from the detailed information are given here.
Formats
If your electronic artwork is created in a Microsoft Office application (Word, PowerPoint, Excel) then please supply 'as is' in the native document format.
Regardless of the application used other than Microsoft Office, when your electronic artwork is finalized, please 'Save as' or convert the images to one of the following formats (note the resolution requirements for line drawings, halftones, and line/halftone combinations given below):
EPS (or PDF): Vector drawings, embed all used fonts.
TIFF (or JPEG): Color or grayscale photographs (halftones), keep to a minimum of 300 dpi.
TIFF (or JPEG): Bitmapped (pure black & white pixels) line drawings, keep to a minimum of 1000 dpi.
TIFF (or JPEG): Combinations bitmapped line/half-tone (color or grayscale), keep to a minimum of 500 dpi.
Please do not:
• Supply files that are optimized for screen use (e.g., GIF, BMP, PICT, WPG); these typically have a low number of pixels and limited set of colors;
• Supply files that are too low in resolution;
• Submit graphics that are disproportionately large for the content.

Color artwork
Please make sure that artwork files are in an acceptable format (TIFF (or JPEG), EPS (or PDF), or MS Office files) and with the correct resolution. If, together with your accepted article, you submit usable color figures then Elsevier will ensure, at no additional charge, that these figures will appear in color on the Web (e.g., ScienceDirect and other sites) regardless of whether or not these illustrations are reproduced in color in the printed version. For color reproduction in print, you will receive information regarding the costs from Elsevier after receipt of your accepted article. Please indicate your preference for color: in print or on the Web only. For further information on the preparation of electronic artwork, please see http://www.elsevier.com/artworkinstructions.
Please note: Because of technical complications which can arise by converting color figures to 'gray scale' (for the printed version should you not opt for color in print) please submit in addition usable black and white versions of all the color illustrations.

Figure captions
Ensure that each illustration has a caption. Supply captions separately, not attached to the figure. A caption should comprise a brief title (not on the figure itself) and a description of the illustration. Keep text in the illustrations themselves to a minimum but explain all symbols and abbreviations used.

Tables

Number tables consecutively in accordance with their appearance in the text. Place footnotes to tables below the table body and indicate them with superscript lowercase letters. Avoid vertical rules. Be sparing in the use of tables and ensure that the data presented in tables do not duplicate results described elsewhere in the article.

References

Citation in text
Please ensure that every reference cited in the text is also present in the reference list (and vice versa). Any references cited in the abstract must be given in full. Unpublished results and personal communications are not recommended in the reference list, but may be mentioned in the text. If these references are included in the reference list they should follow the standard reference style of the journal and should include a substitution of the publication date with either 'Unpublished results' or 'Personal communication'. Citation of a reference as 'in press' implies that the item has been accepted for publication.

Web references
As a minimum, the full URL should be given and the date when the reference was last accessed. Any further information, if known (DOI, author names, dates, reference to a source publication, etc.), should also be given. Web references can be listed separately (e.g., after the reference list) under a different heading if desired, or can be included in the reference list.

References in a special issue
Please ensure that the words 'this issue' are added to any references in the list (and any citations in the text) to other articles in the same Special Issue.

Reference style
Text: All citations in the text should refer to:
1. Single author: the author's name (without initials, unless there is ambiguity) and the year of publication;
2. Two authors: both authors' names and the year of publication;
3. Three or more authors: first author's name followed by 'et al.' and the year of publication.
Citations may be made directly (or parenthetically). Groups of references should be listed first alphabetically, then chronologically.
Examples: 'as demonstrated (Allan, 2000a, 2000b, 1999; Allan and Jones, 1999). Kramer et al. (2010) have recently shown ....'
List: References should be arranged first alphabetically and then further sorted chronologically if necessary. More than one reference from the same author(s) in the same year must be identified by the letters 'a', 'b', 'c', etc., placed after the year of publication.
Examples:
Reference to a journal publication:
Van der Geer, J., Hanraads, J.A.J., Lupton, R.A., 2010. The art of writing a scientific article. J. Sci. Commun. 163, 51–59.
Reference to a book:
Strunk Jr., W., White, E.B., 2000. The Elements of Style, fourth ed. Longman, New York.
Reference to a chapter in an edited book:
Mettam, G.R., Adams, L.B., 2009. How to prepare an electronic version of your article, in: Jones, B.S., Smith , R.Z. (Eds.), Introduction to the Electronic Age. E-Publishing Inc., New York, pp. 281–304.

Journal abbreviations source
Journal names should be abbreviated according to:
List of title word abbreviations: http://www.issn.org/2-22661-LTWA-online.php; NLM Catalog (Journals referenced in the NCBI Databases): http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nlmcatalog/journals;
CAS (Chemical Abstracts Service): via http://www.cas.org/content/references/corejournals.

Source code repositories
The journal strongly encourages authors to make source code available where appropriate, especially in the case of Software Release Papers. Code should be released with an open-source licence where appropriate. A rationale should be given in the paper in cases where one or other of these is not appropriate, and should be commented on by the referee.

Ideally, the code should be curated in a public source-code repository such as bitbucket.org , github.com, Google Code , or SourceForge , and the particular version described in the paper should be identifiable, and readily available for download. If no repository is available, authors should make code available through a long-term stable URL (for example using purl.org or an institutional data repository). Authors should register significant codes with an entry in the Astrophysics Source Code Library ASCL). Referees will be expected to attempt to build distributed code, and they will regard the experience of doing so as in-scope for their review of the submitted paper.

If there is a small amount of code associated with a paper -- perhaps because it illustrates an algorithm or demonstrates the use of a system -- then it may make little sense to create a full-scale distribution just for this purpose. In this case, code can be included inline within an article (up to a few hundred lines), or can be attached to the article as supplementary material, in the same category as additional tables, videos and images.

arXiv and NASA ADS
Authors are allowed to upload a pre-print version of their article to arXiv and this will be linked to the record for the published journal version of the paper within NASA ADS and on ScienceDirect. All papers published in the journal will be indexed by ADS and will be findable through the traditional ADS metadata search ('Abstract Search'). Additionally, the full content of the papers will be indexed in ADS's new full-text search service, as part of ADS's ongoing collaboration with Elsevier.

Authors can submit the pre-print version of their article from arXiv, by following the standard article submission process and providing an arXiv identifier (such as 1210.8030) on the final 'attach files' page in EES.

Video data

Elsevier accepts video material and animation sequences to support and enhance your scientific research. Authors who have video or animation files that they wish to submit with their article are strongly encouraged to include links to these within the body of the article. This can be done in the same way as a figure or table by referring to the video or animation content and noting in the body text where it should be placed. All submitted files should be properly labeled so that they directly relate to the video file's content. In order to ensure that your video or animation material is directly usable, please provide the files in one of our recommended file formats with a preferred maximum size of 50 MB. Video and animation files supplied will be published online in the electronic version of your article in Elsevier Web products, including ScienceDirect: http://www.sciencedirect.com. Please supply 'stills' with your files: you can choose any frame from the video or animation or make a separate image. These will be used instead of standard icons and will personalize the link to your video data. For more detailed instructions please visit our video instruction pages at http://www.elsevier.com/artworkinstructions. Note: since video and animation cannot be embedded in the print version of the journal, please provide text for both the electronic and the print version for the portions of the article that refer to this content.

*NEW* Inline supplementary computer code

Elsevier now offers you the possibility to place supplementary computer code, data snippets, algorithms and other machine readable structures at the right place in your online article in reusable .txt format. This will allow readers to easily view this material in the appropriate context, and to directly copy it to the clipboard or download the original source file for testing or re-use. If you would like to have reusable "computer code" inserted into the body of your online article please indicate in your manuscript where they should be placed and number them in order of appearance, e.g. "Insert Inline Supplementary Computer Code 1 here". To support discoverability and reusability please submit these items in *.txt format and make sure to include a descriptive title and caption that references the characteristics and the appropriate environment of this material , e.g. 'An algorithm for filtering text files in R'. For more information please visit http://www.elsevier.com/ism.

Submission checklist

The following list will be useful during the final checking of an article prior to sending it to the journal for review. Please consult this Guide for Authors for further details of any item.
Ensure that the following items are present:
One author has been designated as the corresponding author with contact details:
• E-mail address
• Full postal address
• Phone numbers
All necessary files have been uploaded, and contain:
• Keywords
• All figure captions
• All tables (including title, description, footnotes)
Further considerations
• Manuscript has been 'spell-checked' and 'grammar-checked'
• References are in the correct format for this journal
• All references mentioned in the Reference list are cited in the text, and vice versa
• Permission has been obtained for use of copyrighted material from other sources (including the Web)
• Color figures are clearly marked as being intended for color reproduction on the Web (free of charge) and in print, or to be reproduced in color on the Web (free of charge) and in black-and-white in print
• If only color on the Web is required, black-and-white versions of the figures are also supplied for printing purposes
For any further information please visit our customer support site at http://support.elsevier.com.

Use of the Digital Object Identifier

The Digital Object Identifier (DOI) may be used to cite and link to electronic documents. The DOI consists of a unique alpha-numeric character string which is assigned to a document by the publisher upon the initial electronic publication. The assigned DOI never changes. Therefore, it is an ideal medium for citing a document, particularly 'Articles in press' because they have not yet received their full bibliographic information. Example of a correctly given DOI (in URL format; here an article in the journal Physics Letters B):
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.physletb.2010.09.059
When you use a DOI to create links to documents on the web, the DOIs are guaranteed never to change.

Proofs

One set of page proofs (as PDF files) will be sent by e-mail to the corresponding author (if we do not have an e-mail address then paper proofs will be sent by post) or, a link will be provided in the e-mail so that authors can download the files themselves. Elsevier now provides authors with PDF proofs which can be annotated; for this you will need to download Adobe Reader version 7 (or higher) available free from http://get.adobe.com/reader. Instructions on how to annotate PDF files will accompany the proofs (also given online). The exact system requirements are given at the Adobe site: http://www.adobe.com/products/reader/tech-specs.html.
If you do not wish to use the PDF annotations function, you may list the corrections (including replies to the Query Form) and return them to Elsevier in an e-mail. Please list your corrections quoting line number. If, for any reason, this is not possible, then mark the corrections and any other comments (including replies to the Query Form) on a printout of your proof and return by fax, or scan the pages and e-mail, or by post. Please use this proof only for checking the typesetting, editing, completeness and correctness of the text, tables and figures. Significant changes to the article as accepted for publication will only be considered at this stage with permission from the Editor. We will do everything possible to get your article published quickly and accurately – please let us have all your corrections within 48 hours. It is important to ensure that all corrections are sent back to us in one communication: please check carefully before replying, as inclusion of any subsequent corrections cannot be guaranteed. Proofreading is solely your responsibility. Note that Elsevier may proceed with the publication of your article if no response is received.

Offprints

The corresponding author, at no cost, will be provided with a PDF file of the article via e-mail (the PDF file is a watermarked version of the published article and includes a cover sheet with the journal cover image and a disclaimer outlining the terms and conditions of use). For an extra charge, paper offprints can be ordered via the offprint order form which is sent once the article is accepted for publication. Both corresponding and co-authors may order offprints at any time via Elsevier's WebShop (http://webshop.elsevier.com/myarticleservices/offprints). Authors requiring printed copies of multiple articles may use Elsevier WebShop's 'Create Your Own Book' service to collate multiple articles within a single cover (http://webshop.elsevier.com/myarticleservices/offprints/myarticlesservices/booklets).

For inquiries relating to the submission of articles (including electronic submission) please visit this journal's homepage. For detailed instructions on the preparation of electronic artwork, please visit http://www.elsevier.com/artworkinstructions. Contact details for questions arising after acceptance of an article, especially those relating to proofs, will be provided by the publisher. You can track accepted articles at http://www.elsevier.com/trackarticle. You can also check our Author FAQs at http://www.elsevier.com/authorFAQ and/or contact Customer Support via http://support.elsevier.com.