International Journal of the Federation of European Simulation Societies - EUROSIM
Former title: Simulation Practice and Theory

General

Submission of your manuscript is welcome provided that it, or any translation of it has not been copyrighted or published is not being submitted for publication elsewhere.

Upon acceptance of an article, the author(s) will be asked to transfer copyright of the article to the Publisher. This transfer will ensure the widest possible dissemination of information. Manuscripts should be prepared for publication in accordance with instructions given in the "Guide for Authors" (available from the Publisher) details of which are given below. Return to top of document

Type of contributions

The journal welcomes the following types of contributions:

• any application area of systems simulation (industry, economics, management, agriculture, biology, ecology, energy systems, education, training,etc.),
• simulation methodology (system modelling, system design, solution methods, algorithms, formula manipulation, etc.),
• progress on software tools (simulation environments, simulation languages, model specification, distributed computing,etc.), as well as on hardware tools (parallel and massively parallel computers, opto- electronic interconnects and optical computing, etc.).

To whom can I submit my manuscript?

Web Submission Site:

Authors are strongly encouraged to submit their papers electronically by using online manuscript submission at http://ees.elsevier.com/simpat. Authors interested in online submission are requested to go to the website and upload their manuscript and its associated artwork. An electronic (PDF) proof is generated and the reviewing process is carried out using that PDF. The PDF file may be edited after acceptance to follow journal standards. Authors and editors send and receive all correspondence by email via the website and no paper correspondence is performed.

In exceptional cases, where electronic submission is impossible, authors can send five copies of their article directly to the Editorial Office at the following address:
Editorial Office
Simulation Modelling Practice and Theory
Elsevier
P.O. Box 103
1000 AC Amsterdam
The Netherlands
Tel: +31 20 485 2397
Fax: +31 20 485 2580
simpra@elsevier.com

Please note that this type of submission will have a significantly slower publication time than electronic submission via the journal's online submission and tracking tool.

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General Author Instructions

Each paper should be introduced by three to five keywords as well as by a selfcontained abstract of no more than 100 words not counting the formulas.

Please make sure that the paper is submitted in its final form. Corrections in the proof stage other than printer's errors should be avoided: costs arising from such corrections will be charged to the authors.

Footnotes should be avoided if possible and be brief. They should be numbered consecutively. References should be listed alphabetically, as in the following examples: books [1], articles in journals [2], papers in a contributed volume [3,4], unpublished papers [5].

• [1] E. Borger, Computability, Complexity, Logic (North-Holland, Amsterdam, 1989).
• [2] D.E. Knuth, Theory and Practice, Theoret. Comput. Sci. 90 (1991) 1-15.
• [3] A.K. Lenstra and H.W. Lenstra, Jr., Algorithms in number theory, in: J. van Leeuwen, ed., Handbook of Computer Science, Vol. A (Elsevier, Amsterdam,1990) 673-715.
• [4] M. Li, Lower bounds by Kolmogorov complexity, in: Proc. ICALP '85, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol.194 (Springer, Berlin, 1985) 383-393.
• [5] A. Rajasekar, Semantics for logic programs, Ph.D. Thesis, Department of Computer Science, University of Maryland, 1989.

Figures should be provided in a form suitable for photographic reproduction and reduction. Lettering should be uniform of size corresponding to the anticipated reduction.

Handwritten lettering on figures is not acceptable. Figures should be identified by arabic numerals and the captions should be typed, double-spaced, on a separate sheet rather than lettered on the figures themselves. Photographs and coloured pictures must be of impeccable quality. Please note that for colour photographs the publisher will charge the printing costs to the author. Return to top of document

Sending accepted articles to Elsevier in electronic format


Wordprocessor documents
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. In particular, do not use the wordprocessor's options to justify text or to hyphenate words. However, do use bold face, italics, subscripts, superscripts etc. Do not embed "graphically designed" equations or tables, but prepare these using the wordprocessor's facility. When preparing tables, if you are using a table grid, use only one grid for each individual table and not a grid for each row. If no grid is used, use tabs, not spaces, to align columns. The electronic text should be prepared in a way very similar to that of conventional manuscripts (see also: http://www.elsevier.com/artworkinstructions). Do not import the figures into the text file but, instead, indicate their approximate locations directly in the electronic text and on the manuscript. See also the section on Preparation of electronic illustrations.
To avoid unnecessary errors you are strongly advised to use the "spellchecker" function of your wordprocessor.


LaTeX documents


If the LaTeX file is suitable, proofs will be produced without rekeying the text. The article should preferably be written using Elsevier's document class "elsart", or alternatively the standard document class "article".
The Elsevier LaTeX package (including detailed instructions for LaTeX preparation) can be obtained from the Quickguide: http://authors.elsevier.com/latex or from the Comprehensive TeX Archive Network (CTAN): see below, in the directory /tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/supported/elsevier. It consists of the files: elsart.cls, guidelines for users of elsart, a template file for quick start, and the instruction booklet "Preparing articles with LaTeX".


CTAN is an archive with up-to-date copies of all the public-domain versions of TeX, LaTeX, Metafont and ancillary programs, which is made available via a mirrored network of FTP servers. You can enter the CTAN archive via a Web interface in the UK ( http://www.tex.ac.uk), in the USA ( http://www.ctan.org), or in Germany ( http://www.dante.de/software/ctan) (page in German). You can search for a package on CTAN via http://www.ucc.ie/cgi-bin/ctan/. You can also enter the archive via FTP at ftp://ftp.tex.ac.uk, at ftp://ftp.dante.de, at http://ctan.tug.org, or at one of the many mirror servers; see for a list the UK or USA CTAN Web pages. When a CTAN server does not respond, please try another one.


Note that CTAN is not related to Elsevier, and that Elsevier's author support cannot accept complaints or answer questions about the availability of any CTAN server.


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


Your LaTeX file will be most useful as input for the printed article if you obey the following rules of thumb:
1. Be consistent. If you use a macro for a phrase, use it throughout.
2. 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.
3. Keep it simple. Do not define macros that accomplish complicated layout. They will also make the input process complicated.

Keyword Instructions

Important Notice: please add one to five keywords to your article.

Keywords are essential for the accessibility and retrievability of your article. Keywords assigned to articles will be assembled in a keyword index which will be printed in the last issue of each volume for each journal, and in cumulative indexes. In addition, it is planned to make keywords available on Internet.

To maximize the consistency with which such keywords are assigned by different authors, the following guidelines have been drawn up.
• Each keyword (which can be a phrase of more than one word) should describe one single concept. Often words like "and" or "of" should be avoided.
• Avoid very general keywords which become meaningless once in a keyword list. Examples to avoid are "action", "computer", "mathematics". Check whether the keywords as a whole describe the outlines of the article.
• Use natural language: for instance "automatic error recovery" rather than "error recovery, automatic".
• Try to use nouns and adjectives as much as possible (i.e. use "automatic error recovery" rather than "recovering errors automatically"). Do not use nouns in the plural form. Use English rather than American spelling (regardless of the spelling used for the article itself).
• Avoid the use of abbreviations as much as possible, unless an abbreviation is so well-established that the full term is rarely used (e.g. use "laser" instead of "Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation", but use "computer aided design" instead of "CAD"). Author Benefits


• Simulation Modelling Practice and Theory has no page charges.
• The corresponding author, at no cost, will be provided with a PDF file of the article via e-mail or, alternatively, 25 free paper offprints. 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.
• 30% discount on all Elsevier books.

Although these guidelines are not mandatory, they should be adhered to where possible.