Guide for Authors
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.
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), 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carried out, and that, if accepted, it will not be published elsewhere including electronically in the same form, in English or in any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.
Language and language services
Please write your text in good English (American or British usage is accepted,
but not a mixture of these). Authors who require information about language editing and copyediting services pre- and post-submission
please visit
http://webshop.elsevier.com/languageservices
or our customer support site at
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.
Therefore users need to keep their contact coordinates on the registration page up-to-date with the "UPDATE MY INFORMATION"
option.
For a direct link to online submission please
click here.
Use of wordprocessing software
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. 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
the Guide to Publishing with Elsevier:
http://www.elsevier.com/guidepublication). Note that source files of figures, tables
and text graphics will be required whether or not you embed your figures in the text. See also the section on Electronic artwork.
To
avoid unnecessary errors you are strongly advised to use the 'spell-check' and 'grammar-check' functions of your wordprocessor.
LaTeX
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 'elsarticle', or alternatively any of the other recognized classes and formats
supported in Elsevier's electronic submissions system, for further information see
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/authorsview.authors/latex-ees-supported.
The Elsevier 'elsarticle' LaTeX style file package (including detailed instructions for LaTeX preparation) can be obtained from the
Quickguide:
http://www.elsevier.com/latex. It consists of the file: elsarticle.cls, complete user documentation for the
class file, bibliographic style files in various styles, and template files for a quick start.
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 telephone and fax 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 mandatory for this journal. They consist of a short collection of bullet points
that convey the core findings of the article 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 either British or American spelling, but be consistent, 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. These keywords
will be used for indexing purposes.
Classification codes
Please provide up to 6 standard
JEL codes. The available codes may be accessed at JEL:
http://www.aeaweb.org/journal/elclasjn.html.
Artwork
Color artwork
Please make sure that artwork files are in an acceptable format (TIFF, EPS 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.
References
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.
Reference Style
All citations in the text should
refer to:
- Single Author: the Author's name (without initials, unless there is ambiguity) and the year of publication;
- Two
Authors: both Authors' names and the year of publication;
- Three or more Authors: first Author's name followed by "et al." and the
year of publication.
Examples: "as demonstrated in (Allan, 1996a, 1996b, 1999; Allan and Jones, 1995). Lee et al. (2000) have recently
shown"
In the references 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.
Reference to a journal publication:
-Griffiths, W., Judge, G., 1992. Testing and estimating
location vectors when the error covariance matrix is unknown. Journal of Econometrics 54, 121-138 (note that journal names are not to
be abbreviated)
Reference to a book:
-Maddala, G.S., 1983. Limited Dependent and Qualitative Variables in Econometrics.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Reference to a chapter in an edited book:
-Reinganum, J., 1989. The timing of
innovation: research development and diffusion. In: Schmalansee, R., Willig, R. (Eds.). Handbook of Industrial Organization, Vol. I.
Amsterdam: North-Holland, 849-908.
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
• Telephone and fax 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. The correct format for citing a DOI is shown as follows
(example taken from a document in the journal
Physics Letters B):
doi:10.1016/j.physletb.2010.09.059
When you use the
DOI to create URL hyperlinks to documents on the web, the DOIs are guaranteed never to change.
Offprints
The
corresponding author, at no cost, will be provided with a PDF file of the article via e-mail. For an extra charge, paper offprints can
be ordered via the offprint order form which is sent once the article is accepted for publication. 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 inquiries relating to the submission of articles (including
electronic submission) please visit this journal's homepage. 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 (
http://www.elsevier.com/authorFAQ) and/or contact Customer Support via
http://support.elsevier.com.
