Submissions

Author Guidelines

Author Guidelines

1. Formats for CSCanada contributions

All the manuscripts should be sent by email as an attachment to relative email address and should be typed in single line spacing and 10 pt.

1.1 Research Articles

Research Articles are innovative reports whose conclusions represent a substantial advance in the understanding of a significant problem and have directly, far-reaching implications. They should have no more than 60 references.

Research articles are typically 3,000~20,000 words of text (including references, notes and captions, or ~30 printed pages) are expected to present a major advance.

Research Articles include an abstract, an introduction, up to six figures or tables, sections with brief subheadings (less than six in total and less than 40 characters). Materials and Methods should usually be included which will also be needed to support the paper's conclusions.

1.2 Letters

Letters are short reports of creative research focused on an outstanding finding whose importance means that it will be of interest to scientists in other fields. They should have less than 30 references.

They begin with a fully referenced paragraph, of about 200 words, (definitely no more than 300 words) aimed at readers in other disciplines. The letters (up to ~2500 words including references, notes and captions or ~3 printed pages) should include an abstract, an introductory paragraph, up to four figures or tables. Materials and Methods should usually be included, which should be needed to support the paper's conclusions.

1.3 Reviews

Reviews (up to 4500 words including references, notes and captions) describe new developments of interdisciplinary significance and highlight future directions. They include an abstract, an introduction that outlines the main theme, brief subheadings, and an outline of important unresolved questions. A maximum of 50 references is suggested. Most Reviews are solicited by the editors, but unsolicited submissions may also be considered.

1.4 Other contributions to CSCanada

CSCanada also publishes News and Comment, Correspondence, Opinion, Book & Arts, Futures, News and Views, Perspectives, Insights, Outlooks, Analyses, Hypotheses, and Technology features. Please see www.cscanada.net

2. Manuscript selection

Manuscripts should be clear and simple so that they are accessible to readers in other disciplines and to readers for whom English is not their first language. Authors are notified of decisions by e-mail or phone. Repeated submissions of the same manuscript will not be acknowledged. CSCanada treats all submitted manuscripts as confidential documents. Our peer review process is also confidential and identities of reviewers are not released. Research papers that are selected for in-depth review are evaluated by at least two outside referees. Reviewers are contacted before being sent a paper and asked to return comments within 1 to 2 weeks for most papers. We are able to expedite the review process significantly for papers that require rapid assessment. Selected papers are edited to improve accuracy and clarity and for length. Papers cannot be resubmitted over a disagreement on interest or relative merit. If a paper was rejected on the basis of serious reviewer error, resubmission may be considered. In some cases, reviewers are satisfied that a paper's conclusions are adequately supported by the data presented, but the general interest of the findings is not sufficient to justify publication in CSCanada. In such a case, the authors will be offered the opportunity for publication with additional review required when reviewers have asked for supplementary experiments during revision. In this case again, reviewers and editors may find an appropriately worded version of the paper to be acceptable for publication without further in depth review.

CSCanada makes decisions about submitted papers as rapidly as possible. All manuscripts are handled electronically throughout the consideration process. Authors are usually informed within a week if the paper is not being considered.

3. Format of Research Articles, Letters and Review

Manuscripts are preferred to be presented in the following order:

1. title
2. abstract and keywords
3. text
4. end notes
5. references
6. appendices
7. figure legends
8. tables (each table complete with title and footnotes)
9. figures

3.1 Title

Titles do not exceed two lines in print. This equates to 90 characters (including spaces) for Letters or 75 characters (including spaces) for Research Articles. Titles do not normally include numbers, acronyms, abbreviations or punctuation. They should include sufficient detail for indexing purposes but be general enough for readers outside the field to appreciate what the paper is about.

3.2 Abstract

We suggest each manuscript should accompany a structured abstract to explain to the general reader why the research was done and why the results are significant. A structured abstract should include such contents: the purpose of the research, the materials and methods and the results. Please do not include citations or undefined abbreviations in the abstract. The preferred length of the abstract is less than 300.

3.3 Text

Research articles should fill no more than 5 pages, and Letters no more than 3 pages. A typical Research article contains about 3,500 words of text and, additionally, up to six small display items (figures and/or tables) with brief legends, reference list and methods section if applicable. A typical Letter to CSCanada contains about 2,500 words of text (including the first paragraph of Letters, figure legends, reference list and the methods section if applicable) and four small display items (figures and/or tables) with brief legends. A composite figure (with several panels) usually needs to take about half a page, equivalent to about 600 words, in order for all the elements to be visible. Our preferred format for is APA and MSWord is also acceptable. We prefer the use of a 'standard' font, preferably 10-point Times New Roman. For mathematical symbols, Greek letters and other special characters, use normal text or Symbol font. Word Equation Editor/Math Type should be used only for formulae that cannot be produced using normal text or Symbol font.

3.4 Methods

If brief (less than 200 words), they can be included in the text at an appropriate place. Otherwise, they should be described at the end of the text in a 400-word (maximum) 'Methods Summary'. Detailed descriptions of methods already published should be avoided. If more space is required for Methods, the author should include the section 'Methods Summary' and provide an additional 'Methods' section at the paper. The Methods section should not normally exceed 1,000 words of text, and should be subdivided by short bold headings referring to methods used. If both a Methods Summary and additional Methods section are required, the Methods Summary will appear in print only but will not appear in the online version of the paper. Therefore, any critical information in the Methods Summary should also be incorporated into the Methods section.

3.5 End notes

End notes are brief and follow the reference list. Papers containing supplementary information contain a statement after the reference list:

Acknowledgements should be brief, and should not include thanks to anonymous referees and editors, inessential words, or effusive comments. Acknowledgements can contain grant and contribution numbers. Author Contributions: authors are required to include a statement to specify the contributions of each co-author. The statement can be up to several sentences long, describing the tasks of individual authors referred to by their initials.

3.6 References

References are each numbered, ordered sequentially as they appear in the text, methods summary, tables, boxes, figure legends, online-only methods in our nature science and engineering journals. When cited in the text, reference numbers are superscript, not in brackets unless they are likely to be confused with a superscript number. The maximum number of references, strictly enforced, is 60 for Research articles and 30 for Letters. Only one publication can be listed for each number. We preferred articles that have been published or submitted to a named publication in the reference list; papers in preparation should be mentioned in the text with a list of authors (or initials if any of the authors are co-authors of the present contribution).Published conference abstracts, numbered patents and preprints on recognized servers may be included in reference lists, but text, grant details and acknowledgements may not. Please follow the style below in the published edition of CSCanada in preparing reference lists.

We advise the authors to use the APA style to write the references list. You can visit http://www.apastyle.org/ for detail information. There are some examples for APA style.

• Author A. A., Author, B. B., & Author, C. C. (Year). Title of article, Title of Periodical, xx(xx), xxx-xxx. doi: xx.xxxxxxxxxx
• Author A. A., Author, B. B., & Author, C. C. (in press). Title of article, Title of Periodical. Retrieved from http://xxx.xxx.xxx
• Article title. (Year, Month). Newsletter source. Retrived from http://xxx.xxx.xxx
• Author, A. A. (Year, Month Day). Article title. Newspaper title. pp.xx-xx.
• Author A. A. (Year). Book title [Version]. doi:xx.xxxxxxxxxx
• Author A. A. (Year). Book title [Version]. Retrieved from http://xxx.xxx.xxx
• Author A. A. (Year). Book title. Location: Publisher.

3.7 Tables

Tables should each be presented portrait (not landscape) direction and upright on the page, not sideways. Tables have a short, one-line title in bold text. Tables should be as small as possible. Symbols and abbreviations are definite immediately below the table, followed by essential descriptive material as briefly as possible, all in double-spaced text. We also use APA format on tables you can visit http://www.apastyle.org/ for detail information. Here is the example.

Table 1

Error Rates of Older and Younger Groups

Top line: 1.5 pt
Middle line: 0.25 pt
Bottom line: 2.25 pt

3.8 Figures

CSCanada requires figures in electronic format.

Figures should be as small and simple as is compatible with clarity. The goal is for figures to be comprehensible to readers in other or related disciplines, and to assist their understanding of the paper. Unnecessary figures and parts (panels) of figures should be avoided. Avoid unnecessary complexity, colorful and over amount of details. For instruction, CSCanada standard figure sizes are 95 mm (single column) and 190mm (double column) and the full depth of the page is 283mm.

Some brief guidance for figure preparation:

• The figures also are suggested in APA format you can visit http://www.apastyle.org/ for detail information.
• Units should have a single space between the number and the unit, and follow SI nomenclature or the nomenclature common to a particular field. Thousands should be separated by commas (1,000). Unusual units or abbreviations are defined in the legend.
• Scale bars should be used rather than magnification factors.
• Where possible, text, including keys to symbols, should be provided in the legend rather than on the figure itself.
• Figure quality

At initial submission, figures should be at good quality to be assessed by referees, ideally as JPEGs, PNGs, and BMPs. The suggest size of each figure is less than 600KB since we cannot accept large attachments.

4. Submission

Articles now are be submitted on our website http://www.cscanada.org/index.php/css or you can turn in your paper from Email: css@cscanada.net, caooc@hotmail.com, css@cscanada.org.

Please be sure to read the information on what to include as essential content-related issues when putting a submission together. CSCanada authors must make data and materials publicly available upon publication. This includes deposition of data into the related databases and arranging for them to be publicly released on the online publication date.

Reminder 

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Submission Preparation Checklist

As part of the submission process, authors are required to check off their submission's compliance with all of the following items, and submissions may be returned to authors that do not adhere to these guidelines.

1. 1. The submission has not been previously published, nor is it before another journal for consideration (or an explanation has been provided in Comments to the Editor).

   2. The submission file is in OpenOffice, Microsoft Word, RTF, or WordPerfect document file format.

   3. Where available, URLs for the references have been provided.

   4. The text is single-spaced; uses a 10-point font; employs italics, rather than underlining (except with URL addresses); and all illustrations, figures, and tables are placed within the text at the appropriate points, rather than at the end.

   5. The text adheres to the stylistic and bibliographic requirements outlined in the Author Guidelines, which is found in About the Journal.

   6. If submitting to a peer-reviewed section of the journal, the instructions in Ensuring a Blind Review have been followed.

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