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To check on the status of your submission, please visit the Ultrafast Science manuscript submission site.


For general guidance on using the manuscript submission system, please read the tutorials for Authors, Editors, and Reviewers. For questions on specific functionality, explore the Editorial Manager video library.



Categories of Manuscripts

The journal Ultrafast Science considers submissions for original research articles, review articles, editorials and perspectives. Prior to submission, each author should review and be prepared to fulfill the submission requirements outlined in the Publication Ethics page and comply with the following limitations.


Research articles should present cutting-edge research of outstanding significance. Submissions must include an abstract of up to 250 words, an introduction and sections with brief informative subheadings. Authors may include up to 50 references.The total research article length should be under 8,000 words. Supplementary materials should be limited to information that is not essential for the general understanding of the research presented in the main text and can include data sets, figures, tables, videos or audio files. For ease in preparing your submission, please follow the manuscript templates in Word and LaTex.


Review articles should describe and synthesize recent developments of significance and highlight future directions in ultrafast science fields. Reviews must include an abstract, an introduction that outlines the main theme, brief subheadings and an outline of important unresolved questions. Authors may include up to 120 references. Reviews should be no longer than 10,000 words, although longer manuscripts will be considered when warranted. Most reviews are solicited by the editors. Unsolicited submissions will be considered, and authors are encouraged to contact the Editors first before writing a review paper.


Rapid reports present ground-breaking developments or discoveries in the field of ultrafast science. Submissions must include a short abstract (maximums of 150 words), 10 references or fewer, and two data elements (any combination of figures or tables). Manuscript should be divided into an introduction, a combined results and discussion section, and materials and methods. Total length should be less than 1,000 words excluding the abstract, materials and methods, and references. Ultrafast Science encourages junior scientists to contribute their exciting validated short advances for consideration as a Rapid Report. Authors are encouraged to use the rapid report templates in Word or LaTex.


Editorials are short, invited opinion pieces that discuss an issue of immediate importance to the research community. Editorials should have fewer than 1,000 words total, no abstract, a minimal number of references (no more than five) and no figures or tables. Editorials are only solicited by the editors.


Perspectives highlight recent exciting research, but do not primarily discuss the author’s own work. They may provide context for the findings within a field or explain potential interdisciplinary importance. Perspectives that comment on papers in Ultrafast Science should add a dimension to the research and not merely be a summary of the experiments described in the paper. As these are meant to express a personal viewpoint, with rare exceptions, Perspectives should have no more than three authors. Perspectives should include an abstract and have no more than 1,000 words and one figure or table.



Preparation of Manuscripts

English Language Editing Services


Interested in English language assistance prior to submission? The Science Partner Journals publishing team has evaluated the work of the companies listed on the SPJ Author Services page and found their services to be effective for editing scientific English language in manuscripts prior to submission.


Experimental Design and Statistics Guidelines


Study Design Guidelines


In the first section of the Materials and Methods, we encourage authors to have first subtitle of "Experimental and Technical Design," which includes a diagram or flowchart to show the entire experimental design and illustrates the most significant elements: materials, treatments, measurements, data collection, methods of data analysis. This will facilitate the editors, reviewers and readers to understand and follow the whole concept, design, and results.


Statistical Analysis Guidelines


Generally, authors should describe statistical methods with enough detail to enable a knowledgeable reader with access to the original data to verify the results.


Reporting Guidelines


Authors are encouraged to follow published standard reporting guidelines for the study discipline. Many of these guidelines can be found at the EQUATOR website.



Figure, Table & Supplementary Material Guidelines

Creating Your Figures


It is best to create your figures as vector-based files such as those produced by Adobe Illustrator. Vector-based files will give us maximum flexibility for sizing your figures properly without losing resolution. These figure files can be saved at a lower resolution to minimize the file size at initial submission.

Although we do not need the highest-resolution files for the initial submission, you will need to have these high-resolution files of your figures on hand so that they can be submitted with your revised manuscript for final publication production. Each figure or image must be in a separate editable file format at revision. Images may be in TIFF, GIF, JPEG, PNG, BMP, PS, EPS, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, or PDF.


Figure Layout and Scaling


In laying out information in a figure, the objective is to maximize the space given to presentation of the data. Avoid wasted white space and clutter.

Please follow these guidelines for your figures:

·    The figure’s title should be at the beginning of the figure legend, not within the figure itself.

·    Include the figure’s identifying number (e.g., "Figure 1") on the same manuscript page that includes the figure.

·    Keys to symbols, if needed, should be kept as simple as possible. Details can be put into the figure legend.

·    Use solid symbols for plotting data if possible (unless data overlap or there are multiple symbols). For legibility when figures are reduced, symbol sizes should be a minimum of 6 points and line widths should be a minimum of 0.5 points.

·    Panels should be set close to each other and common axis labels should not be repeated.

·    Scales or axes should not extend beyond the range of the data plotted. All microscopic images should include scale bars, with their values shown either with the bar or in the figure legend. Do not use minor tick marks in scales or grid lines. Avoid using y-axis labels on the right that repeat those on the left.

Color-mix and Contrast Considerations


·    Avoid using red and green together. Color-blind individuals will not be able to read the figure.

·    Do not use colors that are close to each other in hue to identify different parts of a figure.

·    Avoid using grayscale.

·    Use white type and scale bars over darker areas of images.



Typefaces and Labels


Please observe the following guidelines for labels on graphs and figures:

·     Use a serif font whenever possible.

·     Simple solid or open symbols reduce well.

·     Label graphs on the ordinate and abscissa with the parameter or variable being measured, the units of measure in parentheses and the scale. Scales with large or small numbers should be presented as powers of 10. (When an individual value must be presented as an exponential, use correct form: 6 × 10 –3, not 6e-03.)

·     Avoid the use of light lines and screen shading. Instead, use black-and-white, hatched, and cross-hatched designs for emphasis.

·     Capitalize the first letter in a label only, not every word (and proper nouns, of course).

·     Units should be included in parentheses. Use SI notation. If there is room, write out variables—e.g., Pressure (MPa), Temperature (K).

·     Variables are always set in italics or as plain Greek letters (e.g., P, T, µ). Vectors should be set as roman boldface (rather than as italics with arrows above).

·     Type on top of color in a color figure should be in boldface. Avoid using color type.

·     When figures are assembled from multiple gels or micrographs, use a line or space to indicate the border between two original images.

·     Use leading zeros on all decimals—e.g., 0.3, 0.55—and only report significant digits.

·     Use small letters for part labels in multipart figures enclosed in brackets, (a), (b), (c), etc.

·     Avoid subpart labels within a figure part; instead, maintain the established sequence of part labels, using small or lower-case letters. Use numbers (1, 2, 3) only to represent a time sequence of images.

·     When reproducing images that include labels with illegible computer-generated type (e.g., units for scale bars), omit such labels and present the information in the legend instead.


Modification of Figures

·      Ultrafast Science does not allow certain electronic enhancements or manipulations of micrographs, gels or other digital images.

·      Figures assembled from multiple photographs or images must indicate the separate parts with lines between them.

·      Linear adjustment of contrast, brightness or color must be applied to an entire image or plate equally. Nonlinear adjustments must be specified in the figure legend.

·      Selective enhancement or alteration of one part of an image is not acceptable.

·      In addition, Ultrafast Science may ask authors of papers returned for revision to provide additional documentation of their primary data.



Acceptable File Formats


Text


We prefer that the initial submission be uploaded to the electronic submission site as a Word file (PDFs acceptable if LaTeX source files are used) that contains all components of the paper. Create a single file consisting of the text, references, figures and their legends, tables and their legends. Supplementary Materials that cannot be incorporated into a Word file must be sent to the Editorial Office separately.

Alternatively, you may upload your manuscript as one file that contains all of the textual material plus separate figure files (one for each figure) and separate Supplementary Material files. The text file should be a Word .docx (preferred) or .doc file (as stated before, PDFs are acceptable in the case of LaTeX source files).


Please use zipped files when necessary to upload unusually large supplementary files.


Figures


See the guidelines above for creating and formatting your original figures. For initial submission, the figure files should be incorporated into the main text file at their proper places if at all possible. All figures should be cited in the manuscript in consecutive order. Figures should be supplied as TIFF, GIF, JPEG, PNG, BMP, PS, EPS, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, or PDF. Bitmap images should be of 300 dpi resolution at least unless the resolution is intentionally set to a lower level for scientific reasons. If a bitmap image has labels, the image and labels should be embedded in separate layers.


Tables


Tables should be cited consecutively in the text. Every table must have a descriptive title and if numerical measurements are given, the units should be included in the column heading. Vertical rules should not be used.


Supplementary Materials


Text and figures. Include supporting text (including supplementary materials and methods, tables, and figures) at the end of the main manuscript file, in a separate section titled Supplementary Materials, if this can be easily done. Alternatively, Supplementary Materials can be included as a separate .docx file that can be uploaded. In that case, use one of the file types specified above (.doc or .docx preferred).


Video files. Acceptable formats for videos are MP4, AVI, MOV, MPEG, and WMV. Keep videos short and the display window small to minimize the file size of the video. Supply caption information with the videos. Edit longer sequences into several small pieces with captions specific to each video sequence.


Audio files. Please contact the Editorial Office (usjournal@opt.ac.cn) regarding submission of such file types.



Submission of Manuscripts

All manuscripts should be prepared according to the guidelines above and submitted via Editorial Manager by following the link to Submit a manuscript


Submission Requirements


In preparation for submitting a research manuscript to Ultrafast Science, authors should review the manuscript template, which will facilitate accurate preparation and processing. Please follow the guidelines in this document when formatting your manuscript.

The body text of a manuscript for a research article must include the sections in the list below in the same order listed.

·       Title

·       Authors and their affiliations

·       Abstract

·       Keywords

·       Introduction

·       Materials and Methods

·       Results and Discussion

·       Conclusion

·       Acknowledgments

·       References

·       Figures and tables

·       Supplementary materials


Submission Checklist


The following items are required for submission:

·       A cover letter, containing the following:

o      The title of the paper and a brief summary of the main point.

o      A statement that none of the material has been published or is under consideration elsewhere, including online, and that all authors listed on the paper have reviewed and agree to the journal’s Publication Ethics policies.

o      Names, email addresses and ORCID IDs for all authors, including selection of one to be corresponding author.

·       Names, affiliations and email addresses of potential referees.

·       Copies of any paper by you or your co-authors that is in press or under consideration elsewhere that relates to the work submitted to Ultrafast Science should be uploaded as a related paper during submission.

During manuscript submission, the submitting author will be asked to confirm their understanding of or compliance with the Ultrafast Science policies on:

·       Authorship

·       Prior publication

·       Informed consent

·       Animal care and use

·       Related papers

·       Citation to personal communications and unpublished data

·       Data deposition and availability

·       License selection

·       Materials sharing

·       Third-party image reuse

·       Publication of accepted version




Citation Style

Authors submit their references in any style. If accepted, Ultrafast Science will reformat the references in Chicago style. Authors are responsible for ensuring that the information in each reference is complete and accurate.

List all authors by first initial(s) and last name. Do not use op. cit., ibid., 3-m dashes, en dashes, or et al. (in place of the complete list of authors’ names).

For journals that do not use page number ranges use the article number.

DOIs, if available, should be included for each reference.

Posted preprints may also be included in the References list with appropriate identification information and an independent persistent identifier such as a DOI.



Publication Forms

Each submission to Ultrafast Science must be accompanied by Licenses to Publish and Conflict of Interest forms completed by each author prior to acceptance. Image Permission forms are required as needed for re-use of any third-party created figure, image, or other asset; permission is only needed if the copyright holder is not an author on the paper.

These forms need to be completed prior to manuscript acceptance. They do not need to be completed prior to submission.

Documents may be printed out, signed, and scanned or signed using an electronic signature. Once completed, please upload the files into Editorial Manager alongside your manuscript files.

Download the Authorship and Conflict of Interest Form

Download the License to Publish Form

Download the Image Permission Form



Copyright and Licensing

Ultrafast Science content is Open Access, published under a Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) on a continuous basis. This means that content is freely available to all readers upon publication and content is published as soon as production is complete. XIOPM holds an exclusive license to the content, the author(s) hold copyright and retain the right to publish.



Appeal Process

Appeals will be considered on a case by case basis and must be submitted in writing to the Editorial Office (usjournal@opt.ac.cn). Appeals on the basis of novelty or scope are not likely to be granted.

 



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