Ethical Responsibilities of Authors

This journal is committed to upholding the integrity of the scientific record. The journal will follow the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) guidelines on how to deal with potential acts of misconduct.

Important note: the journal may use software to screen for plagiarism.

Authors should refrain from misrepresenting research results which could damage the trust in the journal, the professionalism of scientific authorship, and ultimately the entire scientific endeavour. Maintaining integrity of the research and its presentation can be achieved by following the rules of good scientific practice, which include:

The manuscript has not been submitted to more than one journal for simultaneous consideration.

• The manuscript has not been published previously (partly or in full), unless the new work concerns an expansion of previous work (please provide transparency on the re-use of material to avoid the hint of text-recycling (“self-plagiarism”)).
• A single study is not split up into several parts to increase the quantity of submissions and submitted to various journals or to one journal over time (e.g. “salami-publishing”).
• No data have been fabricated or manipulated (including images) to support your conclusions
• No data, text, or theories by others are presented as if they were the author’s own (“plagiarism”). Proper acknowledgements to other works must be given (this includes material that is closely copied (near verbatim), summarized and/or paraphrased), quotation marks are used for verbatim copying of material, and permissions are secured for material that is copyrighted.
• Consent to submit has been received explicitly from all co-authors, as well as from the responsible authorities - tacitly or explicitly - at the institute/organization where the work has been carried out, before the work is submitted.
• Authors whose names appear on the submission have contributed sufficiently to the scientific work and therefore share collective responsibility and accountability for the results.
• Authors are strongly advised to ensure the correct author group, corresponding author, and order of authors at submission. Only after major revision of the submission, can the authors make changes of authorship or in the order of authors. Thus, after “Accepted with Minor Revision”, the authors cannot make any changes of authorship, including in the order of authors.
• Adding and/or deleting authors at revision stage may be justifiably warranted. A letter must accompany the revised manuscript to explain the role of the added and/or deleted author(s). Further documentation may be required to support your request.
• Requests for addition or removal of authors as a result of authorship disputes after acceptance are honored after formal notification by the institute or independent body and/or when there is agreement between all authors.
• Upon request authors should be prepared to send relevant documentation or data in order to verify the validity of the results. This could be in the form of raw data, samples, records, etc. Sensitive information in the form of confidential proprietary data is excluded.

If there is a suspicion of misconduct, the journal will carry out an investigation following the COPE guidelines. If, after investigation, the allegation seems to raise valid concerns, the accused author will be contacted and given an opportunity to address the issue. If misconduct has been established beyond reasonable doubt, this may result in the Editor-in-Chief’s implementation of the following measures, including, but not limited to:

• If the article is still under consideration, it may be rejected and returned to the author.
• If the article has already been published online, depending on the nature and severity of the infraction, either an erratum will be placed with the article or in severe cases complete retraction of the article will occur. The reason must be given in the published erratum or retraction note. Please note that retraction means that the paper is maintained on the platform, watermarked 'retracted' and explanation for the retraction is provided in a note linked to the watermarked article.
• The author’s institution may be informed.

 

Manuscript Submission

General

Manuscripts are accepted for review on the understanding that they have not been published, nor are presently submitted for publication in any other English journals. Enhanced versions of papers previously published in conference proceedings may be considered provided it is notified when the paper is submitted, especially if they are of particularly high quality or include substantially new material. Prior publication of an abstract, summary, or other abbreviated form of the material, shall not preclude publication in this journal when notice of such prior or concurrent publication is given at the time of submission. 

Permissions

An article submitted for publication to JCST should be original work. The article should not have been published previously and should not be concurrently under consideration for publication elsewhere. JCST assumes that material submitted to it is properly available for general dissemination for the readership of JCST. It is the responsibility of the authors, not JCST, to determine if disclosure of their material requires the prior consent of other parties. Authors wishing to include figures, tables, or text passages that have already been published elsewhere are required to obtain permission from the copyright owner(s) for both the print and online format and to include evidence that such permission has been granted when submitting their papers. Any material received without such evidence will be assumed to originate from the authors.

Referencing Guidelines

At times, it may be necessary for authors to reuse portions of their own previously published work or to include another author’s material.

When an author uses text, charts, photographs, or other graphics from another author’s material, the author shall: 

1) Clearly indicate reused material and provide a full reference to the origin (publication, person, etc.) of the material and

2) Obtain written permission from the publisher or, if the reused material has not been published, obtain written permission from the original source.

When an author reuses text, charts, photographs, or other graphics from his/her own previously published material, the author shall: 

1) Clearly indicate all reused material and provide a full reference to the original publication of the material and 

2) If the previously published or submitted material is used as a basis for a new submission, clearly indicate how the new submission differs from the previously published work(s).

Submission of Manuscripts

• Please follow the hyperlink “Submit online” on the right or login at https://mc03.manuscriptcentral.com/jcst, and upload all of your manuscript files following the instructions given on the screen. Before you do this, please be sure that the files are not infected by viruses.
• If the submission is for a focused section, please select the specific focused section from the list of article types. Please include a statement in the cover letter indicating the submission is for the specific focused section as laid out in the call-for-papers.

JCST publishes four types of papers: Regular Paper, Survey, Review, and Short Paper (whose length is not more than 5 typewritten pages). For Regular Paper, Survey, and Review, the length is preferred not to exceed 35 pages using the submit template.

• All contributions are handled in the same fashion. Review management is under the direction of an area editor, who will solicit two reviews for each submission. Usually, the review process takes 3~6 months, and the publication process after acceptance can take additional 4~6 months. However, JCST will make every effort to shorten the processes.

Title Page

The title page should include:

• the name(s) of the author(s);
• a concise and informative title;
• the affiliation(s) and address(es) of the author(s);
• the e-mail address and telephone number(s) of the corresponding author;
• if available, the 16-digit ORCID of the author(s).

   Please notify the publisher immediately of a change of your address.

 

Text

Abstract

Please provide an abstract of 100 to 250 words. The abstract should clearly state the nature and significance of the paper. It must not include undefined abbreviations, mathematical formulas or bibliographic references.

Keywords

Please provide 3 to 5 keywords which can be used for indexing purposes.

Text Formatting

Please refer to JCST Template (LATEX, WORD) available at Download Templates. Manuscripts submitted for reviews should follow the JCST Submit Template, and those that have passed the review and are going to be accepted should use the JCST Publish Template.

• All elements of formulae should be type-written whenever possible.
• Use the automatic page numbering function to number the pages.
• Do not use field functions.
• Use the table function, not spreadsheets, to make tables.
• Save your file in TeX or LaTeX files, or docx format (Word 2007 or higher) or doc format (older Word versions). For Word files, use the equation editor or MathType for equations.

Abbreviations

• Abbreviations should be defined at first mention and used consistently thereafter.

Footnotes

• Footnotes can be used to give additional information, which may include the citation of a reference included in the reference list. They should not consist solely of a reference citation, and they should never include the bibliographic details of a reference. They should also not contain any figures or tables.
• Footnotes to the text are numbered consecutively. 
• Always use footnotes instead of endnotes.

Acknowledgments

• Upon acceptance of the paper, authors may add acknowledgement of people, grants, funds, etc., which should be placed in a separate section. The names of funding organizations should be written in full.

Biography and Photo

• Upon acceptance of the paper, authors will be asked to provide a short biography and a photo of each author, to be included at the end of the manuscript.

Scientific Style

• Please always use internationally accepted signs and symbols for units (SI units).

 

References

Citation

Reference citations in the text should be identified by numbers in square brackets. Some examples:

1. Negotiation research spans many disciplines^[3].

2. This result was later contradicted by Becker and Seligman^[5].

3. This effect has been widely studied^{[1-3, 7]}.

Reference List

The list of references should only include articles that are cited in the text and that have been published or accepted for publication. Personal communications and unpublished work should only be mentioned in the text using footnotes to give more information. Do not use footnotes or endnotes as a substitute for a reference list.

The references should be listed at the end of the manuscript and numbered in the order they are referred to in the text. For journals the following information should appear: names (including initials of the first names) of all authors, full title of the paper, and journal name, volume, pages and year of publication. For books the following should be listed: author(s), full title, edition, publisher, place of publication and year.

Examples are as follows.

• Journal article

 [1] Sayah J Y, Kime C R. Test scheduling in high performance VLSI system implementations. IEEE Trans. Computers, 1992, 41(1): 52-67.

• Book chapter

[2] Gordon Plotkin. A semantics for type checking. In Lecture Notes in Computer Science 526, Ito T, Meyer A R (eds.), Springer-Verlag, 1991, pp.1-17.

• Book

[3] Geddes K O, Czapor S R, Labahn G. Algorithms for Computer Algebra. Boston: Kluwer, 1992.

• Conference paper

[4] Kwan A W, Bic L. Distributed memory computers. In Proc. the 6th Int. Parallel Processing Symp., March 1992, pp.10-17.

• Online document

[5]Cartwright, J. Big stars have weather too. IOP Publishing PhysicsWeb. 2007. http://physicsweb.org/articles/news/11/6/16/1. Mar. 2017.

Always use the standard abbreviation of a journal’s name according to the ISSN List of Title Word Abbreviations, see ISSN.org LTWA

If you are unsure, please use the full journal title.

For authors using EndNote, Springer provides an output style that supports the formatting of in-text citations and reference list.

 

Tables

• All tables are numbered using Arabic numerals in the order they are referred to in the text.
• Tables should be cited in text in consecutive numerical order.
• For each table, please supply a table caption (title) explaining the components of the table.
• Identify any previously published material by giving the original source in the form of a reference at the end of the table caption.
• Footnotes to tables should be indicated by “Note:”and included beneath the table body.

 

Artwork and Illustrations Guidelines

Electronic Figure Submission

• Supply all figures electronically.
• For vector graphics, the preferred format is EPS; for halftones, please use TIFF format. MSOffice files are also acceptable.
• Vector graphics containing fonts must have the fonts embedded in the files.
• Name your figure files with 'Fig' and the figure number, e.g., Fig1.eps.

Line Art

• Definition: Black and white graphic with no shading.
• Do not use faint lines and/or lettering and check that all lines and lettering within the figures are legible at final size.
• All lines should be at least 0.1 mm (0.3 pt) wide.
• Scanned line drawings and line drawings in bitmap format should have a minimum resolution of 1200 dpi.
• Vector graphics containing fonts must have the fonts embedded in the files.

Halftone Art

• Definition: Photographs, drawings, or paintings with fine shading, etc.
• If any magnification is used in the photographs, indicate this by using scale bars within the figures themselves.
• Halftones should have a minimum resolution of 300 dpi.

Combination Art

• Definition: a combination of halftone and line art, e.g., halftones containing line drawing, extensive lettering, color diagrams, etc.
• Combination artwork should have a minimum resolution of 600 dpi.

Color Art

• Color art is free of charge for online publication.
• If black and white will be shown in the print version, make sure that the main information will still be visible. Many colors are not distinguishable from one another when converted to black and white. A simple way to check this is to make a xerographic copy to see if the necessary distinctions between the different colors are still apparent.
• If the figures will be printed in black and white, do not refer to color in the captions.
• Color illustrations should be submitted as RGB (8 bits per channel).

Figure Lettering

• To add lettering, it is best to use Helvetica or Arial (sans serif fonts).
• Keep lettering consistently sized throughout your final-sized artwork, usually about 2–3 mm (8–12 pt).
• Variance of type size within an illustration should be minimal, e.g., do not use 8-pt type on an axis and 20-pt type for the axis label.
• Avoid effects such as shading, outline letters, etc.
• Do not include titles or captions within your illustrations.

Figure Numbering

• All figures are to be numbered using Arabic numerals in the order they are referred to in the text.
• Figures should always be cited in text in consecutive numerical order.
• Figure parts should be denoted by lowercase letters: (a), (b), (c), etc.
• If an appendix appears in your article and it contains one or more figures, number the appendix figures: A1, A2, A3, etc.

Figure Captions

• Each figure should have a concise caption describing accurately what the figure depicts. Include the captions in the text file of the manuscript, not in the figure file.
• Figure captions begin with the term Fig. in bold type, followed by the figure number, also in bold type.
• No punctuation is to be included after the number, nor is any punctuation to be placed at the end of the caption.
• Identify all elements found in the figure in the figure caption; and use boxes, circles, etc., as coordinate points in graphs.
• Identify previously published material by giving the original source in the form of a reference citation at the end of the figure caption.

Figure Placement and Size

• When preparing your figures, size figures to fit in the column width.

Permissions

If you include figures that have already been published elsewhere, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner(s) for both the print and online format. Please be aware that some publishers do not grant electronic rights for free and that Springer will not be able to refund any costs that may have occurred to receive these permissions. In such cases, material from other sources should be used.

Accessibility

In order to give people of all abilities and disabilities access to the content of your figures, please make sure that

• All figures have descriptive captions
• Patterns are used instead of or in addition to colors for conveying information (colorblind users would then be able to distinguish the visual elements)
• Any figure lettering has a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1.

 

Electronic Supplementary Material

Springer accepts electronic multimedia files (animations, movies, audio, etc.) and other supplementary files to be published online along with an article or a book chapter. This feature can add dimension to the author's article, as certain information cannot be printed or is more convenient in electronic form.

We encourage research data to be archived in data repositories wherever possible.

Submission

• Supply all supplementary material in standard file formats.
• To accommodate user downloads, please keep in mind that larger-sized files may require very long download times and that some users may experience other problems during downloading.

Highlight

It is a short collection of information (e.g., text and graphics), in 4~5-pages PPT (with the first page presenting the title and the authors), to convey the research problem and the kernel findings, to provide readers with a quick overview of the article. The highlights describe the essence of the research (e.g., research problem, kernel contribution, results or conclusions) and highlight what is distinctive about it. Highlights may be displayed online in http://www.springer.com/journal/11390, but will not appear in the article PDF file or print.

Audio, Video, and Animations

• Aspect ratio: 16:9 or 4:3
• Maximum file size: 25 GB
• Minimum video duration: 1 sec
• Supported file formats: avi, wmv, mp4, mov, m2p, mp2, mpg, mpeg, flv, mxf, mts, m4v, 3gp

Text and Presentations

• Submit your material in PDF format; .doc or .ppt files are not suitable for long-term viability.
• A collection of figures may also be combined in a PDF file.

Spreadsheets

• Spreadsheets should be converted to PDF if no interaction with the data is intended.
• If the readers should be encouraged to make their own calculations, spreadsheets should be submitted as .xls files (MS Excel).

Specialized Formats

• Specialized format such as .pdb (chemical), .wrl (VRML), .nb (Mathematica notebook), and .tex can also be supplied.

Collecting Multiple Files

• It is possible to collect multiple files in a .rar or .gz file.

Numbering

• If supplying any supplementary material, the text must make specific mention of the material as a citation, similar to that of figures and tables.
• Refer to the supplementary files as “Online Resource”, e.g., '... as shown in the animation (Online Resource 3)', “... additional data are given in Online Resource 4”.
• Name the files consecutively, e.g. “ESM_3.mpg”, “ESM_4.pdf”.

Captions

• For each supplementary material, please supply a concise caption describing the content of the file.

Accessibility

In order to give people of all abilities and disabilities access to the content of your supplementary files, please make sure that

• The manuscript contains a descriptive caption for each supplementary material
• Video files do not contain anything that flashes more than three times per second (so that users prone to seizures caused by such effects are not put at risk)

 

Data Sharing

If the paper has research data that is shareable by other researchers, please use a footnote to present the way to access it. Besides, it is encouraged to submit the data to a Chinese data repository, e.g., ScienceDB. ScienceDB is a public and non-profit generalist data repository developed and maintained by the Computer Network Information Center, Chinese Academy of Sciences. All the delivered datasets on ScienceDB is under CC0 or CC BY 4.0 conditions. Meanwhile, DOI is assigned to each dataset by the repository for citation and access.

 

After Acceptance

Copyright Transfer

Authors will be asked to transfer copyright of the article to the Publisher (or grant the Publisher exclusive publication and dissemination rights). This will ensure the widest possible protection and dissemination of information under copyright laws.

Offprints

Offprints can be ordered by the corresponding author.

Color Illustrations

Online publication of color illustrations is free of charge. For color in the print version, authors will be expected to make a contribution towards the extra costs.

Proof Reading

The purpose of the proof is to check for typesetting or conversion errors and the completeness and accuracy of the text, tables and figures. Substantial changes in content, e.g., new results, corrected values, title and authorship, are not allowed without the approval of the Editor.

After online publication, further changes can only be made in the form of an Erratum, which will be hyperlinked to the article.

 

English Language Editing

For editors and reviewers to accurately assess the work presented in your manuscript you need to ensure the English language is of sufficient quality to be understood. If you need help with writing in English you should consider:

• Asking a colleague who is a native English speaker to review your manuscript for clarity.
• Visiting the English language tutorial which covers the common mistakes when writing in English.
• Using a professional language editing service where editors will improve the English to ensure that your meaning is clear and identify problems that require your review.

Please note that the use of a language editing service is not a requirement for publication in this journal and does not imply or guarantee that the article will be selected for peer review or accepted.

If your manuscript is accepted it will be checked by our copyeditors for spelling and formal style before publication.