Instructions for authors

1. Publication charges

EPJ N - Nuclear Sciences & Technologies is a gold open access journal. As such, it is freely and widely available to all readers via the Internet. Instead of relying on paid subscriptions, accepted authors pay a publication fee called an Article Processing Charge (APC) to ensure the long term sustainability of the journal.

2. Types of articles

EPJ N publishes technical papers, technical notes, critical reviews, workshop and congress proceedings, book reviews, computer code abstracts and letters to the editor.

Articles published within a given calendar year form a volume of the journal.

3. Preparing your article - Style guide

Manuscript content

Submissions to EPJ N should be written in English so as to be easily understood by an international audience. British (or American) English spelling should be used consistently throughout the article. The level of English should be formal, just like with any other traditional academic article. Articles should be written as clearly and concisely as possible. A special attention should be given to spell out any acronyms & abbreviations when first introduced in the article.

Material should be placed in the following order: title, author names, address of author institutions, abstract, main body of the paper, conflict of interests, acknowledgments, funding, data availability statement, author contribution statement, appendices, and references. Figures and tables should be included in the main body of the paper.

3.1 Title

Title should be simple, concise and informative. Please note that the use of relevant keywords may improve the discoverability of the article online.

3.2 Author(s) name(s) and affiliations

A list of all authors, as well as corresponding addresses, should be provided. Addresses should contain all information necessary for an effective mail delivery. E-mail and telephone numbers should also be supplied separately, in order to speed up communication between Editorial Office and authors. The email addresses of the corresponding authors are made available to the readers in the published articles.

We would like to draw here your attention to our Journal policy on authorship and contributorship - as well as to this COPE document, if you are a new researcher.

3.3 Abstract

An abstract should accompany each manuscript; it should be fully self-contained, not exceeding 200 words and written as a single paragraph. Mathematical expressions should be avoided.

3.4 Main body of the paper

The body of the paper should be divided into sections starting with an Introduction and ending with a Conclusion. Sections should be numbered with Arabic (not roman) numerals. Subsections (second level) should be numbered 1.2, 1.3, etc., and sub-subsections (third level) 1.1.1, 1.1.2, etc. All sections must have a short descriptive title. Equations, tables, figures, and references should follow a sequential numerical scheme in order to ensure a logical development of subject matter.

3.5 Conflict of interests

This section should be inserted before the Acknowledgments. This section shall describe whether yes or no, an individual author has to disclose some kind of conflict of interests. Conflict of interests may be of financial or non-financial nature. They have a wide range of origins spanning from personal relationships, ideological beliefs, to legal, financial and/or commercial consequences of publishing the work. If you do not have any conflict of interest to declare, please include the following statement : “The authors declare that they have no competing interests to report”.

3.6 Acknowledgments

This section must be concise and without subdivisions. Colleagues, who have carried out activities that alone (without other contributions) do not qualify for authorship, should be mentioned here. Examples of such activities include: informal discussions; acquisition of funding; general supervision of a research group or general administrative support; writing assistance such as technical editing, language editing, and proofreading.

3.7 Funding

This section should be inserted before the Data availability statement and inform the readers of the funding sources (grant(s), project(s) numbers) that made the work possible. If no funding has been provided for the research, please include the following statement : “This research did not receive any specific funding”.

3.8 Data availability statement

If legally and ethically possible, authors should use this section to indicate whether or not their manuscript has associated data and where positive (and appropriate), if the data has been deposited in a data repository [whose location should be disclosed here]. Alternatively authors could write: This article has no associated data generated and/or analyzed / Data associated with this article cannot be disclosed due to legal/ethical/other reason.

3.9 Author contribution statement

Authors should use this section to outline their individual contributions to the article with the corresponding roles. Authors may use the CRediT taxonomy here.

3.10 Appendices

Authors may use Appendices to feature some additional, supplementary material that is not essential to the main text. Appendices should be numbered with A, B, etc. if there are more than one appendix (Appendix A or Appendix A: Complex developments, when there is a title). The appendix equations should be numbered consecutively, but separately from those in the main body of the paper ((A1), (A2), etc.). In each appendix equations will be numbered separately ((B1), (B2), etc.).

3.11 References

It is important to confirm the accuracy of bibliographic information in references. This has become more important with the online version. Hyperlinks will be programmed to enable readers to jump directly to the material cited. If your reference citations are incorrect or incomplete (e.g., missing author name, or an incorrect volume number or page), the associated hyperlinks may fail, and the usefulness of your paper in the online environment may be diminished. Authors should also refrain as much as possible to refer to material that does not have a perennial requirement.

References should be cited in the text by placing sequential numbers in brackets (for example, [1], [2,5,7], [8--10]) according to the Vancouver referencing style, i.e. numbered in the order in which they are cited. Authors may be cited in the text by name, but without initials. Authors should use the forms below in the final reference list.

Journal articles

1. E. Le Mire, E. Burger, B. Iooss, C. Mai, Prediction of crack propagation kinetics through multipoint stochastic simulations of microscopic fields, EPJ Nuclear Sci. Technol. 7, 4 (2021)
2. L. Brès, N. Gherardi, N. Naudé, B. Rives, Experimental investigations of a remote atmospheric pressure plasma by electrical diagnostics and related effects on polymer composite surfaces, Eur. Phys. J. Appl. Phys. 95, 30801 (2021)
3. D.B. Saakian, Th.M. Nieuwenhuizen, J. Phys. I France 7, 1513 (1997); J.M. Smith, Nucl. Phys. A 195, 123 (2008)
4. P. van der Schoot, J. Phys. II France 6, 1557 (1996)

Journal articles accepted for publication

5. J.M. Smith, Eur. Phys. J. Appl. Phys. (to be published)

Books

6. J. Couturier, Y.H. Abou and E. Grolleau, in Element of nuclear safety, (EDP Sciences, Les Ulis, 2019)

Proceedings

7. J. Rhodes, K. Smith, D. Lee, CASMO-5 development and applications, in Proceedings of the PHYSOR-2006 conference, ANS Topical Meeting on Reactor Physics, Vancouver, BC, Canada, September 10-14, September 10-14 (2006), B144

Reports and Theses

8. V. Lamirand, Installation nucléaire CROCUS - rapport de sécurité, Tech. rep., LRS Internal Report No 15-48 (2016)
9. S. Azzaoui, SCALE-6 fuel depletion analyses: Application to the ARIANE program, Master Thesis, SCK-CEN, Belgium, 2010
10. K. Ambrožič, L. Snoj, Characterization of gamma field in the JSI TRIGA reactor, Ph.D. thesis, University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Mathematics and Physics (2020)

Others

11. J.M. Smith (private communication)
12. J.M. Smith (unpublished)

3.12 Mathematical material

A standard typesetting procedure is followed by the production staff. Authors should observe the following simple rules to help clarify the content of mathematical material.

• The text should make clear distinctions between physical variables, mathematical symbols, units of measurement, abbreviations, chemical formulas, etc. Hand-written Greek letters should be written fully in the margin at the first place of mention.
• Equations must be typewritten in papers submitted as hard copy and be sequentially numbered. The number should appear in parentheses at the right-hand side of the page and referred to in the text as, e.g. (7).

Caution: Mathematical expressions often need to be displayed on two or more lines (“broken”) because of the line length limitation of EPJ N two-column layout. There are situations where breaking an equation is not possible or appropriate (long fractions or matrices). The production department reserves the possibility to place unbroken equations at the bottom or at the top of the concerned page(s), according to the page-layout to be defined by the production staff, with an appropriate citation in the text. For example:

See equation (8) below (above)

• Authors who have access to italic and boldface should use these to identify physical or mathematical variables. Variables are to be set in normal italic. Physical constants such as the speed of light or the Boltzmann constant are also set in normal italic.
• Italic type should be avoided for the following:
  • Units of measurement (e.g., km, g, K, cm^-2, s^-1).
  • Mathematical signs such as sin, cos, log, exp, etc.
  • Chemical formulas.

3.13 Figures

Authors are encouraged to submit colour illustration: EPJ N is an all-electronic journal and all figures will appear in colour at no additional costs.

Each figure should be cited in the text. They must conform to the usual quality criteria given below. Authors should remember that the final published quality of illustrations can never be better than the quality of the original artwork.

• Good quality figures have the following characteristics:
  
  • Lines, letters, numbers and symbols should have uniform strength and contrast, they should be appropriately oriented on the axes and consistent with those used in the text.
  • Authors should avoid including any unnecessary text around a figure, such as captions, figure numbers, author or file names. Captions for all figures should be written as a clear, separate list in a dedicated area of the article.
  • Parts of diagrams, graphs, ... should be clearly indicated by different types of hatching. Grey scales, which might get difficult to distinguish after reducing, or which often disappear during the printing process, should be avoided. Also, parts a, b, c, etc. of a figure should be in separate files.
  • Standard symbols which should be used inside a figure are:
  • Labelling should be uniform in size throughout all figures. Lettering should not be pasted on to the figures as it may easily become detached as a result of handling.
  • After photographic reduction, all details of the figures should still be visible and all labelling legible.
• Scaling of artwork
  Figures are often reduced to 50% of their original size. Very few figures have a final size outside the range of 40--85%. The final size of capital letters or numerals in a figure usually lies within the range 1.6--2.3 mm to avoid any disproportion between figure/text character sizes.

Using third party material - such as figures or tables from another source:
If parts from copyrighted works owned by third parties are included (included figures, tables etc.) in a Manuscript, written permission should be obtained from the copyright owners for all uses, and credit to the sources should be shown in the Manuscript. The following text should be used: This permission is obtained for reproduction in a publication in Open Access with a CC-by 4.0 License.

3.14 Tables

Tables should be consecutively numbered with Arabic numerals as they are cited in the text. Complex formatting should be avoided - preferred format is the basic Table format in Word.

4. Submitting your work

Authors should submit their manuscripts electronically, only through the web at the following address:
https://articlestatus.edpsciences.org/is/epjn

Original manuscripts should be preferably submitted (initially) in one single PDF file with text, figures and tables.

5. The Peer Review Process

The Peer Review Process is a widely established validation method used in academia whereby a work is critically assessed by expert referees demonstrating both the right level of knowledge in the field of the work, while being fully independent from it. EPJ N follows the “single-blind” Peer Review Process where referees know the identity of the authors, but the authors do not know who the reviewers are.

All EPJ N submissions undergo a fair, independent, objective and constructive Peer Review Process: only scientifically sound articles, deemed of high enough interest and originality, will receive favorable reports from our reviewers, hence be accepted for publication.

All EPJ N submissions are sent to two reviewers, independent from the Editorial Board of the journal. The reviewers are informed of the necessity to keep the manuscript confidential before acceptance and publication. The reviewers should have no conflict of interest or they will be withdrawn from the process. The reviewers are asked to point out relevant published work which is not yet cited.

Based on the recommendations of the reviewers, the Editorial Board decide whether the manuscript is:

• straight Accepted (i.e. Accepted without modifications)
• Accepted, after modifications (i.e. subject or not to a second round of peer review)
• Rejected

6. The acceptance stage

At this stage, an electronic version of the manuscript (Word, TeX, LaTeX), which must exactly match the accepted version, should be sent to the publisher (even if the article has been previously submitted electronically). The Editorial Office will send an acceptance letter to the corresponding author, and at the same time, will ask for electronic files of text and figures. All portions of the manuscript available in electronic form should be sent to the production department according to the instructions mentioned in the acceptance letter from the Editorial Office or to be found on our web servers.

Authors are informed that any missing element in an accepted article (electronic file of the text and/or of good quality figures) will delay the publication date. The Editorial Office will keep the paper on a waiting list until all missing material is received.

Authors will be contacted by EDP Sciences’ Finance department regarding the settlement of their APCs as soon as their proofs are ready.

7. The proof correction stage

The main aim of proofreading is to correct errors that may have occurred during the production process, but not to modify the content of the paper. Substantial modifications made by authors affecting the content of their paper are prohibited at this stage.

Authors should keep in mind that reading proofs is their responsibility. Files typeset using Word, Wordperfect, Macwrite, etc., need heavy retyping (equations and special characters are lost during the conversion process). Also, LaTeX files are slightly modified by the production department to follow general presentation rules of the journal.

8. Post-publication corrections

The published version of an EPJ N article constitutes its Version-of-Record (VoR).

Should an author discover a material error or inaccuracy in their own published article, they should promptly notify the Editor(s)-in-Chief and the Publisher of the journal so that appropriate action can be taken in order to correct the issue and ensure that the VoR of their EPJ N article remains exact, complete and authoritative.

A thorough investigation involving the Publisher, the Editor(s)-in-Chief, the author and/or the Editorial Board may be needed, hence undertaken, in some cases when alleged ethical problems affecting EPJ N published articles are reported, and so as to assess the severity of the situation.

Please note that EPJ N may also liaise with authors’ institutions in the framework of investigations and inform them of suspected misconduct should evidence supporting these concerns be established. Reciprocally EPJ N is committed to cooperate with investigations and respond to institutions’ questions about misconduct allegations.

Depending on the circumstances and significance of a reported issue, the journal may have to publish a Correction, a Retraction, an Expression of Concern or even remove the article, in accordance with the COPE Post-publication guidelines.

9. Procedure for Comments and Replies

EPJ N allows for the submission of Comments and Replies aimed at clarifying or correcting the scientific record.

Comments submitted to EPJ N should address an article published in the journal itself.

1. Upon submission, Comments are checked by a member of the Editorial Board for both scientific soundness & potential for bringing novel information and/or clarification to a published article.


2. Should a Comment pass this initial step, the author of the criticized article is invited to prepare a Reply, within a limited timeframe. They will receive a copy of the Comment in order to help them make a decision or prepare their Reply. The peer review process of the Comment is put on hold during that (reflecting/writing) time.
   • Should the author of the criticized article agree to submit a Reply, both Comment and Reply are to be jointly refereed by one (or more) independent peer reviewer(s). It may be that the articles get a revised, an acceptance or a rejection decision, i.e. only the Comment could be accepted and published.
   • Should the author of the criticized article decline to submit a Reply or not respond within the timeframe offered by the journal, only the Comment will be refereed by one (or more) independent peer reviewer(s). It may be that the Comment gets a revised, an acceptance or a rejection decision.
   
   

3. Once the peer review process has taken place and a final decision communicated to the author(s), correspondence is then closed.


4. On some instances, following receipt of a Comment and an invitation from EPJ N to prepare a Reply, it may be that the authors of the criticized article decide to prepare a Corrigendum on their published article. This is also acceptable practice. The author(s) of the Comments may then be acknowledged for bringing up an important point. The Corrigendum will be peer reviewed before a revised, an acceptance or a rejection decision can be made.