Editorial

JAAS Technical Notes—Editorial Board initiates a new policy

JAAS Technical Notes should offer practical solutions to problems that are of interest to the JAAS readership and merit publication, but neither a full length paper nor an urgent communication is justified. Technical Notes should be as brief as possible: wherever appropriate authors should use references to the established technique, explaining in full only what is novel about the proposed approach.

Over the past few years the number of Technical Notes published in JAAS has steadily increased such that, currently, around one in five papers published in JAAS is a Technical Note.

The average page length for a Technical Note published in JAAS last year was over four pages and some Technical Notes were as long as six pages. By comparison, the average page length for a full paper was only 6.7 pages.

In the spirit of JAAS retaining its excellent reputation through its high standards, the JAAS Editorial Board believes that the length of a manuscript should be commensurate with its novel content and that we need to be consistent about defining a Technical Note. It should therefore be significantly shorter than a full paper. We are listing below our unanimously adopted guidelines for Technical Notes applicable to manuscripts originally submitted as Technical Notes or those resubmitted after a reviewer has recommended category change.

A strict page limit of three journal pages—approximately 2500 words (less 200 words per single-column figure or table)—for Technical Notes is the principal guideline, to be achieved in part by:

A shorter abstract (no more than 150 words). Shorter introductory information (not more than 180 words, containing a summary of the background and rationale for the work, concluded by a one sentence statement of the primary aim). Minimal figures for print (additional figures may be included as Electronic Supplementary Information). No separate conclusions section. Absence of lengthy introductions and discussion, extensive data, and excessive experimental details and conjecture.

Authors of contributions that exceed the page limit will have to shorten their papers before acceptance, inevitably delaying publication. Authors whose papers still exceed the page limit after acceptance will be asked to edit their page proofs. To avoid the necessity of late edits, authors are strongly encouraged to use the article template available at http://www.rsc.org/authors when preparing their manuscript.

These guidelines are now included in the manuscript preparation instructions on the JAAS web site (http://www.rsc.org/jaas) and the referee report forms have been amended to provide clearer guidance for referees on expectations for Technical Notes, Full Papers and Communications, respectively (http://www.rsc.org/referees).

Joseph Caruso

Chairman, JAAS Editorial Board

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