MANUSCRIPT PREPARATION (STYLE, ELEMENTS, AND ORDER)

A. Manuscript Preparation Style

From the point of initial submission of a manuscript to its final publication as an article upon peer review, the entire process is broadly divided into two phases and each requires different style in which the manuscript is to be prepared. All manuscript, initial or final, must be double-spaced and have 1 in. (2.5 cm) margins throughout, including footnotes, references, tables, and figure captions.

Phase 1: Initial Submission and during Review Process

Initial Submission must be a single PDF or Word file, with all Elements in Order (details of each given below in Section B);

• Title
• Author details including full name, affiliation, and contact email
• Abstract and Keywords
• Introduction of the main article, followed by the entire manuscript as is intended to be read, with tables and figures in-text at the accurate locations, with appropriate captions and short explanatory titles.
• Competing Interests Statement
• Data Availability Statement
• Funding Statement
• References

Henceforth, if accepted for review, each revised manuscript, duly suffixed .R1, .R2, etc., shall follow the same style. 

Phase 2: Final Compilation for Publication

Upon final decision of acceptance and request for ‘production ready’ files by Editors, the authors must submit the following; 

1. i. A reference file in PDF of the finalised manuscript, as is intended to be read, with tables and figures in-text at the right locations, with appropriate captions and short explanatory titles, and all elements in order. This file is for reference to create high-quality production files. 
2. ii. A TEXT Only file; in Microsoft Word (.doc/.docx) or LaTeX (.TEX or .LTX) format; including the Tables and Figures in their accurate locations with the appropriate captions and short explanatory titles in order of their appearance in text.
3. iii. All Figure Files; preferably in EPS or high-resolution TIFF format, and any Supplementary material files (pdf, doc/docx, xls/xlsx, ppt/pptx, jpeg, tiff, png, and zip) to be uploaded as separate files, with a single caption, appearing beneath, named according to the order in which it appears in text. 
4. iv. All Table Files; preferably in Word (.doc/.docx) or LaTeX (.TEX or .LTX) format or in EPS or high-resolution TIFF format, to be uploaded as separate files, with a single caption, appearing beneath, named according to the order in which it appears in text. 
5. v. Author Biographies

B. Manuscript Preparation Elements and Order

Title page. The title should be concise, informative, and free of abbreviations, chemical formulae, technical jargon, and esoteric terms. This page should include: (a) the article’s full title; (b) the names and affiliations of all authors; (c) the name, mailing address, telephone number, and email address of the corresponding author; (d) a short title of 40 characters or less; and (e) a list of the number of manuscript pages, tables, and figures.

Abstract and keywords page. This should include (a) the article’s full title, (b) an abstract of no more than 300 words, and (c) up to 5 keywords or phrases that reflect the content and major thrust of the article. The abstract should give a succinct account of the objective, methods, results, and significance of the subject matter.

Introduction. This section should clearly state the objective of the research in the context of previous work bearing directly on the subject. An extensive review of the literature is usually not appropriate.

Notations in text. Customary abbreviations will be accepted and the authors are recommended to employ Système Internationale (SI/metric) units. Special and unusual symbols should be clearly presented and in a common font. Spell out acronyms at first use, and use only acronyms thereafter. All equipment supplies and products stated in the article should have the manufacturer name and location identified at first mention.

Tables. Tables should be numbered consecutively with Arabic numerals, and each should be double-spaced on separate pages after the references. A short explanatory title and column headings should make the table intelligible and a footnote should define all terms without reference to the text. All tables must be cited sequentially.

Figures and captions. The number of figures should be the minimum necessary to make the essential points of the paper. Figures should be no larger than 6 X 8 in. (approx. 200 X 250 mm). Figures should be composed to occupy one column (20 picas or 8.3 cm) or two columns (41.5 picas or 17 cm) after reduction. Diagrams and illustrations must have a professional appearance and be created with high-resolution lettering to permit reduction. To assure legibility, letters, numbers, and symbols on figures should all be the same size and have a minimum height of 2 mm (i.e., 6 points on the pica scale) when reduced. Each figure must be cited sequentially. Figures must be numbered consecutively with Arabic numerals and be accompanied by a descriptive double-spaced caption provided at the end of the article. The captions should concisely describe the figure, identify any symbols and/or calibration bars, and define any terms or acronyms. Acceptable figure file formats are MS Word, EPS, JPEG, TIFF, PS, and PDF.

Competing Interests Statement. All authors must include a competing interest declaration in their manuscript after the text before the References. This declaration will be subject to editorial review and will be published in the article. Competing interests are situations that could be perceived to exert an undue influence on the content or publication of an author’s work. They may include, but are not limited to, financial, professional, contractual or personal relationships or situations.

If the manuscript has multiple authors, the author submitting must include competing interest declarations relevant to all contributing authors. Example wording for a declaration is as follows: “Competing interests: Author A is employed at company B. Author C owns shares in company D, is on the Board of company E and is a member of organisation F. Author G has received grants from company H.” If no competing interests exist, the declaration should state “Competing interests: The author(s) declare none”.

Data Availability Statement. Authors must include a Data Availability Statement in the manuscript, describing how readers can access the resources necessary to replicate the findings if they are publicly accessible. If these resources are under embargo, or cannot be publicly released for legal, ethical, commercial or other reasons, the Data Availability Statement should make this clear with a brief explanation.

Examples:

Data availability: The data that support the findings of this study are openly available in [repository name] at http://doi.org/, reference number [reference number]. 

Data availability: The data that support the findings will be available in [repository name] at [URL / DOI link] following a [6 month] embargo from the date of publication to allow for commercialisation of research findings. 

Data availability: The data that support the findings of this study are available from [third party]. Restrictions apply to the availability of these data, which were used under licence for this study. Data are available [from the authors / at URL] with the permission of [third party]. 

Funding Statement. This must detail the sources of financial support for all authors in relation to the article, including grant numbers, or declare that no specific funding exists. The statement should also make it clear whether the funder had a role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

For example: 

“This work was supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) under research grant XXXX. The funder had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.” 

Where no specific funding has been provided for research, please provide the following statement: “This work received no specific grant from any funding agency, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.” 

References. The alphabetical list of references begins a new page after the text and competing interest declaration. Each in-text citation must have a corresponding reference and vice versa. Only conference papers, theses, and published or in press articles and books should appear in this list.

All authors’ names should be included, followed by the year of publication. For journals, the full title of the journal, volume, issue number, and inclusive page numbers should be provided. For books, the full title should be given, followed by the editors, volume number (if any), page numbers, place of publication, and publisher. Citations in the text should read Brown and Goel (2010) or (Brown & Goel, 2010). Where there are more than two authors the citation should read Brown et al. (2010). When more than one paper by the same authors has appeared in the same year, they are distinguished by (Brown & Goel, 2010a, 2010b). Multiple citations in the text should be in chronologi- cal order (Dym, 1994; Birmingham, 1999; Brown, 2010).

Journal or Magazine Article

Brown, D.C. (2010). AI EDAM at the cutting edge. Artificial Intelligence for Engineering Design, Analysis and Manufacturing 24(3), 281–282.

Frey, D., Birmingham, W., & Dym, C. (2010). Design pedagogy: representations and processes [Guest editorial]. Artificial Intelligence for Engineering Design, Analysis and Manufacturing 24(3), 283–284.

Knight, T., & Sass, L. (2010). Looks count: computing and constructing visually expressive mass customized housing. Artificial Intelligence for Engineering Design, Analysis and Manufacturing 24(3), 425–445.

Book

Dym, C.L. (1994). Engineering Design: A Synthesis of Views.

NewYork: Cambridge University Press.

Chapter in Edited Book

Goodman, J., Clarke, S., Langdon, P., & Clarkson, P.J. (2007). Designers’ perceptions of methods of involving and under- standing users. In Universal Access in Human Computer Interaction (Stephanidis, C., Ed.), LNCS Vol. 4554, pp. 126–136. NewYork: Springer.

Proceedings With Publisher Identified

Strickfaden, M., & Heylighen, A. (2007). Exploring the cultural capital of design educators. Proc. Int. Conf. Engineer- ing Design, ICED’07. Paris: The Design Society.

Proceedings With No Publisher Identified

Shu, L., Hansen, H., Gegeckaite, A., Moon, J., & Chan, C. (2006). Case study in biomimetic design: handling and assembly of microparts. Proc. ASME 2006 Int. Design Engineering Technical Conf. & Computers and Information in Engineering Conf., Paper No. DETC2006/DTM-99398, Philadelphia, PA, September 10–13.

Author biographies

Brief author biographies must be provided at the end of each paper; they should not exceed 100 words for each author.

Artificial Intelligence tools

Use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools 

We acknowledge the increasing use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools in the research and writing processes. To ensure transparency, we expect any such use to be declared and described fully to readers, and to comply with our plagiarism policy and best practices regarding citation and acknowledgements. We do not consider artificial intelligence (AI) tools to meet the accountability requirements of authorship, and therefore generative AI tools such as ChatGPT and similar should not be listed as an author on any submitted content. In particular, any use of an AI tool: 

• to generate images within the manuscript should be accompanied by a full description of the process used, and declared clearly in the image caption(s)

• to generate text within the manuscript should be accompanied by a full description of the process used, include appropriate and valid references and citations, and be declared in the manuscript’s Acknowledgements. 

• to analyse or extract insights from data or other materials, for example through the use of text and data mining, should be accompanied by a full description of the process used, including details and appropriate citation of any dataset(s) or other material analysed in all relevant and appropriate areas of the manuscript 

• must not present ideas, words, data, or other material produced by third parties without appropriate acknowledgement or permission

Descriptions of AI processes used should include at minimum the version of the tool/algorithm used, where it can be accessed, any proprietary information relevant to the use of the tool/algorithm, any modifications of the tool made by the researchers (such as the addition of data to a tool’s public corpus), and the date(s) it was used for the purpose(s) described. Any relevant competing interests or potential bias arising as a consequence of the tool/algorithm’s use should be transparently declared and may be discussed in the article.