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Preparing your materials

Policy on prior publication

When authors submit manuscripts to this journal, these manuscripts should not be under consideration, accepted for publication or in press within a different journal, book or similar entity, unless explicit permission or agreement has been sought from all entities involved. However, deposition of a preprint on the author’s personal website, in an institutional repository, or in a preprint archive shall not be viewed as prior or duplicate publication. Authors should follow the Cambridge University Press Preprint Policy regarding preprint archives and maintaining the version of record. 

Overleaf

Overleaf is a free online tool for writing and submitting scholarly manuscripts. An Overleaf template is available for this journal, which allows authors to easily comply with the journal’s guidelines. There is also a direct link to submit your manuscript from within the Overleaf authoring environment. Once you have completed writing an article in Overleaf, you can use the "Submit to Journal" button and select the appropriate link to be directed to this journal's manuscript submission system.

Benefits of using Overleaf include:

  • An intuitive interface, in which authors can write in LaTeX or rich text and see a preview of their article typeset in the journal’s style
  • Features enabling collaboration with co-authors (the ability to share, highlight and comment on versions of articles)
  • Sophisticated version control
  • Clean PDF conversion and submission into the journal’s online manuscripts system (supporting materials can also be added during this process)

Overleaf is based on LaTeX but includes a rich text mode. An author writing in Overleaf would need to have some knowledge of LaTeX, but could collaborate through the tool with an author who is not a LaTeX expert. Overleaf’s tutorial pages include a two minute video and an introduction to LaTeX course, and Overleaf also provides support for authors using the tool.


Preparing your article for submission

We recommend that you try the Programmable Materials template in Overleaf, which allows authors to easily comply with the journal's guidelines whilst submitting to ScholarOne. 

You can also contact Overleaf for general support using the tool.

If you would prefer not to use Overleaf, papers can also be prepared in either Microsoft Word or LaTeX format, and initially should have figures and tables embedded. If the paper is prepared in Word, the doc file can be uploaded during submission, and the submission system will generate a PDF for review purposes. 

If the paper is prepared in LaTeX, the author must generate a PDF and upload this during the submission process. Authors should use the CUP-JNL-WTC.cls style file and supporting files provided below:

LaTeX Template files for submission (zip file).

The LATEX source file should not initially be submitted alongside the PDF, but upon provisional acceptance of the paper, the LATEX source file, along with individual figure files and a PDF of the final version, will need to be submitted for typesetting purposes. See the publication process after acceptance page for further information

Abstract and Keywords preparation

Each article should contain an abstract of not more than 250 words. The Abstract should tell the reader about the content of the article and should be standalone text without any references, to allow it to be listed independently of the article. The Abstract is not the place for the argument, explanation or editorializing. The Abstract should be added to the online submission system in the freetext box provided. The Abstract should also be included in the main PDF of the submitted article. Further guidance on writing an effective abstract can be found here.

Authors should not enter keywords on the manuscript, as these must be chosen by the author during the online submission process and will then be added during the production process. For further details, please see the submitting your materials page.

Equations, Tables and Artwork

Equations

Equations should be numbered consecutively as (1), (2), (3) etc. and, where necessary, referred to as such in the text. If you are preparing your paper in Word, equations can be set using MathType or Equation Editor, but should not be embedded as figures.

Tables

Tables should be headed by a self-explanatory title and referred to consecutively as Table 1 etc.

Figures

There is no charge for colour figures. For review purposes figures should be embedded within the manuscript. Upon final acceptance, however, individual figure files will be required for production. 

Each figure should be accompanied by a single caption, to appear beneath, and must be cited in the text. Figures should appear in the order in which they are first mentioned in the text and figure files must be named accordingly to assist the production process (and numbering of figures should continue through any appendices). Failure to follow figure guidelines may result in a request for resupply and a subsequent delay in the production process.

For further information, please consult the Cambridge Journals artwork guide

Citations and References 

References and citations should be formatted correctly in journal style when the article is submitted to the journal but formatting is not grounds for rejection at the submitting phase.

References in text should follow the CitationA citation style. Find here Endnote style by searching CambridgeA.

Footnotes

Footnotes should be numbered using roman numerals.

Acknowledgements 

You may acknowledge individuals or organisations that provided advice, support (non-financial). Formal financial support and funding should be listed in the Financial Support section (see below).

Required statements

Author Contributions

A short statement should be provided indicating how each author contributed to the work. For example: AB and CD conceived and designed the study. CD and EF conducted data gathering. GH performed statistical analyses. AB, EF and GH wrote the article.

Financial Support

Please provide details of the sources of financial support for all authors, including grant numbers.

EXAMPLE:  "This work was supported by the National Science Foundation (grant number XXXXXXX)".

Multiple grant numbers should be separated by a comma and space, and where research was funded by more than one agency the different agencies should be separated by a semi-colon, with 'and' before the final funder. Grants held by different authors should be identified as belonging to individual authors by the authors' initials.

EXAMPLE:  "This work was supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (A.B., grant numbers XXXX, YYYY), (C.D., grant number ZZZZ); the Natural Environment Research Council (E.F., grant number FFFF); and the Australian Research Council (A.B., grant number GGGG), (E.F., grant number HHHH)".

Where no specific funding has been provided for research, please provide the following statement:

 "This research received no specific grant from any funding agency, commercial or not-for-profit sectors."

Competing Interests Declarations

All authors must include a competing interests declaration in their manuscript above the references. This declaration will be subject to editorial review and may 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

Articles should contain sufficient information to allow others to understand, verify and replicate new findings. Therefore we encourage authors to include a Data Availability Statement in their manuscript. This statement should include information on where resources such as data, materials, protocols and software code can be accessed. If data sharing is not applicable, authors should state that ‘Data sharing is not applicable to this article as no new data were created or analysed in this study.’

For further information on the Research Transparency policy for Programmable Materials please view the full policy here.

Ethical Standards (only if applicable)

All Cambridge journals adhere to a set of Ethical Standards, as laid out on our Publishing Ethics page.

Where research involves human and/or animal experimentation, the following statements should be included:

"The authors assert that all procedures contributing to this work comply with the ethical standards of the relevant national and institutional committees on human experimentation and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2008." and "The authors assert that all procedures contributing to this work comply with the ethical standards of the relevant national and institutional guides on the care and use of laboratory animals."

English language editing services 

Authors, particularly those whose first language is not English, may wish to have their English-language manuscripts checked by a native speaker before submission. This step is optional, but may help to ensure that the academic content of the paper is fully understood by the Editor and any reviewers.  

In order to help prospective authors to prepare for submission and to reach their publication goals, Cambridge University Press offers a range of high-quality manuscript preparation services, including language editing. You can find out more on our language services page.

Please note that the use of any of these services is voluntary, and at the author's own expense. Use of these services does not guarantee that the manuscript will be accepted for publication, nor does it restrict the author to submitting to a Cambridge-published journal. 

Seeking permission for copyrighted material

If your article contains any material in which you do not own copyright, including figures, charts, tables, photographs or excerpts of text, you must obtain permission from the copyright holder to reuse that material. As the author it is your responsibility to obtain this permission and pay any related fees, and you will need to send us a copy of each permission statement at acceptance.

For information on how to obtain permission, please refer to this guidance document.

Ethics and Transparency Policy requirements

Please refer to Programmable Materials' Publishing Ethics and Research Transparency policies when preparing your manuscript.

Authorship and contributorship

All authors listed on any papers submitted to this journal must be in agreement that the authors listed would all be considered authors according to disciplinary norms, and that no authors who would reasonably be considered an author have been excluded. For further details on this journal’s authorship policy, please see this journal's publishing ethics policies.

During the submission process, the Corresponding Author must declare that they have the authority of all co-authors for the submission. The Corresponding Author will be asked this question when they submit the article for review.

Author affiliations

Author affiliations should represent the institution(s) at which the research presented was conducted and/or supported and/or approved. For non-research content, any affiliations should represent the institution(s) with which each author is currently affiliated. 

For more information, please see our author affiliation policy and author affiliation FAQs.

ORCID

We require all corresponding authors to identify themselves using ORCID when submitting a manuscript to this journal. ORCID provides a unique identifier for researchers and, through integration with key research workflows such as manuscript submission and grant applications, provides the following benefits:

  • Discoverability: ORCID increases the discoverability of your publications, by enabling smarter publisher systems and by helping readers to reliably find work that you have authored.
  • Convenience: As more organisations use ORCID, providing your iD or using it to register for services will automatically link activities to your ORCID record, and will enable you to share this information with other systems and platforms you use, saving you re-keying information multiple times.
  • Keeping track: Your ORCID record is a neat place to store and (if you choose) share validated information about your research activities and affiliations.

See our ORCID FAQs for more information.

If you don’t already have an iD, you will need to create one if you decide to submit a manuscript to this journal. You can register for one directly from your user account on ScholarOne, or alternatively via https://ORCID.org/register.

If you already have an iD, please use this when submitting your manuscript, either by linking it to your ScholarOne account, or by supplying it during submission using the "Associate your existing ORCID iD" button.

ORCIDs can also be used if authors wish to communicate to readers up-to-date information about how they wish to be addressed or referred to (for example, they wish to include pronouns, additional titles, honorifics, name variations, etc.) alongside their published articles. We encourage authors to make use of the ORCID profile’s “Published Name” field for this purpose. This is entirely optional for authors who wish to communicate such information in connection with their article. Please note that this method is not currently recommended for author name changes: see Cambridge’s author name change policy if you want to change your name on an already published article. See our ORCID FAQs for more information. 

Supplementary materials

Material that is not essential to understanding or supporting a manuscript, but which may nonetheless be relevant or interesting to readers, may be submitted as supplementary material. Supplementary material will be published online alongside your article, but will not be published in the pages of the journal. Types of supplementary material may include, but are not limited to, appendices, additional tables or figures, datasets, videos, and sound files.

Supplementary materials will not be typeset or copyedited, so should be supplied exactly as they are to appear online. Please see our general guidance on supplementary materials for further information.

Where relevant we encourage authors to publish additional qualitative or quantitative research outputs in an appropriate repository, and cite these in manuscripts.

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.