It can take between 2 and 6 weeks, from receipt of your article at Cambridge University Press, for proofs to be sent out. If you have still not received a proof after this time please check your spam filter and then contact [email protected] . Your article might not yet have been submitted for production by the journal’s editorial office, there may be a problem with the email address you supplied, your server may be rejecting the pdf proof, or there may be other reasons for the proof being delayed.

Note that for most journals the proofs will only be sent to the corresponding author.

The corresponding author will be sent an email with a link to a proof. A covering note attached to the proof will include full instructions on what you need to do with the proof and a link to the author publishing agreement and copyeditor queries (if appropriate).

You must now check your proof. If you have received a pdf proof, you will need a pdf reader such as Adobe Reader  to view your proof.

The email you have received includes full instructions for proof reading as well the contact details of the relevant proof collator. Please follow these instructions carefully in order to avoid delays in publication.

It is your responsibility to check your proof very carefully at this stage. Errors not found may appear in the published journal. Please ensure you answer all author queries received with your proof. Please note that this is not the time to rewrite large sections of your text or introduce editorially significant changes. Corrections must be confined to typographical errors only.

Some journals asks for corrections to be submitted via an online correction tool. An online correction tool enables corrections to be made directly to the article proof, reducing the risk of ambiguity about corrections and providing a streamlined approach when dealing with corrections from multiple authors or editors. Instructions for using the tool can be found on the correction tool’s home page.

The proof collator coordinates receipt of all author corrections for a particular journal and ensures they are forwarded to the content manager who will arrange for corrections to be implemented. The full contact details of your proof collator will be provided in the instructions you receive with your proof.

The proof notice you receive will give details of your content manager. If you have any queries prior to proof stage then email the journal’s editor whom you have dealt with to date or [email protected] .

Your content manager can help you with any questions you may have about production matters; but if you have any queries about corrections to your proof then please contact the proof collator or content manager.

For the majority of journals, we ask that you mark your corrections electronically by annotating the PDF. Instructions for commenting on PDFs can be found here .

Some journals ask for corrections to be submitted via an online correction tool. Instructions for using the tool can be found on the correction tool’s home page.

Some journals ask for a list of corrections to be submitted via email.

Do not reply to the email proof alert or directly to the typesetter. If you have any queries about your proof please contact the proof collator.

We generally require your corrections within 2 to 4 working days. Please check the instructions sent to you with your proof for the deadline and details of where to send your corrections. It is important that you attend to your proof as soon as possible so that publication is not delayed.

You should return your proof as soon as you can even if this is after the deadline has passed. However, if you are away for any significant time, you should nominate a co-author to check the proof for you, or if this is not possible please email the proof collator to let them know when you may be able to return the proof.

If you have checked your proof carefully, do not wish to make any corrections, and have no author queries to resolve please email the proof collator and tell them you are happy for the proof to be published as it is. Do not forget to send your completed author publishing agreement if you have not already done so.

After an article is accepted, it is copyedited to ensure it conforms to the journal style. Usually the changes are not major. If major changes are required the article will be referred back to the journal’s editors. If you believe that changes have been made which are inaccurate then please clearly mark the corrections you require.

Please email the proof collator who will be able to advise if it is still possible to make the corrections. The proof collator may need to refer this to the content manager for a decision. If your article is published online it will be too late to make any changes. However, if your article is not already published online, we may be able to accept further corrections. It is always best to try to avoid this situation happening by checking your proofs very carefully.

Many Cambridge journals publish individual articles online ahead of issue assignment. Articles are corrected and published online as soon as possible after they are corrected. This means that articles are published more quickly and publication is not delayed by the collation of an issue. Please note that FirstView publication is considered final.

If you are publishing in a journal that allows FirstView publication – through which each article is published online as soon as production is complete – please allow up to 2 weeks for an article to be corrected and uploaded to Cambridge Core. You can check if your article is online by visiting the journal’s home page and clicking on ‘FirstView’. A number of journals do not publish articles under this model. For these journals, articles will not be published until the whole issue is ready. Refer to your journal’s home page for further information.

If you are publishing in a FirstView journal your article will be published online within 2 to 3 weeks of the completion of proof corrections.

The corresponding author will be sent a pdf of the final published version to distribute among co-authors. It is not another proof and you cannot make any further corrections to it. You will also receive another pdf once your article is repaginated and published in an issue.

If your journal is not a FirstView journal then you will receive a pdf of the final published version when the whole issue is published on Cambridge Core.

Cambridge Core is the online content delivery service for Cambridge University Press’s collection of leading journals across the sciences, social sciences and humanities. All visitors to the site can:

• read tables of contents and abstracts for all Cambridge journals
• search the full text of articles
• keep up to date with the latest research in their field

If you are publishing in a FirstView journal your article will be published online within 2 to 3 weeks of the completion of proof corrections. If your journal is not a FirstView journal your article will be published when the whole issue is published on Cambridge Core.

To view the full text of your article you must be a subscriber/registered user. If you are the author of the work please contact [email protected] 

You should follow your usual citation style but include the article’s online publication date and DOI, both of which will remain consistent after the article is repaginated and included in an issue. For example:

Lazerson, Samuel A. and Wiechen, Heinz M. ‘Three-dimensional simulations of magnetic reconnection in a dusty plasma’, Journal of Plasma Physics, doi: 10.1017/S0022377807006861, Published online 27 November 2007.

The published online date establishes the copyright date for your article and the DOI is the unique string of characters which enables other readers to access your article.

The DOI (digital object identifier) is a string of characters which together uniquely identify a published article. The DOI is permanently assigned to an article, and provides a persistent link to current information about that article, including where the article, or information about it, can be found on the Internet. It enables readers to find the article on the Internet irrespective of any subsequent changes in the website structure, in the management responsibility of the journal in which it was first published, or the location of the website on which the journal is hosted.

For more information about DOIs, see www.doi.org  or www.crossref.org. 

To convert a DOI to a web address you need to add a prefix to the DOI. For papers published on Cambridge Core use the url prefix http://dx.doi.org/ 

For example, assuming your paper has DOI as follows:

doi:10.1017/S1368980008002541

Your web address will then be:

You can use the url string within any documents you write, or you can simply copy and paste it into your browser.

The url will lead to the page where your paper is published on Cambridge Core.

Articles published online under the FirstView model are considered published and can be cited and quoted using the DOI as the reference source.

Cambridge University Press has a policy that changes will not be made after publication of an article. The reason is not technical, nor is it a bid to avoid extra administrative time or cost, it is instead a matter of publishing principle that we can only ever release into the public domain a single definitive version of anything we publish. It’s an industry standard practice to maintain the integrity of published content in the digital world. If a significant error is discovered after online publication you should contact the journal’s content manager to decide if there is a need to publish a separate corrigendum/erratum linked to the online version. Please see our policy on post-publication notices.

Please note that simple typographical errors and other aesthetic changes are not considered serious enough to warrant publishing an erratum. We will only issue notices for errors that affect the understanding of the article, the integrity or usability of the paper, or where there is a legal or safety imperative to do so. Please see our policy on post-publication notices.

Each journal has its own policy for including articles in issues and what goes into each issue is usually the journal editor’s decision. Many journals also have large forward loads of articles waiting for inclusion in an issue. Issues are generally compiled about 6 to 8 weeks before the issue cover date. However, online publication confirms that an article is published and it can confidently be cited as such.

When scheduling articles for any particular issue, the journal editor and/or content manager take a number of things into account, including date of submission, date of acceptance, date of online publication, subject balance or theme in an issue, and also length (every journal has a strict annual page budget, and we try to get as close as possible to this). When making the final selection of articles for an issue, date of online publication has to be balanced against all these other factors so may not always be the prime consideration.

The copyright date of an article always matches the date an article was first published. As many of our journals publish online ahead of issue publication (FirstView), individual articles are published online as soon as they are corrected. It can easily happen that an article may not appear in an issue until some months later, possibly the following year. In these cases the journal’s year of publication will not match the copyright year stated, and this is entirely correct.

Some journals publish early versions of articles as soon as they enter the production cycle, allowing articles to be read and cited more quickly. A PDF version of the accepted manuscript (a manuscript that has completed peer review and editorial acceptance, but has not been copyedited or typeset) is published online ahead of FirstView. This is usually published within four days of the manuscript being accepted by Cambridge University Press, and will eventually be replaced with the final copyedited and typeset Version of Record.

The licence that Cambridge University Press applies to this accepted manuscript may be more restrictive than what is agreed for the final Version of Record, due to workflow timings and limitations. Please note:

The final Version of Record will always be published with the licence chosen in your publishing agreement.

Cambridge’s publication of this accepted manuscript in no way restricts authors from also sharing their accepted manuscripts in accordance with our Green Open Access policy.

Each journal has its own policy on providing complimentary copies to authors. If your journal sends out complimentary copies or offprints you should allow 6 to 8 weeks for these to be delivered.

Most journals no longer provide offprints but offer a pdf of the final version instead. Please consult your journal’s author instructions for the current policy.

Please contact our Customer Services department at [email protected]  for assistance.

Yes, email signed pdfs to the name/email address provided on the form.

Traditionally, only hand-signed forms are accepted and we are unable to accept forms that include electronic signatures. However, due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the Press is providing alternative contract signing procedures.

Some journals use Ironclad, a digital contract management platform, to manage author publishing agreements. If you receive an email from “Cambridge University Press via Ironclad” ([email protected]) please follow the instructions and complete an Information Request Form (IRF). The information submitted via the IRF will determine the terms and conditions under which the article will be published. Failure to provide the information promptly may result in publication delays.

Please refer to the author publishing agreement you signed before publication for a full explanation of the rights you retain in your published article. Further details about how you may share different versions of your article are explained in our journals Green Open Access policy.

Authors should always read the particular terms and conditions on the author publishing agreement they submitted. For more information please see our permissions FAQs .