You can format your paper in the way that you choose!

It is not necessary to try to produce pages that look like published journal pages, as the detailed design (typesetting) work will be undertaken by our publisher as part of the production process.

If you would prefer to work from a template, we do provide this for both LaTeX and Word.

We do ask that you consider the readability for referees when formatting your manuscript. For example, please use a reasonable font size (at least 10 points) and line spacing. There is no need for you to include line numbers in your manuscript as these will automatically be added on submission.

Figures and tables should be embedded at the appropriate point within the text, rather than placed at the end of the manuscript.

Papers must be written in English.

Article structure

You should consider the best way to structure your article before you begin writing. If you wish to use a LaTeX template to format your manuscript (this is optional, you are not obliged to do so), then the files are available in a zipped format and Unix tar gzipped format here. Your article should follow the Introduction, Methods, Results and Discussion system, and usually, consist of the following sections:

Title
The title should be concise, informative and meaningful to the whole readership of the journal. It should include key terms to help make it more discoverable when people search online. Please avoid the use of long systemic names and non-standard or obscure abbreviations, acronyms or symbols.
Authors
List all authors' full names and institutions. Authors in our journals have the option to include names in Chinese, Japanese or Korean characters in addition to the English name. The names will be displayed in parentheses after the English name. We recommend you supply ORCID identifiers for all authors to avoid ambiguity. If an author's current address is different from the address where the work was carried out, this should be explained in a footnote.
Keywords
When you submit an article, you will be asked to supply some keywords relevant to your work. If your article is accepted for publication, we will display these keywords in the published article, and they will be used to index your article, helping to make it more discoverable. When choosing keywords, think about the kinds of terms you would use when searching online for related articles.
Abstract
Your abstract should give readers a brief summary of your article. It should concisely describe the contents of your article and include key terms (especially in the first two sentences, to increase search engine discoverability). It should be informative, accessible and not only indicate the general scope of the article but also state the main results obtained and conclusions drawn. The abstract should be complete in itself; it should not contain undefined acronyms/abbreviations, and no table numbers, figure numbers, references or equations should be referred to. It should be suitable for direct inclusion in abstracting services and should not normally be more than 300 words.
Introduction
This should be concise and describe the nature of the problem under investigation and its background. It should also set your work in the context of previous research, citing relevant references. Introductions should expand on highly specialised terms and abbreviations used in the article to make it accessible for readers.
Methods
This section should provide sufficient details of the experiment, simulation, statistical test or analysis carried out to generate the results such that the method can be repeated by another researcher and the results reproduced.
Results
The results section should detail the main findings and outcomes of your study. You should use tables only to improve conciseness or where the information cannot be given satisfactorily in other ways such as histograms or graphs. Tables should be numbered serially and referred to in the text by number (Table 1, etc.). Each table should have an explanatory caption which should be as concise as possible.
Discussion
This should discuss the significance of the results and compare them with previous work using relevant references.
Conclusion
This section should be used to highlight the novelty and significance of the work and any plans for future relevant work.
Acknowledgements
All authors and co-authors are required to disclose any potential conflict(s) of interest when submitting an article (e.g. employment, consulting fees, research contracts, stock ownership, patent licences, honoraria, advisory affiliations, etc.). This information should be included in an acknowledgements section at the end of the manuscript (before the references section). All sources of financial support for the project must also be disclosed in the acknowledgements section. The name of the funding agency and the grant number should be given.

LaTeX guidelines and class file

The text of articles may be submitted in any common variant of TeX including LaTeX2e, REVTeX, AmSTeX, AmSLaTeX and plain TeX (including pdfTeX/pdfLaTeX). A LaTeX2e class file, together with full documentation is available to help authors prepare articles for consideration by our journals. Though it is not necessary to format your paper in this way or to use this class file, using our publisher class file may help to speed the publication of accepted articles. Note that there is an incompatibility between amsmath.sty and iopart.cls. If your article relies on commands in amsmath.sty that are not available in iopart.cls, you may wish to consider using a different class file.

The files are available in a zipped format and Unix tar gzipped format.

Word template

Though it is not necessary to format your paper in this way or to use this file, using this template may help to speed the publication of accepted articles. Please use the most appropriate template (.docx or .doc) for the version of Microsoft Word or Office you are using.

Figures

Carefully chosen and well-prepared figures, such as diagrams and photographs, can greatly enhance your article. You are encouraged to prepare figures that are clear, easy to read and of the best possible quality and resolution.

Figures are converted and sized to the journal template as part of the production process for accepted articles, but they are not normally edited further. It is your responsibility to ensure that the figures you supply are legible and technically correct. Micrographs should include a scale bar of appropriate size, e.g. 1 μm.

Characters should appear as they would be set in the main body of the article.

Figures should be numbered in the order in which they are referred to in the text.

If there is more than one part to a figure (e.g. Figure 1a, Figure 1b etc.), the parts should be identified by a lower-case letter in parentheses close to or within the area of the figure.

File types

For articles prepared using LaTeX2e, please make sure that your figures are all supplied as vector Encapsulated PostScript (EPS) and linked to your main TeX files using appropriate figure inclusion commands such as \includegraphics. For articles prepared using Word, where possible, please also supply all figures as separate graphics files (in addition to being embedded in the text). Our preferred graphics format is EPS. These files can be used directly to give high-quality results, and file sizes are small in comparison with most bitmap forms.

If you are unable to send us images in EPS, we can also accept PDF, WMF, TIFF, GIF, JPEG or BMP.

Vector formats

The advantage of vector graphics is that they give the best possible quality at all output resolutions. In order to get the best possible results, please note the following important points:

Permissions

Note that it is also your responsibility to obtain written permission from the copyright holder for any figures you have reused from elsewhere. This will also include any figures that you created yourself but have previously been published by another publisher, unless that publisher allows you to reuse them without permission under their author rights policy. Check individual publisher's policies for details. Many scientific, technical and medical publishers use RightsLink® to grant permission. Information on how to request permission can usually be found on the website of each publisher. Below are some useful tips for when permission is required.

Authors need permission to reuse any content that is not original, e.g.

Permission needs to be given by the copyright owner if it is:

Figure captions

Captions should be included in the text and not in the graphics files. Figure captions should contain relevant key terms and be self-contained (avoiding acronyms) so that a reader can understand the figure without having to refer to the text. Figure captions should also reference the source of the figure if the figure has been reused from elsewhere.

Colour figures

The use of colour in figures can enhance the effective presentation of results, and there are no restrictions on the use of colour in the online version of your article. However, please note that readers of the journal may download and print out on a black-and-white printer, which may make coloured lines difficult to distinguish.

Please note that because conventional full-colour printing remains an expensive process, we usually ask you (or your institution) to pay the additional costs incurred (i.e. the costs over and above the cost of normal black-on-white reproduction) if you require colour in the printed version of your article. There is no charge for colour in the online version of an article.

If you would like your figures to be reproduced in colour in the printed journal, please let us know by clicking the proper checkbox on the journal