The following information gives advice and instructions on preparing a chapter or book and submitting it to us.
It is important that you adhere to the information on this page to ensure your manuscript is prepared and submitted to us correctly so that we are able to process and publish the book efficiently and on time.
Please ensure that you also read the specific instructions for your book type in addition to the general instructions below.
Guidelines for specific book types
Edited books
Authored books
Specialist periodical reports
Conference proceedings
Format & layout
- The manuscript should be prepared in Microsoft Word. If you want to use a different application, please contact us to discuss this first.
- Text should use 2.0pt line-spacing.
- Punctuation and spelling must follow standard English practice. The use of either British or American English is acceptable, but must be used consistently.
- Standard IUPAC nomenclature must be used.
- SI units and symbols must be used.
- Abbreviations must be defined at first mention in the chapter and abbreviated thereafter. A list of abbreviations may be provided at the end of the chapter if necessary.
-
Numbers with five or more digits should have spaces every three digits (eg 10 000, 2 000 000 鈥� commas, eg 10,000, should not be used).
Numbers with five or more decimal places should have spaces every three decimal places (eg 3.141 592 62). -
Units should be presented in inverse style (eg m s-1 and not m/s).
Chapter abstract
Each chapter will need a chapter abstract. The abstract is very important in promoting the book content. The abstract:
- should be a single paragraph of 50鈥�200 words, briefly summarising the chapter
- will be present only in the eBook version of the book, and not the print book (with the exception of the Issues in Environment Science and Technology series and some specialist periodical reports)
- must not contain any reference citations, figures or footnotes
Headings
- The chapter text should be divided into sections with headings, as appropriate.
- All main words within a heading should be capitalised.
- No full point is needed at the end of a heading.
- Acknowledgement and reference sections should be at the end of the chapter, and these headings are not numbered.
- Headings should be numbered as follows (where X is the chapter number)*.
- X Chapter Title
- X.1 Main Section Heading
- X.1.1 Sub Section Heading
- X.1.1.1 Lower Sub Section Heading
Images
- Figures should be supplied as TIFF or EPS files, with a resolution of 600 dpi or greater and at a final size of 20 x 12 cm.
- Photographs should be provided at the best resolution available (minimum 600 dpi) as TIFF, PDF or JPEG files.
- Figures should be supplied ready for printing, without further retouching or redrawing.
- Figures should be adequately labelled, and this must remain legible after reduction.
- Information not necessary to the discussion 鈥� for example, solvents or temperatures 鈥� should be omitted from legends.
- Avoid using long, complicated schemes or large figures as these may end up some distance from the textual discussion.
- Over-large schemes or blocks of structures will be reduced to fit the page so you will need to ensure that detail is not lost in reduction 鈥� for example, make sure that lines are thick enough to be visible after reduction, and only label significant atoms in ORTEP-style diagrams.
- Figures must be cited in the text. The recommended location of a figure to appear should be indicated as follows:
[Figure X.1 near here]
- Figures taken from internet sites are not usually of reproducible quality, and may also be copyright protected; the original authors should be contacted for a suitable file and permission.
- Figures should all be submitted as separate files and not embedded in the typescript (with the exception of ChemDraw files).
Chemical structures & schemes
- Structures should be supplied as ChemDraw files.
- Structural formulae and reaction schemes should be named Scheme X.1, X.2, etc, and must be cited in the text*.
- The approximate positions in the text should be clearly indicated as follows:
[Scheme X.2 near here]
- Recommended guidelines for drawing structures as as follows.
- Chain bond angle = 120掳
- Fixed bond angle = 15掳
- Bond length = 0.43 cm or 12.2 pt
- Bond width = 0.016 cm or 0.5 pt
- Bold bond width = 0.056 cm or 1.6 pt
- Double bond space = 20% of bond length
- Stereo bond width = 0.056 cm or 1.6 pt
- Hash spacing = 0.062 cm or 1.8 pt
- Captions/atom labels = Arial, 7 pt
Colour figures
Your contract will state whether the use of colour is allowed in the printed book or not. The use of colour figures will be considered only where scientifically necessary.
In the eBook version, any figures supplied in colour will appear in colour, regardless of whether the printed book is in colour or black and white. However, the same figure captions will be used in both the print and electronic version so refrain from mentioning colour in the caption.
Tables
- Tables should be supplied in Word format.
- Do not supply tables as image files or in Excel or PowerPoint.
- Tables should be single-line spaced.
- Footnotes in tables should be self-contained, labelled with superior lower-case letters, and listed as a block of text beneath the table.
- The table must be cited in the text.
- The approximate location of a table to appear should be indicated as follows:
[Table X.5 near here]
Captions
- All figures and tables should have a caption.
- Items should be numbered as X.1, X.2, etc consecutively throughout the chapter*.
- Items should be referred to by their number in the text. Do not use phrases such as 'in the figure above' as the final placement of items may change during typesetting.
- If a figure has been previously published, the correct copyright information must be included in the caption as stipulated by the copyright holder.
- When writing the caption for a figure, please bear in mind that a figure may be black and white in the print book but appear in the electronic book in colour, so the caption must make sense for both situations. Your contract will state if the use of colour is allowed in the printed book or not.
- A separate list of all figure and table captions should appear at the end of the main text document.
Equations
- These should be set in Mathtype (or Word Equation Editor, where Mathtype is unavailable).
- They should be displayed on a separate line in the main text.
- They should be numbered consecutively throughout each chapter ((X.1), (X.2) etc) in parentheses at the right-hand side of the page*.
- Symbols for variables and physical constants should be italicised.
- Matrices and vectors should appear in bold.
References
- References should be superscripted in the text (for example, one day.36 The next鈥�).
- CASSI Journal abbreviations should be used.
- For authors using EndNote, an EndNote style file is available in Templates & sample documents.
- A list of references in numerical order (following the Vancouver system) should appear at the end of the chapter. References should only appear once in the list. If the same source is cited more than once the reference number should be repeated.
- Books in the Issues in Toxicology series must also include the full article title and the full page range in the reference lists.
- References supplied in the Harvard (author/date) system will not be accepted. Please note that the Advances in Chemistry Education series is an exception to this rule.
Journal articles
A. Name, B. Name and C. Name, Journal Title, year, volume, first page.
When page numbers are not yet known, articles should be cited by DOI (Digital Object Identifier) 鈥� for example, T. J. Hebden, R. R. Schrock, M. K. Takase and P. M眉ller, Chem. Commun., 2012, DOI: 10.1039/C2CC17634C.
For books in the Issues in Toxicology series, you must also include the full article title and the complete page range.
Books
A. Name, B. Name and C. Name, Book Title, Publisher, Publisher's Location, edition, year. For example, S. T. Beckett, Science of Chocolate, 萝莉社, Cambridge, 2000.
If you are referencing published conference proceedings, these should be cited as for a book.
Book chapters
A. Name, in Book Title, ed. Editor Name(s), Publisher, Publisher Location, edition, year, chapter, pages.
The 鈥榚d.鈥� in the example above stands for 鈥榚dited by鈥�. If the book has no editors this should be left out.
Theses
A. Name, PhD thesis, University Name, year.
Lectures, meetings & conferences
A. Name, presented in part at Conference Title, Place, Month, year.
Reference to unpublished material
You should not reference unpublished work without the permission of those who completed the work.
For material accepted for publication, but not yet published: A. Name, Journal Title, in press.
For material submitted for publication, but not yet accepted: A. Name, Journal Title, submitted. For material that has yet to be submitted for publication: A. Name, unpublished work.
Online resources (including databases, websites & wikis)
Name of resource, URL, (accessed date).
Please note the most important information to include is the URL and the date accessed. For example, The Merck Index Online, http://www.rsc.org/Merck-Index/monograph/mono1500000841, (accessed January 2016).
Preprint servers (for example, arXiv)
For example: V. Krstic and M. Glerup, 2006, arXiv:cond-mat/0601513.
Patents
The name of the patentee must be given. For example, A. Name, Br. Pat., 123 456, 2016. B. Name, US Pat., 1 234 567, 2015.
Software
T. Bellander, M. Lewne and B. Brunekreef, GAUSSIAN 3 (Revision B.05), Gaussian Inc., Pittsburgh, PA, 2003.
Electronic supplementary information (ESI)
If you wish to provide additional content to accompany your chapter, for example extra figures, data tables or a video, we can now host this alongside the chapter files online.
Please submit any ESI files along with your manuscript, ensuring that they are clearly marked as ESI. ESI will be made available online at the same time as the ebook is published, or when the print book is published for print-only titles.
Submitting a manuscript
Large File Transfer system
Our Large File Transfer (LFT) system provides a secure means to upload large files.
As soon as you are ready to submit the final and complete manuscript, we'll send you a link to the LFT. This link will have an expiry date so please do let us know if you're not ready to send the typescript in.
All the folders for the book should all be zipped into one complete zip file before uploading. If the zip file exceeds the 1 GB limit then please split into two or send chapter by chapter.
How to create a zip file
In Windows Explorer, navigate to where the folders are that you want to zip; select all the folders. Right-click on the highlighted files, and select 'Send to' followed by 'Compressed (zipped) folder'.
In OSX, navigate to where the folders are that you want to zip; select all the folders. Right-click on the highligted files, and select 'Compress Items'.