Cover letter

Each manuscript must be accompanied by a cover letter, including statements that:

•    All authors agree with the submission;

•    The work has not been published or submitted for publication elsewhere, either completely or in part, or in another form or language;

•    No materials are reproduced from another source (if there is material in your manuscript which has been reproduced from another source, please change this item to 'there are some materials which are reproduced from other sources. We have gotten authorizations from the copyright holders to use them, and have included these authorizations with this submission');

•    Conflict of Interest Statement

Organization of manuscript

Please use a common word-processing package (such as Microsoft Word) for the manuscript text. Supplementary Information should be supplied as a separate file in word or PDF format, preferably in Word format, while not combined in the manuscript file.

Authors should follow the guidelines outlined below, which also must be followed when submitting files for revisions.

Manuscript should be provided in a single file, prepared using Microsoft Word; figures and tables should be embedded into the file at proper position. The manuscript text file should include the following parts, in order: a title page with author affiliations and contact information (the corresponding author should be identified with an asterisk); the sections required for each content type (see information for different article types) then References, Acknowledgements (optional), Author Contributions, Conflict of Interest statement. Footnotes to the text are not allowed and any such material should be incorporated into the text as parenthetical matter. Manuscript should include continuous line number.

(i)    Title page

The title page should include a succinct title (less than 200 characters); the full names of all authors including their given names; the affiliations (including city, state, country and zip code) of all authors; the official email addresses of all authors, and the full contact details of the corresponding author (including telephone number).

(ii)   Abstract

A brief abstract (maximum 250 words) should state the purpose, basic procedures, main findings and principal conclusions of the study. The abstract should not contain abbreviations or references and should not be structured.

(iii)  Introduction

The Introduction should summarize the rationale for the study and outline pertinent background material. The Introduction should not contain either results or conclusions.

(iv) Experimental       

Experimental should be described in sufficient detail to allow the experimental work to be reproduced in another laboratory, and to leave the reader in no doubt as to how the results were derived.

(vi)  Results and Discussion

The Results should be presented in a logical sequence in the text, tables and figures; repetitive presentation of the same data in different forms should be avoided. The Results should not include material appropriate to the Discussion. The Discussion should not reiterate Results, but rather should consider them in relation to any hypotheses advanced in the Introduction. This may include an evaluation of methodology and the relationship of new information to the existing body of knowledge in that field.

(vii ) Acknowledgements

Authors should acknowledge the source of financial grants and other funding, and declare any industrial links or affiliations. The contribution of colleagues or institutions should also be acknowledged. Personal thanks and thanks to anonymous reviewers should not be included.

(viii) Conflict of interest

A conflict of interest statement must be included for each contributing author. Please see the Conflict of Interest guidelines in the Editorial Policies section for more information and for guidelines on what constitutes a conflict of interest.

(ix)  References

All authors should be listed for papers with up to three authors; for papers with more than three authors, the first only should be listed, followed by et al. Abbreviations for titles of medical periodicals should conform to those used in the latest edition of Index Medicus. The first and last page numbers for each reference should be provided. Abstracts must be identified as such. Papers in press and preprints hosted on a recognized server may be included in the list of references.

Examples:

Journal article, up to three authors:

Lu Min, Zhang Xiaoyu, Zhang Yu, et al. Simultaneous Strontium Doping and Chlorine Surface Passivation Improve Luminescence Intensity and Stability of CsPbI3 Nanocrystals Enabling Efficient Light-Emitting Devices. [J]. Adv. Mater. 2018, 30 (50): 1804691.

Journal article, in press:

Lu Min, Zhang Yu, Wang Shixun, et al. Metal Halide Perovskite Light-Emitting Devices: Promising Technology for Next-Generation Displays. [J]. Adv. Funct. Mater. (in the press).

Book:

Yen W M, Shionoya S, Yamamoto, H. Phosphor Handbook [M]. CRC Press, 2007.

Published conference proceedings:

Smith, Y. (ed.), Conduction band caused by oxygen vacancies in aluminum oxide for resistance random access memory, Proc. 1st National Conference on Porous Sieves, Butterworth-Heinemann, London, 1997.

Dissertation/Thesis

Young, W. R. Effects of Different Tree Species on Soil Properties in Central New York. MSc thesis, Cornell Univ., 1981.

Patent

Pagedas, A. C. Reusable laparoscopic retrieval mechanism. US patent 6,387,102, 2002.

Materials online

Manaster, J. Sloth squeak. Scientific American Blog Network http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/psi-vid/2014/04/09/sloth-squeak (2014).

Online Submission

We only accept manuscript submission via our online manuscript submission system. Before submitting a manuscript, authors are encouraged to consult both our Editorial Policies and the Submission Instructions for our online manuscript submission system. If you have not already done so, please register for an account with our online manuscript system. You will be able to monitor the status of your manuscript online throughout the editorial process.

Submission of Revisions

Authors submitting a revised manuscript after review are asked to include the following:

(1)    A rebuttal letter, indicating point-by-point how you have addressed the comments raised by the reviewers. If you disagree with any of the points raised, please provide adequate justification in your letter.

(2)    A marked-up version of the manuscript that highlights changes made in response to the reviewers' comments in order to aid the Editors and reviewers.

Publication

Publishing Open Access will mean the paper is freely accessible online immediately upon publication. By paying this charge authors are permitted to post the final, published PDF of their article on a website, institutional repository or other free public server, immediately on publication.

Open access articles are published under a CC BY license (Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License). The CC BY license is preferred by many research funding bodies. It allows for maximum dissemination and re-use of open access materials: users are free to share (copy, distribute and transmit) and remix (adapt) the contribution including for commercial purposes, providing they attribute the contribution in the manner specified by the author or licensor (read the full legal code).

Under Creative Commons licenses, authors retain copyright in their work. Authors should note that some funders require papers to be published under a specific license and so should check the funder mandate to ensure compliance.

Proofs

The corresponding author will receive an e-mail containing a URL linking to the proofing site. Proof corrections must be returned within 48 hours of receipt. Failure to do so may result in delayed publication. Extensive changes cannot be made at this stage.