All users must be registered to JCAP. Registration gives access to your personal pages for all the roles you play in the journal (author, referee, editor). There you can perform all the actions connected with the stages in the editorial procedure. Registration is easy and free of charge. To register you have to fill in the form on the JCAP home page with the following data:

• Login name
• Password
• First Name
• Last Name
• E-mail
• Institution

If you cannot remember your registration data, please do not register again, just click on "automatic password recovery" on the JCAP home page. You can also update your profile and change login name and password by clicking on "modify my personal data".

The checkbox "Remember my login name on this computer" allows a cookie to be sent to your computer, which spares you from having to log in every time, unless you click on the "logout" button.

For information on the status of your submission please use the "WRITE TO EDITOR" or the "WRITE TO EDITORIAL OFFICE" buttons available at the bottom of the preprint page on your author pages (this link will only be accessible from the JCAP home page once you have submitted your contribution as a corresponding author). Please ALWAYS use these tools instead of normal e-mail so that these messages may be saved in the database and associated to the document they refer to.

On your author pages you can find all your pending preprints divided into sections according to their status:

• Waiting for editor's decision:your submissions that are still being considered for publication. Any revised preprint that you have sent following editor's request can be found here.
• To be revised (major revision): preprints that you have to revise and resubmit from your Author pages.
• To be revisied (minor revision): preprints for which you have to make some small modifications prior to acceptance.
• To proofread: accepted preprints that have been typeset in the JCAP style, and must be proofread by you before publication.
• Appeals against rejection: rejected preprints that the editor has accepted to reconsider for publication.

Furthermore, in the top part of the page there are two navigation bars. The bottom one leads to all archived contributions, which are divided into

• Accepted: accepted preprints that are being typeset and proofread
• Rejected: preprints that have not been accepted for publication
• Withdrawn: preprints withdrawn
• Not suitable: preprints considered as not suitable for the journal
• Published: papers published.

Title, Authors (first and family names), affiliations and e-mail addresses must be clearly indicated.

If you have posted your preprint on the Archives, please enter its ID number in the submission form (in the field "arXiv number").

The abstract should briefly summarize the content of the contribution and must fit in the first page.

Please avoid formulae and references in the title and abstract.

At the time of submission you must characterise your work with a number of keywords selected from the JCAP keyword list. Please indicate these keywords after the abstract.

Please divide the text into sections. Write your work in standard, comprehensible English. Conciseness is strongly encouraged, but clarity and consistency are more important. Short and simple words and sentences are helpful for readers. Please keep jargon and acronyms to a minimum. The Editors will consider whether the content is of sufficient scientific interest compared to the overall length and may recommend ways of shortening the text.

Tables and figures can be used to improve the information in the text.

Particularly large tables and figures or multimedia materials can be submitted as attachments to the contribution, by clicking the "upload file" button after the submission of the main files for the paper has been successfully completed. They will be made available to reviewers but, in case of acceptance, will not be typeset or transformed in any way. Authors are therefore kindly requested to use standard formats to prepare them, so that editors, referees and readers will be able to view them. SISSA and IOP bear no responsibility for uncommon formats, viruses and other problems that may arise.

JCAP uses the sequential numerical system for references in the text. The sequential numbers occur within square brackets, and the reference list at the end of the preprint lists the references in numerical order, not alphabetically. Please write the reference as in the following example:

Manuscripts can be prepared in TeX/LaTeX and will be automatically transformed by the system in PS and PDF files.

Your contribution can be one of the following:

1. a single .tex file
2. a file archive (a zipped or a gzipped tar archive)
   If your preprint includes more than one file the files will have to be archived. In this case it is essential for the master file to be saved in the root (main) directory, while the other files may be included in subdirectories. Please note that if two or more source files have the same extension (i.e. "abc.tex" and "def.tex"), in making the submission you must specify the master file name in the appropriate field, otherwise the submission will fail.
3. a file or archive plus attachments (additional figures, large tables, videos etc.).
   In this case an additional step will be requested of you when you see the upload confirmation screen ("submission report"). Please click on the button "upload file" (at the bottom of the page), and you will be able to recursively upload additional material. These will be viewed as separate file attachments throughout the review procedure and on the paper's publication.

Manuscripts should be preferably prepared in LaTeX using the LaTeX class article or the JCAP style class. Other macro packages are also accepted, but preprints in these formats are inevitably processed more slowly after acceptance. If you are using other LaTeX formats, you should try to use standard packages. Some frequently used macro packages, (i.e.: aastex, elsart, feynman, harvmac, lanlmac, j-phys, phyzzx and revtex), even if old and/or deprecated, are installed at the JCAP site, in addition to the standard TeX inputs. If you are using an unrecognised package, please include it in the submission. Always consider that the submission can be completed only if your file compiles successfully on the JCAP server. If you have used BibTeX, you must include the .bbl file. The .bib file may also help. Figures must be in PostScript format (.eps or .ps).If you use packages like feynmf that require the use of metafont please include the .pk, .tfm and .t1, .t2, ..., files in your archive.

If the document consists of a stand-alone (La)TeX file this alone can be submitted as it is, without compressing it.

Preprints can be submitted only via the Internet by authors previously registered to JCAP. The person making the submission (corresponding author) must be one of the authors. To register to JCAP please complete the appropriate form available on the home page of the Journal. Registration is free (see also General).

In order to submit a new preprint please login to JCAP.

There are two ways to submit a contribution

If you have already posted your paper on the arXiv, then you can submit it to JCAP just by selecting the keywords and sending the arXiv number. This facility only works for TeX/LaTeX files. To submit your contribution you have to follow the following steps:

You are first requested to select the appropriate keywords to characterise your work from a multiple choice menu.

Make sure you select them accurately because the keywords will be used by the software to identify the most suitable editor-in-charge for your submission.

Click here to see the complete list of keywords. You must choose from 2 to 4 keywords (which can be in more than one section) which most accurately describe the subject of your work.

After you have chosen the keywords, press the button "Submit" at the bottom of the page. Should you then realise that your choice was not appropriate, at this stage you can still go back and change them. Requests for changing keywords after the submission has been completed will not be accepted.

You can now select the appropriate archive and fill in the preprint number of your contribution.

On the same page you are also reminded of the keywords you have chosen and can assign a value to each keyword to establish its relevance for the paper. The default value is [100], meaning that all keywords will be considered equally relevant.

Please use the appropriate form to communicate if your paper should be published open access. Authors may request open access publication upon payment of an article publication fee. Click here for further information

Authors are asked to submit a completed Assignment of Copyright form to IOP at the same time as submitting their contributions or after its acceptance. For full information on the Journal's copyright policy and to download the appropriate form, click here.

After filling in the fields described above, please click on "submit". The system will take care of downloading the file(s) together with the full metadata. Please DO NOT double-click: push the upload button just once and wait. The system is processing your files. This can take about one minute or more depending on their size.

After completing the procedure, a submission report will be shown to you with the data of your contribution, the link to the compilation log file and the link where you can upload additional materials (the "upload file" button). If, on the other hand, the submission fails the report will inform you of the error(s) that have occurred. In particular if the (La)TeX compilation fails, please read the .log file, fix the error on your computer and try again. Should you be unable to solve the problem, do contact the Editorial Office.

To upload additional figures, tables and multimedia see below point C.

On your computer, please prepare an archive (tar) compressed (gz) file containing the LaTeX (or TeX) file(s), all the .eps (or .ps) figures, any nonstandard package, and, if you use bibtex, the .bbl file.

You can also submit pdflatex documents, which allows you to use .pdf, .png and .jpg images. To ensure pdflatex compilation you must add \pdfoutput=1 in the line immediately after the \documentclass command as shown in the following example:

\documentclass[11pt,a4paper]{article}
\pdfoutput=1
...

Note that in this case .ps and .eps images are not allowed.

You are first requested to select the appropriate keywords to characterise your work from a multiple choice menu.

Make sure you select them accurately because the keywords will be used by the software to identify the most suitable editor-in-charge for your submission.

Click here to see the complete list of keywords. You must choose from 2 to 4 keywords (which can be in more than one section) which most accurately describe the subject of your work.

After you have chosen the keywords, press the button "Submit" at the bottom of the page. Should you then realise that your choice was not appropriate, at this stage you can still go back and change them. Requests for changing keywords after the submission has been completed will not be accepted.

Please give the following information:

• The title
• The complete list of authors
• The abstract
• The arXiv number (if any)

In "File to process" select the file (tar.gz or .zip) containing your contribution. If there is more than one .tex file you should fill in also the field "TeX/LaTeX master file", for the system to know which file to compile.

On the same page you are also reminded of the keywords you have chosen and can assign a value to each keyword to establish its relevance for the paper. The default value is [100], meaning that all keywords will be considered equally relevant.

Please use the appropriate form to communicate if your paper should be published open access. Authors may request open access publication upon payment of an article publication fee. Click here for further information

Authors are asked to submit a completed Assignment of Copyright form to IOP at the same time as submitting their contributions or after its acceptance. For full information on the Journal's copyright policy and to download the appropriate form, click here.

Finally click on the button "upload file". Please DO NOT double-click: push the upload button just once, and please wait. The system will process your files. This can take about one minute or more depending on their size.

After completing the procedure, a submission report will be shown to you with the data of your contribution, the link to the compilation log file and the link where you can upload additional materials (the "upload file" button). If, on the other hand, the submission fails the report will inform you of the error(s) that have occurred. In particular if the (La)TeX compilation fails, please read the .log file, fix the error on your computer and try again. Should you be unable to solve the problem, do contact the Editorial Office.

Your contribution can be completed with additional tables and figures, multimedia or any other attachment. To submit additional material, please click on "upload file" in the "Submission report" page after successfully uploading the main files for your contribution. After clicking on "upload file" you can repeat the procedure as many times as necessary.

The attachments will be processed along with the main document.

Please make sure that after you have submitted your paper you go to "My author pages (corresponding author)" from the JCAP home page. Click on the appropriate preprint number and scroll down the page. Please check all available data on your submission. Should you need to communicate with the editor or the editorial office, you will find the appropriate e-mail tool. You will be able to communicate with the editor-in-charge in this way at every stage of the editorial procedure.

Revised versions can be submitted only if requested by the editor, contributions must therefore be originally submitted in their final form.

Once accepted, revised preprints will be labelled as "revised". If the revision required is only a minor revision, the preprint, once accepted, will not be labelled as "revised".

The revisions requested by the editor-in-charge are listed in your author's page in "State of preprints" in the sections "To be revised (major revision)" and "To be revised (minor revision)" respectively.

Authors who have been asked to revise their preprints must attend to the requested modifications and provide a new version of their preprints within 90 days at most in case of major revision, 30 days in case of minor revision. If the revised version is not submitted by the deadline the original submission will be withdrawn and any revised version will have to be considered as a new submission.

The revised preprints must be uploaded from the preprint page by clicking "submit revision" or "submit minor revision". You can make your resubmission using the submission via the arXiv or by web upload.

The cover letter with your reply to the referee report is mandatory and should clearly describe all the changes with respect to the previous version, explaining whether or not you have addressed the editor's requests. You will be asked to enter the cover letter in a text area during the upload procedure. Please make sure you save it in a file on your computer before uploading it, as a network failure could cause the resubmission to fail and the cover letter might get lost. Should you forget to enter the cover letter when resubmitting your paper, please connect to your JCAP Author pages and send it with the "WRITE TO EDITOR" e-mail tool.

Contributions are selected, processed and reviewed as fairly as possible, with no discrimination by active scientists in the field. Authors of contributions that have been rejected can appeal and reply to the editor and referee(s). Appeals must be scientifically justified and not polemic. Please send your rebuttal letters by connecting to the preprint page and using the "write to Editorial Office" button.

Although the identity of editors is anonymous, authors can communicate at all times with them through the appropriate "write to editor" button on their pages, or through the Editorial Office.

Errata and addenda can be submitted to JCAP as stand-alone articles following the instructions below.
1) Click on "submit an erratum" or "submit an addendum" in JCAP to see the list of your published articles (as corresponding author).
2) Find the article in question and click on "submit erratum" or "submit addendum".
3) Continue the submission process (see instructions).

The file submitted should be as follows.

File format - LaTeX and pdfLaTeX
Title - "Erratum: Title of the original paper" or "Addendum: Title of the original paper". Different titles will be corrected during the typesetting stage.
Abstract - the author can choose whether or not to include an abstract in the file. Note however that the abstract will not be displayed on the published erratum/addendum's web page.
Keywords - they must not be included.
References - references to specific parts of the original article (equations, figures, tables, etc.) must be consistent with the numbering of its published version.

Please refer to the section File preparation if you need to submit an archive.

Errata and addenda are the only way to modify articles after publication. They are peer-reviewed, typeset and proofread before publication.

A preprint can be withdrawn at any moment during the review process, by clicking on the appropriate button.

A coauthor is a registered user selected by the corresponding author that has access to the author pages without being able to view the correspondence relating to the paper or change the status of the paper.

Select Coauthors

After you have submitted your paper it is possible to select coauthors for your paper. From the JCAP home page select the "my Author pages (corresponding author)" and click on the appropriate preprint number. At the bottom of the page you will find the "Select Coauthor" button which allows you to select and notify the coauthors of the paper.

Please note that in order to be selected as a coauthor the person must already be a registered JCAP user.
If the person you wish to select as a coauthor is not already registered, please ask them to register by completing the appropriate form available on the home page of the Journal. Remember that registration is free (see General for further details).

Switch Corresponding Author

Once a coauthor has been selected it is also possible to change the corresponding author to one of the coauthors using the "Switch Corresponding Author" button.

With this operation, the existing corresponding author becomes a coauthor and the selected coauthor becomes the new corresponding author.

As soon as a new contribution is submitted to JCAP, a preprint number is assigned and the preprint appears in the section "Waiting for editor's decision". The preprint number identifies your contribution throughout the editorial procedure, and is required for any correspondence with the JCAP Editorial Office.

Figure 1. The preprint number

To access the preprint web page of a particular document, you should:

1. Login to the JCAP website at SISSA (http://jcap.sissa.it)
2. Click on "my Author pages"
3. The preprints still in progress are in the "pending papers" page divided into sections according to their status.

The preprint web page for a particular preprint contains all the information about that preprint, except for confidential data (i.e., editor and referee names). From the preprint web page, you can perform the following actions:

• check the status of the preprint and the progress of the editorial procedure
• download the preprint itself in different formats (PS and PDF)
• communicate with the Editor and the Editorial Office
• read and download the report
• submit the revised version of the preprint, if requested by the editor

After the contribution has been accepted and typeset you will be notified and you will be able to:

• view the typeset version of your document (in PDF format)
• proofread the document for mistakes or minor changes before publication. The only corrections acceptable at this stage are the following:
  • layout (i.e., wrong floating of figures or tables),
  • spelling mistakes in words or formulae,
  • wrong cross-references among formulae and text,
  • mistakes or updating in references
• The corrections must be suggested using the web form accessible with the button "send proofs", explaining where they occur in the document (page number, paragraph and line, or equation number) and specifying both the old (wrong) version and the correction.
  Please notice that if the corrections you request are not minor, the paper will be shown to the editor-in-charge for approval. If (s)he reckons that they affect the content significantly, you may be requested to submit a revised version of the preprint for which a new review process will begin. This will be listed in the "Pending revision after proofreading" section.
• 
  
• approve the document for publication (unless there is a request for information from the editorial office).

When you approve the document for publication, or after your requested corrections have been implemented, the document is sent to the IOP Publishing Office for publication. Please note that if there is no feedback from the authors within 7 days from the first proofreading notification, the document is considered suitable for publication as it stands, and is sent to the IOP Publication Office for publication. It will be stored in the "published" section of your JCAP author pages and will also be available on the IOP website.

Note that the Assignment of copyright form must be sent to the IOP Publishing Office before publication.

At the time of publication on the IOP EJ's site, the paper will receive a definitive paper number (fig. 2).

Figure 2. Definitive paper number

Authors are asked to submit a completed Assignment of Copyright form to IOP at the same time as submitting their contributions to JCAP or after its acceptance. There are two different forms depending on whether or not the article is to be published on an Open Access basis. Open Access articles are subject to an Article Processing Charge (see below). The transfer of copyright assumes that all authors have received the final version of the contribution and have agreed to it being submitted to the journal. The copyright assigned to IOP covers all formats and media (including electronic, microform and paper).

In the case of multi-author papers, only one author needs to sign the form but they should have obtained the written consent of all the other authors beforehand.

Regular Assignment of Copyright Form
Copyright of articles is assigned to Institute of Physics Publishing and SISSA Medialab from the date on which the article is accepted for publication. The main features of the copyright transfer are that:

• authors transfer the worldwide copyright of their work to the Institute of Physics Publishing and SISSA Medialab;


• authors automatically retain rights for the future use of their own work;

If you cannot assign copyright, an agreement giving License to Publish will be required instead. Please consult permissions@iop.org if the standard form is not appropriate for your circumstances.

Transfer of copyright allows IOP to participate in the work of the UK's Copyright Licensing Agency (CLA), which licenses copying in the UK. In addition, through bilateral arrangements, it participates in the work of other reproduction rights organizations around the world, principally the Copyright Clearance Center (CCC) in the USA. IOP supports these organizations as they represent a development in copyright protection that is extending to other countries, so that copies beyond those permitted under legislation should be paid for by the copier.

Open Access Assignment of Copyright Form

Open Access articles are published under a creative commons attribution license (more information on this policy can be found here). The creative commons attribution license allows users to re-use the content in any way they like, provided it is accurately attributed. Copyright stays with the agreed copyright owner. Authors who may not own the copyright (e.g. authors in industrial companies or government research establishments) are asked to state this explicitly

Please download, complete and fill in the appropriate form and send it to the following address

JCAP
IOP Publishing Ltd
Temple Circus
Temple Way
BRISTOL BS1 6HG
UK

All research papers published in JCAP are free to view for 30 days from the date of online publication on the IOP website, with subsequent access requiring subscription to the journal. Authors, however, can access all versions of their JCAP papers on their Author pages (in the link "published"). Regrettably, source files cannot be provided.

Authors of papers submitted from January 2013 can opt for Open Access publication. Open Access articles are published under a creative commons attribution license (more information on this policy can be found here). The creative commons attribution license allows users to re-use the content in any way they like, provided it is accurately attributed. Copyright stays with the agreed copyright owner.

How can I make my article Open Access?
You can let the publisher or the editorial office know that you wish to take up this option at any point in the review process.

How much does it cost to make my article Open Access?
The article processing charge for JCAP is:
£1400 (GB Pound); $2220 (USD); €1600 (Euro); excluding VAT where applicable.

The fee covers all publication costs, from the management of peer review to the online hosting, dissemination and long-term archiving of the published paper.

How do I pay?
The corresponding author/paying third party will be sent an invoice once your article has been accepted for publication.

Does it make any difference in the review process or after publication?

Open access articles are treated in the same way as all other articles in the journal; they are peer-reviewed to the same high standard and are processed in the same way. Downloads of open access articles are included in Counter usage statistics and open access articles are indexed by abstracting and indexing services in the same way that regular articles are. The only difference is that they are published under a creative commons attribution license and are available to all on open access terms.

Who should I contact for more information about the copyright statement and Open Access publication fee?
For copyright issues you should contact permissions@iop.org
For the Open Access publication fee you should contact jcap@iop.org