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General

We invite submissions in any of the following forms:

Research Articles of 5000-8000 words which present new research; we welcome contributions applying quantitative or qualitative research methods, or combinations of these; peer reviewed.

Essays of 3000-4500 words which explore current issues, e.g. of policy or theory, in science communication; we aim to stimulate discussion in the science communication communities and such essays may be specifically designed for that purpose but contributors should be prepared to accept possibly critical responses; peer reviewed.

Practice Insights of 3000 to 5000 words which reflect on project evaluations, action/research projects or similar studies focused on practical examples of science communication; peer reviewed.

Book or Conference Reviews of c.1000 words on books, conferences, festivals or other major science communication-related publications and events; not peer reviewed.

Letters of up to 1000 words, may be submitted as responses to published papers or to comment on topical issues; peer reviewed.

Review Articles of up to 8000 words, these provide a comprehensive review of a topic pertinent to science communication. Reviews are specifically commissioned. Authors wishing to propose a review paper should contact the Editorial Office with a topic proposal that outlines the area to be explored and explains why this topic is pertinent to science communication and a review needed; peer reviewed.

JCOM also publishes occasional Commentaries, comprising several perspectives on a shared topic. We welcome proposals for topics and possible contributors but these Commentaries will be commissioned directly by the journal's editors. Contributions to commentaries are not peer reviewed.

Research Article, Essay, Practice Insight and Review Article submissions will be reviewed by the editors, and, if considered potentially suitable for JCOM, also by at least two referees through a double-blind peer review. The decision of the editors and referees will be communicated to the corresponding author.

Registration

All users must be registered in JCOM. Registration gives access to your personal pages for all the roles you have for the journal (author, referee, editor). There you can perform all the actions connected with the different stages of the editorial process. Registration is easy, free of charge and mandatory for all authors of submitted contributions. Click here to register and complete the form with the following data:

Username
Password
First Name
Last Name
E-mail
Institution

If you cannot remember your registration details, please do not register again, just click on the "Forgot your login name?" or "Forgot your password" buttons on the JCOM 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 login every time, unless you click on the "logout" button.

For your information, when you login to the JCOM system for the first time you will be asked to read and accept the Privacy Notice in order to use your pages.

Manuscript preparation

Please note that a template is available for authors to download at the following link:
AUTHOR TEMPLATE

Technical guidelines:

Contributions should be submitted as a docx file. If the submission comprises many files, a compressed archive (.zip, .tar.gz or .tgz) should be uploaded.

Proposals for commentaries should instead be sent to the Editorial Office via

Language:

The first language of the journal is English. Papers may be submitted in other languages, but the editors reserve the right to ask for an English translation if editors or referees in the particular language are not available. If the paper can be processed in the original language and it is accepted, the journal will provide the English translation and will publish the paper in both versions.

Length:

Research Article: 5000-8000 words, abstract (50-100 words) and references included.
Essay: 3000-4500 words, abstract (50-100 words) and references included.
Practice Insight: 3000-5000 words, abstract (50-100 words) and references included.
Book or conference Review: about 1000 words, abstract (50-100 words) and references included.
Letter: up to 1000 words abstract (50-100 words) and references included.
Review Article: up to 8000 words, abstract (50-100 words) and references included.

Font:

Text files should be presented in Arial, 12pt, without page headers or footers, and with minimum variation of typeface, e.g. bold, italic, etc.
Please ensure that your file is formatted to include line numbering.

Paper structure:

Title of the paper: centered at the top of the first page.

Authors: do not insert the name(s) of the author(s) in the docx file. Please do so only in the submission form in the JCOM web page.

Abstract: the abstract should provide the context or background for the study and should state the purpose, basic methodology and procedures, main results and principal conclusions. It should emphasize new and important aspects of the study or observations. Abstracts should be 50-100 words.

Keywords: identify 1-3 keywords from the list in the submission web page that capture the main topics of the paper.

Text: if the submission is in the form of an article it should preferably be divided into sections with the headings such as: Context, Objective, Methods, Results, Discussion and Conclusions.

Notes: only numbered text notes will be accepted; a source must be referred to in the text by a numbered apex;^¹ notes should be placed at the bottom of the page where they are cited; i.e. "The decision was at first left with the scientific community.^² Everyone agreed ..."

Figures: Please number figures sequentially in the text. Figures must be placed at the point where they are referred to in the text and also uploaded as separate files. Figures should be accompanied by a suitable figure legend.

Tables: Please number tables sequentially in the text. Tables must be placed at the point where they are referred to in the text and also uploaded as separate files. Tables should have an appropriate descriptive title.

References: JCOM uses APA citation and reference list style, please refer to the official web page for details and examples: https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/references

JCOM strongly encourages citations to non-traditional research objects available in external repositories. Citations should follow the repository style (i.e, the “cite as” notice) and should include persistent identifiers such as DOIs wherever possible.
Discoverable data citations allow for proper tracking, attribution and recognition apart from increasing discovery & further citations.

Data/Software/Code Availability Statements should be included at the end of articles submitted to JCOM to improve their discoverability.

Submission

After logging in to the home page, you are asked to choose the appropriate option:

- submit a letter
- submit a research article
- submit an essay
- submit a book/conference review
- submit a practice insight (?)
- submit a review article
- submit an article for a Special Issue

In the case of an article submitted for a Special Issue, you will then be asked to select the name of the Special Issue you are submitting to before you proceed with the upload process.

Keyword selection

In order for your article to be correctly categorized and tagged, please make sure you select 1 to 3 keywords from the JCOM keyword list provided in the submission form.

Submission form

Please fill in all the fields in the submission form.

Make sure you fill in the Authors' biography field with a short (max 80 words) descriptive bio for each author.

Please note that in the submission form the abstract must always be in English, even though you may be submitting an article in another language.

The submitted file must be completely anonymous in order to guarantee an effective double-blind review process. Therefore, the submitted manuscript should be purged of all mention of the authors' names or personal details.

In "File to process" select the file (docx) containing your contribution. "If your contribution contains figures and/or attachments, you may:"

a) Prepare an archive (a .zip or a .tar.gz file) containing all your files. If the Word document contains figures, tables, charts etc... they must appear in the .docx file, but please make sure they are also included as separate files (GIF, JPEG, png, pdf, xls/xlsx) in the compressed archive.

If your archive includes more than one .docx, please also fill in the "master file name" field with the name of the manuscript file.

b) In order to upload your additional material, once you have completed the submission, use the "upload attachment" button at the bottom of the page confirming the process has been successful. The button allows you to upload one file at a time. Repeat the procedure for as many times as necessary until you have uploaded all your additional material. The attachments (unless otherwise indicated by the authors) will be reviewed along with the main document but will not be typeset or transformed in any way.

Completing the submission process

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 up to a few minutes, depending on their size.

After completing the procedure, a submission report will be shown to you with the data for your contribution and the link where you can upload additional materials (the "upload attachment" button). If, on the other hand, the submission fails, the report will inform you of the error(s) that have occurred. Should you be unable to complete the process, please contact the Editorial Office for assistance.

Please remember that all authors on the submitted paper's author list must be registered JCOM users. Each and every author of a contribution submitted to JCOM must register to the journal.

After submission

After submitting your article, make sure you go to "My author pages (corresponding author)" from the JCOM 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.

JCOM policy on data files and similar supplementary material

JCOM strongly encourages posting data files and similar supplementary material to publicly-accessible, discipline-specific, community-recognised repositories that comply with the FAIR principles as much as possible.
In cases where a suitable discipline-specific resource does not exist, such files may be submitted to a generalist repository (for example, Zenodo), including any such repositories provided by universities, funders or institutions for their affiliated researchers.
Authors may also wish to explore repository registries such as FAIRsharing.org and re3data.org

Supplementary material should conform to the FAIR principles as much as possible.

Revised versions

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

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

Authors that have been asked to revise their preprints must attend to the requested modifications and provide a new version within the specified deadline. Extensions may be agreed upon by contacting the editor and explaining the reasons for your request of a new deadline.

The revised preprints must be uploaded from the preprint page by clicking "submit revision" or "submit minor revision".

The cover letter with your reply to the referee report is required and should clearly describe all the changes with respect to the previous version, explaining how 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 be lost. Should you forget to enter the cover letter when resubmitting your article, please connect to your JCOM Author pages and send it with the "write to editor" e-mail tool.

After rejection

Contributions are considered, processed and reviewed as fairly as possible. Authors of contributions that have been rejected may appeal for reconsideration 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.

Author inquiries

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

After publication

In case corrections or additions to published papers are needed, authors should contact the Editorial Office.

Withdrawal

Authors may withdraw their contributions at any time during the review process, by clicking on the appropriate button on the preprint status page.

Coauthors

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 article or change the status of the article.

Please remember that all authors on the submitted paper's author list must be registered JCOM users.

After submitting your article you can select the coauthors. On the JCOM home page click on "my Author pages (corresponding author)" and on the preprint number. At the bottom of the page you will find the "Select Coauthor" button which allows you to select and notify the coauthors one by one. Please note that, in order to be selected as a coauthor, the person must already be a registered JCOM user. Information regarding registrations is available in the section General.

Switch Corresponding Author

Once a coauthor has been selected, the corresponding author may choose one of the co-authors to take over his/her role by clicking on the "Switch Corresponding Author" button.

The preprint web page

As soon as a new contribution is submitted to JCOM, 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 JCOM Editorial Office.

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

1. login to the JCOM website at SISSA

2. Click on "my Author pages"

3. Preprints still in progress are in the "pending papers" page, divided into sections according to their status.

The preprint web page contains all the information about that particular 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
communicate with the Editor and with the Editorial Office
read and download the report
submit the revised version of the preprint, if requested by the Editor

After a contribution has been accepted for publication, authors are requested to accept the Open Access and Copyright terms available here.

Only after these terms have been accepted will the article be typeset and sent back to the authors for proofreading.

Contributions are published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence.

Authors retain the right to distribute their author accepted manuscript (AAM) via an institutional and/or subject repository under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence for release staring from the date of publication.

Proofreading and publication

After the contribution has been accepted and typeset, you will be notified and 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

mistakes or updating in references

The corrections must be suggested using the web form accessible via the button "send proofs", explaining where they occur in the document (page number, paragraph and line) and specifying both the old (wrong) version and the correction.

Please note that if the corrections you request are not minor, the article 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 by clicking on the "ready for publication" button on your author pages (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 ready to be published. It will be stored in the "published" section of your JCOM Author pages and will also be available on the JCOM website.

At the time of publication the article will receive a publication ID and a DOI.