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General


All users must be registered to JINST. Registration gives access to your personal pages for all the roles you play in the journal (author, coauthor, 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 JINST home page with the following data:

  • Username
  • Password
  • First Name
  • Last Name
  • E-mail
  • Institution

Click here to register.

You can sign in to JINST either by using your JINST username and password or via your ORCID account. If you sign in via your ORCID account, you will be requested to enter your JINST username and password only the first time in order to correctly connect your ORCID and JINST accounts.

If you are registered to JINST but cannot remember your username and password, please do not register again, just click on "Forgot your username?"/"Forgot your password?" on the JINST home page.

After signing in you can update your profile, change username and password and connect your JINST account to your ORCID account by clicking on "modify my personal data".

ORCID iDs are 16-digit numbers which will usually be presented in the form of a web address that leads to the researcher's profile, for example http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8534-5985. They provide a persistent digital identifier that distinguishes you from every other researcher. Associating your ORCID iD to your JINST profile helps JINST to keep your personal records correctly updated for all the roles you play in the Journal (author, editor, referee, ...).

For information on the status of your submission please use the "WRITE TO EDITOR" and 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 JINST home page once you have submitted your contribution as a corresponding author).Please ALWAYS use these tools instead of normal e-mail. These messages will be processed more quickly, and will be saved in the database and associated to the document they refer to.

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

  • Under review: preprints that are in the review process, for which you have to await the editor's decision. The revised papers that you have submitted following editor's request can also be found here.
  • To be revised (major revision): preprints that you have to revise and resubmit from your Author pages.
  • To be revised (minor revision): preprints for which you have to make some small modifications prior to acceptance. The contribution will not be labelled as "revised" when it is published.
  • To proof read: accepted preprints that have been typeset in the JINST style, and must be proof-read 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 regular papers and technical reports 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 and technical reports published.

Manuscript preparation


General information

Authors take full responsibility for the content they submit for publication which must abide to the journal ethical standards. In particular authors have a responsibility to fully acknowledge the work of others, disclosing their sources clearly and thoroughly in the manuscript. Authors should also be aware of the possible shortcomings of AI generated material in this respect, and are thus required to declare and properly reference in detail the use of AI assisted technology in the preparation of the manuscript, either in the methods or acknowledgments section.

Title, authors (full first and last names), affiliations and the corresponding author's e-mail address must be clearly indicated, we recommend the use of the ASCII character set in order to improve the compatibility with other systems

If the article is authored by a collaboration, its official email address should be provided, if available, instead of the corresponding author's.

If you have posted your preprint on the ArXiV, 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.

We suggest to include line numbering in your manuscript as it would be very helpful for editors and reviewers during the peer review stage and for typesetters in the proofreading stage.

At the time of submission you must characterize your work with a number of keywords selected, by order of preference or relevance, from the JINST keyword list. Please indicate these keywords after the abstract.

If your article is authored by a collaboration, please do not insert the whole author list in the article metadata when submitting the paper, but just the Collaboration name. Moreover, please provide the Editorial office with the Collaboration logo and institutional email, if needed.


Text and style

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 Journal will not make language corrections; preprints submitted with poor English will be returned to the authors and publication will be delayed until they can provide a new version. 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, figures and multimedia

Tables and figures can be used to improve the information in the text. Tables and figures should be referred to in the text and always have a caption describing their content.

If you include pictures or other material that has already been published elsewhere, please obtain permission from the copyright owner(s) before incorporating it in your article.

Particularly large tables and figures or multimedia materials can be submitted as attachments to the contribution, by clicking the "upload attachment" button after the submission of the main files for the preprint has been successfully completed. They will undergo the same review process but, in case of acceptance, will not be typeset or transformed in any way. Authors are therefore advised to use standard formats to prepare them, so that Editors, Referees and Readers will be able to read them. SISSA Medialab and IOP bear no responsibility for uncommon formats, viruses and other problems that may arise.


References

JINST 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:

S. Kachru and E. Silverstein, 4-d conformal theories and strings on orbifolds,
Phys. Rev. Lett. 80 (1998) 4855
[hep-th/9802183]

Please refer to the author manual and to JHEP.bst for finer details.

JINST strongly encourages citations to data files and similar supplementary material 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.
Correct 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 JINST to improve their discoverability.

Author Manual

In order to make JINST papers as homogeneous as possible, authors are invited to follow the instructions described in the manual Instructions for authors: jinst-author-manual.pdf


File preparation


The following instructions should be followed for preparing papers/technical reports/proceedings contributions.

Manuscripts can be prepared in TeX/LaTeX (preferred format) or MS-Word. Source files submitted will be automatically transformed by the system in PDF files.

TeX and LaTeX

Please note all new submissions will be processed using TeXLive 2023. The most visible differences with previous distributions of LaTeX are:

  • UTF-8 is the default file encoding (since TexLive 2018) which means improved support for special characters and characters with accents.
  • Filenames are now case insensitive. If your tex file includes a figure Figure.png but in your submitted zip/tar.gz the file is called figure.png the compliation will not fail due to the file not found.
It is always better use the correct filename in your tex file when including figures. Please note that if your article was first submitted before 13th May 2020 it is processed using TexLive 2016 and the file name is case sensitive.

Your contribution can be one of the following:

  1. a single (La)TeX file
    which can be submitted with no need of compressing it.
  2. a file archive (.zip, .tar.gz, .tgz)
    If your preprint includes more than one file, the files have to be uploaded as an archive. In this case it is essential for the master file to be saved in the root (main) directory of the archive. The other files may be in subdirectories. If your archive includes more than one .tex file, please make sure you specify the name of the tex master file in the appropriate field on the submission page 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. Please click on the button "upload attachment" (at the bottom of the page), and you will be able to upload additional material. These will be viewed as separate file attachments throughout the review procedure and on the published article's web page.

Manuscripts should be preferably prepared in LaTeX in one of the following ways:

Preprints preared with different styles are also accepted, but are inevitably processed more slowly after acceptance. In any case, you should try to use standard packages. Please see the next section for some general tips. Some infrequently 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 JINST site in addition to the standard TeX distribution. 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 JINST server.

Please include the .bbl file if you have used BibTeX. Please include the .pk, .tfm and .t1, .t2, ..., files in your archive if you use packages (for example feynmf) that require the use of metafont. Please include the .gls file if you use the glossaries package.

You can include graphic files (via the graphicx package) but please be careful with filenames.

  • Figure file names must not contain spaces.
  • Case sensitivity is important. It is always better use the correct filename in your tex file when including figures. If your tex file includes a figure Figure.png in your submitted zip/tar.gz the file should also be called Figure.png.
    (Since 13th May 2020 JINST uses TexLive 2020 which is case insensitive however articles submitted before 13th May 2020 continue to use TexLive 2016 and the file name is case sensitive).

Important note: the class JINST.cls is obsolete. Please do not use it and refer to the documentation for the jinstpub.sty package.

LaTeX tips

We often see the same errors perpetrated by habit and copy-paste techniques. Here are some tips that we hope will help you to write better LaTeX.

Please avoid common mistakes. A very nice and short document with such errors can be read with texdoc l2tabuen (or here). Please read it.

Keep in mind that the typesetting issues that you encounter have probably already been solved by someone else. Look for existing solutions before reinventing the wheel (sub-equations, proofs environments, small inline matrices,...). If your search does not yield results, feel free to ask to any TeX user group. They are helpful and good. Also check out StackExchange.

Please leave margins, font, styling of sections, captions, references alone (i.e. no "\caption{\small ...}" or "\section{\it ...}" etc.).

Try to keep the preamble as simple and clean as possible: do not copy paste from other tex files huge macro lists that you do not use, that overwrite already existing commands and that redefine the same thing multiple times.

The same goes for packages: do not load packages that you do not use. Especially, do not use obsolete packages (if in doubt, comment the \usepackage and see what happens).

Do not use \def.

Do not use \def.

The above is not an error, it's a repetition: do not use \def!

Be aware that certain command have arguments, but other are switches: they change something but do not have arguments (e.g. do not confuse \textbf{} with {\bfseries}). See the last tip.

You must know these packages: amsmath, hyperref, graphicx.

Please read the compilation log. Certains LaTeX IDE/editors may hide it. Read the warnings but especially the errors.

"Encoding" is a complex subject. If in doubt, stick to us-ascii or utf-8.

Read the Manual. If all else fails, please read some documentation on TeX/LaTeX. The very minimum should be A short introduction to LaTeX2e. Other good starting points might be wikipedia and overleaf documentation.

MS-Word

Your contribution can be one of the following:

  1. a single .docx file
    Please note that if the .docx file contains figures, you should submit these also (see point 2).
  2. a file archive (.zip)
    If your preprint includes more than one file, the files have to be uploaded as an archive. In this case it is essential for the master file to be saved in the root (main) directory of the archive. The other files may be in subdirectories. Please note that if two or more source files have the same extension (i.e. "File1.docx" and "File2.docx"), in making the submission you must specify the master file name in the appropriate field, otherwise the submission will fail. If the document contains figures they must appear in the .docx file. Make sure they are also included as separate files (PNG, JPEG, GIF) in the compressed archive.
  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. Please click on the button "upload attachment" (at the bottom of the page), and you will be able to upload additional material. These will be viewed as separate file attachments throughout the review procedure and after publication.

For documents prepared in Microsoft Word for Windows or Macintosh, please use only True Type fonts (also for Greek letters and mathematical symbols). Equations must be prepared using Equation Editor, version 1.0, 2.0, 3.0 or MathType.

We also provide a sample MS-Word article in JINST style (jinst-word-sample.docx).

Archive preparation (.tar.gz)

Put all the files that make up your manuscript in a folder. The folder is called paper in our example. To create a .tar.gz file issue these commands from a terminal:


$ cd paper/
$ tar -cvzf article.tar.gz *

You will find the file article.tar.gz inside the folder.


Submission


Preprints can be submitted only via the Internet by authors previously registered to JINST . The person making the submission (corresponding author) must be one of the authors. To register to JINST please complete the appropriate form available on the home page of the Journal. Registration is free (see also General). Please note that submitting a preprint implies the acceptance of the copyright agreement.

You can submit two different types of contributions:

  • Papers
  • Technical reports

JINST has a regular papers section and a technical reports section which share the same Advisory and Editorial Boards.

If you connect to the JINST website at SISSA Medialab you will find the following links:

  • submit a paper - this is for regular research paper submissions that will be published in the Papers section of the journal on the IOP Publishing website.

    • submit a technical report - this is for technical report submissions, reports on innovative technical achievements of interest to the community

    • submit a proceedings contribution - this is to be used exclusively for conferences that have announced to participants the publication of proceedings in JINST.


The submission procedure

The procedure for submitting papers and technical reports is the same. After logging in to JINST , you are asked to choose between papers and technical reports at the beginning of the submission procedure, by clicking on the appropriate link on the JINST home page in the section "Submit":

  • submit a paper
  • submit a technical report
  • submit a proceedings contribution

There are two ways to make a submission


A) Submission from the arXiv

If you have already posted your preprint on the arXiv, you can submit it to JINST just by selecting the keywords and sending the arXiv reference number. This submission mode only works for TeX/LaTeX files. To submit your contribution, please follow the steps below:


A.1) Keyword selection

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

Click here to see the complete list of keywords. Please choose from 2 to 4 keywords (they can be taken from more than one section), that most accurately describe the subject of your work.

After you have chosen your keywords, press the "Submit" button 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 make a change. Requests for changing keywords after the submission has been completed will not be accepted.


A.2) Fill in the submission form

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

In the following field you can specify the TeX master file name, which is necessary if more than one .tex file are included in the article archive.

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.

If applicable, please also use this form to communicate if your paper should be published open access according to one of the listed items. You may request open access publication upon payment of an article publication fee by selecting the options "Open access paid by Author". Click here for further information

A.3) Completing the submission process

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 up to a few minutes, 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 attachment" 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.


B) Submission via web upload

B.1) Preparation of the archive

On your computer, please prepare a compressed archive (a .tar.gz or a .zip file) containing all necessary LaTeX (or TeX) files, all figures in the formats metioned above, any nonstandard package, and, if you use bibtex, a single .bbl file. If you use MS Word prepare your .zip archive containing the full text with figures and all the figures in separate files. (See also Preparation of the file)

B.2) Keyword selection

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

Click here to see the complete list of keywords. Please choose from 2 to 4 keywords (they can be taken from more than one section), that most accurately describe the subject of your work.

After you have chosen your keywords, press the "Submit" button 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 make a change. Requests for changing keywords after the submission has been completed will not be accepted.


B.3) Fill in the submission form

Please give the following information:

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

and select the format of your contribution (TeX or docx).

In "Enter the file to process" put the file (tar.gz or .zip) containing your contribution. If there is more than one .tex file you should also fill in the field "Master file name", for the software to know which is the main file for the article. The indicated master file name must include the appropriate extension (.tex or .docx), which must match the extension of the actual master file.

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 preprint. The default value is [100], meaning that all keywords will be considered equally relevant.

If applicable, please also use this form to communicate if your paper should be published open access according to one of the listed items. You may request open access publication upon payment of an article publication fee by selecting the options "Open access paid by Author". Click here for further information

B.4) Completing the submission process

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 up to a few minutes, 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 attachment" 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.


C) Submission of the additional materials

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

The attachments will be processed along with the main document.


D) Correspondence with the editor and the Editorial Office

If you wish to communicate with the editor-in-charge of your preprint or with the Editorial Office after you have submitted your preprint, please go to "my Author pages (corresponding author)" from the JINST home page. Click on the appropriate preprint number and scroll down the page. You will find, amongst others, the "write to editor" and "write to the editorial office" buttons. You will be able to communicate in this way at every stage of the editorial procedure. Please do so for the correspondence to be stored in the system.


JINST policy on data files and similar supplementary material

JINST strongly encourages 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 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 are listed in your author page in "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 tend to the requested modifications. The time frame for resubmitting major revisions is 4 weeks, while for minor revisions it is 2 weeks. After 3 weeks and 1 week respectively the author will receive a message from the Editorial Office, reminding him/her of the deadline. 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. For proceedings contributions, please liase with the editor-in-charge about the desired schedule for publication.

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

The cover letter is mandatory and should clearly describe all the changes with respect to the previous version and explain whether or not you have addressed the editor's requests. You will be asked to enter the cover letter in a text area at the beginning of the upload procedure (i.e. before uploading the file for the revised version). 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 preprint, please connect to your JINST Author pages and send it with the "WRITE TO EDITOR" e-mail tool.


After rejection

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.


Author inquiries and appeals

In the case of regular papers and technical reports, 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. For proceedings contributions, the editor is not a regular member of the JINST Editorial Board, but rather a member of the Organizing Committee and is therefore known to the authors.


Addenda/Errata

Errata and addenda can be submitted to JINST as stand-alone articles following the instructions below.
1) Click on "submit an erratum" or "submit an addendum" in JINST 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 or MS-Word
Title - "Erratum: Title of the original article" or "Addendum: Title of the original article". Different titles will be corrected during the typesetting stage.
Authors - they must be the same as the original article.
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 and archive 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 being published open access. Please inform the Editorial Office if the original article was a proceedings contribution, or part of a special issue, as the paper must be tagged accordingly.


Papers evaluated as technical reports

Editors evaluating a submitted work may decide that it is not suitable for publication as a regular paper. However, if it contains very relevant technical information they can suggest that the author(s) publish it as a technical report instead. If the author agrees, the Editorial Office will take care of the conversion from Paper to Technical Report.

Withdraw

A preprint can be withdrawn during the review process by clicking on the relevant button or, if not available, upon request to the editorial office.


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 preprint or change the status of the preprint.

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).

Coauthors are encouraged to update their JINST profile with their ORCID iD as a way to avoid cases of homonimy and incorrect attributions of published papers. In order to update their JINST with their ORCID iD, coauthors can use the link "modify my personal pages", that is available on the JINST home page after signing in.

Select Coauthors

After submission you can select your preprint's coauthors by clicking "Select Coauthor" at the bottom of the preprint web page.

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.



The preprint web page


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

The preprint number
Figure 1. The preprint number

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

  1. Log in to the JINST website at SISSA Medialab
  2. Click on "my Author pages (corresponding author)" or "My coauthor 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 (PDF)
  • communicate with the Editorial Office, the Editor and the Scientific Director (corresponding author only)
  • read and download the report
  • submit the revised version for the preprint, if requested by the Editor (corresponding author only)
  • withdraw the preprint (corresponding author only).

Proof-reading and publication


After your 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)
  • proof-read 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 truly minor, the preprint will be shown to the editor-in-charge for approval. If they feel that the corrections 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 of 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 proof-reading 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 JINST author pages and will also be available on the IOP website.

After acceptance of your paper you will be contacted by the IoP Publishing Office to fill in and sign an Assignment of Copyright before publication.

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

Definitive paper number
Figure 2. Definitive paper number

Copyright and Licence information


The submitting author will be asked to complete a copyright form online, on behalf of themselves and their co-authors, once their article has been accepted. There are two different options, depending on whether the article is to be published on a gold open access basis or on a subscription basis.

In the case of multi-author papers, only one author needs to complete the form, but they should have obtained the written consent of all the other authors beforehand. By signing the copyright form, it is assumed that all authors have received the final version of the contribution, have agreed to it being submitted to the journal and agree to the terms of the copyright form.

If your institution/employer owns the copyright to your manuscript, please ensure that they agree to the terms of the copyright form and that the full legal name of your institution/employer is inserted at the top of the form. If an authorised signatory of your institution/employer needs to sign the form, then they should do so at the bottom of the form along with the author who must also sign the form.

Articles to be published on a subscription basis

For articles to be published on a subscription basis, ownership of copyright is transferred to the 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 manuscript to the Institute of Physics Publishing and SISSA Medialab;

  • authors are granted back certain specific rights under the copyright form;

Transfer of copyright allows IOP Publishing 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 Publishing supports these organizations as they represent a development in copyright protection that is extending to other countries, so that copying beyond those permitted under legislation should be paid for by the copier.

Articles to be published on a gold open access basis

Gold open access articles are subject to an Article Processing Charge (see below).

For gold open access articles, the author grants a non-exclusive licence to the Institute of Physics Publishing and SISSA Medialab, from the date on which the article is accepted for publication. This means that ownership of copyright is retained by the authors (or if your institution/employer owns the copyright then your institution/employer).

Gold open access articles are published under a Creative Commons attribution license (CC-BY 4.0) (more information on this licence can be found here). The Creative Commons attribution license allows anyone to re-use the content in any way they like, provided it is accurately attributed and the terms of the licence are adhered to.

CERN research articles

Please note that in the case of research articles where the copyright is owned by CERN, authors need to notify us of this on submission. Authors will not need to sign the copyright form, as CERN research articles are covered by a collective license agreement between CERN, SISSA Medialab and the Institute of Physics Publishing. Proceeding contributions, on the other hand, are not covered by this agreement and their authors need to sign the standard copyright form.

Please email jinst@ioppublishing.org if you have any questions about the form.


Access to your paper


Authors can access all versions of their JINST papers on their Author pages (in the link "published"). If your article was published years ago, the pdf file might be not available onymore. In this case, please write jinst-eo@jinst.sissa.it to request it.Regrettably, source files cannot be provided.

JINST encourages authors to submit their accepted manuscript to arXiv at any time provided that the 'non-exclusive licence to distribute' is granted to arxiv.org. We recommend the inclusion of the DOI when citing the published manuscript. The publisher's current authors rights policy can be found here

Please check the Journal Finder ChronosHub for more information about JINST's different copyright/licence options, the relevant APC and any Transformative Agreements in place with your funder/institution.

Articles can be published on open access terms. Gold open access articles are published under a Creative Commons attribution license (CC BY 4.0). More information on this licence can be found here. The Creative Commons attribution license allows anyone to re-use the content in any way they like, provided it is accurately attributed and the terms of the licence are adhered to. Copyright stays with the agreed copyright owner (usually the authors).

How can I have my article Open Access?
There are 3 options:

  • I wish my article to be published on open access terms. The publication fee will be paid by the authors after acceptance.

  • My article is eligible for Open Access - Transformative Agreement

  • In my article at least one coauthor is affiliated to CERN.
Choose the appropriate option while submitting your article or change your article’s settings at any time before acceptance by using the button “Open Access Settings” on your preprint web page.

What is the option “I wish my article to be published on open access terms. [...]”?
Authors can opt to have their article published Open Access upon payment of an Article Processing Charge (APC) while submitting their article to the Journal or, during the review process, by using the “Open Access Settings” button on the preprint web page. This type of publication mode is also referred to as "Open Access paid by Author".
The APC for JINST is available here.
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. The corresponding author/paying third party will be sent an invoice after the article has been accepted for publication.

What is the option “My article is eligible for Open Access - Transformative Agreement”?
This journal is included in a number of transformative agreements with institutions, funders and consortia to manage the cost of article publication charges (APCs) for open access publishing. These typically enable eligible corresponding authors to publish on an open access basis at no cost to themselves. Authors of proceeding articles are also eligible for this option. Such agreements have been signed by the institutions listed at the following link: https://publishingsupport.iopscience.iop.org/questions/institutional-open-access-agreements

Use IOPP Journal Finder to see if you might be covered by a transformative agreement.

In particular, articles for which the corresponding author has a CERN affiliation, or are authored by a CERN collaboration are eligible for Open Access - Transformative Agreement. Open Access - Transformative Agreement should also be marked as option in the event the corresponding author has an eligible but not CERN affiliation, even if a coauthor has a CERN affiliation.
Any article submitted by authors as "eligible for Open Access - Transformative Agreement" will be checked by the Editorial Office who will take care of contacting the author if needed.

If the corresponding author's affiliation is in one of the above Countries, during the review process the article’s web page will show that the paper is a candidate for “Open Access – Transformative Agreement”. Please note, however, that this is not definitive. Confirmation or denial of inclusion in the transformative agreement depends on the agreement in place between the author’s institution and IOP Publishing and will be communicated to the author during the production stage.

What is the option "In my article at least one author is affiliated with CERN”?
A fixed yearly number of research Papers and Technical Reports (no proceedings) with at least one author other than the corresponding author affiliated to CERN are published Open Access at no cost to themselves. A CERN affiliation must be present in the article's pdf file.

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 and licensing issues you should contact permissions@ioppublishing.org

For the Open Access publication fee you should contact jinst@ioppublishing.org

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