Articles will be clearly labeled as open access. Any users therefore be notified when an open access article is published.

Publishing a paper in an open access journal is a good option for authors because it increases visibility of the paper. Publishing your article in an OA journal means that more people are likely to see it, simply because more people will be able to access it.

No, The journals are currently hybrid open access and the special issues are fully open access.

Upon acceptance of your paper you will be required to sign a license/consent form to publish online. As part of this process you will be asked to indicate whether you would like to publish your article under an open access license and pay the associated charge.

If the journal offers the option to publish under an Open Access license, please email us at [email protected] and we can arrange this for you.

All manuscripts submitted to journals that offer an open access option will continue to be subject to the same rigorous process of editorial consideration and peer review, thereby ensuring that the high standards the community has come to expect from the journal are maintained. In hybrid access journals, the editors of the journal will not be involved in correspondence with authors regarding payment of open access charges for their article. Instead, the author charge system will be administered by the publisher, OUP, only after manuscripts have been accepted for publication. In this way authors should be reassured that their ability to pay publication charges will not influence editorial decisions.

Free content usually consists of editorial material such as tables of contents, covers, advertisements, etc.  These contents are not supported by article processing fees.

Open access content is technical in nature, peer reviewed, supported by article processing fees, and available to all.

Green” open access'' refers to the practice of depositing a version of an article in a repository. Usually, that article version is freely accessible to the public. For example, if an author posts the accepted version of his or her NIH-funded article to PubMed Central, that article is said to be available through green open access.

It allows authors to post the accepted (not final) version of their article to their website, employer’s website, or a repository specified by their funding agency. Authors may obtain the accepted version of their article.

“Gold” open access refers to articles that are freely available in their final form. Most gold open access articles are supported by article processing charges (APCs), rather than through subscriptions. APCs may be paid by the author, the author’s institution, or a funding agency.

It supports all authors and readers globally. That means being able to offer any author a publication venue that is compliant with their circumstances, regardless of their funding status, the publishing mandates they may have in place, or where in the world they may work.

An author may choose to publish in a traditional journal or in a fully open access journal.

There are many benefits of publishing scholarly research. Some reasons why some authors may choose to publish their research through open access depend on the unique circumstances and goals of the individual author. These reasons could include:

1. Get Published More Quickly –Open access titles follow a rapid yet rigorous peer review process, enabling authors to accelerate the sharing of their work to a broad audience. with the capability to get published in a matter of weeks with select fully open access titles.
2. Share Your Latest Research with a Wide Audience – Increase exposure and quickly reach millions of global users through the free access to research available immediately to all users.
3. Satisfy OA Publishing Requirements – Authors using government research funding or university consortium funding may be required to publish in OA journals. Many institutions also encourage their authors to publish OA, and some provide funds to help authors do so.
4. Multidisciplinary Research Scope – A topic that is inclusive of multiple technologies may be considered out of scope for some journals but might be perfect for a multidisciplinary title.

Our author support team remains contactable via query portal or via the email address authors receive when their paper is accepted for publication. The team is responding to all authors on the same or next working day as usual. Please contact us by email or the query portal in the first instance.

Our author support team remains contactable via the query portal or via the email address authors receive when their paper is accepted for publication. The team is responding to all authors on the same or next working day as usual. Please contact us by email or the query portal in the first instance.

Publication misconduct includes plagiarism, fabrication, falsification, inappropriate authorship, duplicate submission/multiple submissions, overlapping publication, and salami publication.

Scientific research shows that publishing in open access, because of the worldwide visibility without barriers, demonstrably leads to more citations and more impact. Businesses also have broad access to the most recent scientific ideas, which they can then build upon.

The DOI (digital object identifier) is a string of characters which together uniquely identify a published article. The DOI is permanently assigned to an article, and provides a persistent link to current information about that article, including where the article, or information about it, can be found on the Internet. It enables readers to find the article on the Internet irrespective of any subsequent changes in the website structure, in the management responsibility of the journal in which it was first published, or the location of the website on which the journal is hosted.

For more information about DOIs, see www.doi.org or www.crossref.org.

To convert a DOI to a web address you need to add a prefix to the DOI. For papers published on STM use the url prefix http://dx.doi.org/

For example, assuming your paper has DOI as follows:

doi:10.1017/S1368980008002541

Your web address will then be:

http://dx.doi.org/doi:10.1017/S1368980008002541

 You can use the url string within any documents you write, or you can simply copy and paste it into your browser.

The url will lead to the page where your paper is published on STM

The authors/Editors who would like to propose a Special Issue and be the Lead Guest Editor are required to submit the proposal form from the Journals Library

A proposal contains diverse aspects,  such as

• Journal Name
• Special Issue Title
• Lead Guest Editor details
• Guest Editor details
• Submission Deadline date
• Publication Date
• Description
• Provisional Paper Listing.

For more details visit Special Issues Page [https://stmjournals.in/jopc/special-issues/]

Submission Deadline means the last day for the paper submission. Papers cannot be submitted to the online submission system after the deadline. You should choose an appropriate duration for your Special Issue according to your estimation when you could solicit enough papers.

Publication date means the expected completion date when all papers in your Special Issue are reviewed, revised and are ready for publication. The Special Issues are published within two months after the submission deadline.

The provisional paper listing denotes the unpublished manuscripts from some potential authors which you can offer for listing with mandatory details such as the paper's title and author's name.

In order to increase the credibility of special issues, the names of Lead Guest Editor and Guest Editors and other details such as education qualification, work experience, areas of expertise are required to be submitted along with the proposal. These details are directly added to the website of your Special Issue for your convenience.

Journals Library will also offer the login account information to the Lead Guest Editor. Please note that the Lead Guest Editor should be responsible for informing the Guest Editors to complete the personal profile.

Authors are also informed that a special issue should include at least 5 Guest Editors; however there is no maximum limit. Moreover, a special Issue should at least include 4 papers apart from 2 free papers from Lead Guest Editor.

Benefits to Lead Guest Editor:

• The Lead Guest Editor gets a chance to polish his/her area of expertise by reviewing a manuscript.
• The Lead Guest Editor gets updated information about recent developments and research.
• The Lead Guest Editor avails the chance to interact with a group of experienced researchers and eminent authors around the world.
• Journals Library provides the flexibility to the Lead Guest Editor to personalize his/her space on the website in their own way.
• The Lead Guest Editor has an opportunity to be promoted to the Editor-in-Chief of the respective Journal.

Responsibilities of the Lead Guest Editor:

• The Lead Guest Editor will be solely responsible for developing an expert team for the review and revision of the manuscripts submitted for publication in special issues.
• The Lead Guest Editors are expected to carry forward the promotional strategy of the special issue which includes inviting prominent authors for submitting breakthrough manuscripts for special issue publication.
• It is the sole authority of the Lead Guest Editor to accept or reject a manuscript, however he/she is expected to provide reasons for the same.
• The Lead Guest Editor is expected to check and recheck the quality and scope of the submitted manuscripts in relation to the prominent areas of the concerned Journal.

Special Issue/Lead Guest Editors are free to invite Guest Editors from anywhere in the world of scientific community including their colleagues, friends and students, or any other experts who have  the expertise in the relevant field and have the passion to research and write.

• Step 1:  The Lead Guest Editors are required to download the manuscript from the online manuscript retrieval system.
• Step 2: The Lead Guest Editors are expected to review and revise the manuscripts within stipulated time (maximum seven days from the day of downloading of manuscript).
• Step 3: Lead Guest Editors are required to submit analytical review reports for the respective manuscript.
  

Lead Guest Editors can promote in different ways, such as

• Putting up an Email Poster, or uploading the special issue in Facebook, twitter, Google+ or LinkedIn.
• Sending the special issue details to all the contacts with an aim to invite papers.
• Demonstrating the special issue manuscripts in the conferences the Lead Guest Editor is attending.
• Captivating on guest editors expertise for promotion of special issues.

The authority to confiscate the special issue from the website is reserved, in case the special issue can’t reach the minimum limit of paper amount.

The recommended charges for publishing a special issue article is $1000. This will include all the processing charges along with designing, archiving and promotional charges. For more details on APCs you can visit Article Processing Charges Page

The discount facility will be applicable for Special Issue editors, Guest editors and deserving authors. If any scholar feels that the discounts are not enough, they can directly contact the journal management team through [email protected]

The Special Issues will be released for all the journals. For updated information on the upcoming Special Issues, please visit the Special Issues page. [https://stmjournals.in/jopc/special-issues/]

It provides the right and opportunity to the authors, researchers, doctors and individuals to uphold the important designation of Lead Guest Editors through the special issues of the Journals.

The lead guest Editors also get the chance of being promoted to the designation of Editor-in-chief after successful completion of the special issue.

In order to ensure the hassle-free submission and publication of the manuscripts, we incorporate editorial workflow which can be easily understood through a flowchart. For the work flow chart, please visit Editorial Process page [https://journals.stmjournals.com/open-access-policy/editorial-policy/]

In order to make the submission in the special issue easily understandable, we have segregated it in different stages. Please visit the manuscript submission page. 

Open access publication charges vary by journal. In order to check the details regarding the Article processing charges. [apply link] Fee waivers apply for authors in developing countries publishing in fully Open Access journals. You can go through the Article Processing Charges page[https://journals.stmjournals.com/open-access/article-processing-charges/] for a list of qualifying countries.

Open access charges are in addition to any normal (excess) page charges and color charges that may apply. Please check the individual journal’s Instructions to Author pages for information regarding page and color charges.

As costs are involved in every stage of the publication process, from administrating peer review to copy-editing and hosting the final article on dedicated servers, authors are asked to pay an article processing charge (APC) in order for their article to be published open access under a Creative Commons license.

As the corresponding author of the manuscript you are responsible for making or arranging the payment (for instance, via your institution) upon editorial acceptance of the manuscript.

If you select an open access license to publish, you will be invited to pay online after signing the license. It allows you to pay online using a bank transfer, PayPal, or to request an invoice by email

Open access articles are supported by article processing charges (APCs), rather than through subscriptions. APCs may be paid by the author, the author’s institution, or a funding agency. For more information on APCs, please see the Article Processing Charges page

No, in open access there is no charge for submission.

Yes, upon the acceptance of papers and depending on the country categorization discounts are provided accordingly.

Yes we have a waiver policy for authors from low and lower-middle income countries. Corresponding authors from low-income countries are eligible for waiver on APCs. Corresponding authors from lower-middle-income countries are also eligible for a discount on APCs.The discount level is determined by the Hinari List.

An author’s open access APCs may be refunded when alternative funding is provided (e.g. by a funding agency or the author’s institution). If you need additional assistance, please contact [email protected].

Authors submitting to fully open access journals will be asked to confirm at submission that they understand that the journal uses an open access model and that if their article is accepted they must pay an article processing charge. Authors submitting to hybrid journals are given the option to make their articles open access on acceptance.

For fully open access journals, the corresponding author will be notified that payment is due upon editorial acceptance of their article. If the open access option is selected, the corresponding author will then be prompted to provide billing information.We advise prompt payment, as failure to provide payment information or to complete payment may lead to delays in publication.

Usual credit terms are 30 days from receipt of original invoice. Invoices will be chased periodically, but if after 60 days no payment is received, the author will be contacted. Failure to pay invoices within the stated credit term may result in restrictions placed upon authors' ability to publish with Journals in the future, involvement of a third party debt collection agency and legal proceedings. In the case of articles that Journals publishes on behalf of partners, the partner organization and, where appropriate, the journal editors may be notified of non-payment and will make a decision on what penalty to levy on the author. However, Journals recognizes that often authors do not pay the APC personally, and if an author's institution is to pay the APC, it may take some time for an invoice to be paid.

All open access articles clearly indicate that the article has been published as open access and are marked with Creative Commons licence text.

Where journals publish a print version, open access articles are included in the print journal issue and clearly indicate that the article has been published as open access under a Creative Commons license.

APC are reviewed annually to ensure our pricing remains consistent and fair for our authors, across our entire open access portfolio. Prices are updated to be reflective of the costs involved in publishing journals, promoting the final research, and the investment being made in improving systems to deliver a superior and sustainable service to the research community. The APC price will usually be determined from the date on which the article is accepted for publication.

No, The actual amount of an article processing charge varies depending on the journal in which an article is published. The invoice is sent for article processing charges (APCs) if a manuscript has been accepted for publication. The acceptance of a manuscript is based on the outcome of the Editorial and peer-review procedure. The final decision as to whether a manuscript will be accepted for publication or rejected is made by the Editor-in-Chief of a journal or the Guest Editor of a Special Issue.

Please check which of the following two problems you are encountering:

Page does not load at all?

• If you are unable to access it at all, could you try once more with a different web browser (if available), or try to disable any Add-ons in your browser which might be blocking the transaction?

Page loads, but after continuing, the payment is not executed after entering the credit card?

• If the page returns an error after entering the credit card details, your card provider may have blocked the transaction. To resolve this issue, you would need to contact your credit card provider. It might be because of a limit per transaction.

If you are unable to resolve the issue, please see our Article Processing Charges Page for alternative payment options.

It can take between 2 and 6 weeks, from receipt of your article at Journals for proofs to be sent out. If you have still not received a proof after this time please check your spam filter and then contact [email protected]. Your article might not yet have been submitted for production by the journal’s editorial office, there may be a problem with the email address you supplied, your server may be rejecting the pdf proof, or there may be other reasons for the proof being delayed.

Note that for most journals the proofs will only be sent to the corresponding author.

The corresponding author will be sent an email with a link to a proof. A covering note attached to the proof will include full instructions on what you need to do with the proof and a link to the author publishing agreement and copyeditor queries (if appropriate). 

You must now check your proof. If you have received a pdf proof, you will need a pdf reader such as Adobe Reader to view your proof. 

The email you have received includes full instructions for proof reading as well the contact details of the relevant proof collator. Please follow these instructions carefully in order to avoid delays in publication.

It is your responsibility to check your proof very carefully at this stage. Errors not found may appear in the published journal. Please ensure you answer all author queries received with your proof. Please note that this is not the time to rewrite large sections of your text. Corrections must be confined to typographical errors only.

The proof notice you receive will give details of your content manager. If you have any queries prior to proof stage then email the journal’s editor whom you have dealt with to date or [email protected]

Your content manager can help you with any questions you may have about production matters. but if you have any queries about corrections to your proof then please contact the  content manager through [email protected]

For the majority of journals, we ask that you mark your corrections electronically by annotating the PDF. Instructions for commenting on PDFs can be found here. [link: https://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/using/commenting-pdfs.html]

Some journals ask for a list of corrections to be submitted via email.

Do not reply to the email proof alert or directly to the typesetter. If you have any queries about your proof please contact the proof collator.

We generally require your corrections within 2 to 4 working days. Please check the instructions sent to you with your proof for the deadline and details of where to send your corrections. It is important that you attend to your proof as soon as possible so that publication is not delayed.

You should return your proof as soon as you can even if this is after the deadline has passed. However, if you are away for any significant time, you should nominate a co-author to check the proof for you, or if this is not possible please email the proof collator to let them know when you may be able to return the proof.

After an article is accepted, it is copyedited to ensure it conforms to the journal style. Usually the changes are not major. If major changes are required the article will be referred back to the journal’s editors. If you believe that changes have been made which are inaccurate then please clearly mark the corrections you require.

Each journal has its own policy for including articles in issues and what goes into each issue is usually the journal editor’s decision. Many journals also have large forward loads of articles waiting for inclusion in an issue. Issues are generally compiled about 6 to 8 weeks before the issue cover date. However, online publication confirms that an article is published and it can confidently be cited as such.

When scheduling articles for any particular issue, the journal editor and/or content manager take a number of things into account, including date of submission, date of acceptance, date of online publication, subject balance or theme in an issue, and also length (every journal has a strict annual page budget, and we try to get as close as possible to this). When making the final selection of articles for an issue, date of online publication has to be balanced against all these other factors so may not always be the prime consideration

The copyright date of an article always matches the date an article was first published. As many of our journals publish online ahead of issue publication, individual articles are published online as soon as they are corrected. It can easily happen that an article may not appear in an issue until some months later, possibly the following year. In these cases the journal’s year of publication will not match the copyright year stated, and this is entirely correct.

Some journals offer accepted manuscript publication. A PDF version of the accepted manuscript (a manuscript that has completed peer review and editorial acceptance but has not been copyedited or typeset) is published online ahead of FirstView. An accepted manuscript PDF is published within four days of the manuscript being received by Cambridge University Press, allowing authors to make their work available to read and cite much more quickly. The accepted manuscript will eventually be replaced with the final copyedited and typeset Version of Record.

Please click here for a successful submission.

No, there are no limits on manuscript length or numbers of figures in journal articles.

All published articles are indexed widely by services such as Scopus, Web of Science, Google Scholar and others.

All open access articles are published under either the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC-BY) or the Creative Commons Attribution, Non Commercial, No Derivatives License (CC BY-NC-ND), in which the copyright remains with the author.

Creative Commons licenses such as CC-BY are used by many academic publishers. The CC-BY license grants the most liberal reuse rights of all commonly used OA licenses. It allows users to distribute, reuse, modify, and build upon work as long as proper attribution to the original article is provided. Works published with a CC-BY license may be used for commercial purposes.Some funding agencies require grant recipients to publish with a CC-BY license. Authors should verify with their funding agency before selecting 

The CC BY-NC-ND is similar to the CC-BY license, in that authors are allowed to retain copyright to their work, and end users may reuse the work, provided that they credit the original author. The end user does not have to obtain permission from the authors to reuse the work, but the reuse cannot be for commercial purposes or change the work in any way. Some funding agencies require grant recipients to publish with a CC BY-NC-ND license. Authors should verify with their funding agency before selecting their copyright license.

After an article has been accepted, the corresponding author will be prompted to complete the electronic copyright form. If an author is publishing OA, the author will be asked to choose either the CC-BY or CC BY-NC-ND license.

Authors with questions or concerns should contact [email protected].

All articles are published using a CC-BY license, which means that the author keeps their copyright. Articles can be used freely provided that they are appropriately referenced and cited.

• It follows guidelines on authorship. Contributors who meet fewer than all four criteria for authorship should not be listed as authors, but they should be acknowledged. You can get in touch with the team of the relevant journal should you need to make any correction to authorship. All listed authors would be required to fill in and sign an authorship change form.
• For the authorship dispute, please contact the authors or institute/university first. According to the guideline of COPE, it is not the role of the journal editors to determine who qualifies or does not qualify for authorship or to arbitrate authorship conflicts. If agreement cannot be reached about who qualifies for authorship, the institution(s) where the work was performed should be asked to investigate.