Paul V. Dressendorfer
IEEE, ELECTRONIC PUBLISHING,
AND TNS – continued
Paul V. Dressendorfer, TNS Editor
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Paul V. Dressendorfer |
In the last issue of this newsletter I provided an overview of the activities at IEEE in electronic publishing and of how the Transactions on Nuclear Science (TNS) was involved in that initiative. In that article I said that in a future issue I would describe in more detail the electronic-file-format requirements for all conference-related issues. (These formats have been used for some time for regular contributed papers to TNS.) This article will attempt to provide that description.
In the past, all conference-related issues of TNS were published from a camera-ready copy of the manuscripts. The December, 2000, issue devoted to papers from the Nuclear and Space Radiation Effects Conference (NSREC) was the first conference issue of TNS to be prepared from electronic files of the manuscripts provided by the authors. The issues devoted to the 2000 Nuclear Science Symposium and Medical Imaging Conference are being prepared from electronic files, as will all future conference-related issues of TNS. This move to electronic file submission helps support IEEE’s online periodical service Xplore™ (described in detail in the last newsletter).
IEEE has established strict requirements for acceptable electronic file formats for text and graphics submissions. These limitations are necessary because of the large volume of material that IEEE handles in any one year – around 100 publications, 25,000 articles, and 150,000 graphics. In order to automate the processing of this material as much as possible, IEEE has restricted the allowable formats.
For text, several allowable options are available. Acceptable word processor formats (in order of preference) are TeX, LaTeX, Word (6.0 or higher), and WordPerfect (5.1 or higher) for IBM or Mac. If an author cannot submit his text in one of these formats, it may be submitted in ASCII or rtf format from whatever word processor is being used. Templates that automatically provide the correct formatting are available for LaTeX documents at http://www.ieee.org/organizations/pubs/transactions/stylesheets.htm and for Word documents at http://www.nsrec.com/editathr.htm.
Tables and figures must not be embedded in the electronic version of the manuscript. All tables and figures are processed as images and proceed along a different production path from that of the text at IEEE. Thus, the electronic version of tables and figures must be on a separate disk from the text file.
The options for the electronic format of images are very limited. The preferred format is Tagged Image File Format (TIFF); if this is not possible, then non-color figures can be submitted in Postscript (PS) or Encapsulated PostScript (EPS) format. IEEE automatically converts all acceptable PS and EPS files into TIFF files for production. Note that Portable Document Format (PDF), Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG), Graphical Interchange Format (GIF), PCX (originally from PC Paintbrush from ZSoft Corporation), PICT (Macintosh Picture file), and the other multitude of image file formats are not acceptable. Bitmap (BMP) files are currently not accepted, but studies are underway at IEEE to determine whether there might be a way for them to be used in the future.
There are additional instructions for the usage of the allowable image file formats. A separate file should be used for each TIFF image. High-contrast line figures and tables should be prepared with 600 dpi resolution, saved with no compression, 1 bit per pixel (for monochrome images), and have a file name of the form “1fig600.tif” or “2tab600.tif.” Photographs, color figures, and grayscale figures should be prepared with 220 dpi resolution, no compression, 8 bits per pixel (256 color or grayscale) with a file name of the form “3fig220.tif.”
Additional information on guidelines for preparation of electronic files for graphics is available at http://www.ieee.org/organizations/pubs/transactions/eic-guide.pdf. It is interesting to note that even with the very limited number of acceptable file types and detailed instructions for preparation of graphics files, IEEE has found a large number of those files submitted by authors to be unusable. For example, for the December, 2000, NSREC issue, IEEE had problems with the graphics files on 37% of the manuscripts. These problems require manual intervention and additional time and resources to resolve. Efforts are underway to try to determine the cause of these problems so that they can be eliminated or minimized. As a backup to the electronic graphics files, authors are required to also submit full-size hardcopies of their figures (which IEEE scans if the electronic file submitted is unusable).
The above information is a brief summary of the requirements for electronic file preparation for manuscripts accepted to be published in TNS. Complete general instructions are available at http://www.ieee.org/organizations/pubs/transactions/eic-guide.pdf, and items specific to TNS can be found within the Word template at http://www.nsrec.com/editauth.htm. Although this initial transition to electronic file submission has been somewhat painful for many of our authors, the hope is that as both we and the IEEE get more experience with the process, it will proceed more smoothly and with less effort.
One last item I would like to mention regarding the move to electronic publishing concerns the page proofs, which are supplied to authors for proofreading before their paper is published. In the past these have been faxed to the author for corrections. IEEE is moving towards also making this part of the process electronic, so that their complete cycle of preparation for publication can be performed in a fully electronic environment. Initially, the page proofs are being sent to the authors in PDF format by email; the authors then print and annotate a hardcopy with corrections, and fax or mail this back to IEEE. The next stage (to be operational in 2001) will be to post the PDF page-proof file on a secure Web site, notify the author via email that the proof is ready to be checked, and have the author annotate the PDF file on the Web or with an email attachment.
With that change, IEEE hopes to move out of the “paper pushing” paradigm in the publication process. We are also headed in that direction in the peer review process – having the manuscript review process be an electronic/ Web-based system. That move will be the topic of an article in the next newsletter. Stay tuned!