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Author Guidelines

The main mission of Quanta is to teach standard quantum mechanics as it is originally conceived in the Dirac–von Neumann axioms.

Authors who submit their manuscripts to Quanta agree to follow the journal policies and to do their best not to violate the ethics of scholarly publishing.

Necessary files

Each submission should contain the following files:

  1. Cover letter
  2. Printable PDF file for review
  3. LaTeX or LyX source file of the manuscript
  4. Figure files if any

It is recommended that the corresponding author archives all files into a single zipped folder and uploads it using the online manuscript tracking system.

Cover letter

In the cover letter, the corresponding author should:

  1. Provide the names, affiliations and e-mail addresses of at least 3 potential peer-reviewers for the submitted manuscript. The decision whether to actually use the services of the proposed peer-reviewers, however, will be made in our Editorial Office.
  2. Declare on behalf of all authors that the submitted manuscript does not contain copyrighted material by others or material that is not subject to Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.
  3. Oblige to update promptly any corresponding arXiv entry with the Journal Ref and DOI bibliographic information once the submitted work is published in Quanta.

Article style

  1. The journal publishes only Full Length Articles.
  2. The articles should be self-contained: this means that all information needed for the proper understanding of the text has to be presented in complete detail in the article rather than re-directing the reader to other external sources. Citations should not be used as an excuse for sloppy writing.
  3. The articles should be written in an easily accessible and reader friendly style. For example, if you can provide a complete proof, do not omit essential steps in the proof, and if you can provide the context in which your work should be understood, do not confine your efforts to providing only citations to other works.
  4. Use of dense technical jargon is particularly discouraged since this will delay the review process, and very likely the author will be asked to revise the work and resubmit again.
  5. If you are unsure whether the style of your manuscript complies with our guidelines, it may be helpful to check the content of other articles previously published in the journal and update your work accordingly.
  6. Write for the reader, not for yourself. Quanta aims to be an useful educational resource equally accessible for experts, as well as for undergraduate students. This does not mean, however, that the exposition should be stripped down of mathematics and degraded to a layman's popular level. If you want to further improve your writing skills, we would like to recommend the following free online video lecture by Larry McEnerney, director of the University of Chicago’s writing program.

Article length

  1. The submitted articles could be as long as needed in order to be self-contained (typically 10 printed pages or more).
  2. Salami slicing of one project into several articles is strongly discouraged. Multi-part works should be combined and submitted as a single manuscript.
  3. The journal does not publish Letters or Comments. If the author thinks that a topic is important, it is always possible to write a Full Length Article. If the author cannot be bothered to write more extensively on a topic, then the topic is not that important to merit coverage in Quanta.
  4. Short aricles that are less than 5 typeset pages could be considered for mathematical derivations of quantum no-go theorems.
  5. There are no limitations for the number of figures, tables or citations within the article.

Organization of the manuscript

Most articles should be organized as follows: Title, Authors, Affiliations, Abstract, Introduction, any number of Sections, Discussion, Acknowledgments, References.

Title

The article title should be less than 90 characters in length including the white spaces between words.

Abstract

The abstract should be concise and factual. The length should be strictly within the range 250-300 words. The abstract should state briefly the purpose of the research, the principal results and major conclusions. The abstract should stand alone because it is presented and indexed separately from the article. References should not be cited in the abstract and abbreviations should be avoided.

Mathematical equations

  1. All displayed formulas should be numbered.
  2. Avoid using colon (:) in front of every displayed equation. Use colon only in cases where it is absolutely necessary.
  3. Punctuation after displayed formulas is not compulsory.
  4. Do not put punctuation within inline formulas. The punctuation should be outside the formula as a text.
  5. Do not use i as imaginary unit. Instead use \imath symbol, which is i without dot.
  6. Do not use the letters i or j as variables. They should be reserved for indices in sums, products, etc.
  7. Do not use Capital Sigma and Capital Pi as variables or operators. They should be reserved for sums and products only.
  8. All operators need to have \hats.
  9. Do not make sections or subsections using numbering and/or bold standard text. Instead use the \section or \subsection environments.
  10. Text subscripts or superscripts in formulas should be inserted using \textrm font.
  11. Exponentials better be writen as powers of e, rather than exp(), in order to save space in long formulas.
  12. Write Big O function using \mathcal{O}.
  13. Do not re-define standard LaTeX code, e.g., do not re-define \dagger into \dag, etc. because such "customized" LaTeX cannot be easily edited by our production team.
Text and language
  1. As a courtesy to the reader, use only plain English throughout the article and avoid inserting replaceable Latin, French, German or other foreign words.
  2. Do not emphasize words using apostrophes: 'like this', or underlining: like this, but use italics: like this.
  3. Do not use metaphors and avoid putting quotation marks around single words or expressions such as "word", "my word", etc. Because the reader has direct access only to what is explicitly written, the author should explain everything in words without recourse to metaphors or jargon that is used only within a limited circle of individuals.
  4. Avoid usage of expressions like: "it is easy to see that" or "it is obvious that".The text will be more reader friendly if you asume that some readers interested in your work may not be able to "easily see" the "obvious" things.
  5. Avoid using abbreviations and write out all words. For example, "QM" should be written as "quantum mechanics" and "EPR" should be written as "Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen". Text written without abbreviations is more reader-friendly as you may convince yourself from trying to read this negative example arXiv:quant-ph/0002019.
  6. Avoid using gramatically incomplete or truncated sentences. In particular, avoid writing with dashes. All sentences that can be written with dashes can also be written in full without dashes. For example, "Alice -the sender - performs a measurement of her qubit" can be also written as "Alice, who is the sender, performs a measurement of her qubit".
  7. Avoid using i.e. and e.g. If needed use "that is" instead of i.e., and "for example" instead of e.g.

Footnotes and Endnotes

  1. Footnotes and endnotes should not be used in the article.
  2. Footnotes and endnotes should not be disguised as References.
  3. Writing without footnotes and endnotes might be a harder work but the result, if well done, is a clearer and more readable article, with fewer ambiguities.
  4. Authors need to exercise restraint and omit from the text material that is peripheral to the main topic of the article. Either a point is sufficiently significant to make, in which case it should be in the text, or it is not, in which case it should be deleted.
  5. Footnotes and endnotes interrupt the flow of the argument, distract the reader, add to the argument's length and complexity, and too often diminish the argument's clarity.
  6. In essence, footnotes and endnotes are considered to be a sign of lazy writing and poor scholarship.

Figures

  1. Diagrams and illustrations should be provided in a vector PDF format if possible, but SVG and EPS formats are also acceptable.
  2. Photographs or bitmap images can be provided as JPG or TIFF files.
  3. There are 2 types of figure sizes:
    Single column figure should be 84 mm wide.
    Two column figure should be 170 mm wide.
    The height should be considered based on the Figure caption length. Both the Figure and the Caption should be on the same page.
  4. Image color mode should be RGB, not CMYK.
  5. Please note that the main color for illustrations is blue (and shades of blue). The second color is red (and shades of red).

Please note that if your work is accepted for publication all of your figures may be modified or re-drawn by our production manager in order to comply with the journal standards. The authors will have the opportunity to further correct their figures once they receive the proof copies of their articles.

Reusing copyrighted figures from others is only possible if the figures are released under Creative Commons CC BY 3.0 license, which applies to all materials published by Quanta. It is important to note that obtaining permission from the original author to use the image is not the same as obtaining permission to release the work under CC BY 3.0 license. Also be aware that there are different types of Creative Commons licenses. For example, articles published in the New Journal of Physics appear to be released under CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 licence, which is more restrictive that the license used by Quanta. If you are unsure whether you can use a previously published image, you better remove it from your manuscript or replace it with your own drawing or sketch.

References

  1. Do not refer directly to references in the text as: "Reference [27] shows that something is true". Instead use: "The Author showed that something is true [27]".
  2. References should be ordered in the way they appear in the main text, not alphabetically.
  3. Each reference should be complete and independent from other references. For example do not use Ibid. or _____ abbreviations.
  4. Each reference in the bibliography should be formatted as a separate entry. Do not lump multiple articles together.
  5. References to published or accepted manuscripts are preferable.
  6. Inclusion of a functional DOI is highly desirable. Please check whether the DOI is resolved correctly. A journal whose DOIs are dysfunctional and do not get resolved is very likely to be a predatory one.
  7. Manuscripts that are submitted but not yet accepted should not be cited unless they are available in an open access preprint server online.
  8. Web sites or blogs should not be cited.
  9. References could be provided in the main LaTeX article or in a separate .bib file.

Reference style

Usage of any reference style is acceptable provided that the cited work can be determined unambiguously. For published works, providing a resolvable DOI works best.
  • Journal article

Basran J, Sutcliffe MJ, Scrutton NS. Enzymatic H-transfer requires vibration driven extreme tunneling. Biochemistry 1999; 38(10):3218-3222. doi:10.1021/bi982719d

  • Book

Popper KR. Unended Quest: An Intellectual Autobiography. London: Routledge, 2002.

  • Book chapter

Elitzur AC, Dolev S. Becoming as a bridge between quantum mechanics and relativity. In: Endophysics, Time, Quantum and the Subjective. Buccheri R, Elitzur AC, Saniga M (editors), World Scientific, 2005; pp. 197-214.

  • Conference proceedings

Bramon A, Escribano R. Popper's test of quantum mechanics. Proceedings of the Fundamental Physics Meeting "Alberto Galindo", Madrid, November 26, 2004, Alvarez-Estrada RF, Dobado A, Fernandez LA, Martin-Delgado MA, Sudupe AM (editors), Aula Documental de Investigacion, Madrid, 2004, pp. 201-207. arXiv:quant-ph/0501134

  • Thesis

Dolev S. New approaches to the study of the measurement problem in quantum mechanics. Ph.D. Thesis, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan, Israel, 2004.

Citations

Always format the reference keys to {AuthorYear}. Several examples:

Single citation in text: \cite{Popper1982}

Multiple citations in text: \cite{Popper1934,Popper1982,Popper1994}

Single citation with additional information such as page numbers, book section, or equation number: \cite[pp. 90-91]{Popper1982}

Revisions

Revisions need to be submitted by the authors no later than 6 months after the date of the editorial decision requesting revision. If the authors do not ask specifically for extension of this period and fail to submit their revised manuscript within the 6 month period provided for revision, the manuscript will be rejected for publication and any subsequent submission by the authors will be considered as a new one.

Proofs

The authors whose articles are accepted for publication will receive PDF proofs of their articles with request for corrections that need to be submitted within 72 hours. Although, distribution of final published PDFs is allowed, online upload or circulation of uncorrected PDF proofs is strictly forbidden.

arXiv

The authors are allowed to upload either pre-print or post-print at arXiv of their published articles in Quanta, however, they are requested to update promptly their arXiv entry with the Journal Ref and DOI bibliographic information once their work is published online in Quanta.

The reason for requiring authors to take care of their arXiv entries is to avoid misattribution of citations to arXiv, when in fact the article has been already peer-reviewed, accepted and published in an academic journal.

 

Submission Preparation Checklist

As part of the submission process, authors are required to check off their submission's compliance with all of the following items, and submissions may be returned to authors that do not adhere to these guidelines.

  1. The submission has not been previously published, nor is it before another journal for consideration.
  2. The submission file is prepared as a zipped folder cointaining cover letter, PDF version of the article, LaTeX source file and all figures, which are consecutively numbered as "Fig1", "Fig2", etc.
  3. Where available, URLs or DOIs for the references have been provided.
  4. The text is single-spaced; employs italics, rather than underlining; and all illustrations, figures, and tables are placed within the text at the appropriate points, rather than at the end. The text adheres to the stylistic and bibliographic requirements outlined in the Author Guidelines.
 

Copyright Notice

All work by Quanta is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

 

Privacy Statement

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