TNANO Information for Authors

Version 3.3 (Revised June 2021)

These instructions supersede any conflicting information that may be found on IEEE web pages, which sometimes are not up to date.

The IEEE Transactions on Nanotechnology (TNANO) publishes novel and important results in engineering at the nanoscale. It focuses on nanoscale devices, systems, materials and applications, and on their underlying science. It is an interdisciplinary journal that covers all areas of nanotechnology. Accepted papers are published on the web as soon as they are submitted in final form. Web-published papers have a DOI (Digital Object Identifier), and are fully citable and downloadable. Nanotechnology is evolving rapidly and swift publication is necessary to ensure that authors submit their best work. Fast publication is achieved through TNANO’s entirely electronic submission and review process.

TNANO publishes Regular papers and Research Letters. Regular Papers normally are 4 to 6 printed pages in length, and take longer to process than Research Letters that are 3 printed pages in length. Manuscripts of a tutorial or review nature are welcome, and treated as Regular Papers. Potential authors of reviews or tutorials are advised to contact the Editor-in Chief (EiC) before submission, to ensure that the topic is judged timely and desirable by the TNANO Editorial Board.

Authors are requested to declare at the time of submission which of the following areas best describes the contents of their papers:

  1. Nano and Molecular Electronics,
  2. Circuits and Architectures,
  3. Nanomagnetism and Spintronics,
  4. Nanooptics, Nanooptoelectronics and Nanophotonics,
  5. Nanorobotics and Nanoassembly,
  6. Nanosensors and Nanoactuators,
  7. Nanomechanics and NEMS (nanoelectromechanical systems),
  8. Nanobiotechnology and Nanomedicine,
  9. Nanofabrication and Nanolithography,
  10. Nanometrology and Characterization,
  11. Computational Nanotechnology,
  12. Other.

Selection of the correct area is important since this information is used to route the papers to the appropriate members of the Editorial Board. Failure to specify an area or selection of “other” as an area are likely to slow down the review process.

Information for TOC Graphical Abstract

Each manuscript must include an abstract graphic for the table of contents (TOC). The Graphical Abstract should capture the essence of the article without providing specific results, so that the readers can determine the content and importance of the manuscript at a single glance. Detailed information can be found here.

Ethical Issues

Manuscripts should be original, previously unpublished work not currently submitted to any other publication. It is the responsibility of the authors, not the IEEE, to determine whether disclosure of their material requires the prior consent of other parties and, if so, to obtain it. If authors make use of charts, photographs, or other graphical or textual material from previously published material, the authors are responsible for obtaining written permission to use the material in the manuscript.

IEEE defines plagiarism as the use of someone else’s prior ideas, processes, results, or words without explicitly acknowledging the original author and source. Plagiarism in any form is unacceptable and is considered a serious breach of professional conduct, with potentially severe ethical and legal consequences. Self-plagiarism is also unethical. If authors have used their own previously published work(s) as a basis for a new submission, they are required to cite the previous work(s) and briefly indicate how the new submission offers substantively novel contributions beyond those of their previously published work(s). Extended versions of preliminary papers that have appeared in conference proceedings are acceptable, provided that they satisfy the conditions mentioned just above (i.e., citation and substantial novelty).

Multiple submissions to different journals are unacceptable. This applies to the entire period in which a paper is under TNANO review. It is the responsibility of the authors to clearly spell out the differences of their submitted papers with similar content, and any common part should be clearly indicated. If in doubt, please contact the EiC.

Peer Review

The articles in this journal are peer reviewed in accordance with the requirements set forth in the IEEE Publication Services and Products Board Operations Manual (https://pspb.ieee.org/images/files/files/opsmanual.pdf). Each published article was reviewed by a minimum of two independent reviewers using a single-blind peer review process, where the identities of the reviewers are not known to the authors, but the reviewers know the identities of the authors. Articles will be screened for plagiarism before acceptance.

It is the policy of the IEEE to own the copyright to the technical contributions it publishes on behalf of the interests of the IEEE, its authors, and their employers; and to facilitate the appropriate reuse of this material by others. To comply with U.S. copyright law, authors are required to complete an IEEE electronic copyright form (ECF) on Manuscript Central (now known as Scholar One) when they submit either their manuscripts (after April 2009) or their final package for publication (for earlier papers)—more on this below. This form returns to authors and their employer’s full rights to reuse their material for their own purposes upon request.

Style of Manuscripts and Paper Submission Procedure

Access Template

1) Paper submission and review are through Manuscript Central (now known as Scholar One) at http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/tnano. Instructions for authors are provided on-line at the site.

2) A valuable IEEE link for helping authors in their manuscript preparation is the “IEEE Author Center HomePage“.

3) To facilitate review, manuscripts should be submitted with the main document as a single file, with the figures and captions inserted in the text, and preferably using either Adobe pdf or Microsoft Word doc formats. Adobe PostScript format (ps) is also acceptable. Authors are strongly encouraged to read the section titled “Preparation of Final Versions of Manuscripts for Publication” below, and to pay special attention to figure requirements. Creating acceptable figures may take non-negligible time and slow down the final submission process if the manuscript is accepted. Note that publication-quality figures are not required for manuscript review.

4) Manuscripts should be submitted in a double column format using an IEEE style file. Templates are available in the IEEE Author Center HomePage. (Please note that the format of the template file is correct, but the instructions in the text of the template are partially obsolete.) Regular Papers and Research Letters are limited to 6 and 3 Transactions pages, respectively, with mandatory page charges imposed on extra pages (see Page Charges below). Excessively long papers may be rejected without review.

5) Authors: as per IEEE regulation, all authors appearing in a submitted manuscript must also be registered in the official record of Manuscript Central Scholar.

6) Uploaded information: A cover letter, an abstract (up to 200 words for Regular Papers and 50 words for Research Letters), keywords, the type of paper (Regular Paper, or Research Letter), and technical area (see above for a list). Please indicate the area in the cover letter as well, and whether the paper is submitted for a special issue or section.

7) All figures must be numbered and cited in the text. Use consistent font and size in all figures and tables, and choose sizes that will allow the text to be scaled to 8 points at final printed size. Otherwise, an entire figure may be enlarged so that the smallest size is scaled to 8 points for readability.

8) References must be in a separate reference section at the end of the paper in IEEE style, with items referred to by numerals in square brackets. For journal articles: Author initials followed by last names, title in quotation marks, periodical, volume, inclusive page numbers, month and year. For books: Author initials followed by last names, title, location, publisher, year, inclusive pages if appropriate. For conference papers: Author initials followed by last names, title in quotation marks, conference, location, month and year, and inclusive page numbers.

9) For a paper that was previously reviewed by TNANO, the old paper number should be included in the cover letter, and a separate response file should be submitted describing how reviewers’ comments were addressed.  Instructions for submitting a response are provided in the Manuscript Central Author Center.

10) If it is felt that a paper is beyond the scope or capability of TNANO, the corresponding author will be notified, usually within one week of submission, by one of Editors or the EiC.

11) An Electronic Copyright Form (ECF) should be included with the submission. Follow the instructions to sign electronically the ECF as provided in the Manuscript Central Author Center. You will receive by e-mail a copy of the signed form. Please keep it because it may be needed if the paper is accepted.

12) If you have difficulties, please contact the Editorial Administrator or the Editor-in-Chief using the respective inquiries forms.

Preparation of Final Versions of Manuscripts for Publication

Authors of accepted papers should submit the final versions for publication through the Manuscript Central system. Detailed information on final file requirements is available in the IEEE Guidelines for Author Supplied Electronic Text and Graphics, at http://www.ieee.org/documents/eic-guide.pdf.

1) To submit the final files, log into the Manuscript Central system and go to your Author’s Center. On the left, under My Manuscripts, you will see a list entry labeled Awaiting Final Files. Click on it and the accepted paper will appear under Manuscripts Accepted for Final Submission. The paper record will have a link to Submit Final Files. Click on this link and follow the instructions to upload the files listed below. Make sure that file names are distinct or they will not successfully export to Manuscript Central.

2) An editable document with the text of the manuscript, preferably in Microsoft Word or LaTeX, in the standard IEEE 2-column format (see above), and including: abstract, index terms, body of the text, footnotes, figure captions, references, and, for Regular Papers, author biographies.

3) Figures, each on a separate file. Acceptable formats are tiff, ps, eps, pdf, and Microsoft ppt, doc or xls. Note that jpeg is acceptable only for the authors’ photos. Figure files should be named with lower-case figure numbers and the appropriate extensions, e.g., fig1.tif, fig2.doc, fig3.ppt. Please verify that the figures are acceptable by using the IEEE Graphics Checker at http://graphicsqc.ieee.org .

4) A pdf version of the complete manuscript, in lieu of a hardcopy. This should be in IEEE 2-column format and have the figures and captions inserted in the text. Production will use this file to ensure that the printed version corresponds exactly to your pdf. It is essential that all fonts be embedded and subsetted in the pdf document for correct reproduction.

5) The final version you supply must include in the first-page footnote (where the affiliations of the authors are listed) the following sentence (without the quotes and replacing “Year” by the current year, e.g., 2014): Copyright (c) Year IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. However, permission to use this material for any other other purposes must be obtained from the IEEE by sending a request to pubs-permissions@ieee.org . Without this your paper’s publication as a preprint on the web, through IEEE Xplore, will be significantly delayed.

6) The ECF is signed at the time the original manuscript is submitted. Please keep a copy of the signed ECF, because it may be needed for publication.

7) Authors of accepted papers are invited to submit with the final version of a paper and an image or two for potential use in the journal color cover. The images should be accompanied by a one-sentence caption (for the cover) and a longer explanation, as would normally appear in a paper’s figures.

Page Charges

A page charge form ($110/page) is sent to the authors of accepted papers with proofs, and the author is encouraged, whenever possible, to make a contribution to defray part of the publication cost. A mandatory over-length page charge is imposed on all Regular Papers and Research Letters whose length exceeds 6 and 3 Transactions pages by up to 6 and 1 extra pages, respectively, including illustrations. This charge is $175 per page for each page over the first 6 and 3, respectively, based on the final typeset length and not on the manuscript length, and is a prerequisite for publication.

Open Access

This publication is an Open Access (author-pays OA) manuscript submission. This enables unrestricted public access to the article via IEEE Xplore. At the time the manuscript is submitted, the OA discounted fee of $2045 must be paid before the article is published in the journal. If you have unusual circumstances about this, please contact the Editor-in-Chief. Any other applicable charges (such as the over-length page charge and/or charge for the use of color in the print format) will be billed separately once the manuscript formatting is complete but prior to the publication.