Criteria for acceptance

Criteria for acceptance will be appropriateness to the field of the Journal, as described in the Aims and Scope, taking into account the merit of the content and presentation. The number of pages of submitted articles is limited to 20 (using the appropriate Word or LaTeX template). Manuscripts should be clearly written. Abstracts should be self-contained and informative of what was learned from the research. Rigorous argument and presentation are expected throughout.

There is no strict limit on the number of articles that may be submitted by the same author(s). However, it is our journal's policy to provide an opportunity for all interested and quality authors to publish their research results in our journal. Therefore, the Editorial Board retains the right, depending on the circumstances, to reject all submissions featuring the same author(s) that appear too frequently during the course of the year.

Statement of peer review policies in SMACS

Manuscripts will be refereed in the manner customary with scientific journals before being accepted for publication. Upon receiving a manuscript, 2 members of the Reviewers Board will examine it and if the paper is out of scope of the journal or does not meet the basic criteria for a journal article, it will be immediately rejected without further review (please note that this process may take up to two months to complete due to the large number of received submissions). Otherwise, the Editor-in-Chief will solicit reviews from at least two external referees. Based on the reviews, the Editor will make the decision on manuscript acceptance, or solicit additional reviews if the decision in unclear. Possible decisions are Accept without change, Accept conditioned on minor revision, Accept conditioned on major revision, Reject with encouragement to resubmit and Reject without encouragement to resubmit. Regarding conditional acceptance decisions, the Editor will distribute the revised manuscript to the reviewers for approval. In case of high discrepancy between opinions of reviewers, two core Reviewers Board members will be assigned the task of consolidating the reviews.

Ethical publication standards in SMACS

Scientific reliability: Article authors are obliged to present an account of the research performed and an objective discussion of its results. Articles should contain sufficient information in order to identify the sources used, as well as to permit others to replicate the research. Presenting and interpreting data and research results that is not compliant with the ethical publication standards is unacceptable and may result in the article removal.

Originality of the paper: Authors may submit only their own, original works. The research and/or data of other scholars used in the work should be appropriately and clearly cited or quoted. Plagiarism or data fabrication is unacceptable.

Data access: Authors may be asked to provide the research data which is not cited in the text. They are obliged to provide access to such data, also after publication.

Avoiding authors’ competing interests: Authors should not publish texts presenting the same research in more than one journal. Submitting the same manuscripts to more than one journal constitutes unethical behaviour.

Authorship of the paper:

- Authors submitting a manuscript by several authors are obliged to disclose contribution made by particular authors (including their affiliation address and the level of the contribution, i.e. information on the authors of the concept, assumptions, methods, protocols, etc. used during the preparation of the manuscript).

- Ghostwriting and guest authorship are treated as scientific misconduct; all detected cases shall be disclosed and a notification shall be sent to relevant institutions, such as institutions employing the authors, scientific societies, associations of scientific editors, etc.

- Authors submitting a manuscript are obliged to ensure that all those who have made contributions agree on the final form of the manuscript.

Source reliability: Authors are obliged to cite in an attached reference list all publications which have been used when preparing the article.

Errors in the paper: Should (an) author(s) discover any significant errors or inaccuracies in their paper, they are obliged to notify the Editorial Board immediately in order to withdraw the paper or correct the errors.

The SMACS journal subscribes to the principles of the COPE Committee on Publication Ethics:

https://publicationethics.org/files/Full%20set%20of%20English%20flowcharts_9Nov2016.pdf

Accepted papers

Authors of the accepted papers are responsible to submit a camera-ready paper in electronic form, both in source (MS Word or LaTeX) and PDF formats, according to the "Instructions for Camera-Ready Papers", which may be downloaded here (MS Word version) and here (LaTeX version).

After publishing, the authors will receive a free copy of the Journal.

Manuscript requirements

General

The manuscript should be typed single-spaced throughout. Manuscripts should begin with the title of the paper, followed by the names and addresses of the authors. Phone and fax numbers and e-mail addresses should be included, where possible. In the case of co-authors, a corresponding author should be clearly indicated. An abstract must be included and placed after the author information.

Tables

All tables should be designated by Arabic numerals, sequentially increasing. A self explanatory title, indicating a content of a table should be included.

Figures

All figures should be designated by Arabic numerals, sequentially increasing. A self explanatory title, indicating a content of a figure should be included.

Equations and formulas

All equations and formulas should be typed in separate lines, and numbered by Arabic numerals in parentheses on the right, sequentially increasing. References to equations or formulas should be quoted in parentheses.

References and notes

References should be quoted in alphabetical sequence of author names, listed at the end of the manuscript, and numbered sequentially. The references should be cited in the main text only (not in abstracts and titles), by using the corresponding Arabic numbers in square brackets. To quote the references, please use the following model:

1. Agrawal, R., Srikant, R.: Fast Algorithms for ..., Journal, Publischer, Vol., No., Year, pages