Linköping University Electronic Press (E-Press)

Information for authors

This is provisional information for use during our startup phase

Our mission is to make academic publications available over international computer networks, at the service of the research community.

If you are interested in being one of the first to publish your article in the E-Press, then read the following and click for the item of interest.

How to prepare your paper for publication

In the present initial phase, we only publish articles that have been prepared using Latex and using our special style form. Other formatters etc will be introduced later, but we start with Latex because it allows us a simple way of establishing a standard appearance, and it solves some problems with copyright for fonts in a simple way.

Additional restrictions are that the copyright situation of the article must be clear (talk to us for details), and that the article must fit into one of the series that have been defined. The following series exist at present:

If your favorite discipline is not in the list, please help us to recruit a series editor. That's all we need to create a series.

Authorization to publish must be obtained from a senior faculty (in IDA: the lab leader) unless you are one yourself.

Then, to prepare your paper for publication, check the present model paper which provides the information you need. Look first at the actual appearance of the model paper to see what the format is like. (Note that the page numbers are outside the range presented by Ghostview, but they come out right on paper). Then, look at the latex source of the "main file" for this model paper, and follow the same pattern. You can not put in the number within the series yet, you have to get the number from us, but everything else should be easy. Possibly you will also wish to take a look at the style file to see how things work, but don't create your own unless you have talked to us first.

There are also special instructions from the editor for each participating series. Click here for instructions pertaining to your area:

If you have done this and everything seems to be OK, then everything should be ready for publishing your article in the E-Press. Send an Email message in order to proceed.

How does this compare with departmental reports?

The main difference is that we will claim with emphasis that E-Press publications have been published. This requires various kinds of arrangements: formal archiving in Swedish university libraries ("pliktexemplar"), safeguarding that the article is kept on-line and available for a long time (25 years) and that its contents are not changed during that period, etc.

There are three main cases:

Publish in E-Press first, then in conventional journal or conference

The main advantage for you of having it published is that you can claim that it is an early reference to the work preceding the publication in a conference or journal. In other words, you get an earlier publication date. This may be particularly important if there are long reviewing delays in your favorite journals.

The main stumbling block is the danger that a journal or conference might refuse to publish the paper, even if it has been accepted in a reviewing process, on the grounds that it is "previously published". This is new area: we do not know what will happen, but someone must test it.

Of course, you can always publish an article in the E-Press and then submit a revised article to a journal or conference. The same thing happens all the time when a conference paper is revised and sent to a journal, so it should not lead to any trouble.

In order for the claim "it has been published" to be taken seriously, you must also arrange that the existence of your article becomes known to researchers in the field. This you have to do yourself - you do not have the support of a conventional publisher (for books) or of being in a journal or a proceedings. Be creative!

Republish in E-Press after publication in a conventional journal or conference

This also includes the case of "concurrent publication", that is, you publish in the E-Press after your paper has been accepted for the journal or conference, but before it has actually appeared.

Then you don't have to face the problems mentioned above. The E-Press offers a more serious way of dealing with copyright issues and the stability of the text than if you just "put it on the net" yourself. However, the E-Press will be very careful not to republish (or concurrently publish) an article if it would violate your agreement with the other publisher.

In a longer run, it may be that the university will want all republication to go via the E-Press in order to keep track of the copyright issues. The present practices are a bit wild-grown.

At present, republishing a paper in the E-Press is basically a way of being one of the first to use this new service.

Publish in the E-Press only

This may be of interest if you have reference materials which you want to make available to the world, but which is not in itself a research result. Maybe it is background information for an article. You can publish it on the E-Press and presume it to be referenceable.

Publication agreements and forms

The following are drafts for these agreements. The final agreements will look slightly different, after having been checked by our lawyers, but the substance will be the same. (The lawyers said that "just a few details should be changed").

Publication by the E-Press

Information to authors, about what one needs to know and what one needs to do in order to get an article published in the Linköping E-Press.

Agreement to publish, the form to comlete and sign in order to get the E-Press to publish an article which \emp{has not} previously been published elsewhere.

Agreement to republish, a form which is only slightly different from the form in the previous item, and which one has to comlete and sign in order to get the E-Press to publish an article which \emp{has} previously been published elsewhere.

Statement of previous publication in a journal, a form which is to completed and attached to the "agreement to republish" if previous publication was in a journal.

Statement of previous publication in a conference proceedings or a book, a form which is to completed and attached to the "agreement to republish" if previous publication was in a conference proceedings or a containing a collection of articles.

If the article has previously been published several times, then of the "Statement of..." forms have to be completed.

Renewed publication forms

These pages are used by the author when an article which has first been published by the E-Press is later accepted for publication in a refereed journal, conference proceedings, or book.

Introductory page.

Copyright release agreement, to be sent to the publisher of the journal, etc. in place of their standard copyright release form.

Explanation of previous electronic publication, containing information about the E-Press; to be attached to the copyright release agreement in the previous item.

Agreement to publish, same as above. A copy of your signed agreement should be attached to the copyright release agreement in the 2nd-previous item.