Authors should send the manuscript directly to editors' e-mail (ludek.jelinek@vscht.cz, martin.paidar@vscht.cz or hruby@imc.cas.cz) together with cover letter (preferably in the body of the message)  indicating the novelty and importance of it. Authors can suggest up to 3 reviewers they can also suggest (and explain) who should not review their article. Final selection of reviewers will be, however, performed by the editor. For the short communication/letter please use the template provided below and prepare the article in camera ready form. As the journal is published in electronic (PDF) form, color figures and images can be easily incorporated  and are encouraged.  Longer articles and reviews can be send, after consultation with editor, in  suitable format, preferably MS Word (*.doc, *.rtf). Authors bear the entire responsibility for their work (see publication ethics section below) and must be the owners of the copyright of all its parts. The copyright will be transferred automatically to Ion Exchange Letters upon publishing the article. Articles are published under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

Authors should be aware of their responsibility to attain all the legal, ethical and scientific standards related to article publishing. Severe misconduct (e.g. plagiarism, data fabrication, falsification) will lead to immediate rejection of the submitted article. If misconduct would be revealed after the publication of the article, article will be retracted or its correction will be published. Authors have the right to appeal against such allegations.

 

Apart from above mentioned cases of severe misconduct, authors should pay attention also to:

• authorship - only authors who substantially contributed to the article should be listed, other contributors should be mentioned in acknowledgement; all co-authors should be aware and agree with the publication of the article
• multiple publication - submitted article should not be published  or submitted for publication elsewhere; posters, conference abstracts, presentations at meetings, etc. are in this case not considered as publication but editor should be informed in cover letter
• conflict of interests - authors should inform editor about relevant conflicts of financial, personal or other interest in cover letter
• research foundation - any financial support should be clearly stated in the acknowledgements
• proper referencing - all relevant sources of information should be properly cited; primary sources should be cited whenever possible; excessive self-citations are discouraged but authors should not withhold relevant references to their articles; citing personal communications is discouraged; if necessary, they should not be listed in references but can be mentioned in text and acknowledged

Apart from author responsibilities there are also authors rights that we are willing to respect during and after the publication process. Authors can appeal against the editor's decision by the letter addressed to editor-in-chief explaining their objections. All the editors will vote on the appeal and the appealing author will be informed about the decision by the editor in chief.  After the article is published, authors can still submit corrections of their articles when necessary and in extreme cases, they can ask editors to retract their article.

 

Additional information about publication ethics from the point of view of not only authors but also editors and publishers can be found at sites of major publishers and professional organizations. Examples of publication ethics guidelines and practices, which we used as reference for designing our guidelines, can be found at: Committee on Publication Ethics, Blackwell Publishing Publication Ethics and Elsevier Publication Ethics Resource Kit.

 

In case of any doubts or suggestions how to improve this section, please feel free to contact the editors.

Authors will be informed upon reception of their manuscript by e-mail. Pertinent manuscripts will be forwarded to reviewers. Authors will then receive reviewers' questions and comments to their articles. The identity of rewires will not be revealed to the authors. Errors in the usage of English will not be corrected during the review process. We can only recommend the authors to recheck their manuscripts.

If the article is recommended for publication, authors will be asked to change article in accordance with reviewers' comments and answer their questions. Then, proofs (in PDF form) will be created from the revised version of manuscript. Authors should revise the proofs within two weeks. Only minor changes (mistyping,  units, etc.) of proofs will be allowed. Then, article will be published on the web pages of the journal. Dates of reception, acceptance and publishing will be shown in the final PDF form of article.

Published article will be freely available (as PDF file) on the web pages of the journal. Editors of the journal will put all their effort into spreading the information about the journal and its content to help others find the relevant articles in Ion Exchange Letters easily.

Manuscript template (MS Word *.doc, last updated 30/09/2011)

Letter to editor example (MS Word *.doc)