Instruction for authors

The submission stage

Authors should submit their manuscripts electronically, only through the web at the following address:
https://sbuild.nestor-edp.org

For the peer-review process:

Manuscripts should preferably be in Word format, RTF files are also accepted. Figures and tables should be submitted as separated files. The submission system will produce a unique PDF from these elements, which will be submitted to your approval, and will be eventually sent to the referees after evaluation by the Editors.

Sustainable Buildings can only consider articles that have been approved by all co-authors, and that have not been published and are not currently submitted for publication in any other journals. When an author has used a figure or a table from another publication, he should indicate clearly the origin of the manuscript and should also obtain permission for reproduction from the publisher concerned. All papers are reviewed and only the articles with a positive report will be accepted for publication.

Manuscript content

The manuscripts should be written in English. Material should be placed in the following order: title, author names, address of author institutions, shortened version of the title (75 characters, including spaces), abstract, text, implications and influences, acknowledgments, appendices, references.

Implications and influences

Authors should provide a short paragraph or a few sentences on how the published work and research contained in the contribution will have implications for further work and/or influence other disciplines, where appropriate. In cases where the work will have more significant implications/influences for change and development, this section will emphasize those matters and again be written in an accessible manner for the non-specialist reader.

The acceptance stage

At this stage, an electronic version of the manuscript (Word, TeX, LaTeX), which must exactly match the accepted version, should be sent to the publisher (even if the article has been previously submitted electronically). The Editorial Office will send an acceptance letter to the corresponding author, and at the same time, will ask for electronic files of the text and figures. All portions of the manuscript available in electronic form should be sent to the production department according to the instructions mentioned in the acceptance letter from the Editorial Office.

Authors are informed that any missing element in an accepted article (electronic file of the text and/or good quality laser-printed figures) will delay the publication date. The Editorial Office will keep the paper on a waiting list until all missing material is received.

The proof correction stage

Authors should keep in mind that reading proofs is their responsibility. Files typeset using Word, WordPerfect, MacWrite, etc., need heavy retyping (equations and special characters are lost during the conversion process). Also, LaTeX files are slightly modified by the production department to follow the general presentation rules of the journal. The main aim of proofreading is to correct errors that may have occurred during the production process, and not to modify the content of the paper. The proofs, once corrected, should be signed and returned to the publisher as soon as possible.

Sustainable Buildings requires authors to pay a publication fee (Article Processing Charge, APC). For 2013, the APC is 750 €; the information for payment will be sent with the proofs.

Style guide

Title

The title should be simple, concise and informative. A shortened version of the title consisting of a maximum of 75 characters (including spaces) for running headers should also be provided.

Author(s) name(s) and affiliations

A list of all authors, as well as corresponding addresses, should be provided. Addresses should contain all information necessary for effective mail delivery. E-mail addresses and telephone numbers should also be provided to speed up communication between the Editorial Office, readers and authors.

Abstract

An abstract should accompany each manuscript; it should be completely self-contained, not exceeding 200 words and written as a single paragraph. Mathematical expressions should be avoided.

Authors should also provide an “Implications and influences” paragraph (see description above)

Main body of the paper

The body of the paper should be divided into sections (however, in short papers, sections may not be necessary). Sections should be numbered with Arabic (not Roman) numerals. Subsections (second level) should be numbered 1.2, 1.3, etc., and sub-subsections (third level) 1.1.1, 1.1.2, etc. Appendices should be numbered A, B, etc. All sections must have a short descriptive title, which should be capitalized. Equations, tables, figures and references should follow a sequential numerical scheme in order to ensure a logical development of subject matter.

Mathematical material

A standard typesetting procedure is followed by the production staff. Authors should observe the following simple rules to help clarify the content of mathematical material. The text should make clear distinctions between physical variables, mathematical symbols, units of measurement, abbreviations, chemical formulas, etc. Hand-written Greek letters should be written fully in the margin at the first place of mention. Equations must be typewritten in papers submitted as hard copy and be sequentially numbered. The number should appear in parentheses at the right-hand side of the page and be referred to in the text as, e.g. (7).

Caution: Mathematical expressions often need to be displayed on two or more lines (“broken”) because of the line length limitation of Sustainable Buildings's two-column layout. There are situations where breaking an equation is not possible or appropriate (long fractions or matrices). The production department reserves the possibility of placing unbroken equations at the bottom or at the top of the page(s) concerned, according to the page layout to be defined by the production staff, with an appropriate citation in the text. For example:

See equation (8) below (above)

• Authors who have access to italic and boldface should use these to identify physical or mathematical variables. Variables are to be set in normal italic. Physical constants such as the speed of light or the Boltzmann constant are also set in normal italic.
• Italic type should be avoided for the following:
  • Units of measurement (e.g., km, g, K, cm^-2, s^-1).
  • Mathematical signs such as sin, cos, log, exp, etc.
  • Chemical formulas.

Acknowledgments and appendices

The acknowledgment section should follow the main body of the paper and should precede any appendix. Appendices should be numbered with A, B, etc. if there are more than one appendix (Appendix A or Appendix A: Complex developments, when there is a title). The appendix equations should be numbered consecutively, but separately from those in the main body of the paper ((A1), (A2), etc.). In each appendix equations will be numbered separately ((B1), (B2), etc.).

Figures

Authors are encouraged to submit color illustrations: Sustainable Buildings is an all-electronic journal and all figures will appear freely in color. Each figure should be cited in the text. They must conform to the usual quality criteria given below. Authors should remember that the final published quality of illustrations can never be better than the quality of the original artwork.

• Good quality figures have the following characteristics:
  • They should be produced with a good quality laser printer and have lines, letters, numbers and symbols of uniform strength and contrast.
  • Authors should avoid including any unnecessary text around a figure, such as captions, figure numbers, and author or file names. These indications should be handwritten on the back or at the bottom of the original figures.
  • Parts of diagrams, graphs, etc. should be clearly indicated by different types of hatching. Gray scales, which might become difficult to distinguish after reducing, or which often disappear during the printing process, should be avoided. Also, parts a, b, c, etc. of a figure should be in separate files.
  • Standard symbols which should be used inside a figure are:
  • Labeling should be uniform in size throughout all figures. Lettering should not be pasted on to the figures as it may easily become detached as a result of handling.
  • After photographic reduction, all details of the figures should still be visible and all labeling legible.
• Scaling of artwork
  Figures are often reduced to 50% of their original size. Very few figures have a final size outside the range of 40-85%. The final size of capital letters or numerals in a figure usually lies within the range 1.6-2.3 mm to avoid any disproportion between figure/text character sizes.

Electronic Supplementary Material

Authors are encouraged to submit Supplementary Materials to complement articles in Sustainable Buildings.  This might include additional figures or examples, animations, movies, audio, data sets used in the paper, computer code used to generate figures or tables, or other materials that are necessary to fully document the research contained in the paper or to facilitate the readers' ability to understand and extend the work.

References

It is important to confirm the accuracy of bibliographic information in references. This has become more important with the online version. Hyperlinks will be programmed to enable readers to jump directly to the material cited. If your reference citations are incorrect or incomplete (e.g., missing author name, or an incorrect volume number or page), the associated hyperlinks may fail, and the usefulness of your paper in the online environment may be diminished.

References should be cited in the text by placing sequential numbers in brackets (for example, [1], [2,5,7], [8-10]). They should be numbered in the order in which they are cited. Authors may be cited in the text by name, but without initials. Authors should use the forms below in the final reference list.

Journals

1. J.M. Smith., R. Brown, C. Green, Sustainable Buildings. 1, 01 (2013)
2. J.M. Smith et al., Eur. Phys. J. Appl. Phys. 4, 123 (2012)
3. J.M. Smith, Sustainable Buildings 123 (2009), accepted for publication
4. J.M. Smith, Eur. Phys. J. Appl. Phys. (to be published)

Books

5. J.M. Smith, in Molecular Dynamics, edited by C. Brown, 2nd edn. (EDP Sciences, Les Ulis, 2012)

Proceedings

6. J.M. Smith, in Proceedings of the International Conference on Low Temperature Physics, Madison, 1997, edited by C. Brown (EDP Sciences, Les Ulis, 1998), p. 201

Reports and Theses

7. J.M. Smith, Brookhaven National Laboratory Report No. 110, 2001 (unpublished)
8. J.M. Smith, Ph.D. thesis, University of Paris XI, 2006