Instructions for Authors

Authors’ Guideline
Prior to submitting your manuscript, please ensure that it has been prepared according to the template and the guideline below.

Template in PDF: IECE_Sample.pdf.

Template in MS Word: IECE_Sample.doc. 

Template in Latex: IECE_Sample.zip. 

Article Types

The journal publishes Research Articles, Reviews and Editorials. All papers must be written in English and must follow a clear concise style. The language editors may have to check the language and grammar of your submitted manuscript and make editorial changes if deemed necessary.

Research Articles

A Research article is a detailed technical report of an original study that is likely to impact its field. It is a primary report where authors collect and analyze data and draw conclusions from the results leading to an original study in the literature. Research articles incorporate a comprehensive list of elements i.e., Title, Keywords, Authors and Affiliations, Abstract, a substantive Introduction, Material and Methods, Results, Discussion and Conclusion. There is no specific word count limitation; however, manuscripts must be as concise as possible.

Review Articles

A Review article is a paper based on other published research. It is a secondary source. It does not report original research but rather critically evaluate previously published material. Typically, a review article analyzes or synthesizes existing literature on a subject with the aim of expanding on its current understanding or sums up the already existing work to relate it to its present status and suggest new research directions. Structured reviews and meta-analyses should use the same structure as research articles and adhere to the PRISMA guidelines, and authors should also include a completed PRISMA checklist and flow diagram as supporting files.

Editorials

Editorials are short personal perspectives about topics relevant to the journal’s aims and gateways. Editorials are not formally Peer-reviewed and must not include new research and data. They are evaluated by the editorial team in-house, if necessary in consultation with advisory board members.

All manuscripts must be submitted via the online system. Manuscripts submitted for publication must be prepared according to the guideline given below.  

This guideline is intended to assist authors in preparing their manuscripts. To prevent avoidable delays in the review and typesetting process, TSSC asks and encourages authors to read carefully the guidelines before writing the manuscript.

TSSC publishes review and research articles among others types. All papers must be written in English, with a clear and concise style. The language editors will check the language and grammar of any submitted manuscript, and will make editorial changes when deemed necessary.

1 Cover Letter

A submitted manuscript must be accompanied by a cover letter. The cover letter must clearly state that the manuscript is an original work on its own merit, that it has not been previously published in whole or in part, and that it is not being considered for publication elsewhere. It should also include statements, clearly indicating that all authors have read the final manuscript, have approved the submission to the journal, and have accepted full responsibilities pertaining to the manuscript’s delivery and contents. If there are any ethical, copyright, and/or disclosure issues that come with the manuscript, they should be revealed in the cover letter. In addition, authors need to declare that there is no conflict of interests, or disclose all the conflicts of interest regarding the submitted manuscript.

2 Template

Authors are recommended to use the Latex template.

3 Manuscripts

3.1 Title and Author Information

• The title of the paper should be in bold, Times New Romans, 14-point, at the top center of the page. Capitalize the first letter of each notional word of the title (title case format).

• Insert two line breaks (two Returns) before the title.

• Insert one line break (one Return) between title and authors.

• Provide full names of all authors and their affiliations. The author line should be centered.

• Authors should be numbered according to their affiliations. There should be no space between the author’s name and the number.

• Use a comma “,” to separate each author, use “and” to separate the last two authors.

• If there are only two authors in the author line, use “and” to separate them.

• Authors should provide their full names in the author line.

• Affiliations should include the authors’ Departments, Institutes, Cities and Countries.

• Corresponding author should be marked with the superscript *.

• Use two line breaks (two Returns) between authors and the Abstract.

3.2 Abstract

• Abstract of a research paper is typically 200 to 400 words in length, and 150 to 300 words for a review paper.

• Abstract should be one continuous (not structured) paragraph and should not include reference citations.

• Abbreviations should be defined in full the first time they appear. They could be then used, quoted in-between parentheses.

• Insert one line break (one Return) between the Abstract and the Keywords.

3.3 Keywords

• Three keywords are the minimum required. Use a semi-colon “; ” between each keyword.

• Only the first letter of the first keyword is capitalized, unless it is a proper name or required.

• One line break (one Return) is inserted between the Keywords and the Main text.

4 Structure

A paper for publication should be divided into multiple sections: a Title, Full names of all the authors including their affiliations, a concise Abstract, a list of Keywords, Main text (including figures, equations, and tables), Acknowledgments, Funding Statement, Conflict of Interests, References, and Appendix.

An indentation with 4 spaces (0.20”) should be inserted at the beginning of each paragraph. There should be no line breaks between paragraphs belonging to the same section.

5 Equations and Mathematical Expressions

• Equations and mathematical expressions must be inserted into the main text.

• Two different types of styles can be used: In-Line style, and Display style.

• Use either the Microsoft Equation Editor or the MathType add-on. Math equations should be editable text, and not images.

6 Figures and Tables

Figures and tables should be inserted in the text of the manuscript. Figures should have relevant legends and should not contain the same information already covered in the main text. Figures (diagrams and pictures) should be numbered consecutively using Arabic numbers. They should be placed in the text soon after the point where they are referenced. Figures must be submitted in digital format, with resolution higher than 300 dpi.

7 Citations

• All references should be cited in the main text, sequentially.

• For citations of references, please use square brackets and consecutive numbers, e.g., [1], [2,3], [4–6].

• Only the first author is cited, such as Wang [1]. If the cited reference has more than one author, please omit the rest of the authors using et al., such as Chen et al. [7], Li et al. [4–6]. Do not use “Ref.” or “reference” except at the beginning of a sentence: “Reference [3] shows ...” .

• If the cited reference contains more than 2 consecutive references, the format should be:  please see the example, [1–3], [4–6]. It is better not to cite more than 5 consecutive references.

• No citation to the page number should be used.

• Please do not use automatic endnotes in Word, rather, type the reference list at the end of the paper using the “References” style.

8 Declarations

Submitted manuscripts should, where appropriate, contain the following parts right before the list of references:

8.1 Acknowledgement: IECE suggests to list all non-author contributors in the acknowledgement section at the end of the paper, with details on their respective activity. Contributors include individuals in the planning, conducting, editing and/or reporting the work, and all the patients or members of the public who have kindly assisted as research volunteers. This is a good place of acknowledging their support, list their names and recognize their individual roles. IECE strongly encourages authors to fully acknowledge contributions of patients and the public towards their research, if and where appropriate.

8.2 Funding Statement: Authors should describe sources of funding that have supported the work, including specific grant numbers, initials of authors who received the grant, and the URLs to sponsors’ websites. If there is no funding support, please write “The author(s) received no specific funding for this study”.

8.3 Author Contributions: The Author Contributions statement is mandatory. It should represent all the authors and is to be included upon submission. It can be up to several sentences long and should briefly describe the tasks of individual authors. All listed authors should have substantially contributed to the manuscript and have approved the final submitted version, which should include a description of each author’s specific work and contribution.

We suggest the following format for the contribution statement:

The authors confirm contribution to the paper as follows: study conception and design: X. Author, Y. Author; data collection: Y. Author; analysis and interpretation of results: X. Author, Y. Author. Z. Author; draft manuscript preparation: Y. Author. Z. Author. All authors reviewed the results and approved the final version of the manuscript.

8.4 Availability of Data and Materials: This statement should make clear how readers can access the data used in the study and explain why any unavailable data cannot be released.

8.5 Ethics Approval (Non-Biological or Non-Medical manuscripts do not need to write this part): Guidelines for ethical approval statements may differ based on the journal, a standard ethical approval statement will usually include:

1. Whether or not the study included human or animal subjects. In all cases, the ethical approval status of the work should be stated in the ethical approval statement.   

2. The committee which approved the study.

3. The compliance documents. What policies, declarations, acts, etc.

4. Persistent identifier: reference or approval number. Include the registration ID/reference number if applicable.

8.6 Conflicts of Interest: Authors must declare all conflicts of interest. If there is no conflicts of interest, it should also be declared as in ex, please write “The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest to report regarding the present study”.

8.7 Supplementary Materials: Supplementary Materials should be uploaded separately on submission. The supplementary files will also be available to the referees as part of the peer-review process. Any file format is acceptable; however, we recommend that common, non-proprietary formats are used where possible.

Supplementary materials should be clean, without tracked changes, highlights, comments or line numbers.

Supplementary figures must be clear and readable, and we recommend a minimum resolution of 300 dpi, figure legends must be clear and accurate.

Supplementary materials must be mentioned in the main text. The citation format of Supplementary Figure, Table, Equation, etc., should start with a prefix S (i.e., Fig. S1, Eq. (S2), Table S1, etc.).

9 References

All references numbers are set flush left and form a column of their own, hanging out beyond the body of the reference. References must use APA format.

10 Appendix

Authors that need to include an appendix section should place it after the References section. Multiple appendices should all have headings in the style used above. They will be ordered A, B, and C etc.

11 Units and Symbols

• There should be a space between the unit and Arabic number: 5 mm NOT 5mm.

• There should be a space before and after the operator: 3 cm  × 5 cm NOT 3 cm × 5 cm.

• Please use Arabic number and relevant unit in the manuscript: 5 kg NOT five kilograms or 5 kilograms or five kg.

• Do not use hyphen/dash or any connector symbol between the value and its unit: 5 kg NOT 5–kg.

• Please clarify all units during a calculation or a mathematical relationship: 3 cm × 5 cm NOT 3 × 5 cm, 123 g ± 2 g or (123 ± 2) g NOT 123 ± 2 g, 70%–85% NOT 70–85%.

• Greek letters must be inserted using the correct Greek symbol (using Times, Helvetica or Symbol font), NOT written in full, i.e., alpha: α; beta: β, ß, (available in Times and Helvetica); and gamma: γ, etc.

12 Research and Supplementary Materials

In addition to the data, computer code, and research materials transparency guidelines, TSP encourages authors to provide supplementary materials that complement their main articles and enhance the readers' understanding of the research. These supplementary materials may include additional data, figures, tables, multimedia content, or relevant information.

12.1 Supplementary Materials Submission: Authors should submit supplementary materials along with their main article during the manuscript submission process. These materials should be in a separate section and clearly labeled as "Supplementary Materials."

12.2 Content Relevance: All supplementary materials should be directly relevant to the main research article and provide valuable additional insights or data that support or expand upon the article's findings. Supplementary materials should not duplicate information already presented in the main text.

12.3 File Formats: Supplementary materials can be submitted in various formats, such as Word, PDF, Excel, CSV, images (JPEG or PNG), audio (MP3), video (MP4), or any other appropriate format for the content type.

12.4 Supplementary Data: Authors can provide raw data or additional data that support the article's findings but are not included in the main text due to space constraints. Data should be well-organized, properly labeled, and accompanied by clear explanations of the data's context and significance.

12.5 Supplementary Figures and Tables: Authors may include extra figures or tables that complement those in the main article. These should be numbered separately (e.g., Supplementary Figure S1, Supplementary Table S1) and referred to in the main text.

13 Chemical Compounds

Chemical and Chemical Nomenclature and Abbreviations
Authors should provide the exact structure of the chemical compound, and if there are appeared as new chemical compounds, authors should submit the small-molecule crystallographic data to the Cambridge Structural Database (CSD) and deposit relevant information to PubChem. The final version of the manuscript should contain the accession codes. When possible, authors should use systematic nomenclature to identify chemical compounds, and biomolecules using IUPAC is preferred. Standard chemical and chemical abbreviations should be used. Chemical structures should be included as high-resolution files according to Cell Press Figure Guidelines. 

Combinatorial Compound Libraries
The authors should include standard characterization data for a diverse panel of library components when describing the preparation of combinatorial libraries in the manuscript.    

Chemical Structures for Organic and Organometallic Compounds
Chemical structures for organic and organometallic compounds should be established through spectroscopic analysis. The authors should provide standard peak listings for both 1H NMR and proton-decoupled 13C NMR for all new compounds. Other NMR data, when appropriate, such as 31P NMR, 19F NMR, etc. should be reported. For the identification of functional groups, both UV and IR spectral data should be reported when appropriate. For crystalline materials, melting-point ranges should be included. For the analysis of chiral compounds, specific rotations should be reported. For known compounds, authors should provide detailed references.      

Spectral Data
Detailed spectral data for new compounds should be provided in the Materials and methods section. The authors should explain how specific, unambiguous NMR assignments were made in the Materials and methods section.      

Crystallographic Data for Small Molecules

For crystallographic data for small molecules, authors should provide a standard crystallographic information file (CIF) and a structural figure with probability ellipsoids. The authors should check the CIF using the International Union of Crystallography (IUCr) checkCIF. For the structure, the structure factors must be included either in the main CIF or in a separate CIF. Crystallographic data for small molecules should be submitted to the Cambridge Crystallographic Data Centre (CCDC), and the accession number must be referenced in the manuscript.     

Biomolecular Materials
Manuscripts reporting new biomolecular structures should contain a table summarizing structural and refinement statistics. If suitable, high-field NMR or X-ray crystallography may also be used. For new biopolymeric materials (e.g., oligosaccharides, peptides, nucleic acids, etc.), if it is not possible for structural analysis by NMR spectroscopic methods. Authors must provide evidence of the identity based on sequence (when appropriate) and mass spectral characterization.      

Biological Constructs
Authors should provide sequencing or functional data that validates the identity of their biological constructs (plasmids, fusion proteins, site-directed mutants) upon request.  

Polymers

For new materials, as well as 1H NMR and 13C NMR, the mass spectral analysis should be used to support the identification of molecular weight. Ideally, high-resolution mass spectral (HRMS) data are preferred.  

Nanomaterials

The authors must provide a detailed characterization of both individual objects and bulk composition.

14 Data Availability Statement

This statement should provide information about the availability of the research data and any restrictions or conditions associated with accessing it.

15 Suggesting Reviewers

Authors are welcome and encouraged to suggest reviewers when they submit their manuscripts by using the submission system. Authors should make sure they are totally independent and without conflicts of interest in any way. When suggesting reviewers, the Corresponding Author must provide an institutional email address for each suggested reviewer.

16 English Editor Service

Clear and concise language enables both the journal editors and reviewers to concentrate on the scientific content of your manuscript. In order to facilitate a proper peer review process and ensure that submissions are judged exclusively on academic merit, Tech Science Press strongly encourages authors to prepare the language of their manuscripts with the utmost care.

If you are an author whose native language is not English—or you have any concerns regarding the language quality of your manuscript—we recommend having your manuscript professionally edited by a qualified English-speaking researcher in your field prior to submission.

IECE offers paid language editing services, or you may choose to use an alternative service that provides a confirmation certificate.

17 Editors and Journal Staff as Authors

In the circumstances where Editors or editorial staff of the journal submit their own studies to the journal, they shall not be involved in the reviewing process, and the review process must be made transparently and rigorously. Submissions authored by editors or editorial staff of the journal will be handled by another editor who has least COIs with the authors to minimize the bias.

Conflicts of Interest

Conflicts of interest (COIs, also referred to as “competing interests”) may indicate the potential to influence the validity or objectivity of research. Editors, authors, and reviewers may be involved into COIs, and IECE considers it essential to identify and seek to mitigate them so as to ensure the integrity of its role in the dissemination and preservation of knowledge. Failure to declare competing interests may result in decline of a manuscript.

Authors must declare all potential conflicts of interest; if they have none to declare, they should state plainly, “The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest to report regarding the present study”.

In order to limit COIs, all roles involved in the peer-review process must identify and declare any personal circumstances or associations that may be perceived as having such influence and acknowledge all funding sources for the work. However, COI statements relating to public funding sources, such as government agencies and charitable or academic institutions, need not be supplied.

Authors

IECE requires a declaration from all authors of a manuscript regarding any potential COIs that could be relevant to the integrity or reliability of the scientific and professional judgment presented therein, as well as that of otherwise unassociated studies in the same journal. If there is, in fact, no conflict of interest, the authors should state plainly, “The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest to report regarding the present study.”

Reviewers

Reviewers should declare any COIs when they are assigned a manuscript and disclose this information to the editor, who will then assess whether they should proceed with the review process. 

Editors

The evaluation procedure (i.e., peer review and decisions regarding publication) must be free of biased editorial decisions. If an editor, guest editor, or associate editor believes that a personal, professional, or financial connection to an author may compromise the procedure, he or she must inform the journal’s editorial office of the fact.

18 Copyright and Licensing

Open Choice articles do not require transfer of copyright as the copyright remains with the author. In opting for open access, the author(s) agree to publish the article under the Creative Commons Attribution License.
 

19 Corrections & Retractions

IECE journals will issue corrections, and/or retraction statements, when deemed proper.

Corrections 

IECE aims to publish every article online in its final form. Upon receiving the proofs of their accepted manuscripts, authors will have an opportunity to check for errors and oversights. Occasionally, a mistake is pointed out in a published article, necessitating the issuance of a correction statement. A correction is a statement rectifying an error or an omission, Authors or readers may submit such a statement either through the journal’s online manuscript submission system (https://www.iece.org/TSSC), or by sending an email, along with the submission ID, to the IECE’s editorial office. A correction notice, published and linked to the corresponding article, is freely accessible to all readers.

Author’s Correction: An Author’s Correction may be published to correct an important error(s) made by the author that affects the scientific integrity of the published article, the publication record, or the reputation of the authors or the journal. The Managing Editor of that manuscript will be responsible for handling the correction process.

Publisher’s Correction: A Publisher’s Correction may be published to correct an important error(s) made by the journal that affects the scientific integrity of the published article, the publication record, or the reputation of the authors or of the journal.

Retractions 

A retraction is a notice that a previously published paper should no longer be regarded as part of the published literature. The primary purpose of a retraction is to ensure the integrity and completeness of scholarly records by withdrawing any manuscript which is found to contain infringements of professional ethical codes, major errors, or where its main conclusion is seriously undermined as a result of new evidence coming to light.
Violations of professional ethical codes include multiple submissions without proper citations or permission, redundant publications, fake claims of authorship, plagiarism, fraudulent use of data, etc. Major errors cover any or all miscalculations or experimental errors, intentionally or due to honest mistakes.

The retraction will be referred to the Editors-in-Chief, Associate Editors, and the Managing Editor who have handled the paper. Retracted articles will not be removed from the printed copies of the journal (e.g., from libraries) nor from the electronic archives. Their retracted status will be indicated as clearly as possible. Bibliographic information about the article will be retained to ensure the permanence and integrity of the published scientific record. When an article is retracted, in most of the cases, the original manuscript is corrected and is bi-directionally linked (to and from) the published retraction notice which details the original error. For the purpose of transparency, when corrections made to the original article affect any data, figures, tables or texts, the retraction notice will display the original data alongside the corrected version. When a correction is not possible, all existing versions of the article will remain unchanged but will contain the bi-directional links, to and from, the published retraction notice.
The notice of retraction is permanently linked to its corresponding retracted article and is freely available and accessible by all readers.
Articles may be retracted by their Author(s), by the Journal Editors, or by the Publisher, i.e., Tech Science Press. In all instances, the retraction should indicate the reason for the action as well as the entity behind the decision. A retraction made without the unanimous agreement of the authors is feasible and indicated as such.

Article Withdrawal

Article Withdrawal is only used for articles in press, which represent early versions of articles and sometimes contain errors, or may have been accidentally submitted twice. Occasionally, an articles may contain infringements of professional ethical codes, such as multiple submissions, bogus claims of authorship, plagiarism, and fraudulent use of data or the like. Articles that include errors or are discovered to be accidental duplicates of other published article(s), or are determined to violate our publishing ethics guidelines in the view of the editors (such as multiple submissions, bogus claims of authorship, plagiarism, fraudulent use of data or the like), may be “Withdrawn” by the article author or the journal editor.

Removal of Published Content

Under special circumstances, IECE reserves the right to remove an article, book or other content from IECE’s website and submission system. Such action may be taken when:

There are evidence indicating that the published content is defamatory, infringes on intellectual property rights, privacy rights, other legal rights, or is plainly unlawful;

A court or government order requires removal of such content;

The content, if acted upon, would pose an immediate and serious risks to health. Removal may be temporary or permanent. A statement will be published explaining the decision behind the removal.

Addressing Post-publication Issues

IECE is fully committed to maintaining the integrity and completeness of the scientific record and recognizes its importance to researchers and the academic community at large. As such, IECE will thoroughly investigate concerns that are directly raised with us by authors and/or readers. Authors are strongly encouraged to address any raised issues. In the course of our investigation, we may request original raw data, and consult with experts and other scholars in the field. Depending on the seriousness of the issues, the following outcomes may ensue:

A manuscript still under consideration may be rejected and returned to the author.

A published online article, depending on the nature and severity of the issues, may result in a correction notice or a retraction notice.

Issues deemed to be serious may prompt IECE to inform the authors’ institution and related affiliations.

Our actions are driven by our dedicated aim for transparent notification to our readers and unabated commitment to the integrity of the published record, and not by any motivation to sanction individuals or attribute responsibility to specific named individuals. We may refer readers to the institutional investigations’ reports if they are publicly available. While we are committed to addressing post-publications issues and correcting the record swiftly, investigations typically take some time to reach resolutions given the complexity of the discussions, the diligence in our process and the need to obtain original data and consult with experts. We will issue and regularly update relevant Editor’s Notes and/or Editor’s Expression of Concern as interim notifications to alert our readership of any of concerns with published material.

20 Appeals and Complaints

IECE’s appeal and complaint procedures pertain to grievances against editorial decisions, discontent with procedural inaccuracies (such as tardiness in manuscript handling), and complaint regarding publishing ethics.  

Queries of appeal and complaint must be accompanied by comprehensive justifications, and authors are requested to submit appeals and complaints in writing to IECE. The editorial office will provide a prompt response upon receipt of a formal appeal or complaint, and endeavor to resolve the matter within a reasonable time frame.