Our author guidelines have been carefully prepared to facilitate the editorial process of publishing articles. Adherence to formatting guidelines allows the editors and reviewers to concentrate on the content of submitted articles. Therefore, please observe formatting instructions carefully. All articles are evaluated by the blind review process described in the “Editorial Policy”, after they are uploaded to the online submissions platform of the FORMATH Editorial System. All manuscripts must be submitted online through the FORMATH Editorial System. Submissions that arrive via mail or e-mail will NOT be processed for review. PDF for this guideline is available from here.
The accepted manuscript will be published using wording by Tex with high publishing quality. Because of this, we encourage you to prepare your submitted papers by Tex or Microsoft Word. If Microsoft Word is your preference, we recommend that you use the guideline described here, as a base format in order to avoid unnecessary change in style. When submitting figure files for publication, please ensure that the original software files and other figure files are saved in EPS FORMAT, which is of high publishing quality. The details of these instructions will be sent to the authors once acceptance notification of the manuscript is sent out.
First-time authors will be required to create a user account in the FORMATH Editorial System in order to proceed.
Please review the “Editorial Policies” of the FORMATH journal before submitting your manuscript.
Formatting Basics:
- Text should be written in English.
- File types: Please upload a PDF formatted file of the manuscript for submission and review the process to avoid any OS-dependent font errors. After acceptance of the manuscript for publication, the original file may be requested for upload along with other supplementary files, such as tables and figures.
- Font type and size: 10.5 point, Times New Roman or similar. Do NOT use unnecessary font or style in your manuscript.
- Spacing: 1.5 line-spaced is enough.
- Page Layout: Use approximately 2.5cm or 1-inch margins on all sides with page numbers in the bottom center and no header/footer. Line number is recommended.
- Maximum Number of Pages: The maximum number of pages after final printout may be limited to 20 pages. The manuscript should be concise and reasonable for reading.
Readability: The submitted manuscripts are judged not only on the depth and scope of the ideas presented and their contributions to literature, but also on whether they can be read and understood by the average reader of the FORMATH journal. The following guidelines may help authors with the preparation of manuscript.
- Write in an interesting, readable manner with varied sentence structure, and use active voice. Use as little passive voice as possible.
- Avoid using technical jargons that will make it difficult for the average reader to understand the manuscript. If you choose to use these jargons, please provide definitions.
- Keep sentences short so the reader does not get lost before the end of a sentence.
- Limit the number of footnotes to a minimum. Preferably, the sentence should be structured to avoid the need for a footnote.
Manuscript Organization
Each submission may consist of two parts: (1) Title Page and (2) Main Document.
1) Title Page: Please include the following information.
- Title
- Author(s) name, title, institution, address, and e-mail address, with identification of the corresponding author using asterisk, *. Please note that if the manuscript has coauthors, authors' contributions should be carefully judged. Criteria for authorship can be found in the “Editorial Policies”.
- Declaration of conflict of interests: If you do not have any conflict of interests, please state "The authors declare that they have no conflict of interests". Otherwise, please state it here.
2) Main Document: The main document may contain the following.
- Title
- Abstract
- Keywords
- Main text
- Acknowledgements, if any. Note all sources of funding for the research reported should be declared here.
- References
- Tables
- Figures
- Appendixes
Manuscript Components of Main Document
1) Title: The title should not exceed 25 words.
2) Abstract: The abstract is limited to 250 words and summarizes the key components of the manuscript, offering the reader the main findings of the work. Please minimize the use of abbreviations and do not cite references in the abstract.
3) Keywords: Include 4-5 primary keywords that best suit the topic of the manuscript.
4) Main Text: Main text may consist of:
- Introduction: This section should explain the background to the study, its aims, summary of the existing literature and why this study was necessary or its contribution to literature.
- Methods: This section should explain how the study was performed and statistical tests used, for instance. The methods section may include the design and setting of the study, description of materials used, and the type of statistical analysis used.
- Results: This section should explain the main findings. This should include the findings of the study.
- Discussion: This section should discuss the implications of the findings in context of existing research and highlight limitations of the study.
- Conclusions: This section should provide brief summary and potential implications. This may state clearly the main conclusions and provide an explanation of the importance and relevance of the study reported.
5) Please do not add any headers/footers on each page (other than the page number).
6) Headings are numbered and are formatted according to level:
- Primary Heading: Flush left, title-style capitalization (first letter of each word), with an extra line space before and after.
- Secondary heading: Flush left with only capitalization of first letter of first word. You must have at least two sections beginning with a secondary heading. If there is only one, the heading should be excluded. No extra line space is needed.
- Further heading is not recommended.
7) Mathematical Notations
Equations should be centered in the line, and be numbered with square blanket, (e.g. [1]) flush with the left margin. It is recommended to use Equation Editor or MathType for mathematical equations in MS Word. Cite the equation by “Eq.[1]” in the document. Please do not forget to put enough explanation for variables and parameters in equation. An example of equation notation is:
[1] zij = f(xi, yj)
where xi is the i-th weight and yi is the j-th height.
8) Acknowledgements: All sources of funding for the research reported should be declared. Please acknowledge anyone who contributed towards the article. See “Editorial Policies” for a full explanation of acknowledgements and authorship criteria.
9) References: References are listed in alphabetical order by the first author’s last name. Only references cited within the text are included. The author is fully responsible for any citation in the manuscript. All cited papers should be identified in the reference section.
- Citation in the manuscript should be in the form of [name year], e.g. in the parenthesis (Matsumura 1990), (Matsumura 1990; Matsumura and Yoshimoto 1991; Matsumura et al. 1993), and in the direct citation Matsumura (1990), Matsumura and Yoshimoto (1991), Matsumura et al. (1992). Citation in the reference section should follow the alphabetical order with the following format. Note that a capital letter should be used for the first character of the first word of the title of scientific papers, the first character of words in the title of books and proceedings. Italic font is also used as specified below.
- Use abbreviation for citation from Scientific Journal: Please use ISI Journal Title Abbreviation
- If available, DOI should be added.
Article within a journal:
[Name] [Year] [Title], [Abbreviated Name of Journal: Italic] [Vol #: pages][DOI].
Yoshimoto, A. and Shoji, I. (1998) Searching for an optimal rotation age for forest stand management under stochastic log prices, Eur J Oper Res 105: 100-112, doi:10.1016/S0377-2217(97)00040-4.
Article within a journal by DOI:
Surovy, P., Yoshimoto, A., and Panagiotidis, D. (2016) Accuracy of Reconstruction of the Tree Stem Surface Using Terrestrial Close-Range Photogrammetry, Remote Sens 123, doi: 10.3390/rs8020123
Citation from Book:
[Name] [Year] [Title: Italic], [Publisher], [Place of Publisher].
Hillier, F.S. and Lieberman, G.J. (1990) Introduction to Operations Research, McGraw Hill, New York.
Citation from a part of proceedings:
[Name] [Year] [Title], [Editors], [Name of Proceedings: Italic], [Publisher's information], [pages].
Yoshimoto, A., Paredes, V.G.L. and Brodie, J.D. (1988) Efficient optimization of an individual tree growth model, In: Kent, B.M., Davis, L.S. (eds), The 1988 Symposium on Systems Analysis in Forest Resources, USDA Forest Service. General Technical Report RM-161, pp. 154–162.
Citation from Web publication:
[Name] [Year] [Title: Italic], [Web Site] [Accessed date].
Pellegrino, J. (1999) Homepage, <http://www.english.eku.edu/pellegrino/default.htm> (Accessed 12 June 1999).
10) Footnotes: Footnotes can be used to give additional information, which may include the citation of a reference included in the reference list. Footnotes are to be used sparingly and must be concise at the minimum. Footnotes to the text are numbered consecutively in plain text, with a superscript asterisk-number (*1) appearing in text. Those to tables should be indicated by superscript lower-case letters (or asterisks for significance values and other statistical data).
11) Tables: Tables should appear after the document. Each table should be numbered consecutively in the order in which they are to appear in the document. No table is allowed without a reference in the document. When preparing a table file, do NOT use the graphic format for tables, which could result in lower quality after printing.
12) Figures: Figures should follow tables. Each figure should be numbered consecutively in the order in which they are to appear in the document. No figure is allowed without its reference in the document.
13) Appendix: If Appendixes are provided, they must appear on a new page after the figures. Multiple appendixes are labeled with letters (Appendix A, Appendix B). A single appendix is labeled without letters (Appendix). Multiple appendixes must be numbered in the order in which they are to appear.
14) Consent for publication: If the manuscript contains any individual person’s data in any form, it is the corresponding author’s responsibility to obtain the consent for publication from that person. It may be requested at any stage (including after publication).
15) Availability of data and materials: All manuscripts must indicate an “Availability of data and materials” statement in the context where it is appropriate. It can be a footnote. Data availability statements should include information on where data supporting the results can be found, including hyperlinks to publicly archived datasets analyzed or generated during the study. Authors are allowed to upload data files as supplement to the system for publication. Examples of the statement are following:
- The datasets generated and/or analyzed during the current study are available in the [name] repository, [web link to datasets]
- The datasets used and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
- All data generated or analyzed during this study are included in this published article [and its supplementary information files].
- The datasets generated and/or analyzed during the current study are not publicly available due [reason why data are not public] but are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
- The data that support the findings of this study are available from [third party name] but restrictions apply to the availability of these data, which were used under license for the current study, and so are not publicly available. Data are however available from the authors upon reasonable request and with permission from [third party name].