Submission Preparation Checklist

As part of the submission process, authors are required to check off their submission's compliance with all of the following items, and submissions may be returned to authors that do not adhere to these guidelines.

• Cover Letter:
  A cover letter is mandatory and should give the justification of the submission, highlights of the article, and a general impact statement. The authors are invited to submit, as part of the cover letter, the name, affiliation and email address of up to five potential Referees. Reviewers that are located in the same country or region of the authors will not be considered.
  
• Articles:
  Full-length research manuscripts, consistent with the objectives of Substantia, are the main focus of the Journal. Regular articles should have a maximum total length of 50,000 characters including spaces. In general, a combined maximum of 8 normal-sized figures and/or tables is allowed (for instance 3 tables and 5 figures). For multiple-panel figures each set of two panels equates to one figure. In case the limits on characters and figures or tables are exceeded, the authors are requested to justify this need in the cover letter. A good consolidate practice of the journal is to actively collaborate with the authors, and satisfy their publishing requests as long as they do not conflict with the ethical and editorial guidelines. Manuscripts can be submitted as a single Word or PDF file to be used in the refereeing process. Only when the paper is at the revision stage, the contributing author will you be requested to fit the paper into a “correct format” for acceptance and provide the items required for the publication of the article.
  Authors are kindly encouraged to use the following list to carry out a final check of their contribution before submitting the paper to the Journal for review. Please make sure that the following items are clearly specified on the first page of the manuscript:
• Contact details of the corresponding author:
  • Affiliation(s)
  • E-mail address,
  • Full postal address, Telephone Number, Website URL (when available)
• Manuscript:
  • Include up to 5 keywords immediately after the Abstract in order of relevance
  • All figures (including figure captions) embedded in the main document
  • All tables (including titles, description and footnotes) embedded in the main document
  • Make sure all figures and table citations in the text are duly mentioned
  • Supplementary Information files (where applicable)
• Further considerations:
  • Manuscript should be “spell checked” and “grammar checked”. The journal does not offer a language polishing service.
  • All references mentioned in the Reference List must be cited in the text, and vice versa
  • Permission to reproduce must be obtained for use of copyrighted material from other sources (including the Internet sources) prior to publication
  • Relevant declarations of interest are made
  • Journal policies detailed in this guide were reviewed
• Referees:
  Please submit, as part of the cover letter, the name, affiliation and email address of up to five potential Referees. Appropriate Referees should be knowledgeable about the subject but have no close connection with any of the authors. Some very important recommendations:
  • Reviewers should not be colleagues or have co-authored or collaborated with the authors during the last three years.
  • Do not indicate reviewers that may have competing interests with you.
  • Reviewers that are located in the same country or region of the authors will not be considered.
  The journal Editorial Staff will take the final decision on whether to invite your suggested reviewers.
• Book citations:
  Books without editor: E. Wingender, Gene Regulation in Eukaryotes, VCH, Weinheim, 1993, p. 215. Books with editor: T. D. Tullius in Comprehensive Supramolecular Chemistry, Vol. 5 (Eds.: J. L. Atwood, J. E. D. Davies, D. D. MacNicol, F. Vögtle, K. S. Suslick), Pergamon, Oxford, 1996, pp. 317–343.
• Miscellaneous citations:
  Patents: C. R. A. Botta (Bayer AG), DE-B 2235093, 1973 (in cases where the patent is not available online at the respective patent office the corresponding reference to Chemical Abstracts should be added). PhD or Master thesis: A. Student’s last name, the title of the thesis, University of (city), country, year (in boldface). Website: http://www.wesleyan.edu/chem/faculty/novick/vdw.html, last accessed on dd/mm/yyyy. Note that missing data will be highlighted at proof stage for the authors to correct.
• Figures and tables embedded in text:
  Please make sure that all figures and tables included in the manuscript file are placed next to the relevant text in the manuscript, rather than at the bottom or the top of the document.
• Use of word processing software:
  Regardless of the file format of the original submission, during the revision process, the authors will be invited to provide an editable file of their contribution. Please keep the layout of the text as simple as possible. Most formatting codes will be removed and replaced during the processing of the article. The electronic text should look like a conventional manuscript.
• Subdivision - unnumbered sections:
  Divide your article into clearly defined sections. Each subsection shall be given a brief heading. Each heading should appear on its own separate line. Subsections should be used as much as possible when crossreferencing text: please refer to the subsection by heading as opposed to simply 'the text'.
• Graphical Abstract:
  For the electronic online version of the article a Graphical Abstract is expected to be chosen and provided by the author(s). If needed, the publication office of the journal can be contacted for assistance.
• Journal citations.
  Only a comma is required between the name of the last author and the title of the journal. Journal titles should be italicized and abbreviated according to the "Chemical Abstracts Service Source Index" (CASSI; no commas appear in the journal names). The journal title should be followed (no comma) by the year of publication (in boldface), comma, volume number (in italics), comma, first page - last page. The use of the DOI code is highly recommended. This code can be indicated after the journal name (and a comma), instead of year, volume and first page. If the correct abbreviation is not known, the title of the journal should be given in full.
  Examples:
  1) J. P. Kraft, D. H. Johnson, Chem. Commun. 1996, 77, 2851-2857.
  2) M. Krebs, H. U. Hürter, Acta Crystallogr. Sect. A 1981, 37, and references therein.
  3) D. Bruss, Appl. Phys. B, DOI 10.1007/s003409900185.
• References and Footnotes:
  References to the literature or to footnotes are typed as superscripts after punctuation. These are numbered consecutively and listed (but not as superscripts) at the end of the manuscript. Please refer to Kragh, H. (2019). Controversial Elements: Priority Disputes and the Discovery of Chemical Elements. Substantia, 3(2), 79 - 90. (https://doi.org/10.13128/Substantia-740) as an example for References citations and listing. Footnotes must be listed consecutively with small letters as superscript in the text in alphabetical order and at the bottom of the corresponding page. They should not contain comprehensive experimental details (which should be included in the Supplementary Information instead) or long explanatory text. In the list of references, the names of all authors should be given in upper- and lowercase, starting with the initials of first names followed by the surname). The use of "et al." for the remaining authors of the cited works is not allowed. Please double-check your references, for example by using CrossRef, to ensure correct (online) links. Authors are strongly suggested to refer to an article that has already been published in Substantia in order to check the required style and format for citing papers, book, websites, etc.
• Formatting requirements:
  There are no strict formatting requirements but all manuscripts must contain the essential elements, for example Abstract, Keywords, Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results and Discussion, Conclusions, Acknowledgments, References, Artwork and Tables with Captions. If your article includes any Videos and/or other Supplementary Information, this should be included in your initial submission for peer review purposes. Please divide the article into clearly defined sections.
• Accessible and inclusive publishing: The manuscript adheres to requirements outlined in the "The Creating Accessible Content Guide"
  This guide will be useful for authors in preparation of their manuscripts and for editors in formatting materials for publication and adding content to journal websites. Carefully read the Guide here.
• Generative AI technologies are not authors. These tools should only be used to improve language and readability, with caution. If you used generative Al or AI-assisted technology, you must include the following statement directly before the references at the end of your manuscript:
  
  "During the preparation of this work the author(s) used [NAME TOOL / SERVICE] in order to [REASON]. After using this tool/service, the author(s) reviewed and edited the content as needed and take(s) full responsibility for the content of the publication."