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CDAM: Computational, Discrete and Applicable Mathematics@LSE

Submission of CDAM Research Reports - Guidelines for Authors

The purpose of this webpage is to inform prospective authors about the style and submission process for the CDAM Research Report Series. These reports are preprints of research results, typically by members and visitors of CDAM@LSE and their co-authors, or researchers otherwise affiliated to the LSE. They are intended for rapid dissemination in hardcopy (typically posted by an author) and on the web.

Contents

Organisation of the report and guidelines for the title page

CDAM research reports should conform to the usual standards of scholarly articles. Adhering to these standards is the authors' responsibility. The paper will not be refereed. Typically, a CDAM research report is in the form of a manuscript as submitted to a journal for publication. The only exception is that the typesetting should aid readers rather than printers. That is, if possible, figures should be included in the running text rather than accumulated at the end, and overly wide line spacing and wide margins should be avoided to reduce the number of pages.

As any scientific article, the paper should have a proper title page (see below), introduction, well organised sections stating the results of the paper, and a list of references (usually ordered alphabetically) as cited in the text. All pages should be numbered with arabic numerals, starting with the title page 1.

The title page should contain the title of the paper, the authors and their affiliations, and, most importantly, a date (the month suffices) in order to make the paper identifiable by those who have printed it out and find it some time later in their pile of preprints. Without a date, it is hard to judge if the paper is current compared to a similar article, or to cite it.

Before or after the date, you may want to add a line (typically centered like the author names and date) stating its report number as in

CDAM Research Report LSE-CDAM-2001-33

where LSE-CDAM-2001-33 is the number that you have been assigned by the editor (see below).

Including a report number is advisable since the report will be put on the web as a single manuscript file without the cover pages as they appear in the hardcopy.

Title, author names, date and report number complete the title. Below that, there is usually space for the abstract. In addition to footnotes for acknowledgments, this should complete the title page (page 1).

It is advisable to start the introduction on a new page (page 2) since then alterations to the title page (like omitting the report number when submitting it to a journal) will not cause subtle changes in the rest of the manuscript. For example, a referee might point to lines on pages in the manuscript which are then more likely to match the hardcopy of the research report that you are using.

Web publication

A CDAM research report is listed on our website with its title and on a separate abstract page, and if possible also with an electronic copy of the entire document so that it can be downloaded (as a single file). The preferred format for this is PDF (Portable Document Format), which is a standard format accessible in web browsers like Netscape and Internet Explorer. In some cases, generating a PDF document causes excessive technical difficulties, in which case POSTSCRIPT (the most commonly used printer language) can be used. Printing a POSTSCRIPT document usually requires somewhat more sophistication by the user in order to print it, but is standard on Unix/Linux environments.

Not suitable for downloading are document formats that require special computer programs in order to process them, such as Microsoft Word, Scientific Word, WordPerfect, DVI-Files, LaTeX or TeX files, HTML files, or other formats. All of these can be converted to PDF. If you do not have such a converter on your computer system, you may find the public file conversion service at CERN useful, which can for example perform a conversion of a MS Word document to portable document format (PDF). (If necessary, the CDAM report editor will help you with this, and with converting LaTeX files.)

LaTeX is a very good typesetting system for mathematical text. If you use, in the old style, plain TeX, there is a relatively simple way of making your document digestible to the LaTeX system: Typically, a TeX-file begins and ends in 

\magnification =\magstep1

\bye
which in LaTeX (the new LaTeX2e) should be replaced by 
\documentclass[12pt]{article} 
\begin{document}

\end{document}
If you want to use the TeX command \eqalign which is unavailable in LaTeX, include before \begin{document} above the definition 
\def\eqalign#1{\,\vcenter{\openup.7ex\mathsurround=0pt
 \ialign{\strut\hfil$\displaystyle{##}$&$\displaystyle{{}##}$\hfil
 \crcr#1\crcr}}\,}
A similar thing exists for \eqalignno. There are further minor conversion issues, like defining the height and width of the text and other things, but essentially any TeX file is easily converted to a working LaTeX file. Ask your local TeX expert for further help.

Figures should, if possible, be integrated electronically into the document. A good way of doing this is the EPS (Encapsulated Postscript) format. For example, figures drawn by the Unix graphics program xfig can be exported as EPS files. They can be included in a LaTeX2e file as follows. Start with 

\documentclass[12pt]{article} 
\usepackage{epsf}
(in old LaTeX, \documentstyle[12pt,epsf]{article}).
Suppose your figure is in the file (in the same directory) named mypic.eps and your text occupies a width of 16 centimetres (as specified by the initial LaTeX command \textwidth=16cm ).
Then the following will create a little vertical space (1ex, the height of the lower case letter "x" in the current font), and then indent the figure by 1cm assigning a width of 12cm to the figure. The text continues in a new paragraph afterwards. 
\vskip1ex
\epsfxsize12cm
\noindent\hskip1cm
\epsfbox{mypic.eps}
A smaller version of the picture is obtained by replacing, for example, its xsize (width) of 12cm by 8cm and typically indenting it somewhat more, for example by replacing 1cm above by 3cm. These commands can also be embedded in the text as "floating insertions" by surrounding them by the commands \begin{figure} ... \end{figure} as documented in the LaTeX manual.

Converting to PDF of the DVI file generated from a LaTeX document is done conveniently by the dvipdfm command if you have that installed on your Linux system. The CDAM report series editor will do this conversion for you if necessary.

A small-size PDF file is obtained by using the LaTeX2e option \usepackage{times}
(in old LaTeX, by \documentstyle[12pt,times]{article})
which typesets the paper using the standard Times Roman font. The size of the resulting PDF file is typically reduced by a factor of 10.

If you have no means of producing an electronic copy, you may still publish a CDAM report by submitting it in hardcopy. Also, the electronic copy may be missing the figures if you find that inserting them is too complicated.

Submitting your manuscript

First, get a CDAM report number from the CDAM report series editor, specifying title and authors. Do not assume the number is the first unassigned number in the list since there may be simultaneous submissions, especially at the end of the calendar year, or some forthcoming papers may have been assigned a number that are not as forthcoming as at first. Usually, you should request the number only when you are ready to supply your manuscript.

When your paper is ready according to the above guidelines, your editor needs from you also an abstract as, for example, in this sample abstract webpage. Title, authors, and an abstract in ASCII (in a simple email message, for example) are also acceptable. Avoid mathematical formulas in abstracts as much as possible since they do not show well in HTML. Mathematical italics for variables as in LaTeX $n$ can be replaced by HTML italics.

Send your PDF file to the editor, or else your LaTeX and DVI file and all enclosed EPS figure files and style files. It can then hopefully converted to PDF without problems.

If you have only a hardcopy of your report, or if the electronic copy is missing figures, please submit an original hardcopy as well. The original hardcopy for the printer (even when it is produced from a file) stays with the department for possible reprints.

The typical number of hardcopies to be printed is 15 but you can request less or more according to the demand that you anticipate. About 5 hardcopies will stay with CDAM in the department.

Revisions of your report are possible while keeping the old report number. In that case, you should also keep the old date and add a second line with the date of the revision, so that the dates then look like, for example,

January 2001
Minor corrections added September 2001

(or "Proof of Theorem 2.1 revised" instead of "Minor corrections added", etc.). This should avoid any confusion which version of the report one is referring to.
If you wish, you can also withdraw a report and replace it with a new one, but minor changes in the form of a revision as just described are probably better for clarifying the successor status of the new report.

Copyright © London School of Economics & Political Science 2004-8
Last changed: 15 January 2008
Send comments to the current CDAM research report editor at reports @ maths.lse.ac.uk.