The Mathematica Journal: Submissions

SUBMISSIONS

Package includes TheMathematicaJournal stylesheet.

Article Submissions to The Mathematica Journal

The Mathematica Journal publishes articles and notes on all aspects of Mathematica and related subjects.

Its goals are to inform and challenge the community of Mathematica users and to enable readers at all levels of proficiency to use Mathematica more effectively. A high standard of Mathematica programming, using clarity and conciseness in writing, is valued. The Mathematica Journal reserves the right to edit contributions, with changes subject to the authors' approval.

The Mathematica Journal also publishes Mathematica notebooks and packages as well as programs in other languages that can be used to complement Mathematica. All programs are accompanied by a note or an article. Programs distributed through the journal can be used freely and duplicated for noncommercial purposes.

Some of the categories of material published in The Mathematica Journal are listed below.

Reports of applications of Mathematica to particular fields
The level of exposition should be such that readers in other fields of education, research, or business can grasp the essence of the application, the reasons why Mathematica is being used, and the possible relevance to the other fields of the techniques being employed.

Descriptions of programs
The programs--Mathematica packages and notebooks or Mathematica-related programs in other languages, whether or not accompanied by the code itself--should be exemplary in their implementation and thoroughly tested.

Mathematica programming advice
This advice can range from notes about little-known programming tricks to tutorials focusing on a general problem or technique. The main test of applicability here is how many readers are likely to benefit from the ideas, but even a relatively esoteric application can aid in the teaching of good programming principles.

Discussion of issues beyond Mathematica
Essays, columns, and surveys on subjects that do not involve Mathematica directly may be considered if they are likely to be of general interest to the Mathematica community. Possible subjects include symbolic computation, numerical computation, computer-based education, computer graphics, computer art, and so forth. Articles of this type should be particularly well written and well argued, and their relevance to the Mathematica community should be clear.

General informational material
Articles, profiles of exemplary Mathematica users or applications, interviews, and news related to the Mathematica community will be sought for publication online on a frequent basis.

Please do not send submissions simultaneously to Mathematica Information Center and The Mathematica Journal.

To submit a contribution, send the material--together with a cover letter stating that the material is being submitted for publication in The Mathematica Journal--in one of the following formats. Use filenames that suggest the contents.

Web
Articles, graphics, and other files may be uploaded on the internet at http://upload.wolfram.com/?tmj=1.

Email
Articles and other material may be sent by email to submissions@mathematica-journal.com. Do not use this method for articles or attachments that exceed 1 MB.

Hard Copy and/or Physical Media by Mail
Send to:

Editor
The Mathematica Journal
PO Box 6359
Champaign, IL 61826-6359
USA

Articles, packages, graphics, notebooks, and programs submitted for publication can be sent on CD-ROM, zip, or other disk. Submissions will not be returned. Do not send proprietary or confidential information. Currently the time between submission and publication of an article is about two years.

Manuscript Submission Guidelines

Manuscripts must be in English. Manuscripts should be submitted as properly formatted notebooks made with Mathematica 6.0. Notebooks should be well structured, making good use of text, sections, and inline and displayed equations (if required), and they should use the Mathematica stylesheet TheMathematicaJournal.nb. This stylesheet, along with an authoring palette, can be downloaded as a package from www.mathematica-journal.com/submissions.

Manuscripts should present a significant application of Mathematica. Manuscripts under consideration by other journals or submitted simultaneously to other journals will not be considered.

Remember to include:

1. The title (if the title has more than 50 characters, submit an alternative short title)

2. Your name(s), affiliation, and postal and email addresses

3. An abstract of 150 words (at most)

The remaining material should be included in the following order:

1. Text of the article or note

2. References (see below)

3. A list of additional electronic material including, if appropriate, information on the necessary environment (machine, operating system, and so on)

4. A biography of each author (limited to 60 words per author and 180 words overall)

References should be numbered in the text in order of appearance. In the listing at the end of the article, each reference should include complete information: author or institution, full title, publisher, city, and year (for books, manuals, and so forth) or full journal name, volume, year, and page range (for papers). References to software and hardware should contain complete manufacturer or distributor names and addresses. See the format in a current issue.

All references in the bibliography should be cited in the text or accompanied by comments stating their relevance.

Avoid footnotes if possible. If used, they should be numbered sequentially and clearly marked in the text, with the footnotes as a section at the end of the article.

Please observe the following guidelines for text and embedded code:

Use of the word Mathematica should be kept to a minimum since the reference is almost always clear from the context. It is especially discouraged in titles.
Technical terms unlikely to be known to nonspecialists should be italicized the first time they are used, and unless the first use is self-explanatory, they should be defined or explained then. Italics should be not be used for emphasis, except very occasionally.
Mathematica words, symbols, or expressions should appear in a font distinct from that used for text. The use of a fixed-pitch font, in which all characters have the same width, is strongly encouraged. Use the authors' palette and The Mathematica Journal stylesheet.
References to Mathematica functions should not be followed by [ ] unless what is meant is that the function is being invoked with no arguments.
Lines of displayed code, whether from packages or interactive sessions, should be no longer than 60 characters.
Do not use Mathematica comments in interactive sessions; instead, alternate explanatory text using complete sentences with input/output pairs. It is especially important to explain the commands in a long interactive session as you go along rather than all at once at the beginning or end of the session. As a rule, notebooks should be cast into this same format: explanatory text alternating with code.
Always mention which version of Mathematica you are running.

Guidelines for Mathematica Packages

Packages are programs written in Mathematica, to be used on their own or integrated with the user's code.

The most important consideration in designing a Mathematica package for distribution is that it must be readily usable by others. Clarity is the goal, and a good test of the clarity of your design is the ease with which it can be documented. Ideally, the purpose and use of each symbol visible to the user should be simple enough to explain in its usage string.

The more simply your design can be described, the more likely people are to be able to understand and use what you have built. In addition, such designs are often more general and therefore usable in a wider range of circumstances.

The book Programming in Mathematica, Third Edition, by Roman Maeder (Addison-Wesley, 1996) provides good pointers on programming style.