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Thank you for your interest in LiveCoMS. The Living Journal of Computational Molecular Science is a peer-reviewed journal and welcomes submissions from all investigators.

Types of articles

Five types of manuscripts are currently published in LiveCoMS:

More details journal policies and procedures can be found in our authors guide.

Before Submission

Authors must first send a presubmission letter to the section lead editor in the relevant area. The contents of the letter are described in the Guide for writing articles for LiveCoMS. Submissions without an approved presubmission letter will be rejected without review, and authors will not receive any refund of their submission fee.

Once approved for submission, the authors should prepare the manuscript using LaTeX in a suitable public GitHub repository, using our LaTeX template. Instructions on how to use the templates can be found in the GitHub repository with the template files. Submission for publication carries a $100 fee, the only fees associated with publication in LiveCoMS.

A complete description of how to prepare an article can be found in the guide for writing an article for LiveCoMS.

Submission process

Articles (after approval of the presubmission letter) are submitted on the journal site, from the "For Authors" section. When filling out the submission form, note the following instructions:

  • Even if a version of the article is posted on arXiv, do not select to import the submission information from arXiv.

  • There is no specific word limit for the abstract, but it should be short and descriptive. The abstract should include the web address of the GitHub repository where the author's version of the article is hosted. Check that the abstract appears as you intent, especially watching out for copied and pasted carriage returns that break lines.

  • The main article manuscript should be of type .pdf.

  • As a single PDF file, a copy of their presubmission letter, appended with the response recieved from the Section Lead Editor approving the presubmission and specifying any changes or modifications to the scope the editors requested. The authors should also include a description of any deviations, if any, from what was laid out in the presubmission letter, with a rationale for why these changes were made. This should be uploaded as a "Supporting File", with the descriptor "Presubmission Letter".

  • Also as a "Supporting File", please upload a image (at least 300 x 200 pixels, any standard image format, color preferred, less than 1MB in size). This image is important to choose carefully, as it is the image that will appear on the article's front page and whenever the paper is shared on social media. We suggest something evocative of the research, but containing less scientific detail than, say, the table of contents image for an ACS journal.

  • If there are simulation input files or data files included as part of your article, they should be placed into a single compressed .zip directory, with a README file fully explaining how to use the, as "Supporting Files". Data should be uploaded in nonproprietary formats (.pdf instead of .ppt/.pptx/.key, .csv instead of .xls or .xlsx). In most cases, explanatory information should be put directly in the article itself, as there are no page limits. Supporting Files such as movies can be uploaded separately.

  • For the keywords section, please put the type of manuscript being submitted (one of either "Best Practices", "Living Reviews", " Comparisons of Molecular Simulation Packages", "Lessons Learned", and "Tutorials") and up to four other short terms or keywords.

Review and revision

Once submitted to LiveCoMS, review proceeds much as any other journal; however, review criteria are slightly different. A key purpose of the articles is that they should be useful to a range of researchers, but especially early-stage researchers. Thus, all articles will be reviewed by a member of the student review board, which consists of graduate students and postdocs invited by the editorial board.

A unique aspect of LiveCoMS is article versioning. New versions of manuscripts can be submitted for peer review, to be treated as new publications, with new DOI’s. Authors are therefore encouraged to involve the community in reviewing, improving, and (if warranted) expanding their work, with comments and responses done via the GitHub issue tracker. Such review and revision can occur at any time--before submission, during the review process, and after acceptance. When the author feels the article is sufficiently different from a previously published LiveCoMS article, they can submit a new version for publication. A description of the versioning process can be found in the guide for writing an article for LiveCoMS.

We understand that in the evolving lifetime of such a perpetual article, there may be changes in authorship. Our principle is that participants (e.g. new authors, people providing feedback) should receive credit for their contributions. A complete description of LiveCoMS policies for publication credit can be found in the guide for writing an article for LiveCoMS.

Article restrictions

Articles do not need to contain original research, but may do so.

There are no explicit length limits on any manuscript, but authors are reminded that excessive length discourages readership. In cases where the authors find a lengthy article is required, careful organization with descriptive sectioning is highly recommended.