Author Guidelines

AIP Conference Proceedings
Guidelines for Authors ( details click here)

Dear Author,

Thank you for writing and contributing a paper to the proceedings of your conference. These guidelines
are intended to help everyone involved in the proceedings to achieve rapid and efficient publication, so
we are grateful to you, and any co-authors, for taking the time to read them and for following the
instructions below.

Reading lots of documentation can be time-consuming, so we have tried to be brief and cover the most
important points you need to consider before writing your paper for AIP Conference Proceedings. If you
have any questions, don't hesitate to get in touch with us via e-mail at aipcpeo@aip.org. We will do our best to reply to you within 1 business day, but as the proceedings mailbox is extremely busy, it may take a little longer to reply.

If you have already attended the event, we hope the conference was enjoyable. If you are yet to
attend, we wish you a safe journey.

Thank you, and best wishes.
The AIP Conference Proceedings team

Introduction: What is in these guidelines?
Please take a moment to familiarize yourself with the documents contained within the ZIP file package
of guidelines, you have downloaded.

• README_author_guidelines.pdf: The file you are reading, which summarizes the main issues
you should consider when writing your paper and preparing your article PDF file.
• permissions: This folder contains essential guidelines on using copyrighted materials within
your article, together with a letter you can use to apply for copyright permission.
o permission_guidelines.pdf: Essential notes and guidance on use and reproduction of
copyrighted material.
o permission_letter.pdf: A suggested template letter you can use to seek permission to
reproduce copyright material.
• sample_ references.pdf: A collection of examples showing how to prepare and format your
references.
• article_templates: This folder contains the manuscript templates in Word (or LaTeX) depending
which set of guidelines you have downloaded. Please note that double-column templates are no
longer supported; please use single-column templates only.
What do I have to read?
In addition to the advice and guidance contained in this document. If you intend to use copyrighted
materials in your paper, please read permission_guidelines.pdf.

What do I need to do?
The proceedings publication process, including where to send your paper, is summarized below in the
section What is the publication process for proceedings. The main requirement is that AIP Conference
Proceedings requires a ready-to-publish PDF file of your article (with fonts embedded), prepared using
our Word or LaTeX templates and following the general guidelines discussed in this document.
However, for review/editorial reasons your proceedings editor may ask you for source files (Word or latex) so make sure to check the conference web site on what is required from you. Be sure to check
the web site for any limits on page count requested by the proceedings editors: AIP Conference
Proceedings does not impose any maximum limits on page counts, but the editors may do so. 

Is there anything else I need to prepare or submit?
In addition to your article, you should send the following items to your proceedings editor:
• Copyright permission letters/e-mails: The ZIP file folder “permissions” contains essential advice
in the file permission_guidelines.pdf. If you have used copyrighted material in your paper, you
must obtain permission to use it from the owner of the copyright and/or authors. You need to
send full details (e.g., copies of e-mails) to your editor who will subsequently submit them to
AIP Conference Proceedings.
• Color printing requests: If your conference organizer/editor has asked AIP Conference
Proceedings to produce printed copies they will be printed in greyscale (sometimes, mistakenly,
called “black and white”). If you want to print any of your article pages in color, please contact
your proceedings editor directly to discuss this. AIP Conference Proceedings does not accept
orders for color printing directly from authors: Color printing is managed through our
arrangements with the editors only.

Essential points for all authors
Before you start writing, please consider the following essential points.
• No 1-page papers please. AIP Conference Proceedings does not wish to publish extremely short
proceedings papers, such as 1-page, abstract-only contributions and we reserve the right to
exclude any such articles from the proceedings. AIP Conference Proceedings’ online publication
fees are completely independent of the number of pages in each article and we welcome
substantial contributions, provided your page count complies with guidelines/limits set by your
proceedings editor.
• Online use of color is free. We still get asked if it costs extra to use color within online
proceedings papers and, of course, the answer is no it does not. The use of color in printed
proceedings does incur additional cost, so please contact your proceedings editor to discuss
this.
• Avoid huge PDF files (10 MB maximum, ideally). For the benefit of readers and researchers
accessing your article from slow or expensive internet connections we recommend that you try
to keep your article PDF file below 10 MB. This is just a recommendation; it is not a
requirement.
• Prepare and format references with care. Please prepare and format your references in
accordance with the examples provided in the document sample_ references.pdf.
• Do not add page numbers or headers/footers. Our article templates deliberately do not include
these so please do not add them. Adding them causes significant delays and creates
unnecessary work for your editor. Page numbers and headers are added by AIP Conference
Proceedings during the publication process.
• Do not alter the margins of our templates. They are carefully designed for AIP Publishing’s
production process, altering them can cause significant delays and create unnecessary work for your editor. Top, left and right margins should be 1 inch, the bottom margin should be 1.18
inch.

• Embed all fonts into your article PDF. The importance of font embedding is explained below,
together with how to check this.
• Use clear, legible graphics and diagrams. We still receive articles containing graphics that are
almost illegible, which significantly reduces readership of the article. Do not use “blocky” JPEG
images, especially if they contain text: Readers of your paper will be grateful. If they cannot
read it, they are unlikely to cite it.
• Do not use copyrighted material without permission. The file permission_guidelines.pdf
supplied with these guidelines contains instructions on using copyrighted materials within your
article. Regretfully, papers submitted to AIP Conference Proceedings without appropriate
copyright permissions may be excluded from the proceedings without any opportunity to
resubmit. Seeking copyright permission at that late stage can cause significant delay in
publication which would be unfair to other authors in the proceedings.

What is the publication process for proceedings?
Proceedings publication differs from regular journals in several aspects:
(1) Most pure proceedings publications, including ours, use author-prepared PDF files for
publication and production of printed copies.
(2) Proceedings papers are submitted directly to the proceedings editors who manage the review
process and collection of conference materials.
(3) The proceedings articles are submitted to AIP Conference Proceedings (by the editors) in a
single batch, rather than one-by-one as each paper is ready.
(4) The proceedings papers are published together as a single collection (volume) of AIP
Conference Proceedings.

Proceedings editors undertake a review of papers in accordance with community and conference
traditions/expectations and they will advise you of any changes you may need to make, prior to it being
accepted. Once the editors have collected sufficient accepted papers, or as many papers as authors are
willing to write, they submit them to AIP Conference Proceedings in a single batch. We cannot publish
any proceedings until the entire set of files submitted to us meets the requirements of our publication
and production systems. Consequently, it is extremely important for all authors to follow our guidelines
so that the proceedings are not delayed by problematic papers. Any questions pertaining to your article
or the publication of the volume must be sent to the conference editor and not AIP Conference
Proceedings.

Some general notes on graphics
The guiding principle is to think of your readers. Will they be able to read the text with very small
graphics, especially scaled-down bitmap images? Try to consider readers who may have restricted
vision. Generally, use the highest quality graphics possible, placed within your article at a sensible size
so that the text is clear and legible. Here are some recommendations for raster images (halftones, line
art/bitmaps):
• If you are scanning line art: use a minimum 600 dpi resolution.
• If you are scanning photographs or images (creating halftones): 300 dpi.

• Use 600 dpi for combinations line art halftones.
• Save line art as black/white bitmap, not greyscale.
• Save halftones and combinations as greyscale, not black/white bitmap.

Notes on color in graphics
• Within online proceedings or CDs: We still receive questions about the use of color graphics in
electronic proceedings so do please be assured there are no costs at all for color graphics within
online proceedings or on CDs. We strongly support and encourage the use of color where it
assists with communicating and expressing the science contained within your paper.
• Within printed proceedings: Printed proceedings are only produced if they have been ordered
by the conference organizers. Within online proceedings all color graphics/images will, of
course, remain in color but within the printed proceedings they will be reproduced in greyscale
(sometimes, mistakenly, called “black and white”). If you want to have specific pages of your
article printed in color you need to contact your proceedings editor to request this. AIP
Conference Proceedings no longer accepts orders for color printing directly from authors: Color
printing is managed through our arrangements with the editors only. Conversion of color images/graphics to greyscale.

Authors are advised that some colors do not reproduce well when converted to
greyscale for printing. You are advised to print your color graphics on one or two
reasonable quality office laser printers to determine whether the colored elements are
easy to read. Although this check is not fully scientific, it may highlight obvious
problems. For example, if your graphics contain fine line art that uses lighter shades of
yellow or green these may become difficult to distinguish when printed.

Font embedding: Why is it so important?
In the following notes we explain why your proceedings article PDF file needs to have all fonts
embedded by you, the author, prior to sending it to your proceedings editor.
AIP Conference Proceedings performs many technical quality checks on all PDF files submitted to us for
proceedings publication. During those checks we continue to encounter PDFs that do not have all (or
any!) fonts embedded. This can result in publication delays while we seek replacement files from those
authors. We do offer an embedding service to conference editors to assist with these files at additional
cost. This re-process of PDFs in an attempt to embed missing fonts, but those processes may fail or
produce incorrect results. For highly complex PDFs containing scientific and mathematical content, any
attempt to “force” font embedding (by re-processing PDFs) is very far from ideal and not without risk.
Very subtle errors can be introduced through complexities arising from issues such as font encoding.
These errors can be exceptionally difficult to detect.
As the author and creator of your article PDF, you have the most intimate knowledge of exactly what
the PDF should display. We ask all authors to carefully check their article PDF prior to submission.
Perform visual inspections to detect subtle font errors and ensure that all fonts are embedded. With the
wide range of tools and software that authors use to create PDFs, and the number of devices and
platforms which readers use to view/print them, font embedding by authors is essential.
Why should I care about font embedding?
Embedding fonts into your PDF file is critically important for two reasons:

(1) Commercial printing companies are unable to print PDFs without the correct fonts being
embedded.
(2) To ensure that your online article PDF file displays and prints correctly for everyone who wants
to read your work.
Readers of scientific articles use a range of devices to access, view, and print PDFs—from smart phones
and tablets to desktop and laptop computers running any number of operating systems—and
applications to view/print PDF files. To ensure that readers of your article can display and print it
correctly, it is important for your article’s PDF file to be truly portable: your PDF file needs to be fully
“selfcontained.”
Font embedding: Ensuring portable PDFs
PDF stands for Portable Document Format and it is the word Portable that needs to be understood and
interpreted with some care. It is tempting to think “Portable” implies that all PDF files, however
created, are by default fully portable and will always display or print identically. Unfortunately, life is
not quite that straightforward for one simple reason: fonts.
Any application or device used to view or print the text and mathematics contained in your article PDF
will need access to the appropriate font data—which typically comes from two “sources”:
(1) The PDF file itself: A process called font embedding—which is the only way to guarantee true
portability.
(2) Substitute fonts installed on the device on which the viewer application is running.
Point (2) is where you can get into difficulty. When viewing/proofing your article PDF on the computer
on which it was created you may see nothing wrong: Everything looks and prints perfectly even when
font data is not embedded, or built into, the actual PDF file itself. Only when your PDF is transferred to
different “device environments” that do not have the same set of installed fonts or use a different
PDFviewing application will problems caused by non-embedded fonts start to show up.
A PDF-viewing application may try its best to find “correct” substitutes for any fonts which are not
embedded—this might work well for simple text, but for mathematics or specialized symbols it is quite
likely that it will fail: perhaps spectacularly, or in much more subtle ways. Your carefully prepared
mathematics might appear “garbled” or fail to display at all; random characters might be missing when
viewed or printed; or, perhaps worse, incorrect symbols are substituted, making it appear that your
mathematics contains errors!
The golden rule: Just because your article’s PDF file looks correct on your computer, you cannot assume
that it will always look the same on any another device: You must embed all fonts and check font
embedding.
Tip: A simple test is to forward your article PDF to another device and view it there—such as on a smart
phone or tablet where the PDF-viewer application and installed fonts may be very different to those on
your desktop computer.
How do I check font embedding?
Tools and methods to check font embedding in PDFs is discussed in numerous tutorials, blogs, and
articles on the internet. If you have access to Adobe’s Acrobat Pro product, you can easily check font
embedding using its built-in preflight tools; however, free tools are also available. If your institution’s
policies permit you to download and install software, you can use a free command-line utility called
pdffonts—which is available for Windows and Linux (we are not aware of a Mac OS version): 

http://www.foolabs.com/xpdf/download.html pdffonts generates a list of fonts used in a PDF
file and indicates whether each font is embedded.
I notice some fonts are not embedded, what can I do?
If your complete article PDF is reported as not having all fonts embedded the first step is to make a copy
of your article, remove all graphics from your document and create a PDF of just the article text. If that
text-only PDF is reported as having all fonts embedded, you need to check your graphics: Especially if
you pasted them (into Microsoft Word) or imported them via PDF or EPS (Encapsulated PostScript)
format (into LaTeX or pdfLaTeX).
With the huge variety of software tools available to authors it is difficult to provide comprehensive
advice but here are some diagnostic tips.
• Copying and pasting graphics (Microsoft Word, or other word processors). Depending on how
you generate the article PDF, it is possible that some fonts for the text within your pasted
graphics were not embedded into the final PDF. A simple test is to paste a graphic into a new
blank Word document, make a PDF and check to see if the fonts are embedded.
• PDF or EPS export: It is quite possible that some of your PDF or EPS graphics files do not contain
the font data needed to render/display the text inside them. By default, many graphics tools or
applications export PDF or EPS files that fail to embed font data, so you should explore any file
export settings (or configurations) to determine if your graphics application can be made to
export font data.
Font subsetting: What is that?
Suppose you have a document with single page containing just the text “Hello World” formatted using,
say, the Times Roman typeface: How many unique characters are required to display the text Hello
World? Of course, the answer is 8: H, e, l, o, W, r and d (plus space “character”). However, a font file
for Times Roman might contain data (glyph descriptions) to display hundreds, perhaps thousands, of
characters: You only need 8 of them to display Hello World. Out of the total set of characters provided
by a Times Roman font, only a tiny fraction, or subset, is required to display your document. When you
go on to create a PDF file from your document, the PDF-creation software needs to embed just a small
subset of characters in the Times Roman font to display (render) the Hello World text.
Modern font files (e.g., OpenType) contain data (glyph descriptions) to display many thousands of
characters, resulting in large font files (potentially many megabytes). Font subsetting reduces the size of
PDF files and many font licenses insist that the entire font is not allowed to be embedded in a PDF. In
practice, you rarely need to worry about font subsetting because your PDF-generation software does it
for you automatically.
Reference formatting
AIP Conference Proceedings recommend using the Vancouver system of references. We ask authors to
ensure that all references are accurate, complete and correctly punctuated and styled. Please ensure
the appropriate use of bold or italic styling for individual components of the reference as demonstrated
in the examples.

Vancouver system
By number, in the order of first appearance, giving the names of the authors, the journal name, volume,
first page number only or page range or CID number, and year as in:
1. Q. Zhao, H. Z. Zhang, Y. W. Zhu, S. Q. Feng, X. C. Sun, J. Xu, and D. P. Yu, Appl. Phys. Lett. 86,
203115 (2005).
2. H. R. Schober, C. Oligschleger, and B. B. Laird, J. Non-Cryst. Solids 156–158, 965 (1993).
3. T. Kawamura, H. Uchiyama, S. Saito, H. Wakana, T. Mine, M. Hatano, K.Torii, and T. Onai, Tech.
Dig. - Int. Electron. Device Meet. 2008, 77.

For details Author Guidelines click here 
If you have further questions, please contact us at confproc@aip.org

Best wishes
The AIP Conference Proceedings team