About Micro and Nano Systems Letters

This page includes information about the aims and scope of Micro and Nano Systems Letters, editorial policies, open access and article-processing charges, the peer review process and other information. For details of how to prepare and submit a manuscript through the online submission system, please see the instructions for authors.

Aims & scope

Micro and Nano Systems Letters is an international open access journal published by SpringerOpen. The MNSL offers express online publication of short research papers containing the latest advances in micro and nano-scaled devices and systems. It also offers a rapid route for the international dissemination of high quality research findings from both the micro and nano communities. Manuscripts should report new and significant findings that represent recent advances and practical applications of micro and nano systems engineering.

The journal’s specific areas include, but are not limited to:

• Micro & Nano Fabrication Technologies
• Packaging Technologies
• Materials and Device Characterization
• Mechanical Sensors and Systems
• Physical (Optical, Magneto) Devices
• RF MEMS
• Bio and Chemical Sensors and Systems
• Medical Microsystems
• Micro & Nano Fluidic Components and Systems
• Micro & Nano Actuators
• Energy Harvesting and Power Systems
• Nano-Electro-Mechanical Devices and Systems

Open access

All articles published by Micro and Nano Systems Letters are made freely and permanently accessible online immediately upon publication, without subscription charges or registration barriers. Further information about open access can be found here.

Authors of articles published in Micro and Nano Systems Letters are the copyright holders of their articles and have granted to any third party, in advance and in perpetuity, the right to use, reproduce or disseminate the article, according to the SpringerOpen copyright and license agreement.

Article-processing charges

The publication costs for Micro and Nano Systems Letters are covered by The Society of Micro and Nano Systems, so authors do not need to pay an article-processing charge.

Indexing services

SpringerOpen is working closely with Thomson Reuters (ISI) to ensure that citation analysis of articles published in Micro and Nano Systems Letters will be available.

Publication and peer review process

Authors will be able to check the progress of their manuscript through the submission system at any time by logging into My Micro and Nano Systems Letters, a personalized section of the site.

Portability of peer review

In order to support efficient and thorough peer review, we aim to reduce the number of times a manuscript is re-reviewed after rejection from Micro and Nano Systems Letters, thereby speeding up the publication process and reducing the burden on peer reviewers. Therefore, please note that, if a manuscript is not accepted for publication in Micro and Nano Systems Letters and the authors choose to submit a revised version to another SpringerOpen journal, we will pass the reviews on to the other journal's editors at the authors' request. We will reveal the reviewers' names to the handling editor for editorial purposes unless reviewers let us know when they return their report that they do not wish us to share their report with another SpringerOpen journal.

Reprints

Please see our reprints website for information about reprinting articles.

Supplements

Micro and Nano Systems Letters will consider supplements based on proceedings (full articles or meeting abstracts), reviews or research. All articles submitted for publication in supplements are subject to peer review. Published supplements are fully searchable and freely accessible online and can also be produced in print. For further information, please contact us.

Editorial policies

Any manuscript, or substantial parts of it, submitted to the journal must not be under consideration by any other journal. In general, the manuscript should not have already been published in any journal or other citable form, although it may have been deposited on a preprint server. Authors are required to ensure that no material submitted as part of a manuscript infringes existing copyrights, or the rights of a third party.

Correspondence concerning articles published in Micro and Nano Systems Letters is encouraged. A 'post a comment' feature is available on all articles published by Micro and Nano Systems Letters. Comments will be moderated by the editorial office (see our Comment policy for further information) and linked to the full-text version of the article, if suitable.

Editorial standards

SpringerOpen is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). In order to safeguard the quality of SpringerOpen journal publications, Springer has developed a policy on Publishing Integrity which is in line with the philosophy of COPE.

We follow the principle that we have a prime duty to maintain the integrity of the scientific record. Springer’s Policy on Publishing Integrity addresses:

• Clear definitions of what violation of Publishing Integrity is.
• A manual on how to identify such a violation (in the document referred to as an Act of Misconduct).
• Clear (COPE) examples of what such an Act of Misconduct looks like in practice.
• Clearly defined actions which have to be undertaken by the Editor and Springer when such an Act is a clearly proven fact.
• Q & A – a useful list of Questions and Answers on the definition of Publishing Integrity.

Please find the full document of Springer’s Policy on Publishing Integrity here.

Data and materials release

Submission of a manuscript to Micro and Nano Systems Letters implies that readily reproducible materials described in the manuscript, including all relevant raw data, will be freely available to any scientist wishing to use them for non-commercial purposes. Nucleic acid sequences, protein sequences, and atomic coordinates should be deposited in an appropriate database in time for the accession number to be included in the published article. In computational studies where the sequence information is unacceptable for inclusion in databases because of lack of experimental validation, the sequences must be published as an additional file with the article.

Any 'in press' articles cited within the references and necessary for the reviewers' assessment of the manuscript should be made available if requested by the editorial office.

Appeals and complaints

Authors who wish to appeal a rejection or make a complaint should, in the first instance, contact the Editor-in-Chief who will provide details of the journal's complaints procedure.

Competing interests

Submitting authors are asked to declare that they have observed the IZA Guiding Principles of Research Integrity. A statement confirming this will be added to all submitted articles.

Plagiarism detection

Micro and Nano Systems Letters's publisher, SpringerOpen, is a member of the CrossCheck plagiarism detection initiative. In cases of suspected plagiarism CrossCheck is available to the editors of Micro and Nano Systems Letters to detect instances of overlapping and similar text in submitted manuscripts by using the plagiarism detection tool iThenticate. CrossCheck is a multi-publisher initiative allowing screening of published and submitted content for originality.

Citing articles in Micro and Nano Systems Letters

Articles in Micro and Nano Systems Letters should be cited in the same way as articles in a traditional journal. Because articles are not printed, they do not have page numbers; instead, they are given a unique article number.

Article citations follow this format:

Authors: Title. Micro Nano Syst Lett [year], [volume number]:[article number].

e.g. Roberts LD, Hassall DG, Winegar DA, Haselden JN, Nicholls AW, Griffin JL: Increased hepatic oxidative metabolism distinguishes the action of Peroxisome Proliferator-Activated Receptor delta from Peroxisome Proliferator-Activated Receptor gamma in the Ob/Ob mouse. Micro Nano Syst Lett 2009, 1:115.

refers to article 115 from Volume 1 of the journal.

Why publish your article in Micro and Nano Systems Letters?

High visibility

Micro and Nano Systems Letters's open access policy allows maximum visibility of articles published in the journal as they are available to a wide, global audience. Articles that have been especially highly accessed are highlighted with a 'Highly accessed' graphic, which appears on the journal's contents pages and search results.

Speed of publication

Micro and Nano Systems Letters offers a fast publication schedule whilst maintaining rigorous peer review; all articles must be submitted online, and peer review is managed fully electronically (articles are distributed in PDF form, which is automatically generated from the submitted files). Articles are published with their final citation immediately upon acceptance in a provisional PDF form. The article will subsequently be published in both fully browsable web form, and as a formatted PDF; the article will then be available through Micro and Nano Systems Letters and SpringerOpen.

Flexibility

Online publication in Micro and Nano Systems Letters gives authors the opportunity to publish large datasets, large numbers of color illustrations and moving pictures, to display data in a form that can be read directly by other software packages so as to allow readers to manipulate the data for themselves, and to create all relevant links (for example to relevant databases and papers).

Promotion and press coverage

Articles published in Micro and Nano Systems Letters are included in article alerts and regular email updates. Some may be included in abstract books mailed to academics and are highlighted on Micro and Nano Systems Letters's pages and on the SpringerOpen homepage.

In addition, articles published in Micro and Nano Systems Letters may be promoted by press releases to the general or scientific press. These activities increase the exposure and number of accesses for articles published in Micro and Nano Systems Letters.

Copyright

Authors of articles published in Micro and Nano Systems Letters retain the copyright of their articles and are free to reproduce and disseminate their work (for further details, see the SpringerOpen copyright and license agreement).

For further information about the advantages of publishing in a journal from SpringerOpen, please click here.