Instructions to Authors

General

The Proceedings of the Estonian Academy of Sciences is an open access journal that publishes internationally peer-reviewed primary research and review papers in the fields of sciences represented at the Estonian Academy of Sciences (mathematics, physics, chemistry, cosmology, industrial engineering etc.). The manuscripts submitted should be written in English and meet the following requirements.

Manuscript elements should be in the following order: Title Page, Key Words, Abstract, Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results, Discussion, Conclusions, Acknowledgements, Appendices (if any), References.

Authors of the article should name the subject by which the field of the article can be determined.

The title should be concise but informative. The arrangement and selection of words is important for indexing purposes. A short running title should be provided.

The name(s), including one forename in full, affiliation(s), and full address(es) of the author(s) should follow the title of the paper. The corresponding author should be marked by an asterisk and his/her e-mail address should be given. In the covering letter the telephone number(s) of the corresponding author should be provided.

The abstract (not more than 250 words) should be a self-contained summary of the paper, presenting concisely the objectives of the work reported, methodology, results, and conclusions. Mathematical expressions and citations in the abstract should be avoided. The abstract should be followed by key words (max seven) with the first key word indicating the discipline of the study.

The introduction should be a review of pertinent work, cite appropriate references, as well as include a clear statement of the object of investigation.

Conclusions should give a short summary of the achieved results followed by possible further steps and extensions.

Acknowledgements of people, grants, funds, etc. should be placed in a separate section before the reference list. The names of funding organizations should be written in full. The  institution(s) or person(s) covering the publication costs must be shown in this section.

The manuscript should include a summary in Estonian (not obligatory for foreign authors).

The authors of review articles are asked to present also their CVs (not more than 100 words) and photographs.

The volume of the manuscript (incl. references, summaries, illustrations, and tables) is preferably no more than 26 double-spaced pages.

It is essential that the paper be written in clear, proper English. Manuscripts requiring substantial improvement of English usage may be returned to the author(s) for revision before the review process. Authors for whom English is not their mother tongue should have their manuscripts checked by a competent linguist or native English speaker before submission. The editors reserve the right to adjust style to certain standards of uniformity.

Submission
Manuscripts should be submitted electronically by e-mail (virve.kurnitski@eap.ee). The attachment should be packed (max size 10 MB) and include:

(a) the files of the paper in MS Word (.doc, .docx) or LATEX (.tex) format (other TEX versions are not accepted);
(b) original files of illustrations (in .xls, .xlsx) or saved as .tif, .eps, .psd, or .ai;
(c) a copy of the identical text and illustrations in .pdf format;
(d) the covering letter.

Word versions are preferable in case the manuscript does not include complicated formulas. The authors are asked not to use specially defined macros. If it has been necessary to define the commands, they should be added to the text file.

In the covering letter the authors should supply full contact details (incl. e-mail addresses) for at least four individuals who may be appropriate reviewers for the manuscript. Also, information about possible conflict of interests should be reported. 

Notation and abbreviations
Notation must be clear, compact, and consistent with standard usage. All notations and abbreviations should be defined in the text. Avoid abbreviations in the title and abstract.

Equations should be numbered consecutively with equation numbers enclosed in parentheses at the right margin of the page. In the text, reference to an equation should be in the form of an equation number enclosed in parentheses.

Illustrations should be prepared in their final format (i.e. no enlarging or reducing will be necessary) and fit into the print area of the journal. The maximum size of an illustration is that of one journal page (166 mm × 228 mm) or of one column (80 mm × 228 mm). All illustrations must be clearly numbered. Each illustration should be indicated at the appropriate place in the text. All illustrations must have self-explanatory legends. The text, tables, and illustrations should not repeat one another.
The lettering (upper- and lowercase letters, italic, bold) should follow the usage in the text. Different parts of a figure should be marked by lowercase letters in parentheses. The size of symbols and lettering should not be smaller than 1.5 mm.

Colour illustrations should be in RGB and CMYK mode (resolution at least 300 dpi). Authors will be asked to cover the full cost for reproduction of colour artwork at a rate of 35 EUR for one printed page. Colour figures online will be published free of charge.

References to the literature cited should be indicated at the appropriate place in the text. Either the author–year (Harvard) or numerical (Vancouver) style of citing may be used. All references included in the list of references should also appear in the text and vice versa. Use abbreviated titles of journals in the list of references. All references should be provided with DOI links if possible, e.g. https://doi.org/10.1109/5.771073

If the author–year style is used, references to the literature should be indicated at the appropriate place in the text by using the name(s) of the author(s) and the year of publishing. A reference list in alphabetical order should appear at the end of the article.

Examples for author–year style :

(a) For a book:

Dehmlow, E. V. and Dehmlow, S. S. 1993. Phase Transfer Catalysis, 3rd ed. VCH, Weinheim. https://doi.org/10.1002/bbpc.19940980725

(b) For articles in journals:

Hua, Z., Chen, J., Lun, S., and Wang, X. 2003. Influence of biosurfactants produced by Candida antarctica on surface properties of microorganisms and biodegradation of n-alkanes. Water Res., 37, 4143–4150. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0043-1354(03)00380-4

(c) For articles in collections:

Kuusk, A. 1991. The hot spot effect in plant canopy reflectance. In Photon-vegetation Interactions. Applications in Optical Remote Sensing and Plant Ecology (Myneni, R. B. and Ross, J., eds), pp. 139–159. Springer Verlag, Berlin. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-75389-3_5

If the numerical style is used, references should be numbered preferably consecutively at the appropriate place in the text by using brackets (e.g. [1]). A list of references should appear at the end of the paper.

Examples for numerical style:

(a) For a book:

Porubov, A. V. Amplification of Nonlinear Strain Waves in Solids. World Scientific, Singapore, 2003. https://doi.org/10.1142/5238

(b) For articles in journals:

Milnor, J. On the Betti numbers of real varieties. Proc. Am. Math. Soc., 1964, 15, 275–281. https://doi.org/10.1090/S0002-9939-1964-0161339-9

(c) For articles in collections:

Hansch, C. Recent advances in biochemical QSAR. In Correlation Analysis in Chemistry (Chapman, N. B. and Shorter, J., eds). Springer, Boston, MA, 1978, 397–438. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-8831-3_19

References to electronic materials (except electronic journals) should be kept to a minimum. If material is available online, the address, and the access date should be given.

Literature in Cyrillic script. The official title in English, German, or French should be given if available (e.g. from summaries). If no official English, German, or French version is available, the titles of books and articles should be translated into English; journal names should be abbreviated and transliterated into Roman script; the publication data should be transliterated. The following system (modified BGN/PCGN system) should be used for transliteration:

		Trans- literation			Trans- literation			Trans- literation			Trans- literation
А Б В Г Д Е(Ё) Ж З	а б в г д е(ё) ж з	a b v g d e zh z	И Й К Л М Н О П	и й к л м н о п	i j k l m n o p	Р С Т У Ф Х Ц Ч	р с т у ф х ц ч	r s t u f kh ts ch	Ш Щ Ъ Ы Ь Э Ю Я	ш щ ъ ы ь э ю я	sh shch ″ y ′ é yu ya

Article publication charges 

All articles published in the Proceedings of the Estonian Academy of Sciences are freely available to read, download, re-use, and share for non-commercial purposes. To cover publication costs of these papers, the Estonian Academy Publishers charges a publication fee of €500 per publication of papers up to 12 printed pages. The publication fee of articles up to 12 printed pages will be waived by the Estonian Academy of Sciences to the authors whose work was supported by Estonian granting agencies or other Estonian funding bodies and the authors of these papers have explicitly stated this information in the Acknowledgements. For all papers longer than 12 printed pages, an additional page charge of €62 will be requested for each extra page. 

The publication fee should be paid by the authors, by their institution or the funder of their research. When submitting an article to the Proceedings of the Estonian Academy of Sciences, the submitting author must agree to pay the publication fee and state this in the Covering Letter. After acceptance of the article the authors will be asked to pay the publication fee and this payment must be received before the article enters the production cycle. Payment should be made in Euro to the bank account indicated by the Estonian Academy Publishers. An invoice will be sent by the accountant. Prompt payment is advised, as the article will not be sent to the production cycle and published until the payment is received.

The authors of review papers are free of publication fees and additional charges for extra pages.

“Fast track” publication
After the final decision about manuscript acceptance the authors have a possibility of applying for “fast track” publication. If this application is accepted by the Editor, the paper will be included in the next issue. Extra costs of this increase will be covered by the non-refundable “fast track” fee, paid by the author(s) prior to publication. In the case of papers of standard length, the fee will be €500 per publication. 

Proofs
The author (or the corresponding author) will receive a .pdf file for correcting printer’s errors. No changes may be made and no new material inserted in the text at the time of proofreading.

Offprints
Payable offprints of an article (minimum 10 copies) can be ordered from the Editorial Office at proof stage.