formerly Computers in Cardiology

Author's Kit for Preparing Manuscripts
for Computing in Cardiology

(Revised 11 October 2009)

Important notes:

Do not begin to prepare a manuscript for CinC until you have read these notes!

If you a preparing a paper for pre-acceptance review, submit a separate abstract first. If your paper is accepted, this abstract will appear in the printed conference program distributed to all attendees.

All manuscripts must be submitted to the CinC manuscript collector as PDF (Adobe Portable Document Format) files in correct CinC style. Manuscripts on paper are no longer collected at the conference as they were in past years. Printed copies of your paper are no longer required and will not be accepted in lieu of electronic submissions.

Please check this page on or after 15 July to see if any revisions have been made for this year's CinC. If you follow the instructions in this kit carefully, it is likely that your paper will be properly formatted. Please note, however, that the CinC Author's Kit is occasionally revised to improve the appearance of finished papers, to clarify instructions, or to maintain compatibility with current versions of LaTeX, MS Word, and OpenOffice.

The deadline for submitting manuscripts is in September, one week before the conference begins, in order to permit session chairs and other CinC attendees to read them. Submit your paper on time so that it gets the attention and thoughtful discussion it deserves!

If you have ...	submit it ...
a paper for pre-acceptance review^*	no later than 1 May
an accepted paper for publication	on or after 15 July, but no later than a week before the CinC meeting begins
a revision requested by the Editor	as soon as possible

^* Submission of a full paper for pre-acceptance review is a requirement for the YIA competition or for reduced registration.

Papers submitted for pre-acceptance review are not published unless they have been resubmitted between 15 July and a week before the CinC meeting begins. They may be revised before resubmission.

Papers that are not presented by their authors at a CinC meeting are not published in any case. It is essential that CinC attendees have an opportunity to discuss your work with you. If you know that it will be impossible for you or a coauthor to present your work at CinC, please find another suitable meeting or journal for publishing it.

What you will need before starting to write:

Example layout, including formatting instructions and a dimensioned page template. To view and print this PDF document with correct dimensions and margins, follow the instructions below.
A customized template for use with LaTeX or MS Word. (The MS Word template can also be used with Open Office.) One of these templates must be used to prepare your manuscript or it will not be accepted for publication.
LaTeX, Microsoft Word, or Open Office. Additional notes, required style files, and examples for LaTeX users are here, and additional notes for MS Word users are here.

Composing your manuscript

As you write, keep these points in mind:

Layout: Lay out your manuscript in exactly the way given in the example layout.
Length: Maximum of 4 pages.
Margins: These are given in the example layout. Your text must not exceed the boundaries given (very important). Text position refers to the top left of a US letter-sized sheet of paper, as used in the printed volumes of CinC. The margins will be uneven on A4 paper. Print a copy of the example layout and make sure that its margins match those of your paper.
Title and author blocks: These must be typed in exactly the same format as shown in the example layout. Use a customized template to ensure that the correct format is used, and make any necessary corrections using the on-line form to get a new template, rather than editing an old one.
Address: The address given below the authors' names should give their affiliations and not the postal address. An "Address for correspondence" should be included at the end of the paper.
Illustrations: If your original illustrations are not in a digital format, scan them at a resolution of at least 600 dpi, preferably more. If you have used software such as Adobe Illustrator to prepare multi-layer figures, use that software to flatten them and eliminate transparency before including them in your paper.
Color: Color is not reproduced in the printed volumes, although the CD and on-line versions of CinC do preserve color. If you choose to include color illustrations, please test-print them in black and white, and adjust the colors as necessary to ensure that they are readable.
Spelling: Please check spelling. Use a spelling checker if possible.

Study the instructions above and in the example layout very carefully. We want papers that are published in Computing in Cardiology to have a consistent format. It is particularly important that you follow the instructions for the title block, authors' names, authors' addresses and section headings. It is vital that the text of your manuscript is contained within the dimensions given. The editors have made significant achievements in reducing the publication delay, and authors must help to improve this further. Poorly prepared manuscripts introduce significant delays, and may result in your paper not being published.

Preparing a PDF version of your completed manuscript

However you make your PDF, be sure to flatten your figures first!

If you write your paper using LaTeX, we recommend preparing a PDF version of your manuscript using pdflatex or ps2pdf as described in the instructions for LaTeX users. If neither of these is possible, you may prepare a PostScript version using dvips and then use the CinC PDF conversion service to generate a PDF version.

If you write your paper using MS Word, convert your .doc file into PDF using the CinC PDF conversion service.

If you use Open Office to write your paper using the MS Word template, use OpenOffice's "Export as PDF" feature to generate a PDF version.

In all cases, check your PDF carefully before submitting it to the CinC manuscript collector. Pay particular attention to figures, tables, mathematical expressions, and diacritical marks (accents, umlauts, etc.) to be sure that they are rendered in the PDF as you intended them to appear. If you used color in your figures, print a copy of your PDF on a black-and-white printer and check that the figures can be understood by a reader who has only a printed copy. Caution: Don't view and then save the PDF using Adobe software! This will result in loss of necessary metadata, causing your PDF to be rejected by the manuscript collector.

Printing and checking your PDF paper

If you have not done so already, you may wish to download the free Adobe Reader. To print PDF documents with the correct dimensions, choose "Page Scaling: None" and uncheck "Auto-Rotate and Center" (or uncheck "Shrink oversized pages to paper size" and "Expand small pages to paper size") in Adobe Reader's Print dialog.

Print a copy of the example layout, and a copy of your PDF paper, using the same method for both documents, and compare their margins, type face, headings, and type size. All should match. In particular, check these critical dimensions, which should match within ± 3 mm:

Total text width: 172 mm (6.75 inches)
Column width: 82 mm (3.25 inches)
Maximum distance from top of title to bottom of text on page 1: 215 mm (8.5 inches)
Maximum column height on pages 2, 3, and 4: 225 mm (8.875 inches)
Top margin: 36 mm (1.375 inches) on page 1, 26 mm (1 inch) on pages 2-4
Left margin: 22 mm (0.875 inches) on all pages)

The left and right margins will be equal on US letter paper (8.5 x 11 inches, or 216 x 279 mm, as used in the printed proceedings), but not on A4 paper. If you want to print a copy of your paper with even margins on A4 paper, check "Auto-Rotate and Center" in Adobe Reader's Print dialog. This will not be useful for checking that the margins in your PDF paper are correct, however; for that, you should follow the instructions above.

Submitting your PDF paper

Make a .zip or .tar.gz archive of the files needed to create the PDF version of your paper, and save it for future use if the Editor requests revisions. The archive should contain not only the main document, but also any files containing figures, tables, references, and any other non-embedded data included in your manuscript.

To submit the PDF version of your paper, follow the instructions here.

You have the option to post a copy of your submitted paper in the preprint collection, either at the time you submit it or at any later date until it is published in Computing in Cardiology. Follow the instructions here to do so.

If you wish to submit a revision of your manuscript at any time between 15 July and the end of the conference, you may do so simply by repeating this procedure; after that date, please request permission from the Editor. If you previously posted a preprint, your revision will replace it in the preprint collection.

The editors reserve the right to make corrections or changes when necessary to improve the quality of the paper. Time permitting, authors will be given the opportunity to review all changes that could influence technical interpretation of the paper.

Questions?

Some frequently asked questions are answered in the CinC Authors' FAQ. After reading the FAQ carefully, if your question is still unanswered, please write to the appropriate address below. We try to answer all questions promptly, but please understand that this may not be possible for a week or two surrounding the annual CinC meeting, since we all attend the meeting and may not have uninterrupted email access throughout that period.

For questions about writing your paper with MS Word, or about the CinC template generator or the CinC PDF conversion service, write to Bill Sanders.

For questions about writing your paper using LaTeX, about the CinC manuscript collector or the CinC preprint server, or any other issue related to this web server, write to George Moody.

Please note that although we attempt to answer your technical questions about preparing your paper for publication, we do so as volunteers, and our attention may be needed by other authors, especially near deadlines and during the conference. Authors are ultimately responsible for preparation of their papers.

If you have any other questions, please contact the Editor, Alan Murray.

Author's Kit for Preparing Manuscriptsfor Computing in Cardiology