Instructions for Authors

Commentary Articles

Commentary articles directly comment on an article published either in the Beilstein Journal of Nanotechnology or in a different journal with a matching scope. In doing so, they provide a focused critical or alternative viewpoint and are typically narrowly focused and concise. Please note that with the introduction of the article type Perspective in 2022, the scope of Commentary articles was adjusted and refocused.

Manuscript Sections for Commentary Articles

Manuscripts for Commentary articles should be divided into the following sections:

  • Title
  • Authors' Names and Affiliations
  • Abstract
  • Introduction
  • Discussion
  • Conclusion
  • Supporting Information (if any)
  • Acknowledegments (optional)
  • Funding (optional)
  • References

Title

The title of a Commentary article should be clear, concise and comprehensible to all readers with the purpose of quickly identifying the focus of the reported work. It should be brief and contain the most important keywords to optimize electronic retrieval. The use of capitals should be restricted to the first word and proper nouns. As far as possible abbreviations should be avoided.

Authors' Names and Affiliations

For all authors who have made substantial contributions to the work, first name, middle initial(s) and last (family) name must be provided. Below this information the institutional address should be written in a separate line in the following format: department, organization, street/P.O. box, city/town and zip code/postal code, country. If several affiliations need to be mentioned, consecutive Arabic numerals should precede the address and these numerals must also be placed as superscript after the respective author's name. At least one author must be designated with an asterisk as the person to whom correspondence should be addressed. The full name and the email address of the corresponding author(s) separated by a hyphen should be given in a new paragraph following the affiliation. Finally, the meaning of the asterisk must be explained. We also highly encourage all authors to link their ORCID record to their manuscript. During the submission process, the submitting author will be asked to link their existing ORCID record to their manuscript, or create an ORCID record, if they do not already have one. All co-authors will also be provided a link where they too can amend this information. It is not necessary to include the ORCID iD directly in the manuscript, only in the online submission system.

Abstract

The abstract should describe the main statements of the Commentary. Abbreviations should be used sparingly in the abstract. If used, then only common ones should be employed. Citations and references should not be given in abstracts. Only standard characters and those that can be included using the font “Symbol” are allowed. 

Introduction

This section should clearly state the background of the Commentary theme. At the end of the introduction a brief statement of the discussion should be given.

Discussion

This section contains the body of the article. All arguments important for the Commentary should be discussed extensively here. If necessary, this section may be subdivided with short, informative headings.

Conclusion

In this section the main conclusions of the Commentary and a clear explanation of their importance should be given.

Supporting Information

If supporting information files are provided, each should be described in this section of the manuscript, providing the following information:

  • a consecutive Arabic numeral in the order of the first mention in the manuscript text (e. g. Supporting Information File 1, Supporting Information File 2, etc.)
  • the file name
  • the file format (including the name and the URL link of an appropriate viewer if the format is unusual)
  • a concise title of 15 words maximum
  • optional: a detailed description of the dataset.

Additionally, supporting information files may be referenced within the body of the article to allow the creation of a hyperlink in the full text version. For example "See Supporting Information File 1" could be embedded at an appropriate place in the section "Discussion".

Acknowledgements

In this section the authors can dedicate the article to a scientist of outstanding merit or acknowledge technical assistance and other contributions or advice from persons who are not coauthors.

Funding

In this section the authors can acknowledge the source(s) of financial support for the research reported in their article by naming the financially supporting body(s) followed by associated grant number(s) (if applicable). It is the responsibility of the corresponding author(s) to provide the relevant funding information from all authors.

References

In general, authors are obliged to perform literature searches and to cite original publications describing closely related work.

A complete list of all references should be provided at the end of the article with an individual reference number for each reference. All references must be numbered consecutively with Arabic numerals, in the order in which they are first cited in the text. The references should be inserted at the appropriate location in the text by writing the reference number in square brackets. Multiple citations should be separated by commas within the square brackets. In case of more than two sequential references, ranges should be given. In general, a reference should appear before a punctuation mark and not after. Reference citations should not appear in titles, headings or the abstract. Unnecessarily long lists of references are not desirable. Authors are requested to constrict the reference list to the most important or most recent references relating to a specific topic. However, all previous publications in which portions of the present article have appeared must be referenced. If references refer to a supporting information file, they should be listed at the end of that file.

The references should be presented in a style consistent with the ACS Style Guide and should not contain any form of note or comment. If automatic numbering systems are used, the reference numbers must be finalized and the bibliography must be fully formatted before submission. Web links and URLs should be included in the reference list. They should be provided in full, including both the title of the site and the URL.

Examples of the Beilstein Journal of Nanotechnology reference style are shown below. Please take care to follow the reference style precisely; references not in the correct style must be retyped, necessitating tedious proofreading.

Beilstein Journal of Nanotechnology Reference Style

Article within a journal

  1. Yang, Y. T.; Callegari, C.; Feng, X. L.; Ekinci, K. L.; Roukes, M. L. Nano Lett. 2006, 6, 583–586.
  2. Constantino, M. G.; Lacerda, V., Jr.; Aragão, V. Molecules 2001, 6, 770–776.
  3. Bartlett, P. A.; Green, F. R., III; Webb, T. R. Tetrahedron Lett. 1977, 331–334.

Article within a journal with non-continuous (i.e. issue-based) pagination

  1. Gröger, H.; Sans, J.; Güthner, T. Chim. Oggi 2000, 18 (3/4), 12–16.
  2. Wills, M. R.; Savory, J. Lancet 1983, No. 2, 29.

Article within a journal with article number

  1. Flamme, E. M.; Roush, W. R. Beilstein J. Org. Chem. 2005, 1, No. 7.

Article within a journal supplement

  1. Orengo, C. A.; Bray, J. E.; Hubbard, T.; LoConte, L.; Sillitoe, I. Proteins 1999, 37 (Suppl. S3), 149–170.
  2. Papapoulos, S. E. Am. J. Med. 1993, 95 (5, Suppl. 1), S48–S52.

Article within a journal with two separate editions or with translations

  1. Grubbs, R. H. Angew. Chem. 2006, 118, 3845–3850; Angew. Chem., Int. Ed. 2006, 45, 3760–3765.
  2. Šorm, F.; Holub, M.; Sýkora, V.; Mleziva, J.; Streibl, M.; Plíva, J.; Schneider, B.; Herout, V. Chem. Listy 1952, 46, 554–560; Collect. Czech. Chem. Commun. 1953, 18, 512–526.

Article within a journal with additional Chemical Abstracts reference

  1. Ryzhenkov, V. E.; Molokovskii, D. S.; Ioffe, D. V. Vopr. Med. Khim. 1984, 30, 78–80; Chem. Abstr. 1984, 100, 203340s.
  2. Dement'eva, L. P.; Kostikov, R. R. Zh. Org. Khim. 1990, 26, 138–139; J. Org. Chem. USSR 1990, 26, 117–118; Chem. Abstr. 1990, 113, 132046f.

In press article

  1. Schwartzman, M.; Wind, S. J. Nano Lett., in press.

Patent

  1. Schimmel, T.; Xie, F.; Obermair, C. Gate controlled atomic switch. U.S. Pat. Appl. 20090195300, Aug 6, 2009.

Article within conference proceedings

  1. Jones, X. Zeolites and synthetic mechanisms. In Proceedings of the First National Conference on Porous Sieves, Baltimore, MD, June 27–30, 1996; Smith, Y., Ed.; Butterworth-Heinemann: Stoneham, MA, 1996; pp 16–27.

Whole issue of a journal

  1. O'Brien, P., Ed. Recent developments in chiral lithium amide base chemistry. Tetrahedron 2002, 58, 4567–4733.

Whole conference proceedings

  1. Smith, Y., Ed. Proceedings of the First National Conference on Porous Sieves, Baltimore, MD, June 27–30, 1996; Butterworth-Heinemann: Stoneham, MA, 1996.

Complete book

  1. Rao, C. N. R.; Govindaraj, A. Nanotubes and Nanowires; Royal Society of Chemistry: Cambridge, U.K., 2005.
  2. Ohtsu, M., Ed. Nanophotonics and Nanofabrication; Wiley-VCH: Weinheim, Germany, 2009.

Book edition

  1. Borisenko, V. E.; Ossicini, S. What is what in the Nanoworld, 2nd ed.; Wiley-VCH: Berlin, 2008.

Book chapter or article within a book

  1. Taylor, R.; Burley, G. A. Production, Isolation and Purification of Fullerenes. In Fullerenes – Principles and Application; Langa, F.; Nierengarten, J.-F., Eds.; Royal Society of Chemistry: Cambridge, U.K., 2007; pp 1–14.
  2. Deslongchamps, P. Amides and Related Functions. Stereoelectronic Effects in Organic Chemistry; Pergamon: New York, 1983; pp 101–162.

Book chapter or article within a multi-volume book

  1. Farnum, M. A.; DesJarlais, R. L.; Agrafiotis, D. K. Molecular Diversity. In Handbook of Chemoinformatics: From Data to Knowledge; Gasteiger, J., Ed.; Wiley-VCH: Weinheim, Germany, 2003; Vol. 4, pp 1640–1686.

Chapter of a book in a series

  1. Goldfuss, B. Enantioselective addition of organolithiums to C=O groups. In Organolithiums in Enantioselective Synthesis; Hodgson, D. M., Ed.; Topics in Organometallic Chemistry, Vol. 5; Springer: Berlin, 2003; pp 21–35.

Book with institutional author

  1. Advisory Committee on Genetic Modification. Annual Report; London, 1999.

Thesis

  1. Pfrang, A. Von den Frühstadien der Pyrokohlenstoffabscheidung bis zum Kompositwerkstoff – Untersuchungen mit Rastersondenverfahren. Ph. D. Thesis, University of Karlsruhe, Germany, 2004.

Link/URL

  1. Proceedings of "Molecular Informatics: Confronting Complexity", May 13–16, 2002, Bozen, Italy. http://www.beilstein-institut.de/index.php?id=154 (accessed Sept 12, 2007).

Software

  1. Gaussian 03, Revision C.02; Gaussian, Inc.: Wallingford, CT, 2004.

Data from a repository or database

    1. Chung, Y. G.; Camp, J.; Haranczyk, M.; Sikora, B.; Bury, W.; Krungleviciute, V.; Yildirim, T.; Farha, O. K.; Sholl, D. S.; Snurr, R. Q. Computation-Ready, Experimental Metal–Organic Frameworks, Version 1.0.0, Zenodo, 2014. https://zenodo.org/record/3228673. doi: 10.5281/zenodo.3228673.
      Please note: when using BibTeX, use the @www reference type. Add the name of the repository and, if applicable, version and publication date to the title.

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