Template and Style

Endnote Output Style: Authors are advised to use the Endnote output style for submission. Authors can download the Endnote output style from the Journal Library.

Manuscript Template: Authors are recommended, but not required, to use the manuscript template for submission.

Publication Frequency

Mass Spectrometry Letters will be published at least four times a year; 31th March, 30th June, 30th September, 31th December every year are the scheduled publishing dates. The publication frequency is subjected to future change, which should be advised by the Editorial board meeting’s decisions.

Publication Charge

All the papers will be published for free without any payment of page charge or article processing charge and the access to the papers in Mass Spectrometry Letters is also free to the public in general through the homepage of the journal. The publication cost will be covered by the Korean Society for Mass Spectrometry. The printed journal issue will be provided to the Korean Society for Mass Spectrometry members who have completed the annual membership fee payment.

Conflict of interest

All authors are requested to disclose any actual or potential conflict of interest including any financial, personal or other relationships with other people or organizations within three years of beginning the submitted work that could inappropriately influence, or be perceived to influence, their work.

Submission declaration and verification

Submission of an article implies that the work described has not been published previously (except in the form of an abstract or as part of a published lecture or academic thesis), that it is not under consideration for publication elsewhere, that its publication is approved by all authors and tacitly or explicitly by the responsible authorities where the work was carried out, and that, if accepted, it will not be published elsewhere in the same form, in English or in any other language, including electronically without the written consent of the copyright-holder. To verify originality, your article may be checked by the originality detection software.

Publication Ethics and Publication Malpractice Statement

For the policies on the research and publication ethics not stated in this instructions, International standards for editors and authors (http://publicationethics.org/international-standards-editors-and-authors) can be applied.

Language and language services

The manuscript should be prepared in good English (American or British usage is accepted, but not a mixture of both). English language proof-reading service is recommended before submission.

Submission

Submission to this journal proceeds totally online and you will be guided stepwise through the creation and uploading of your files.

Manuscript Types

Mass Spectrometry Letters publishes several types of articles: letter, technical note, article, review, and tutorial.  

Review. A comprehensive overview on a topic in mass spectrometry. There is no restriction in length.

Article. A full-length article presenting important new research results. The length of the articles should not exceed ten printed pages.

Technical note. A short description of a novel apparatus of technique. The length of technical notes should not exceed three printed pages.

Letter. A short report on any subject in mass spectrometry, requiring urgency, timeliness, and scientific significance. The length of letters should not exceed four printed pages.

Tutorial. A tutorial is an educational exposition covering recent trends and basic knowledge in mass spectrometry. There is no restriction in length

All manuscripts for publication in Mass Spectrometry Letters, except review and tutorial, should include Title, Authors, Abstract, Introduction, Experimental section, Results and Discussion, Conclusions, Acknowledgments, and References.

Preparation of Manuscripts

14) Units

SI units rather than conventional units should be used for reporting measures. Information regarding on SI units can be found at https://www.nist.gov/pml/weights-and-measures/metric-si/si-units.

Submission checklist

Authors will be asked to confirm the following statements when they submit a manuscript through the submission system.

* Confirm that the references are formatted as specified by the Author Instruction.

*Confirm that the ORCID iD for the corresponding author is included in the submission process.

* Confirm that the manuscript has been submitted solely to this journal and is not published, in press, or submitted elsewhere. 

* Confirm that the authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

* Confirm that the all articles in Mass Spectrometry Letters (MSL) are published and distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), meaning that the authors retain the copyright, but they permit anyone unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work, first published in MSL, is properly cited.

Authorship

All authors should have made substantial contributions to all of the following: (1) the conception and design of the study, or acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data, (2) drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content, (3) final approval of the version to be published, and (4) agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved. All those designated as authors should meet all four criteria for authorship, and all who meet the four criteria should be identified as authors. Acquisition of funding, data collection, or general supervision of the research group alone does not constitute authorship. Individuals who have contributed substantially to some (but not all) of the four categories, or in other areas, should be listed in Acknowledgments.

Authors are expected to consider carefully the list and order of authors before submitting their manuscript and provide the definitive list of authors at the time of the original submission. Changing authorship is possible during revision, if appropriate, according to the additional contributions needed for revision. However, once the decision of acceptance is made, adding authors or changing the first or the corresponding authors is not allowed. Any addition, deletion or rearrangement of author names in the authorship list should be made only before the manuscript has been accepted and only if approved by the Editor. To request such a change, the Editor must receive the following from the corresponding author: (a) the reason for the change in author list and (b) written confirmation (e-mail, letter) from all authors that they agree with the addition, removal or rearrangement. In the case of addition or removal of authors, this includes confirmation from the author being added or removed. The Editor may decline any inappropriate changes.

ORCID iD Required

ORCID iDs are required for corresponding authors of published papers. You can enter ORCID iDs in the submission process. ORCID is an independent non-profit effort to provide an open registry of unique researcher identifiers and open services to link research activities and organizations to these identifiers. The ORCID iD is a unique, persistent digital identifier that distinguishes an individual investigator and can be used to connect researchers with their contributions to science over time and across changes of name, location, and institutional affiliation. These free identifiers are assigned and maintained by the non-profit organization ORCID (Open Researcher and Contributor Identifier).

Plagiarism Policy

Plagiarism is when an author attempts to pass off someone else work as his or her own. Duplicate publication, sometimes called self-plagiarism, occurs when an author reuses substantial parts of his or her own published work without providing the appropriate references. This can range from getting an identical paper published in multiple journals, to salami-slicing, where authors add small amounts of new data to a previous paper.

All the submitted manuscripts for publication are initially checked for plagiarism after submission and before starting review using a plagiarism detection software such as “iThenticate”, “Turnitin”, etc. If plagiarism is detected by the editorial board member, reviewer, editor etc., in any stage of article process- before or after acceptance, we will alert the same to the author(s) and will ask them to rewrite the content or to cite the references from where the content has been taken. If more than 30% of the paper is plagiarized, the article may be rejected and the same is notified to the author.