Journal of Functional Programming: General Advice for Authors

Edited by
Professor Matthias Felleisen
North Eastern University, USA
Dr Xavier Leroy
INRIA Rocquencourt, France

Information for authors

    * What sort of papers does JFP publish?

    * Practice and experience papers

    * How to submit a paper to JFP

    * Web-accessible material

    * Copyright matters

    * Offprints

    * Incremental Publishing and DOIs

What sort of papers does JFP publish?

JFP publishes a variety of different sorts of paper:

    * Regular papers constitute the main diet. They are usually in
      the range 20-40 pages, but can be shorter or longer. Each paper
      is submitted to an Editor and is refereed. A paper may go
      through one or more rounds of refereeing.  Included in the
      regular papers are ones describing the experience of applying
      functional programming to real problems, which is described in
      more detail below.

    * Tools and Applications started in 2006.  This category covers
      the development of software tools using functional programming
      and how they may be applied. Papers should be submitted to the
      Tools and Applications Editor, who will manage the refereeing
      and decision making.

    * Commercial Uses of Functional Programming started in 2007.
      This includes papers explaining and describing the direct use of
      functional programming in industrial or commercial
      situations. Papers should be submitted to the Commercial Uses
      Editor, who will manage the refereeing and decision making.

    * Education started in 2003. This category covers the use of
      functional programming as an educational tool, in high school,
      the university, and professional settings.

    * Functional Pearls are short (typically 4-10 pages), well-rounded
      papers describing some clever programming idea. The Functional
      Pearls Editor is responsible for all these papers. Usually he will
      have the papers refereed, but occasionally he may simply accept a
      paper after reviewing it himself.

    * Theoretical Pearls are like programming pearls, but in the
      theoretical area.

    * Book reviews are solicited and edited by the Book Reviews Editor.

    * Special issues of JFP have been a successful way of attracting a
      group of high-quality papers on a particular topic. We invite a
      Guest Editor  or Editors to edit the issue, but one of the permanent Editors
      plays an "uncle" role. The Guest Editor writes and circulates an
      open Call for Papers, received submissions, and evaluates them
      with the help of referees. The Editors-in-Chief are open to
      proposals for Special Issues any time.

JFP encourages authors of workshop and conference papers to submit enhanced versions of the same work to JFP. Typically, the version submitted to JFP should contain additional discussion, examples, or proofs. Only if a workshop or conference paper is exceptionally well presented and complete is it suitable for journal publication without significant revision. If another publisher holds copyright on an earlier version of an article, the enhanced version must differ sufficiently so that the author can assign copyright to CUP.

Practice and experience papers

Research and papers on practice and experience sometimes receive less attention because they are perceived as possessing less academic content. So we want to remind potential authors that we have published a number of papers on this topic in the past, and have recently introduced three new categories: Education (started in 2003), Tools and Applications (started in 2006), and Commercial Uses of Functional Programming (started in 2007),  which are described above.  Authors are encouraged to submit papers in these categories, or on any topic related to the use of functional programming to solve real-world problems.  Such papers don't have to make novel contributions to either functional programming or to the application area, but they do have to involve functional programming ideas in a central and critical way. An application may be of interest because of (rather than in spite of) being entirely straightforward, since others might hesitate to write a similar application in a functional language without evidence that it would be tractable.

Such papers should clearly summarise their contributions:

Is there a new technique -- or is the point that the application is straightforward, and no new technique is required? 
Did it make a difference writing in a functional style -- or could the same application be written the same way in an imperative language? 
What lessons were learned?  Were there any reusable programming techniques? And so on. 
In general, the paper must give an account of the application area that would be regarded as well-informed, up to date, and accurate by an expert in that field.

These sorts of papers can be hard to get published in conferences, because they tend to be a little long, and because they may not report crisp new research results. JFP is delighted to publish them, provided they meet the criteria above. So write on!

How to submit a paper to JFP:

Manuscripts for consideration for the Journal of Functional Programming should be submitted electronically, using the Manuscript Central System. This system will allow authors to benefit from faster review and earlier, online publication. The system will accept PDF files; most other files types will be automatically converted directly into PDF. Source files are required for any paper accepted for publication. Authors who are unable to submit online should contact the Editorial Office for assistance.

Authors may want to consult the guidelines we offer to JFP referees to get an idea of the criteria that will be applied by referees.

Submission of a paper is taken to imply that it has not been previously published and that it is not being considered for publication elsewhere. Authors should inform the editor of any related papers submitted or published elsewhere. Upon acceptance of a paper, the author will be asked to transfer copyright to the publisher.

Following acceptance of the paper, your final submission should include both the PDF for the paper, and a directory containing all the LaTeX source files, including any supporting style files, figures, etc.

You are also encouraged to supply supporting material for your paper which JFP will make permanently accessible over the Web. (See Web-accessible accompanying material for your paper for more details.)

Electronic manuscripts

The publisher encourages submission of manuscripts written in LaTeX
which can be used for direct typesetting. Authors can download LaTeX
styles from CUP's ftp site.
The site contains a README file that describes what is available, a user's guide, and a class file which must not be edited. Associated style files should also be supplied on acceptance even though they are in general use. In case of difficulties obtaining these files, there is a help-line available via e-mail.
If you have trouble with JFP style, the publisher may be able to accept Plain TeX, or plain LaTeX or AMS TeX in article style.

On final acceptance of a paper, send the TeX source code to the editor by e-mail. Where possible, artwork and diagrams should be supplied as eps files rather than left in the TeX source. The publisher reserves the right to typeset any article by conventional means if the author's TeX code presents problems in production.

Layout of manuscripts

Manuscripts should begin with an abstract of not more than 300 words.
Please avoid footnotes whenever possible. Papers should conform to a good standard of English prose: please consult a style guide such as 'The Elements of Style' by Strunk and White, Macmillan, New York. It is encouraged to present programs in one of two styles: either with identifiers in italic and keywords in bold, or entirely in fixed-width teletype font. Do not begin a sentence with a symbol or identifier name.

Please supply Web URLs for the home page of each of the authors of the paper. These are used when generating the JFP bibliography and author index. People searching the JFP indexes will then be able to find their way to your home page easily.

References

The Harvard system of references should be used. Citations are by author's surname and year of publication, and may stand either as a noun phrase (e.g., "Curry (1933)") or as a parenthetical note (e.g., "(Curry 1933)"). List references at the end of the text in alphabetical order. A typical entry is: Curry, H. B. (1933) Apparent variables from the standpoint of mathematical logic, /Ann. of Math/., *34* (2): 381-404.
For LaTeX users, view the JFP Bibtex style for formats references in the appropriate style.

Illustrations

Illustrations should be supplied as ps or eps files, not as raw TeX files. They should be sized so as not to exceed the page width of the journal. Wherever possible they will be reproduced with the author's original lettering. If electronic files are not available, then figures should be supplied as hardcopy: originals of figures should not be sent until the paper has been accepted, and a list of captions should be attached separately.

Proof Reading

Please submit papers in their final form. Typographical or factual errors only may be changed at proof stage. The publisher reserves the right to charge authors for correction of non-typographical errors. No page charge is made.

JFP's policy is to follow the spelling convention (American or British) of the author(s).

Copyright matters

On publication, authors must assign copyright of their paper to Cambridge University Press. Notwithstanding the assignment of copyright
in their contribution, all contributors retain the following non-transferable rights:

    * The right to (continue to) post the contribution on their personal
      or departmental web page, provided the first screen contains the
      statement that the paper has been accepted for publication in
      Journal of Functional Programming published by Cambridge
      University Press, together with the appropriate copyright notice.
      On publication the full bibliographical details (volume: issue
      number (date), page numbers) must be inserted after the journal
      title.

    * The right to make hard copies of the contribution or an adapted
      version for their own purposes, including the right to make
      multiple copies for course use by their students, provided no sale
      is involved.

    * The right to reproduce the paper or an adapted version of it in
      any volume of which they are editor or author. Permission will
      automatically be given to the publisher of such a volume, subject
      to normal acknowledgment.

Web-accessible accompanying material for your paper

For some (but not all) papers it may be useful to accompany the paper with source code, data, proofs, or other material, in web-readable
form.  This is appropriate for papers describing programming techniques, software libraries, modest applications, and theoretical papers involving long and tedious proofs.  It may be less appropriate for tutorials, surveys, or large implementations. You can now do that for JFP. Here's how it works:

    * You provide a set of one or more files; one of them must be
      "index.html", an HTML home page for the material. We will arrange
      a link from the abstract of your paper (available in a couple of
      clicks from the JFP web site) to the "index.html" file that you
      provide. The printed copy will also say how to find the material.

    * We permanently maintain all the files you supply, at the JFP web
      site. Material that is hosted on the JFP site is regarded as part of the submission,
      and will be included in the refereeing process. The "index.html" home page should contain
      links (direct or indirect) to all the other files. Some of these other
      files might be tar'd up bundles for convenient download; whatever
      you provide we'll use.

    * Once your paper, and its accompanying material is published, the
      Web-accessible material will not be changed. You may, at any time,
      ask to add new material to your "index.html" page (clearly
      identified, with data attached), but you cannot delete or change
      any existing material. The whole point of a journal is to capture
      a particular, self-consistent snapshot. The source code (or
      whatever) that you provide is mutually consistent with the printed
      material and, because we keep it, it will remain so.

      That is not to say that errors cannot be corrected! Your
      subsequent additions (if any) to the online supplementary material
      may certainly take the form of errata, correcting errors in the
      paper, or providing new, better, download bundles. Any such
      additions should be dated.

      Your "index.html" file can also contain a link back to your own
      home site, where readers can find fuller information, or more
      up-to-date source code; but any such link must be clearly
      identified as going outside the JFP archive.

    * Whether or not you supply accompanying material for your paper,
      please include in your submission the home-page URLs for each of
      the authors.

Offprints

No paper offprints are provided but the corresponding author will be sent a freely-accessible link to a pdf of the published article.

Incremental Publishing and DOIs

The Journal of Functional Programming now publishes articles incrementally online as soon as author corrections have been completed and before they join a printed issue. A new reference has now been added to the first page of the article in the journal catchline. This is the DOI -- the Digital Object Identifier. This is a global publishers standard. A unique DOI number is created for each published item. It can be used for citation purposes instead of Volume, issue and page numbers. It therefore suits the early citation of articles which are published on the web before they have appeared in a printed issue.

© Cambridge University Press 2009.