Author Guidelines

Rights and Permissions

Before submitting an article for publication in IPJ (as opposed to submitting a draft for review), please make sure you have the necessary permissions from your management to do so.

You are free to publish your article in other publications, online etc, but we ask that:

  1. If the article was FIRST published in IPJ you include a statement when re-publishing that states this fact and has a pointer to IPJ, for example: “A version of this article was first published in The Internet Protocol Journal (IPJ), Volume 11, No. 2, June 2008. For more information about IPJ, please visit http://protocoljournal.org
  2. If you have ALREADY published your article in another publication, please let us know this when you submit it to IPJ so we can evaluate the value of re-publishing it in IPJ. Original articles are generally preferred.

Articles in IPJ are published under the Creative Commons “CC BY-NC-ND” licence, see:
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0)

Length

Article sizes vary somewhat, depending on the topic. As a general rule, an “average” article is 5-12 pages, where 1 page is equal to about 3000 bytes of plain ASCII text. IPJ is looking for practical articles, not theoretical proposals such as those found in academic journals.

Article Structure
  • Give your article a title and a by-line. For example: “The Rabbit Transmission Protocol, by Peter Jones, University of Virginia”
  • Include an introduction/motivation for your article, tell how it relates to other material, why we should care, and set the stage.
  • Articles should be “flat,” not structured documents as in “1.2.2.4”
  • Sections should have (fairly short) descriptive “names” or headers (not numeric labels). For example: “Lessons,” “Protocol Details,” “Summary.”
  • Include a reasonable number of references to other articles, books, standards documents, Web pages, and so forth. Use numeric reference labels: [7] rather than [Williamson84b]. List the references at the end of the article, and place pointers (if and when appropriate) in the body of the text.
  • Each time you introduce a new acronym, you should expand it; for example: “This is called Available Bit Rate (ABR).”
  • Write in a “tutorial” style, somewhere between a formal academic paper and the trade press. The idea is to explain things well.
  • Avoid product pitches or commercials of any kind. It is OK to mention products, of course (“..we use the Sniffer (TM) to gather segment stats..”), but the journal is more interested in technologies than products.
  • Include a short author bio. A sample can be found at the end of this guide.
Using Microsoft Word

You may send your article in plain ASCII or in Word format, but if you use Word, please pay attention to the following requirements:

  1. Please use a common font, Times is a safe choice, size at least 12 points.
  2. Please do NOT apply any special styles such as first and second level headings or any other pre-defined Word styles including headers, footers and page numbers. Do not justify or hyphenate. Do not use automatic numbering of any kind.
  3. Please do NOT embed references or URLs; spell them out in the list of references at the end and numerically (like [17]) in the text itself. Do NOT use any of Word’s automatic citation tools such as endnotes, footnotes or hyperlinks.
  4. You do not need to include the graphics in the Word file, but you do need to include figure captions IN THE MAIN text, and (if appropriate) similarly identify each figure in the file which contains your graphics. Acceptable formats include, PostScript, PowerPoint, Keynote or PDF. We prefer ONE figure per page in landscape format. We will re-draw all artwork to conform to our “house style”. IPJ is printed using only TWO colors so keep this in mind when drawing your figures.

It’s a good idea to include a PDF version of your article with ALL the text and figure in place. This will be used for article review by a set of experts.

Using ASCII Text
  • Do NOT justify, hyphenate, indent (tab), paginate, or otherwise “pretty” the ASCII text. If you need to indicate emphasis, use generally-accepted styles such as *very* or _very_.
  • Use a SINGLE space between sentences, and TWO blank lines between paragraphs.
  • Keep lines to no more than 70 characters.
  • Send any “pictures” (if applicable), as separate PDF files. (Other acceptable file types are: PostScript, PowerPoint and Keynote). Indicate the position and the figure caption in the main text body. If the files are large, it may be better to place them on an FTP server rather than send them in e-mail.
Sample Bio

CRAIG PARTRIDGE holds an A.B., a M.Sc., and a Ph.D from Harvard University. Since 1983, he has worked for Bolt Beranek and Newman on a variety of networking-related projects, including CSNET, the NSF Network Service Center (NNSC), and various projects concerned with distributed systems, IP transport protocols, and gigabit networking. He is a member of the Internet End-To-End Research Group, the Internet Engineering Task Force, and a Senior Member of the IEEE. He is the past editor of ACM Computer Communication Review and the current editor of IEEE Network Magazine. He can be reached at: craig@aland.bbn.com.

 

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