WEB de la revista

The Managing Editor,

The Analyst, The Royal Society of Chemistry,

Thomas Graham House, Science Park,

Milton Road, Cambridge CB4 0WF,

tel +44 (0)1223 420066, fax +44 (0)1223 420247

Instrucciones (resumen tomado de la web)

The Analyst publishes original and significant contributions to the development and application of analytical and bioanalytical techniques, both fundamental and applied, including miniaturisation of analytical systems, bioanalysis (including biospecific assays), chromatography and electrophoresis, mass spectrometry, electrochemistry, sensors, imaging techniques, sampling and sample handling, chemometrics/statistics, atomic and molecular spectroscopy and all other areas related to measurement science. The journal is published monthly, and also includes reviews on selected topics of interest to analytical scientists. Occasional, special issues are published.

There is no page charge for papers published in The Analyst.

The Analyst contents list is organised into the following section headings:

Bioanalytical
Chemometrics/statistics
Electroanalytical
Mass Spectrometry
Microscale
Sample handling
Sensors
Separations
Spectroscopy
Surface analysis
Other methods
Authors may indicate at the time of submission which section is the most appropriate for their paper.

1.1 Criteria for publication

The following types of papers will be considered:

Full research papers, which must represent a significant development in the particular field of analysis and are judged on the criteria of (i) originality and quality of scientific content, (ii) contribution to our existing knowledge, and (iii) appropriateness of length to content of new science. The Analyst strongly discourages papers reporting the application of routine/well established analytical procedures unless they contain chemical principles or applications of exceptional novelty. Minor enhancement in sensitivity or selectivity of a technique is not normally sufficient to merit publication in the journal. Although short articles are considered, the RSC strongly discourages fragmentation of a substantial body of work into a number of short publications. Unnecessary fragmentation will be a valid reason for rejection of manuscripts.

Communications, which must report preliminary research findings that are particularly novel/original, of immediate interest, are likely to have a high impact on the analytical science community and therefore rapid publication is desirable. Communications receive priority treatment and are published within 8 weeks of receipt. Ideally, each communication should be followed by a full research paper in The Analyst, Journal of Analytical Atomic Spectrometry, Journal of Environmental Monitoring, Lab on a Chip or another appropriate primary journal. Authors should provide at the time of submission a short paragraph explaining why their work justifies urgent publication as a communication.

Critical Reviews, which must be a critical evaluation of the existing state of knowledge on a particular facet of analytical science. Original work may be included. Simple literature surveys will not be accepted for publication. Potential review writers should contact the Managing Editor before embarking on their work.

Tutorial Reviews, which are review articles that are written to be of relevance to both the expert or someone new to the field, with a view to informing the reader of the most recent important developments in a specific area of analytical science (i.e., those not yet available in teaching texts) and give an indication of the author's view on where future developments might lead. Potential review writers should contact the Managing Editor before embarking on their work.

Other I-Section articles. Potential writers should contact Prof M Thompson (Scientific Editor, I-section) before embarking on their work.

Further information regarding criteria for publication in The Analyst can be found in a special editorial, "Expectations for the quality and originality of articles submitted to The Analyst".

1.2 Submission of articles

Microsoft Word article templates are available and instructions on their use can be downloaded. Please note that use of the templates is optional. Authors who decide not to use the template, should prepare their typescript in double spacing, single column format, with tables and figures appearing at the end of the text. Copies of any related, relevant, unpublished material and raw data should be made available on request. Authors may also recommend potential reviewers for their paper.

The Analyst only has space to publish three out of every ten submissions it receives. In order for a manuscript to be acceptable for The Analyst, it must report significant advances in analytical science, as reflected in its originality, scientific quality and contribution to knowledge. At the time of submission, authors should provide a short but explicit letter of justification for publication in The Analyst. The emphasis should be on why the work is considered to be original and novel, and why the research will be of interest to the analytical community at large. The justification will be passed on to the referees to aid them in making their recommendations.

1.2.1 Electronic manuscript submission

Electronic manuscript submission is preferred. Articles may be submitted to the appropriate Editor using the RSC file-upload service. Authors should send a PDF version of the manuscript as a single file (containing text, tables and figures). This file will be used for online refereeing where possible. (A Microsoft Word file may alternatively be supplied but is unlikely to be suitable for online refereeing). Manuscripts sent by file upload will be acknowledged by e-mail. Authors should contact the Editorial Office if they have not received an acknowledgement within 5 working days. When submitting electronically, authors will not be required to send a printed copy of the manuscript separately.

1.2.2 Manuscript submission by mail

Three copies of text and illustrations should be sent to: The Managing Editor, The Analyst, The Royal Society of Chemistry, Thomas Graham House, Science Park, Milton Road, Cambridge CB4 0WF, tel +44 (0)1223 420066, fax +44 (0)1223 420247; or directly to the North American Editor, and a further copy retained by the author.

1.2.3 North American Editor

Papers from the Americas can be submitted by regular mail or, preferably, electronically using the RSC file-upload service to Professor Luis A Colón, Department of Chemistry, SUNY University at Buffalo, 578 Natural Sciences Complex, Buffalo, NY 14260-3000, USA, tel (716) 645 6800 Ext 2143, fax (716) 645 6963, Email lacolon@buffalo.edu. These papers will usually be refereed in North America.

1.3 Ethical Guidelines for Publication in Journals and Reviews

One of the foundations of the scientific profession is the acceptance by its members of a 'code of conduct' which outlines desired behaviour and obligations of members of the profession to each other and the public. Such a code of conduct seeks to maximise the benefits of science to society and the profession.

The publication of scientific research in journals is one of the fundamental ways in which the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) serves the chemical science communities. Central to this service are certain responsibilities that editors, authors and referees have to maintain the high ethical standard relating to the publication of manuscripts in the journals published by the RSC. These responsibilities are outlined in the following document.

Manuscripts should be in accordance with the style and usage shown in recent copies of The Analyst. Conciseness of expression is expected: adopting a logical order of presentation, with suitable paragraph or section headings, increases clarity.

3.1 Order of presentation

(a) Title. This should be brief but informative with an adequate indication of the original features of the work. The title should usually include the analyte being determined or identified, the matrix and the analytical method used. Acronyms and subtitles should be avoided.

(b) Authorship. To facilitate abstracting and indexing by Chemical Abstracts Service, and other abstracting organisations, at least one forename should be included with each author's family name. The corresponding author should be indicated with an asterisk and an Email address supplied.

(c) Summary/abstract. A summary of about 100 (communications) to 200 words (full papers), describing the purpose of the work and drawing attention to the novel aspects, should be provided for all papers. It should be essentially independent of the main text and include relevant quantitative information such as detection limits, precision and accuracy data.

(d) Aim of investigation/introduction. A concise introductory statement of the object of the investigation with any essential historical background, supported by appropriate citation of relevant references (particular attention should be paid to recently published literature). The section should conclude with an unambiguous statement of the novel features of the work.

(e) Description of the experimental procedures. Working details must be given concisely. Analytical procedures should be given in the form of instructions and should be succinct; well known operations should not be described in detail. Suppliers of equipment and materials should be mentioned. The choice of any optimisation procedure (in accordance with an accepted protocol) must be justified and any figure of merit clearly stated. This section should also include information on how a new method was validated, including a description of the statistical procedures used. Descriptions of methods should be supported by experimental results showing accuracy, precision and selectivity.

(f) Results and discussion. Results are best presented in tabular or diagrammatic form (but not both for the same results), followed by an appropriate statistical evaluation, which should be in accordance with accepted practice. Any discussion should comment on the scope of the method and its validity, followed by a statement of any conclusions drawn from the work. Appropriate negative results should also be reported. A separate conclusions section is not encouraged but, if included, it should not simply duplicate statements in the discussion.

(g) Acknowledgements. Contributors other than co-authors, companies or sponsors may be acknowledged in a separate paragraph at the end of the paper. Titles may be given but not degrees.

(h) References. References should be numbered serially in the text by means of superscript figures, e.g., Foote and Delves,1 Burns et al.2 or . . . in a recent paper3 . . ., and collected in numerical order under the heading 'References' on a separate page at the end of the paper. Journal titles should be abbreviated according to the Chemical Abstracts Service Source Index (CASSI) and all the authors' names and initials should be given. Articles "in the press" should be listed only if formally accepted for publication. Otherwise "submitted to" or "unpublished work" should be used. Where possible, page ranges should be stated. Examples of reference formats follow:

1 L. S. Riter, Z. Takáts, and R. G. Cooks, Analyst, 2001, 126, 1980-1984
2 J. A. Harnisch and M. D. Porter , Analyst, 2001, 126, 1841-1849, and references cited therein.
3 N. Yates and R. Yost, unpublished work.
4 A. Manz, Lab Chip, in the press.
5 J. H. Vincent, G. Ramachandran, S. M. Kerr, J. Environ. Monit., submitted for publication.
6 R. Parker, 1998, personal communication.
7 K. Gaus, PhD Thesis, Cambridge University, Cambridge, 1999.
8 G. J. Pritchard, J. E. Bateson, B. A. Hill, B. A. Heald and S. F. Hubbard, US Pat., 5762770, 1998.
9 EEC Directive, 88/146, 1988, No. 70/16.
10 R. Furuta, Report CIPAC/4172/R, Collaborative International Pesticides Analytical Council, Harpenden, 2000.


For books, the edition (if not the first), the publisher and the place and date of publication should be given, followed by the page number.

1 A. F. Marcus, in Air Monitoring by Spectroscopic Techniques, ed. M. W. Sigrist, Wiley, New York, 1994, vol. 3, pp. 18-52.
2 Handbook on Metals in Clinical and Analytical Chemistry, ed. H. G. Seiler, A. Siegel and H. Sigel, Marcel Dekker, New York, 1994, pp. 720-734.
3 V. R. Meyer, Practical High-performance Liquid Chromatography, Wiley, New York, 2nd edn., 1993.
4 APHA-AWWA-WPCF, Standard Methods for the Examination of Water and Wastewater, American Public Health Association, Washington DC, 15th edn., 1994, ch. 2.
5 M. E. P. Hows, N. G. Coldham and M. J. Sauer, in Residues of Veterinary Drugs in Food, Proceedings of the Euroresidue IV Conference, Veldhoven, May 8–10, 2000, ed. L. A. van Ginkel and A. Ruiter, RIVM, Bilthoven, 2000, pp. 581-586.
6 CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics, ed. R. C. Weast, CRC Press, Boca Raton, FL, 72nd edn., 1992, sect. D-100.
7 British Pharmacopoeia 1996, HM Stationery Office, London, 1996, vol. 1, p. 40.

Internet Sources. Internet sources should include the author (if any), the title of the site, the URL (address), and the date accessed

Authors must, in their own interest, check the lists of references against the original papers; second-hand references are a frequent source of error. References to conference abstracts which have not been published in the open literature are not acceptable. The number of references must be kept to a minimum.

3.2 Figures and tables

Table column headings should be brief. Tables consisting of only two columns can often be arranged horizontally. Tables must be supplied with titles and be so set out as to be understandable without reference to the text.

Either tables or graphs may be used but not both for the same set of results, unless important additional information is given by so doing. The information given by a straight-line calibration graph can usually be conveyed adequately as an equation or statement in the text.

Column headings and graph axis labels should be in accord with SI conventions. Thus, the expression of numerical values of a physical quantity should be dimensionless, i.e., the quotient of the symbol for the physical quantity and the symbol for the unit used, e.g., c/mol dm-3, or some mathematical function of a number, e.g., ln(c/mol dm-3). Further examples are /cm-1, /cm, mass of substance/g and flow rate/ ml min-1. For units which are already dimensionless, i.e., ratios such as % or ppm, the type of ratio is indicated in parentheses, e.g., c (%) or c (ppm). The diagonal line (solidus) will not be used to represent 'per'. Units such as grams per millilitre should be expressed in the form g ml-1. It should be noted that the 'combined' unit, g ml-1, must not have any 'intrusive' numbers. To express concentration in grams per 100 millilitres, the word 'per' will still be required: concentration/g per 100 ml. It may be preferable for an author to express concentrations in grams per litre (g l-1) rather than grams per 100 ml.

Best quality original diagrams should be supplied. Figure captions should be supplied separately to the figures. Figures which have been computer generated should be saved in formats TIFF or EPS at a minimum of 600 dpi and submitted in a separate file to the text.

In the majority of cases, author's figures will be reduced in size so that they are less than 20 picas (83 mm) in width and will fit into a single column in the journal. Authors must consider if originals (in particular text on figures and axes labels) will remain legible if reduced to conform to this column width. Where possible, illustrations should be provided in the size they are to appear when published. Authors are discouraged from supplying full page, outsized diagrams and graphs. The intention is to avoid any loss of detail that can occur when oversized originals are reduced in size before printing. It is recognized that this may be impossible where illustrations are produced manually (hand drawn). In this event artwork should be submitted at twice the size of the final printed version. All lettering appearing on figures should be in a clear font (sans-serif is preferable) and should be 6-8 point type (on reduction where necessary). Lines should be of sufficient thickness and symbols of sufficient size to reproduce well even when the illustrations are reduced in size. The optimum line thickness when printed is 1 pt. Symbols should be approximately 1 mm in diameter when printed. The use of shading and tints should be avoided as these are unlikely to reproduce successfully.

Figures and tables should be kept to a minimum; a maximum of 5 figures and/or 5 tables is recommended. Authors should consider using the free ESI service for depositing extensive sets of tabulated data.