INSTRUCTIONS FOR AUTHORS

Authors who publish in Bentham Science Publishers print & online journals will transfer copyright to their work to Bentham Science Publishers. Submission of a manuscript to the respective journals implies that all authors have read and agreed to the content of the Copyright Letter or the Terms and Conditions. It is a condition of publication that manuscripts submitted to this journal have not been published and will not be simultaneously submitted or published elsewhere. Plagiarism is strictly forbidden, and by submitting the article for publication the authors agree that the publishers have the legal right to take appropriate action against the authors, if plagiarism or fabricated information is discovered. By submitting a manuscript the authors agree that the copyright of their article is transferred to the publishers if and when the article is accepted for publication. Once submitted to the journal, the author will not withdraw their manuscript at any stage prior to publication.

It is mandatory that a signed copyright letter should also be submitted along with the manuscript by the author to whom correspondence is to be addressed, delineating the scope of the submitted article, declaring potential competing interests, acknowledging contributions from authors and funding agencies, and certifying that the paper is prepared according to the 'Instructions for Authors'. All inconsistencies in the text and in the reference section, and any typographical errors must be carefully checked and corrected before the submission of the manuscript. The article should not contain any such material or information that may be unlawful, defamatory, fabricated, plagiarized, or which would, if published, in any way whatsoever, violate the terms and conditions as laid down in the copyright agreement. The authors must acknowledge that the publishers have the legal right to take appropriate action against the authors for any such violation of the terms and conditions as laid down in the copyright agreement. Download the Copyright letter

Bentham Science has collaborated with the Copyright Clearance Center to meet customer’s licensing, besides rights & permission needs.

The Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink^® service makes it faster and easier to secure permission from Bentham Science’s journal titles. Simply visit Journals by Title and locate the desired content. Then go to the article’s abstract and click on “Rights and Permissions” to open the RightsLink’s page. If you are unable to locate the content you wish to use or you are unable to secure the rights you are seeking, please e-mail us at permissions@benthamscience.net

Published/reproduced material should not be included unless written permission has been obtained from the copyright holder, which should be forwarded to the Editorial Office in case of acceptance of the article for publication.

By signing the Copyright Letter, the authors retain the rights of self-archiving (subject to certain restrictions).

Following are the important features of the self-archiving policy of Bentham Science journals:

1. Authors can deposit the first draft of a submitted article on their personal websites or their institution’s repositories for personal use, internal institutional use, or for permitted scholarly posting only.
2. Authors may deposit the ACCEPTED VERSION of the peer-reviewed article on their personal websites, their institution’s repository or the non-commercial repositories, PMC and arXiv, after 12 MONTHS of publication on the journal website. For personal use, internal institutional use, or for permitted scholarly posting only.
3. In case of (b) above, an acknowledgement must be given to the original source of publication and a link must be inserted to the published article on the journal's/publisher’s website. The link to the original source of publication should be provided by inserting the DOI number of the article in the following sentence: “The published manuscript is available at EurekaSelect via http://www.eurekaselect.com/[insert DOI].”
4. If the research is funded by NIH, Wellcome Trust or any other Open Access Mandate, authors are allowed the archiving of published versions of manuscripts in the nominated institutional repositories, after the mandatory embargo period. Authors should first contact the Editorial Office of the journal for information about depositing a copy of the manuscript to a repository. Consistent with the copyright agreement, Bentham Science does not allow archiving of FINAL PUBLISHED VERSION of manuscripts unless under an Open Access mandate as above. Archiving, under any of the above mentioned Open Access mandates, is done under the terms of the Creative Commons License CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 - Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International.
5. There is no embargo on the archiving of articles published under the OPEN ACCESS PLUS category. Authors are allowed deposition of such articles on institutional, non-commercial repositories and personal websites immediately after publication on the journal website. This is done under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License CC-BY 4.0.
6. In case of any form of archiving, an acknowledgement must be given to the original source of publication and a link must be inserted to the published article on the journal's/publisher’s website. The link to the original source of publication should be provided by inserting the DOI number of the article in the following sentence: “The published manuscript is available at EurekaSelect via http://www.eurekaselect.com/[insert DOI].”

To ensure permanent access to our publications, Bentham Science has an agreement with Portico to have a long-term preservation of the content published in its journals.

These special issues are peer-reviewed and may contain invited or uninvited review/mini-review articles or a mixture of research articles, and reviews/ mini-reviews. The Special Editor will offer a short perspective and co-ordinate the solicitation of about 4 to 6 manuscripts to 8-12 (for full-length thematic issue) from leading Asian scientists., with a total page limit ranging between 100 to 150 printed journal pages. Each printed journal page is on average 900 words (excluding any figures, plates and diagrams). Authors interested in editing a single topic issue in an emerging field of Artificial intelligence and robotics may submit their proposal to the Editor-in-Chief at thematicissue@benthamscience.net for consideration.

For proposals to publish conference proceedings in this journal, please contact us at email: proceedings@benthamscience.net

There is no restriction on the number of figures, tables or additional files e.g. video clips, animation and datasets, that can be included with each article online. Authors should include all relevant supporting data with each article (Refer to Supplementary Material section).

It is advisable that authors prepare their manuscript using the template available on the Web, which will assist in preparation of the manuscript according to Journal’s Format. Download the Template.

Manuscripts submitted for research and review articles in the journal should be divided into the following sections

• Title
• Title Page
• Structured Abstract
• Graphical Abstract
• Keywords
• Text Organization
• Conclusion
• List of Abbreviations (if any)
• Consent for Publication
• Availability of Data and Materials
• Funding
• Conflict of Interest
• Acknowledgements
• References
• Appendices
• Figures/Illustrations (if any)
• Chemical Structures (if any)
• Tables (if any)
• Supportive/Supplementary Material (if any)

A small paragraph summarizing the contents of the article, presenting the final outcome of the research or proposing further study on the subject, may be given at the end of the article under the Conclusion section.

All potential conflicts of interest that could have a direct or indirect influence on the work must be disclosed by the authors. Even if an author does not have a conflict, disclosing affiliations and interests allows for a more comprehensive and open approach, which leads to a more accurate and objective evaluation of the work. Conflicts of interest, whether genuine or imagined, are a perspective to which the readers are entitled.

The publication of a conflict statement in the article itself, as well as the submission of the conflict disclosure form, is required for all types of papers. It is not necessarily the case that a monetary relationship with examination support or funding for counseling work is inappropriate.

The following are some examples of potential conflicts of interest that are directly or indirectly related to the research:

Financial competing interests include (but are not limited to):

• Type of support / grant number
• Name of institution
• Funds received by the author
• Fund received by the institution
• Travel allowances for the research
• Funds received for article preparation and reviewing
• Funds for conducting review activities
• Support provided for article writing assistance, for drugs, equipment, etc.
• Editorial board member
• Advisor or expert opinion
• Paid lectures
• Expert advice for scientific and technical issues
• Pending fund or grant

In addition, interests other than monetary and any funding (non-financial interests) should be declared if they are relevant to readers. Personal relationships or conflicting interests directly or indirectly related to research, as well as professional interests or personal opinions that may impact your research, are examples of these.

Intellectual property, in basic terms, refers to any intangible property that is the result of creativity, such as patents, copyrights, etc. Similarly, this section seeks to know about copyright and patent (licensed patent, pending or issued) and any payment received for intellectual property such as,

• Patent
• Licensed Patent
• Issued Patent
• Pending Patent
• Royalties
• Funds received for article preparation and reviewing
• Licensee
• Remarks

All conflict of interest disclosure forms are collected by the corresponding author. It is sufficient for the corresponding author to sign the disclosure form on behalf of all authors in author collaborations when legal agreements for representation allow it. The templates of the form can be found here.

Before the reference list, the corresponding author will include a summary statement in the text of the article that reflects what is reported in the potential conflict of interest disclosure form (s).

• [1]  Arnórsson S, Bjarnason JÖ, Giroud N, Gunnarsson I, Stefánsson A. Sampling and analysis of geothermal fluids. Geofluids 2006; 6 (3): 203-216.
• [2]  Fournier RO. Geochemical and hydrologic considerations and the use of enthalpy-chloride diagrams in the prediction of underground conditions in hot-spring systems. J Volcanol and Geoth Res 1979; 5(1-2): 1-16.

• [3]  Rogdakis ED, Koronaki IP. Renewable Energy Engineering: Solar, Wind, Biomass, Hydrogen and Geothermal Energy Systems, 3^rd ed. Bentham Books: UAE 2018.

• [4]  Vrachopoulos M, Koukou MK, Tsolakoglou NP. Exploitation of normal shallow geothermal energy for heating and cooling applications. In: Rogdakis ED, Koronaki IP, Eds. Renewable Energy Engineering: Solar, Wind, Biomass, Hydrogen and Geothermal Energy Systems, 3^rd ed. Bentham Books: UAE 2018; pp. 324-68.

• [5]  Jakeman, D.L.; Withers, S.G.E. In: Carbohydrate Bioengineering: Interdisciplinary Approaches, Proceedings of the 4^th Carbohydrate Bioengineering Meeting, Stockholm, Sweden, June 10-13, 2001; Teeri, T.T.; Svensson, B.; Gilbert, H.J.; Feizi, T., Eds.; Royal Society of Chemistry: Cambridge, UK, 2002; pp. 3-8.

• [6]  National Library of Medicine. Specialized Information Services: Toxicology and Environmental Health. sis.nlm.nih.gov/Tox/ToxMain.html (Accessed May 23, 2004).

• [7]  Binding C, Sundstroem OL. Energy allocation system for balancing energy consumption. U.S. Patent 9946285, April 17, 2018.

• [8]  Mackel, H. Capturing the Spectra of Silicon Solar Cells. PhD Thesis, The Australian National University: Canberra, December 2004.

• [9]  Citations for articles/material published exclusively online or in open access (free-to-view), must contain the accurate Web addresses (URLs) at the end of the reference(s), except those posted on an author’s Web site (unless editorially essential), e.g. ‘Reference: Available from: URL’.

Some important points to remember:

• All references must be complete and accurate.
• All authors must be cited and there should be no use of the phrase et al.
• Date of access should be provided for online citations.
• Journal names should be abbreviated according to the Index Medicus/MEDLINE.
• Punctuation should be properly applied as mentioned in the examples given above.
• Superscript in the in-text citations and reference section should be avoided.
• Abstracts, unpublished data and personal communications (which can only be included if prior permission has been obtained) should not be given in the references section. The details may however appear in the footnotes.
• The authors are encouraged to use a recent version of EndNote (version 5 and above) or Reference Manager (version 10) when formatting their reference list, as this allows references to be automatically extracted.

The four types of research data policies are mentioned below.

• Case 1: Data sharing and data citation
• Case 2: Data sharing and its evidence
• Case 3: Statement for Data sharing and data availability
• Case 4: Data sharing, evidence of data sharing and data for peer-review

Wherever appropriate and possible, the journal encourages authors to publish data to support their research findings in a public repository. Any datasets mentioned in the article that are available in external repositories should be cited.

How to Cite the Data?

Whether the data was developed by the author(s) or researcher(s), all publicly available data referenced in the preparation of an article should be cited in the text and reference list. The references relating to the data availability should be presented in the following format:

Example: Name of author(s), the title of data set, data repository, document version (e.g., most recent updated version), Digital Object Identifier (DOI), and Bentham Science reference style should be included in data citations.

When authors submit a paper to a journal, the authors agree that the data provided in the publication, including the relevant raw data, will be freely available to any researcher who wants to use these for non-commercial reasons without jeopardising participant anonymity.

Data availability declarations are required under Bentham Science research data policy types.

The statement relating to the data availability should be presented in the following format under a separate section for ‘Availability of Data and Materials’ in the manuscript:

1. The authors confirm that the data supporting the findings of this study are available within the article and its supplementary materials.
2. The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author, [author initials], on special request.
3. The datasets generated or analysed during the current study are not publicly available due to [mention the reason(s)].
4. Authors who do not wish to share their data should clearly state that the data will not be shared, and thus mention as ‘Not applicable’.
5. The statement relating to the data should be presented in the following format:
   "The data supporting the findings of the article is available in the [repository name] at [URL], reference number [reference number]”.

Additional Data Availability Statements

Authors can add or change the statement(s) above, to fit their work the best. Depending on the nature of the research, several assertions may need to be merged.

All datasets on which the paper's conclusions are based must be made accessible to reviewers and readers, according to the journal's rules. Prior to peer review, authors must either deposit their datasets in publicly accessible repositories or provide them as supplementary materials with their submission.

All authors must strictly follow the guidelines below for preparing illustrations for publication in Artificial Intelligence and Robotics. If the figures are found to be sub-standard, then the manuscripts will be rejected.

The authors are expected to submit good quality figure(s) in PDF, PPT, MS Word, TIFF or JPEG versions, which, if required, should be improved yourself or by professional graphic designers of your organization/ country. You may even consider approaching our contracted service providers Eureka Science for Graphics Enhancement Services.

The Graphics Designing team at Eureka Science can assist in improving the quality of your images at affordable rates. Eureka Science has offered special rates of US $135 for the improvement of up to five figures, with any additional figures being charged at US $20 each.

The quality of Graphic Enhancement Services offered by Eureka Science can be viewed at http://www.eureka-science.com/images/Binder1.pdf, along with valuable feedback on their services at http://www.eureka-science.com/testimonials.php. You may contact Eureka Science at info@eurekascience.net

Note: Availing Graphics Enhancement Services does not guarantee acceptance of the manuscript for publication. The final acceptance/decision on the manuscript is taken by the EiC.

Chemical structures must be prepared in ChemDraw/CDX and provided as separate file.

• Data Tables should be submitted in Microsoft Word table format.
• Each table should include a title/caption being explanatory in itself with respect to the details discussed in the table. Detailed legends may then follow.
• Table number in bold font i.e. Table 1, should follow a title. The title should be in small case with the first letter in caps. A full stop should be placed at the end of the title.
• Tables should be embedded in the text exactly according to their appropriate placement in the submitted manuscript.
• Columns and rows of data should be made visibly distinct by ensuring that the borders of each cell are displayed as black lines.
• Tables should be numbered in Arabic numerals sequentially in order of their citation in the body of the text.
• If a reference is cited in both the table and text, please insert a lettered footnote in the table to refer to the numbered reference in the text.
• Tabular data provided as additional files can be submitted as an as MS Excel spreadsheet.
• It is adequate to present data in Tables to avoid unnecessary repetition and reduce the length of the text.
• The citation of each table in the text must be ensured.
• Symbols and nonstandard abbreviations should be explained in the end of the text.
• All references should be numbered sequentially [in square brackets] in the table and listed in the same numerical order in the reference section.

The names of the authors should be provided according to the previous citations or as the authors would want them to be published along with the institutional affiliations, current address, telephone, cell & fax numbers and the email address. Email address must be provided with an asterisk in front of the name of the principal author. The corresponding author(s) should be designated and their complete address, business telephone and fax numbers and e-mail address must be stated to receive correspondence and galley proofs. Also it is suggested to regularly update the profile on SCOPUS and other databases.

Authors will receive page proofs of their accepted paper before publications. To avoid delays in publication, proofs should be checked immediately for typographical errors and returned within 48 hours. Major changes are not acceptable at the proof stage. In case of inability to send corrections within 48 hours due to some reason, the author(s) must at least send an acknowledgement on receiving the galley proofs otherwise the article will be published exactly as received and the publishers will not be responsible for any error occurring in the published manuscript.

The corresponding author will be solely responsible for ensuring that the revised version of the manuscript incorporating all the submitted corrections receives the approval of all the co-authors of the manuscript.

No page charges will be levied to authors for the publication of their article. However, the authors may decide for some paid-for editorial services such as open access publication and/or a faster overall publication for their article(s).

For this journal an optional fast publication fee-based service called QUICK TRACK is available to authors for their submitted manuscripts. Authors who opt for this fee-based service do not have to pay any additional page charges.

QUICK TRACK allows online publication within 2 weeks of receipt of the final approved galley proofs from the authors. Similarly the manuscript can be published in the next forthcoming PRINT issue of the journal. The total publication time, from the date of first receipt of manuscript to its online publication is 12 weeks, subject to its acceptance by the referees and modification (if any) by the authors within one week.

The author will be initially charged a small fee on receipt of the agreement form for Quick Track publication to cover the initial costs incurred for expedited peer- review of the submitted manuscript. Later, the Quick Track publication fee (US$ 52 per composed page charges) will be payable in advance, after acceptance of the manuscript, before online publication of the article. However, if the article is rejected at the peer-review stage, then the US$ 52 per composed page charges will not be charged.

Please note that whether the author opts for the QUICK TRACK facility or not, standard reviewing practices will be followed, which will not in any way affect the acceptance or rejection of the manuscript by the reviewers.

Authors who have availed QUICK TRACK services in a BSP journal will be entitled for an exclusive 30% discount if they again wish to avail the same services in any Bentham journal.

For more information please contact the Editorial Office by e-mail at ccs@benthamscience.net.

Bentham Science offers a 50% discount off the Quick Track Publication Fee for manuscripts of all corresponding authors who reside in countries which are categorized as low-income economies by the World Bank. To see if you qualify to the discount, please refer to the complete list of these countries click here.

Bentham Science also offers authors the choice of “Open Access Plus” publication of articles at a fee of US$ 504 per article. This paid service allows for articles to be disseminated to a much wider audience, on the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0) (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode). Authors are asked to indicate whether or not they wish to pay to have their article made more widely available on this “Open Access Plus” basis. Where an author does not opt-in to this paid service, then the author’s article will be published only on Bentham Science’s standard subscription-based access, at no additional cost to the author.

Authors who select the “Quick Track” publication option and also wish to have their article made available on an “Open Access Plus” basis will be entitled to a 50% discount on the “Open Access Plus” publication fee.

For more information please contact us at e-mail: openaccess@benthamscience.net

Bentham Science offers a 50% discount off the Open Access Plus Fee for manuscripts of all corresponding authors who reside in countries which are categorized as low-income economies by the World Bank. To see if you qualify to the discount, please refer to the complete list of these countries click here.

Printed reprints and e-prints may be ordered from the Publisher prior to publication of the article. First named authors may also order a personal online subscription of the journal at 50% off the normal subscription rate by contacting the subscription department at e-mail: subscriptions@benthamscience.net.

Bentham Science offers 50% discount on the Open Access Plus Fee, Quick Track Fee and Article Processing Charges (APC) for manuscripts of the corresponding authors based in countries categorized as low-income economies by World Bank (list given below).

For any query or suggestion, please contact us on info@benthamscience.net.

The text of every submitted manuscript is checked using the Content Tracking mode in iThenticate. The Content Tracking mode ensures that manuscripts with an overall low percentage similarity (but which may have a higher similarity from a single source) are not overlooked. The acceptable limit for similarity of text from a single source is 5%. If the similarity level is above 5%, the manuscript is returned to the author for paraphrasing the text and citing the original source of the copied material.

It is important to mention that the text taken from different sources with an overall low similarity percentage will be considered as a plagiarized content if the majority of the article is a combination of copied material.

There may be some manuscripts with an overall low similarity percentage, but a higher percentage from a single source. A manuscript may have less than 20% overall similarity but there may be 15 % similar text taken from a single article. The similarity index in such cases is higher than the approved limit for a single source. Authors are advised to thoroughly rephrase the similar text and properly cite the original source to avoid plagiarism and copyright violation.

We all know that scholarly manuscripts are written after thorough review of previously published articles. It is therefore not easy to draw a clear boundary between legitimate representation and plagiarism. However, the following important features can assist in identifying different kinds of plagiarized content. These are:

• Reproduction of others words, sentences, ideas or findings as one’s own without proper acknowledgement.
• Text recycling, also known as self-plagiarism. It is an author’s use of a previous publication in another paper without proper citation and acknowledgement of the original source.
• Paraphrasing poorly: Copying complete paragraphs and modifying a few words without changing the structure of original sentences or changing the sentence structure but not the words.
• Verbatim copying of text without putting quotation marks and not acknowledging the work of the original author.
• Properly citing a work but poorly paraphrasing the original text is considered as unintentional plagiarism. Similarly, manuscripts with language somewhere between paraphrasing and quoting are not acceptable. Authors should either paraphrase properly or quote and in both cases, cite the original source.
• Higher similarity in the abstract, introduction, materials and methods, and discussion and conclusion sections indicates that the manuscript may contain plagiarized text. Authors can easily explain these parts of the manuscript in many ways. However, technical terms and sometimes standard procedures cannot be rephrased; therefore Editors must review these sections carefully before making a decision.

Published manuscripts which are found to contain plagiarized text are retracted from the journal website after careful investigation and approval by the Editor-in-Chief of the journal. A ‘Retraction Note’ as well as a link to the original article is published on the electronic version of the plagiarized manuscript and an addendum with retraction notification in the journal concerned.

Articles appearing in E-Pub Ahead-of-Schedule sections have been peer-reviewed and accepted for publication in this journal and posted online before scheduled publication. Articles appearing here may contain statements, opinions, and information that have errors in facts, figures, or interpretation. Accordingly, Bentham Science Publishers, the editors and authors and their respective employees are not responsible or liable for the use of any such inaccurate or misleading data, opinion or information contained of articles in the E-Pub Ahead-of-Schedule.