Nanophotonics

Aims and Scope

Nanophotonics covers recent international research results, specific developments in the field and novel applications. The journal focuses on the interaction of photons with nanostructures, such as carbon nanotubes, nanometal particles, nanocrystals, semiconductor nanodots, photonic crystals, and tissue and DNA.

Nanophotonics disseminates the latest developments for physicists, engineers and material scientists working in fields related to:

• Plasmonics: metallic nanostructures and their optical properties
• Meta materials, fundamentals and applications
• Nanophotonic concepts and devices for solar energy harvesting and conversion
• Near-field optical microscopy
• Nanowaveguides and devices
• Nano lasers
• Nanostructures, nanoparticles, nanotubes, nanowires and nanofibers
• Photonic crystals
• Integrated silicon photonics
• Semiconductor quantum dots
• Quantum optics and quantum information
• Ultra-fast and non-linear pulse propagation in nanomaterials and structures
• Light-matter interaction and optical manipulation techniques
• Nano-biophotonics
• Optofluidics
• Optomechanics
• System applications based on nanophotonic devices
• Nanofabrication techniques, thin film processing and self-assembly

Nanophotonics is published in partnership with Sciencewise.

Publication Frequency: 26 issues per annum

Publication Language: English

Publication Model: Open access. All content published in the journal is published under a CC BY 4.0 model. All articles accepted for publication will be required to pay an article processing charge (APC).

Article Categories

Peer Review Information

Nanophotonics operates a single-blind peer review model with a two-phase refereeing system. All manuscripts are initially reviewed by the Managing Editor to assess the level of scientific writing, scientific innovation and integrity. The Managing Editors that support the review process are all active scientists with various backgrounds and expertise in the field of nanophotonics.

Our standard peer review policy requires each paper reporting primary research or secondary analysis of primary research, together with relevant supplementary materials, to be reviewed by at least two referees. Review articles are also reviewed by a minimum of two referees. The Editors reserve the right to decline the submitted manuscript without review if the studies reported are not sufficiently novel or important to merit publication in the journal. Manuscripts deemed unsuitable (insufficient originality or of limited interest to the target audience) are returned to the author(s) without review. The Editor seeks advice from experts in the appropriate field. The final decision of acceptance is made the by Managing Editor or, in case of conflict, by the Editor-in-Chief.

Authors are encouraged to suggest the names of relevant reviewers upon submission. Reviewers indicated by the authors must be from different institutions to the authors and should not have collaborated on the same research project within the past three years. Authors may also provide names of reviewers they wish to exclude from reviewing their manuscript. Please note that this will be treated only as a suggestion, and the final selection of reviewers is exclusively the Editor's decision.

Peer Review Turnaround Times

• Average time from submission to initial editorial manager assessment: 5 days
• Average time from submission to first decision: 22 days
• Average time from submission to final decision: 57 days
• Average time from acceptance to publication: 13 days

Issue-Based Publication

As soon as articles have been typeset and finalised, they are published online as DOI citable articles in the ‘Just Accepted’ section of the journal homepage. They are later assigned to an issue and published with page numbers.

Appeals

Manuscripts that have been rejected for publication will be reconsidered only at the discretion of the Editor(s). Authors wishing to request reconsideration of a previously rejected manuscript must do so in written form and submit a rebuttal by email to the Publishing Editor, Dennis Couwenberg, at dcouwenberg@nanophotonics-journal.com. Authors should provide detailed reasons as to why they believe the manuscript should be reconsidered. If the rebuttal is accepted, the author will be asked to resubmit the manuscript. The resubmitted manuscript will be given a new manuscript ID and submission date before undergoing peer review.

Preprint Policy

Nanophotonics does not consider the following purposes of a paper as pre-publication: publication in the form of a congress abstract, publication as an academic thesis and publication as an electronic preprint in arXiv.

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Language and Use of AI

All manuscripts must be written in clear and concise English. Please use British or American English consistently. De Gruyter provides a lightcopyedit of accepted manuscripts, but authors remain responsible for their own copyediting. If you have reasons to doubt your proficiency concerning spelling or grammar (e.g., because English is not your native language), you may wish to employ – at your own expense – the services of a professional language editor.

Artificial Intelligence and Language Editing: In line with COPE’s position on the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in published research, Nanophotonics and De Gruyter do not allow any AI tool to be listed as an author of a paper. However, authors who use AI tools to help write their paper, such as for language editing, must disclose this transparently in the Acknowledgements or Materials and Methods section, whichever is most relevant. Authors should state clearly which AI tool was used and for which specific purpose.

For more information, please see COPE’s full AI statement.

Language Editing Guidance: We recommend using a language editing service. There are several key considerations to ensure optimal results when using artificial intelligence tools for language editing in research papers. First, select a reliable and well-trained language model specializing in grammar, syntax, and style, such as ChatGPT. Second, provide clear instructions to the AI model, specifying the desired objectives, such as grammar correction, sentence structure improvements, or academic tone adjustments. Third, be mindful of the model's limitations and verify the accuracy of the suggestions it provides. While AI can be a helpful tool, it is crucial to exercise critical thinking and review any suggested changes to maintain the coherence and integrity of your research.

Abstract

The abstract should be a concise summary of your article. It should be a single paragraph and approximately 250 words (150 words for Letters). As abstracts are published separately by abstracting and indexing services, please spell out abbreviations on first use and do not include footnotes, tables, figures or equations. Please avoid using references.

Keywords

Keywords are used by abstracting and indexing services as well as search engines to facilitate finding your paper. Please supply three to six specific keywords. These can be single words or short phrases representing the content. Where possible, avoid the repetition of words already used in the article’s title.

Headings

Your manuscript should be subdivided into sections and, if necessary, subsections. These sections should be labelled with headings in a consistent format and with a clear hierarchy. Limit your subsections to a maximum of four levels. Please ensure that subdivided sections have at least two subheadings on one level. Headings should be numbered and in sentence case. Use lowercase letters after a colon. Headings do not have a full stop.

References

References must be numbered consecutively in square brackets [] as they are cited. Multiple citations should be separated by commas [1], [2].

All references should be collected at the end of the paper. List all authors when there are six or fewer; when there are seven or more, list the first one, followed by “et al.” When citing internet addresses, it is important to include the access date as well as the URL.

Please use the following IEEE style for the reference list.

Figures and Figure Captions

Graphs, line drawings, photographs, schemes and diagrams may be used to illustrate your findings. The publication quality always depends directly on the quality and size of the delivered data.

All illustrations must be of reproduction-ready quality. They will be reduced in size to fit, whenever possible, the width of a single column.

The lettering of all figures within the article should be uniform in style (preferably a sans serif typeface such as Helvetica) and of sufficient size (approximately 8pt). Lowercase letters (a), (b), (c), etc. should be used to identify multi-part figures. Cite all figures in the text in alphabetical or numerical order.

For an initial submission, authors are strongly advised to upload their entire manuscript, including tables and figures, as a single PDF file. Source files should include DOC/DOCX or TEX (in a ZIP archive) files in which the approximate placement of each figure should be indicated. Preferably, figures should be submitted in separate files; do not embed figures within the text body of the manuscript.

Figures (greyscale and colour) should have a minimum resolution of 600DPI and be of good contrast. Authors are encouraged to submit illustrations in colour if necessary for their scientific content.

Line drawings must be of reproduction-ready quality. Please note that faint shading may be lost upon reproduction. When drawing bar graphs, use patterning instead of grey scales. Lettering of all figures should be uniform in style. A resolution of 1,200DPI is recommended.

Figure legends: Provide a short descriptive title and a legend to make each figure self-explanatory. Explain all symbols used in the figures. Remember to use the same abbreviations as in the text body.

Permissions for the reuse of figures: Authors are responsible for obtaining the correct permissions to reproduce original or modified published material. They must ensure that reused figures do not infringe on any copyrights, performing rights, trademark rights, personal rights, or any other third-party rights and that their use is not otherwise unlawful. De Gruyter is a member of STM and a signatory of the STM Permissions Guidelines. Refer to these guidelines for rights guidance from publishers who are also signatories. If the publisher is not an STM Permissions Guidelines signatory, check the publisher's website for their standard terms and conditions. To reuse material published by De Gruyter, please follow the instructions on our website: De Gruyter Rights and Permissions.

Tables and Table Captions

Number tables consecutively using Arabic numerals.

Provide a short descriptive title, column heads and (if necessary) footnotes to make each table self-explanatory. In column heads, separate units with a comma and use parentheses or square brackets for additional measures (e.g., %, range, etc.). Use footnotes in alphabetical order (a, b, c, etc.) to give emphasis or further information. Expand abbreviations used in tables in footnotes. If bold type or italics are used to highlight information, please explain their meaning.

Avoid colour, shading, vertical lines and other cell borders. Note that most horizontal lines within the table body will be removed during the production process.

Refer to tables in the text as Table 1, etc. Use Table 1, etc. in the table legends. In the text, please avoid expressions such as “in Table 1 below/above”, as the exact positioning of these elements cannot be determined until after the manuscript has been typeset. Note that tables will usually be placed on the top or the bottom of the page in the final layout.

Please note that figures and tables in the published article will be left-aligned in accordance with the journal's style.

Abbreviations

The use of abbreviations and acronyms is permitted as long as they are expanded in full when used the first time with the abbreviation in parentheses (applies to abstract and main text). Please use them consistently thereafter. Avoid using non-standard abbreviations unless they appear more than three times in the text. We recommend providing a list with an overview of all abbreviations. The list of abbreviations is placed at the end of the main text before the reference list in the typeset manuscript.

Equations and Symbols

Equations should be well-aligned and not crowded. Use only Latin and Greek alphabets. Avoid complicated superscripts and subscripts by introducing new symbols. Avoid repetition of a complicated expression by representing it with a symbol. For MS Word submissions, create equations using the Microsoft equation editor or a corresponding add-on. Do not submit math equations as images but as editable text. Number displayed equations consecutively with Arabic numerals (if referred to in the text).

Units

Use SI units. For more information, please visit https://www.bipm.org/en/home.

Appendices

Use appendices for information that supports your findings but is not essential for the understanding of your paper (e.g., lengthy mathematical proofs, questionnaires, graphics, correspondence with other researchers). Cite appendices within the main text. Tables and figures in the appendix should be numbered consecutively as follows: Figure A.1, Table A.1, Figure A.2, Table A.2, etc. The appendix is placed at the end of the main text before the reference list.

Supplementary Material

Authors are encouraged to submit supplementary materials in addition to the manuscript files. The data/information will be available online on the journal’s website. Supplementary material may contain extensive tables, additional figures, questionnaires for discussed surveys, protocols, code samples, datasets and multimedia files (audio, video, animations). Material that has been published previously should not be included as supplementary files.

Please provide supplementary material data as a separate file(s) of no more than 10MB during submission. Note that the material should be publication-ready (not in track changes mode), as it will not be typeset but published exactly as supplied. Within the text, the supplementary material must be cited consecutively and be referred to as supplementary material data (e.g., see Supplementary Material, Fig. 1). Authors are strongly advised to submit supplementary materials prepared using the journal’s Word or LaTeX template.

If the software required for users to view/use the supplementary material is not embedded in the file, you are urged to use shareware or generally available/easily accessible programs.

Author Statements

Manuscripts must follow certain ethical guidelines to be considered for publication. These can be found in De Gruyter’s Publication Ethics Statement. Before submitting your manuscript, please make sure you and your co-authors agree to the applicable requirements. Furthermore, our Code of Conduct for Publication Procedures and Ethics defines the responsibility of De Gruyter as a publisher and the Editors we work with to ensure the legitimacy and quality of our published research. Our principles are based on the guidelines of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

Please ensure the following statements relating to publication ethics are included in your submission. These should appear at the end of your article, before your references. During the submission of an article, authors will also be asked to provide author statements in a separate document. Please refer to the author statements template.

• Acknowledgements (if applicable)
• Research Funding Statement (mandatory)
• Author Contribution Statement (mandatory)
• Conflict of Interest Statement (mandatory)
• Informed Consent Statement (if applicable)
• Ethical Approval Statement (following specific guidelines for any research involving humans or animals) (if applicable)

Please refer to the following guidance when preparing your statements.

Acknowledgements (if applicable): Authors may wish to acknowledge individuals, working groups or institutions that provided help and support (other than financial assistance) during research and the preparation of the manuscript (e.g., language checking, writing assistance or proofreading of the article). Do not include acknowledged individuals on the title page, as a footnote to the title or otherwise.

Research Funding Statement (mandatory): If your study benefitted from funding through an unrestricted grant or other resources provided to a university, college, other research institution or an individual author, state the name of the institute or organisation that provided the funding along with the grant number, if applicable. If no funding has been provided for the research, please use the default statement: ‘None declared.’

Author Contribution Statement (mandatory): Authorship should be limited to those who have made a significant contribution to the conception, design, execution, or interpretation of the reported study. All those who have made significant contributions should be listed as co-authors. Where there are others who have participated in certain substantive aspects of the research project, they should be named in the Acknowledgement section. The corresponding author should ensure that all appropriate coauthors (according to the above definition) and no inappropriate co-authors are included in the author list of the manuscript and that all co-authors have seen and approved the final version of the paper and have agreed to its submission for publication. Only one Corresponding Author can be indicated in the online submission system. Upon acceptance, authors can nominate up to one additional Corresponding author from the existing author list. This must be communicated to the Journal Coordinator promptly as changes cannot be made after publication.

For more details on author roles, please visit the website.

For multi-authored publications, authors should add an "Author contribution" section. This section should contain the following information:

If required by the funding bodies, the authors may add further information describing the degree of each author's contribution.

Example:

Author contribution: All authors have accepted responsibility for the entire content of this manuscript and consented to its submission to the journal, reviewed all the results and approved the final version of the manuscript. IGH and JB designed the experiments and CC carried them out. HD developed the model code and performed the simulations. AA prepared the manuscript with contributions from all co-authors.

For single-authored publications, authors should add an "Author contribution" section stating they confirm the sole responsibility for the conception of the study, presented results, and manuscript preparation.

Example:

Author contribution: The author confirms the sole responsibility for the conception of the study, presented results and manuscript preparation.

Conflict of Interest Statement (mandatory): A conflict of interest for a particular manuscript exists when a participant in the peer review and publication process – author, reviewer or editor – has ties to activities that could inappropriately influence his or her judgement, regardless of whether the judgement is actually affected. Financial relationships with industry (e.g., employment, consultancies, stock ownership, honoraria, patent applications, expert testimony, grants and other funding), either directly or through immediate family, are usually considered the most important conflicts of interest. However, conflicts can occur for other reasons, such as financial support of the study, ties to health insurance, politics or other stakeholders, personal relationships, academic competition and intellectual passion. To ensure fair and objective decision-making, authors must declare any financial, personal or professional associations that pose a conflict of interest in connection with the manuscript under evaluation. This must be declared during the submission process and at the end of the manuscript. If you do not have a statement to make, please use the default statement: ‘Authors state no conflict of interest.’Authors are encouraged to fill in the ICMJE Conflicts of Interest Form (available here) and upload the completed form during the submission process.

Informed Consent Statement (if applicable): Protection of privacy is a legal right that must not be infringed upon without individual informed consent. In cases where the identification of personal information is necessary for scientific reasons, authors should obtain full documentation of informed consent, including written permission from the patient or their legal guardians before inclusion in the study. The following (or similar) statement should appear in your informed consent statement: ‘Informed consent was obtained from all individuals included in this study.’

Ethical Approval Statement (if applicable):

Authorisation for the use of human subjects: Manuscripts that contain information on the use of humans should clearly state that the research complies with all relevant national regulations and institutional policies and has been approved by the author’s Institutional Review Board or any equivalent Committee. The Editors reserve the right to seek additional information or guidance from reviewers on any cases in which concerns arise. All investigations with human subjects must have been conducted by following the tenets of the Declaration of Helsinki. Moreover, authors must identify the Committee or Institutional Review Board approving the experiments and provide a statement indicating approval of the research. The following (or similar) statement should be included in your Ethical Approval statement: ‘The research related to human use complies with all relevant national regulations and institutional policies and in accordance with the tenets of the Helsinki Declaration, and has been approved by the authors’ Institutional Review Board or equivalent Committee.’ Detailed information should be provided (IRB name, IRB approval date and ID).

Authorisation for the use of experimental animals and wildlife in natural settings: Manuscripts that contain information on the use of animals should clearly state that the research has complied with all relevant national regulations and institutional policies and has been approved by the authors’ Institutional Review Board or any equivalent Committee. The Editors reserve the right to seek additional information or guidance from reviewers on any cases in which concerns arise. The research using animal subjects should be conducted according to the principles of laboratory animal care (e.g., NIH). For manuscripts reporting experiments on live vertebrates or higher invertebrates, authors must identify the Committee approving the experiments and must confirm that all experiments were performed in accordance with relevant regulations. The following (or similar) statement should appear in your Ethics Approval Statement: ‘The research related to animal use has complied with all the relevant national regulations and institutional policies for the care and use of animals.’ Detailed information should be provided (IRB name, IRB approval date and ID). For research involving wildlife in natural settings, authors must have obtained Institutional Animal Care approval and state that they have complied with the relevant national, international and institutional guidelines regarding the ethical treatment of the taxa of study and cite them.

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Submission Declaration and Verification

Submission of a manuscript to Nanophotonics implies that the work described has not been published previously except in the form of an abstract, academic thesis, lecture or preprint; that it is not under consideration for publication elsewhere (multiple, redundant or concurrent publication); and that publication of the work is approved by all authors and tacitly or explicitly by the responsible authorities where the work was carried out. For information on publication ethics, please refer to COPE.

To exclude potential overlap with prior publication(s), your manuscript may be checked by the originality checking tool, iThenticate. Any previously published material must be referenced appropriately in the manuscript, regardless of whether the material was previously published in a subscription-based, hybrid or open access journal.

Scientific Misconduct

Nanophotonics publishes only original manuscripts that are not already published or are going to be published elsewhere. Multiple submissions/publications, or redundant publications (re-packaging in different words of data already published by the same authors) will be rejected. If they are detected only after publication, the journal reserves the right to publish a Retraction Note. Editors will follow COPE’s Core Practices and implement the advice for each particular case.

ORCID

ORCID (Open Researcher and Contributor ID) is a non-profit, publisher-independent system that is used to uniquely identify academics and their publications. Click here for detailed information about ORCID.

Submitting authors can log in with their username and password. However, since the journal uses ScholarOne as a submission tool, authors can also log in with their ORCID details. Therefore, providing ORCID details for each author is strongly recommended. Furthermore, all authors are requested to register with institutional email addresses and refrain from using private email addresses.

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Galley Proofs

Online proofreading: The corresponding author of an article receives the galley proofs electronically to check them for editing and typesetting accuracy. Corresponding authors receive an email notification (‘Check your proof’) with a link to the online proofreading system (Proof Central) where they can access their galley proofs. The interface is similar to MS Word; authors can edit the text by entering their corrections directly, adding comments and answering questions from the copy editor. If preferred, authors can also annotate and upload edits to the PDF version.

All instructions for proof corrections, including deadlines, will be given in the email notification to the corresponding author, along with a user guide providing step-by-step instructions for inserting corrections.

Publication

Nanophotonicsendeavours to publish articles as soon after acceptance as possible. The average time from acceptance to publication is 13 days.

As soon as articles have been typeset and finalised, they are first published online as DOI citable articles in the ‘Just Accepted’ section of the journal homepage.

They are later assigned to an issue and published in the issue with page numbers.

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License to Publish Agreement

The submitting author must confirm that all authors have read and accepted the License to Publish agreement during submission.

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Article Processing Charges (APCs)

To sustain the production of our fully refereed open access journal, each article accepted for publication in Nanophotonics is subject to an article processing charge of €2,650. This fee is used to cover the costs of the peer review process, professional typesetting and copyediting, as well as online hosting, long-term preservation and extensive promotion to potential readers.

Information regarding payment of these charges will be provided following acceptance for publication. Enquiries concerning article processing charges should be addressed to the Publishing Editor (see contact details below).

Article Processing Charges are collected via RightsLink system (provided by Copyright Clearance Center). The payment can be made in EUR, USD or GBP, and may be subject to VAT when applicable.

Waiver Policy

If the submitting author is affiliated with an organisation that has an open access agreement with De Gruyter, APCs may be covered or discounted.

In addition, Nanophotonics and De Gruyter are committed to supporting researchers in emerging nations to share their research with a global audience. APCs may be waived for authors who work for institutions in developing countries (countries classified by the World Bank as low-income and lower-middle-income economies).

Moreover, all authors can apply for a discount or waiver during the submission process. Authors are asked to contact the Managing Editor before, or straight after, submitting their article.

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Publishing Editor

Drs. Ing Dennis Couwenberg

Email: dcouwenberg@nanophotonics-journal.com

WeChat ID: dcouwenb

Managing Editor

Ms. Tara Dorrian

Email: tdorrian@nanophotonics-journal.com