Submission Information

Objectives and Scope

The International Journal of Steel Structures aims to provide an international forum for a broad classification of technical papers in steel structural research and its applications. The journal was launched in 2001, the abbreviated title is Int J Steel Strut. The journal aims to reach not only researchers, but also practicing engineers who will most likely benefit from the published research results. Contributions on research findings that are suitable for practical applications are especially welcome. The scope of the International Journal of Steel Structures encompasses, but is not limited to, the following areas: stability, fatigue, non-linear behavior, dynamics, reliability, fire, design codes, computer-aided analysis and design, optimization, expert systems, connections, fabrications, maintenance, bridges, off-shore structures, jetties, stadiums, transmission towers, marine vessels, storage tanks, pressure vessels, aerospace, and pipelines. The Editorial Boards of the International Journal of Steel Structures (IJOSS) include Chief Editor (two-year term), three Regional Chief Editors (three-year-term), and International Editorial Board Members (two-year term). Guest Editors may be invited to organize IJOSS Special Issues with full authority. The journal aims to contribute to solve or mitigate global and local problems by collecting new ideas and developments from around the world.

Instruction to Authors
Refereeing procedure: The Chief Editors may assign the manuscript to an appropriate International Editorial Board Members. When the manuscript is deemed qualified for the refereeing process, the Chief Editor identifies three competent referees who are acknowledged experts in the given subject for the peer review process. The referees names will remain anonymous to the authors of the manuscript. The Chief Editor informs authors with respect to the outcomes of the review. Only those receiving favorable recommendations from the referees will be accepted for publication. Submission of manuscripts: Authors are asked to submit their manuscripts to www.springer.com/journal/13296. Editors-in-Chief: Prof. Dong-Ho Choi Hanyang University, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering 17 Haengdang-dong, Seongdong-gu, Seoul, 133-791, Korea Tel: +82-2-400-7101, Fax: +82-2-400-7104, E-mail: samga@hanyang.ac.kr Prof. Leroy Gardner Imperial College London, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering South Kensington Campus, London, SW7 2AZ, UK Tel: +44-20-7594-6058, E-mail: leroy.gardner@imperial.ac.uk Prof. Guo-Qiang Li Tongji University, Department of Building Engineering 1239 Siping Rd., Shanghi, 200092, China Tel: +86-21-6598-2975, E-mail: gqli@tongji.edu.cn Prof. Charles Roeder University of Washington, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering 201 More Hall, Box 352700, Seattle, WA 98195-2700, USA Tel: +1-206-543-6199, E-mail: croeder@u.washington.edu Manuscript: To ensure both accuracy and relevance, three referees must read and review all contributions. Revisions to the manuscripts may thus be required. All manuscripts submitted to the journal should be accompanied by a list of five potential reviewers suggested by the author(s). This list should include the complete name, address, telephone and fax numbers, E-mail address, and at least five key words that identify the expertise of each reviewer. The corresponding author should be identified by e-mail address. Full postal addresses must be given for all co-authors. Manuscripts should be written in clear and concise English, and typed double-spaced with wide margins on one side of A4 (210 297 mm) or letter-sized paper with a font size of 12 or 10 pt (preferably in no more than 20 manuscript pages, including tables and illustrations). Each sheet of paper must be numbered. All measurements and data should be

expressed in SI units, or in an internationally accepted unit if SI units are not applicable. Manuscripts should be arranged in the following order: 1) title, authors name, affiliation, full postal addresses, telephone, fax, and e-mail address; 2) an abstract of about 100-150 words in a single paragraph, purpose, scope, and conclusions of the paper; 3) about five (5) key words for indexing purposes; 4) text with tables and figures, divided under suitable headings and subheadings; 5) acknowledgment (if any); 6) appendix; and, 7) references. The Chief Editor reserves the right to adjust the authors style according to certain standards of uniformity. References should be cited by the last name(s) of the author(s) and the year of publication (e.g., Galambos and Ketter, 1959). They should be listed at the last part of the manuscript, arranged in alphabetical order by the last name of the first author. References should be listed by following the format of the examples below: Journal: Book: Proceedings: Galambos, J. M. and Ketter, R. L. (1959). Columns under combined bending and thrust. Journal of Engineering Mechanics Division, ASCE, 85(2), pp. 1-30. Chen, W. F. and Atsuta, T. (1976). Theory of Beam-columns. Vol. 1, McGraw-Hill Book Co., Inc., New York, N.Y., USA. Kim, Y. J. (1998). Seismic resistance characteristics of beam-column connections. Proc. 5th Pacific Structural Steel Conf., Vol. 1, Korean Society of Steel Construction, Korea, pp. 919-924.

Tables should be numbered consecutively, and each must be given a short caption. They should be referred to in the text as Table 1, etc. All figures, including photographs, charts, and diagrams, should be provided in cameraready form, and must be suitable for reproduction without modification. They should be numbered and referred to in the text as Fig. 1, etc. The smallest allowable size for the figures is 6 pt after reduction. Footnotes to tables or figures should be typed below them, using superscript lowercase letters. Equations should be numbered consecutively in parentheses on the right-hand side of the page. They should be referred to in the text as Eq. (1), etc. Special symbols should be identified at the margins, and the meanings of all the symbols should be explained in the section of the text where they first appear. Submission after Acceptance for Publication: Manuscripts that need revision prior to final acceptance shall be returned together with the referees reports. The revised version must be submitted as soon as possible; revised manuscripts returned after four months will be considered as new submissions subjected to full reassessment. After the final acceptance of the manuscript, MS Word file should be submitted. Proofs: Proofs will be sent to the author (first named author, if no other corresponding author is identified in multiauthored papers) and should be returned within 48 hours of receipt. Corrections should be restricted to typesetting errors. Any queries should be answered in full. Please note that authors are urged to check their proofs carefully before returning the manuscript since the inclusion of late corrections cannot be guaranteed. Proofs should be returned via E-mail (ijoss@mail.kssc.or.kr). Off-prints: Twenty-five (25) off-prints and one copy of the journal will be supplied free of charge. Off-prints and copies of the issue can be ordered at a specially reduced rate by using the order form sent to the corresponding author after the manuscript has been accepted. Subscription information: The International Journal of Steel Structures is published four times a year: March 31, June 30, September 30, and December 31, respectively. Subscriptions to the journal are available at www.springer.com/ journal/13296. Copyright: All authors must sign the Transfer of Copyright agreement before the paper can be published.

Ethical Standards for Publications of IJOSS

Instruction to Authors Preface
The International Journal of Steel Structures (IJOSS) serves the steel structural engineering community and society at large in several ways, including the publication of technical journals that present the results of current engineering and scientific research and practice. Fundamental to that service is the responsibility of editors, authors, and reviewers to maintain high ethical standards relating to the submittal, review, and publication of manuscripts. These ethical standards derive from the IJOSSs definition of the scope of the journal and from the communitys perception of standards of quality for engineering and scientific work, and its presentation. The ethical standards that follow reflect a conviction that the observance of high ethical standards is so vital to the entire engineering and scientific enterprise that a definition of those standards should be brought to the attention of all concerned.

Instruction Ethical Standards to Authors

Obligations of Editors 1. The primary responsibility of an IJOSS editor is to ensure an efficient and fair review process of manuscripts submitted for publication, and to establish and maintain high standards of technical and professional quality. Criteria of quality are originality of approach, concept and/or application; profundity; and relevance to the steel structural engineering profession. 2. An editor shall give unbiased consideration to all manuscripts offered for publication and shall judge each on its merits without regard to any personal relationship or familiarity with the author(s), or to the race, gender, sexual orientation, religious belief, ethnic origin, citizenship, professional association, or political philosophy of the author(s). 3. The editor and editorial staff shall disclose no information about a manuscript under consideration to anyone other than those from whom professional advice regarding the publication of the manuscript is sought. The names of reviewers shall not be released by the editors or editorial staff. 4. An editor who authors or co-authors a manuscript submitted for consideration to the journal with which that editor is affiliated, shall not review that work. If after publication, the editor-authors work merits ongoing scientific debate within the journal, the editor-author shall accept no editorial responsibility in connection therewith. 5. An editor shall avoid conflicts of interest and/or the appearance thereof. An editor shall not send a manuscript to reviewers who are known to have personal bias in favor of or against the author(s) or the subject matter of that manuscript. 6. Unpublished information, arguments, or interpretations contained in a submitted manuscript are confidential and shall not be used in the research of an editor or associate editor, or otherwise disseminated except with the consent of the author (s) and with appropriate attribution. 7. If an editor is presented with convincing evidence that the substance, conclusions, references or other material included in a manuscript published in? IJOSS are erroneous, the editor, after notifying the author(s) and allowing them to respond in writing, shall facilitate immediate publication of an erratum. If possible, an editor shall also facilitate publication of appropriate comments and/or papers identifying those errors. 8. If an editor is presented with convincing evidence that a manuscript or published paper contains plagiarized material or falsified research data, the editor shall forward such evidence to the Manager for investigation by the IJOSS Professional Conduct Committee. Obligations of Authors 1. An authors central obligation is to present a concise account of the research, work, or project completed, together with an objective discussion of its significance. 2. A submitted manuscript shall contain detail and reference to public sources of information sufficient to permit the authors peers to repeat the work or otherwise verify its accuracy. 3. An author shall cite and give appropriate attribution to those publications influential in determining the nature of the reported work sufficient to guide the reader quickly to earlier work essential to an understanding of the present work. Information obtained by an author privately, from conversation, correspondence, or discussion with third parties shall not be used or reported in the authors work without explicit permission from the persons from whom

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the information was obtained. Information obtained in the course of confidential services, such as refereeing manuscripts or grant applications, shall be treated in the same confidential manner. The submitted manuscript shall not contain plagiarized material or falsified research data. IJOSS defines plagiarism as the use of the ideas or words of another person without giving appropriate credit to that source. The Society views any similar misappropriation of intellectual property, which may include data or interpretation, as plagiarism. Fragmentation of research papers shall be avoided. An engineer or scientist who has done extensive work on a system or group of related systems shall organize publication so that each paper gives a complete account of a particular aspect of the general study. It is inappropriate for an author to submit for review more than one paper describing essentially the same research or project to more than one journal of primary publication. Scholarly criticism of a published paper may sometimes be justified; however, personal criticism is never appropriate. To protect the integrity of authorship, only persons who have significantly contributed to the research or project and manuscript preparation shall be listed as co-authors. The corresponding author attests to the fact that any others named as co-authors have seen the final version of the manuscript and have agreed to its submission for publication. Deceased persons who meet the criterion for co-authorship shall be included, with a footnote reporting date of death. No fictitious name shall be given as an author or co-author. An author who submits a manuscript for publication accepts responsibility for having properly included all, and only, qualified co-authors. It is inappropriate to submit manuscripts with an obvious commercial intent. It is inappropriate for an author either to write or co-author a discussion of his or her own manuscript, except in the case of a rebuttal or closure to criticism or discussion offered by others.

Obligations of Reviewers 1. Because qualified manuscript review is essential to the publication process, all engineers and scientists have an obligation to do their fair share of reviews. 2. If a reviewer feels inadequately qualified or lacks the time to fairly judge the work reported, the reviewer should immediately notify the editor and promptly return the manuscript. 3. A reviewer shall objectively judge the quality of a manuscript on its own merit and shall respect the intellectual independence of the author(s). Personal criticism is never appropriate. 4. A reviewer shall avoid conflicts of interest and/or the appearance thereof. If a manuscript submitted for review presents a potential conflict of interest or the reviewer has a personal bias, the reviewer shall return the manuscript promptly without review and so advise the editor. 5. Unpublished information, arguments, or interpretations contained in a submitted manuscript are confidential and shall not be used in the research of a reviewer or otherwise disseminated except with the consent of the author and with appropriate attribution. 6. If a reviewer receives for review a manuscript authored or co-authored by a person with whom the reviewer has a personal or professional relationship, the existence of this relationship shall be promptly brought the attention of the editor. 7. A reviewer shall treat a manuscript received for review as a confidential document and shall neither disclose nor discuss it with others except, as necessary, with persons from whom specific advice may be sought; in that event, the identities of those consulted shall be disclosed to the editor. 8. Reviewers shall explain and support judgments adequately so that the editor and author(s) may understand the bases for their comments. Any statement that an observation, derivation, or argument has been previously reported shall be accompanied by the relevant citation. 9. A reviewer shall call to the editors attention any substantial similarity between the manuscript under consideration and any published manuscript or any manuscript submitted concurrently to another journal. 10. A reviewer shall not use or disclose unpublished information, arguments, or interpretations contained in a manuscript under consideration, except with the consent of the author(s) and with appropriate attribution. 11. If a reviewer has convincing evidence that a manuscript contains plagiarized material or falsified research data, the reviewer shall notify the editor and send the evidence to the Manager for investigation by the IJOSS Professional Conduct Committee. Acknowledgments These standards are based on those developed by the American Society of Civil Engineers and are used with their permission.

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