Instructions for authors revised

Abstract

The Instructions for Authors of ‘‘Accreditation and Quality Assurance’’ provide guidance when composing a manuscript and submitting it to the journal. To facilitate the publishing process and make it more transparent to our authors, these instructions have now been substantially revised and updated. This revision takes into account many questions over the years by our authors and requirements for standardization of all Springer journals. The revised version is now available on the ACQUAL homepage at http://www.springer.com/769 via a menu entitled ‘‘For authors and editors’’, to be found on the right-hand side. This also includes information for reviewers whose advice about the scientific and technical level of submitted manuscripts is clearly indispensable. Here, we would like to give a brief overview of the information that is now available for authors, editors, and reviewers. The Aims and Scope provide a description of the topical range of manuscripts suitable for the journal. The section Guidance for Authors summarizes relevant technical and legal requirements of the publishing process with links to detailed explanations. This section also states some basic obligations such as using the English language and complying with the internationally agreed conventions on definitions of concepts and terms, quantities, their symbols and units as laid down in, e.g., the VIM3 [1], the GUM [2], the SI brochure [3], and the IUPAC Green Book [4]. Some explicit rules and helpful recommendations are listed as Compulsory Conventions. Nevertheless ACQUAL’s editors will not push these formal conventions to the extreme, but strive for clarity and unambiguity in the papers submitted. If reliable measurement results are our common intercontinental goal, we should do the utmost to avoid misunderstandings and technical barriers to understanding (TBU) by following the above internationally agreed conventions.