Preparation of a Manuscript

General Considerations

Manuscripts submitted to Spectrum of Mechanical Engineering and Operational Research (SMEOR) should be written clearly, prepared in accordance with the journal template, and structured in a manner appropriate to the type of research presented.

SMEOR publishes research across mechanical engineering, operational research, mathematical modelling, optimization, simulation, decision support, computational methods, industrial applications, and related interdisciplinary areas. Accordingly, the organization of the main manuscript may be adapted to the methodological requirements of the study.

  • Research manuscripts: Research articles should normally include Front Matter, the main research sections, and Back Matter. Depending on the nature of the study, the main sections may include Introduction, Materials and Methods, Methodology, Mathematical Model, Model Development, Computational Procedure, Results, Discussion, Results and Discussion, Case Study, Validation, and Conclusions.
  • Review manuscripts: Review articles should include appropriate Front Matter, clearly organized review sections, critical synthesis of the relevant literature, conclusions, and applicable Back Matter.
  • Abbreviations: Abbreviations should be defined at first use and used consistently throughout the manuscript. Unnecessary abbreviations, particularly in the title and abstract, should be avoided.
  • SI Units: International System of Units (SI) should be used wherever applicable. Other units should be converted to SI units or accompanied by their SI equivalents where appropriate.
  • Equations: Equations must be provided in editable form. Authors preparing manuscripts in Microsoft Word should use the built-in Equation Editor or another compatible equation editor. Equations must not be submitted as images.
  • Research reproducibility: Authors should provide sufficient methodological, computational, experimental, and analytical information to allow readers to understand, evaluate, and, where reasonably possible, reproduce the reported research.

Front Matter

The following elements should normally appear in all manuscript types.

  • Title: The title should be concise, specific, informative, and representative of the principal subject and contribution of the manuscript. Abbreviations and acronyms should be avoided unless they are widely recognized within the relevant discipline.
  • Author List and Affiliations: The full first and last names of all authors must be provided. Middle names or initials may be included where appropriate. Each affiliation should contain the institution, department or organizational unit where applicable, city, postal code, and country. At least one author must be designated as the corresponding author and a valid email address must be provided.
  • Abstract: The abstract should normally not exceed 250 words and should be presented as a single paragraph without headings. It should briefly describe the research context or problem, objective, methodology, principal results, and main conclusions or implications. The abstract must accurately reflect the content of the manuscript and must not contain claims or results that are not supported by the main text.
  • Keywords: Authors should provide three to ten relevant keywords after the abstract. Keywords should accurately represent the subject, methodology, and/or application area of the research and should facilitate indexing and discovery.

Research Manuscript Sections

The structure of the main text should reflect the nature of the research. SMEOR does not require all research articles to follow an identical section structure. Experimental, computational, mathematical, optimization, simulation, methodological, and application-oriented studies may use different organizational structures where scientifically appropriate.

  • Introduction: The Introduction should establish the scientific or practical context of the study, critically identify the relevant research gap or problem, and clearly state the objectives and contribution of the work. Relevant and current literature should be discussed to position the study within the existing body of knowledge.
  • Materials and Methods / Methodology / Model Development: Methods should be described with sufficient detail to permit scientific evaluation and, where reasonably possible, replication. New methods, mathematical models, algorithms, experimental procedures, and computational approaches should be explained in sufficient detail. Established methods should be appropriately referenced. Software, computational environments, relevant versions, algorithms, parameter settings, datasets, and other information necessary to understand the procedure should be reported where applicable.
  • Results: Results should be presented clearly, logically, and objectively. Depending on the type of study, this section may contain experimental findings, computational results, numerical analyses, optimization results, simulations, comparative analyses, validation results, sensitivity analyses, or case-study findings.
  • Discussion: Authors should interpret the findings in relation to the research objectives, existing literature, assumptions, and relevant theoretical or practical considerations. The scientific, engineering, operational, managerial, or methodological implications should be discussed where appropriate. Limitations of the study should be explicitly acknowledged. Results and Discussion may be combined when this improves the clarity of presentation.
  • Conclusions: The Conclusions should summarize the principal findings and contributions without merely repeating the abstract or Results section. Relevant theoretical, methodological, engineering, operational, or practical implications may be highlighted. Limitations and meaningful directions for future research may also be included.

Back Matter

Where applicable, manuscripts should contain the following declarations and information before the reference list.

  • Supplementary Materials: Authors should identify supplementary files accompanying the manuscript and provide a brief description of each item, for example: Figure S1: title; Table S1: title; Dataset S1: description.
  • Author Contributions: Authorship must be limited to individuals who have made substantial scholarly contributions to the work and who accept responsibility for the submitted manuscript. Authors are encouraged to describe individual contributions using the CRediT (Contributor Roles Taxonomy), where appropriate. All authors must approve the submitted version of the manuscript.
  • Funding: All sources of financial support for the research must be disclosed. Authors should provide the names of funding organizations and grant numbers where applicable. Financial support specifically related to publication costs should be distinguished from funding of the research itself. If the research received no external funding, authors may state: “This research received no external funding.”
  • Acknowledgments: Individuals, institutions, or organizations that contributed to the work but do not meet the criteria for authorship may be acknowledged where appropriate. Non-financial technical, administrative, or other assistance may also be reported in this section.
  • Data Availability Statement: Authors must provide a statement describing the availability of data supporting the findings of the study. Where legally, ethically, and practically possible, underlying research data should be deposited in an appropriate repository or provided as supplementary material. If data cannot be made publicly available because of confidentiality, privacy, commercial, legal, ethical, third-party, or other legitimate restrictions, this should be clearly stated.
  • Conflicts of Interest: Authors must disclose any financial, professional, personal, institutional, or other interests that could reasonably be perceived as influencing the research or its interpretation. If no conflicts exist, authors should state: “The authors declare no conflicts of interest.”

References

References must be numbered consecutively in the order in which they first appear in the manuscript, including citations appearing in tables and figure captions. Each reference should be represented by the same number whenever it is cited subsequently.

Citations in the text should be indicated by numbers enclosed in square brackets, for example [1], [3], or [4–7]. Citation numbers should normally appear before punctuation.

Authors are responsible for ensuring that every reference cited in the text appears in the reference list and that every item in the reference list is cited in the manuscript. References should be accurate and complete. Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) should be provided whenever available.

References should primarily consist of relevant scholarly sources necessary to support the research. Citation practices must be based on scholarly relevance. Authors must not include irrelevant references for the purpose of manipulating citation indicators.

Web References

Web references should include, where available, the author or responsible organization, title, publication or update date, full URL, and date of access. Persistent identifiers should be used where available.

Data References

Authors are encouraged to cite datasets that directly support the research. Data references should normally include the author(s) or responsible organization, dataset title, repository, version where applicable, year, and a persistent identifier such as a DOI.

Reference Examples

Journal article:

[1] J. Van der Geer, J.A.J. Hanraads, R.A. Lupton, The art of writing a scientific article, Journal of Scientific Communications 163 (2010) 51–59.

Book:

[2] W. Strunk Jr., E.B. White, The Elements of Style, 4th ed., Longman, New York, 2000.

Chapter in an edited book:

[3] G.R. Mettam, L.B. Adams, How to prepare an electronic version of your article, in: B.S. Jones, R.Z. Smith (Eds.), Introduction to the Electronic Age, E-Publishing Inc., New York, 2009, pp. 281–304.

Dataset:

[4] M. Oguro, S. Imahiro, S. Saito, T. Nakashizuka, Mortality data for Japanese oak wilt disease and surrounding forest compositions, Mendeley Data, Version 1 (2015). https://doi.org/10.17632/xwj98nb39r.1.

Figures, Schemes, and Tables

  • Figures, schemes, and tables should be placed in the manuscript close to their first citation and numbered consecutively according to their order of appearance.
  • Each figure, scheme, and table must have a concise and informative caption or title sufficient to understand its purpose.
  • Figures should be of sufficient quality for publication. Raster images should normally have a resolution of at least 300 dpi at the intended publication size. Vector graphics should be submitted in an appropriate vector format where possible.
  • Common publication-quality formats such as TIFF, JPEG, PNG, EPS, and PDF may be used where appropriate. Authors may be requested to provide original or editable source files during production.
  • Tables must be created as editable tables rather than inserted as images. Column headings and symbols should be clearly defined.
  • Color figures are permitted without additional publication charges. Authors should ensure that figures remain understandable when viewed on different devices and, where possible, by readers with color-vision deficiencies.
  • AI-generated images and visual content are not permitted in manuscripts submitted to SMEOR. Generative AI tools must not be used to create, generate, fabricate, or modify figures, graphical abstracts, illustrations, diagrams, photographs, artwork, or other visual content included in the manuscript.
  • Where AI-based image processing, computer vision, image reconstruction, synthetic-data generation, or related techniques constitute an integral part of the scientific methodology itself, their use must be transparently and reproducibly described in the Methods or equivalent section. Such methodological use does not permit AI-generated decorative or illustrative content.

Research Data and Data Availability

SMEOR supports research transparency and reproducibility. Authors are encouraged to make the data underlying their published findings openly available in a recognized repository whenever this is legally, ethically, and practically possible.

Data should be accompanied by sufficient documentation and metadata to permit appropriate interpretation and reuse. Where a recognized repository provides a persistent identifier, such as a DOI, the identifier should be cited in the manuscript.

The journal recognizes that unrestricted public sharing may not always be possible. Legitimate restrictions may include confidentiality, personal or sensitive information, contractual obligations, commercial restrictions, intellectual property rights, third-party ownership, security concerns, or applicable legal and ethical requirements. Any relevant restriction should be explained in the Data Availability Statement.

Computer Code and Software

For studies in which novel computer code, algorithms, computational procedures, or software constitute an important component of the reported research, authors are strongly encouraged to make the relevant code available through a recognized public repository or as supplementary material where legally and practically possible.

Authors should provide sufficient information about the software and computational environment to allow the reported analyses to be understood and, where reasonably possible, reproduced. The name and version of relevant software, libraries, packages, solvers, or computational tools should be stated where applicable.

If source code cannot be made publicly available because of legitimate commercial, contractual, security, intellectual-property, or other restrictions, authors should clearly state the relevant restriction.

Supplementary Materials

Additional datasets, mathematical derivations, algorithms, proofs, computational results, multimedia files, experimental information, questionnaires, source code, and other supporting material may be submitted as supplementary files.

Supplementary materials should be directly relevant to the manuscript and should be sufficiently described in the main text. Supplementary files will normally be made available to reviewers as part of the peer-review process.

Authors should use common, accessible, and preferably non-proprietary file formats wherever possible.

Supplementary material may contain its own reference list where necessary. References appearing only in supplementary material do not need to be duplicated in the reference list of the main manuscript unless they are also cited in the main text.