OOS has an international editorial board of recognized practitioners and researchers, whose intention is to maintain high standards and quality by means of a thorough and balanced review process. As timely reporting of work is increasingly important, OOS intends to establish an average turnaround time for papers of 6 months between submission and appearance in print.A number of different categories of paper are published by OOS:
* Research papers
* Experience papers
* Research perspectives (forward-looking papers)
* State-of-the-art surveys
* Responses to earlier papers
* Book reviews, especially extended ones offering technical commentary
OOS encourages contributions in the following areas of object- oriented systems: development methods; analysis and design techniques; architectures; applications; interfaces and interaction; algorithms and programming techniques; programming languages; development and/or programming environments; operating systems; theoretical issues; metrics ; object sharing and persistence; objectbases; object-oriented database management systems (OODBMS); enterprise systems; issues in the adoption of object technology.
This section offers some annotations to the paper categories presented in the `Aims and scope' section, outlines the paper categories acceptable for OOS and forms the basis for the refereeing criteria.
Research papers: These report novel theoretical and practical/experimental work undertaken by the author(s).
Experience papers: These report case studies and provide feedback to others in the field by describing the application of ideas.
Research perspectives (forward-looking papers): These papers describe views on the future of the discipline; not necessarily reporting work done. Research perspectives should be more "philosophical", perhaps introducing programmes of work to be done.
State-of-the-art surveys: There are comprehensive surveys, preferably with critique, but this is not essential, of particular areas covered by the journal.
Responses to earlier papers: These are small papers arguing some point(s) raised in a paper published previously.
Book reviews: The best book reviews are ones that give not just a summary of the book but a critical (but nontheless fair) technical summary.
Papers submitted for publication will be subject to a rigorous refereeing process by three referees per paper, to ensure that material published is of a high standard. The referees will consider technical soundness and interest to the readership.
The editorial process will be efficient as well as rigorous, setting high expectations for both contributors and from referees.
Originality: Submission of a paper to the Journal implies that it is an original paper not previously published elsewhere, and is not currently being considered for publication elsewhere. If previously published tables, illustrations or text exceeding 200 words are to be included then the copyright holder's written permission must be obtained, and included with the submission.
On acceptance of the paper for publication, authors will be asked to assign copyright to the publisher by signing a copyright form.
Submitting papers: Four paper-copies of the manuscript should be submitted to the Regional Editor covering your geographical region:
Europe, Middle East and Africa
Russel Winder
Department of Computer Science
University College London
Gower Street
London WC1E 6BT, UK
Tel: +44 171 380 7293
Fax: +44 171 387 1397
Email:
The Americas
Mark Whiting
Battelle Pacific Northwest Laboratories
PO Box 999 M/S K7-22
Richland
WA 99352, USA
Tel: +1 (509) 375 2237
Fax: +1 (509) 375 3641
Email:
Asia, Australia and Oceania
Brian Henderson-Sellers
School of Computing Sciences
University of Technology Sydney
PO Box 123
Broadway
New South Wales
Australia 2007
Tel: +61 2 330 1189
Email:
Basic format: The materials should be in good English and typed double spaced on one side of A4 or US A4 (8.5 x 11) only with large (greater than 1 inch) left and right margins. Each page should be numbered.
Title page: The title page must include the title; author's full name(s) affiliations(s), and contact details; running title (maximum 50 characters); and up to six keywords. The full address, telephone number, fax number and electronic mail address of the author responsible for correspondence (who should be clearly identified) must be indicated on the title page.
Abstract: Page 2, should contain the paper title and abstract typed double spaced. Biography: Submissions should include a brief professional biography, of approximately 100 words for each author, on a separate page from the rest of the manuscript. The biography should consist of degrees, current position, and research interests.
Tables and figures: Tables and figures should be presented on separate sheets. Tables should be numbered consecutively with Arabic numerals in order of appearance in the text and referred to in the text as Table n. Figures should be numbered consecutively with Arabic numerals and referred to in the text as Figure n. Tables should be typed double spaced on separate sheets. These will be typeset by the publisher so care must be taken to show the intended layout clearly. Authors will need to submit original camera ready copy of figures when the manuscript is accepted. Figures should therefore be good quality drawings in black ink on white paper. They should be prepared with a 50% reduction in mind. For electronic submissions, PostScript files one for each, with only that figure, should be sent to the Editor with paper copies.
References: The Harvard system should be used, i.e. in the text references should be cited by author and date; if there are more than two authors use et al. The references should be listed in author alphabetical order at the end of the paper, with all author names listed, i.e. not using et al.
The following information should be given.
For books (author(s), date, title, publisher)
Winder, R (1993) Developing C++ Software (2nd ed). Chichester: John Wiley & Sons.
For journal articles
(author(s), date, title, journal title, volume, number, page numbers):
Henderson-Sellers, B and Edwards, JM (1990) The object-oriented systems life cycle. Comms. ACM, 33 (9)142-159.
For chapters in books, conference proceedings, etc.
(author, date, title, editors, book title, publisher, page numbers):
Winder, R (1993) Is object-oriented the answer? In Gilmore, D, Winder, R D'etienne, F, User-Centred Requirements for Software Engineering Environments. Berlin: Springer-Verlag, pp. 250-268.
Citations in the text should conform with the following examples: "Winder (1993) shows ...",".... as shown by Henderson-Sellers and Edwardes (1992).","Object-oriented systmes development is different (Winder, 1993)." i.e. use (author(s), date) or authors(s) (date) as appropriate to the text, using the et al. form where there are three or more authors.
Proofs: Proofs must be corrected and returned within 3 days of receipt. Alterations which were not in the original manuscript may be charged to the Author.
Offprints: 25 offprints per paper will be provided free of charge. Extra copies may be ordered when returning proofs.