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Author Guidelines

All submissions to the DFI Journal should be prepared in agreement with the Author Guidelines. Guidelines can be downloaded as PDF or Microsoft Word Template.

The following types of papers are included in DFI Journals. Other paper types, as well as proposed special issues, should be discussed with the Journal editors and are most welcome in addition to the common paper types outlined below.

Paper Types

Research Papers

Research papers should be around 5,000 (max 7,500) words in length plus Figures and Tables. Exceptions may be requested from the Editors.

Technical Notes

The manuscript text of technical notes should not exceed 2,000 words and four figures and / or tables. This word count excludes the abstract, keywords, acknowledgements, and references.

State-of-the-Art Reviews

The typical length of a review paper is 5,000 words plus figures and tables.

Case Studies

Case studies should not exceed 7,500 words plus figures and tables.

Discussions

Discussions may be submitted within two years of a publication. A discussion should not be more than 3000 words plus four figures and / or tables. Exceptions may be requested from the Editors.

Forum Papers

Forum papers follow the general guidance of Technical Notes (2000 words and up to 4 figures and tables); however, exceptions will be granted by the Editors. 

Book Reviews

A book review should contain between 1000-2000 words, and may include up to three figures or tables (if needed).

Any manuscript considered for publication in the DFI Journal is subject to the DFI Journal’s Publication Ethics. Publications Ethics are explained in detail here.

Language

DFI recommends that all non-native English-speaking authors ask a native English speaker or professional language-editing service to review their manuscript before submission. This is not mandatory but will help ensure that journal editors and reviewers fully understand the academic content of the article. The only accepted language for any manuscript submitted to the DFI Journal is English.

Data Availability and Data Reproducibility

The DFI Journal strongly supports the availability and reproducibility of work published in its journal and encourages all authors to make data available upon request. Data sharing instills transparency and trust in previously conducted work, and enables a more efficient reuse of data, including the creating of new research that builds on previous results. Overall, it generates a transparent approach to science.

Since data are not published through journal manuscripts, most data is either with the authors or submitted to publicly accessible servers. As such, the DFI Journal encourages authors to include a statement explaining the storage and accessibility of research data pertaining to their manuscript and provide necessary link to publicly available data (e.g., data stored as part of funding requirements in nationally established servers (e.g., NHERI Design Safe); and/or explain the availability of independently obtained data through experimental and numerical research.

The data availability can be described in the article’s summary and conclusion section, or added as independent section in the manuscript, placed before the “acknowledgements”.

A list of examples can be found in the manuscript template.

Publication Ethics

Plagiarism is the copying or use of other authors’ work without proper acknowledgement or attribution. It is unethical and unacceptable in the context of scientific publication, infringes authors’ moral rights and may also be illegal where copyright is infringed.
Authors must ensure that all prior work on which they draw is explicitly acknowledged and that the sources are included in the list of references. This requirement relates to the methods, results and conclusions on which the present work is built, and to the text of the articles in which it has been presented. If passages of text are copied word for word, the source must be given, and the text must be placed within quotation marks. If the original text is paraphrased or reproduced with minor alterations, this must be made clear and the source given. It is unacceptable to reproduce extensive passages of text without permission from the author(s) and the copyright holder.

A related unacceptable practice is ‘redundant-publication’, the multiple publication or submission by an author of the same research or the reuse of substantial portions of articles without acknowledgement of prior publication. This includes publication of an article in different languages, or at different venues (e.g. conference/journal/magazine)
Redundant publication of the same material and plagiarism of others’ work without acknowledgement are serious ethical offences that may leave the author open to sanction.

DFI is an active subscriber to Similarity Check to prevent scholarly and professional plagiarism by providing immediate feedback regarding a manuscript’s similarity to other published academic and general web content (see https://www.crossref.org/services/similarity-check/). Every manuscript submitted to DFI will be subject to a plagiarism check.
It is the responsibility of senior authors and the institutions in which they work to ensure that articles appearing under their names conform to these guidelines. It is a condition of submission to the journal that all authors of any article found, following due process, to breach good practice accept responsibility for this breach, which will be subject to sanction at the Publisher’s and Editors’ absolute discretion. These sanctions may include, inter alia, the retraction of a published article; publication of a note of correction or apology; banning of future submissions by any author for a specified period; and/or notification of the Head of the authors’ department or organization.

Permissions

Authors who wish to reproduce sections of text, data or figures from previously published sources or where copyright is owned by a third party must obtain written permission from the copyright holder and any other interested party and credit the source(s) in the article.

Note that many publishers now deal with copyright permissions requests online via Rightslink (a permissions link is usually provided from the abstract page of the article in question).

Copyright

All submissions must be original work of the authors. If the current paper is an expansion of an ongoing publication series, or if the journal article is an extension of a conference paper, we expect all authors to cite the original publication and ensure that the content presented in the Journal exceeds the content presented in the conference paper (or any other previous or concurrent publication) by at least 50%. To reiterate, at least 50% of all figures must be different, and in addition at least 50% of all text, findings and results must be new and unpublished. Please refrain from copy-pasting original from other manuscripts into your current submission. All previously published content is copyright protected with the respective previous publisher. Similarly, once published in the DFI Journal, the copyright of the submitted material is transferred to DFI. All authors must sign the copyright agreement form through the Editorial Manager or click here to download the Copyright Transfer Agreement.  Email signed Copyright Agreement Form to: journal@dfi.org. Authors are also required to disclose whether the manuscript submitted to the DFI Journal has been concurrently submitted elsewhere.