Acta Numerica
Frequently Asked Questions


Glennis Starling (copy-editor)
glennis.starling@gmail.com
 

19 November 2021


How long should my article be?
May I write my article with co-authors?
Will my article be refereed?
What flavour of English should I use?
What classfile should I use?
How should I generate the bibliography?
Help! I can’t get the classfile to work!
Can I use colour figures?
Can I use figures that have previously been published elsewhere?
Does Acta Numerica have style rules for mathematical notation?
When do I submit my manuscript?
What happens after I submit the manuscript?
Are you a mathematician?
After I have submitted the manuscript, will I have access to the LaTeX files?
I have queries not answered by this FAQ. Who do I contact?


How long should my article be?

We are aiming for 40 pages per article, but this is not a rigid requirement. You are the
best judge and we are happy to leave the length of the paper to your discretion. However,
please warn us if you expect the paper to be more than 55 pages.


May I write my article with co-authors?

Yes, but please notify us in advance.

Will my article be refereed?

No. However, we suggest that you ask colleagues to read your paper critically, to offer
comments and remarks. If English is not your first language, we recommend that you ask
a native English speaker to read the paper and offer comments.

What flavour of English should I use? 

Acta Numerica uses the British variety of Standard English, but also aims to be acceptable
to an international readership. We do sometimes change usages and idioms that stray too far
from British English norms, but we try not to be pointlessly prescriptive. However, we do insist
on British spellings, such as ‘centre’, ‘metre’, ‘colour’, ‘behaviour’ and ‘neighbour’. Furthermore,
we use the Oxford English Dictionary spelling system, in which words such as ‘minimize’ and
‘linearize’ use a ‘z’ but ‘analyse’ has an ‘s’. We will check for all of these during copy-editing.
Note that we need British spellings in figure text labels as well as in the main body of the text.

What classfile should I use? 

We strongly encourage you to use the Acta Numerica classfile, acta_2022.cls, ideally from an early
stage. Note that Acta Numerica has a narrower textwidth than some popular mathematical
classfiles: if your mathematical formulas need to be broken over the line, it’s best if you decide
where the breaks should fall.

How should I generate the bibliography?

Please use the style packages natbib.sty (with options [longnamesfirst] and \setcitestyle{comma,aysep={}})
and har2nat.sty. If you are using a .bib file for your references, you can use our style file
acta-natbib-agsm.bst to compile the bibliography text.

Help! I can’t get the classfile to work!

If you have any problems, email me at glennis.starling@gmail.com. I’ll do my best to help.

Can I use colour figures?

Yes. All recent volumes of Acta Numerica have been printed in colour.

Can I use figures that have previously been published elsewhere?

Yes. However, it is your responsibility to contact the original publisher and obtain permission
before submitting your manuscript to us. Please advise us if we need to use particular wording
in the caption.

Does Acta Numerica have style rules for mathematical notation?

Yes. Here’s a list:

* lower-case (italic) letters for integers
* lower-case Roman and Greek for scalars (and scalar functions)
* boldface for vectors
* upper-case Roman and Greek for matrices and operators
* calligraphic font for sets
* roman d in integrals
* roman i for the square root of –1
* roman e for 2.718281828459 …
* open-face symbols ($\mathbb R$, $\mathbb Z$, etc.) for reals, integers,
   complex numbers and rationals, respectively.

When do I submit my manuscript?

The official deadline is 1 September in the year preceding publication. However, since incoming
papers are processed in sequence rather than in parallel, we can be flexible. If you plan to deliver
later than 1 September, please let us know a likely target date. Unfortunately, if you deliver
later than December, we may be forced to defer publication until the subsequent volume of
Acta Numerica.

What happens after I submit the manuscript?

(1) I will copy-edit the paper and amend the LaTeX file. I will then prepare a pdf proof, with
substantial changes indicated in red text and a list of queries and comments at the end. I will
make it available via Google Drive.

(2) Once you have checked the pdf proof and conferred with any co-authors, please annotate the
pdf with your comments and email it to me at glennis.starling@gmail.com. Alternatively, you
may send me a list of comments via email. Ideally, I would like to receive your comments within
two weeks.

(3) I will implement any new changes, and make further cosmetic improvements, for instance
to pagebreaks and figure positioning. I will then make a second pdf proof available for you to
check. To meet the print deadline, we aim that all papers should reach second proof stage by
the beginning of March.

(4) Please email any comments to me within one week. The book will go to press in March
and be printed by June.

Are you a mathematician?

No. However, a mathematician advises me on the copy-editing.

After I have submitted the manuscript, will I have access to the
LaTeX files to make amendments?

No. Once you have submitted the manuscript, control over the LaTeX files passes to me.
If you make substantial changes to the text, you will need to give full instructions to me so
that I can implement them in my copy. In this case, you are very welcome to email me the
latest version of your LaTeX, so that I can copy and paste chunks of it. However, I will need
full instructions – a ‘guided tour’ – marked on a pdf. Naturally, we hope that substantial
changes won’t be necessary. In an ideal world, your submitted manuscript should be as
near to perfect as is possible to achieve!

I have queries not answered by this FAQ. Who do I contact?

If you have further queries about technical issues or about the production process, please feel
free to contact me, at glennis.starling@gmail.com. If you have queries concerning the content
of your paper, please contact Arieh, at A.Iserles@damtp.cam.ac.uk.