Submission Rules

Submission Rules

• Manuscript Submission
  Submission of a manuscript implies: that the work described has not been published before; that it is not under consideration for publication anywhere else; that its publication has been approved by all co-authors, if any, as well as by the responsible authorities – tacitly or explicitly – at the institute where the work has been carried out. The publisher will not be held legally responsible should there be any claims for compensation.

• Permissions
  Authors wishing to include figures, tables, or text passages that have already been published elsewhere are required to obtain permission from the copyright owner(s) for both the print and online format and to include evidence that such permission has been granted when submitting their papers. Any material received without such evidence will be assumed to originate from the authors.

• Online Submission
  Authors should submit their manuscripts online. Electronic submission substantially reduces the editorial processing and reviewing times and shortens overall publication times. Please go to the Submission Site and upload all of your manuscript files following the instructions given on the screen.

• Author Names and Affiliations
  The review process for the VLDB Journal is single-blind. All submitted manuscripts must contain the name, affiliation, and contact details for each author.

• Overlapping Publications
  If a submission overlaps significantly with one or more refereed or copyrighted publications by the authors then the authors must disclose this to the handling editor-in-chief at the time of submission. Their submission must cite those publications and explain their relationship to the submission. Similarly, the authors must immediately notify an editor-in-chief if they submit an overlapping paper for publication in a refereed or copyrighted outlet while their VLDB Journal submission is being considered.
  
  Technical reports (including technical reports posted on CoRR), theses, and publications with limited distribution need not be disclosed unless this is deemed appropriate by the authors. If in doubt, authors should err on too much disclosure, not too little. Feel free to ask an editor-in-chief for advice.
  
  A submission that substantially overlaps the authors' previous refereed or copyrighted publications, such as an extended version of a conference paper, must contain at least 30% significant new content. Such a submission must be accompanied by a separate detailed explanation to the reviewers and the handling editor-in-chief of this additional content. Deciding whether the additions are significant enough to warrant publication is inevitably a judgement call of the reviewers and editor.
  
  The Editors-in-Chief of the VLDB Journal and the Proceedings of the VLDB Endowment (PVLDB) agree that extended versions of papers published in PVLDB may be considered for publication in the VLDB Journal. Thus, the above paragraph about extended versions of conference papers applies to papers previously published in PVLDB.
  
  If a submission is based on one or more papers previously submitted (but rejected) elsewhere, we encourage the authors to carefully handle any review comments received on the earlier versions of their papers before submission to the journal. This indicates a commitment to achieving the best possible results and shows respect for the reviewing system. If it is discovered that earlier comments are not handled, this is likely to adversely affect the evaluation of a paper and may be a reason for rejection.

• Submission Format and Length Restriction
  All submissions to the journal must use the journal’s two-column LaTeX template.
  
  Initial submissions can be submitted as pdf documents. However, final submissions must include all source files (which the submission site then compiles into a pdf file).
  
  Submissions, initial as well as final, cannot exceed 25 pages when formatted according to the two-column LaTeX template. No space-saving tricks are permitted, and all content, e.g., figures, should use font sizes that are similar to that of the running text. Figures, tables, and other displayed matter must be clearly readable.
  
  Should a submission be found not to comply with the above, it will be returned to the authors. This will delay the publication procedure.

• Declaration of Conflicts of Interest
  Authors must identify any editor-in-chief or editorial board member of the VLDB Journal with whom they have a conflict-of-interest along with the nature of the conflict. This can be entered in the Submit Comments step during the submission process. Conflicts-of-interest include a family relationship, business relationship, employment by the same enterprise, co-authorship of a paper within the past two years, advisor-advisee relationship (present or past), or other close relationship that an informed third party would consider an impediment to objective evaluation of the submission.

• Text Formatting
  Manuscripts should be prepared using LaTeX. Please use Springer’s LaTeX macro package and choose the formatting option "twocolumn".
  
  Submission of all source files for manuscripts is preferred, and this is required for accepted manuscripts. The Editorial Manager system compiles the source files into a PDF version. However, initial submissions can be submitted in PDF format.
  
  

  LaTeX macro package

• Headings
  Please use no more than three levels.

• Abbreviations
  Abbreviations should be defined at first mention and used consistently thereafter.

• Footnotes
  Footnotes can be used to give additional information, which may include the citation of a reference included in the reference list. They should not consist solely of a reference citation, and they should never include the bibliographic details of a reference. They should also not contain any figures or tables.
  
  Footnotes to the text are numbered consecutively; those to tables should be indicated by superscript lower-case letters (or asterisks for significance values and other statistical data). Footnotes to the title or the authors of the article are not given reference symbols.
  
  Always use footnotes instead of endnotes.

• Acknowledgments
  Acknowledgments of people, grants, funds, etc. should be placed in a separate section before the reference list. The names of funding organizations should be written in full.