META: Guidelines for authors

Each issue of the META magazine includes popular scientific contributions that describe research activity that is carried out on the supercomputer facilities, novel usage of these facilities, computationally and data-intensive applications, and new user communities. Also contributions about new hardware and software technologies, international projects with Norwegian participation, expert opinions, etc. are included.

The META magazine appears 3-4 times per year. Each issue has 20-24 pages. We currently distibute 1000 copies per issue.

Below, you find some general guidelines on how to write a contribution for META:

• Authors have considerable freedom in choosing structure and contents of their contribution. The contents should be interesting for a wide audience, including researchers and engineers, users of the national infrastructure, university management, funding angencies (e.g., research council), etc. The language of a scientific contribution should be understandable for a non-expert audience.
• Each scientific contribution should include a short introduction, a description of the problem and its scientific and/or socio-economic relevance, a description of the scientific methods and algorithms used (not technical, but describing the main methods), the challenges in particular with respect to computation and data management, important results, an outlook into the future and conclusions. However, the author is free to choose an alternative structure that is deemed more appropriate.
• The length of a scientific contribution is typically 2-4 pages. One page (with text only) has ca. 750 words. The main text is usually divided in several sections, each with a short heading (1-4 words).
• The language of the magazine is English.
• Mathematical formulae should be not be used.
• The text should be sent to us in a common editable format, e.g., ASCII (txt) or Word (doc, rtf).
• The author need not deal with the layout of the contribution, but preferences and suggestions are welcome.
• The author is encouraged to accompany the article with several relevant pictures or diagrams. A minimum quality (dpi) is required by the publisher. A picture should be accompanied by 1-2 sentences explanation (caption). Pictures can be provided in commonly used formats like .jpg, .png, .ps, .eps, .tif and .ai. Please do not embed the pictures in the text but send them separately. Make sure that there are no copyright problems with any of the pictures, state any source that must be referenced, or state what action needs to be taken to allow usage of the pictures.
• Each contribution is accompanied with a small (passport-like) picture and the affiliation of the author (or authors).
• There is usually space for one or more separate boxes with short supplementary information. This can e.g., be references to literature and links to other information. The number of items in such boxes should be kept small.

Every so often, a special section in META is reserved for the Speaker's Corner. Here, someone is invited to express his/her concerns, opinions, etc. about computational science, e-Science and infrastructure. The contribution to Speaker's Corner is typically two pages. The author is free to choose the theme.

Once we have received the contribution, we will edit it but keep changes to a minimum. Author(s) will be asked to approve the final version (in final layout) before it goes to print.

Previous issues of the magazine can be found at www.notur.no/publications/magazine