General ⇒ elsarticle | Submission to NIM A

[tafi]

I've just finished my first LaTeX paper for submission to Nuclear Instruments and Methods A. The only other submission I have made has been done with MS word.

Now NIM A asks for tiff images and I dutifully produced all my graphs and diagrams as such. But obviously PDFlatex will not accept tiffs, so for editing/proof reading I've converted all the tiffs to png to get the image sizing right and check how they will turn out in two column format.

But at submission time, Elsevier claim to be able to produce a reviewers' proof directly from the submitted source file (some flavour of latex) and the submitted images (tiff).

How does Elsevier handle this process with images submitted in a (PDF)latex unfriendly format?

I have to say that I've found their submission documentation to be a bit sketchy and sometimes contradictory. The Elsevier artwork information document implies that almost any image format is acceptable provided the resolution is okay (whilst also stating that image formats should be chosen according to application). However some Elsevier journals (like NIM A) indicate that you could be shot for submitting anything other than tiffs.

I haven't come across any definitive guide (from a user's perspective) to the elsarticle submission process, so what are your experiences?

[localghost]

Perhaps they use tif2eps. You get more ideas and instructions from the TUGboat talk about »Strategies for including graphics in LaTeX documents« [1]. Of course it would be more reasonable to ask the people at Elsevier directly.

[1] TUGboat 26:1, 2005 - TeX Users Group


THorsten

[tafi]

Perhaps they use tif2eps.

Perhaps, but then why not just ask for eps in the first place? All my graphs and daigrams can easily be exported in this format.

... You get more ideas and instructions from the TUGboat talk about »Strategies for including graphics in LaTeX documents« ...

Thanks but this document does not answer my questions. I know how to include and convert images already. What I really want to know are the strategies of those who have submitted latex articles to Elsevier and how the process works. There must be some people who have.

... Of course it would be more reasonable to ask the people at Elsevier directly....

I agree that it SHOULD be, but I already have and got nothing but rather vague statements refering to the equally vague documentation. The response I got couldn't even definitievely tell me if they could deal with UTF-8 encoding.

With 2536 journals published by Elsevier, I guess it is reasonable to expect that the right hand would not know what the left hand is doing.

[tafi]

The reason for this thread was that I had a sneaking suspicion that something would go wrong with the submission and it did, despite the fact that the tex document has already compiled correctly on both my work and home computers several times.

On submitting my article and figures (which, according to the submission guidelines should be in tiff format). Rather than produce a PDF the Elsevier Elditorial System produces a PDF file containing the latex log file of a failed compilation, with the tiff images appended at the end. I think I know some of the reasons for the failed compilation. From the log file it is clear that:

1) The EES system (at least for Nuclear Instruments and Methods A) claims to use PDFlatex (from the early part of the log file) but says it cannot find eps figures.
2) The tex system they seem to use is TeXLive2009, with packages at least two years older than what can be obtained (for free) now.
3) The format of images they ask for (tiff) is NOT compatible with their own editorial system; they have no smart image converter.
4) Becasue of the age of the system, they only have version 1.3a of siunitx which is incompatible with currently available user options (current version is 2.3a).

Given that I got these errors after following (as best I could) the (very poor) latex submission instructions, it seems surprising to me that no-one else has been prepared to share their experiences with journal submission. Surely I am not the only one to run into issues like this....

[nicolas5]

I'm in the same situation. Any news about this TIFF issue? Now tired of trying. I think the only solution is using EPS for all figures =(

[tafi]

I finally, after much trial and error, found what is needed. here is what I did:

1) Used EPS figures. After all the bluster about the need for TIFFs (and the claim that the system uses PDFlatex), EES can only compile latex with EPS anyway. Thankfully this was easy as my data analysis software can output almost any format, and my diagrams converted easily with imagemagick.

2) All commands for the siunitx package had to be changed to suit the older version (list commands did not work). This is not so easy because documentation for old versions is not easy to find (package option commands have changed a lot since v1.3a)

I suspect that point (2) will be a problem for lots of packages.

Why is EES so out of step with current latex versions?

[tafi]

I'm in the same situation. Any news about this TIFF issue? Now tired of trying. I think the only solution is using EPS for all figures =(

Were you also submitting to NIM or another Elsevier journal. I'm keen to know if these issues are isolated to NIM or are widespread.

[wallyvonwalters]

I had this same problem for a while but ending up fixing it by converting all the images to pdf and using \includegraphics{Figure.pdf} for all my images. I still included the TIFF files as well separately as they request them from you.

The American Society of Civil Engineers has a link about these problems as well that may be useful;
http://www.asce.org/Content.aspx?id=12884907073

Hope this helps any future people with this problem.