To insure high quality BESIII papers, analyses must undergo a careful review process. Authors should understand that the process is designed to improve upon the analysis and to produce a result that is worthy of publication in an international physics journal.

The Steps to Publication:

Following is a brief description of the necessary steps. For more detail, see the BESIII Publication Policy. Note: at each step, authors should answer all questions raised using HyperNews and update the body of the memo to incorporate clarifications, suggested improvements, and any changes to the analysis.

1. Present the results of your analysis at a Physics Working Group (PWG) meeting. Use the comments received to improve the analysis.
2.  Prepare a detailed analysis memo and upload it to the BESIII DocDB. (See Memo Preparation.)
3. When PWG conveners are satisfied with the memo, present the results at a Physics and Software meeting (PS meeting).  Equivalently, the results could instead be presented in a memo-approval session at either a Physics and Software Workshop or at a BESIII collaboration meeting.
4. After the comments from the PS meeting (or memo-approval session) are properly addressed, the Physics Coordinators will appoint a Referee Committee (RC).
5. The RC will review the analysis and raise more questions. Authors should respond promptly.
6. When the RC is satisfied with the analysis and memo, prepare a paper draft. (See Paper Draft.) Remember to always keep the results in the memo consistent with the results in the paper! 
7. Once the RC is satisfied with the analysis and paper draft, the Physics Coordinators will check them. After all issues are resolved, the authors should update the draft with the latest author list and acknowledgements from the database, and put the latest memo, draft and authorlist xml file into the same docdb page.  Then the Physics Coordinator will call for Collaboration Wide Review (CWR) of the paper, and the PubComm will appoint two editors for the paper. (See PubComm procedure.)
8. After CWR, the Physics Coordinators will ask the Publication Committee and the Spokespersons to perform a final review and to make final edits to the language. This process may raise additional questions.
9. After the approval of the Publication Committee and the Spokespersons, the paper draft may be submitted to the journal and to the arXiv. Additional details:
   • Whenever information about the corresponding author is required within a publication, remember to use "The BESIII Collaboration" and the common BESIII email address (besiii-publications@ihep.ac.cn). In addition, for submissions to APS journals (PRD and PRL), please request that  the ORCiD identifier be removed.
   • Handling latex source files: Make sure to delete comment lines from your latex source files; Do not upload figures which are not actually included in the final document； Change any \today in the date field to have an explicit date and remember to update it during later resubmission; 
   • Special note for arXiv submission: make sure to submit the authorlist xml file to arXiv, it is used by Inspire to keep track of everybody's publication count. Choose "Creative Commons Attribution license (CC BY 4.0)". Always list the paper as "High Energy Physics - Experiment". Do not cross list paper to other categories unless this has been approved by RC.
10. When journal referee comments are received, they should be posted on HyperNews. Authors will prepare a reply and update the paper if necessary. The reply should be posted in HyperNews, and the modified draft should be posted in the DocDB. Before resubmission, the draft and replies should be approved by at least two-thirds of the RC and the Physics Coordinators.
11. If and when the paper is accepted by the journal, authors should submit the accepted version of the paper to the arXiv.
12. If requested, authors should supply figures to the Physics Coordinator to place on the BESIII publication page.
13. If appropriate, and discussed and approved within the RC, data should be submitted to HEPData:
    • The primary author should send email to the BESIII HEPData Coordinator (mailto:dongly@ihep.ac.cn) with the Inspire (http://inspirehep.net) record number of the corresponding publication.
    • The Coordinator will initiate a new HEPData submission and assign an Uploader and Reviewer.The Uploader is the primary author of the particular physics analysis.  The Reviewer is the referee chair. The Coordinator can also choose to act as the Reviewer.
    • Once the Uploader finishes uploading the data submission and the Reviewer marks each table as "Passed", the Coordinator will finalize the submission and make the record public.

Preliminary Results:

• To release preliminary results for conferences, ask for approval from the RC.
• Physics Coordinator and Spokespersons must give their approval before preliminary results can be presented.
• Only one preliminary result should be presented publicly, except in special circumstances when the Physics Coordinator has determined that updating the result is in the best interest of the collaboration.
• Conference talks should be posted for comments at least one week before the talk is to be presented. A practice talk should be given.
• To facilitate clear and consistent conference presentations of preliminary results, authors should prepare Power Point slides (see BESIII Publication Policy). The slides must be approved by the RC, and the Physics Coordinator will make the slides available on the BESIII preliminary publication page.

Memo Preparation:

Download the Memo Preparation Files :  Files Example

Every analysis to be considered for publication must have a detailed memo prepared in English and available to all BESIII members via DocDB. Describe clearly what was done and supply supporting numbers and plots. It should include information about the data set(s) used, software versions, selection criteria with justifications, relevant plots including data/Monte Carlo comparisons, numerical results, and interpretation. This document should be sufficiently detailed so that other BESIII members could reproduce the analysis and results.

Paper Draft:

The paper draft should be carefully prepared. Although writing in English may be difficult, this is not an excuse to write a poorly organized, sloppy paper. Applying final English polishing is not terribly difficult if the paper has been adequately prepared.

• Discuss with RC the appropriate journal. Draft should use correct journal template.
• Use this template to find suggested descriptions of the detector and MC and to find common references: BESIII Template
• Use official BESIII plot style files.
• Run spelling checker.
• Check your paper with the Paper checklist.

Examples:

• Example of a PRD paper: (All files) or (tex file).
• Example of a PLB paper: (All files) or (tex file).
• More information on APS paper styles.

Last modified: Jan., 05, 2021