MANUSCRIPT SUBMISSION
Submission of a manuscript implies:

• The work described has not been published before.
• It is not under consideration for publication anywhere else.
• Its publication has been approved by all co-authors, if any, as well as by the responsible authorities—tacitly or explicitly—at the organization where the work has been done.

The publisher will not be held legally responsible should there be any claims for compensation. If part of a contribution has appeared or has been submitted elsewhere, the paper is not automatically rejected so long as the main result, conclusion and implications are substantially enhanced or different as compared to the other work. In this event, the corresponding author must specify in the cover letter which part of the contribution will appear or has appeared elsewhere, in what publication, and how the submitted manuscript differs from previously disseminated versions.

MANUSCRIPT RESUBMISSION
Authors of papers containing any amount of material previously rejected by this journal must identify the manuscript number of the previously rejected manuscript in the covering letter and clearly state the reasons for resubmission.

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 of JOM 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.

CONFLICT OF INTEREST
Authors must indicate whether or not they have a financial relationship with the organization that sponsored the research. This note should be added in a separate section before the reference list. If no conflict exists, authors should state: "The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest".

CO-AUTHOR GUIDELINES
The co-authors of a paper should be all persons who have participated sufficiently in the work reported to take public responsibility and be accountable for appropriate portions of the content. Any changes to the author names listed in the original manuscript, including additions, deletions, or change of order of appearance, requires proof of agreement of all coauthors.

ONLINE SUBMISSION
All JOM authors submit their manuscripts online. Please go to the JOM Editorial Manager at this link to upload all of your manuscript files, following the instructions that will be presented on the screen.

AUTHOR QUERY APPLICATION
Upon acceptance of your article, you will receive a link to the special Author Query Application at Springer’s web page where you can sign the Copyright Transfer Statement online and indicate whether you wish to order Open Choice, offprints, or printing of figures in color.

Once the Author Query Application has been completed, your article will be processed and you will receive the proofs.

Open Choice
In addition to the normal publication process (an article is submitted to the journal and access to that article is granted to customers who have purchased a subscription), Springer provides an alternative publishing option: Springer Open Choice. A Springer Open Choice article receives all the benefits of a regular subscription-based article, but in addition, is made available publicly through Springer’s online platform, SpringerLink. We regret that Springer Open Choice cannot be ordered for published articles. For additional information, go to Springer Open Choice at this link.

Copyright Transfer
Authors will be asked to transfer copyright of the article to the Publisher (or grant the Publisher exclusive publication and dissemination rights). This will ensure the widest possible protection and dissemination of information under copyright laws. Open Choice articles do not require transfer of copyright as the copyright remains with the author. In opting for Open Choice, authors agree to the Springer Open Choice License.

Offprints
Offprints can be ordered by the corresponding author.

Color Illustrations
Online publication of color illustrations is free of charge. For color in the print version, authors will be expected to make a contribution towards the extra costs.

PROOFS
The purpose of the proof is to check for typesetting or conversion errors and the completeness and accuracy of the text, tables, and figures. Substantial changes in content, e.g., new results, corrected values, title, and authorship, are not allowed without the approval of the Editor. To ensure timely publication of the journal, it is important that your corrected proof be returned within 48 hours of receipt.

After online publication, further changes can only be made in the form of an Erratum, which will be hyperlinked to the article.

To view a tutorial on the online proofing process, go to this link. For complex corrections, such as table changes and figure label corrections, please use the traditional method of marking the correction on a hard copy of your proof and faxing it to the number indicated on your proof.

Online First
The article will be published online after receipt of the corrected proofs. This is the official first publication citable with the DOI. After release of the printed version, the paper can also be cited by issue and page numbers.