Technical requirements for Judgment and Decision Making (JDM)

However if you ar preparing an article with the idea that you might submit it to JDM, then you can save time later by anticipating some of the technical requirements (explained in more detail below), in particular:

• Do not use Word's equation editor.
• If your paper has a lot of math, use LaTeX formatting for the whole thing.
• Keep the tables as simple as possible.
• With Word, do not switch font style in a way that is not visible to you. (For example, if you use bold font, turn it on and then turn it off, but do not override it.)
• For graphics, use software that will be able to produce EPS, although you don't need to submit EPS initially.

So far we have no charges for authors. This is because I (Jon Baron) do the production, with the help of lots of open-source software (listed below). If you follow these guidelines, I can produce an article while reading it through to make sure it makes sense, something I would do anyway, with little extra time. I can tolerate some deviations from these guidelines, but, if the deviations are major, I will ask you to fix them. You are free to hire someone to help you do this (and this may still cost you less than what other open-access journals charge).

Timing: Regular issues of the journal appear every two months starting February. Final versions of articles are due the 15th of the month in which the issue appears. In most cases, when an ariticle is accepted pending revision, the revision (with a letter explaining what was done) is the final version, even if some further editing is required.

Style notes

• Please use APA citation style. (Not the rest of APA style.) This means that articles are cited by author within the text, and citations are alphabetical at the end, with authors initials (not names) following each author's last name (e.g., "McCaffery, E. J., & Baron J. (2006)." --- note the spaces and periods). Volume numbers are in italics following the journal name (also in italics), followed by a comma. No issue numbers. Page numbers are required for everything. Use "and" when citing multiple authors in the text, "et al." for three or more (unless it is important to list all authors), and "&" for citations in parentheses and for authors listed in the reference section.
• Include an abstract and key words.
• The title of your article, all article and book titles in the references, all headings and subheadings, and all graph and table labels, use upper case for only: the first letter of the first word, the first word after a colon, proper nouns, and (optionally) names coined in the paper (such as names of variables). Journal titles have all major words begin with upper case.
• Spellings: "et al.", "etc.", "i.e.", followed by commas if the sentence continues. Don't use "cf." It is better to say, in a couple of words, why you are citing something, e.g., "see X for a review," "for additional supporting results," or "but see X for an opposing perspective."
• Punctuation: Despite earlier issues of the journal, we now put all punctuation, including commas and periods, outside of quotation marks, unless the punctuation was itself part of the quotation.
• For additional thoughts about writing style see these recommendations.

Graphics

When you make graphs, think about how they will fit in a two-column layout. Are they one column or two? Then adjust the font size so that it looks right given the width of the figure (roughly 3 inches for one column, 6 inches for two).

Put legends (e.g., identifications of line types) inside of the box of the graph.

For graphs, use vector formats such as eps (Encapulsated PostScript, which is what I use), PostScript (ps), xfig, or svg (scalable vector graphics). These can be re-sized easily. Unfortunately, these formats can include raster (bitmap, non-vector) data, and many proprietary program tend to include these raster images even when they are saved in a vector format.

If you have a choice of fonts, please use Helvetica (or, if you have it, Nimbus Sans). Other fonts (aside from Times Roman, Courier, and probably Arial) should be embedded (defined in the file you send).

One program that does everything correctly "out of the box" is R, which is what I use when I need to re-draw something. If you use R, send the R code. Stata, Matlab and SigmaPlot produce good eps output. With SPSS use "ps output". Whatever you use, choose options for "no preview" and "convert to postscript fonts" if these are available.

For diagrams, a useful and easy-to-use tool is Mayura Draw. It makes nice EPS output.

For other images, such as photos, a bitmap (raster) format is necessary (e.g., bmp, png, gif, tiff, jpg). The bigger the better. It is easy to shrink. Hard to expand.

Note that we are not bound by the need to call every graphic a "figure". You are free, for example, to use Sparklines, so long as other graphic requirements are met.

Text formats

• Make tables as simple as possible. Think about whether a table will fit in one column or two. Do not use sideways tables, or tables wider than a page. Do not try to make the table look nice on a double-spaced one-column manuscript. It will not appear that way. Better to to have an ugly table that is easy to convert. Tables must be text, not images. Apparently these instructions are very difficult for Word users to follow, so the simplest thing might be to submit tables separately in LaTeX format.
• Do not attempt to control position on the page, except as part of a display (for example, a response scale).
• Do not control the font style (bold, italic), position (center), or size, except for italics and bold in the text itself, for emphasis or math, and italics for journal titles and volume numbers in the references.
• For sections, subsections, etc., either number them (1, 1.1, 1.1.1) so that I know the level of each or use semantic formating ("heading," "subheading" and so on, which are available on most word processors). Do not try to indicate these with centering, indentation, font size, or font style.
• Do not format the title page. Either use the LaTeX template or follow the instructions at the end of this page.
• Use " " [space] between authors' initials, e.g., Sorkin, J. M.
• Do not use single quotes in the text, except between double quotes.
• Do not use sideways tables, or tables wider than the text on a page.
• In tables, do not use empty rows or columns
• Put tables and figures in the text, not at the end.
• Do not use vertical lines in tables except when reproducing stimulus materials.
• Use footnotes, not endnotes.

Special notes for LaTeX

Use LaTeX for formatting if possible. Please use a minumum of additional packages and do not attempt to control positioning, spacing, or width (unless you use the template). Specifically:

• Use "--" between numbers.
• Use "---" for an em-dash.
• Use \label and \ref as usual.
• Do not use longtable or any packages specific to Scientific Workplace.
• Do not rely on bibTeX.

A template is here.

See the instructions for the title page for word processors, below, to make sure you include all relevant information.

Every published article has a .tex version. To find it, look at the URL of the html version, replace "htm" or "html" with "tex". Later articles are better examples to imitate (because I'm using Hevea rather than Tth to make the html version).

Special notes for word processors

The general principle is that I convert these to LaTeX using many wonderful open-source programs (OpenOffice, writer2latex, sed, and hevea for the html). What is easy for these programs and what is easy to read on a printed page are two different things.

• Remove hidden codes (such as those made by Endnote); CTRL-SHIFT-F9 will do this in Word. Also, please check for other hidden changes that you may not see. To do this in Word, click on the paragraph symbol (¶) in the menu. Look for things that you don't understand, such as little black boxes, and delete them.
• Math. Equations, formulas, and other mathematical expressions must be text, not images. Greek letters are fine, so long as they are represented as characters, not pictures of characters. Since 2007, Microsoft Equation Editor makes pictures. Avoid it. (Science suggests using the Mathtype plug-in, or an earlier version of Word.) I don't mind re-writing a few equations, but, if a paper is full of math, it is best to write it with LaTeX formatting from the outset. Alternatively, if all the math is in one section, you can send that separately as a text file using LaTeX math notation.
• For tables, do not use empty rows or columns, or tables within tables. Do not specify the position of each item within each cell (e.g., center). Use italic and bold fonts sparingly. If you have your table in Excel, please use Excel2LaTeX and send the output separately. If you use R, the xtable packages produces LaTeX tables, so you may send me either the tables or the R code. (Apparently Matlab can also produce LaTeX tables.) To create LaTeX tables with a graphical user interface, you might try TeXTable (apparently for Mac only), Texmaker, or LyX. I would be interested in reports about these tools.
• The title page should include the following, preferably in standard font only (no bold or italics) and with no formatting (e.g., centering).
  1. A running head. Use upper case only for the first letter of the first word and for proper nouns.
  2. The title. Use upper case only for the first letter of the first word and for proper nouns.
  3. A list of the authors' names, in order, one per line, first name first, each followed by the author's affiliation. The corresponding author should give a complete mail address and email address.
  4. The acknowledgements, as one paragraph.

Some technical details

For converting word-processor formats to LaTeX, and LaTeX to html.
My notes on LaTeX
Batch file to convert .sxw (made by OpenOffice) to .tex, using writer2latex
configuration file for writer2latex
configuration file for H^EV^EA (for making html)
CSS file for html version

For RePEc (Research Papers in Economics), table of contents, citations, and notifications. (Perl scripts by Adam Kramer and Alan Schwartz.)
notes on usage
Template for 'dat' format
Make table of contents
Convert 'dat' to APA format
Make RePEc 'rdf' format
Make 'ris' format
Extract abstract from .tex files
R script for making rss feed from RePEc rdf
R script for DOAJ (and archives)

When I need to re-draw figures, I use R. Here are some examples. The numbers are related to the articles. For example, "8221/figs.R" has results in "8221/jdm8221.pdf".