Electronic Liquid Crystal Communications

Rationale:
   The purpose of e-LC is to provide the liquid crystal community with rapid access to the most recent research results in advance of their publication in journals.

e-LC proposes to employ a new procedure of acceptance and review which allows posting of the document within one week of submission.

Mission:

• To allow rapid electronic access to research results in the area of liquid crystals and related soft condensed matter.
• The establishment of a platform that allows members of the scientific community to respond by posting comments and questions and by evaluating the posted documents.

Format:
   All documents will be published in PDF format. In addition to their direct content, PDF documents can contain links to movies and other resources on the authors' server.

Timelines:
   All documents will be either accepted and posted or rejected within one week of submission.

Submission:
    Documents for posting in e-LC will be submitted only electronically in PDF format. Guidelines for the preparation and submission of documents will be provided online.

Criteria:
   The submitted work should present new results of interest to the community. All aspects of the work (scientific results, language, presentation) should be of high quality to merit posting.

Gatekeeping:
   The gatekeeping process will have one of two outcomes: a document submitted to e-LC will either be accepted for posting without change, or it will be rejected. There will be no detailed response; the authors will be informed either that their submission has been accepted for posting, or that it is not suitable for posting.

Reviewers:
   Submitted documents will first go to one of the two Editors, who will forward the document to the appropriate Associate Editor. Associate Editors of e-LC will decide if a submitted document is to be accepted or rejected.

Peer Assessment:
e-LC allows comments to be posted following each accepted document, and allows readers to assign a rating. Comments can be made on the document or other comments, forming threads.

   The rating, as well as the number of reviewers, will be displayed, together with the abstract. The corresponding author will receive notice via e-mail when a new comment on the document is added.

Copyright:
e-LC will not hold copyright on the posted documents. It will require that submitting authors:

• attest that the submitted work is new and has not been published elsewhere, and
• grant e-LC permission, without term, to post the document in electronic format.

This allows the authors to retain copyright, and to publish in print elsewhere.

Contributors to e-LC are encouraged to publish work posted on e-LC in Journals. Authors need to be aware that Copyright Agreements of certain Journals, such as Physical Review Journals, require that authors ensure the establishment of a link to their paper on the server of that journal. e-LC is pleased to provide such a link for each posted document, together with a notice of publication in the Journal. It is the responsibility of the corresponding author to inform the Editors of e-LC of the publication, and to provide the information required to set up the link.

Organization:
e-LC will be managed by the Senior Editor and Editor, acting on the advice of the Editorial Board, and working with the Associate Editors in processing submitted documents.

Affiliation:
e-LC has requested recognition as an official organ of the International Liquid Crystal Society at ILCC 2002. This request is currently under consideration.

Facilites:
   The server for e-LC is located at the Liquid Crystal Institute, Kent State University.
Systems analyst: L. Holmberg (holmberg@lci.kent.edu)

Access:
e-LC will be free with unrestricted access. It will be fully searchable (by words in abstract, author and title fields, and by volume and issue numbers.)