Impact Factor
2024
0.4
CiteScore
2024
1.3

Volume

17, 2 issues

Latest issue

17:1 online 28 June 2024

Next issue

17:2 scheduled for December 2024

Back volumes

From volume 1, 2003

ISSN print

1567-2069

ISSN online

1875-9262

Aims & Scope

Fracture has been studied for many years, for instance more than 160 as far as fatigue is concerned. Even though nanostudies and computational science are rapidly developing, it and its related problems remain unsolved, such as using equations expressed in non-linear nano, meso and macroscopic terms with no ad hoc parameters including time developments. This suggests that fracture may be an example of a complexity system. Strength, Fracture and Complexity: An International Journal is devoted to solving the problem of strength and fracture in a non-linear and systematic manner as a complexity system. It will welcome attempts to develop new paradigms and studies which fuse together nano, meso, microstructure, continuum and large-scale approaches.

Whether theoretical or experimental, or both, these are welcome. Presentation of empirical data is also welcome, as an addition to practical knowledge. Deformation and fracture in geophysics and geotechnology are also acceptable, particularly in relation to earthquake science and engineering. Other future problems in fracture will be accepted as additional subjects.

Editorial Board

Editor-in-Chief
Teruo Kishi
Professor Emeritus
The University of Tokyo
4-6-1 Komabe, Meguro-ku
Tokyo, Japan
Tel./Fax: +81 35 452 5006   
Email: nims.advisor@nims.go.jp

Executive Editor
A. Toshimitsu Yokobori Jr.
Professor Emeritus of Tohoku University
Specially Appointed Professor of Teikyo University
Advanced Comprehensive Research Organization (ACRO)
Teikyo University
2-22-1 Kaga Itabashi-ku
Tokyo, Japan
E-mail: toshi.yokobori@med.teikyo-u.ac.jp

Founding Editor
Takeo Yokobori

Honorary Editor
Alan H. Cottrell

Editors
Alberto Carpinteri, Polytechnic University of Turin, Turin, Italy
William W. Gerberich, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA 
Takeshi Isogai, Teikyou University, Utsunomiya, Japan
Jörg F. Kalthoff, Ruhr University Bochum, Bochum, Germany
Takashi Kuriyama, Yamagata University, Yamagata, Japan
Jean Lemaitre, LMT-Cachan, Cachan, France
Yiu-Wing Mai, University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia
Kamran Nikbin, Imperial College, London, United Kingdom
Go Ozeki, Teikyo University, Tokyo, Japan
Yapa D.S. Rajapakse, Office of Naval Research, Arlington, VA, USA
Shinsuke Sakai, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan
Yasuhide Shindo, Tohoku University, Sendai, Japan
Yuji Tanabe, Niigata University, Niigata, Japan
Keiichiro Tohgo, Shizuoka University, Shizuoka, Japan
Kee Bong Yoon, Chung Ang University, Seoul, Korea

International Advisory Editorial Board
Grigory Isaakovich Barenblatt, University of California, Berkely, CA, USA 
Janne Carlsson, Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden
Toshihito Ohmi, Shonan Institute of Technology, Fijisawa, Japan
Yuri A. Ossipyan, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia
Ashok Saxena, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, AR, USA
Karl-Heinz Schwalbe, Institute for Materials Research, Geesthacht, Germany
George Webster, Imperial College, London, United Kingdom

Author Guidelines

SUBMISSION OF MANUSCRIPT

By submitting my article to this journal, I agree to the Author Copyright Agreement, the IOS Press Ethics Policy, and the IOS Press Privacy Policy.

Authors are requested to submit their manuscript electronically to the journal's editorial management system. Note that the manuscript should be uploaded as one file with tables and figures included. All submissions need to be in MsWord format; PDF format will not be accepted.

Publication fee
Strength, Fracture and Complexity does not charge a publication fee.

Open Access option
Strength, Fracture and Complexity offers authors the option to make their article freely available on the Publisher's website. For an additional charge of €1250/US$1450, your article (including pre-publication) will be freely accessible immediately upon publication.

Changes to authorship
IOS Press has adopted Sage’s Authorship Policy.  Please go to:  Authorship guidelines | SAGE Publications Ltd for details.

PREPARATION OF MANUSCRIPTS

Organization of the paper and style of presentation
Manuscripts must be written in English. Authors whose native language is not English are advised to consult a professional English language editing service or a native English speaker prior to submission.
 
Manuscripts should be prepared with wide margins and double spacing throughout, including the abstract, footnotes and references. Every page of the manuscript, including the title page, references, tables, etc., should be numbered. However, in the text no reference should be made to page numbers; if necessary, one may refer to sections. Try to avoid the excessive use of italics and bold face.
 
Manuscripts should be organized in the following order:

  • Title page including Abstract and Keywords
  • Body of text (divided by subheadings) including Figures and Tables
  • References

Headings and subheadings should be numbered and typed on a separate line, without indentation.
SI units should be used, i.e., the units based on the metre, kilogramme, second, etc.
 
Title page
The title page should provide the following information:
•  Title (should be clear, descriptive and not too long)
•  Name(s) of author(s); please indicate who is the corresponding author
•  Full affiliation(s)
•  Present address of author(s), if different from affiliation
•  Complete address of corresponding author, including  e-mail address
•  Abstract
•  Keywords (Keywords should be terms from the MeSH database)

Abstract
The abstract should be clear, descriptive, self-explanatory and not longer than 200 words, it should also be suitable for publication in abstracting services.


The abstract for research papers should follow the “structured abstract” format. Section labels should be in bold uppercase letters followed by a colon, and each section will begin on a new line.
BACKGROUND:
OBJECTIVE:
METHODS:
RESULTS:
CONCLUSIONS:

Tables
Number as Table 1, Table 2 etc., and refer to all of them in the text. Each table should be provided on a separate page of the manuscript. Tables should not be included in the text. Each table should have a brief and self-explanatory title.

Column headings should be brief, but sufficiently explanatory. Standard abbreviations of units of measurement should be added between parentheses.
Vertical lines should not be used to separate columns. Leave some extra space between the columns instead. Any explanations essential to the understanding of the table should be given in footnotes at the bottom of the table.

Figures
Figures should be numbered according to the sequence in the text. The text should include references to all figures. Figures should be included in the text. Figures will be printed in grey scale. At an additional charge figures can be printed in colour in the print version. Note that figures that are supplied to us in full colour are always in colour in the online version at no charges.

For the file formats of the figures please take the following into account:

  • Line art should be have a minimum resolution of 600 dpi, save as EPS or TIFF
  • Grayscales (incl photos) should have a minimum resolution of 300 dpi (no lettering), or 500 dpi (when there is lettering); save as tiff
  • Do not save figures as JPEG, this format may lose information in the process
  • Do not use figures taken from the Internet, the resolution will be too low for printing

Figures should be designed with the format of the page of the journal in mind. They should be of such a size as to allow a reduction of 50%. On maps and other figures where a scale is needed, use bar scales rather than numerical ones, i.e., do not use scales of the type 1:10,000. This avoids problems if the figures need to be reduced. Each figure should have a self-explanatory caption. The captions to all figures should be typed on a separate sheet of the manuscript. Photographs are only acceptable if they have good contrast and intensity. Each illustration should be provided on a separate page. Illustrations should not be included in the text. The original drawings (no photocopies) are required. Electronic files of illustrations should preferably be formatted in Encapsulated PostScript Format. Footnotes should be kept to a minimum, and they should be provided all together on a separate page.

Conflict of interest
Statement of any potential conflicts should be clearly identified at the end of the paper. If there is no conflict of interest to declare, you must still include this section and insert the following statement: "The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest."

REFERENCES

Authors are requested to use the ACM citation style. Place citations as numbers in square brackets in the text. All publications cited in the text should be presented in a list of references at the end of the manuscript. List the references alphabetically by the lead author’s last name. Only articles published or accepted for publication should be listed in the reference list. Submitted articles can be listed as (author(s), unpublished data). If an article has a doi, this should be provided after the page number details. Manuscripts will not be considered if they do not conform to the ACM citation guidelines.

Templates of references in ACM style:

[1] Journal Article: A. Author Surname, Title, Publication Title Volume Number(Issue Number) (Year Published), Page Numbers. doi: doi Number
[2] Book Article: A. Author Surname, Title, in: Book Article, Publisher, Year Published, pp. Page Numbers. doi: doi Number
[3] Book: A. Author Surname, editors, Title, City: Publisher, Edition, Year Published. 
[4] Conference Article: A. Author Surname, Title, in: Conference Proceedings, Publisher, Year Published, Page Numbers. doi: doi Number.
[5] Online Page: Name. City: Publisher, Year. Accessed on Access Date. Available from: Link.

Examples of references in ACM style:

[1] M.E. Rose, M.B. Huerbin, J. Melick, D.W. Marion, A.M. Palmer, J.K. Schiding, et al., Regulation of interstitial excitatory amino acid concentrations after cortical contusion injury. Brain Res. 935(12) (2002), 406. doi: 10.1016/s0006-8993(02)02445-9.
[2] P.S. Meltzer, A. Kallioniemi and J.M. Trent, Chromosome alterations in human solid tumors, in:  The genetic basis of human cancer, McGrawHill, 2002, p. 93113. doi: 10.1016/B978-0-12-385071-3.00004-6.
[3] R. Berkow and A.J. Fletcher, editors, The Merck manual of diagnosis and therapy, Rahway: Merck Research Laboratories, 16th ed., 1992.
[4] S. Andler, Predicate path expressions, in: Proceedings of the 6th. ACM SIGACT-SIGPLAN Symposium on Principles of Programming Languages (POPL '79), ACM Inc., 1979, pp. 226-236. doi: 10.1145/567752.567774.
[5] Canadian Cancer Society. Toronto: The Society, 2006. Accessed on 12 May 2006. Available from: www.cancer.ca/.

Footnotes
Footnotes should only be used if absolutely essential. In most cases it is possible to incorporate the information in the text. If used, they should be numbered in the text, indicated by superscript numbers and kept as short as possible.

IOS pre-press
This journal publishes all its articles in the IOS Press Pre-Press module. By publishing articles ahead of print the latest research can be accessed much quicker. The pre-press articles are the corrected proof versions of the article and are published online shortly after the proof is created and author corrections implemented. Pre-press articles are fully citable by using the DOI number. As soon as the pre-press article is assigned to an issue, the final bibliographic information will be added. The pre-press version will then be replaced by the updated, final version.

COPYRIGHT

Copyright of your article
Authors submitting a manuscript do so on the understanding that they have read and agreed to the terms of the IOS Press Author Copyright Agreement.

Article sharing
IOS Press adopted Sage’s Article Sharing Policy from 8th of July 2024. 
Please go to:  Sage’s Author Archiving and Re-Use Guidelines | SAGE Publications Ltd for details. If your manuscript was submitted prior to 8th of July 2024, please contact editorial@iospress.nl with details of your enquiry.

PROOFS

The corresponding author will receive a PDF proof and is asked to check this proof carefully (the publisher will execute a cursory check only). Corrections other than printer's errors, however, should be avoided. Costs arising from such corrections will be charged to the authors.

PURCHASES

The corresponding author of a contribution to the journal will receive a complimentary PDF Author’s Copy of the article, unless otherwise stated. This PDF copy is watermarked and for personal use only. A free PDF copy will not be provided for conference proceedings and abstract issues. An order form for a PDF file without watermark, reprints or additional journal copies will be provided along with the PDF proof.

If you wish to order reprints of an earlier published article, please contact editorial@iospress.nl.

An author is entitled to 25 % discount on IOS Press books. See Author's discount (25%) on all IOS Press book publications.

KUDOS
Authors of published articles (non-prepress, final articles) will be contacted by Kudos. Kudos is a service that helps researchers maximize the impact and visibility of their research. It allows authors to enrich their articles with lay metadata, add links to related materials and promote their articles through the Kudos system to a wider public. Authors will receive no more than three emails: one invitation and a maximum of two reminders to register for the service and link the published article to their profile. Using and registering for Kudos remains entirely optional. For more information, please have a look at our authors section.

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Open Access

By default, articles published in Strength, Fracture and Complexity are available only to institutions and individuals with access rights. However, the journal offers all authors the option to purchase open access publication for their article as part of the IOS Press Open Library. This means that the final published version will be freely available to anyone worldwide, indefinitely, under a Creative Commons license and without the need to purchase access to the article. This is also referred to as “gold” open access.

Gold open access pricing
Authors who choose gold open access publication will be subject to an article publication charge of € 1500 / US$ 1500 for publication under the CC BY-NC 4.0 license or € 2150 / US$ 2150 for publication under the CC BY 4.0 license. Pricing is exclusive of possible taxes. After an article is accepted for publication, the corresponding author will be informed regarding the open access option during the production stages, and will have the opportunity to purchase open access for their article. It could be that the open access fee of an article is waived completely due an institutional agreement IOS Press has with the corresponding authors' institution. Please check the institutional agreements page for details.

Green open access
Authors who do not make use of the gold open access option may still make their article freely available using self-archiving, also referred to as green open access. Authors may make their final accepted manuscript available for free download from their personal or institutional website or institutional archive. This model is free for the author.

Peer Review

Strength, Fracture and Complexity Peer Review Policy

Strength, Fracture and Complexity is a peer-reviewed journal. Articles submitted to the journal undergo a single-blind peer review process. This means that the identity of the authors is known to the reviewers but the identity of the reviewers is not communicated to the authors. Please visit our reviewer guidelines for further information about how to conduct a review.

After automatic plagiarism screening through iThenticate, all submitted manuscripts are subjected to initial appraisal by the Editor-in-Chief and, if found suitable for further consideration, to rigorous peer review by independent, anonymous expert referees. Reasons to reject a paper in the pre-screening process could for example be that the work does not fall within the aims and scope, the writing is of poor quality, the instructions to authors were not followed or the presented work is not novel.

Papers deemed suitable to be reviewed will be assigned to a handling editor. The handling editor will then invite reviewers to comment on the work and might consider inviting the reviewers suggested by the author(s). Editors and reviewers are asked to excuse themselves from reviewing a submission if a conflict of interest makes them unable to make an impartial scientific judgment or evaluation. Conflicts of interest include but are not limited to: collaboration with the authors in the past three years; any professional or financial affiliations that may be perceived as a conflict of interest; a history of personal differences with the author(s).

As a standard policy, decisions are based on two reviews, in some specific circumstances one review may be deemed sufficient to make a decision on a paper. The Executive Editor strives to ensure a typical turnaround time of 3 months.

Reviewers are asked to judge a paper on at least:

  • Logical, concise ordering of ideas
  • Use of sound research methods
  • Adequacy of documentation    
  • Material has good applied use in the field    
  • Readability and interest level

Based on the received reviews the handling editor will propose to the Executive Editor a recommendation:

  1. Accept article as submitted
  2. Accept article revision by the author according to suggestions made in review
  3. Revise and resubmit
  4. Reject
  5. Consider for another issue/publication

They mean the following:

  1. The manuscript is suitable for publication and only requires minor polishing; thus, no further reviews are requested.
  2. The authors are required to make moderate changes to their manuscript. The manuscript becomes acceptable for publication if the changes proposed by the reviewers and editors are successfully addressed. The revised manuscript will be examined by the Editors-in-Chief and possibly sent back to all (or a selection of) reviewers for a second round of reviews. Authors are requested to provide a letter to the reviewers detailing the improvements made for the resubmission.
  3. In its current form, the manuscript is not suitable for publication. A resubmission would require substantial revisions and is only encouraged in special cases. The resubmitted manuscript will be considered as a new submission.
  4. The manuscript is rejected as it is deemed to be out of scope, not relevant, or not meeting the journal’s quality standards in terms of significance, novelty, and/or presentation.
  5. The manuscript is rejected as it is deemed to be better suited for a different journal or publication.

Authors are notified by the Editorial Assistant (in name of the Executive Editor), whose decision is final.

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