Formatting APS Journal Articles :: Title Page
Articles are the products of someone's work, and this information is shown in the author line. Author lines are not difficult to format, but they are important because they are used for many other things, like the generation of the Table of Contents and as searchable terms in the Internet. Also, there are few things that bother authors more than having their names misspelled--even if the misspelling was used in the copy that they provided to us.
First names may be spelled out or only given as initials; follow the original manuscript. Initials are always spaced with periods (e.g., M. S. Smith) except when hyphenated (e.g., M.-S. Smith).
Name prefixes such as Van, De, Der, La, Le, etc. should be left capitalized or lowercase, according to how they are given in the manuscript.
Usually, compound proper names are capitalized after the hyphen, e.g., Jean-Michel. However, there are some cases where this is not so, e.g., Jun-ichii. If you have a question regarding this, query the authors.
Use a comma before the "and" with three or more authors.
If the manuscript has more than one author and more than one affiliation, use superscripted numbers to match individual authors with their corresponding affiliations.
If the manuscript has only one author or multiple authors but only one affiliation, then no superscripts are necessary.
Affiliation superscripts go outside the comma after the author's name, with no space between the comma and the first superscript. The superscript numbers are roman and are placed before the first word of the affiliation (bumped). Multiple superscripts after an individual author's name are separated by commas but not spaces and not as ranges: A. E. Van Buren,1,2,3 Jill Jones,2,4 and John Smith4.
See affiliation line for more details and examples.
APS does not permit an article to be dedicated to any of the authors, living or deceased (see acknowledgments). However, a footnote with the author's name with the date of death is permitted. Insert the dagger symbol (†) after the author's name outside the comma and after any affiliation superscripts (do not separate this by a comma or space): A. E. Van Buren,1,2,3† Jill Jones,2,4 and John Smith4.
To construct the footnote, see footnotes.
Sometimes, authors made equal contributions to the work detailed in the article. This is indicated by an asterisk (*) placed after each contributing author's name outside the comma after any affiliation superscripts (do not separate this by a comma or space): A. E. Van Buren,1,2,3 Jill Jones,2,4* and John Smith4*.
Note that the asterisks are not superscripted.
A footnote is then added to text. To construct the footnote, see footnotes.
Contributors may be listed separately as having provided technical assistance. Usually this is used for individuals who do not have a doctorate or advanced degree but contributed substantially to the actual, physical work done in the experiments.
All of these processes (adding an author, removing an author, or changing author order) are larger issues than they first appear. Anyone wants to make sure that their hard work has been recognized, and taking credit for other people's work is not a good personality trait. Scientific articles represent the sum of a great deal of effort; therefore, giving proper credit for that work is important. In general, the order of the authors reflects the contributions of the authors: the first author is the person responsible for the majority of the work, middle authors contributed by aiding in the experiments directly or indirectly, and the final author is usually the person in control of the laboratory where the work took place and provided general information or supervision.
All of these processes require a Change of Authorship form signed by all the authors. This to prevent any surprises from occurring after the article has been printed. There are many reasons why an author is added or removed, and there may be some discussion among the authors regarding who did how much work, but one thing is certain: APS needs author confirmation that all of the authors are aware of the changes and that they agree to them. Until all the authors give their approval, the article cannot be published.
Use the «a» code at the beginning of the author line. Use the «tech» code at the beginning of the technical assistance line. This should come immediately after the author line in the manuscript. Use only the authors' names, as follows: «tech»J. Smith and S. Jones.
Note that on proof the technical assistance line will look like this: (With the Technical Assistance of J. Smith and S. Jones). However, the parentheses and the phrase "With the Technical Assistance of" are boilerplate text, added automatically by the printer.