The Journal of Mechanical Design (JMD) uses ASME’s online submission site, Journal Tool, to manage submissions. Before preparing a submission, authors should review the topics and keywords (listed below) to determine if their manuscript is within the scope of JMD. It is highly recommended that authors consult upcoming and recent issues of JMD and include citations to relevant publications in their manuscript. This helps to place the manuscript within the context of other work and helps to maintain the high reputation of the journal. Citation format must follow the ASME guidelines. It is ASME policy that a research paper should not exceed 9000 words or the equivalent of nine journal pages. Manuscripts are reviewed using archival scholarship standards.

Article Keywords

Authors should select several relevant keywords for their manuscript submissions. They should also identify keywords in areas in which they are comfortable reviewing papers. Authors are encouraged to register as volunteer reviewers in the ASME Journal Tool and add their areas of expertise using the keywords posted here.

English

ASME does not provide language editorial services therefore correct use of English language text is the responsibility of the authors. Reviewers and editors will assess language quality. Papers that do not meet the language quality standards of JMD cannot be published, independently of scientific merit. Authors are encouraged to engage professional editorial services as required. Title and Abstract The paper title of the work should be concise and definitive, and should be provided in upper and lowercase letters: This is How a Paper Title Should be Typed. Additionally:

• Prepositions and conjunctions of four (4) or more letters should be uppercase: e.g., With, From, That, Which, Until, About, Through, but, and, is, the, an, be, for.
• Special terms should be provided as they are known or understood by the industry. This includes acronyms, abbreviations, computer program names and codes, units of measure, etc.
• If the paper you are submitting was published in ASME conference proceedings and therefore has a unique paper number, e.g., DTM-2003-546, include this number in parentheses at the end of the paper title.

The paper abstract should be 150-200 words long using only text with Latin characters (no special characters, Greek, or math symbols). The purposes of the abstract are: (1) To give a clear indication of the objective, scope, and results so that readers may determine whether the full text will be of particular interest to them; and (2) To provide key words and phrases for indexing, abstracting, and retrieval purposes. The abstract text should be organized to include the following categories in the order noted: Background, method of approach, results, and conclusions.

For more information, please see the 2009 Editorial, Titles and Abstracts.

Referencing

Reference citations are a critical ingredient of a good paper. Reference citations help to show where there are gaps in knowledge that the presented work fills. It is important to provide reference citations for relevant work that has previously appeared in JMD or in related design journals that JMD readers are likely to also follow. These provide context for the JMD readership. Some of JMD’s sister journals are: ASME Journal of Mechanisms and Robotics; ASME Journal of Computing and Information Science in Engineering; Journal of Mechanisms and Machine Theory; AI for Engineering Design, Analysis and Manufacturing; Journal of Product Innovation Management; Computer-Aided Design; Research in Engineering Design; Journal of Engineering Design; Design Studies; Mechatronics; Engineering Optimization; Structural and Multidisciplinary Optimization. The list is not exhaustive. See also the January 2012 Editorial, The Design Universe: A Journals Perspective.

Most references should be in English to be accessible to JMD’s English-speaking readers. While it is acceptable for some portion of the references to be non-English language publications, these cannot dominate the reference list. If some seminal work has appeared in a language other than English it will be of service to the JMD readers if the authors articulate and summarize the referenced findings for the benefit of those who cannot access or understand the original source. Simply listing several papers without explaining why they are listed is not useful. For further information on the rationale for referencing see the November 2011 Editorial, Referencing.  Additional help and information can be found in ASME’s Author Resources.