METAL 2025

1-5 September 2025
Cardiff, UK

Information for Paper Authors

Paper abstracts have now been through the peer review process and successful authors have been notified of provisional acceptance for development to full paper stage.

Submission of papers is via the https://metal2025.paper-flow.com/ website.

Deadline

30th November 2024

Metal 2025 Guidance for Paper Authors.pdf

Paper Preparation Guidelines

Please Note:

Conference attendance by at least one author is mandatory for selection and publication.
The material included in the paper must not have been published or be in the process of publication elsewhere.
Authors are responsible for obtaining all permissions for reproduction of figures and any other material used in the paper.
Papers will be subject to copyright transfer.

A copyright transfer agreement will be provided and must be completed by all authors prior to submission and uploaded with the paper manuscript after the review stage.

Details of copyright transfer will be communicated separately.

Language

Papers must be submitted in English (British, American or other recognised version) and be consistent in the version of English used.

Submitted papers are assumed to be in final form and if they require extensive language editing, may be refused.

Word Limits

4000 (standard papers)
2000 (Emerging Conservation Professionals (formerly Young Conservation Professionals))

Word limits include title, keywords, abstract, captions, endnotes, references and biographies, but not the author affiliations.

Authors must provide a word count for their paper.

Figures and Tables

Figure limit: Max. 10 including all graphs, diagrams and images
Table limit: Max. 5

All figures and tables must be referenced in the text at the appropriate place.

Figure and table captions should be listed at the end of the paper.

Submit each figure and table as an individual file, do not embed in the text or together in one document.

Authorship and Multiple Authors

Authorship should be limited to those who have made a substantial contribution to the paper as defined by the following criteria:

Makes substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work, or the acquisition, analysis or interpretation of data for the work.
Drafts the work or critically revises it for important intellectual content.
Approves the final version of the manuscript.
Agrees to be accountable for all aspects of the work to ensure its accuracy and integrity

(Note that for copyright purposes, all authors cited are considered full authors.)

A contributor:

Does not qualify as an author.
May help in acquiring funds, supervising research groups, extending administrative support, technical writing, editing or proofreading.
Should be thanked in the acknowledgments.

Permissions

It is the author’s responsibility to obtain permission to reproduce material protected by copyright and to obtain all necessary clearances, including the payment of any fees.

Proofs

Authors will have the opportunity to review their manuscript before the article is published. Only minor corrections or typographical errors will be accepted at this stage.

Only the corresponding author will receive a copy of the proofs, which should be read carefully for errors.

The corrected proof must be returned promptly, a time frame will be given at the time the proof is sent out.

Paper Structure

Paper structure should follow the broad headings below, in the order provided.

Title

This briefly describes the contents of the paper. Lengthy or complex titles may be edited.

Author name(s) and details

For each author, state their full name, institutional affiliation (where applicable), city, state/province, country, and email address.

Indicate “*Author for correspondence” with an asterisk.

Abstract

This should be a concise summary (max. 400 words) of the paper, stating its purpose, methodology, principal findings and conclusions.

The abstract must be complete in itself, without references to the text or literature cited in the paper.

Note that this abstract is not the same as the proposal abstract submitted in the first phase of the process.

Keywords

Provide 4-8 relevant keywords which describe the main aspects of the paper, such as a broad area of interest (e.g. archaeology), a cultural period, the materials being studied or conserved, the analytical procedure used, the main reagents used, etc.

Keywords are generally singular nouns, but a brief compound term may be given if relevant (e.g. preventive conservation).

Main body of the paper

This should contain the following:

An introduction explaining the context, the problem and the aim and objectives of the work.
The method used to address the problem, for example the experimental procedure. This should be sufficiently detailed that a reader could reproduce the work.
The results of the study.
A discussion of how the results relate to the problem under study and an explanation of their significance.

Conclusion

A meaningful but brief summary of the principal findings or achievements. Do not introduce new information that has not already appeared in the text.

Acknowledgements

Brief acknowledgements may be included.

References

These should be concise and are included in the word limit. References should include only those publications that are cited or referred to in the text and should be listed alphabetically by first author.

Refer to the Referencing Guide below for more information.

Author biography

A short biography of maximum 100 words for each author.

Materials list

Commercial products mentioned in the paper should be listed by trade name and composition, as well as a supplier, if available.

Figure and table captions

Provide a list of all figure and table captions (figures and tables are uploaded separately).

Use a full stop after the figure/table number, an initial capital for the caption and no final full stop, e.g.:

Figure 6. Text obscured by delamination

A note on figures and tables

Figures

A maximum of 10 figures are permitted.

All figures must be of professional publication quality and should be relevant to the reader. Consider the legibility of all aspects of the figures.

Cite every figure in the text as (Figure 1), (Figures 4-6) etc.

Do not embed figures within the paper manuscript. Indicate where each figure should be placed at the relevant point in the text (e.g. “Insert Fig. 1 here”) and upload all figure files individually to the PaperFlow system as JPEG (.jpg) files.

Tables

A maximum of 5 tables are permitted.

Keep the layout of tables simple and use minimum formatting.

Use abbreviations where appropriate and give a key to all abbreviations in the table caption.
Cite every table in the text as (Table 1), (Tables 2-3) etc.

Do not embed tables within the paper manuscript. Indicate where each table should be placed at the relevant point in the text (e.g. “Insert Table 1 here”) and upload all tables together to the PaperFlow system in one Word document (.docx).

Style Guide

Fonts

Arial (Regular) 12 pt. is the preferred typeface.

Use Helvetica for tables, where possible.

Spacing

Double-space the text.

Use margins of 3.5cm.

Formatting

Keep the format of your text file simple.

Do not use special formatting commands and codes.

Do not use the automatic footnoting feature of any word processing software.

Alignment

All text should be aligned left.

Do not justify text.

Do not centralise section headings.

Do not indent paragraphs.

Headings

Do not number headings.

All headings should be in sentence case (initial capital for first word and proper nouns only). Use two levels of heading: main headings and subheadings.

Indicate subheadings by italics or by noting the heading level in brackets, e.g.
Identification techniques [heading]
Visual examination [subheading]

Lists

Bullet points are preferred.

Arabic numerals may be used where necessary, for example where there is a clear hierarchy in the list entries.

Where the bulleted points are complete sentences (or paragraphs), use an introductory colon, initial cap only, and a final full stop.

Where the bulleted points are incomplete sentences, use an introductory colon, lowercase and no punctuation after the bullet points except for a final full stop after the last point.

Numbers

Numbers from one to ten should be spelled out except when denoting ranges, e.g. ‘7 to 13’, in which case both should be in digits.

For numbers higher than 9999, please use commas, e.g. 11,000.

Use digits where relating to percentages, e.g. ‘17 percent’ and centuries, e.g. ‘19th century’.

The ‘%’ symbol should only be used in tables and illustrations.

Use a decimal point (not decimal commas).

Date ranges should be in full, using an en dash (e.g. ‘1998–1999’).

Decades can be referred to using numerals, i.e., the 1920s; note that no apostrophe is used.

Nomenclature

All the parameters cited in the text should be defined with SI units.

Ångstrôm (1Å=10-10 m) may be used in addition to SI units.

Use IUPAC (International Union of Pure & Applied Chemistry) nomenclature, e.g. for chemical compounds (http://www.iupac.org/nomenclature).

Include full wording for the first occurrence of a term in the paper with the acronym in brackets before using acronym from that point onwards.

Equations

Equations that are referred to in the text, e.g. [equation (2)] should be numbered with Arabic numerals enclosed in parentheses on the right margin.

Quotations

Quoted matter from another source should follow the original wording exactly, in both punctuation and spelling. Short quotations (less than 30 words) should be run on within the text and enclosed in single quotation marks (double for quotes within quotes). Longer quotations may be indented, without quotation marks, by the publisher. All quotations must be attributed in the main text and/or in the notes.

Trademarks and brand names

For products, generic names should be used as well as trade names, whenever possible. If a trade name is very well known (for example Paraloid B-72), it is not necessary to give the generic or chemical name. Brand names that are registered trademarks should be capitalised. There is no legal requirement to use the ® and TM symbols and they should be omitted whenever possible, other than in the Materials list.

Referencing Guide

List all cited references alphabetically by author.

Where two or more publications by the same author are cited, they should be listed chronologically, beginning with the earliest date.

A single-author entry precedes a multi-author entry beginning with the same name.

In a multi-author entry, only the first author’s name is inverted.

Titles and subtitles of books and articles are capitalised sentence style and the first word of the subtitle is capitalised.

Names of journals are capitalised headline style.

Do not abbreviate journal titles.

Use a minimum of punctuation and no bold or underlining.

Use italics only for the publication title.

Abbreviations ‘ed.’ (editor/edition) or ‘trans.’ (translator) are normally used and are capitalised if they follow a full stop.

When citing a reference in the body of the text, include the author's last name and publication date in parentheses, for example:
(Grattan 1987) or Grattan (1987) described a method . . .

If there is more than one reference, the order is chronological, for example: (Grattan 1987, Young 1991, Beentjes 2010)

When a specific page, section or other division of the work is cited, it follows the date, preceded by a comma: (Krop 2010, 73), (Werner 1972, 58–60)

Examples

Examples of various reference types follow. Note that all references should be combined in a single alphabetical list, regardless of type.

Book
Feller, R.L., N. Stolow, and E.H. Jones. 1985. On picture varnishes and their solvents. Revised ed. Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art.

Article
Rees-Jones, S. 1993. A note on the transfer of light into and out of paintings. Studies in Conservation 38(4): 174–179.

Chapter
Stoner, J.H. 1992. The mortality of things. In Caring for your collections: preserving and protecting your art and other collectibles, ed. H. Whelchel, 10–17. New York: Harry N. Abrams.

Citation of ICOM-CC Preprints
Author last name, initial. Year. Title of article. In ICOM-CC xxth Triennial Meeting / Conference (as applicable) Preprints, City, Date of meeting/conference as days month year, ed (s) Initial (s) Last name (s), pp. City: Publisher.

Example: de la Rie, E.R. 1987. Research on picture varnishes: Status of the project at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In ICOM-CC 8th Triennial Meeting Preprints, Sydney, 6–11 September 1987, ed. K. Grimstad, 791–796. Paris: International Council of Museums.

Editor, translator or compiler
Stanley Price, N., M.K. Talley Jr., and A.M. Vaccaro, eds. 1996. Historical and philosophical issues in the conservation of cultural heritage. Readings in Conservation. Los Angeles: The Getty Conservation Institute.

Unpublished work
de la Rie, E.R. 1988. Stable varnishes for Old Master paintings. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Amsterdam, Netherlands.

Internet publication
Online sources that are analogous to print sources (such as articles published in online journals) should be cited similarly to their print counterparts, with the addition of a URL.
Example: Meacham, W. 2010. Frad, J.C., ‘Uncovering the Decoration Techniques of a Southeast Asian Lacquered Buddha Sculpture’
http://e-conservation.org/issue-2/39-Lacquered-Buddha-Sculpture

Personal communication
Name, institution [or other identification if applicable], personal communication, date [in parentheses].
Example: Costain, C., Canadian Conservation Institute, personal communication (16 February 1998).
Simeon, F., private restorer, Paris, personal communication (March 2004).

In-house report
McCabe, C. 1993. Recleaning treatment used for aged facsimile palladium prints. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

Web site addresses
If the URL includes “www,” the listing should read as follows: www.website.com (accessed month/day/year).
If the URL does not include “www,” the listing should read as follows: http://aic.stanford.edu (accessed month/day/year).

Any questions?

Contact the team: Metal2025@cardiff.ac.uk