For authors

To submit a paper to the journal, you first need to post it to arXiv, formatted in LaTeX. (Do not use ToCTeX formatting (ToC style).) Select the CC-BY license when prompted. If you have difficulty with this part of the process, contact the editors at toc@episciences.org. You will get an arXiv identifier, like "arXiv:1812.08731" and a version number, like "v1". The full arXiv identifier combines these two elements, like "arXiv:1812.08731v1" (no space).

Please see the documentation for account creation steps.

To submit an article to the journal, please refer to the documentation.

When submitting your article, you must attach a cover letter with the following content:

Subject: ToC cover letter [full arXiv identifier]
(without the brackets)

Cc: (all coauthors)

Body of cover letter:

• The full arXiv identifier

• The title of the paper

• Author names, in the form "Family name, Given names plus initials". Separate the names by "and" (no comma). Use ascii characters only; use TeX code for accents. Mark the corresponding author by an asterisk. Examples:

  • Li, Cedric Yen-Yu* and de Oliveira Filho, Fernando Mario [O]
  • Chl{\'a}mta{\v c}, Eden and Jayram, T. S.*
  • Le Gall, Fran{\c c}ois [L]* and de Wolf, Ronald [W]

  (Brackets: alphabetic position if not the first letter in the family name or if the family name is composite.)
  If a name involves accents, please additionally give the name in Unicode:

  • Chlámtač, Eden
  • Le Gall, François

• Affiliation and email address for each author

• The length of the paper in normal 11pt TeX pages

• A list of editors whose interests are close to the subject of the article

• Name(s) of editor(s) with whom you have discussed this paper (optional)

• If a conference version of this paper exists or is being planned, please state conference status (name, date of conference, submission/acceptance/publication status of paper) and give a link to the conference version; otherwise state: "no conference version." (Please inform the editors if the conference status of the paper changes while the paper is in the editorial process.)

• Are you aware of a competing paper? A "competing paper" is a paper that makes an independent claim for one of your main results or a significantly overlapping result. (Please inform the editors if a competing paper comes to your attention during the editorial process.)

• Please include the following submission statement.
  "The authors of the paper identified as [full arXiv identifier] ("the Work") submit the Work for possible publication in "Theory of Computing" ("the Journal"). The author(s) of the Work agree that if the (revised) Work is accepted for publication in the Journal, then

  • the (revised) Work will be published under the Journal's Copyright Policy, including the Agreement therein.
  • upon acceptance of the (revised) Work for publication, the authors will share the Work's arXiv credentials with the Journal's Editors to enable the Editors to post an authentic copy of the (revised) Work on arXiv as a version of the original Work.

  I, the corresponding author, warrant that all authors have been advised and have consented to the terms of the Agreement and I act as duly authorized agent of the other authors." [You may omit the last sentence in case of a single author.]

• Any submission purporting to solve a long-standing open problem in complexity theory must follow our P/NP policy (below).

1. This is an agreement between Theory of Computing (the "Journal"), and the copyright owner, or co-owner, (the "Owner") of a paper (the "Work") submitted to be published in the Journal.
2. The Owner warrants that s/he has the full power and authority to enter into this Agreement and to grant the rights granted in this Agreement and in the Creative Commons license hereunder. The Owner further warrants that all authors have been advised and have consented to the terms of this agreement and the Owner acts as duly authorized agent of the other authors.
3. The Owner agrees, if the Work is accepted for publication in the Journal, to have it covered by a Creative Commons Attribution License.
4. The Owner agrees that no new version of the article, once it is published in the Journal, will be submitted to the Computing Research Repository without the agreement of the Journal. The Owner agrees to handle all changes or corrections via the assigned editor of their article in the Journal.
5. The Owner agrees that further publication of the Work, with the same or substantially the same content as appears in the Journal, will include an acknowledgment of prior publication in the Journal.
6. This Agreement is governed by the laws of the United States of America.

Before final publication, authors are requested to typeset their manuscript in ToCTeX. You will need to send us:

1. the appropriately formatted .tex and .bib files (not .bbl);
2. any figures you might have; and
3. author photos.

Detailed instructions follow.

1. Download toctex.zip and unzip it to a new directory. (If you're using an old Latex distribution, you might want to use this older package instead.)
2. Download toc-template.tex and store it in the same directory. Rename it to the name of your article. Open the file with an editor, and fill in the fields marked with exclamation marks, following the instructions in the file. Copy and paste the contents of your article into the appropriate place. We prefer if the entire article is in one tex file and not spread over several. One of the things you will be asked to supply is ACM and AMS classification codes. Please don't forget to include your affiliation, email address, and URL in the "Authors" section (after the bibliography).
3. Compile your article using "pdflatex" and "bibtex". (Note that the file will not compile properly in "latex".)
4. We recommend that you read the typesetting guidelines before starting to edit the ToCTeX version.
5. We encourage authors to study the source files of recently published articles by clicking the "Source ZIP" button on the article's home page.
6. Appendices: It is strongly recommended that all "Appendix" material be folded into the main text. If appendices are necessary, it is a firm ToC policy that all appendices precede the bibliography.
7. Bibliography: The use of a bib file is strongly encouraged. You may mine a file containing all the bib entries of published articles. If possible, please try to include first names of authors in your bib file.
8. Figures: Figures should be created using a vector-editing program, such as the highly recommended IPE or the powerful language TikZ, and should be saved as a PDF file. Do not use pixel-editing software like Paint or Photoshop.
9. Brief bio: Please include a brief biographic sketch of each author at the end of the article, in the "about the authors" section. Take the bio sketches of previously published papers as models. Some guidelines: please include basic information about your education, research, career (institutions, advisor(s), thesis title, honors/awards, list of areas of interest in some detail ["complexity theory" will not distinguish you from the majority of authors]). This is a good place to pay tribute to a mentor who helped shape your career - perhaps someone at your high school. We encourage you to include some personal information (place where you grew up, family, hobby, etc), sprinkle it with humor. Please include links in the bio sketch (to your advisor's and your Alma Mater's home page, your favorite hobby site, etc.). As far as links go, the more, the merrier.
10. Author photos: Please also send us photos for inclusion in the "About the authors" HTML page associated with the article. (The picture will not appear in the article.) The picture should be in portrait, and preferably not bigger than 300KB. Please name the files "lastname.jpg".

Last updated May 9, 2018.

Theory of Computing has adopted a variant of JACM's P/NP policy. Here is the text of our policy.

Theory of Computing frequently receives submissions purporting to solve a long-standing open problem in complexity theory, such as the P/NP problem ("P/NP manuscripts/submissions," for short). P/NP submissions tax the voluntary editorial and peer-reviewing resources used by Theory of Computing by requiring the review process to identify errors in them. Theory of Computing remains open to the possibility of eventual resolution of P/NP and related questions, and continues to welcome submissions on the subject. However, to mitigate the burden of repeated submissions of incremental corrections of errors identified during editorial review, Theory of Computing has adopted the following policy:

• Along with any P/NP submission, the author(s) must disclose to the Editors of Theory of Computing the submission/review history of all P/NP manuscripts by the same author(s), and the author(s) must share any reviews of such submissions with the Editors. This includes previous versions of the current submission as well as other P/NP manuscripts by the same author(s).
• No author may submit more than one P/NP manuscript to Theory of Computing in any 36 month period, except by invitation of the Editor-in-Chief. This applies to revisions of previously rejected manuscripts.

Last updated June 20, 2009.