Guidelines on Manuscript Length

Optics Letters articles are limited to three published journal pages.

• All estimates are made in terms of single-column Optics Letters lines (OL lines). Whenever a rule gives a line equivalent for a number of characters (letters, numerals, and spaces), it is to be understood that partial OL lines will be counted as full lines.
• Standard headings take 36 OL lines.
• If the title is longer than 66 characters, add 4 lines for every additional 66 characters.
• If more than 1 address is to be given, add 7 lines for each additional address
• If the abstract is longer than 700 characters (100 words), add 1 line for each additional 100 characters. Subtract 1 line for every 100 characters fewer than 700 characters.
• For the text of a manuscript, count the total number of manuscript lines (exclude equations). Count the number of characters in 3 representative manuscript lines (keeping in mind that each space counts as one character), and calculate the number of OL lines using the formula:

  number of OL lines = (total number of manuscript text lines) x (number of characters on 3 manuscript lines / 156).

• A simple equation occupies 3 OL lines for up to 50 characters, and 1 additional OL line for each additional 50 characters on the same equation line. A complex equation (involving sigma, ?, fractions, subscripts, or superscripts) will occupy 4 OL lines for each additional 50 characters.
• For each table, count the number of lines per table and add 2 lines; double this number if any line exceeds 56 characters.
• For each figure caption count 1 line for each 56 characters and add 2 lines.
• For each reference count 1 line for each 56 characters.
• For each figure that can be reduced to single-column width, calculate the height / width ratio. Add these ratios for all figures and multiply the result by 19.5 to get the equivalent number of OL lines. (A square single-column figure will occupy 19.5 OL lines.)
• Total manuscript length : If the estimate of the total number of OL lines is less than 360, there should be no problem with the manuscript length. If the manuscript office estimates the length to be between 360 and 410 lines, the manuscript will be sent to the referees but may need to be shortened - incurring additional delays - before publication. Manuscripts estimated to be longer than 410 lines will be returned to the authors for shortening without processing, and the shortened manuscript will be assigned a new receipt date.