Forest Products Journal Publication Style Sheet

The Forest Products Journal is published by the Forest Products Society. The Journal’s primary purposes include communicating research findings at the applied or practical level, communicating news and items of current interest to the membership, and describing Society programs and activities. Technical manuscripts submitted for publication are reviewed in a double-blind review process by referees selected by the Editor. Final evaluation of the material rests with the Editor. Authors who speak English as a second language are urged to have their manuscripts edited by a native English speaker prior to original submission. If necessary, papers will be submitted to a 3rd-party editing service at the author’s expense.

Manuscript Preparation

Before submitting manuscripts, authors should review the information presented below. Authors will be required to submit electronic files of the following items: author information (names, titles, affiliations, mailing addresses, and email addresses), title page, abstract, text, acknowledgments, literature cited, figure captions, tables, and figures. Do not incorporate figures or tables in the text.

  1. Authors’ names, titles, affiliations, complete addresses of the affiliation, and e-mail addresses should be included on a separate page. The title page should only include the title of the manuscript, which should be as concise as possible.
  2. The abstract should contain, in condensed form (250 words for an article, 100 for a Technical Note), the essence of the entire work, summarizing why the work was done, what was done and how, results and conclusions, and its significance.
  3. In the text, make certain all figures and tables are called out in numeric order and that all references are cited. References should be cited at the appropriate location in the text using the author-date style, in chronologic order. For example: . . . (Brown and Banks 1990, Adams 1995, Evans et al. 1997).
  4. References should be listed at the end of the manuscript in a section called "Literature Cited." They should be listed in alphabetic order. Translate foreign titles; indicate the original language and if an English abstract is available. If the author has consulted an online source, the citation should include the complete uniform resource locator (URL) and the date the source was accessed. If the source is an online version of a printed journal or other printed material, the citation should include the standard reference information, examples:
    Adams, R. 1997. Wood is good. Forest Prod. J. 47(1):68–70.
    Adams, R. and T. Banks. 1995. Drying Wood. Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey. 550 pp.
    Banks, T. 1991. Drying Wood for Fun and Profit. Van Nostrand Reinhold, New York. 485 pp.
    Cai, Z., M. O. Hunt, R. J. Ross, and L. A. Soltis. 2002. Screw withdrawal—A means to evaluate densities of in-situ wood members. In: Proceedings of the 13th International Symposium on Nondestructive Testing of Wood, August 19– 21, 2002, Berkeley, California; Forest Products Society, Madison Wisconsin. pp. 277–281.
    Evans, R. 2005. Drying schedules for southern pine. USDA Forest Products Laboratory GTR-324. 4 pp. http://www. fpl.fs.fed.us/documnts/pdf2005/fpl_ 2005_evans002.pdf. Accessed November 4, 2008.
  5. Prepare Equations using Microsoft Equation Editor 3.0 or MathType. Do NOT use Word 2007’s Equation Builder Tool.
  6. All tables should be typed on separate pages and numbered consecutively. Tables should be kept simple and used for summary data, rather than raw data, if possible. Captions should be included above each table.
  7. Detailed instructions for submitting figures are given in Preparing Figures for Publication in the Forest Products Journal. Figure files can be submitted using EPS, TIFF, PDF, and JPG formats. Failure to follow those instructions can delay publication of the paper and incur additional costs for the author.

The Forest Products Society strongly encourages the use of SI units. Authors, however, may still choose the units most appropriate for their audience. In principle, highly technical papers should give preference to SI units only; general interest or industry-targeted papers might be more appropriate in dual units. Consistent units should be used throughout the paper.

Technical manuscripts published in the Forest Products Journal are subject to a page charge of $135 per printed page ($155 per page if none of the first three authors is a member of the Forest Products Society).

Manuscript Submissions

All manuscripts to be considered for publication in the Forest Products Journal must be submitted through our online peer review system, PeerTrack. When first visiting the site, you will need to click on Register and follow the instructions. Helpful tutorial information on the submission process is available. As an author, you will be able to submit your manuscript and monitor its status throughout the review process, including view required revisions, submit revisions, and check on the outcome of editor decisions. Please note that authors need to upload and enter all information related to a manuscript. After loading the files, the submission will be converted into a PDF file. The submitting author must approve the converted file before the submission process is complete.

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