Instructions for Undergraduate Authors

Manuscript Submissions

Authors must submit manuscripts to SIAM Undergraduate Research Online (SIURO) in PDF format. Authors should enter submissions through the Submission & Tracking System. 

If you have not used the Journal Submission & Tracking System, you'll need to create an account.
Instructions for using this online submissions system. 

Elements Required for Submission

Along with the manuscript itself, authors must include with their submission:

A letter from their project advisor that:

• Lists 3 potential reviewers for the article (these should be entered into the system also under potential referees)
• Documents the fact that the authors did a significant amount of the research and that the research was done while the authors were undergraduates

A cover letter that contains:

• The title of the manuscript
• A short readable explanation about the paper and why it is important
• A statement that the paper has not been previously published and is not currently under consideration by another journal
• Author contact information

As an option, submissions may include supplemental files.

• Authors are highly encouraged to prepare their papers using SIAM’s macros for SIURO. Though doing so is optional, using the SIAM macros enables features that will aid editors and referees during review.
• SIAM's LaTeX 2e macros for SIURO are available online or by email request.

Submitted papers needn’t conform to any particular style or format; however they should be prepared with software that has adequate equation editing capabilities.

Additional Requirements

• As noted above, the submitted paper must be in PDF format.
• Figures and tables should be labeled consecutively throughout the paper.
• Submitted papers should be authored or coauthored by undergraduate students and written in English.
• Project advisors should be listed on the line following the authors with the words ‘Project advisor:’ before the name.

High school students may also submit papers to SIURO.

Figures and Tables

Figures and tables, if any, must be embedded "inline" in your PDF manuscript file. Supplemental files are accepted, but are optional. See the section below titled Supplemental Files for specifics.

Manuscript Length

There is a limit of approximately 20 pages and three megabytes. The limit can be exceeded, however, substantial deviation from the limit requires that the referees, reviewing editor, and editor-in-chief be convinced that a longer paper is required.

Manuscript Receipt

Upon receipt of a submission, the SIAM office sends the corresponding author email acknowledging receipt and providing the manuscript reference number. Authors are asked to include the manuscript number in all correspondence regarding the paper. After checking the files the author submitted, the SIAM office contacts the editor-in-chief to let him/her know that there is a new manuscript. All subsequent review correspondence with the associate editor and the SIAM office regarding the manuscript will be done via the email messages. You can use the “Send Manuscript Correspondence” feature in the web-based system to communicate with SIAM staff, or send a message to SIAM Staff with any questions. The editor-in-chief reviews each submission to determine whether it is appropriate for SIURO and, if so, which associate editor is best suited to handle the review. Note that the editor-in-chief can reject papers that are clearly inappropriate for SIURO without assigning them to an associate editor.

Supplemental Files

Authors are welcome to take advantage of the web-based nature of the publication by submitting supplemental files that include animations, software demonstrations, and innovative graphics. Supplementary materials will be evaluated with the manuscript as part of the peer-review process. View Guidelines for Supplementary Materials.

Additional Information

Project Advisors

Each paper must be submitted with a letter from a project advisor, who may be a faculty member at the student’s institution or someone associated with a non-academic organization or government lab who supervised the research. The project advisor’s letter must document the fact that the research was done while the student was an undergraduate. The letter should state the student's current status, including the student's graduation date or anticipated graduation date, major, and an assessment by the project advisor of the amount of research performed independently by the student.

Prize Competitions

Students may submit their work to SIURO and to a competition for undergraduates, such as the Undergraduate Research Project Competition (USRESP). If the paper is under prize consideration at the time of SIURO submission, the cover letter must note this. If the paper is submitted to SIURO following award of a prize and resulting appearance on a website, a page one footnote is required.

Other Conferences

If the paper appeared in a preliminary form in a conference proceedings, this must be clearly indicated in both the cover letter and in a footnote on the title page of the manuscript. If the paper contains material (for example, tables or figures) from another published source, the previously published material must be accompanied by written permission from the author and publisher.