About the Journal

Focus and Scope

CERN is a scientific laboratory whose main purpose is fundamental research in High-Energy Physics (HEP). An important task of the Organization is to communicate its work, discoveries, and achievements, also via publications in books, journals, and proceedings of conferences, in paper and/or electronic form.

The CERN Yellow Reports series was started in 1955 with the CERN Report (Yellow Reports) series to which it was later added the Proceedings of High-Energy Physics Schools series. The series provides a medium for communicating CERN-related work where publication in a journal is not appropriate and includes proceedings of conferences, schools and workshops having a large impact on the future of CERN, as well as reports on new activities which do not yet have a natural platform. The series also includes reports on detectors and technical papers from individual CERN departments, again criteria being that the audience should be large and the duration of interest long. Documents relating to processes which could lead to patents are particularly appropriate since a departmental report does not give the necessary protection of intellectual propriety rights.

In 2017 the existing CERN Yellow Report series have been re-organized into three new ones: CERN Yellow Reports: School Proceedings, CERN Yellow Reports: Conference Proceedings and CERN Yellow Reports: Monographs, to better accomodate the different types of content they publish.

In particular, the CERN Yellow Reports: Monographs publishes monographs (Technical Design Reports on detectors, technical papers from individual CERN departments, historical reports, etc.) which were previously published in the more general CERN Reports (Yellow Reports) series.

Peer Review Process

The CERN Reports Editorial Board (CREB) reports to the Scientific Information Policy Board and is responsible for the oversight of issues related to the CERN Yellow Reports series. As documented below, it is responsible for approving individual Reports in a two-step process: approval in principle (i.e. deciding if the subject matter is in-principle appropriate for publication in one of the CERN Yellow Report series); and final approval (i.e. confirming that the completed document is acceptable for publication and printing).

Responsibility for detailed checking of the contents is generally delegated to the Editor of each individual report who is required to confirm that the document is ready for printing (so-called "bon à tirer" in French).


The membership of the Board comes from different areas of CERN that are involved in providing content for and/or for production of the CERN Yellow Reports series. This includes experimental and theoretical high-energy physics, accelerator physics and engineering, as well as information technologies and publishing.

The membership of the committee is as follows:

  • Carlos Lourenço, chairman of the CREB, Physics Department (Experimental Physics)
  • Gian Francesco Giudice, Physics Department (Theoretical Physics)
  • Alexander Kohls, Scientific Information Service
  • Tim Smith, Information Technology Department
  • Frank Zimmermann, Beams Department
  • Jens Vigen, Publisher for the CERN Yellow Reports

Open Access Policy

Knowledge transfer is an integral part of CERN’s mission. Moreover CERN has recently developed an Open Access Policy for its publications.

Therefore volumes in the CERN Yellow Reports: Monographs series are published in Open Access under the Creative Commons CC-BY-4.0 Attribution License.

Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement

The principles outlined below are inspired by the guidelines of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).
For more details please refer to the general guidelines of COPE at https://publicationethics.org/resources/guidelines.

Duties of Editors

  1. The Editors are responsible for deciding which of the articles submitted to the journal should be published;
  2. The Editors may discuss with other editors or reviewers in making decision;
  3. The Editors evaluate manuscripts for their intellectual content without regard to race, gender, sexual orientation, religious belief, ethnic origin, citizenship, or political philosophy of the authors;
  4. The Editors must not disclose any information about a submitted manuscript to anyone other than the corresponding author, reviewers, potential reviewers, other editorial advisers, and the publisher, as appropriate;
  5. The Editors should ensure a fair and appropriate peer review process;
  6. Unpublished materials disclosed in a submitted manuscript must not be used by anyone who has a view of the manuscript in his or her own research without the express written consent of the author;
  7. The Editors should guard the integrity of the published record by issuing corrections and retractions when needed and pursuing suspected or alleged research and publication misconduct.

Duties of the Editorial Board

  1. The Editorial Board must keep information pertaining to submitted manuscripts confidential.
  2. The Editorial Board must disclose any conflicts of interest.
  3. The Editorial Board must evaluate manuscripts only for their intellectual content.
  4. The Editorial Board is responsible for making publication decisions for submitted manuscripts.

Duties of the Reviewer

  1. Information regarding manuscripts submitted by authors should be kept confidential and be treated as privileged information;
  2. Reviews should be conducted objectively. There shall be no personal criticism of the author. Reviewers should express their views clearly with supporting arguments;
  3. Reviewers should identify relevant published work that has not been cited by the authors. Any statement that had been previously reported elsewhere should be accompanied by the relevant citation;
  4. Reviewers should request to the Editors attention any substantial similarity or overlap between the manuscript under consideration and any other published paper of which they have personal knowledge;
  5. In case, any reviewer feels that it is not possible for him/her to complete review of manuscript within stipulated time then the same must be communicated to the editors, so that the same could be sent to any other reviewer;
  6. Reviewers should not review manuscripts in which they have conflicts of interest resulting from competitive, collaborative, or other relationships or connections with any of the authors, companies, or institutions connected to the papers.

Duties of the Author

  1. The Authors should submit papers only on work that has been conducted in an ethical and responsible manner and that complies with all relevant legislation;
  2. The Authors should   present   their   results   clearly,   honestly,   and   without   fabrication, falsification or inappropriate data manipulation;
  3. The Authors should endeavor to describe their methods clearly and unambiguously so that their findings can be confirmed by others;
  4. The Authors should adhere to publication requirements that submitted work is original, is not plagiarized, and has not been published elsewhere;
  5. The Authors must certify that the manuscript is not currently being considered for publication elsewhere;
  6. The Authors should ensure that they have written entirely original works, and if the authors have used the work and/or words of others this must be appropriately cited;
  7. The Authors should take collective responsibility for submitted and published work;
  8. A paper should contain sufficient detail and references to permit others to replicate the work. Duplicitous or expressively inaccurate statements constitute unethical behaviour and are unacceptable;
  9. Proper acknowledgment of the work of others must always be given. Authors should cite publications that have been influential in determining the nature of the reported work;
  10. The Authors should ensure that the authorship accurately reflects individuals’ contributions to the work and its reporting; and where there are others who have participated in certain substantive aspects of the research project, they should be acknowledged;
  11. The Authors should disclose relevant funding sources and any existing or potential conflicts of interest. All sources of financial support for the project should be disclosed;
  12. When an author discovers a significant error or inaccuracy in his/her own published work, it is the author’s obligation to promptly notify the journal editors and the editor to retract or correct the paper.

Indexing

This publication is indexed in INSPIRE and the CERN Document Server (CDS).

Sponsors

This series is sponsored by

Sources of Support

This series is supported by

Journal History

CERN is a scientific laboratory whose main purpose is fundamental research in High-Energy Physics (HEP). An important task of the Organization is to communicate its work, discoveries, and achievements, also via publications in books, journals, and proceedings of conferences, in paper and/or electronic form.

The CERN Yellow Reports series was started in 1955 with the CERN Report (Yellow Reports) series to which it was later added the Proceedings of High-Energy Physics Schools series. The series provides a medium for communicating CERN-related work where publication in a journal is not appropriate and includes proceedings of conferences, schools and workshops having a large impact on the future of CERN, as well as reports on new activities which do not yet have a natural platform. The series also includes reports on detectors and technical papers from individual CERN departments, again criteria being that the audience should be large and the duration of interest long. Documents relating to processes which could lead to patents are particularly appropriate since a departmental report does not give the necessary protection of intellectual propriety rights.

In 2017 the existing CERN Yellow Report series have been re-organized into three new ones: CERN Yellow Reports: School Proceedings, CERN Yellow Reports: Conference Proceedings and CERN Yellow Reports: Monographs, to better accomodate the different types of content they publish.

In particular, the CERN Yellow Reports: Monographs series publishes reports on detectors and technical papers from individual CERN departments, criteria being that the audience should be large and the duration of interest long.