Call for Papers

Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, we postponed the face-to-face symposium to the next year's ALC'22. Instead, we have decided to call for papers for online poster presentations, mainly to give young researchers and students the opportunity to make presentations. Refer to the topics page for the target research areas.

Each contributor should submit 1 page (A4 paper) of an abstract and contact information via the ALC'21 Online web site by the deadline shown below. On abstract submission, everyone can apply to the excellent presentation awards by checking corresponding checkbox in the application form. You are also required to assign 1 to 2 possible referees on the award application, however, the final selection of referees will be decided by the Program Committee. We are also considering setting up a “We Like It!” award for all presentations that will be evaluated by all participants. Details of this award will be announced in the web page and/or emails to the participants.

The program committee will make a decision to accept or reject titles by September 10 (Fri) 2021, and the decision will be announced by e-mail to each author.

For all accepted papers, it is required to submit a short (about 10 min) presentation video and a TOC image by the deadline shown below. If the video/TOC is not submitted within the deadline, it will be treated as withdrawn. The submitted abstract, video and TOC image will be published online about 10 days prior to the symposium, and all participants can access to the submitted contents in advance. During the poster session of the symposium, only 2-minute short presentations and discussions will be held.

Accepted authors can submit a manuscript for journal with peer review. See the Publication page in detail.

Call for Post-Deadline Papers

We will be accepting post-deadline papers for those who have latest hot topics that were not submitted in time for the regular papers. The deadline for the post-deadline papers is October 1. To apply for Post-deadline papers, you need to submit a 10-minute video and a TOC image in addition to the abstract, just like a regular poster. The deadline for submission of the video and the TOC images is October 1, the same as for regular posters. If the video/TOC is not submitted within the deadline, it will be treated as withdrawn.

Abstract Submission

Abstract Preparation Instructions

1 page of camera-ready abstract must be in clear English and typed within a rectangle 170 mm wide by 240 mm high (left/right/top/bottom margins of 20/20/27/30 mm) on A4 paper (NOT US letter). The required format is:

• Title (12-point, bold, Times New Roman or Times like font), centered at the top of the page.
• Author's name(s), affiliation(s), address(es) and e-mail address of the corresponding author, centered below the title with one blank line using 10-point Times New Roman or Times like font. Underline the name of the speaker.
• Two columns (each column has 81 mm width and the column spacing is 8 mm) of body text should start after one blank line using 10-point Times New Roman or Times like font, including references and figure/table if necessary. Please use single line spacing.
• Color figures are acceptable, however, abstract book will be printed in black & white.
• Page numbers should NOT be included.
• Convert the prepared file into PDF format using Adobe Acrobat or other compatible software. Other file types are NOT acceptable.
• The PDF file must be smaller than or equal to 1.5 MB. If it is larger than 1.5 MB, try reducing file size by Acrobat.

Templates for Camera Ready Abstract

Abstract Submission Site

Short Video/TOC Image Submission

Short Video Preparation Instructions

• About 10 minutes video including presentation slides and audio in mp4 (or m4v) format must be prepared within 200 MB.
• The short video should include the entire contents of your presentation. Participants will use the video presentation in advance, and as a rule, only a discussion session will be held during the poster presentation time.
• It is recommended that you use “Widescreen (16:9)” for the slide size.
• You can create a presentation video by using the recording and video exporting function in your presentation software. See the links below for more details (Please search for the procedure by yourself if you are using other software than PowerPoint or Keynote).
• To keep within the specified capacity of 200 MB, it is recommended to select 720p (HD Video or Internet quality) as the quality for video export.
• Before submitting, please make sure that the slide quality and volume are appropriate and that you can hear clear audio without noise.
• It may take several minutes or several tens of minutes in some cases to upload large video file. Please make sure you have a stable and fast network environment, and allow plenty of time for the work to be done.
• Submitted videos will be uploaded to YouTube, but will only be linked from the online program and will not be available to the public. Videos uploaded to YouTube will be deleted within one month after the conference.

TOC Image Preparation Instructions

• The TOC (table of contents) image will be appeared in the online program “in this way”. The TOC image will also be used in the 2-minute presentation (promotional presentation to get people to visit your poster) held at the virtual poster site. So please prepare a single image that is attractive and can also be used for the short presentation. You do not need to include the title of your talk, name, affiliation, or the poster number.
• Recommended image size is 1920×1080 pixels in width×height. If the size is different, it will be resized to fit 1920×1080.
• The image should be in JPEG, PNG or BMP format within 3 MB.

Short Video/TOC Image Submission Site

Publication

The conference papers of ALC'21 Online will be published in an open access journal, e-Journal of Surface Science and Nanotechnology (e-JSSNT). A speaker can submit one of the following papers without publication fee.

Regular Paper Technical Note Review (for the plenary and invited speakers) Proceeding Paper	e-JSSNT (JVSS)

Of the four options above, “Proceeding Paper” is the same as the previous "Conference (Proceedings)" and is treated as a volume for each conference. The other three are treated the same as normally submitted papers, with the only difference being that the name of the conference at which the paper was presented is included in the Notes section at the end of the paper.

All papers will be subject to peer review. The excellent presentation award winners will be required to submit a conference paper though the submission does not guarantee eventual acceptance.

The conference papers will be nominated for various prizes of the Japan Society of Vacuum and Surface Science.

How to Submit Your Paper

1. Prepare your manuscript according to the instructions page. The authors are encouraged to use color figures and movies.
2. Visit the ScholarOne to submit your manuscript. Please create your account first if you have never logged in before.
3. Choose “Author” tab on the top, and “Start Submission” menu on the left, then “Begin Submission”.
4. Please choose “Conference Paper” for [Type] in Step 1 (Type, Title, & Abstract), otherwise you will be required to pay a submission fee.
5. In Step 3 (Attributes), choose “Conference-ALC” for [Conference Name], and select a desired type (e.g. “Conference (Regular Paper)”) for [Conference Paper Type].
6. See also “How to select Conference Paper Type in the submission process”.

Manuscript Deadline

Presentation Instructions

Instructions for Oral Presentations

In this symposium, only invited speakers have oral presentations. The oral presentations will be given online using Zoom. In addition to the normal lectures, we are planning to have virtual lounge using breakout room in Zoom where invited speakers and participants can exchange information freely. Details of the presentation instructions and how to access to the online session and lounge will be provided individually.

Instructions for Poster Presentations

Poster sessions will be held online using Gather. Only Google Chrome and Firefox for Windows and Mac are officially supported web browser to access Gather. If you do not have these browsers, download and install one of them in advance. Browsers on tablets and smartphones are not supported.

During the poster session, please change your avatar name to something like ‘19PD03 Suzuki (JAIST)’, so that participants can identify which poster you are presenting. You can edit your avatar name by clicking on your account name at the bottom center of the screen.

In the poster session, you will be asked to make a 2-minute presentation first. This short presentation is a promotion to get people to come and see your poster, so please make it concise and attractive (and punctual!). The short presentations will be held in the poster room in the virtual conference site (Poster rooms are available for each session code such as ‘19PA’, ‘19PB’ etc.). The slide used in the short presentation will be the TOC image you sent with video (slide sharing will be done by the organizer).

After the short presentations, discussions for each talk will be held in respective poster booth. For individual discussions, please share your own slides (you can use the slides used in the 10-minute video (+α), so there is no need to prepare a poster-specific image).

Since precautions will be given on the day of the session, please gather at your poster room (the red area of the room, not in the individual booth) at least 10 minutes before the start of the session.

Rehearsal on how to use Gather

A rehearsal time to practice using Gather will be available before the meeting. Details will be provided along with instructions on how to access the online program which will be sent to speakers and registered participants (not open to the public).