Guidelines for Authors | AIChE

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Guidelines for Authors

What is CEP?

Chemical Engineering Progress (CEP) is the flagship publication of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE), the global home of chemical engineers. CEP is a trade magazine, not an academic research journal; CEP does not publish case histories or journal-type papers that report the results of experimental research. Feature articles in CEP give widely applicable guidance, “how to” advice, or an overview of a technology and are written by subject-matter experts.

Who Reads CEP?

All 60,000 AIChE members have access to the digital flipbook and the CEP mobile app, and the print magazine is mailed to about 19,000 members. The majority of our readers work in industry, while a smaller percentage work in academia. Our audience includes chemical engineers, biological engineers, chemists, and related scientists at all stages of their careers.

What Are We Looking For?

CEP welcomes submissions of technical feature articles that give how-to guidance, provide lessons learned, or describe best practices.

See the Editorial Calendar to get an idea of some of the topics we are currently working on. Inquire with the editors if you are interested in writing a particular feature article on the calendar. (Note: We typically fill the Editorial Calendar far in advance, so look at topics that are six to eight months out.) If your topic of interest is not on the Editorial Calendar, that does not mean we are not interested. We are always open to submissions on any topic related to chemical engineering.

CEP does not accept case history manuscripts. Case studies should only be used to teach a lesson or provide an example of concepts taught earlier in the article. We do not publish research papers.

What to Submit

Please submit an abstract and outline of your article topic. The outline should include main section headings, as well as a description of what will be covered in each section and what graphics will be included. Including such an outline will allow us to provide better feedback to you.

If you have already written a manuscript that has not been published that you think might be suitable for publication in CEP, feel free to submit it for review.

Please submit your manuscript, abstract, or outline here.

If you are developing a manuscript, keep the structure and formatting guidelines below in mind.

Structuring Your Article

  • Word Count: Aim for 2,500–3,500 words; we will not review articles over 6,500 words
  • Title: Please give your article a relevant title
  • Deck: 1–3 sentences that sum up the article contents
  • Introduction: The last paragraph of the introduction should tell readers what the article describes, explains, or explores.
  • Body: Separate the body into sections. Use subheadings to break up the text.
  • Closing thoughts: Rather than writing a recap of the content covered in the article, use the final section to address future or upcoming developments in the topic area. The closing thoughts paragraph should offer tips, or discuss implications, challenges, and uncertainties.
  • Bios: Please include a bio for each author. Bios should run no longer than 200 words. Each bio should include the author’s job title and relevant work history, schools attended and degrees received, professional society affiliations, publications and patents, areas of specialization, etc.

Literature Cited

Please include no more than 25 references per article. The purpose of literature cited in CEP is to provide sources of information for statistics and measurements, and to give the reader the ability to find further information. Our reference style can be found here. For inline citations, please do not use Word field codes. Simply place the number of the citation at the end of the relevant sentence in parenthesis.

Graphics and Figures

  • If you are submitting graphics or figures for review, low-resolution images can be sent with the manuscript for review purposes.
  • For publication, we require high-resolution images of at least 300 dpi at 3 inches wide.
  • If your manuscript is accepted for publication, please send all image files in one of the following formats: .png, .tif, .jpg, .ai, or .eps file type.
  • If you have an illustration that is not at a high enough resolution for publication, we may be able to recreate it.
  • Please include a descriptive caption for every image or figure. Captions should consist of full sentences and help the reader to readily understand the figure. Click here for caption examples.

Formatting Your Abstract or Manuscript

The Word document should not have any automatic formatting. As you prepare the manuscript, type everything as plain text in the same font size (we prefer Times New Roman, 12 point, double-spaced), and manually format bold, italics, bullets, paragraph indents, etc. Do not use automatic footnoting or endnoting for references; rather, list all references at the end of the article.

CEP Editing Process Timeline

After an article is scheduled for publication, it undergoes two rounds of formal editing with a team of CEP editors. This process takes about two months. Articles are edited for clarity and style. If necessary, figures and tables are recreated according to CEP convention.

Authors will have two opportunities to view and approve the text during editing and one opportunity to approve the layout.

Example Articles

Copyright Policy

AIChE will require a copyright assignment for any articles to be published in CEP. To avoid any problems regarding copyright infringement, submit your draft to only one publication at a time. If the paper has been published or presented previously, let us know so that we can proceed accordingly.