About the Journal

RILEM Technical Letters – new open access journal of RILEM

Since 1947, the mission of RILEM, the International Union of Laboratories and Experts in Construction Materials, has been to advance scientific knowledge related to construction materials, systems and structures and to promote and encourage transfer and application of this knowledge worldwide.
With the scientific peer review journal, RILEM Technical Letters, RILEM ventures into the new era of open access publishing by disseminating contributions breaking new ground in the field of construction materials science.

The history of the journal can be found here.

 

Scope of the journal and profile of the publications

RILEM Technical Letters publishes scientific papers devoted to major innovative research or strategic research needs in the field of construction and building materials science. The format of the papers is aimed at fast communication of the breakthrough reports and reviews: short letters available online.

The authors are welcome to share their scientific opinions on the current research topics and future strategic research needs to enhance excellence in research and its applications and stimulate new directions in the field. 

The opinions shared by the authors in their papers should not be considered unique with the opinions of the whole RILEM Association. In fact, RILEM and the journal promote a platform for experts to freely share their research and scientific knowledge. The authors are solely responsible for the contents of their papers.

 

Publication rules

Before submission, please first send a cover letter by e-mail to the Editor-in-Chief. Please include: title, list of authors, a short abstract (ca. 200 words) and a list of 3-5 most recent references dealing with the topic.

The article is invited to submission either based on the sent abstract or directly upon invitation from an Editor. At this point the prospective author will receive the author credentials from the Managing Editor and can submit the paper via the webpage.

Please note that the article publication fees are sponsored by RILEM. This means that, for the submission to be considered, one of the authors should be a RILEM member or become a member upon submission.

RILEM membership fees together with different special discounts (e.g. for PhD students or different countries) can be seen here. Please also see the other benefits of joining RILEM.

Upon submission the authors grant the journal right of first publication in open access and agree on the copyright statement and submission rules.

 

Open access policy, copyrights, depositing (self-archiving)

RILEM Technical Letters is published as an open access journal available online. The published articles (full texts) are available for searching, viewing or downloading at no cost.

There are no publication fees for the authors. Publishing in RILEM Technical Letters is sponsored by RILEM as an additional benefit offered to RILEM members. This means that, for the submission to be considered, one of the authors should be a RILEM member or become a member upon submission. RILEM membership fees together with different special discounts (e.g. for PhD students or different countries) can be seen here. Please also see the other benefits of joining RILEM.

Authors retain copyright of the articles published in RILEM Technical Letters and grant the journal the right of first publication with open access. The work is simultaneously licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0) that allows others to share and adapt the work under the following terms: 1) a proper attribution is given in a form of a reference to the original work's authorship and initial publication in RILEM Technical Letters (bibliographic record with the DOI link); 2) a link to the license is provided; 3) the changes (if any) are indicated.

This journal permits and encourages authors to post items submitted to the journal (including the publisher's final layout) on personal websites or institutional repositories after acceptance and/or publication, while providing bibliographic details that credit their publication in RILEM Technical Letters (bibliographic record with the DOI link).

See also the policy indexed in SHERPA/RoMEO

 

Publishing schedule

RILEM Technical Letters uses Continuous Article Publishing (CAP) scheme (no issues are released). New articles are continuously added to the current volume shortly after their acceptance. RILEM Technical Letters publishes 1 volume per year, with 20 letters per volume.

 

Indexing

RILEM Technical Letters is indexed in ISSN, Scopus, Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), PKP Index, Google Scholar, Electronic Journals Library, Sherpa Romeo, Mir@bel, Scimago. The journal is also a member of Crossref. The Crossref membership enables that the articles are linked with their permanent DOI identifiers. Moreover, all the references cited in the articles are deposited in the DOI index curated by Crossref.

 

Digital archiving

The articles published in this journal are archived in the Public Knowledge Project Preservation Network (PKP PN) composed of 9 preservation nodes located around the world. For more details see: https://pkp.sfu.ca/pkp-lockss/

 

Errata

The authors have a possibility of correcting their papers in case serious errors are spotted after the publication. In such case, the old version is replaced with a new corrected version of the paper containing a note that describes the modifications and links to the original version. All versions of the paper are accessible on the webpage.

 

Editorial policies

Conflicts of interest
The authors need to state any possible conflict of interest in a dedicated section in their article.

Upon receiving a submission, the editors will evaluate whether any conflict of interest exists. In the case of a conflict of interest involving the editor, the case is reported to the editor-in-chief and the submission is passed to another editor. If the conflict of interest involves the editor-in-chief, the submission is handled by the deputy editor-in-chief.

The editors also avoid possible conflicts of interest upon selecting the external reviewers.

Dealing with allegations of research misconduct
The authors are made aware and need to confirm upon submission that their submitted manuscript does not involve any form of research misconduct. Research misconduct concerns in particular: plagiarism (including self-plagiarism), manipulation of authorship (adding authors without significant contribution or removing contributing authors), data falsification, interference with the review process, etc.

In chosen cases, the editors may use anti-plagiarism software to check a manuscript or contact the authors for explanations. In special cases, the institutions of the authors may be contacted.

Any submissions associated with research misconduct will be rejected.

Any litigation case will be reviewed by the Editor-in-Chief with the assistance of the Editorial Board. In dealing with allegations, the guidelines by COPE are followed.

In case of serious research misconduct or violation of publication ethics, or on justified request by the authors, retraction of a paper will be considered. Each case will be reviewed by the Editor-in-Chief with a support of the Associate Editors. Appropriate notice will be displayed on the webpage along with the retracted paper. In general, the guidleines of COPE on handling retractions will be followed.

Review and decision policy
RILEM Technical letters is a peer-review journal. Each new submission is assigned by the Editor-in-Chief to a member of the editorial board (Handling Editor). At this point, one or more members of the editorial board perform the initial review. Based on the decision of the Handling Editor, the submission can be rejected or sent for external review. In the latter case, at least one report by an external reviewer is required. The Handling Editor takes the final decision based on the recommendation of external reviewers and other Editors.

The journal uses a single blind-review scheme, which means that the identity of the reviewers is not revealed to the authors.