How to submit a paper

Please send a short cover letter in plain text by email to Email with the following content:

the title of the paper
authors' names, affilations, email addresses (please highlight the corresponding author)
the length of the paper in normal 11pt TeX pages
an abstract in plain text with minimal pseudo TeX code for formulas (this will be seen by most editors)
a statement that you intend to submit the paper for publication in "Theory of Computing"
a list of editors whose interests are close to the subject of the article
if you previously discussed this paper with one of the editors, please let us know with whom.
if a conference version of this paper exists, please state conference status (name, date of conference, acceptance/publication status of paper) and give a link to the conference version; otherwise state: "no conference version." Please inform the editors if the conference status of the paper changes while the paper is in the editorial process.

The Subject line of the cover letter should say "ToC cover letter."

In a separate message, send the paper in portable document format (PDF) as well as in LaTeX. The Subject line should say "ToC submission."

We encourage prospective authors to sign up for email notification.

Final typesetting

If the paper is accepted, you will need to edit the paper in the ToCTeX format. The result will be a LaTeX document with documentclass "toc," which, in addition to satisfying the format requirements enforced by the toc.cls class file, follows certain guidelines on what ToC considers to be good practices. In addition to the ToCTeX instructions, your best guides are the source codes of the published articles. (Click on the "TeX" button on the home page of each article.)

One of the innovations built into the ToCTeX package is the introduction of eprint identifiers, a BibTeX field which creates links to a number of archives where bibliography items and related material are stored.

You will need to include in the article a list of descriptive keywords, ACM Computing Classification (1998) codes and AMS Mathematical Subject Classification (2000) codes.

ToC publishes brief biographic sketches at the end of each article. Please include your bio at the end of the article as prescribed by ToCTeX. Take the bio sketches from previously published papers as models. Include basic info on your education, research, and career (institutions, name of advisor, list of areas of interest in some detail ["complexity theory" won't distinguish you from the majority of authors]). Do also include some personal info (family, hobby, etc), sprinkle it with some humor. Please include links in the bio (to your advisor's and your Alma Mater's home page, your favorite hobby site, etc). As far as links go, the more, the merrier.

Please also send us a photo for inclusion on the "About the authors" HTML page associated with the article.

P/NP policy

Theory of Computing has adopted a variant of JACM's P/NP policy. Here is the text of our policy.

Last updated December 23, 2008.