From Scholarpedia

These instructions for authors aim to be a quick, self-contained and ---hopefully--- useful guidelines for Scholarpedia authors that have no knowledge in wikitext writing.

In the following the reader will find:

• An introduction to some elementary actions he/she should master to become an editor--independent author.
• An introduction to Scholarwiki, the dialect of wikitext markup language on which articles are written in Scholarpedia.
• A few ready--to--cut--and--paste examples of useful advanced editing topics.
• A review of the editorial conventions in use in Scholarpedia.
• An overview of the administrative procedures.
• A commented list of links for the reader wanting to improve his knowledge.

Remarks

• This is an help page: do not use it as an example of encyclopedic article.
• This page is written by using advanced Scholarwiki features. The beginner is not advised to read its source code.
• Please correct misprint or signal them to the author.

Notations

The following conventions will be adopted:

• Important remarks you are supposed to read and ---hopefully--- to remember are written like this line.
• the wikitext [[code]] you have to write verbatim in the source page is written like this line
• Advanced sections that can be skipped at a first lecture are marked by (*)

Author's everyday--actions

Here is a list of the actions you should master before writing anything.

• To contact the editors: send an email to the editor who invited you.
• To sign in: click on the sign-in link on the top right zone of the page and write your Scholarpedia user--name and Scholarpedia password in the correspondent boxes. If you do not have/remember your user--name or password contact the editors. In the following we will assume that you have signed in: to check this you should see your user name on the top right zone of the page.
• To search an article page: type one or more words in the title on the search--scholarpedia box the top-left corner of Scholarpedia page and click the Title button. If in the results you see ---in underlined blue--- a link to the complete title of the article you searched, click on it and you will be redirected to the article page. This procedure works in particular for your own article page and your own user--page; to avoid this procedure you are advised to create a bookmark to them in your preferred browser. If you do not find the article you are searching, go back to the search--scholarpedia box, retype the wanted words and press the full text button for a research in the whole text of all pages of Scholarpedia.
• To edit a page/article: click on the edit--this--article tab on the top of each page. After modifying the wikitext, do not forget to click the save button to save and archive the article. Each time you preview the article a temporary cache copy is saved (overwriting the previous one); you are nevertheless advised to frequently save the article. If you really do not want to save modifications and just quit the article, press the cancel link on the bottom of the page to delete all eventual changes.
• To view the source code of a page: search for the page, and proceed like editing the page, but at the end click the cancel link on the bottom of the page to delete eventual changes.

Meaning of the most important tabs you see at the top of each article/page

At the top of each article page you see different tabs you can click. Here is their meaning:

• article: shows the article layout (Default)
• reviews: shows the comments written on the article (by referees or other scholars)
• edit this article: click this to see and/or edit the wikitext
• revisions: here you can compare different archived version of the page
• author: tools for Automatic Reminders/Privacy/Email Notification/Invite co-author/Submit the article/Resign

The built--in on--line editor

When editing a page, on the top of the page you have some iconized buttons that can help you in reducing editing. From left to right the button action on the selected text is the following: Bold, Italic, Internal link, External link, Section, Image, Media,math--tag,nowiki-tag. Try and use them!. For further reading look at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Edit_toolbar. An advanced--online editor ( Wikied) is available for skillfull users.

Off--line editors

We advice you to learn Scholarwiki and to use the on--line editor. If you really want an off--line editor:

• OpenOffice.org versions 2.4 and later have a MediaWiki export filter built in. Just open a Writer document and click File - Export. Then, change File format to MediaWiki
• See also [1].

Your user--page

When the editor created your account, a user--page was automatically created for you. We ask you to put there a mini-CV, fields of research, best articles, awards, books you wrote, a picture and other scientific informations you'll like.

• To reach a user--page: type User:USER_NAME in the search box in the top--left part of any page and follow the proposed blu link.
• To reach your user--page:, if you are logged--in just click on the link with your user name in the top--right corner of any page.
• To edit your user--page: reach your user--page and proceed as for editing a page.
• To see an example of user--page: click this link to see an example of user--page
• To change preferences, including the spelling of your name, your affiliation, email, password, the size of the edit window, your self--imposed deadline and other preferences, click on the preferences link at the top--right corner in your user--page. If you do not see this link it means that you are not logged in: sign in and restart. See Scholarpedia:User_preferences_help for a detailed review of available preferences.

Special pages

Have a look at http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Special:Specialpages, you will find some useful informations, like eg a list of most popular articles in Scholarpedia.

Introduction to Scholarwiki

Basics of Scholarwiki

Web pages in Scholarpedia (including encyclopedic articles) are written in a dialect of the wikitext markup language to which we refer here as Scholarwiki. The software that runs Scholarwiki is a branch of Mediawiki 1.5.4, a free software that implements the wikitext dialect used in Wikipedia, to which we refer as Mediawiki. For this reason Scholarwiki and Mediawiki are pretty similar but not totally identical, meaning that some advanced features of Mediawiki might be absent in Scholarwiki and viceversa.

Paragraphs, white space and indentation

• A carriage return at the end of the line (new line) is ignored in layout.
• Paragraphs and other structures are separated by white lines. Contrary to LaTeX, the more white lines you leave, the more vertical space is skipped.
• New paragraphs are not indented by default. To indent a new paragraph start it with :, ::, ::: according to the wanted indentation.
• If the first character of a non empty new paragraph is a white space you get a colored box useful for source code.Pay attention, starting a new paragraph with an unwanted white space is a typical error.

This line started with a space. Remark the different fonts-style and backgroud color.

• A source code box can also be obtained by using the <pre> tag: typing <pre> a=1; b+=a;</pre> you get

 a=1; b+=a;

• To force a line break in the layout without leaving a white line write </br>

• White space inside a line is not semantically relevant: you type a b c you get a b c

• To add a comment in your wikitext that should not be shown include it inside <!-- -->. You type <!-- nothing --> you get

Text layout

• To have an italic text type ''italic text''.
• To have a bold text type '''bold text'''.
• To have an italic+bold text type '''''italic+bold text'''''.

Sections

• To get a section title, use == section title == in a new line.
• To get a subsection title, use === subsection title === in a new line.
• To get a subsubsection title, use ==== subsubsection title ==== in a new line.

Bulleted Lists

To get a one-level bulleted list place a * at the beginning of each line. Higher level items are obtained by use of **, ***,...

* one
* two
* three
** three.one
** three.two
** three.three
*** three.three.one
*** three.three.two
*** three.three.three
this is the end of the list

Further reading: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:List.

Numbered Lists

To get a one-level numbered list place a # at the beginning of each line. Higher level items are obtained by use of ##, ###,...

# one
# two
# three
## three.one
## three.two
## three.three
### three.three.one
### three.three.two
### three.three.three
this is the end of the list

Further reading: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:List.

Subscripts and superscripts

• To make a subscript, use the  brackets. For example, I_Ca appears as I_Ca.
• To make a superscript, use the  brackets. For example, Ca²⁺ appears as Ca²⁺.

Do not use HTML tags for math equations, even simple ones. In the future, Scholarpedia will have wikitext->latex->pdf converter, so having all equations in latex would result in more consistent texts.

Mediawiki syntax (*)

Mediawiki and Scholarwiki markup languages are quite rich. They admit:

• MediaWiki tokens: i.e. symbols like =,----,=#...Their meaning is position dependent.

• MediaWiki "magic words": like __NOTOC__.

• MediaWiki links: like [[Instructions for authors|text]].

• MediaWiki templates: like {{templateName|p1|p2|p3}} where templateName is the name of the template and p1,p2,p3 its parameters,separated by the pipe "|" .

• MediaWiki variables: like {{templateName}} are templates with no arguments

• MediaWiki parser fuctionslike {{functionName:variable}}

• XHTML symbols like &SymbolName; with SymbolName=hearts (♥),Psi (Ψ), euro (€), amp (&)...

• XHTML tags like <Tag>...</Tag> with Tag=i,b,tt,sub,sup,table,tr,td,... Not all XHTML tags are supported. See http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:HTML_in_wikitext.

• XML tags like <Tag> ... </Tag> with Tag=nowiki,math,...

Links

A link is a tool to redirect the reader's browser to some place in the same page (in--page link), in other pages in Scholarpedia (internal link) or on an web page external to Scholarpedia (external link). The link layout is usually an underlined blue text on which the reader have to click to be redirected.

In Scholarwiki there are different types of links: user--defined intenal links, automatic intenal links, external links.

Automatic internal links

If you write in the text a sequence of words that matches the title of an existing article in Scholarpedia, the autolinker tool will create an automatic internal link to it. The autolinker tries to match the longest title first. E.g., the phrase "..using attractor reconstruction method.." will result in the autolink to attractor reconstruction, and not to attractor.

This feature is very useful but in some cases the autolinker could redirect to an existing article that has nothing to do with your subject. If this happens please inform your editor: he will create a disambiguation page to deal with the conflicting topics.

You can control the autolinking process using the "magic word" __AUTOLINKER{n|exclude title 1|exclude title 2|exclude title N} placed anywhere in the article. The first argument, a non-negative integer n, limits the number of autolinks to any particular title.The other arguments, separated by the pipe "|" are the titles of the article that should be excluded from the autolinking process.

• The default state is __AUTOLINKER{1}, i.e, only the first match for any title is converted to a link to this title.
• Using __AUTOLINKER{1|exclude title 1|exclude title 2} will create a link for all first match of a title apart "exclude title 1"and "exclude title 2".
• Using __AUTOLINKER{0} will turn off the autolinker.

User--defined internal links and in--page links

• The general syntax is: [[Title of the target page| text to be shown]]. Please remark the separating pipe "|".
• The simplified syntax is [[Title of the target page]].In this case the text shown coincides with the page title.
• If the target page exists the text is shown in blue or violet. If the page does not exists the text is rendered in red (broken link).
• If when writing your article you feel that some correlated articles are necessary, but they do not exists, create a user--defined link to each article you need. The editors will see the broken links and they will try to invite authors for those articles.
• A link to the section "my section" of some page is obtained by using: [[Title of the target page#my section| text to be shown]] or [[Title of the target pagee#my section]]. If the section does not exists the link is to the top of the page.
• An in--page link to "my section" is obtained by [[Title of the target page#my section| text to be shown]] or by [[Title of the target page#my section]].

User--defined Anchors (*)

The code <span id="mylabel">blabla</span>, resulting in blabla , creates an invisible "anchor" with label "mylabel" in correspondence of the text "blabla" (i.e. the text "blabla" becomes linkable). You can can create a link to an anchor with label "mylabel" in some Scholarpedia page named "mypage" by using the code [[mypage#mylabel| some text]]. The code [[#mylabel| some text here]] creates a link towards an anchor with label "mylabel" in the same page. Coming back to previous example, the code [[#mylabel| link to blabla ]] gives link to blabla .

When creating a reference with the Scholarwiki template Bibitem, see the section #Writing references, the parameter label=mylabel automatically inserts in the reference an anchor with label "mylabel".

External links

• The general syntax is: [URL| text to be shown]]. Please remark that there is no separating pipe "|".
• The simplified syntax is [URL]. In this case a numbered external link is shown.
• Even simpler, if you write URL the URL is shown as a text.

Mathematics, Latex and Scholarwiki

Scholarwiki partially supports the use of Latex (with AMSLatex package) for writing mathematical formulas. Formulas are compiled in LaTeX and rendered as small png files (or in mathml, if you set this preference in your account). Many ---but not all--- LaTeX and AMSLaTeX features are supported, see [3] for detailed list.

Standard Latex code for a formula should be inserted in a <math> tag.

An in-text formula: <math> \partial_z x^{2 y}  </math> , end of the phrase.

A displayed equation:

<math> \partial_z x^{2 y}  </math>

end of paragraph.

An indented displayed equation:

:<math> \partial_z x^{2 y}  </math>.

Use ::,::: to have more indentantion.

An indented numbered equation:

:<math mynicelabel> \partial_z x^{2 y}  </math>.

Equation (<ref>mynicelabel</ref>).

To get a group of horizontally aligned numbered equations, like (2) and (3), type for example

<table>
<tr> <td><math>x^2</math></td>  <td><math label4></math></td>
<tr> <td><math>\frac{\mathrm{d}}{\mathrm{d}t}\left(x^{y^{z^t}}\right)</math></td> <td><math label5></math> </td>
</table>

and get

	(2)
	(3)

Further reading: http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Help:Math.

Figures

You can insert figures as follows.

You Get	You Type
aaaa aaa aaa. Figure 1: Upload the file and replace this figure. See Upload page bbb bbb bbb. ccc ccc ccc. ddd ddd ddd. eee eee eee. fff fff fff. ggg ggg ggg. hhh hhh hhh. iii iii iii. jjj jjj jjj. kkk kkk kkk kkk kkk kkk kkk kkk kkk kkk kkk kkk kkk kkk.	aaaa aaa aaa. [[Image:Your_article_title_Main_figure.gif|thumb|300px|right|FigureLabel| Upload the file and replace this figure. See [http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Special:Upload Upload page]]] bbb bbb bbb. ccc ccc ccc. ddd ddd ddd. eee eee eee. fff fff fff. ggg ggg ggg. hhh hhh hhh. iii iii iii. jjj jjj jjj. kkk kkk kkk kkk kkk kkk kkk kkk kkk kkk kkk kkk kkk kkk.

Remarks:

• You can cite figure (1) by writing figure (<ref>FigureLabel</ref>). Put different figure labels for different figures :)
• The figure is vertically aligned to the text that follows it.
• If the file is not uploaded, Scholarpedia will create a red link directing you to the upload page.

Further reading: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Images and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Extended_image_syntax.

Other medias (*)

Including movies

The best way to include a movie is to make an animated .gif file, as in Synchronization. Such an animation would not require readers to install any software and it would run even on cell phones and iPods. Other (less desirable) movie formats are avi, mpeg, mpg, mov. Please, keep movie files less than 1MB.

To include a movie into your article, just type [[Media:myvideofile.avi]]

Including mp3 files

To include an mp3 file into your article, just type [[Media:myaudiofile.mp3]].

Including Java applets

First, upload the archive of the applet (.jar file) using the Special:Upload link (found at the bottom left menu). (You need to be a curator to upload .jar files; if is not so ask to yout editor.) Then, include the following code into your article <java_applet code="name.class" height="number" width="number" archive="name.jar"></java_applet>.

Example: <java_applet code="MandelbrotSet.class" height="350" width="300" archive="MandelbrotSet.jar"></java_applet>.

Tables (*)

Compare, learn and generalize.

{| width="100%"
   border="5" 
   frame="hsides" 
   rules="all" 
   cellpadding="10" 
   cellspacing="10" 
   style="caption-side:bottom;"
|+ style="font-style: italic" | International system of units (SI)
|-
! colspan="3" | '''Fundamental units'''
|-
! Physical quantity
! Name
! Symbol
|-
| length
| meter
| m
|-
| time
| second
| s
|-
| mass
| kilogram
| Kg
|-
| electric current
| ampere
| A
|-
| luminous intensity
| candela
| cd
|-
| mass
| kilogram
| Kg
|-
| amount of substance
| mole
| mol
|-
| temperature
| kelvin
| K
|}

The same table can be obtained by using XHTML.

<table width="100%" 
       border="5" 
       frame="hsides" 
       rules="all" 
       cellpadding="10" 
       cellspacing="10" 
       style="caption-side:bottom;">
<caption style="font-style:italic"> International system of units (SI) </caption>
<tr>  <th colspan="3"> '''Fundamental units''' </th>                           </tr> 
<tr>  <th>Physical quantity</th>      <th>Name</th>           <th>Symbol</th>  </tr>
<tr>  <td> length </td>               <td>meter</td>          <td>m</td>       </tr>
<tr>  <td> time </td>                 <td>second</td>         <td>s</td>       </tr>
<tr>  <td> mass </td>                 <td>kilogram</td>       <td>Kg</td>      </tr>
<tr>  <td> electric current </td>     <td>ampere </td>         <td>A</td>      </tr>
<tr>  <td> luminous intensity </td>   <td>candela</td>        <td>cd</td>      </tr>
<tr>  <td> amount of substance </td>  <td>mole</td>           <td>mol</td>     </tr>
<tr>  <td> temperature </td>          <td>kelvin</td>         <td>K  </td>     </tr>
</table>

Further reading: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Tables.

Editorial guidelines

Rules for writing an effective Scholarpedia article

Scholarpedia is a peer-reviewed encyclopedia. It does not publish "research" or "position" papers, but rather "living reviews", written for the community of scholars by worldwide acknowledged experts. These articles will be maintained by future generations of experts via the process of curatorship.

The ideal article of Scholarpedia fulfills two challanging requirements:

1. it is written in a clear, concise and pedagogical style, as appropriate to be useful at least for graduate students;
2. it satisfies Einstein's razor "make it as simple as possible, but no simpler".

In practice the author should use his wisdom to find a good compromise among simplicity and precision which fulfills the main goal of obtaining an article useful for graduate students and non-expert researchers.

Style and structure conventions

• Use bold for definitions and italic for emphasis. For example, "... Washington, DC is the capital of the USA. Do not confuse it with the state of Washington..."
• Do not use "I", "we", "our", or other first- and second-person pronouns. 20 years from now somebody else will be the curator of your article, so using "I" or "we" will be confusing or misleading.
• Just state the facts.
• Avoid using abbreviations. Spell out all phrases; this increases the Google PageRank of your article and puts it up in Google search results.
• Be concise if not terse, making a good use of bullet points.
• The article should starts with a one-sentence or one-paragraph dictionary-like definition of the main topic.

Use <strong>...</strong> brackets in the definition of your topic (so your article comes first in Google search results). Example: Pizza is an aliment... <strong>Pizza</strong> is an aliment...

• Write section titles in "Sentence case", i.e., only the first word capitalized.
• Do not number sections
• Keep references to the minimum, citing only major books and review articles.
• Please, PLEASE use Scholarpedia's Harvard referring style for writing and citing references.

Contents

• Put an introductive encyclopedic definition at the top of the article.
• Mention alternative eponymous naming conventions for the topic you are discussing (even if you do not agree with their use). Ex: "The X pizza, also known as XYZ pizza, and sometimes erroneously attributed to QWRT is a...".
• Provide a full description of the topic, starting from simple aspects and possibly ending with details/references useful for experts.
• Explain in detail only the terms essential for the article. Link to other articles in Scholarpedia whenever is possible.
• Provide examples, illustrations written in a style understandable to non-experts.
• Anticipate questions and give answers as soon as possible.
• Be neutral, mentioning alternative points of view if they are widely accepted.
• Avoid presenting just one point of view (yours?) on open and questioned subjects and warn the reader that the subject is still open.

How to write a totally unuseful article ;)

To waste readers' time and your own time the editorial board suggests you to follow as close as possible the following points (and to train yourself in this art with your students if you have any).

• Be sloppy: it is well known that Scholarpedia readers are not very receptive.
• Be unuseful: who knows, a reader of today might be your competitor tomorrow.
• Be tedious: hide important ideas behind your best and lengthy prose.
• Be unprecise: no one will be able to discover your errors.
• Avoid details, especially those which are important: it is well known that only who already knows a subject can learn it.
• Never define the concepts you use, especially those which are essential to really understand your article.
• Use your own notation and conventions and be careful to avoid any form of clarification.
• Do not respect your own conventions: cut and paste is at the hearth of knowledge.
• Wait the last day before your self--imposed deadline to avoiding wasting your time in thinking about what to write.
• Report only your personal opinion on the topic: that's what readers are looking for!
• Cite only your articles and your books: they are the best!
• Do not care about layout: it is not a scientist's job (and in Scholarpedia we have thousands of volunteers which will improve layout for you).

The structure of a Scholarpedia article

Contributions to Scholarpedia are quantized in terms of web--pages. A web--page should not be longer than 50 KBytes (all formulas, figures and multimedia content included) that is around 10-15 A4 pages of a text with mathematical formulas. Ideally, if compatible with the topic to be treated, an article is sized three-four A4 pages.

According to the size of subject he wants to cover, author can contribute in three ways:
A) writing an encyclopedic article in a single web page,
B) writing an article consisting of a main web--page and a number of subpages (containing, say, examples or more technical details),
C) splitting the contribution in many articles of type A.
The editor will pleased to help the author in finding the best format for his contribution.

Single--page article

The single--page article is the standard contribution. A single web--page encyclopedic article is structured in sections and subsections and ends with the following sections:

• The optional section "Acknowledgments". All acknowledgments there should be signed with the initials of the corresponding author(s).
• The "References" section. As usual, it should contain a short list of academic references to peer reviewed journals, proceedings or books. The Scholarpedia's Harvard referencing style should be used there. The list should contain only the most essential references.
• The "Internal References" subsection. This subsection will be created automatically before publishing. It will contain the list of all published articles in Scholarpedia to which your article links (user--defined or automatic links). You will have one month to eventually discard some of these references.
• The "Further reading" section may contain less formatted bibliography. It is a good place to cite introductory books, tutorials, and reviews. These references can also be commented for a better use.
• The "External links" contains links to online tutorials, author websites, etc.
• The "See also" provide an alphabetical list of links to other relevant articles in Scholarpedia.

A skeleton template article is available: Template:article. You are advised to cut and paste the code you need from that template.

Subpges

Scholarpedia articles may have one or more subpage. For example, this article has a subpage /First Subpage. Here, the symbol "/" at the beginning tells Scholarpedia that First Subpage is not a separate article, but a part of the current (master) page. Subpages may have subsubpages, and so on, resulting in a complicated tree-like structure useful to create multipage courses and tutorials. To refer to a subpage from the master page, just write

[[/First Subpage]], which results in the link /First Subpage or [[/First Subpage| whatever]], which results in the link whatever

To refer to the subpage from other pages, write

[[Scholarpedia:Instructions for authors/First Subpage]] resulting in Scholarpedia:Instructions for authors/First Subpage.

Subpages inherit authors/curators from the master page.

Only authors/curators can create subpages, and only to their own articles. To create a new subpage, write the link to the subpage in the master page and follow it (it appears in red while the subpage is not created, and then it becomes blue). The text that appears on the subpage (prompting for listing curators) is a generic text that always appears on every new page, it can be removed.

A niceway to deal with (first level) subpages is to treat them as appendices, i.e. introducing at the end of the main page an appendix section linking to the subpage. This procedure has the advantage of showing the subpages in the table of contents at the top of the article. An example of this use is shown at the end of this page (check also the table of contents) and has been obtained by typing:

== Appendix: First subpage ==
[[/First Subpage| First subpage]]

To see a concrete example of article with subpages have a look at:

• gauge invariance which uses the subpage [gauge invariance/more on general relativity] as an appendix.
• The article Becchi-Rouet-Stora-Tyutin_symmetry, which has two subpages, Landau gauge free solutions and Indefinite metric_and BRST cohomology.

Scholarpedia's Harvard referring style

Writing references

In Scholarpedia an Harvard referring style is used, see example below.

• Albero, Antony (1999). Pizza Margherita. Journal of pizza eaters 19(3): 13. arXiv:0808.000
• Albero, Antonio and Bocca, Bill (2001). Pizza Capricciosa. Journal of pizza eaters 27: 121-127. arXiv:0808.000
• Albero, Antonio; Bocca, Bill and Cuoco, C T (2003). Pizza Quattro Stagioni. Journal of pizza eaters 34(4): 12.
• Albero, Antonio; Bocca, Bill; Cuoco, C T and Dude, David B (2007a). Pizza Napoletana. Journal of pizza eaters 37: 121-127.
• Albero, Antonio; Bocca, Bill; Cuoco, C T; Dude, David and Elica, E Q (2007b). Pizza Marinara. Journal of pizza eaters 43(4): 1-13.
• Albero, Antonio et al. (2008). Pizza Piccante. Journal of pizza eaters 45(5): 1-13.
• Alto, Antony (1999). La Pizza! Mangiare bene, Volume 3. Albero and Bacca editors. Food Publishers, Genoa.
• Alto, Antony and Bocca, Bill (2000). La Pasta! Mangiare bene. Albero editor. Food Publishers, Genoa. Chapter 1.
• Alto, Antony; Bocca, Bill and Cuoco, C T (2002). Pizza: prepare it yourself. Food Publishers, Genoa. Page 22. ISBN 1-234-99929-0.
• Alto, Antony; Bocca, Bill; Cuoco, C T and Dude, David B (2005a). Italian Pizza. Food Publishers, Genoa.
• Alto, Antony; Bocca, Bill; Cuoco, C T; Dude, David B and Elica, E Q (2005b). Napolitan Pizza. Second edition. Food Publishers, Genoa.
• Alto, Antony et al. (2005c). American Pizza. Food Publishers, Genoa.

In the reference list, references must be lexicographically ordered according:

• surname1,
• forname1,
• surname2, (no surname2 first, then etal, then any surname2)
• forname2,
• authors after second will not be considered in orderning
• publication-year.

Groups of authors having the same first two authors and publishing year must be disambiguated by adding a label (letter) to the publication year: 2008a, 2008b,...

In next section a Scholarpedia tool to help the author in writing references is introduced.

How to use the Template:bibitem to write your references

To build up your reference list you can use the bibitem template we provide. This way, the list of references you write will always be updated if a change in the conventions is performed. The syntax of templates follows.

• Below, N=1,2,3,4,5 or N=etal is the number of authors.
• The order of unnamed parameters should be respected.
• Unnamed parameters are mandatory; eventually they might be replace with a " "(one blank space), but this might result in a bad layout. If this is the case write the reference without using the template.
• The order of named (optional) parameters is arbitrary and their position does not influence unnamed parameters.
• No ending white space should be added to parameters' values.
• No punctuation should be added in the values of the unnamed parameters, apart the parameter corresponding to the TITLE.
• The named parameters should be instead terminated by fullstop, apart LABEL and LETTER.
• No dots in authors initials.
• Dots in other abbreviations are allowed.
• LABEL below is a label that could be referred with an internal link like [[#LABEL| this text links to LABEL]], see #Citing references.

• {{Bibitem article N |TITLE|JOURNAL|VOLUME(NUMBER)|YEAR|PAGES|SURNAME1|FORNAME1|...|SURNAMEN|FORNAMEN|letter=LETTER|label=LABEL|preprint=PREPRINT}}
  • • TITLE, JOURNAL,..., PREPRINT should be replaced by their actual values.
    • No punctuation should be added in parameters' values, unless TITLE and PREPRINT that should terminate with a fullstop/mark.
    • FORENAME= Antony or Antony D or A D (Initials without punctuation).
    • (VOLUME) is optional.
    • See also Template:Bibitem article 5 for more detailed informations.
• {{Bibitem book N |TITLE|PUBLISHER|ADDRESS|YEAR|SURNAME1|FORNAME1|...|SURNAMEN|FORNAMEN|letter=LETTER|label=LABEL|series=SERIES|editors=EDITORS|pages=PAGES|isbn=ISBN}}
  • • TITLE, PUBLISHER, ...., ISBN should be replaced by their actual values.
    • No punctuation should be added in parameters' values, unless TITLE, SERIES, EDITORS, PAGES and ISBN that should terminate with a fullstop/mark.
    • FORENAME= Antony or Antony D or A D (Initials without punctuation).
    • See also Template:Bibitem book 5 for more detailed informations.

Examples. If you type:

*{{Bibitem article 1|Pizza Margherita.|Journal of pizza eaters|19(3)|1999|13|Albero|Antony|preprint=arXiv:0808.000|label=albero1999}}
*{{Bibitem article 2|Pizza Capricciosa.|Journal of pizza eaters|27|2001|121-127|Albero|Antonio|Bocca|Bill|preprint=[http://arxiv.org/abs/0808.0000  arXiv:0808.000]|label=albo2001}}
*{{Bibitem article 3|Pizza Quattro Stagioni.|Journal of pizza eaters|34(4)|2003|12|Albero|Antonio|Bocca|Bill|Cuoco|C T}}
*{{Bibitem article 4|Pizza Napoletana.|Journal of pizza eaters|37|2007|121-127|Albero|Antonio|Bocca|Bill|Cuoco|C T|Dude|David B|letter=a}}
*{{Bibitem article 5|Pizza Marinara.|Journal of pizza eaters|43(4)|2007|1-13|Albero|Antonio|Bocca|Bill|Cuoco|C T|Dude|David|Elica|E Q|letter=b}}
*{{Bibitem article etal|Pizza Piccante.|Journal of pizza eaters|45(5)|2008|1-13|Albero|Antonio}}
*{{Bibitem book 1|La Pizza!|Food Publishers|Genoa|1999|Alto|Antony|series=Mangiare bene, Volume 3.|editors=Albero and Bacca editors.}}
*{{Bibitem book 2|La Pasta!|Food Publishers|Genoa|2000|Alto|Antony|Bocca|Bill|series=Mangiare bene.|editors=Albero editor.|pages=Chapter 1.}}
*{{Bibitem book 3|Pizza: prepare it yourself.|Food Publishers|Genoa|2002|Alto|Antony|Bocca|Bill|Cuoco|C T|isbn=ISBN 1-234-99929-0.|pages=Page 22.|label=this work is false}}
*{{Bibitem book 4|Italian Pizza.|Food Publishers|Genoa|2005|Alto|Antony|Bocca|Bill|Cuoco|C T|Dude|David B|letter=a}}
*{{Bibitem book 5|Napolitan Pizza. Second edition.|Food Publishers|Genoa|2005|Alto|Antony|Bocca|Bill|Cuoco|C T|Dude|David B|Elica|E Q|letter=b|label=11}}
*{{Bibitem book etal|American Pizza.|Food Publishers|Genoa|2005|Alto|Antony|letter=c}}

You will get the example reference list in section Writing references.

Citing references

Groups of authors larger than 2 can be cited with "et al.".

• As proven in (Albero A, 1999).
• As Albero (2009) said.
• As proven in (Albero and Bocca, 2001)
• As proven by Albero and Bocca (2001)
• As proven by Albero et al. (2003)
• As proven by Albero, Bocca and Cuoco (2003)
• As proven by Albero et al. (2007a), confirmed by Albero et al. (2007b) and discarded by Albero et al. (2007c)

If a label has been defined via the label=mylabel parameter in Bibitem template, than the citation can be put in a link: [[#mylabel|text]] (in--page link, see #User--defined internal links and in--page links).

• To get: as proven in (Albero A, 1999), type: as proven in [[#albero1999|(Albero A, 1999)]].
• To get: as proven by Albero and Bocca (2001), type: as proven by [[#albo2001|Albero and Bocca (2001)]].

Administrative stuff

Preparation, submission, peer review, and acceptance

Scholarpedia is great for collaborative writing, since many people from many locations can edit an article simultaneously.

Privacy option

Authors can enable ‘privacy’ option, which would exclude everybody except the authors and the editor-in-chief from viewing and editing the article. The option can be exercised only once per article and only for 30 days.

Submission (uploading) to Scholarpedia

It is easier if you write your article in a text editor (e.g., Notepad or Wordpad) on your local computer. Then, do the following steps:

• Login to Scholarpedia (the fact that you see all the articles including your own does not mean you are logged in). For this, press 'create new account or login' link at the top-right corner of Scholarpedia. Once you are logged in, you will see your name there.
• Go to your article; the easiest way to do that is to press your name at the top-right corner to go to your userpage, and then press the article title on your userpage.
• Open the article for editing by pressing 'edit this article' button. Copy and paste your text into the text window. Then press 'save page' button. You can continue edit your article on-line from any computer, but you have to be logged in with your username so that Scholarpedia recognizes you as the author of the article

Submission to Peer-Review forum

When finished, submit your article by clicking first the "author" button (top of the article page) then the "submit" button. There, you will be asked to suggest potential reviewers.

Reviewers are invited by the editors, and they are given the following instructions.

Anonymous peer review process

Because of the wiki-style collaborative software, such as MediaWiki powering this site, the peer review process of Scholarpedia is more efficient than that of printed journals.

• The reviewer’s job is simplified. If a reviewer of a journal article finds an error, he or she writes something like "on page 12, paragraph 3, line 4 from the top, second equation, numerator, a minus sign is missing in the exp function...", whereas in Scholarpedia, the reviewer just puts the minus sign where it belongs. Similarly, instead of explaining why a statement is wrong and how to fix it, the reviewer just fixes it.
• The author’s job is simplified too. Indeed, instead of getting a review of a journal article with something like "The statement on page 14, paragraph 2, describing the properties of the function f is not clear; please rewrite it...", and then figuring out what is not clear and how to rewrite it, the curator gets the statement already rewritten by the reviewer, and all he has to do is either accept it, reject it, or further revise it.

Reviewers may revise or rewrite your article the way they feel are the best for the subject or ask you to do the revisions. Anonymous reviewers can write comments to you the old-fashioned way: Incorporating suggestions and criticism into the <review> </review> brackets, which will highlight the suggestions to you. You either comply with their suggestions or reply to them by putting your explanations into the same brackets.

Reviewers can also put their comments into the 'reviews' part of the article (see 'reviews' link above the article's title).

To see reviewer comments and changes, press 'revisions' button, select two revisions, then press 'compare selected versions' button. When you address the reviewers concerns, press 'author' button, then 'email alert' button to send the reviewers an automated message that new revision is ready.

Acceptance

It is possible, and even expected, that there are many rounds of reviews, each logged as a ‘revision’, and each accessible to others to view. (For some, reading the review history may be more exciting that reading the article itself). Ideally, the article converges to the form that is acceptable to both the author and the reviewers. At this point, reviewers press the ‘Accept’ button, and the article is labeled as peer-reviewed.

The job of the reviewers is to make sure your article is correct, unbiased, and fits the description of a "good encyclopedic article". They cannot reject your article, but they can hold it (i.e., not accept it) for a long period of time; during this period, your article will show the tag "...not accepted yet; may contain inaccuracies...". If the scope of your article is too narrow, reviewers may also recommend to rename your article.

Authorship

After reviewers accept the article, the author has a chance to make the final revision and then approve the article “in the final form”. At this moment, the article is labeled as “approved”, its final form and the author list are stored permanently in the Scholarpedia archive. The article is given a page number, which should be used to cite it.

Curatorship

As an author of an article, you will automatically become its curator upon the article’s approval. The responsibility of the curator is to evaluate all revisions of the article, accepting those that are valid and useful, and rejecting those that are not. You may resign from curatorship at any time you want. However, it is probably a good idea to keep your curatorship until your article is printed.

You may also want to keep your curatorship after the encyclopedia is printed if you are interested in what people think about your article, what they want to add, to remove, or to rewrite. Remember that the philosophy of Scholarpedia is that articles outlive their authors. Imagine what your article would look like 30 years from now.

Password, Affiliation, and other Personal Information

To change your password, email, affiliation, or other personal information, click the 'preferences' link at the top right corner (next to your username).

Articles' Copyright

Each Scholarpedia article has its own copyright from the following options:

• Authors own the copyright and license the content to Scholarpedia
• Licensed under a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 3.0 license
• Licensed under GNU Free Documentation License

Use of Copyrighted Material

Authors cannot use copyrighted material in Scholarpedia (or in any other media, even their own webpages) unless they have obtained permissions. If the authors reproduce copyrighted material with permissions, they need to say so in the figure captions, e.g., "reproduced with permission" or something equivalent.

On the other hand, if an author puts his/her materials on Scholarpedia, it is protected by Scholarpedia copyright, so nobody can reproduce these materials without permission of Scholarpedia or the author.

The only exception is that other authors of Scholarpedia can freely use the same figures. For example, if the author puts a figure XYZ.gif, then nothing stops you from writing Image:XYZ.gif in your article, which would result in the figure appearing in the appropriate place (you do not reproduce the figure, you just link to the existing figure...)

An author may select to put a tag into the caption of the figure saying "copyrighted by ...", but this is not necessary, since it does not provide more protection above of what is already provided by Scholarpedia's general copyright.

Appendix: First Subpage

First Subpage

See also

Scholarwiki and Mediawiki

General Help on Mediawiki

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mediawiki -- What is Mediawiki?
• http://www.Mediawiki.org/wiki/How_does_Mediawiki_work -- How does Mediawiki work?
• http://www.Mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Contents: -- Mediawiki user's Help
• http://www.Mediawiki.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3AAllPages&from=&namespace=12 -- All available Mediawiki Help pages.
• http://www.Mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:FAQ -- Mediawiki's FAQ
• http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:AllPages/Help: -- All available Mediawiki Help pages from WikiMedia
• http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:MediawikiRefCard.pdf Mediawiki reference Card

General editing in Mediawiki and Scholarwiki

• http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Advanced_editing -- Mediawiki advanced editing from WikiMedia
• http://www.Mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Formatting --Formatting text
• http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/How_to_edit_a_page
• http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Scholarpedia:Article_Template -- Scholarpedia's generic article template.
• http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Section -- Sections, TOC
• http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Wikitext_examples

Scholarwiki--only features

• http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Scholarpedia:User_preferences_help Help on the preferences a user can set.

Images in Mediawiki and Scholarwiki

• http://www.Mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Images -- How to insert images in MediWiki.
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Extended_image_syntax --

Tables in Mediawiki and Scholarwiki

• http://www.Mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Tables -- How to insert tables in Mediawiki.
• http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Table

Lists in Mediawiki and Scholarwiki

• http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:List

Mathematical Formulas in Mediawiki and Scholarwiki (LateX)

• http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Displaying_a_formula
• http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Help:Math --Reference on the use of Latex markup to write mathematical formulas in Scholarpedia.

Mathematical Formulas in Mediawiki and Scholarwiki (XHTML)

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Mathematical_symbols --XHTML mathematical symbols.

XHTML in Mediawiki and Scholarwiki

• http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:HTML_in_wikitext. XHTML tags supported in Mediawiki.
• http://www.w3schools.com/tags/default.asp HTML4.01/XHTML1.0 reference

CSS in Mediawiki (NOT FULLY ENABLED IN Scholarwiki)

• http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS21/propidx.html|http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS21/propidx.html -- CSS 2.1 Index of properties
• http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS21/indexlist.html|http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS21/indexlist.html -- CSS 2.1 Index
• http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS21/cover.html#minitoc|http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS21/cover.html#minitoc -- CSS 2.1 Table of Contents
• http://www.w3schools.com/css/ --CSS tutorial and reference
• http://www.w3schools.com/css/css_colors.asp Colors in CSS