Journal of Fire Sciences
The Journal of Fire Sciences is a leading journal for the reporting of new and significant fundamental and applied research that brings understanding of fire chemistry, physics, and engineering to fire safety. Its content is aimed toward the prevention and mitigation of the adverse effects of fires, as well as development of new tools to better address fire safety needs. The Journal of Fire Sciences covers experimental or theoretical studies (backed with experimental information) of fire initiation and growth, flame retardant chemistry, fire physics relative to material behavior, fire containment, fire threat to people and the environment and fire safety engineering. This journal is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).
The Journal of Fire Sciences is a leading, peer-reviewed international journal for the reporting of new and significant fundamental and applied research within the fire safety science community. Its overall content is generally aimed toward the prevention and mitigation of the adverse effects of fires as well as understanding the flammability behavior of materials and assemblies. Contributors and subscribers alike represent countries from around the world.
Published bimonthly, the Journal of Fire Sciences addresses essentially all scientific fire aspects whose consequences are considered detrimental to life and property.
Topics, generally involving experimental and theoretical (backed with experimental data) studies of fire initiation and growth, fire containment, fire threat to people and the environment and fire safety engineering, frequently include the following:
- Measurement and computation of fire properties of materials and products, including ignitability, heat release, smoke and combustion product generation
- Fire safety engineering studies that find new fire risk scenarios, or provide key insight into existing scenarios
- Fire retardant systems, chemistry, and methodology for materials and products
- Fire growth phenomena, including flame spread and smoke movement
- Fire detection and extinguishment based upon fire chemistry and physical phenomena
- Effects of fire effluents/emissions and heat on exposed occupants (excluding physiological and medical aspects of these effects)
- Fire forensic science
- New approaches to fire protection system design and risk analysis validated by experimental data or by fire loss data.
The content of the Journal of Fire Sciences places particular emphasis on materials, products, assemblies, and systems used in all scenarios affected by fire. Consequently, the Journal is especially relevant for manufacturers, designers, users, and regulators involved with applications where fire safety is of importance. Forum discussions on the intersection of fire science, fire safety engineering, and regulatory issues are within scope, and will be engaged in special issues from time to time where key researchers in these fields come together for special issues to give their hypotheses on these key issues for other researchers to discuss and develop experiments to prove/disprove these hypotheses.
Papers of all lengths (short and long) are welcome in the journal, as articles do not have page limits.
| Alexander B. Morgan | University of Dayton Research Institute, USA |
| Gordon E Hartzell | Hartzell Consulting, USA |
| Edward D. Weil | Polytechnic University, USA |
| Vytenis Babrauskas | Fire Science and Technology Inc., USA |
| Serge Bourbigot | Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Chimie de Lille (ENSCL), France |
| Morgan Bruns | Virginia Military Institute, USA |
| Jenny Alongi | Università di Milano, Italy |
| Gunter Beyer | Kabelwerk Eupen AG, Belgium |
| Matthew S. Blais | Southwest Research Institute, USA |
| Federico Carosio | Politecnico di Torino, Italy |
| W.K. Chow | The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, China |
| Sabyasachi Gaan | Empa Standard Sankt Gallen, Switzerland |
| Laura Hasburgh | USDA Forest Service, USA |
| Marcelo M. Hirschler | GBH International, USA |
| A. Richard Horrocks | The University of Bolton, UK |
| Yuan Hu | University of Science and Technology of China, China |
| Marc L. Janssens | Southwest Research Institute, USA |
| Sergei V. Levchik | Israel Chemicals Ltd., USA |
| Richard E. Lyon | Federal Aviation Administration, USA |
| Ravi Mosurkal | US Army CCDC Soldier Center, USA |
| Gordon L. Nelson | Florida Institute of Technology, USA |
| Bernhard Schartel | BAM Federal Institute for Materials Research and Testing, Germany |
| Michael Spearpoint | University of Canterbury, New Zealand |
| Anna A. Stec | University of Central Lancashire, UK |
| Stanislav Stoliarov | University of Maryland, USA |
| Ya-Ting T. Liao | Case Western Reserve University, USA |
| Yu-Zhong Wang | Sichuan University, China |
| Anteneh Z. Worku | FR Advisor LLC, USA |
| Qiang Yao | Ningbo Institute of Materials Technology and Engineering, China |
| Mauro Zammarano | National Institute of Standards and Technology, USA |
Manuscript Submission Guidelines: Journal of Fire Sciences
This Journal is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics.
Please read the guidelines below then visit the Journal’s submission site http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/jfsciences to upload your manuscript. Please note that manuscripts not conforming to these guidelines may be returned.
Only manuscripts of sufficient quality that meet the aims and scope of Journal of Fire Sciences will be reviewed.
There are no fees payable to submit or publish in this Journal. Open Access options are available - see section 3.3 below.
As part of the submission process you will be required to warrant that you are submitting your original work, that you have the rights in the work, that you are submitting the work for first publication in the Journal and that it is not being considered for publication elsewhere and has not already been published elsewhere, and that you have obtained and can supply all necessary permissions for the reproduction of any copyright works not owned by you.
- What do we publish?
1.1 Aims & Scope
1.2 Article types
1.3 Writing your paper - Editorial policies
2.1 Peer review policy
2.2 Authorship
2.3 Acknowledgements
2.4 Funding
2.5 Declaration of conflicting interests
2.6 Research Data - Publishing policies
3.1 Publication ethics
3.2 Contributor's publishing agreement
3.3 Open access and author archiving - Preparing your manuscript
4.1 Formatting
4.2 Artwork, figures and other graphics
4.3 Supplementary material
4.4 Reference style
4.5 English language editing services - Submitting your manuscript
5.1 ORCID
5.2 Information required for completing your submission
5.3 Permissions - On acceptance and publication
6.1 Sage Production
6.2 Online First publication
6.3 Access to your published article
6.4 Promoting your article - Further information
Before submitting your manuscript to Journal of Fire Sciences, please ensure you have read the Aims & Scope.
Journal of Fire Sciences is a leading journal for the reporting of significant fundamental and applied research that brings understanding of fire chemistry and fire physics to fire safety. Its content is aimed toward the prevention and mitigation of the adverse effects of fires involving combustible materials, as well as development of new tools to better address fire safety needs. Journal of Fire Sciences covers experimental or theoretical studies of fire initiation and growth, flame retardant chemistry, fire physics relative to material behavior, fire containment, fire threat to people and the environment and fire safety engineering. Accepted article types include:
- Original Manuscripts: These cover new research findings and analysis of fire science problems, they include unpublished original research or analysis of existing research on fire science topics.
- Book Reviews: A review of a fire science or fire safety engineering book that is relevant to the scope of the Journal. Book reviews should provide insight and analysis on the benefits and limitations of the book. Book reviews should not be more than 2,000 words.
- Review Articles: Review articles should cover a key aspect of fire science and should provide comprehensive and insightful analysis of the current body of knowledge in that particular aspect.
- Forum/Discussion Articles: Articles submitted to the forum are meant to spur discussion and collaboration on a key aspect of fire science. They should be no more than 1,200 - 1,800 words and should start the beginning of a discussion that could lead to future research, or potential vetting of hypotheses fundamental to fire science.
- Letter to the Editor: Letters can be opinion pieces to the Editor to speak to the fire science community about a fire science topic of interest to the author and the greater fire science community that are not suited for a Forum like discussion. Letters can also be short critical research findings or safety issues that need to be quickly communicated to the fire science community, in which case they will include data and some unpublished results that would not merit a full manuscript, but still is still of value. Letters are generally short documents of 800 - 1,200 words.
- Special Issue Articles: These are original manuscripts that are specially solicited for a focused issue ona single topic of fire science. They are often run by a guest editor who will send invites to specific authors or will create an open invitation to all to submit to the special issue. Special issues are very welcome from any member of the fire science community and are submitted as proposals to the Editor-in-Chief prior to their activation on the Journal website.
The Sage Author Gateway has some general advice and on how to get published, plus links to further resources. Sage Author Services also offers authors a variety of ways to improve and enhance their article including English language editing, plagiarism detection, and video abstract and infographic preparation.
1.3.1 Make your article discoverable
When writing up your paper, think about how you can make it discoverable. The title, keywords and abstract are key to ensuring readers find your article through search engines such as Google. For information and guidance on how best to title your article, write your abstract and select your keywords, have a look at this page on the Gateway: How to Help Readers Find Your Article Online
Journal of Fire Sciences operates a conventional single-anonymize reviewing policy in which the reviewer’s name is always concealed from the submitting author.
As part of the submission process you will be asked to provide the names of 2 peers who could be called upon to review your manuscript. Recommended reviewers should be experts in their fields and should be able to provide an objective assessment of the manuscript. Please be aware of any conflicts of interest when recommending reviewers. Examples of conflicts of interest include (but are not limited to) the below:
- The reviewer should have no prior knowledge of your submission
- The reviewer should not have recently collaborated with any of the authors
- Reviewer nominees from the same institution as any of the authors are not permitted
Please note that the Editors are not obliged to invite any recommended/opposed reviewers to assess your manuscript. All papers are screened by the Editor-In-Chief for relevance to the journal scope and for confirming novelty (new and significant results). Papers showing incremental improvements, or that cover something exhaustively studied in the open literature will not be sent into peer review.
Journal of Fire Sciences is committed to delivering high quality, fast peer-review for your paper, and as such has partnered with Publons. Publons is a third party service that seeks to track, verify and give credit for peer review. Reviewers for the journal can opt in to Publons in order to claim their reviews or have them automatically verified and added to their reviewer profile. Reviewers claiming credit for their review will be associated with the relevant journal, but the article name, reviewer’s decision and the content of their review is not published on the site. For more information visit the Publons website.
The Editor or members of the Editorial Board may occasionally submit their own manuscripts for possible publication in the journal. In these cases, the peer review process will be managed by alternative members of the Board and the submitting Editor/Board member will have no involvement in the decision-making process.
Papers should only be submitted for consideration once consent is given by all contributing authors. Those submitting papers should carefully check that all those whose work contributed to the paper are acknowledged as contributing authors.
The list of authors should include all those who can legitimately claim authorship. This is all those who:
- Made a substantial contribution to the concept or design of the work; or acquisition, analysis or interpretation of data,
- Drafted the article or revised it critically for important intellectual content,
- Approved the version to be published,
- Each author should have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for appropriate portions of the content.
Authors should meet the conditions of all of the points above. When a large, multicentre group has conducted the work, the group should identify the individuals who accept direct responsibility for the manuscript. These individuals should fully meet the criteria for authorship.
Acquisition of funding, collection of data, or general supervision of the research group alone does not constitute authorship, although all contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship should be listed in the Acknowledgments section. Please refer to the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) authorship guidelines for more information on authorship.
Please note that AI chatbots, for example ChatGPT, should not be listed as authors. For more information see the policy on Use of ChatGPT and generative AI tools.
All contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship should be listed in an Acknowledgements section. Examples of those who might be acknowledged include a person who provided purely technical help, or a department chair who provided only general support.
Any acknowledgements should appear first at the end of your article prior to your Declaration of Conflicting Interests (if applicable), any notes and your References.
2.3.1 Third party submissions
Where an individual who is not listed as an author submits a manuscript on behalf of the author(s), a statement must be included in the Acknowledgements section of the manuscript and in the accompanying cover letter. The statements must:
- Disclose this type of editorial assistance – including the individual’s name, company and level of input
- Identify any entities that paid for this assistance
- Confirm that the listed authors have authorized the submission of their manuscript via third party and approved any statements or declarations, e.g. conflicting interests, funding, etc.
Where appropriate, Sage reserves the right to deny consideration to manuscripts submitted by a third party rather than by the authors themselves.
2.3.2 Writing assistance
Individuals who provided writing assistance, e.g. from a specialist communications company, do not qualify as authors and so should be included in the Acknowledgements section. Authors must disclose any writing assistance – including the individual’s name, company and level of input – and identify the entity that paid for this assistance. It is not necessary to disclose use of language polishing services.
Journal of Fire Sciences requires all authors to acknowledge their funding in a consistent fashion under a separate heading. Please visit the Funding Acknowledgements page on the Sage Journal Author Gateway to confirm the format of the acknowledgment text in the event of funding, or state that: This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.
2.5 Declaration of conflicting interests
It is the policy of Journal of Fire Sciences to require a declaration of conflicting interests from all authors enabling a statement to be carried within the paginated pages of all published articles.
Please ensure that a ‘Declaration of Conflicting Interests’ statement is included at the end of your manuscript, after any acknowledgements and prior to the references. If no conflict exists, please state that ‘The Author(s) declare(s) that there is no conflict of interest’. For guidance on conflict of interest statements, please see the ICMJE recommendations here.
The journal is committed to facilitating openness, transparency and reproducibility of research, and has the following research data sharing policy. For more information, including FAQs please visit the Sage Research Data policy pages.
Subject to appropriate ethical and legal considerations, authors are encouraged to:
- share your research data in a relevant public data repository
- include a data availability statement linking to your data. If it is not possible to share your data, we encourage you to consider using the statement to explain why it cannot be shared.
- cite this data in your research
Sage is committed to upholding the integrity of the academic record. We encourage authors to refer to the Committee on Publication Ethics’ International Standards for Authors and view the Publication Ethics page on the Sage Author Gateway
3.1.1 Plagiarism
Journal of Fire Sciences and Sage take issues of copyright infringement, plagiarism or other breaches of best practice in publication very seriously. We seek to protect the rights of our authors and we always investigate claims of plagiarism or misuse of published articles. Equally, we seek to protect the reputation of the journal against malpractice. Submitted articles may be checked with duplication-checking software. Where an article, for example, is found to have plagiarised other work or included third-party copyright material without permission or with insufficient acknowledgement, or where the authorship of the article is contested, we reserve the right to take action including, but not limited to: publishing an erratum or corrigendum (correction); retracting the article; taking up the matter with the head of department or dean of the author's institution and/or relevant academic bodies or societies; or taking appropriate legal action.
3.1.2 Prior publication
If material has been previously published it is not generally acceptable for publication in a Sage journal. However, there are certain circumstances where previously published material can be considered for publication. Please refer to the guidance on the Sage Author Gateway or if in doubt, contact the Editor at the address given below.
3.2 Contributor's publishing agreement
Before publication, Sage requires the author as the rights holder to sign a Journal Contributor’s Publishing Agreement. Sage’s Journal Contributor’s Publishing Agreement is an exclusive licence agreement which means that the author retains copyright in the work but grants Sage the sole and exclusive right and licence to publish for the full legal term of copyright. Exceptions may exist where an assignment of copyright is required or preferred by a proprietor other than Sage. In this case copyright in the work will be assigned from the author to the society. For more information please visit the Sage Author Gateway.
3.3 Open access and author archiving
Journal of Fire Sciences offers optional open access publishing via the Sage Choice programme and Open Access agreements, where authors can publish open access either discounted or free of charge depending on the agreement with Sage. Find out if your institution is participating by visiting Open Access Agreements at Sage. For more information on Open Access publishing options at Sage please visit Sage Open Access. For information on funding body compliance, and depositing your article in repositories, please visit Sage’s Author Archiving and Re-Use Guidelines and Publishing Policies.
4. Preparing your manuscript for submission
The preferred format for your manuscript is Word. LaTeX files are also accepted. Word and (La)Tex templates are available on the Manuscript Submission Guidelines page of our Author Gateway.
4.2 Artwork, figures and other graphics
For guidance on the preparation of illustrations, pictures and graphs in electronic format, please visit Sage’s Manuscript Submission Guidelines.
Figures supplied in colour will appear in colour online regardless of whether or not these illustrations are reproduced in colour in the printed version. For specifically requested colour reproduction in print, you will receive information regarding the costs from Sage after receipt of your accepted article.
Please note that Journal of Fire Sciences ask that you include images embedded into the text. If your article is accepted for publication you will later be asked to provide the source files for production purposes.
Journal of Fire Sciences does not currently accept supplemental files.
Journal of Fire Sciences adheres to the Sage Vancouver reference style. View the Sage Vancouver guidelines to ensure your manuscript conforms to this reference style.
If you use EndNote to manage references, you can download the Sage Vancouver EndNote output file.
4.5 English language editing services
Authors seeking assistance with English language editing, translation, or figure and manuscript formatting to fit the journal’s specifications should consider using Sage Language Services. Visit Sage Language Services on our Journal Author Gateway for further information.
Journal of Fire Sciences is hosted on Sage Track, a web based online submission and peer review system powered by ScholarOne™ Manuscripts. Visit https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/jfsciences to login and submit your article online.
IMPORTANT: Please check whether you already have an account in the system before trying to create a new one. If you have reviewed or authored for the journal in the past year it is likely that you will have had an account created. For further guidance on submitting your manuscript online please visit ScholarOne Online Help.
As part of our commitment to ensuring an ethical, transparent and fair peer review process Sage is a supporting member of ORCID, the Open Researcher and Contributor ID. ORCID provides a unique and persistent digital identifier that distinguishes researchers from every other researcher, even those who share the same name, and, through integration in key research workflows such as manuscript and grant submission, supports automated linkages between researchers and their professional activities, ensuring that their work is recognized.
The collection of ORCID iDs from corresponding authors is now part of the submission process of this journal. If you already have an ORCID iD you will be asked to associate that to your submission during the online submission process. We also strongly encourage all co-authors to link their ORCID ID to their accounts in our online peer review platforms. It takes seconds to do: click the link when prompted, sign into your ORCID account and our systems are automatically updated. Your ORCID iD will become part of your accepted publication’s metadata, making your work attributable to you and only you. Your ORCID iD is published with your article so that fellow researchers reading your work can link to your ORCID profile and from there link to your other publications.
If you do not already have an ORCID iD please follow this link to create one or visit our ORCID homepage to learn more.
5.2 Information required for completing your submission
You will be asked to provide contact details and academic affiliations for all co-authors via the submission system and identify who is to be the corresponding author. These details must match what appears on your manuscript. At this stage please ensure you have included all the required statements and declarations and uploaded any additional supplementary files (including reporting guidelines where relevant).
Please also ensure that you have obtained any necessary permission from copyright holders for reproducing any illustrations, tables, figures or lengthy quotations previously published elsewhere. For further information including guidance on fair dealing for criticism and review, please see the Copyright and Permissions page on the Sage Author Gateway.
6. On acceptance and publication
Your Sage Production Editor will keep you informed as to your article’s progress throughout the production process. Proofs will be sent by PDF to the corresponding author and should be returned promptly. Authors are reminded to check their proofs carefully to confirm that all author information, including names, affiliations, sequence and contact details are correct, and that Funding and Conflict of Interest statements, if any, are accurate.
Online First allows final articles (completed and approved articles awaiting assignment to a future issue) to be published online prior to their inclusion in a journal issue, which significantly reduces the lead time between submission and publication. Visit the Sage Journals help page for more details, including how to cite Online First articles.
6.3 Access to your published article
Sage provides authors with online access to their final article.
Publication is not the end of the process! You can help disseminate your paper and ensure it is as widely read and cited as possible. The Sage Author Gateway has numerous resources to help you promote your work. Visit the Promote Your Article page on the Gateway for tips and advice.
Any correspondence, queries or additional requests for information on the manuscript submission process should be sent to the Journal of Fire Sciences editorial office as follows:
Dr. Alexander B. Morgan, Ph.D.
University of Dayton Research Institute
journalfiresciences@gmail.com