How can I center the caption above the table in “elsart” document class?

Question

I am preparing a paper for Elsevier, then I used elsart document class. Tables are centered, but their captions are not centered. How can I solve this problem?

This is my code:

\documentclass{elsart}    
\usepackage{multirow}    
\usepackage{rotating}

\begin{document}    
\begin{table}[h!]    
\caption{....}    
\centering

\scalebox{1.5}{

\begin{tabular}{cc|c|c|c|c|c|c|c|l}

...

...

...

\end{tabular}}    
\label{tab:tab1}    
\end{table}

\end{document}

I'll be glad if someone help me.

Answer 1

As Gonzalo Medina has commented, consider to switch to elsarticle.cls. That said, here's a hack that adds \centering to elsart's \@maketablecaption:

\documentclass{elsart}

\makeatletter
\long\def\@maketablecaption#1#2{\@tablecaptionsize
    \global \@minipagefalse
%    \hbox to \hsize{\parbox[t]{\hsize}{#1 \\ #2}}}% DELETED
    \hbox to \hsize{\parbox[t]{\hsize}{\centering #1 \\ #2}}}% ADDED

\makeatother

\begin{document}

\begin{table}
\caption{A caption}
\centering
(Tabular content)
\end{table}

\end{document}

Answer 2

You should consider using the improved elsarticle document class instead; this is what Elsevier says about elsart and elsarticle:

Elsevier's previous document class for typeset articles, elsart.cls, is now over 10 years old. It has been replaced with this newly written document class elsarticle.cls, which has been developed for Elsevier by the leading TeX developer River Valley Technologies.

Using elsarticle, you will have centered one-line captions by default:

\documentclass{elsarticle}    
\usepackage{lipsum}% just to generate text for the example

\begin{document}    

\lipsum[2]
\begin{table}
  \centering
  \caption{test caption}    
  \begin{tabular}{ll}
  test & test
  \end{tabular}
  \label{tab:tab1}    
\end{table}

\end{document}