DEVELOPMENTS IN PRECAMBRIAN GEOLOGY INSTRUCTIONS TO AUTHORS
Editing, reviewing and procedures As we are all experienced professionals with a due degree of writing experience, it is proposed that all contributions be reviewed by two referees – chosen by the authors themselves. It is in all our interests to do this in normal professional fashion as the quality of the book will be determined by the combination of probably dozens of different authors’ manuscripts. We would thus like you to send your manuscript off to two reviewers of your own choice, and to send a third copy to the relevant editor (see shortened version of book outlay, below, for your editor) at the same time (i.e deadline of end January 2007). A suitable review form from Elsevier will be distributed in due course. It will greatly ease workloads if your reviewers could be requested to post their reviews directly to the relevant editor, thus saving time and postage for all – we would thus greatly appreciate your doing this for us. The relevant editor will then evaluate the two reports, add his own comments and return it all to authors for final corrections. Although we trust that you will pick your reviewers with due regard to impartiality, it may be necessary in a few isolated cases for a third reviewer of our own choice to be consulted. Based thus on reviewers’ comments plus some suggestions from the editor, the manuscript is then to be corrected for these combined comments and sent to the editor again, in final form (separate text files, table files, and electronic line figure files; photos as glossy originals (2 copies of photos)). Editors will take each chapter and edit to ensure that the various contributions are blended/linked into a sensible whole, and to ensure standard spelling etc. We will also write short linking texts if necessary, and will provide each chapter with a suitable short introduction, and a commentary at the end, to draw each chapter together. This book is thus not just a collection of separate papers, but is intended to be a collection of different views and a multitude of topics, blended into a single whole. Obviously, thus, abstracts are not needed. When supplying first manuscripts to one of the editors, please try and send the electronic line figure files in Corel Draw format, along with a jpeg or tiff file (300 dpi resolution). Please note that we will not change anything on your figures except letter fonts/styles and general features such as boxing them. Please note the approximate lengths for each contribution giving the full version of the book’s layout (approximately 550 pages) – we have to stick to these closely – in simple terms, any author who exceeds the page allocation is merely causing reduction in someone else’s contribution. As a working norm, an Elsevier book page = c. 528 words. Proofs, supplied by Elsevier as PDF files, will be sent both to authors and to editors; authors must please pass any corrections on to editors and not Elsevier – the editors will pass on the corrected proofs to Elsevier. Deadlines Please note the deadlines, which will have to be applied strictly:
(1) Identification of and agreement with potential authors: 1 June 2006 (2) submission, first manuscripts: 1st February 2007. (3) submission of corrected manuscripts: preferably as soon as possible after the above; no later than 31 st August 2007 (bear in mind we have to have a lot of time to do all the drafting, editing, and writing of introduction and synthesis). (4) final delivery of full edited bookmanuscript to Elsevier: 1 st May 2008 Copyright The editors will sign the contract with Elsevier for this book, along with the legal and financial clauses implicit therein. Amongst these is the importance of copyright. As we all know, this entails giving due credit, through references, to material used in text and illustrations. For line figures, these must be somewhat changed from the originals (eg apply some different labels etc) and the source of the original must be given in the caption. For photos in publications, including those where you are an author/co-author, permission must be sought for using them in this book (even if it’s your photo!) and, again, the source of the original photo (ie the reference) must be stated. A standard request for copyright permission is supplied by Elsevier – please ask the editors if necessary! General text layout The typical Elsevier book has a standard page size of 16.5 x 24 cm (type area of 12.5x19.5 cm within that page size). Minimise page formatting codes to page numbers only. Minimise layout: ie no justification (no page centering, not even of headings) which means ragged right hand margin and straight left hand margin. No columns. No page, line or word breaks. No headers and footers. Save files in the active format of the word processor (*.doc, *.wpd, *.rtf) and do not use “flat ASCI”. It is very important that the required electronic and hard copies of text files, tables, electronic line figures are identical. Do not mount hard copies of figures in text nor embed electronic figures into text files. Indicate placement of figures/tables in text files after their first mention, and indicate this by: angular brackets, thus - . Detailed Elsevier guidelines for book authors will be distributed in due course. Nomenclature – for a book, it is always important to be consistent. As we have a mixture of South American, African, European and authors from many other parts, we have decided to opt for “english” spelling rather than “North American” – ie words such as the following: “eolian” becomes “aeolian”; “Archean” becomes “Archaean”; “center” becomes “centre”; and so on. If you wish to emphasize anything in your text, use underlining. A keyword index is planned for this book. Indicate your own chosen keywords by highlighting them (with a highlighter pen), only in the hard copy supplied of your final manuscript. There will also be a separate page at the beginning of the book detailing all
authors’ address details and affiliations; with the headings of individual sections, only authors’ initials and surnames will be noted. Please supply a postal, fax and e-mail addresses for ALL authors, for the purposes of handling the proofs. Headings 1st order = bold, all capitals, 14 font; double space below. 2nd order = bold, first letter capitals, 12 font, space above and below. 3rd order = first letter capitals, italics, 12 font, space above and below. 4th order = first letter capitals, italics, 12 font, space above but not below. References A single, consolidated reference list will be prepared for the book, by the editors, in the style outlined below. Single author, precedes author plus one co-author, precedes author plus two or more coauthors; within each of these categories, arrange chronologically, viz: Jones, 1969. Jones, 1974. Jones and Brown, 1971. Jones, Brown and Smith, 1954. Examples of reference format: Jones, B.S. and Brown, Y.T., 1969. Title of article. J. Sediment. Petrol., 87A: 89-192. Garrels, M., 1962. Title of book, nouns capitalised. Elsevier, Amsterdam, 423 p. Brown, Y.T. and Jones, B.S., 1985. Title of paper in book. In: M.L. Black and J.T. Green (Editors), Title of book, nouns capitalised. Elsevier, Amsterdam, pp. 43-75. References within the text given as: …….(Jones, 1967), or as (Jones et al., 1978). Figures, tables and equations Tables and line figures must be submitted as separate electronic files from text files. All figures (only black/white) to be supplied in hard and electronic form upon submission of final manuscripts to editor(s). If you can also do this with first manuscripts, it will help us a lot as we can then get started on a large drafting task. Figures cited in the text as: “……..(Fig. 10)”; tables cited in text as: “…… (Table 12)” – i.e use arabic numerals for both. Table captions to be with table and figure captions supplied as a separate list and (text) file. Photos – please supply glossy originals (two originals for final submissions please); photos and line figures with multiple parts to be labeled in top left corner with arabic numerals. Prepare both tables and equations using your software package (i.e use table editor etc). Figure and table numbers to be assigned on a chapter basis – this will be finalized in April 2007.
Contact details for editors: Dr Claudio Gaucher Department of Geology Facultad de Ciencias Igua 4225 – 11400 Montevideo Uruguay Ph: +598 2 7085402 Fax: +598 2 7094694 e-mail: gaucher@chasque.net
Prof Hartwig E Frimmel Institute of Mineralogy University of Wuerzburg Am Hubland D-97074 Wuerzburg Germany Ph. +49 – 931 – 888 5420 Fax +49 – 931 – 888 4620 e-mail: hartwig.frimmel@mail.uni-wuerzburg.de Prof. Alcides N. Sial NEG-LABISE Dept. of Geology UFPE C.P. 7852 Cidade Universitaria 50670-000 Recife, PE Brasil e-mail: sial@ufpe.br