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Suggestions to authors Stratigraphy publishes peer-reviewed research of regional or international significance on all aspects of stratigraphy, both physical and historical, with emphasis on applications of micropaleontology. Short notes of professional interest, including notification of formal action by stratigraphic bodies, may be accepted without review. We also publish book reviews and memorials, and noncommercial announcements. Terms and conditions Manuscript must be in English, in digital form submitted via the Micro Man online manuscript manager. There are no page or plate charges, and no charge for color illustrations. Aside from practical considerations, there is no fixed limit on number of pages or plates, but contrbutors should expect to pay for the cost of fold-out pages in the printed edition. Each author and co-author has free access to the journal for a 30-day period after the article goes online, to allow downloading of their published article for unrestricted distribution, as well as the opportunity to research the archived back issues. COPYRIGHT NOTIFICATION: By the act of returning the final page proof of the manuscript, the author(s) agree to grant The Micropaleontology Project, Inc., full copyright to the work in its approved and published form in any medium, including the right to grant reproduction of the work, or portions threrof, for scholarly use, provided that the author(s) are acknowledged. Submittal and review Please look over the main points of Stratigraphy requirements before submitting manuscript. Detailed instructions and suggestions are found below. Document identification:We strongly recommend that all documents be given a characteristic name, i.e., "Jones.doc." and "Jones_fig_1.TIF", not just "Manuscript.doc" or "fig_1.TIF". Style: Most questions of style can be answered by looking through recent issues of the journal. General usage: We do not dictate planktic or planktonic, benthic or benthonic, stratigraphic or stratigraphical, and so on, where there is precedence for either one. The use of a conjunction such as and, but, then, however, therefore, nonetheless to begin sentences is deplorable. Periods and commas are not placed inside a quotation or parenthesis if they are not an original part of the phrase. Fowler's English Usage is a good general source for word usage, punctuation and other such matters. For scientific writing questions, we recommend Suggestions to authors of the United States Geological Survey. Title: The title should be as brief and clear as possible, identifying the subject of the paper and not cetgorizing details of location. Abstract: Summarize the points made in the paper. A mere list of the contents is not acceptable. Author: Author names are written out in full. Chinese names may be written according to custom with family name first. Where there is more than one author the corresponding author (if not first listed) should be indicated in the cover letter. The institutional address of each author should be no more than is necessary for receiving mail; complete organizational information beyond this level is not desirable. E-mail address of the senior or corresponding author is required, and those of other authors should be included if possible. Text format: Text documents (including captions and references) are double spaced, 11 point, left justfied. Note that submittals are manuscripts, not publications! Refinements simply for the sake of appearance, such as forced hyphens, underlines, boldface sentences, embedded images and so on are not appropriate, and must be removed by the editor before the paper can be prepared for publication. Complex mathematical statements and other expressions using special characters or diagrammatic notation should be submitted separately as graphics. Lengthy quotations should be indented, Serial and book titles, and phrases in foreign languages should be italicized. Single words, symbols and abbreviations under discussion should be set apart by single quotes, but longer phrases taken from context are identified by quotation marks and, if possible, referenced. Subject heads: Text should be divided in four levels of subject heads, as follows: top level in ALL CAPITALS, ROMAN BOLD FACE; second level in lower case, Roman bold face; third level in lower case, italic bold face, and the fourth level in lower case italics, regular. Except for the all-cap top level, only proper nouns should be capitalized. The top three levels must be on a separate line without a following period or other punctuation (except for query? and exclamation point!). The fourth level, or "run-in head", is placed in the first line of a paragraph, followed by a period or colon. Note that outline format, with letters and numbers identifying paragraps, is not acceptable, and no footnotes are allowed. Superscript, italics and bold face should be executed, not merely indicated. Abbreviations: The conventions for units of measurement are considered to be symbols, not abbreviated words, and thus do not use periods (km, cm, mm, µm, nm, mi, ft, in, kg, g, lb, oz, hr, sec). Periods are omitted as well from abbreviations of the more common titles (Dr, Mr, Mrs, Ms, Sr, Jr, PhD) and the letters in acronyms. Common acronyms (such as USA, UK, USGS, NY, DSDP, etc.) need not be explained, but where needed, it is the acronym that should be explained -- e.g., "UCLA (University of California, Los Angeles)", not "University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)". The geochronometric symbols Ma, for "million years before present", and ka, for "thousand years before present", stand for age in years, and are not interchangeable with the symbols myr and kyr, for any quantity of years. The commonly abbreviated latinisms (etc., et al., viz., e.g., s.s.) are not italicized. On the other hand ex and et are considered as foreign words, and are therefore italicized, as is vs for versus, which by convention is italicized without a period. Citations: Author last name and date without a comma, and with page or plate number added if necessary, as follows:
The term "et al." should be used only in place of more than three (not more than two) author names. "Et al." stands for the authors included, and no others; which means that two papers by "Author et al." cannot be treated as repetitive in the reference list, as indicatd by dashes, unless all authors are the same. Size estimate: A full page of text in Stratigraphy will contain approximately 1,000 words, or 5,200 characters including spaces; this is between 3 and 4 typescript pages, depending on author's font and spacing. The captions to plates and figures take up more area, equivalent to 600 words per full page. Illustrations: Photographic images should be prepared in TIF or JPG at 300 to 360 dpi. Line art (diagrams, tables, maps) should be TIF or JPG at 1000 dpi. Color in print and online is optional, with no extra charge. Powerpoint files are not acceptable. Text lists, Excel spreadsheets and Word tables must be scanned as graphic images. Full scale image files may be submmitted with the manscript initially, or after the paper is accepted. Full-page plates and figures should be prepared with an aspect ratio of 0.74 width to height, sized to 7 x 9.5in (177 x 235mm). Half-column graphics will fit a width of 3.25 inches (85mm). Figure numbers and superimposed arrows, labels, and other identifiers should be inserted on plates and figures by the author no smaller than 8 point at published scale. No caption, however, should appear on the plate, and explanations for symbols should be included in the caption as far as possible and not on the image. Any "sideways" text on tables and diagrams should be placed to run upwards when the left side is down, so that the words will be correctly oriented when the page is turned clockwise. Captions Captions should begin with a brief descriptive phrase, e.g., "Index map of sample sites." The abbreviations and graphic symbols used in the figure or table should be explained in the caption rather than in the graphic, as far as possible. When the same explanations apply to a series of figures, it is only necessary to explain them completely in the first caption. A long caption, bringing out the point of the figure or table, is preferable to a cursory statement that merely identifies the content, even if the caption repeats discussion that is also found in the text. Footnotes are not permitted. List of References: Cited works are listed alphabetically by author name (in CAPITALS) and then chronologically. Note that "Mc" comes in order, and not before "Mac". Honorifics are detached (for example, write ORBIGNY, A. D', and GUEMBEL, C. W. VON). Serial and book titles are italicized and spelled out in full. The issue number is not indicated unless the issue is separately paginated. All words in serial titles are capitalized but only proper nouns in book titles. Genus and species level names in article and book titles may be italicized.
The final name in a list of authors is not set off by a comma before the "and" or "et al." Author names that are exactly repeated in successive references are replaced by a dash. Written or verbal communication noted in the text should not be cited in the References. The titles of unpublished reports, student papers, dissertations, and posters should given in quotes. References posted on the internet are considered to be publications; where both printed and online versions exist, the doi is not required. A work may be listed in the references if it is actually in press, i.e., formally accepted for publication, but no year or volume number is required. Submittal: Manuscript should be submitted in digital form using the manuscript manager Micro Man, on our website, where details can be found. Review: Reviewers are anonymous, unless they wish otherwise. The help of reviewers who identify themselves should be acknowledged in the final draft. The review comments, marked-up manuscript and editor’s remarks will be available in Micro Man after the author is notified (but not before) The authors must satisfy the Editors, not the reviewers, in preparing a final draft acceptable for publication. Final draft: The corrected manuscript must be submitted in Micro Man, with text in MS Word or rtf and full size illustrations. Documents with the same name will overprint earlier versions. There is no time limit for returning a final draft. Authors may not, however, introduce significant new data, or substantially change the scope or purpose of the work after review, without consulting with the Editor. In such cases a second round of review may be called for. Proof Corrections: Authors receive full-page mockups. Corrections may be returned by email, as comments, revised sections, or scans of marked up pages to the editor. We do not ask for complete proofs to be returned. |
