| Guidelines | |
| 1. | Submission |
| 2. | Sizing Manuscripts |
| 3. | Figures |
| 4. | Ethical Guidelines for Publication |
| 5. | Editor Contact Information |
GSA Today
Submission Guidelines
Need help uploading your article? If at any time you are having trouble using GSA Today's online manuscript submission system (which is separate and distinct from the online system for other GSA journals), please contact GSA Today's managing editor, Kea Giles, at . We can help at any point in the process, from changing your password to uploading your manuscript.
Before submitting any manuscript to GSA Today, please gather the following information:
- Complete names of all authors;
- Addresses and affiliations for all authors;
- Work phone numbers;
- Current e-mail addresses;
- Title (you can copy and paste this from your manuscript);
- Abstract (you can copy and paste this from your manuscript);
- Manuscript files in PDF, Word, text, or rich text format. Note: Please include your abstract and figure captions in the text file;
- Table files (in Word, Excel, tab-separated format, or comma-separated format, or at the end of your text file).
- Contact information (e-mail address and institution) for desired peer reviewers (if any).
- Determine the GSA Today science co-editor to whom you wish to submit your article: Damian Nance (denoted by N on submission screen) or Bernie Housen (H on submission screen).
Please note: Articles submitted to GSA Today must be original and not published elsewhere. GSA Today also prohibits the simultaneous submission of articles.
ONLINE PROCESS
Upload your manuscript at http://gsa-today.allentrack.net/cgi-bin/main.plex. You will need your username and password. If you cannot remember this information, please contact GSA Today's managing editor, Kea Giles, .
- Submissions of manuscripts over the length limit is the number-one problem faced by GSA Today editors. Science articles for GSA Today must be no longer than six printed pages, which includes author affiliations, references, figures and figure captions, and tables. 20,000 to 25,000 characters (including spaces) is a reasonable length for the article file. Please note that science articles over 50,000 characters in length will be automatically rejected by the manuscript tracking system.
- Upload table files in Excel, tab-separated format, or comma-separated format, or at end of text file.
- Upload figure/Image files in the format in which they were originally created. If file size is an issue, for this step only, please submit them as low-resolution .tif, .jpg, or PDF files. Figures should be in order and clearly labeled. Please see the GEOLOGY guidelines for publication-quality figures or contact GSA Today managing editor, Kea Giles, .
The upload process is broken into a series of four screens:
- The first screen asks for basic information: first author, title, abstract, and file quantities. Another step will ask for contributing authors; the corresponding author does not need to be entered again as a contributing author.
- An open file dialog box/browse screen for your files to be uploaded to our server. Please upload your text and figure files separately. We will need your text file (doc, txt, or rtf) in order to size your manuscript to determine if it fits within GSA Today's size limit. Note: Depending on your connection speed, it will take some time for the system to upload your files, even after you receive a dialogue box stating the files have been uploaded. Please watch your browser's status bar; you should not need to click on "submit manuscript files" again.
- A task screen for creating a merged PDF of your article. Please select the order in which your files should appear in the merged PDF (text, table, and figure files; cover letters and supplemental files will be automatically excluded).
- The fourth screen will show your manuscript number (please keep this for reference) as well as your manuscript files and PDF conversion status. Again depending on connection speed and file size, you may need to wait up to thirty minutes for merging to complete. Once all manuscripts have been converted to the merged PDF, please review that PDF. If the conversion is not correct, replace or delete your manuscript files as necessary. Once everything looks good, please click on "Approve Converted Files," and then click "Confirm" to officially submit the manuscript. These links will have red arrows
next to them; red arrows here and elsewhere reflect pending action items for you to address.
If any of your figures are illegible or your manuscript is too long, your submission will be returned to you so that you can fix these problems. Your manuscript will only be considered officially submitted after it has been approved through our initial quality control check and these problems (if any) have been addressed.
If, after review, you are asked to submit a revised manuscript, do so under the original manuscript number (follow the link in the editor's e-mail to you). Please do not submit your revision as a new manuscript.
Once your paper has been through the review and revision process and is accepted, you will be asked to submit the final versions of text and figure files via e-mail or ftp, as well as a cover image and caption. Papers are copyedited before going into production for GSA Today, and the first author will receive page proofs to check before final publication. Note: Authors are discouraged from comparing the length of their paper with other papers published in GSA Today. Beginning fiscal year 2012 (1 July 2011), any paper exceeding the six-page limit, even after acceptance by the science editors, will be returned to the author for shortening. Supplemental data may be included in GSA's online PDF repository; however, this repository is not to be used as additional space to convey the message of the article.
- QUESTIONS?
Please feel free to contact GSA Today's managing editor at any time (pref. by e-mail): - Kea Giles, M.A.
- Tel: +1-303-357-1057
- fax: +1-303-357-1073
- The Geological Society of America
P.O. Box 9140
Boulder, CO 80301-9140, USA