GSA Today: Sizing Manuscripts

Science

Articles must fit the following size constraints:

  1. A character count with spaces (in Microsoft Word) of no more than 25,000 characters for the title, author names, affiliations, abstract, main text, Acknowledgments, and figure captions (the References Cited list does not need to be counted).
  2. Up to 40 references in the References Cited list.
  3. No more than 4 figures and tables. You may have any combination of figures and tables, as long as you keep to a total of 4 items or fewer.

Manuscripts that are too long will be returned for shortening before they go through the review process.

Supplemental material* may be included in GSA's online supplemental material repository.

Groundwork

Articles must fit the following size constraints:

  1. A character count with spaces (in Microsoft Word) of no more than 8,500 characters for the title, author names, affiliations, abstract, main text, Acknowledgments, and figure captions (the References Cited list does not need to be counted).
  2. Up to 12 references in the References Cited list.
  3. No more than 2 figures and tables. You may have any combination of figures and tables, as long as you keep to a total of 2 items or fewer.

The philosophy behind this short format is twofold: (1) keeping an article short can increase the clarity and quality of the writing; and (2) a short article encourages readers to engage and seek more information.

Comments & Replies

  • Comments and Replies provide a forum in which published papers can be discussed. These are each limited to one PDF page, including references, figures, and tables (about 7,500 characters of text = one printed page).
  • Comments focus on the broad assertions or implications in the original article; they are not overly specific or personal. A comment must be submitted within six months of publication of the original article.
  • Replies are written by the original author(s) after receiving a copy of the relevant comment. Replies must be submitted to GSA within one month.
  • Comments & Replies will be posted online; an announcement, including the link, will be printed in GSA Today.


*Supplemental material: Information that supplements and expands on the published article can be posted to GSA's online supplemental material repository. It is generally restricted to data tables and related graphs or figures and/or explanations of methods (when this is not central to the paper). Supplemental information is not to be used to provide additional space to convey the message of the article. If you have questions or concerns, please contact the managing editor.
 
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