Online Section Manual

FIELD TRIP GUIDEBOOKS

If you have questions or would like a schedule created for your meeting, please contact April Leo (aleo@geosociety.org, 303-357-1037).

Information for GSA Field Trip Chairs (Volume Editors)

Having GSA prepare field guides for GSA meetings is an optional—but we hope valuable—service for editors and authors. When GSA produces a guide, it will be available for purchase by individuals and libraries in print and online, it will be archived, and it will be registered with CrossRef and GeoRef, making it a citable, findable publication.

All field trip leaders budget $10 per participant ($10 per registration fee) for the production of the field guide. This money goes toward defraying the costs of publication; it does not cover all costs. For those who want GSA to publish their trip guide:

• All trip guides are peer-reviewed, copyedited, and formatted using GSA style.
• Field guide chapters should be no more than 20 typeset pages, per field trip day. To estimate typeset pages, make sure your MSWord file is double spaced with 1 inch margins, and in 12 pt Times New Roman font. Then take the number of text pages, the number of table pages, the number of figures, and divide by 3. So, for example, a paper with 48 text pages, 2 table pages, and 10 figures would be ~20 typeset pages.
• All trip guides submitted to GSA and accepted by the editors will be included in the print and online version of the Field Guide even if the trip is later canceled.
• GSA assigns a DOI for each trip guide and registers the paper with CrossRef and GeoRef.
• Authors (trip leaders) receive offprints of their guide to distribute to each trip participant.
• Authors, editors, and field trip participants may purchase the bound volume of all the guides at 50% off the list price. (Just to be clear: the $10 mentioned above does not provide for each participant to receive a copy of the bound volume.)
• An online version of the field guide will also be created. Titles, authors, and abstracts will be open access. Individual papers are available for purchase at https://pubs.geoscienceworld.org/gsa, and e-books (in PDF) are available through Google Books and, in time, the GSA Store.

Guidelines for Authors

Editor (usually the field trip chair[s]) Responsibilities

• Editors are responsible for getting papers peer-reviewed. Alternatively, editors may require field trip leaders to submit two external reviews with their papers.
• Editors may have authors send papers to them directly, OR they may have authors send papers to GSA, where we will compile the files needed in order for editors to send papers out for review.
• Revised papers are reviewed by the editors, who make the final accept/reject decision. Accepted papers will be copyedited and typeset by GSA and sent to authors for approval before printing.

Schedule Guidelines

Editors may want more time to review papers. Add time to accommodate any editor or author travel. Add 1–2 weeks to any schedule that includes the Thanksgiving or December holidays.