ELEMENTS MAGAZINE – Instructions to Authors


	Instructions to Authors Thank you for accepting our invitation to write an article for Elements magazine. The Editors hope you will find it a rewarding experience. Writing for Elements differs from writing for the technical scientific journals with which you are familiar in a number of important respects, particularly timing, space and target audience. Please read these instructions carefully before starting to design and write your paper. Time Because of its thematic character, Elements has to adhere to a tightly defined and carefully planned production schedule without the freedom to hold back or accelerate articles that applies in conventional journals. The deadlines for your paper, and various actions that follow its submission, are given in this TABLE. Please ensure that you meet the deadlines and are available to carry out the actions requested in the timetable. Space The Guest Editor of your issue has a space of fixed length in which to place the thematic articles. The length he or she has assigned to your paper, defined in words, is given on p. 6. One page of Elements is approximately 1000 words. An illustration taking up ¼ page, including its caption, will be equivalent to about 250 words. The maximum number of references suggested (30), which will be printed in a smaller font and in three columns, is equivalent to about 600 words of normal text. It is essential that from the outset you design your paper, including its abstract, illustrations and references, to fit the space assigned by the Guest Editor. It is your canvas, and its size will strongly influence the range and balance of what you write. Do not submit an over-length version in the hope that insightful reviewing will lead, as is so often the case with conventional papers, to a leaner and better-focused outcome. Rather try to get the length and emphasis of your paper right from the start. More details are given under ‘Manuscript Length and Style’, below. Target The target audience of Elements is much broader than that of a typical research paper. Writing at a level that is accessible and pleasurable for this large audience, while remaining up-to-date, scholarly and rigorous, is a challenging task. Your target audience includes members of the participating societies; academic and industrial scientists in other disciplines (materials scientists, physicists, chemists, environmental geoscientists, geophysicists); students in the geosciences; popular science writers; funding agencies and policy makers. Elements is published in full colour, and you should use exciting illustrations that draw the casual reader into your article. In our normal technical writing we individually inhabit a familiar world of jargon, buzz-words, acronyms, and notations. Try to stand back a little and consider whether the terms and conventions you are using are really familiar to your target readers, and adopt a tutorial style where required. More comments are given under ‘General Guidelines’, below. Detailed Instructions Authorship Elements articles are relatively short reviews by acknowledged experts. We expect that most articles will have a single author, and not more than three. You can refer to close collaborators in the text or in an Acknowledgements section at the end of your article. Title – Think of a short, punchy title, without technical words, which will attract non-expert readers. Preliminary Abstract or Outline – By the date given on p. 6, please send a one-page preliminary abstract or outline of your article to the Guest Editor. The purpose of this version of the abstract is to delineate the scope of coverage so that the Guest Editor can prevent overlap with other articles, ensure adequate coverage of the overall theme, and write an introduction to the issue. The form can be an abstract or an outline. Length is not critical, as long as the content clearly summarizes the key points and conclusions of the article. Final abstract and keywords – Include a final abstract of not more than 100 words with your completed manuscript. This should summarize the content of your article so that (1) readers can determine their interest in reading further, (2) literature searches will find the article in relevant searches, and (3) a broad audience can appreciate the significance of the article. It should be complete and understandable in itself, and should avoid technical words unsuitable for a wide audience. Do not include references, figures, tables, or equations. The Guest Editor and the Elements editorial office reserve the right to edit the abstract so that it meets these criteria. Please also suggest five keywords that will enhance access to your paper. General Guidelines Consider the target audience listed on p. 1 with great care, and where appropriate give your article a tutorial character. Avoid using jargon and acronyms, except very common ones like XRD or REE. Terms unfamiliar to the non-specialist should be defined or explained clearly. To avoid repetition in issues where the same specialized terms, acronyms or mathematical conventions are introduced repeatedly, Guest Editors may decide to include a general explanatory ‘box’ section in their introductory article, thus releasing space for other articles. ‘Jargon’ is defined by the Concise Oxford Dictionary thus: 1 words or expressions used by a particular group or profession. 2 barbarous or debased language. 3 gibberish. Stand back from what you have written and consider carefully whether your jargon is comprehensible to our wide target audience. Be especially careful where ordinary words or phrases, such as ‘enrichment’, ‘productivity’ or ‘ultra-high pressure’ have been given limited technical meanings by specialist groups. Each Elements article will be reviewed by the Guest Editor, an independent expert reviewer suggested by the Guest Editor, and by the Principal Editor assigned to your issue. The Guest Editor will send the comments of all reviewers and his or her own recommendations to you as soon as they are available. Please act as the Guest Editor recommends as quickly as possible and certainly by the set deadline. Manuscript Length and Style Manuscripts (including text, references, acknowledgments, and figure captions) should be typed double-spaced, using 12pt Times New Roman font which gives ~250 words per typed page. Please adhere to the number of words assigned to you by the Guest Editor. For every figure or table, reduce the length of your typed manuscript by 250 words (one typed page). As a general rule, tables and figures should not comprise more than 1/3 of your total manuscript pages. Manuscripts that are too long are not acceptable. See Guidelines for Submitting Tables and Figures for more information. Use either American or British English spelling and conventions, but please be consistent. Elements uses three levels of heading: – BOLD CAPITALS – Bold italic – Normal italic set into the first line of text. Leave one empty line above and below any bold heading. Do not number headings. Do not indent paragraphs. Leave one empty line between paragraphs. Use standard SI units. In combination use units without punctuation but with appropriate spacing, thus: kJ mol-1, J K-1mol-1, mW m-2. Define terms in mathematical equations. If possible use symbols that correspond with common usage in American Mineralogist, Canadian Mineralogist, Mineralogical Magazine, Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta, or Clays and Clay Minerals. We encourage the use of A Manual of Style, 15th edition, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2003, as a style reference in the preparation of manuscripts. We will follow the recommendations of the International Mineralogical Association as regards mineral nomenclature and the spelling of mineral names. See recommendations References Although Elements articles are reviews, space restrictions do not allow extensive lists of references. In general a maximum of 30 references should be provided, many of which might be to technical reviews in the field. The majority of cited papers should have been published in the last ten years, and older references should be restricted to classic, foundation papers. Thirty references is equivalent to about 600 words in your word-count. The reference list should include only works cited in the text that have been published or accepted for publication. Personal communications should be noted only in the text, e.g. (pers com, JC Maxwell 2004). In the text, references should be cited by author and year, e.g. (Newton 2004); (Newton and Darwin 2004); Newton et al. (in press). One- and two-author papers should be arranged in alphabetical order in the reference list, but papers with more than two authors (which will appear as ‘et al.’ in the text) should be arranged in order of first author and year of publication. Where more than one paper in a single year has the same authorship, the references should be cited (2004a), (2004b) etc., both in the text and the reference list. Journal titles should be written out in full, e.g. Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta, Contributions to Mineralogy and Petrology, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Environmental Science and Technology, Comptes Rendus de l’Académie des Sciences IIa. Elements has a reference style involving minimum punctuation and no changes of font. Examples are given on the page following, with multi-author papers in the correct order. Guidelines for Submitting Tables and Figures Take advantage of the fact that Elements will be published in colour to use striking figures. For naming your figures and tables, please use the following convention: First author’s last name _ fig.Number (Green_fig.1). For printing, we need high resolution photographs (300 dpi at published size.) or line drawings (preferably coloured) at 600 dpi. Pictures that you have used on your web site or for a PowerPoint presentation are unlikely to be adequate for printing purposes. .TIF, .JPEG and .CDR files are acceptable. Use embedded fonts. Do not send figures embedded in other software. If you plan to use other software, please contact the Managing Editor Submission of completed manuscript If possible send your manuscript to the Guest Editor as an MS-Word attachment to an e-mail. The manuscript must include abstract, acknowledgements, references, figure captions, and keywords, with the pages numbered. Send native artwork, figures and tables, as separate files. Save colour in RGB or CYMK form. Also send a paper copy of the text and figures to the Guest Editor. Copyright form Send a signed hard copy of the Copyright Form to the Managing Editor, by air-mail: Pierrette Tremblay Managing Editor, Elements c/o INRS-ETE 490, rue de la Couronne, Québec QC Canada G1K 9A9 Examples of reference style and order *Journal articles:* Harrison LG (1961) Influence of dislocations on diffusion kinetics in solids with particular reference to alkali halides. Proceedings of the Faraday Society 57: 1191-1199 Harrison TM (1990) Some observations on the interpretation of feldspar 40Ar/39Ar results. Chemical Geology (Isotope Geoscience) 80: 219-229 Harrison TM, Bé K (1983) 40Ar/39Ar age spectrum analysis of detrital microclines from the southern San Joaquin Basin, California: an approach to determining the thermal evolution of sedimentary basins. Earth and Planetary Science Letters 64: 244-256 Harrison TM, McDougall I (1982) The thermal significance of potassium feldspar K-Ar ages inferred from 40Ar/39Ar age spectrum results. Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta 46: 1811-1820 Harrison TM, Lovera OM, Heizler MT (1991) 40Ar/39Ar results for alkali feldspars containing diffusion domains with differing activation energy. Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta 55: 1435-1444 Harrison TM, Heizler MT, Lovera OM (1993) In vacuo crushing experiments and K-feldspar thermochronology. Earth and Planetary Science Letters 117: 169-180 Harrison TM, Heizler MT, Lovera OM, Wenji C, Grove M (1994) A chlorine disinfectant for excess argon released from K-feldspar during step heating. Earth and Planetary Science Letters 123: 95-104 Harrison TM, Grove M, Lovera O (1998) Comment on ‘Direct determination of 39Ar recoil distance’ by I. M. Villa. Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta 62: 347 Hayward SA, Salje EKH (1996) Displacive phase transition in anorthoclase: the ‘plateau effect’ and the effect of T1–T2 ordering on the transition temperature. American Mineralogist 81: 1332-1336 *Digital object identifiers:* Vanpeteghem CB, Ohtani E, Kondo T (2002) Equation of state of the hydrous phase d-AlOOH at room temperature up to 22.5 GPa. Geophysical Research Letters 29 (7), doi: 10.1029/2001GL014224 *Books:* Smith JV, Brown WL (1988) Feldspar Minerals, vol. 1. Springer Verlag, Berlin, Heidelberg, New York Bowen NL (1928) The evolution of the igneous rocks. Princeton University Press, reproduced by Dover Publications, New York 1956 Montana A, Luth RW, White BS, Boettcher SL, McBride KS, Rice JF (1991) Complications in the melting of silicate minerals from atmospheric to high pressures. In: Perchuk LL (ed) Progress in metamorphic and magmatic petrology, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp 351-368 Halliday AN, Aftalion M, Van Breemen O, Jocelyn, J (1979) Petrogenetic significance of Rb-Sr and U-Pb isotopic systems in the 400 Ma old British Isles granitoids and their hosts. In: Harris AL, Holland CH, Leake BE (eds)British Caledonides Reviewed, Geological Society of London, pp 653-62 Carroll MR, Webster JD (1974) Solubilities of sulfur, noble gases, nitrogen, chlorine, and fluorine in magmas. In: Carroll MR, Holloway JR (eds) Volatiles in magmas, Reviews in Mineralogy 30: Mineralogical Society of America, pp 231-279 Roedder E (1984) Fluid Inclusions, Reviews in Mineralogy 12, Mineralogical Society of America, 644 pp. Deadlines and actions DOWNLOAD DEADLINES AND ACTIONS TABLE

Instructions to Authors

Thank you for accepting our invitation to write an article for Elements magazine. The Editors hope you will find it a rewarding experience. Writing for Elements differs from writing for the technical scientific journals with which you are familiar in a number of important respects, particularly timing, space and target audience. Please read these instructions carefully before starting to design and write your paper.

Time

Because of its thematic character, Elements has to adhere to a tightly defined and carefully planned production schedule without the freedom to hold back or accelerate articles that applies in conventional journals. The deadlines for your paper, and various actions that follow its submission, are given in this TABLE. Please ensure that you meet the deadlines and are available to carry out the actions requested in the timetable.

Space

The Guest Editor of your issue has a space of fixed length in which to place the thematic articles. The length he or she has assigned to your paper, defined in words, is given on p. 6. One page of Elements is approximately 1000 words. An illustration taking up ¼ page, including its caption, will be equivalent to about 250 words. The maximum number of references suggested (30), which will be printed in a smaller font and in three columns, is equivalent to about 600 words of normal text. It is essential that from the outset you design your paper, including its abstract, illustrations and references, to fit the space assigned by the Guest Editor. It is your canvas, and its size will strongly influence the range and balance of what you write. Do not submit an over-length version in the hope that insightful reviewing will lead, as is so often the case with conventional papers, to a leaner and better-focused outcome. Rather try to get the length and emphasis of your paper right from the start. More details are given under ‘Manuscript Length and Style’, below.

Target

The target audience of Elements is much broader than that of a typical research paper. Writing at a level that is accessible and pleasurable for this large audience, while remaining up-to-date, scholarly and rigorous, is a challenging task. Your target audience includes members of the participating societies; academic and industrial scientists in other disciplines (materials scientists, physicists, chemists, environmental geoscientists, geophysicists); students in the geosciences; popular science writers; funding agencies and policy makers. Elements is published in full colour, and you should use exciting illustrations that draw the casual reader into your article. In our normal technical writing we individually inhabit a familiar world of jargon, buzz-words, acronyms, and notations. Try to stand back a little and consider whether the terms and conventions you are using are really familiar to your target readers, and adopt a tutorial style where required. More comments are given under ‘General Guidelines’, below.

Detailed Instructions

Authorship

Elements articles are relatively short reviews by acknowledged experts. We expect that most articles will have a single author, and not more than three. You can refer to close collaborators in the text or in an Acknowledgements section at the end of your article.
Title
– Think of a short, punchy title, without technical words, which will attract non-expert readers.

Preliminary Abstract or Outline

– By the date given on p. 6, please send a one-page preliminary abstract or outline of your article to the Guest Editor. The purpose of this version of the abstract is to delineate the scope of coverage so that the Guest Editor can prevent overlap with other articles, ensure adequate coverage of the overall theme, and write an introduction to the issue. The form can be an abstract or an outline. Length is not critical, as long as the content clearly summarizes the key points and conclusions of the article.

Final abstract and keywords

– Include a final abstract of not more than 100 words with your completed manuscript. This should summarize the content of your article so that (1) readers can determine their interest in reading further, (2) literature searches will find the article in relevant searches, and (3) a broad audience can appreciate the significance of the article. It should be complete and understandable in itself, and should avoid technical words unsuitable for a wide audience. Do not include references, figures, tables, or equations. The Guest Editor and the Elements editorial office reserve the right to edit the abstract so that it meets these criteria. Please also suggest five keywords that will enhance access to your paper.

General Guidelines

Consider the target audience listed on p. 1 with great care, and where appropriate give your article a tutorial character.

Avoid using jargon and acronyms, except very common ones like XRD or REE. Terms unfamiliar to the non-specialist should be defined or explained clearly. To avoid repetition in issues where the same specialized terms, acronyms or mathematical conventions are introduced repeatedly, Guest Editors may decide to include a general explanatory ‘box’ section in their introductory article, thus releasing space for other articles.

‘Jargon’ is defined by the Concise Oxford Dictionary thus: 1 words or expressions used by a particular group or profession. 2 barbarous or debased language. 3 gibberish. Stand back from what you have written and consider carefully whether your jargon is comprehensible to our wide target audience. Be especially careful where ordinary words or phrases, such as ‘enrichment’, ‘productivity’ or ‘ultra-high pressure’ have been given limited technical meanings by specialist groups.

Each Elements article will be reviewed by the Guest Editor, an independent expert reviewer suggested by the Guest Editor, and by the Principal Editor assigned to your issue. The Guest Editor will send the comments of all reviewers and his or her own recommendations to you as soon as they are available. Please act as the Guest Editor recommends as quickly as possible and certainly by the set deadline.

Manuscript Length and Style

Manuscripts (including text, references, acknowledgments, and figure captions) should be typed double-spaced, using 12pt Times New Roman font which gives ~250 words per typed page. Please adhere to the number of words assigned to you by the Guest Editor. For every figure or table, reduce the length of your typed manuscript by 250 words (one typed page). As a general rule, tables and figures should not comprise more than 1/3 of your total manuscript pages. Manuscripts that are too long are not acceptable. See Guidelines for Submitting Tables and Figures for more information. Use either American or British English spelling and conventions, but please be consistent.

Elements uses three levels of heading:
– BOLD CAPITALS
– Bold italic
– Normal italic set into the first line of text.

Leave one empty line above and below any bold heading.
Do not number headings.
Do not indent paragraphs. Leave one empty line between paragraphs.
Use standard SI units. In combination use units without punctuation but with appropriate spacing,
thus: kJ mol-1, J K-1mol-1, mW m-2.
Define terms in mathematical equations. If possible use symbols that correspond with common usage in American Mineralogist, Canadian Mineralogist, Mineralogical Magazine, Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta, or Clays and Clay Minerals.

We encourage the use of A Manual of Style, 15th edition, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2003, as a style reference in the preparation of manuscripts.

We will follow the recommendations of the International Mineralogical Association as regards mineral nomenclature and the spelling of mineral names. See recommendations

References

Although Elements articles are reviews, space restrictions do not allow extensive lists of references. In general a maximum of 30 references should be provided, many of which might be to technical reviews in the field. The majority of cited papers should have been published in the last ten years, and older references should be restricted to classic, foundation papers. Thirty references is equivalent to about 600 words in your word-count.

The reference list should include only works cited in the text that have been published or accepted for publication. Personal communications should be noted only in the text, e.g. (pers com, JC Maxwell 2004).

In the text, references should be cited by author and year, e.g. (Newton 2004); (Newton and Darwin 2004); Newton et al. (in press). One- and two-author papers should be arranged in alphabetical order in the reference list, but papers with more than two authors (which will appear as ‘et al.’ in the text) should be arranged in order of first author and year of publication. Where more than one paper in a single year has the same authorship, the references should be cited (2004a), (2004b) etc., both in the text and the reference list.

Journal titles should be written out in full, e.g. Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta, Contributions to Mineralogy and Petrology, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Environmental Science and Technology, Comptes Rendus de l’Académie des Sciences IIa.

Elements has a reference style involving minimum punctuation and no changes of font. Examples are given on the page following, with multi-author papers in the correct order.

Guidelines for Submitting Tables and Figures

Take advantage of the fact that Elements will be published in colour to use striking figures.
For naming your figures and tables, please use the following convention: First author’s last name _ fig.Number (Green_fig.1).
For printing, we need high resolution photographs (300 dpi at published size.) or line drawings (preferably coloured) at 600 dpi.
Pictures that you have used on your web site or for a PowerPoint presentation are unlikely to be adequate for printing purposes. .TIF, .JPEG and .CDR files are acceptable. Use embedded fonts. Do not send figures embedded in other software. If you plan to use other software, please contact the Managing Editor

Submission of completed manuscript

If possible send your manuscript to the Guest Editor as an MS-Word attachment to an e-mail. The manuscript must include abstract, acknowledgements, references, figure captions, and keywords, with the pages numbered. Send native artwork, figures and tables, as separate files. Save colour in RGB or CYMK form. Also send a paper copy of the text and figures to the Guest Editor.

Copyright form

Send a signed hard copy of the Copyright Form to the Managing Editor, by air-mail:

Pierrette Tremblay
Managing Editor, Elements
c/o INRS-ETE
490, rue de la Couronne, Québec
QC Canada
G1K 9A9

Examples of reference style and order

Journal articles:

Harrison LG (1961) Influence of dislocations on diffusion kinetics in solids with particular reference to alkali halides. Proceedings of the Faraday Society 57: 1191-1199
Harrison TM (1990) Some observations on the interpretation of feldspar 40Ar/39Ar results. Chemical Geology (Isotope Geoscience) 80: 219-229
Harrison TM, Bé K (1983) 40Ar/39Ar age spectrum analysis of detrital microclines from the southern San Joaquin Basin, California: an approach to determining the thermal evolution of sedimentary basins. Earth and Planetary Science Letters 64: 244-256
Harrison TM, McDougall I (1982) The thermal significance of potassium feldspar K-Ar ages inferred from 40Ar/39Ar age spectrum results. Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta 46: 1811-1820
Harrison TM, Lovera OM, Heizler MT (1991) 40Ar/39Ar results for alkali feldspars containing diffusion domains with differing activation energy. Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta 55: 1435-1444
Harrison TM, Heizler MT, Lovera OM (1993) In vacuo crushing experiments and K-feldspar thermochronology. Earth and Planetary Science Letters 117: 169-180
Harrison TM, Heizler MT, Lovera OM, Wenji C, Grove M (1994) A chlorine disinfectant for excess argon released from K-feldspar during step heating. Earth and Planetary Science Letters 123: 95-104
Harrison TM, Grove M, Lovera O (1998) Comment on ‘Direct determination of 39Ar recoil distance’ by I. M. Villa. Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta 62: 347
Hayward SA, Salje EKH (1996) Displacive phase transition in anorthoclase: the ‘plateau effect’ and the effect of T1–T2 ordering on the transition temperature. American Mineralogist 81: 1332-1336

Digital object identifiers:

Vanpeteghem CB, Ohtani E, Kondo T (2002) Equation of state of the hydrous phase d-AlOOH at room temperature up to 22.5 GPa. Geophysical Research Letters 29 (7), doi: 10.1029/2001GL014224

Books:

Smith JV, Brown WL (1988) Feldspar Minerals, vol. 1. Springer Verlag, Berlin, Heidelberg, New York
Bowen NL (1928) The evolution of the igneous rocks. Princeton University Press, reproduced by Dover Publications, New York 1956
Montana A, Luth RW, White BS, Boettcher SL, McBride KS, Rice JF (1991) Complications in the melting of silicate minerals from atmospheric to high pressures. In: Perchuk LL (ed) Progress in metamorphic and magmatic petrology, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp 351-368
Halliday AN, Aftalion M, Van Breemen O, Jocelyn, J (1979) Petrogenetic significance of Rb-Sr and U-Pb isotopic systems in the 400 Ma old British Isles granitoids and their hosts. In: Harris AL, Holland CH, Leake BE (eds)British Caledonides Reviewed, Geological Society of London, pp 653-62
Carroll MR, Webster JD (1974) Solubilities of sulfur, noble gases, nitrogen, chlorine, and fluorine in magmas. In: Carroll MR, Holloway JR (eds) Volatiles in magmas, Reviews in Mineralogy 30: Mineralogical Society of America, pp 231-279
Roedder E (1984) Fluid Inclusions, Reviews in Mineralogy 12, Mineralogical Society of America, 644 pp.

Deadlines and actions

DOWNLOAD DEADLINES AND ACTIONS TABLE