Guide for Authors
Types of paper
Original research papers, discussion papers, short reports, review papers, Rapid Communications,
Comment and Reply.
Ethics in publishing
For
information on Ethics in publishing and Ethical guidelines for journal publication see
http://www.elsevier.com/publishingethics
and
http://www.elsevier.com/ethicalguidelines.
Conflict of interest
All authors
are requested to disclose any actual or potential conflict of interest including any financial, personal or other relationships with
other people or organizations within three years of beginning the submitted work that could inappropriately influence, or be perceived
to influence, their work. See also
http://www.elsevier.com/conflictsofinterest.
Submission
declaration and verification
Submission of an article implies that the work described has not been published previously
(except in the form of an abstract or as part of a published lecture or academic thesis), that it is not under consideration for publication
elsewhere, that its publication is approved by all authors and tacitly or explicitly by the responsible authorities where the work was
carried out, and that, if accepted, it will not be published elsewhere in the same form, in English or in any other language, including
electronically without the written consent of the copyright-holder. To verify originality, your article may be checked by the originality
detection software iThenticate. See also
http://www.elsevier.com/editors/plagdetect.
Changes
to authorship
This policy concerns the addition, deletion, or rearrangement of author names in the authorship of accepted
manuscripts:
Before the accepted manuscript is published in an online issue: Requests to add or remove an author, or to rearrange
the author names, must be sent to the Journal Manager from the corresponding author of the accepted manuscript and must include: (a)
the reason the name should be added or removed, or the author names rearranged and (b) written confirmation (e-mail, fax, letter) from
all authors that they agree with the addition, removal or rearrangement. In the case of addition or removal of authors, this includes
confirmation from the author being added or removed. Requests that are not sent by the corresponding author will be forwarded by the
Journal Manager to the corresponding author, who must follow the procedure as described above. Note that: (1) Journal Managers will inform
the Journal Editors of any such requests and (2) publication of the accepted manuscript in an online issue is suspended until authorship
has been agreed.
After the accepted manuscript is published in an online issue: Any requests to add, delete, or rearrange
author names in an article published in an online issue will follow the same policies as noted above and result in a corrigendum.
Copyright
Upon acceptance of an article, authors will be asked to complete a 'Journal Publishing Agreement'
(for more information on this and copyright see
http://www.elsevier.com/copyright). Acceptance of the agreement will ensure
the widest possible dissemination of information. An e-mail will be sent to the corresponding author confirming receipt of the manuscript
together with a 'Journal Publishing Agreement' form or a link to the online version of this agreement.
Subscribers may reproduce
tables of contents or prepare lists of articles including abstracts for internal circulation within their institutions. Permission of
the Publisher is required for resale or distribution outside the institution and for all other derivative works, including compilations
and translations (please consult
http://www.elsevier.com/permissions). If excerpts from other copyrighted works are included,
the author(s) must obtain written permission from the copyright owners and credit the source(s) in the article. Elsevier has preprinted
forms for use by authors in these cases: please consult
http://www.elsevier.com/permissions.
Retained
author rights
As an author you (or your employer or institution) retain certain rights; for details you are referred to:
http://www.elsevier.com/authorsrights.
Role of the funding source
You are requested
to identify who provided financial support for the conduct of the research and/or preparation of the article and to briefly describe
the role of the sponsor(s), if any, in study design; in the collection, analysis and interpretation of data; in the writing of the report;
and in the decision to submit the article for publication. If the funding source(s) had no such involvement then this should be stated.
Please see
http://www.elsevier.com/funding.
Funding body agreements and policies
Elsevier
has established agreements and developed policies to allow authors whose articles appear in journals published by Elsevier, to comply
with potential manuscript archiving requirements as specified as conditions of their grant awards. To learn more about existing agreements
and policies please visit
http://www.elsevier.com/fundingbodies.
Open access
This
journal offers you the option of making your article freely available to all via the ScienceDirect platform. To prevent any conflict
of interest, you can only make this choice after receiving notification that your article has been accepted for publication. The fee
of $3,000 excludes taxes and other potential author fees such as color charges. In some cases, institutions and funding bodies have entered
into agreement with Elsevier to meet these fees on behalf of their authors. Details of these agreements are available at
http://www.elsevier.com/fundingbodies.
Authors of accepted articles, who wish to take advantage of this option, should complete and submit the order form (available at
http://www.elsevier.com/locate/openaccessform.pdf).
Whatever access option you choose, you retain many rights as an author, including the right to post a revised personal version of your
article on your own website. More information can be found here:
http://www.elsevier.com/authorsrights.
Language and language services
Please write your text in good English (American or British usage is accepted,
but not a mixture of these). Authors who require information about language editing and copyediting services pre- and post-submission
please visit
http://webshop.elsevier.com/languageservices
or our customer support site at
http://support.elsevier.com
for more information.
Submission
Submission to this journal proceeds totally online and
you will be guided stepwise through the creation and uploading of your files. The system automatically converts source files to a single
PDF file of the article, which is used in the peer-review process. Please note that even though manuscript source files are converted
to PDF files at submission for the review process, these source files are needed for further processing after acceptance. All correspondence,
including notification of the Editor's decision and requests for revision, takes place by e-mail removing the need for a paper trail.
Referees
Please submit, with the manuscript, the names, addresses and e-mail addresses of three potential
referees. Note that the editor retains the sole right to decide whether or not the suggested reviewers are used.
Additional
information
Submission of Papers:
From now on, all manuscripts should be submitted electronically through Elsevier
Editorial System (EES) which can be accessed at
http://ees.elsevier.com/pepi.
With the submitted manuscript authors should
provide the names, addresses, e-mail addresses and fax numbers of four suggested reviewers.
Submission of a paper implies that it has
not been published previously, that it is not under consideration for publication elsewhere, and that if accepted it will not be published
elsewhere in the same form, in English or in any other language, without the written consent of the publisher.
Types of Contributions
Original research papers, discussion papers, short reports, review papers, Rapid Communications, Comment and Reply.
Comments
should be limited to 1000 words and need not have an abstract (but it might if the point is not immediately clear from the first few
sentences). Comments should have a title such as, "Comment on 'xxxxx by yyyyy'." The comment will be sent to the corresponding author
of the original work, and after a response, a decision will be made for a further round of rebuttal, possibly with reviewer help.
General:Manuscripts
must be in double-spaced form with wide margins and numbered lines! A font size of 12 or 10 pt is required. The corresponding author
should be identified (include a Fax number and E-mail address). Full postal addresses must be given for all co-authors. Authors should
consult a recent issue of the journal or the journal's website (
http://www.elsevier.com/locate/pepi.) for style if possible.
The Editors reserve the right to adjust style to certain standards of uniformity.
Abstracts:An abstract in English should
be provided with all papers.
Illustrations: Photographs, charts and diagrams are all to be referred to as "Figure(s)" and should
be numbered consecutively in the order to which they are referred. They should accompany the manuscript, but should not be included within
the text. All illustrations should be clearly marked with the figure number. All figures are to have a caption.
IMPORTANT: In
the PDF file, all figures and tables must be numbered and collected at the END of the manuscript. In addition, please indicate clearly
in the text where each figure/table should be positioned!
After Acceptance
Copyright
All authors
must sign the "Transfer of Copyright" agreement before the article can be published. This transfer agreement enables Elsevier B.V. to
protect the copyrighted material for the authors, without the author relinquishing his/her proprietary rights. The copyright transfer
covers the exclusive rights to reproduce and distribute the article, including reprints, photographic reproductions, microfilm or any
other reproductions of a similar nature, and translations. It also includes the right to adapt the article for use in conjunction with
computer systems and programs, including reproduction or publication in machine-readable form and incorporation in retrieval systems.
Authors are responsible for obtaining from the copyright holder permission to reproduce any material for which copyright already exists.
LaTeX
If the LaTeX file is suitable, proofs will be produced without
rekeying the text. The article should preferably be written using Elsevier's document class 'elsarticle', or alternatively any of the
other recognized classes and formats supported in Elsevier's electronic submissions system, for further information see
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/authorsview.authors/latex-ees-supported.
The Elsevier 'elsarticle' LaTeX style file package (including detailed instructions for LaTeX preparation) can be obtained
from the Quickguide:
http://www.elsevier.com/latex or from the Comprehensive TeX Archive Network (CTAN): see below, in the
directory /tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/elsarticle. It consists of the files: elsarticle.cls, complete user documentation for the
class file, bibliographic style files in various styles, and template files for a quick start.guidelines for users of elsart, a template
file for quick start.
CTAN is an archive with up-to-date copies of all the public-domain versions of TeX, LaTeX, Metafont and ancillary
programs, which is made available via a mirrored network of FTP servers. You can enter the CTAN archive via a web interface in the UK
(
http://www.tex.ac.uk), in the USA
http://www.ctan.org), or in Germany (
http://www.dante.de/software/ctan)
(page in German). You can search for a package on CTAN via
http://www.ucc.ie/cgi-bin/ctan/. You can also enter the archive
via FTP at
ftp://ftp.tex.ac.uk, at
ftp://ftp.dante.de, at
ftp://ctan.tug.org, or at one of the
many mirror servers; see for a list the UK or USA CTAN web pages. When a CTAN server does not respond, please try another one.
Note
that CTAN is not related to Elsevier, and that Elsevier's Customer support cannot accept complaints or answer questions about the availability
of any CTAN server.
Figures may be inserted in the usual way using an \includegraphics command, at the position in the article where
they are cited.
Your LaTeX file will be most useful as input for the printed article if you obey the following rules of thumb:
1.
Be consistent. If you use a macro for a phrase, use it throughout.
2. Use standard LaTeX mark-up. Do not hardcode your own layout
for e.g. section headings, but use the usual LaTeX macro for this purpose.
3. Keep it simple. Do not define macros that accomplish
complicated layout. They will also make the input process complicated.
Article structure
Follow
this order when composing manuscripts: Title, Authors, Affiliations, Abstract, Keywords, Main text, Acknowledgements, Appendix, References,
Figure Captions and then Tables. Do not import the Figures or Tables into your text. The corresponding author should be identified with
an asterisk and footnote. All other footnotes (except for table footnotes) should be identified with superscript Arabic numbers.
Subdivision - numbered sections
Divide your article into clearly defined and numbered sections. Subsections
should be numbered 1.1 (then 1.1.1, 1.1.2, ...), 1.2, etc. (the abstract is not included in section numbering). Use this numbering also
for internal cross-referencing: do not just refer to 'the text'. Any subsection may be given a brief heading. Each heading should appear
on its own separate line.
Material and methods
Provide sufficient detail to allow the work
to be reproduced. Methods already published should be indicated by a reference: only relevant modifications should be described.
Appendices
If there is more than one appendix, they should be identified as A, B, etc. Formulae and equations
in appendices should be given separate numbering: Eq. (A.1), Eq. (A.2), etc.; in a subsequent appendix, Eq. (B.1) and so on. Similarly
for tables and figures: Table A.1; Fig. A.1, etc.
Essential title page information
•
Title.
Concise and informative. Titles are often used in information-retrieval systems. Avoid abbreviations and formulae
where possible.
•
Author names and affiliations.
Where the family name may be ambiguous (e.g., a double name),
please indicate this clearly. Present the authors' affiliation addresses (where the actual work was done) below the names. Indicate all
affiliations with a lower-case superscript letter immediately after the author's name and in front of the appropriate address. Provide
the full postal address of each affiliation, including the country name and, if available, the e-mail address of each author.
•
Corresponding author.
Clearly indicate who will handle correspondence at all stages of refereeing and publication, also
post-publication.
Ensure that telephone and fax numbers (with country and area code) are provided in addition to the e-mail address
and the complete postal address. Contact details must be kept up to date by the corresponding author.
•
Present/permanent
address.
If an author has moved since the work described in the article was done, or was visiting at the time, a 'Present address'
(or 'Permanent address') may be indicated as a footnote to that author's name. The address at which the author actually did the work
must be retained as the main, affiliation address. Superscript Arabic numerals are used for such footnotes.
Abstract
A
concise and factual abstract is required. The abstract should state briefly the purpose of the research, the principal results and major
conclusions. An abstract is often presented separately from the article, so it must be able to stand alone. For this reason, References
should be avoided, but if essential, then cite the author(s) and year(s). Also, non-standard or uncommon abbreviations should be avoided,
but if essential they must be defined at their first mention in the abstract itself.
Graphical abstract
A
Graphical abstract is optional and should summarize the contents of the article in a concise, pictorial form designed to capture the
attention of a wide readership online. Authors must provide images that clearly represent the work described in the article. Graphical
abstracts should be submitted as a separate file in the online submission system. Image size: Please provide an image with a minimum
of 531 × 1328 pixels (h × w) or proportionally more. The image should be readable at a size of 5 × 13 cm using a regular
screen resolution of 96 dpi. Preferred file types: TIFF, EPS, PDF or MS Office files. See
http://www.elsevier.com/graphicalabstracts
for examples.
Authors can make use of Elsevier's Illustration and Enhancement service to ensure the best presentation of their images
also in accordance with all technical requirements:
Illustration
Service.
Highlights
Highlights are mandatory for this journal. They consist
of a short collection of bullet points that convey the core findings of the article and should be submitted in a separate file in the
online submission system. Please use 'Highlights' in the file name and include 3 to 5 bullet points (maximum 85 characters, including
spaces, per bullet point). See
http://www.elsevier.com/highlights for examples.
Keywords
The
authors are kindly requested to supply 4-6 keywords that can be used for indexing/abstracting purposes.
Artwork
Electronic artwork
Line drawings: All lettering, graph lines and points on graphs should be sufficiently
large and bold to permit reproduction when the diagram has been reduced to a size suitable for inclusion in the journal. Dye-line prints
or photocopies are not suitable for reproduction. Do not use any type of shading on computer-generated illustrations.
Photographs:
Original photographs must be supplied as they are to be reproduced (e.g. black and white or colour). If necessary, a scale should be
marked on the photograph. Please note that photocopies of photographs are not acceptable.
Color artwork
Please
make sure that artwork files are in an acceptable format (TIFF, EPS or MS Office files) and with the correct resolution. If, together
with your accepted article, you submit usable color figures then Elsevier will ensure, at no additional charge, that these figures will
appear in color on the Web (e.g., ScienceDirect and other sites) regardless of whether or not these illustrations are reproduced in color
in the printed version.
For color reproduction in print, you will receive information regarding the costs from Elsevier after receipt
of your accepted article. Please indicate your preference for color: in print or on the Web only. For further information on the
preparation of electronic artwork, please see
http://www.elsevier.com/artworkinstructions.
Please note: Because of technical
complications which can arise by converting color figures to 'gray scale' (for the printed version should you not opt for color in print)
please submit in addition usable black and white versions of all the color illustrations.
Tables
Number
tables consecutively in accordance with their appearance in the text and given a suitable caption. Place footnotes to tables below the
table body and indicate them with superscript lowercase letters. Avoid vertical rules. Be sparing in the use of tables and ensure that
the data presented in tables do not duplicate results described elsewhere in the article.
References
Citation in text
Please ensure that every reference cited in the text is also present in the reference list
(and vice versa). Any references cited in the abstract must be given in full. Unpublished results and personal communications are not
recommended in the reference list, but may be mentioned in the text. If these references are included in the reference list they should
follow the standard reference style of the journal and should include a substitution of the publication date with either 'Unpublished
results' or 'Personal communication'. Citation of a reference as 'in press' implies that the item has been accepted for publication.
Reference management software
This journal has standard templates available in key reference management packages
EndNote (
http://www.endnote.com/support/enstyles.asp) and Reference Manager (
http://refman.com/support/rmstyles.asp).
Using plug-ins to wordprocessing packages, authors only need to select the appropriate journal template when preparing their article
and the list of references and citations to these will be formatted according to the journal style which is described below.
Reference style
All publications cited in the text should be presented in a list of references following the
text of the manuscript. In the text refer to the author's name (without initials) and year of publication (e.g. "Since Peterson (1993)
has shown that..." or "This is in the agreement with results obtained later (Kramer, 1994)"). For three or more authors use the first
author followed by "et al.", in the text. The list of references should be arranged alphabetically by authors' names. The manuscript
should be carefully checked to ensure that the spelling of authors' names and dates are exactly the same in the text as in the reference
list.
References should be given in the following form:
Bullen, K.E., 1975. The Earth's Density. Chapman and Hall, London, 420
pp.
Kanamori, H., Cipar, J.J., 1974. Focal processes of the great Chilean earthquake May 22, 1960. Phys. Earth Planet. Inter., 9,
128-136.
Knopoff, L., 1972. Model for the aftershock occurrence. In: H.C. Heard, I.Y. Borg, N.L. Carter, C.B. Raleigh (Editors).
Flow and Fracture of Rocks. Am. Geophys. Union, Geophys. Monogr. Ser., 16, 259-263.
Toksoz, M.N., Thomson, K.C., Ahrens, T.J., 1971.
Generation of seismic waves in prestressed media. Bull. Seismol. Soc. Am., 61, 1589-1623.
Journal abbreviations
source
Journal names should be abbreviated according to
Index Medicus journal abbreviations:
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/tsd/serials/lji.html;
List of title word abbreviations:
http://www.issn.org/2-22661-LTWA-online.php;
CAS (Chemical Abstracts Service):
http://www.cas.org/sent.html.
Video data
Elsevier accepts video material and
animation sequences to support and enhance your scientific research. Authors who have video or animation files that they wish to submit
with their article are strongly encouraged to include these within the body of the article. This can be done in the same way as a figure
or table by referring to the video or animation content and noting in the body text where it should be placed. All submitted files should
be properly labeled so that they directly relate to the video file's content. In order to ensure that your video or animation material
is directly usable, please provide the files in one of our recommended file formats with a preferred maximum size of 50 MB. Video and
animation files supplied will be published online in the electronic version of your article in Elsevier Web products, including ScienceDirect:
http://www.sciencedirect.com. Please supply 'stills' with your files: you can choose any frame from the video or animation
or make a separate image. These will be used instead of standard icons and will personalize the link to your video data. For more detailed
instructions please visit our video instruction pages at
http://www.elsevier.com/artworkinstructions. Note: since video
and animation cannot be embedded in the print version of the journal, please provide text for both the electronic and the print version
for the portions of the article that refer to this content.
Supplementary data
Elsevier
accepts electronic supplementary material to support and enhance your scientific research. Supplementary files offer the author additional
possibilities to publish supporting applications, high-resolution images, background datasets, sound clips and more. Supplementary files
supplied will be published online alongside the electronic version of your article in Elsevier Web products, including ScienceDirect:
http://www.sciencedirect.com. In order to ensure that your submitted material is directly usable, please provide the data
in one of our recommended file formats. Authors should submit the material in electronic format together with the article and supply
a concise and descriptive caption for each file. For more detailed instructions please visit our artwork instruction pages at
http://www.elsevier.com/artworkinstructions.
Data at PANGAEA
Electronic archiving of supplementary data enables readers to replicate, verify and build
upon the conclusions published in your paper. We recommend that data should be deposited in the data library PANGAEA (
http://www.pangaea.de).
Data are quality controlled and archived by an editor in standard machine-readable formats and are available via Open Access. After processing,
the author receives an identifier (DOI) linking to the supplements for checking. As your data sets will be citable you might want to
refer to them in your article. In any case, data supplements and the article will be automatically linked as in the following example:
doi:10.1016/0016-7037(95)00105-9. Please use PANGAEA's
web interface to submit your data (
http://www.pangaea.de/submit/).
Google Maps and KML files
KML
(Keyhole Markup Language) files (optional): You can enrich your online articles by providing KML files which will be visualized using
Google maps. The KML files can be uploaded in our online submission system. KML is an XML schema for expressing geographic annotation
and visualization within Internet-based Earth browsers. Elsevier will generate Google Maps from the submitted KML files and include these
in the article when published online. Submitted KML files will also be available for downloading from your online article on ScienceDirect.
For more information see
http://www.elsevier.com/googlemaps.
Submission checklist
The
following list will be useful during the final checking of an article prior to sending it to the journal for review. Please consult this
Guide for Authors for further details of any item.
Ensure that the following items are present:
One author has been designated
as the corresponding author with contact details:
• E-mail address
• Full postal address
• Telephone and fax
numbers
All necessary files have been uploaded, and contain:
• Keywords
• All figure captions
• All tables
(including title, description, footnotes)
Further considerations
• Manuscript has been 'spell-checked' and 'grammar-checked'
• References are in the correct format for this journal
• All references mentioned in the Reference list are cited
in the text, and vice versa
• Permission has been obtained for use of copyrighted material from other sources (including the
Web)
• Color figures are clearly marked as being intended for color reproduction on the Web (free of charge) and in print, or
to be reproduced in color on the Web (free of charge) and in black-and-white in print
• If only color on the Web is required,
black-and-white versions of the figures are also supplied for printing purposes
For any further information please visit our customer
support site at
http://support.elsevier.com.
Use of the Digital Object Identifier
The Digital Object Identifier
(DOI) may be used to cite and link to electronic documents. The DOI consists of a unique alpha-numeric character string which is assigned
to a document by the publisher upon the initial electronic publication. The assigned DOI never changes. Therefore, it is an ideal medium
for citing a document, particularly 'Articles in press' because they have not yet received their full bibliographic information. The
correct format for citing a DOI is shown as follows (example taken from a document in the journal
Physics Letters B):
doi:10.1016/j.physletb.2010.09.059
When you use the DOI to create URL hyperlinks to documents on the web, the DOIs are guaranteed never to change.
Proofs
When your manuscript is received by the Publisher it is considered to be in its final form. Proofs
are not to be regarded as 'drafts'. One set of page proofs in PDF format will be sent by e-mail to the corresponding author, to be checked
for typesetting/editing. No changes in, or additions to, the accepted (and subsequently edited) manuscript will be allowed at this stage.
Proofreading is solely your responsibility.
A form with queries from the Copyeditor may accompany your proofs. Please answer all queries
and make any corrections or additions required.
The Publisher reserves the right to proceed with publication if corrections are not
communicated.
Return corrections within 3 days of receipt of the proofs. Should there be no corrections, please confirm this.
Elsevier
will do everything possible to get your article corrected and published as quickly and accurately as possible. In order to do this we
need your help. When you receive the (PDF) proof of your article for correction, it is important to ensure that all of your corrections
are sent back to us in one communication. Subsequent corrections will not be possible, so please ensure your first sending is complete.
Note that this does not mean you have any less time to make your corrections, just that only one set of corrections will be accepted.
Offprints
The corresponding author, at no cost, will be provided with a PDF file of the article via e-mail.
The PDF file is a watermarked version of the published article and includes a cover sheet with the journal cover image and a disclaimer
outlining the terms and conditions of use. Additional paper offprints can be ordered by the authors. An order form with prices will be
sent to the corresponding author. Orders for reprints (produced after publication of an article) will incur a 50% surcharge.
Additional information
Authors in Japan kindly note: Upon request Elsevier Japan will provide a list of people
who can check and improve the English of an article (before submission). Please contact our Tokyo office: Elsevier Japan K.K., 1-9-15
Higashi Azabu, Minato-ku, Tokyo 106-0044, Japan; tel.: +81-3-5561-5032; fax: +81-3-5561-5045; e-mail: jp.info@elsevier.com
For inquiries relating to the submission of articles (including electronic submission) please
visit this journal's homepage. Contact details for questions arising after acceptance of an article, especially those relating to proofs,
will be provided by the publisher. You can track accepted articles at
http://www.elsevier.com/trackarticle. You can also
check our Author FAQs (
http://www.elsevier.com/authorFAQ) and/or contact Customer Support via
http://support.elsevier.com.
