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Information for authors and users

Submitting copy to Geoscientist

Geoscientist is pleased to receive contributions. The Geological Society of London is a not-for-profit organisation, so we do not charge for publication, but, unfortunately, also cannot pay for contributions. Anyone may offer articles for consideration by the Editor. However, only Fellows are invited to contribute opinion pieces (soapboxes), letters and book reviews.

If you want to contribute to Geoscientist, please read the guide for authors

Please submit all copy (text and illustrations) electronically, via email to the Editor. Copy deadlines for Geoscientist are posted here.

Citations and digital object identifiers

The scientific content published in Geoscientist is assigned a formal citation and digital object identifier (DOIs), making it searchable and discoverable. However, Geoscientist is a popular science magazine, not an academic journal, and the content does not constitute formal peer-reviewed science.

Copyright licence and reuse

(See here for useful tips on copyright written by the Production Editors at the Geological Society’s Publishing House and here for useful information on Creative Commons open access licences.)

In addition to the print version of the magazine, Geoscientist content is published open access online. Therefore, authors retain copyright of their articles and users are free to share (copy and redistribute) and adapt (remix, transform and build upon) the material. If reusing material published in Geoscientist, users must give appropriate credit to the author(s) for their original creation, indicate if any changes were made and provide the full citation to the original Geoscientist article.

Please note that if you created the material as part of your employment or as a work-for-hire, your employer may own the copyright and you may therefore need to get permission from your employer before publishing the work open access.

Copyright permissions for third party materials

It is the author’s responsibility to obtain the relevant copyright permissions for any third-party material used in their piece. That is, if you include in your article any text, illustrations or figures taken from previously published work (whether created by you or by someone else), you must obtain the relevant permissions from the copyright holder (typically the publisher of the original material) and give proper attribution.

Authors should check all material included in their article has full permission to publish open access.

In cases where permission is required to use third-party material, you must email copies of the relevant copyright permissions to the Editor. We cannot publish your article unless we have the relevant copyright permissions for all third-party materials.

We strongly recommend that authors use their own, original text, figures and illustrations (that is, photographs taken by you or figures created by you, that have not been published elsewhere). If you are in any doubt, please remove the text, illustration, figure, photograph or other content from your article. You can instead refer the reader to the original content by referencing it in the text. We are also happy to secure suitable images from the Shutterstock image library to accompany your piece. Please feel free to recommend suitable images.

If submitting photographs that include recognisable faces of living individuals, authors must obtain permissions from those people featured in the photograph. Useful guidelines can be found here.

Infringement

We make every effort to avoid copyright infringement and assign appropriate credit to all third-party content. We reserve the right to remove any content from a paper, whether before or after publication, that we believe was included without consent from the original owner. 

In cases where we may have inadvertently infringed copyright, we offer our sincere apologies and will act quickly to remedy the situation, removing the material from our site, if necessary. If you feel that your copyright has been infringed, please notify the Editor.

Ethics

Authorship of articles should be limited to those that have made a significant contribution to the piece. All co-authors must have read, reviewed and agreed to the piece prior to publication.

Authors must reveal to the editor any potential or perceived conflicts of interest (financial or otherwise). In the event that an author declares a potential conflict, a short statement to that effect will be added to the article.

Please do not use in your piece any information obtained privately or in the course of confidential services (unless explicit permission has been granted and can be demonstrated).

Plagiarism is unacceptable. Please always include the appropriate credit for original hypotheses, ideas or data.

Disclaimer

No responsibility or liability is assumed by Geoscientist, the Geological Society of London or any copyright owner for any injury or damage to persons or property as a consequence of the reading, use or interpretation of its published content. Whilst every effort is made to ensure accuracy, Geoscientist, the Geological Society of London, the authors, Editors and copyright owners cannot be held responsible for published errors. The views or opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect views of the magazine Editors, Editorial Advisory Panel or the Geological Society of London.

Inclusion of any advertising material in or as an insert with Geoscientist does not constitute a guarantee or endorsement of any products or services or the claims made by any manufacturer. No responsibility is assumed by the Publisher for any injury and/or damage to persons or property as a matter of products liability, negligence or otherwise, or from any use or operation of any methods, products, instructions or ideas contained in advertising materials. All advertising material is expected to conform to ethical and trading standards, and reasonable care is taken to ensure that advertisers are reputable and reliable. However, Geoscientist and The Geological Society of London can give no assurance that an advertiser will fulfil its obligation under all circumstances

Geoscientist online may contain web links to other useful websites and resources. These links are provided for information only—we do not endorse these sites, are not affiliated with them and assume no responsibility for the content contained therein.

Safe working practices

Geoscientist endeavours to ensure that all published images and descriptions of working practices contribute to the objectives of the individual papers in which they appear. The inclusion of such content should not be taken as an endorsement of the practices depicted or described by Geoscientist magazine, The Geological Society of London, the authors, Editors, copyright owners or any other person or body.

For more detailed information on publishing ethics, please see the Society’s ‘Publishing Ethics and Disclaimer’ page here.



Book Reviews

Disaster Deferred - a new view of Earthquake Hazards in the New Madrid Seismic Zone. (2012) by Seth Stein

Geoscientist has a number of books available for Fellows to review. We also invite publishers to send us books to be reviewed.