Information for Authors

Submission

Papers on major topics of international interest in engineering geology and hydrogeology are welcomed; those of local interest may not be suitable. Normally papers should not exceed ten typeset pages, including references, tables and figures: there are c. 900 words on a printed page. Papers longer than twelve pages require special editorial approval. Don't forget to make an allowance for figures and tables, and allow a quarter page for the title, authors and affiliations.

Photographic features and Technical Notes are also invited. Discussion on published articles is also invited within the timescales published with each published article.QJEGH aims to review and publish papers as rapidly as possible. Authors for whom English is not their first language are strongly recommended to procure a thorough review of their papers by a native English speaker prior to submission. This should ensure that the publication of their paper is not delayed or, indeed, jeopardized by issues related to readability. Where appropriate articles should include a location map (clearly showing the direction of North and the scale), in almost all cases such a location map will be required in a Photographic Feature.

Technical Notes are short communications (six pages or less) that present updates to well-established work or principles, novel or emerging ideas, short case studies or the results of recently-completed research, or ongoing work that is of immediate interest to the engineering geological and/or hydrogeological community,

Photographic Features are intended to allow authors to produce articles that are driven by illustrations of features, processes, etc and that will be of interest to the readership. Such Photographic Features should illustrates the exceptional, whether that exception is in relation to events, features, processes or the exceptional quality and/or observations made. The balance between illustration and text is flexible but as a minimum the text must be sufficient to adequately describe the imagery, set it in context and draw some meaningful observations/conclusions regarding that which is illustrated. A Photographic Feature will not normally exceed six pages.

All submissions to the Journal should be made online via http://qjegh.allentrack.net . Full instructions can be found within that site. There are additional help buttons throughout. You will need to register before you can submit. This is very easy. If you have previously submitted a paper, you should already be in the system.

Before submitting a manuscript, it is recommended that you have the following to hand:

all authors' first, middle names/initials and last names
all authors' full postal and e-mail addresses
title and running title (you may copy and paste these from your manuscript)
abstract (you may copy and paste this from your manuscript - 200 word limit)
manuscript files in Word, WordPerfect, RTF or Text formats (please number lines within the text)
figures/images in TIF, EPS, PDF* or JPG formats
tables in XLS, CSV or DOC formats
supplementary data files
covering letter (which the referees will see)
abstracts of any related papers that you have in press (submit as supplemental files)

(*If you load PDF files the merged file might be very large)

(It is a good idea to put all your files in one folder.)

The submission package will guide you through the processes for submitting your files and confirmation/approval.

You can check the status of your manuscript at any time through the system by:

logging into the system with your password
clicking on the link represented by your manuscript tracking number and abbreviated title
clicking on the 'Check Status' link at the bottom of the displayed page

Recommended utilities

PC users: Internet Explorer 5.0 and above
Mac users: Netscape 4.7 and above
Adobe Reader 4.0 and above
You need to have Cookies enabled

Papers are accepted on the understanding that they have not been submitted or published elsewhere and become copyright of the Geological Society. Papers are also accepted on the understanding that all authors consent to the submission. All authors should have seen and approved the version that you submit.

Papers should be arranged as follows.

Title: brief and specific; followed by name(s) and address(es) of authors(including e-mail address of corresponding author)
Abstract: this must be intelligible without reference to the paper, and should not exceed 200 words
Main body of paper: subdivided into 1st, 2nd and 3rd order headings; omit heading 'Introduction'
Acknowledgements (if any)
Appendices: see Supplementary Data.
References: in full; authors' names must be keyed as capitals and lower case
Tables: each as a separate file
Figure captions (you will need to paste these with the figures)
Figures in separate files

Refereeing and editing

The scientific editor will send your paper to at least two referees. The scientific editor and the assistant scientific editors will handle the papers through the reviewing and scientific editing procedure and approve the finalized script for publication. We expect the reviewing and editing procedure to take about four to five months in the case of a paper requiring little revision. We are of course dependent on the goodwill of unpaid reviewers to achieve these targets.

You can keep track of this process through the online submissions package.

It is important that the citation of other works in QJEGH papers is not only sufficient, correct and relevant but also that recent papers are included. The authors should be encouraged to cite relevant, recent papers from QJEGH and elsewhere. In some cases the reviewers may wish to give the authors the opportunity to include retrospectively citation of paper (or papers) that have been published during the review process. This will improve the usefulness of QJEGH to its readers.

Colour charges

In dealing with colour you have three choices:

Submit figures in black & white and both the hardcopy publication and the will be reproduced in black & white. For this option there is no charge.
Submit figures in colour, and decline to pay for colour hardcopy during the submission process, and the hardcopy publication will be in black & white and the online in colour. For this option there is no charge, but you must ensure that your colour figures will be clear when printed in both black & white and colour.
Submit your figures in colour, and accept that you will pay for colour in hardcopy during the submission process, and the hardcopy publication will be in black and white and the online in colour. For this option there is a charge as detailed below

Colour printing incurs extra costs, and like most publishers, we pass these costs to authors in order to keep the subscription price as low as possible. Society subscription prices are much lower than those of many commercial publishers.

For QJEGH the cost to authors is £500 for the first page within a paper, then £100 for subsequent pages provided the paper is no more than 8 pages in length.

The Journal has a small annual budget to help authors with colour costs. The budget is controlled by the Chief Scientific Editor. Please contact the Staff Editor if you have any queries.

You can, of course, have colour in the online version at no cost provided that we can use the same file as for printing in black and white (i.e. we can just switch the colour off in the print version).

Format and tips for calculating the length

Please submit the paper as single column double-line spaced text, line numbers down the left hand side are useful for reviewing purposes. Place every Figure and Table on separate pages along with the accompanying caption.
In the final typeset version the main text is in double column format. Final printed page size: 296 mm deep by 210 mm wide. Maximum final size of illustrations: 240 mm deep by 178 mm wide. Single column width: 85 mm. Number of words per page: 900.
Titles, authors and affiliations: for a short title and one author, allow 100 words; for a longer title and/or several authors and affiliations, allow up to 300 words.

Abstract: straightforward word count

Text: straightforward word count (900 words = 1 page)

References: allow 40 references per page

Figures: single column – estimate ¼ or ½ page depending on depth of figure; for double and 1½ column figures – estimate ½ or 1 page depending on depth of figure. Landscape figures = whole page

Figure captions: straightforward word count unless it is a 1½ column figure, in which case don't include caption in count.

Tables: across one column (max total 65 characters width including three character space between each column) – estimate ¼ or ½ page depending on length of table; across two columns – estimate ½ or 1 page depending on the length of the table. Landscape tables = whole page.

Production

The staff editor will write to the corresponding author notifying them of when the paper is due to be published. The paper will be copyedited and then sent to an external typesetter. PDF proofs will be sent out asap by email. We do not generally send revised proofs to the author. The production process takes about four to five months from acceptance to publication. Because the number of pages in each issue is limited (and has to be a multiple of 16) it is inevitable that some papers get held over to the next issue. We try to do this fairly, selecting the papers by submission date, but sometimes the 16-page multiple constraint means that an older paper has to be held over.

Discussions

Discussions on papers that have already appeared in the Journal are acceptable. Discussions should be submitted as described above. Please ensure you include your own address and all the references that you cite, even if they were in the original paper.

Discussions should add something to the debate and not be just an additional observation.

Normally Discussions are open for one year following publication.

Offprints

You will be given instructions on how to download a PDF of your paper from the online version of the Journal. Paper offprints can be ordered; instructions will be sent with the proof e-mail.

Image Disclaimer

The Geological Society endeavours to ensure that all images published contribute to the objectives of the individual papers in which they appear. In presenting pictures that illustrate a particular technical point it is recognized that authors select pictures from their own archives and from those of others. Occasionally these may illustrate practices in respect of health and safety that may not conform to current best practice in the developed world. This may be due to the age of the particular picture or the region in which it was captured – in either case the near-impossibility of replacing it is recognized by a ‘hands-off’ approach to the inclusion or otherwise of such pictures. The inclusion of such images should not be taken as an endorsement of the practices depicted by The Geological Society, the Authors or any other person or body.

Prof W Dearman Young Author of the Year Award

Each year, the Journal makes an award for the best paper from a young author. The prize is two years free membership to the Geological Society, an SP (or EGSP) of your choice and an invitation to join the QJEGH Board as a guest editor for 1 year.

The only criterion for the award is that you should have been under the age of 30 when the paper on which you were an author was originally submitted.

If you wish your paper to be considered for this award, you must fill in your date of birth in your profile in the submission and review system (allen track).

Previous winners are:

2010: Stuart A. Dunning (The integration of terrestrial laser scanning and numerical modelling in landslide investigation; with N.J. Rosser & C.I. Massey)

2009: Joseph Quinn (Understanding the recession of the Holderness Coast, east Yorkshire, UK - a new presentation of temporal and spatial patterns; with L Philip & W Murphy)

2008: N. Boylan (Peat slope failure in Ireland; with P. Jennings & M. Long)

2007: J. Walstra (Historical aerial photographs for landslide assessment: two case histories; with N. Dixon & J.H. Chandler)

2006: D.P. Neuffer (Mechanisms of slope failure in Valles Marineris, Mars; with R.A. Schultz)

2005: N. J. Rosser (Terrestrial laser scanning for monitoring the process of hard rock coastal cliff erosion; with D.N. Petley, M. Lim, S. A. Dunning & R. Allison)

2004: S. Martino (Geological-evolutionary model of a gravity-induced slope deformation in the carbonate central Apennines (Italy); with A. Prestininzi & G. Scarascia Mugnozza)

2003: M. W. Branston (The application of Time-Lapse Microgravity for the Investigation and Monitoring of Subsidence at Northwich, Cheshire; with P. Styles)

2002: P. J. Phipps (Engineering geological constraints studies for highways schemes in the Republic of Ireland: the N6 Kinnegad to Athlone dual carriageway case study)

2001: A. M. MacDonald (Aquifer properties of the Chalk of England; with D. J. Allen)

2000: R. J. Cullen (South Shore Cliffs, Whitehaven: Geomorphological survey and emergency cliff stabilization work; with A. D. Boggett & N. J. Mapplebeck)

1999: S. Barnes (Karstic groundwater flow characteristics in the Cretaceous Chalk aquifer, Northern Ireland)

1998: S. L. Hobbs (The hydrogeological effect of quarrying karstified limestone: options for prediction and mitigation: with J. Gunn)