Suggestions to authors

Stratigraphy publishes peer-reviewed research on the stratigraphic record, with special attention to papers that apply advances in the specialized fields to problems of general interest. We encourage submission of articles of not more than 50 printed pages (150 ms pages and plates), and monographic or multi-authored theme issues of up to 200 printed pages. We also publish professional notes that deal with stratigraphic nomenclature, stratotypes, software and other such information that does not require peer review. In addition, the journal accepts book reviews and memorials, and donates space for announcements of professional interest.

Requirements and terms

Manuscript must be in English, in digital form and preferably submitted via the online manuscript manager. There are no page charges, and authors receive publisher’s PDFs of their contribution at no cost.

COPYRIGHT NOTIFICATION: By approving and returning the final proof copy for publication, authors agree that Micropaleontology Press has full and undivided copyright to their work in this form. All other rights are retained by the authors.

Submittal Procedure and Review

Pre-review. Authors must obtain pre-reviews of their work from two colleagues of their choice, who agree to be identified and, if necessary, to be contacted by the editors or reviewers after the paper has been submitted. The pre-review forms can be used as a guide. The objective of pre-review is not to obtain an endorsement, but to improve the paper before submittal.

Submittal is in digital form, preferably using the manuscript management program Strat Man, on our website. Submitters must provide (1) name, address and e-mail of the pre-reviewers and (2) the abstract as a separate document, in addition to the full text and illustrations. Note that all illustrations in the first submittal must be in PDF.

Author's names are written out in full. The corresponding author (if not first listed author) should be indicated to the Editor, as well as a special correspondent address if necessary.

Institutional address of each author should be no more than is necessary for receiving mail; organizational information beyond this level is not desirable. The e-mail address of the senior or corresponding author is required, and those of other authors should be included if possible.

Comments should include special requests, contact information, suggestions as to reviewers, and other communication to the Editor.

Resubmittal may be required if the manuscript is not ready for review. Authors will be notified of any problems. Authors whose English is not fluent are strongly advised to ask for assistance.

Reviewers are anonymous, unless they wish otherwise. The help of reviewers who identify themselves should be acknowledged. Authors will be notified when review is completed. The review comments, marked-up manuscript and editor’s remarks will be available in Strat Man. Please note that authors must satisfy the Editorial Board, not the reviewers, in preparing a final draft acceptable for publication.

Final draft must be submitted via Strat Man. Authors are free to decide what should go into the final draft, but the Editorial Board's judgment on the adequacy of response to the reviews is final.

There is no time limit for returning a final draft. Authors may not, however, introduce significant new data, or substantially change the scope or purpose of the work after review, without consulting with the Editor. In such cases a second round of review may be called for.

Proof Corrections will be made on full-page mockups (not galley proofs), in which text, illustrations and all other material will be shown exactly as in the final printed page. The author(s) are expected to review and approve not only spelling, but also the positioning of figures and other aspects of the work as it will be seen. Minor corrections may be emailed to the editor.

Manuscript Style

Authors should consult recent issues of Micropaleontology or Stratigraphy for a general idea of the desired style. The following points should be kept in mind:

Title of the submitted work should be brief and clear. For the benefit of bibliographic indexers, include key words as far as possible in the title. Complex geographical terms, in particular, need not be detailed in the title unless this information itself is significant.

Abstract must summarize the problem and conclusions. A mere list of the contents is not acceptable.

Basic Format follows the principal that submitted papers are manuscripts, not publications! Typographical refinements (other than italics and boldface) to imitate a published page must be removed before the manuscript can be processed, and are therefore highly unwelcome. There should be NO embedded illustrations or graphics in the text, or hidden formatting (i.e. End Notes). Do not align the right margin of text as in a book page, and there should be no forced hyphens or other adjustments merely for appearance's sake.

Text (including captions and references) should have the same character size throughout (11 or 12-point, in any font face). Mathematical notation and special characters may be submitted as graphics, to be incorporated in the text before going to press. Text files should be in rich-text format (RTF) or MS Word, but Word Perfect is acceptable. Formatting should be as simple as possible, without numbered paragraphs, indented sections, or footnotes.

Illustrations in the original submittal must be in PDF, for ease of handling in review.

If the paper is accepted, authors will be asked to upload the same graphics in TIF (or JPG) format at full publication size. Photographs and shaded art should be gray-scale 300 to 360 dpi, and line art (drawings, tables, plain maps) in black and white at 1000 to 1200 dpi. Excel files and data tables should be submtted as digitized graphics. We do not accept proprietary formats (IMG, BMP, PPT, AI, Corel Draw, Photo Shop PSD, etc.)

Color illustrations will be reproduced at no cost in the online version, but cannot be published in the printed edition without significant added expense. Authors should therefore consider whether their color designs will also reproduce satisfactorily in black and white, if necessary.

Figure numbers, arrows, labels, and other emphasis in illustrations should be conspicuous. Caption text must be removed from the image, and submitted as plain text. All maps, sections, and drawings must show scale, with the units of measurement indicated. Graphs and tables should be prepared so that column titles are at the top and row legends are on the left. Where headings are placed sideways, they should be LEFT END DOWN so that they will be readable when the page is rotated clockwise.

Locality information for fossils, surface samples, cores, measured sections and physical features mentioned in the manuscript should be given with enough detail to allow other workers to identify the locality in the field. Wherever possible, collected materials should be located on a map or to levels in stratigraphic sections or cores, and the depository of such materials should be given in the manuscript.

Citations in the text refer to author and date of the reference in question, with page or plate number added for specific location as necessary. Author names are NOT capitalized in the text. The date is always in parentheses, and name and date are never separated by a comma, as follows: Author (1999) or (Author 1999). The term "et al.", following the first author's name, should be used in place of co-author names where there are four or more authors, and (if desired) for three or more authors. Where several "et al." papers with the same first author are referred to, they cannot be cited together unless all co-authors are the same. Assuming co-authors are not the same in the following, we would have (Author et al. 1996, Author et al. 1997, Author et al. 1998), not (Author et al. 1996, 1997, 1998).

Footnotes are not permitted.

Abbreviations of units of measurement are considered to be symbols, not words, and do not use periods (km, cm, mm, µm, nm, mi, ft, in, kg, g, lb, oz, myr, kyr, yr, mo, hr, sec). Such symbols are not separated by a space from the numerical values (e.g., 753km; 25µm). Abbreviations of common titles (Dr, Mr, Mrs, Ms, Sr, Jr, PhD) and acronyms are not printed with periods. For clarity, all acronyms except the most common (USA, UK, USGS, NY, MA, CA, DSDP, RAM, DOS) should be followed by an explanation in parenthesis at first use, e.g., UCLA (University of California, Los Angeles). The abbreviations Ga (giga-annum), Ma (mega-annum) and Ka (kilo-annum) are abbreviations for units of geological time indexed to the present, and are shorthand for earlier, more precise forms such as "Mybp" (millions of years before present). These are NOT interchangeable with symbols for geochronometric quantities (myr, my, kyr, and so on). The commonly abbreviated latinisms (etc., et al., viz., e.g., s.s.) use periods. The words "nec", "ex" and "et" are not abbreviations. By convention, the abbreviation "vs" is italicized without a period.

References are listed alphabetically by author name (in CAPITALS) and then chronologically. Note that "Mc" comes in order, and not before "Ma". Honorifics are detached (for example, write ORBIGNY, A. D', and GÜMBEL, C. W. VON).

Examples of reference format are as follows:

Note that where the names of authors are repeated without change in successive references, they are replaced by an underline dash. Any new combination of author names must be written out, even if the lead author is repeated. NOTE that book and serial titles are always written out in full in the reference citation.

In book titles, only proper nouns are capitalized. Serial titles are capitalized throughout. All primary titles are italicized (compare the book title "A manual of planktonic foraminifera" and the serial title "Journal of Sedimentary Research".) Explanatory information, such as the edition, the issuing society, the inclusive series, the publisher, or the part, are not italicized.

A work in preparation, as well as unpublished reports, correspondence, internal documents, e-mail, and Internet postings (except for formal electronic publications) should be properly identified in the text ("Author, in prep" or ."Source, personal communication, 2010"). These are not listed n References.

A work may be listed in the references if it is actually "in press", i.e., formally accepted for publication. Due to the uncertainties of publishing, however, no year or volume number should be indicated. Dissertations that are available from department or institutional libraries may be treated as published books.

Captions should begin with a brief title, e.g., "Index map of sample sites." The abbreviations and graphic symbols used in the figure or table should be explained. When the same symbols are used in a series of figures, it is only necessary to explain them completely in the first caption and then to point to that caption in the others. A long caption, bringing out the point of the figure or table, is preferable to a cursory statement that merely identifies the content, even if the caption repeats discussion that is also found in the text.

Grammatical usage is left, as far as possible, to the taste of the author(s). We do not dictate planktic vs planktonic, benthic vs benthonic, stratigraphic vs stratigraphical, etc., but the author's usage should be consistent throughout the paper. The use of conjunctions (and, but, then, however, therefore, nonetheless) to begin sentences is deplorable. Periods and commas must not be placed inside a quotation or parenthesis, if they are not an original part of the phrase being quoted or expressed. Fowler's English Usage is a good general source for word usage, punctuation and other such matters. For scientific writing, we recommend Suggestions to authors of the United States Geological Survey.

Space requirements can be estimated by assuming that a page of text in our journals will contain approximately 1,000 words, or 5,200 characters including spaces. The captions to plates and figures take up more space than simple text, equivalent to 600 words per full page. Graphics will be printed in a full page space of 7 x 9.5 in (18 x 24 cm), at an aspect ratio of 0.74. Half-columns will accomodate graphics up to 3.25 in (8.5 cm) in width.