The Geological Society

Information for Authors - Engineering Geology Special Publications

Scope of the series

This series is devoted to engineering geology and geotechnical topics.

Key points to consider before you submit

Preparing your paper

Guidelines for preparing text and illustrations can be found in the box to the right of this page. Those apply to all GSL publications. Details of page size, colour and Open Access costs (which are specific to this book series) are below.

Language

We welcome papers from authors in all countries, but if you are not fluent in English please seek assistance before submission. There are resources to help ESL authors, some of which are written in other languages.

Ethics

We expect all authors, reviewers and editors to comply with the Society’s Code of Publishing Ethics. Please ensure that you have read, understood and complied with this, particularly the sections on authors and sample collection. You will be asked to confirm this when you submit your paper.

The Society now runs automatic plagiarism checks on submissions to all journals and those books using online submission. The checks will occur upon submission of a new manuscript. Authors are encouraged to avoid fragmentation of their published submitted work where practical. Submissions with too much overlap with other papers (either published or under review) without clear, visible reference to the previous publication may be identified as duplicate publications and will not be considered.

Submission or publication elsewhere is not acceptable while your paper is under consideration for the Special Publication. Dual submission and publication are serious breaches of widely accepted publishing ethics.

The Society is now gathering information on the role of each author on submitted papers. We are using the CRediT taxonomy developed by CASRAI. This information appears in our published articles and is sent to CrossRef.

Data availability statements are necessary for all Geological Society of London publications arising from publicly-funded research, and are a requirement of many funders' data policies and the RCUK Common Principles on Data Policy. For more information, please read our guidance on text.

Read the Society’s policy on corrections and retractions.

Declaration of interest statements

During the submission process, authors will be asked to reveal to the editor any potential competing interests that might be affected by publication of the results contained in a manuscript. To ensure transparency and allow readers to form their own judgements of any potential bias, authors must include a declaration of interest statement. To read the GSL Competing Interests factsheet, visit www.geolsoc.org.uk/GSL-Competing-Interests-Factsheet

For example:

Competing interests: authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Competing interests: The authors declare the following financial interests/personal relationships which may be considered as potential competing interests: [Author A] has received research grants from [Company X], [Author B] is a member of [Committee Y], [Author C] has received an honorarium for speaking at [Symposium Y] and [Author D] is consultant to [Company Z]. [Author E] declares no known competing interests.

Publishing agreement and terms of use

If your paper is accepted you (or your employer) will be required to grant the Society an exclusive licence to publish and accept the terms and conditions for use of your final PDF.

You can reuse your figures and data without permission
You can post your original version at any time
You can post the refereed manuscript version 12 months after publication
You can pay to make your paper Open Access (see below)
You cannot post the final PDF or proofs at any time unless you have paid for Open Access

More information on the licence can be found in the Copyright Policy.

More information on reusing your material can be found on the permissions page.

ORCID

If you have not already done so, we encourage you to register for an ORCID iD. You can use your iD to log into our submission system and many others.

From 1 April 2020 corresponding authors will be required to provide an authenticated ORCID identifier as part of the manuscript submission process.

More information is available on the ORCID website.

Submission

Most EGSPs use online submission via Editorial Manager. You need an invitation from the editor in order to be able to submit. If you have any queries during submission, please contact the Editorial Office at [email protected].

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

All authors' first, middle names/initials and last names
Corresponding author ORCID identifier
All authors' email addresses
The role of each contributor in preparing the paper (see CRediT's taxonomy)
The names and links to any repositories where data used in your research is held. For more information, please see the 'What to include in your Data Access Statement' section in the author guidelines document
Manuscript files in Word, RTF or Latex formats with continuous line numbering
Tables in XLS, (or XLS compatible)
Figures (20MB maximum) in separate files. At initial submission figures and their captions can be provided within the manuscript. At revised submission stage figures and their captions should also be uploaded as separate files and figure captions should be included within the text file. Each figure and table must be clearly labelled, either as the file name or on the figure itself.
We recommend images are initially submitted as PDF files as these tend to reproduce well in the merged PDF for the review process. EPS, TIFF or JPG files are also acceptable, but images sometimes do not appear very clear in the merged PDF that is produced for peer review. Higher resolution images (such as TIFF, EPS, JPG or PDF) greater than 20MB can be provided after acceptance.
3D images, please read the illustrations instructions via the box on the right of this page.
Supplementary data files
Covering letter (which the referees will see)
Abstracts of any related papers that you have in press or in review

It is a good idea to put all your files in one folder (you can upload a zip file to the new site).

The submission package will guide you through the processes for submitting your files and confirmation/approval. The final stage can be slow, so please be prepared to save and revisit.

Papers should be arranged as follows:

Title: brief and specific; followed by name(s) and address(es) of authors (including email address of corresponding author)
Abstract: this must be intelligible without reference to the paper, and should not exceed 200 words. Figures are not allowed in the Abstract
Main body of paper: subdivided into 1st, 2nd and 3rd order headings; omit heading 'Introduction'
Acknowledgements
Funding
Appendices: see Supplementary Data
References: in full; authors' names must be keyed as capitals and lower case
Tables
Figure captions
Figures (20MB maximum for new system) in separate files

Page format

Engineering Geology Special Publication papers look very much like journal articles. The authors are listed at the start of the paper; they have abstracts and a reference list at the end of each chapter. The main text is in double column format Final printed page size: 245 mm deep by 190 mm wide. Maximum final size of illustrations: 210 mm deep by 156 mm wide. Single column width 76 mm. Number of words per page: 900.

Colour charges

From EGSP28 onwards there will be no charges for colour figures in Engineering Geology Special Publications.

Open Access publishing

Authors may choose to make their article fully Open Access (sometimes called ‘Gold Open Access’) on payment of an Article Processing Charge.

2024 APC price £2,400/$3360/€2880 (+VAT as applicable at the time of invoicing and subject to change).
Articles where the corresponding author or at least half the authors are Fellows of the Geological Society are entitled to a 25% discount.
Corresponding authors at institutions that have signed a read and publish agreement with the Geological Society of London, qualify for waived APCs. The list of qualifying institutions can be found on our Open Access page.
There is a 50% discount for articles where all the authors are at a research institution in a developing country.

More information on the Society’s policy can be found on our Open Access page.

You can select Open Access when you submit your article online. You do not need to pay until after your article is accepted. There will be a link to the payment authorization form in the acceptance letter.

If you require Open Access but cannot pay the APC, the Geological Society also supports ‘Green Open Access’, where you can post your final post-refereed version of the article to a website or repository 12 months after the online publication date.

Authors must not post a typeset proof or final version to any website or repository unless the article is fully Open Access.

There is no discount for whole books being Open Access.

Citation data for EGSPs

GSL EGSPs and most other books published by the Society from 2008 onwards (with incomplete coverage from 2005) will be included in the Thomson Reuters Book Citation Index or the Conference Proceedings Citation Index, which are components of Web of Science. Citation counts for individual articles will be available, and the counts will be included in an author’s h-index.

Refereeing and editing

The volume editors will send your paper to at least two referees. The volume editors will handle the papers through the reviewing and scientific editing procedure. A Single Blind Peer Review process is used.

We expect the reviewing and editing procedure to take about five to six months - but this is dependent upon referees and schedules of the scientific editors.

Co-reviewing
GSL supports co-reviewing across its portfolio of publications. In co-review, invited reviewers have the option to involve a co-reviewer (often a junior colleague, for training purposes) in completing their report. All peer reviewers for GSL publications are expected to follow the Society’s ethical guidelines, including confidentiality of peer review.

Discussions

Discussions on papers in GSL books can be submitted to an appropriate GSL journal (QJEGH in this case). The editorial board of the journal will be responsible for review and acceptance. Discussions should add something to the debate and not be just an additional observation.

Production

The Publishing House will start work on the book only when the all the papers are finalised. A Production Editor will be assigned, who will write to the authors notifying them of when proofs are due and if there are any problems or costs to be incurred. The paper will be copyedited and then sent to an external typesetter. You will be instructed on how to access your proofs. We do not generally send revised proofs to authors. EGSPs are published online and as hardback books.

What do authors receive?

This varies according to volume and will have been agreed with the Volume Editor upon acceptance of the proposal. All authors will be emailed instructions on how to download a PDF of their paper from the online version of the book.

We will notify authors about options for obtaining print copies shortly before publication.

Keep in touch

We produce a regular author newsletter. If you would like to receive this, please visit our subscriptions page or email our marketing team ([email protected]). You do not have to be a published author to sign up. You can unsubscribe at any time.

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