Irish Journal of Earth Sciences: Instructions to Authors

Style Guidelines For Authors

Papers should be submitted via Manuscript Manager - submit your manuscript here.

After peer-review, proofs of accepted, copy-edited papers will be sent to the author; the author is expected to read them carefully and return them promptly.

Once final proofs are agreed, and prior to a paper's publication, authors will be requested to complete and return a copyright form. The copyright form is available to download here.

Manuscripts

Manuscripts must be typed on one side only of A4 paper, in 12pt font, double spaced, with wide margins. The text should be in a clear, concise style and written in English. Submission of the manuscript is taken to mean that the contents are original and that no similar paper will be submitted to another journal. All the pages of the submitted manuscript should be numbered consecutively and the approximate position of illustrations and tables clearly indicated in the text on the left-hand margin.

Papers will be accepted for publication by the Editors on the advice of at least one referee. They should conform to the following layout:

(a) Research papers should not exceed 15,000 words; discussion papers should not exceed one printed page (approximately 600 words).
(b) An informative brief title should be given, avoiding abbreviations. For retrieval and abstracting purposes the main subject matter covered by the paper should be indicated by the title.
(c) Name(s) of author(s) and professional address(es) should be given at the end of the paper, after the references.
(d) An abstract of not more than 200 words is required, which should be intelligible without reference to the main text.
(e) In the main text, use three or fewer levels of subheading. Metric measurements should be given wherever possible and abbreviated as 6mm, 4kg, 25km etc. Names of taxa should be in italics. Illustrations and tables should be referred to as in the following examples: Fig. 7, (Fig. 7), Figs 7 and 8, (Figs 7, 8), Table 2, (Table 2). Footnotes will not be accepted.
(f) References should conform exactly with the examples given below. Journal titles should be given in full. Titles of books should also be given in full, together with the edition, place of publication and publisher.
(g) Tables should be on separate pages and each should have a brief title.
(h) Captions of illustrations must be typed on a separate page. The journal does not print plates; all halftones will be printed in their proper place in the text. Consequently, all illustrations should be termed figures in the text and numbered consecutively.

Original Illustrations

Once a paper is accepted, high resolution (min. 300dpi for colour images and halftones; 600dpi for line-drawings) jpeg or tiff files of any related illustrations should be submitted to the Publications Office. The maximum size for illustrations is 21cm by 14cm. It is recommended that they be constructed either for the entire width of the type area (14cm) or for a column width (7.5cm). Large folding figures and coloured maps are subject to rigorous scrutiny and will be accepted only in special cases or when publication is assisted by a subvention. All illustrations should bear the author’s name and figure number. Do not attach captions to the illustrations.

References

References should conform to the following style:

Crow, M.J. and Max, M.D. 1976 The Kinrovar Schist. Scientific Proceedings of the Royal Dublin Society 5 (A), 429–41.
Harris, A.L., Holland, C.H. and Leake, B.E. (eds) 1979 The Caledonides of the British Isles: reviewed. Geological Society Special Publication No. 8. London.
Raup, D.M. and Stanley, S.M. 1971 Principles of paleontology. San Francisco. Freeman.
Williams, A. 1969 Ordovician faunal provinces with reference to brachiopod distribution. In A. Wood (ed.), The Pre-Cambrian and Lower Palaeozoic rocks of Wales, 117–54. Cardiff. University of Wales Press.

These should be referred to in the text as follows: ‘Crow and Max (1976) stated...’ . ‘The folds in this area (Crow and Max 1976) are...’ .

More detailed style instructions can be found here.

Publication ethics

Authors submitting papers to an Academy journal should ensure that

• they adhere to all research ethics guidelines of their discipline, particularly where human or animal subjects are involved
• they contact the Editor to identify and correct any material errors upon discovery, whether prior or subsequent to publication of their work
• authorship of the paper is accurately represented, including ensuring that all individuals credited as authors participated in the actual authorship of the work, and that all who participated are credited and have given consent for publication

ORCID Number

When submitting your paper, please include your ORCID number. If you do not have an ORCID number, or want to find out more about it, click here.

Open access

The Royal Irish Academy is committed to the dissemination of scholarship. To that end, it endorses the principles of open access, and is committed to work with and to assist authors and investigators make known their research findings in RIA publications.

The RIA aspires to pursue Green Access as a basic access model. We also participate in JSTOR’s register and read programme which allows individuals to read up to 78 articles a year without charge.

Authors can archive a post-print version of their paper, once the journal in which it appears is published.  We request that authors give the citation to the source and link to it. We can supply a DOI to make this linking easier.

Gold Access

There is no submission or publication fee for papers published in the Academy’s journals. However, Open Access brings with it a cost implication. To maximise access to original research, authors now have the option to make their papers freely available from the time of online publication, on payment of an open access charge (APC), which varies based on the size, content and complexity of the article. If an author wishes to take up this option, contact the Publications Office once a paper has been accepted for publication. For such papers, the final published version may be deposited in repositories immediately.

Funder mandates

The Royal Irish Academy will help authors  meet your funders’ mandates on access and licensing. Contact the Publications Office to discuss requirements once an article has been accepted.

Data Protection

When submitting to one of our journals you agree for the Royal Irish Academy Publications department to store and use your data. For more information on how your data is used see our Privacy and Data Protection policies, and the Publications Transparency Statement.