Terra Nova

Edited by:
Georges Calas, Max Coleman, Carlo Doglioni, Alfred Kroener, Adolphe Nicolas & Jason Phipps-Morgan

Print ISSN: 0954-4879
Online ISSN: 1365-3121
Frequency: Bi-monthly
Current Volume: 22 / 2010
ISI Journal Citation Reports® Ranking: 2008: 41/143 Geosciences, Multidisciplinary
Impact Factor: 1.899

TopAuthor Guidelines

Instructions to Contributors
Terra Nova publishes short, innovative and provocative papers of interest to a wide readership and covering the full range of the solid Geosciences and Planetary Sciences including the interfaces with the hydrosphere and atmosphere. Papers that are of interest to Terra Nova readers will usually expose new general principles and understanding or challenge conventional wisdom.

Preparation of manuscripts
Research articles submitted to Terra Nova should not exceed 2500 words (excluding references and figure captions). There is no limit on the number of references or figures within reason. Review articles may be up to 8000 words and should be discussed with a Scientific Editor or Associate Editor before submission. Comment articles written in response to papers published in Terra Nova are welcome; the authors of the original article will normally be invited to write a reply, and, if accepted, the comment and reply articles will be published together in the same issue of Terra Nova. Comment articles should be presented as briefly as possible and do not normally exceed 1500 words.
Submitted manuscripts should contain previously unreported material. Authors are encouraged to present full data in support of their discussion and conclusions. The overlap of content between related papers should be kept to a minimum and normally confined to the introductory or review section. Authors should provide preprints of any papers closely related to the submitted manuscript that are not yet published (whether in preparation, in review or in press). The Editors' decision to accept or reject a manuscript is final.
Authors should state in their covering letter that all coauthors have approved the manuscript and agree to its submission and that the manuscript has not been previously published and is not under consideration for publication elsewhere.

Structure of the article and preparation of electronic files
Research articles should comprise (in the following order): title page, abstract, text, acknowledgements, references, figure captions, tables and illustrations. All text (including title page, abstract, references and figure captions) should be double spaced and contained within a single file. It is particularly important that the title page and abstract are included, even though you will be asked to supply the information separately as part of the submission process. The preferred formats for the text file are .doc and .rtf. If you are using word processing software that cannot save files in either of these formats then a .pdf file is acceptable.

Title page: this should include the article title, the names and addresses of all the authors, the contact details (telephone number, fax number and e-mail address) for the corresponding author and a short title (running head) of not more than 50 characters.
Abstract: all articles, including comment and reply articles, should have an abstract, which should be a single paragraph of not more than 150 words. It should explain why the topic is important (and why it should interest the broad general readership of Terra Nova) and should emphasise the novel points without summarising all the content.

Text: the text and abstract together should not exceed 2500 words. The introduction should stress the importance and novelty of the presented results. The text should avoid technical jargon or heavy referencing to names of local units. Papers should be written in good English. References should be cited in the form '(Smith and Jones, 2004; Smith et al., 2005)', using et al. where the cited article has three or more authors. Unpublished work should be referred to only in the text and not included in the reference list.

References: these should be listed alphabetically and should conform to the following style:

Allen, P.A. and Allen, J.R., 1990. Basin Analysis: Principles and Applications. Blackwell Scientific Publications, Oxford.

Baumann, M., 1994. Three dimensional modeling of the crust-mantle boundary in the Alpine region. Unpubl. doctoral dissertation, ETH, Zurich, 150 pp.

Caldwell, W.G.E., Diner, R., Eicher, D.L. et al., 1993. Foraminiferal biostratigraphy of Cretaceous marine cyclothems. In: Evolution of the Western Interior Basin (W.G.E. Caldwell and E.G. Kauffman, eds). Spec. Pap. Geol. Ass. Canada, 39, 477-520.

Poort, J., Vassilev, A. and Dimitrov, L., 2005. Did postglacial catastrophic flooding trigger massive changes in the Black Sea gas hydrate reservoir? Terra Nova, 17, 135-140.

Woodcock, N.H. and Strachan, R.A., 2000. The Caledonian Orogeny: a multiple plate collision. In: Geological History of Britain and Ireland (N.H. Woodcock and R.A. Strachan, eds) Blackwell Science, London.

Figure captions: these should be as concise as possible and should explain any abbreviations used in the figure.
Tables: each table should have a short descriptive title. Where possible, tables should be included at the end of the .doc or .rtf file containing the text, with each table appearing on a separate page. If this is not possible, tables may be submitted as .xls or .pdf files with each table in a separate file. Very large tables of data may be better presented as electronic appendices, which will appear in the online version but not the print version of the article.

Illustrations: These may include line drawings (graphs, maps, cross-sections, etc.), photographs and combination figures (photographs to which labelling, scale bars or other annotations have been added). Line drawings should be prepared as vector graphics and submitted as .eps files. All fonts should be embedded or (preferably) converted to outlines. If the software that you are using cannot save files in .eps format, a .pdf or .ai file may be acceptable. Photographs without added labelling should be prepared as .tif files with a resolution of at least 300 dpi at the anticipated final size of the image. Combination figures (photographs with annotations or labelling) should be prepared as .eps files by importing the photograph at a resolution of at least 300 dpi at the final size of the image and adding the labelling as vector graphics. Figures should be prepared with lettering and symbols of sufficient size and clarity to be reduced to 52 mm, 109 mm or 166 mm widths. Colour illustrations are welcome but authors must contribute to the cost of printing coloured illustrations. The cost is currently £150.00 + VAT for the first figure and £50.00 + VAT for all subsequent figures. Upon acceptance of the article, authors will be asked to signify their willingness to pay this charge by completing the colourwork agreement form, which will be forwarded with the acceptance e-mail and can also be downloaded from http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/pdf/SN_Sub2000_F_CoW.pdf, and returning it to the Editorial Office Manager. Colour illustrations can be reproduced free of charge in the online version of the journal. If you have any questions about acceptable file formats or about the preparation of illustrations, please contact the Editorial Office Manager. More information can be found here.

Supplementary material: Supplementary material can be included as an electronic appendix, which will be published online but will not appear in the print version of the article. Supplementary material can include items such as video files, which cannot be published in hard copy, and also very large tables of data which would occupy one or more pages if published in print. However, the main paper must be able to stand alone, so using supplementary material to give additional information on, for example, methods or analytical techniques is discouraged. Supplementary material is published in the form in which it is supplied, so it should be presented in a readily accessible file format, preferably as a .pdf file.

Data that are integral to the paper must be made available in such a way as to enable readers to replicate, verify and build upon the conclusions published in the paper. Any restriction on the availability of this data must be disclosed at the time of submission. Data may be included as part of the main article where practical. We recommend that data for which public repositories are widely used, and are accessible to all, should be deposited in such a repository prior to publication. The appropriate linking details and identifier(s) should then be included in the publication and where possible the repository, to facilitate linking between the journal article and the data. If such a repository does not exist, data should be included as supplementary material or authors should agree to make their data available upon reasonable request.

Submission
Manuscripts may be submitted electronically at http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/terranova. If you have any difficulty using our online submission system, please contact the Editorial Office Manager.

The Review Process
Upon receipt of a manuscript, the Editors will check that the topic falls within the scope of Terra Nova and that the paper does not exceed the permitted length. A small number of manuscripts are rejected at this stage, usually within a week. All other manuscripts will be reviewed by at least two independent referees. You should expect to receive an initial decision on your manuscript within three months of submission.

After Acceptance
Proofs and Offprints. Manuscripts are copy-edited after acceptance. The author will receive page proofs by e-mail around three weeks after the acceptance of the manuscript. These should be corrected and returned to the Production Editor as quickly as possible. A free .pdf file of the article will be supplied to authors upon publication. Additional paper offprints may be ordered online and ordering information will be supplied in the e-mail that accompanies the .pdf proofs.

Terra Nova articles now appear online, before the printed version, in the Early View section of Terra Nova. The publication date of the article is the date it appears on Early View; late corrections cannot therefore be made, as the online and print editions must have identical content.

Copyright Transfer Agreement. The Copyright Transfer Agreement must be completed and sent to the Editorial Office before the paper is passed to the Production Department. The form will be sent to authors with their acceptance e-mail but can also be downloaded from here.

Author Services. Wiley-Blackwell's Author Services enables authors to track the progress of their accepted articles through the production process from receipt in the Production Department through to publication online and in print. Authors can check the status of their articles online and choose to receive automated e-mails at key stages of the production process. Visit here for more details on online production tracking.

Cover Material
The Editors welcome the submission of suitable cover images for Terra Nova. Priority is given to images that relate to an article within the issue, but standalone images will also be considered. Relevant captions of 50-100 words should be provided. Please send the image as a .jpg file, together with its caption, to the Editorial Office Manager. You will be asked to provide the image as a high-resolution .tif file if Terra Nova decides to use it on the cover.

OnlineOpen
OnlineOpen is a pay-to-publish service from Blackwell that offers authors whose papers are accepted for publication the opportunity to pay up-front for their manuscript to become open access (i.e. free for all to view and download). Each OnlineOpen article will be subject to a one-off fee of US$3000 to be met by or on behalf of the authors in advance of publication. Upon online publication, the article (both full-text and .pdf versions) will be available to all for viewing and download free of charge. The print version of the article will also be branded as OnlineOpen and will draw attention to the fact that the paper can be downloaded for free.

Any authors wishing to send their paper OnlineOpen will be required to complete the combined payment and copyright licence form available at: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/pdf/ter_oof.pdf (Please note this form is for use with OnlineOpen material ONLY.)

Once complete, this form should be sent to the Production Editor. There is no need to inform the Editorial Office that you intend to publish your paper OnlineOpen before acceptance.

The copyright statement for OnlineOpen authors will read:
© [date] The Author(s)
Journal compilation © [date] [Blackwell Publishing Ltd]