BSSA Submission Guidelines
Guidelines for Submitting Your Initial and Revised Manuscripts
Submission to BSSA is understood to imply that the article is original, unpublished, and not under consideration for publication elsewhere.
PREPARATION
Prepare your manuscript following our guidelines for preparing manuscripts. Failing to follow these guidelines can cause a delay to the processing of your manuscript.
Before you submit your manuscript please proofread it carefully. If necessary, ask a colleague whose first language is English for help in preparing the paper. Well-written manuscripts generally spend less time in the review process. Ideas that have not been expressed clearly and concisely are likely to be misunderstood by referees, and this could lead to rejection of a manuscript that might otherwise have been of interest to readers.
Download the copyright form, print it out, fill it out, and scan it into a file. You will upload the form as part of the submission process. If you cannot scan the copyright form into a file, you will be given the opportunity to indicate that you will send it offline and then you can either fax it or mail it to the Editorial Office.
SUBMISSION
Submissions to BSSA are now done through an online submission system.Save your manuscript in a form ready to be uploaded to our online submission system at bssa.edmgr.com. The system can accept Microsoft Word, LaTeX, WordPerfect, AMSTex, Rich Text Format (.rtf), plain text files, or pdf files. For other formats, consult the HELP link near the top of the page at bssa.edmgr.com. Figures can be uploaded either as a single pdf file or as separate figure files in a wide variety of formats (e.g., pdf, eps, Adobe Illustrator, tiff, gif, jpeg, PICT, Excel and Powerpoint). Again, not all of these formats are best for publication, so please see our art submission guidelines for more information. If you submit individual files then the pdf file created by the online submission system will use downsampled versions of your figures to reduce the file size and if you submit individual figure files the pdf will contain links to the full-resolution figure files in case the editors or reviewers need to view them. If you submit your manuscript as a single pdf file or the figures as pdfs, then the figures will not be downsampled by the system and while this may improve how they look in the file you should be careful that they aren't excessively large. If you are using LaTeX please read these suggestions for making it work with our online submission system.
If you have additional material that you wish the reviewers to see, upload this as "Supplemental Material."
To ease the uploading of multiple files, you may place the files in a zip archive and upload that. If the files have easy-to-figure-out names (e.g., text.doc, Figure 1.eps, Figure 2.eps) then the system will properly order them for you. If not, you can rearrange them during the submission process.
During the submission process you will be asked to provide contact information; background information that might be helpful to the Editor, Associate Editor, and referees; type of article (article, short note, comment, reply, or erratum); choice of issue (regular or special issue); names of potential referees (optional but helpful); names of people you wish to exclude as referees (optional); up to 4 classification terms from this list; a new classification term if an appropriate one is not available; the Flinn-Engdahl region most appropriate for your paper; the name of a major earthquake if your paper focuses on one; and the location of your electronic supplement if one is being submitted.
You will also be asked to choose one of three page charge/color options. Before choosing an option, please review the current page charge rates.
The online submission system creates two different pdf files of your manuscript. The first will contain the author's suggested and excluded referees, letter to the editor, and copyright form. This file can be seen only by the authors and editors, not by referees. The second version is for the referees; it will contain only the information needed for a referee to evaluate the paper.
Once you have all of the necessary files prepared, log in to the submission system at bssa.edmgr.com as an author. If you start the process, but do not complete it, the system will save your submission and you can log back in at a later time and finish the process.
Color Options Color figures can be published (1) in color both in the online journal and in the printed journal, or (2) in color online and gray scale in print. You must choose only one option for all of the color figures within a paper; that is, you cannot choose option (1) for one color figure and option (2) for another color figure. You cannot submit two versions of the same figure, one for color and one for gray scale.
The color-in-print option requires that you pay full page and color charges. Before choosing this option, please carefully review page and color costs and ensure that you have the necessary funding. Page charges and color charges for articles that use this option are never waived.
For the color-online-only option, there is no charge for color. You are responsible for ensuring that color figures are understandable when converted to gray scale for the print version and that text and captions are appropriate for both online and print versions. For information on preparing figures, see the art guidelines. If you choose the option of color online and gray scale in print, it is essential that you review the Tutorial on Producing Online-Only Color Figures.
Reviewers should have access to figures and captions that you believe are ready to be published. Please prepare your manuscript and figures following the guidelines for the color option that you have chosen.
Initial Submissions The entire document (including the text, tables, references, and figures) can be saved as a Portable Document Format (.pdf) file, or you may upload individual files as described above. Materials for electronic supplements
1. can be uploaded as "Supplemental Material" files (initial submissions only), or
2. can be placed on a Web site as described in our electronic supplement guidelines.
Include a brief description of the electronic supplement on the title page of your article. If the supplement is on a Web site, include the URL on the title page as well.
Submission of Revised Manuscripts Detailed responses to reviews, including a list of changes or rebuttals, must be submitted along with your revised manuscript. When submitting a revised paper through the online system, you will find the step "Respond to Reviewers." Entering information in the text box on that page is required; you can enter either the complete responses to reviews or a statement that responses are in an uploaded file. The information in the text box will be available to reviewers. In the "Attach Files" step, the system offers the options of uploading files labeled "Response to Reviews" and "Annotated Manuscript." Both of those files will be available to reviewers. A file uploaded as "Letter to Editor" will be seen only by the editors. The revised manuscript (including references, tables, and figure captions) must be uploaded as a file separate from the figures, and it must be in its source format (e.g., MS Word or LaTeX, but not PDF). Figures can be uploaded either as separate files or together in one file. Figures and text must conform to the guidelines for the color option that you have chosen. See guidelines in the "Color Options" section above.
If you are submitting an electronic supplement with your revised manuscript, submit it as a Web site as described in our electronic supplement guidelines. Include the URL on the title page of your paper, and include in-text mentions in the style of "for a complete list of earthquakes, see Table S4 in the electronic supplement to this article." Deviation from these guidelines could cause a delay in the processing of your paper.
Submission Status: For updates on your submission's status, you can log in to the submission system. If you have further questions, please contact Managing Editor Carol Mark at the Editorial Office.