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Submission to BSSA is understood to imply that the article is original, unpublished, and not under consideration for publication elsewhere.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. However, if your paper is accepted for publication our compositor prefers Microsoft Word or LaTeX 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 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; the type of article (article, short note, comment, reply, or erratum); if the paper is meant for a regular or special issue; names of potential referees (optional but helpful), names of people you wish to exclude as referees (optional), and 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.
The online submission system creates two pdf files of your manuscript. The first is for the authors and editors and may contain some information (such as suggested and excluded referees and letters to the editor) that would not be appropriate to show the referees. The second version is for the referees and does not include this information.
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.
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 can be uploaded as "Supplemental Material" files with descriptions after the Figure Captions. However, before acceptance these materials must be placed on a web site as described in our electronic supplement guidelines.
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.
If you have an electronic supplement, submit it as a Web site as described in our electronic supplement guidelines. 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.