Submissions

Author Guidelines

GUIDELINES FOR AUTHORS

Introduction:

Journal of the Indian Association of Sedimentologists (JIAS) is both an international open access online journal and print journal, and is leader in its field and publishes ground-breaking research across the spectrum of sedimentology, sedimentary geology, sedimentary geochemistry, experimental and theoretical sediment transport, mass movement fluxes, modern and ancient sedimentary environments, sequence-,  cyclo-, chrono- and chemostratigraphy, sediment-biological interaction, palaeosols, diagenesis, stable isotope geochemistry, environmental sedimentology, neotectonics, geohazards, stratigraphy, palynology, sedimentary mineral resources and hydrocarbons, and allied branches of sedimentary - stratigraphic research. It also publishes review articles, editorials, conference reports, tributes, announcements, advertisements, etc. It is currently distributed to universities and research laboratories in India and abroad. Access to the complete electronic journal archive over the past 10 years comes free of cost. Subscribers also have the option to buy the printed journal at subsidized cost.  For guide to authors, visit the IAS website: journal.indiansedimentologists.com/ojs/index.php/1. It is published biannually on the 30th of June and 31 December.

INSTRUCTIONS TO AUTHORS

(Authors to follow these guidelines strictly and help in expeditious handling)

ORCID enables you to have full control of your publication record, and can control what information is connected and how it is shared. As part of our commitment to supporting authors at every step of the publishing process, JIAS preferably requires the submitting author (only) to provide an ORCID iD when submitting their manuscript.

Original Research Articles: 

Manuscripts intended for submission should normally not exceed 10,000 words in length (including the title, abstract and main text, but excluding the references and figure captions). Longer manuscripts which demonstrate a significant advancement in the state of the science will also be considered. All manuscripts will be evaluated double blinded. Articles intended to report exceptionally current or significant findings can be submitted to fast-track process of review. Articles of such type should not normally exceed 5000 words.

State of the art articles:

JIAS welcomes proposals which provide an authoritative critical synthesis of an important topic in sedimentology and related disciplines and have a commanding review explaining the importance of the topic; a critical account of the current state of this topic; and an innovative perspective on the topic’s future relevance, highlighting challenges and providing insights supported by new data and modelling.

Discussions: 

of previously published papers, and author’s replies in brief, addressing non-trivial issues and present evidence-based scientific arguments that add new understanding, will also be published by JIAS.

Publishing criteria: 

The articles for consideration by the JIAS must meet the following criteria which will be used to guide editorial decisions. Authors should use this as a checklist before submitting their manuscripts.

Technical aspects:

1.        The objective of the paper should be clear and adequately justified.
2.        Research questions or hypotheses be clearly stated and subsequently addressed.
3.        The results be robust and competent, and based on standard methodology and analyses.
4.        Data presentation and data interpretation be presented under separate heads.
5.        The manuscript be data-rich with sufficient evidence to support the inferences and conclusions.
6.        The written arguments, data tables, figures, annexures, etc. should be clear and accessible.

Impact, novelty and intellectual value of the paper:

1.         The manuscript should be of broad generic importance and addressing theoretical or scientific knowledge gaps. Studies emphasizing on a particular location or region should explain broader scientific questions of relevance to geoscientists working elsewhere.
2.         The work should contain novel elements with innovative aims, hypotheses or methods.
3.         The manuscript should be futuristic in the field with significant outcome adding to our scientific understanding of sedimentology and related disciplines.

Author Services:

JIAS provides online production tracking for your article - once it has been accepted - through the production process to publication online and in print. Authors can check the status of their articles online; Visit Submissions (indiansedimentologists.com)

DOI service:

JIAS is covered by the DOI service which provides complete full access to text articles published online in advance of their publication in a printed issue. Articles are therefore available as soon as they are ready, rather than having to wait for the next scheduled print issue. DOI articles are complete and final. These articles stand fully reviewed, revised and edited for publication, and the authors' final corrections stand incorporated. No changes can be made after online publication. However, these articles do not yet have a volume, issue or page number/s but allows the article to be cited and tracked before it is allocated to an issue. After print publication, the DOI remains valid and can continue to be used to cite and access the article.

Pre-submission English-language editing:

Authors for whom English is a second language may choose to have their manuscript professionally edited before submission to improve English language. Manuscripts having poor English language will be liable to rejection at the editorial stage.

Manuscripts:

Authors should submit their manuscripts online at: Submissions (indiansedimentologists.com) Save the text of your manuscript in both Word document and PDF Format. Figures, tables and graphs should be provided as separate files.
Papers submitted to JIAS are accepted on the basis that they have not been, and will not be, published elsewhere. The journal will also consider for review articles previously available as preprints.

Data Sharing and Data Accessibility:

Authors of accepted manuscripts to be published are required to give a data availability statement to confirm the presence or absence of shared data. If you have shared data, this statement will describe how the data can be accessed, and include a persistent identifier (e.g., a DOI for the data, or an accession number) from the repository where you shared the data. Authors will be required to confirm adherence to the policy. If you cannot share the data described in your manuscript, for example for legal or ethical reasons, or do not intend to share the data, then authors must provide the appropriate data availability statement. JIAS notes that FAIR data sharing allows for access to shared data under restrictions (e.g., to protect confidential or proprietary information) but at the same time FAIR principles encourage you to share data in ways that are as open as possible (but that can be as closed as necessary).

Copyright:

For all the accepted papers, the corresponding author for the paper will have to complete the license agreement on behalf of all authors on the paper.  Visit:  http://Journal.Indiansedimentologists.com for the license format.

Author obligations regarding conflicting interests:

The JIAS requires a “Declaration of Conflicting Interests”, while submitting manuscript you will be asked to certify that:
·All forms of financial support are acknowledged in your Contribution.
·Any commercial or financial involvements that might present an appearance of a conflict of interest related to the Contribution are disclosed in a covering letter accompanying the manuscript and all such potential conflicts of interest will be discussed with the Editor as to whether disclosure of this information with the published Contribution is to be made in the journal.
·That you have not signed an agreement with any sponsor of the research reported in the Contribution that prevents you from publishing both positive and negative results or that forbids you from publishing this research without the prior approval of the sponsor.
·The same obligations equally apply to editors or guest editors writing an editorial that will be published in the journal.

How make a declaration:

If you are submitting to or publishing your article in JIAS, please include such a declaration at the end of your manuscript after Acknowledgements and prior to the Funding Acknowledgement, Notes (if relevant) and References, under the heading 'Declaration of Conflicting Interest'. If no conflict exists, please state that 'The Author(s) declare(s) that there is no conflict of interest'.

*Please note, Where a declaration is required the disclosure information must be specific and include any financial relationship that all authors of the article have with any sponsoring organization and the for-profit interests the organization represents, and with any for-profit product discussed or implied in the text of the article.

Text:

The title page should bear the title of the contribution, name(s) of the author(s) and address of the place where the work was carried out. You are required to indicate the corresponding author and provide the e-mail addresses of all the co-authors.  In addition, you must include the present address of any author if different from where the work was carried out. All pages should be numbered in the top right-hand corner. A short running title should be provided and authors are requested to provide up to six keywords following the Abstract. Papers should follow the format of JIAS as printed in recent issues of the journal. A brief informative Abstract, of 50 to 300 words, should be included. The use of abbreviations should be avoided in the abstract, if possible. The authors should set their paper in the style of JIAS, or indicate in the margin the relative importance of a heading by the use of ringed capital letters, i.e. (A) for the main heading, (a) for the second heading, etc. Figures and tables must be cited at an appropriate point and numbered consecutively throughout the manuscript.  All abbreviations used must be defined at the first point in the text.  Manufacturer details [company name, town (state, if UK) and country] should be included for any equipment which is mentioned in a manuscript. For preferred use of stratigraphic terminology and nomenclature, the reader is referred to the Code of Stratigraphic Nomenclature by ACSN, 1961, in Bulletin American Association of Petroleum Geologists, 45, 454-459, and to Geological Society of London Special Report no. 11, 1978. Files should be formatted double-spaced with no hyphenation or automatic wordwrap (no hard returns within paragraphs). Please type your text consistently, e.g. take care to distinguish between '1' (one) and 'l' (lower-case L) and '0' (zero) and 'O' (upper-case o), etc.

Title and Abstract:

Titles should be short (about 25 words or less) and objective, and should emphasise the generic value of the work.  In some cases the novelty and importance of the work may be tied to a particular location or stratigraphic level but in most cases excessive geographical or chronological referencing should be avoided.

Abstracts must not include references and should contain the following information:
1.      A statement of aims, key questions or hypotheses.
2.      A rationale that explains the importance of the questions being asked
3.      Brief coverage of the methods and analyses, the main results and important interpretations or inferences
4.      Importance of these findings.
5.      A clear statement of how this work is novel and important.

Figures: 

Figures will be sized to fit within the width of a column (80 mm), or a page (170 mm); a page is 240 mm deep. Panels of multipanel figures should be labelled with upper-case roman letters, A, B, etc. at the bottom  left-hand corner of each panel. Multipanel figures that have common axes need not have all axes labelled if the abscissa closest to the bottom of the page or the ordinate closest to the left are also valid for those axes further up the page or further to the right, respectively. Final lettering, after reduction, should be a minimum of 9 point (>2 mm tall). Ensure that scale information is included for all figure panels where appropriate. Please supply figures as EPS or TIFF files. Also ensure that electronic artwork is prepared in such a manner that, after reduction, all lettering will be clear and easy to read, i.e. no labels should be too large or too small. Avoid using tints on diagrams; if they are essential to the figure, always try to make them coarse. Figures and graphs should not contain gridlines.

Colour figures:

All papers are eligible for free of charges for colour throughout in online version and paid in print version. Each illustration must have a caption that makes the material completely understandable without reference to the text. In the full-text online edition of the journal, figure legends may be truncated in abbreviated links to the full-screen version. Therefore, the first 100 characters of any legend should inform the authors of the key points of the figure. Large figures can be printed as fold-outs in the journal; in such cases contact the Production Editor for details of charges for these.

Tables: 

Tables should be supplied in an editable format, e.g. word-processed files; they should be numbered consecutively with Arabic numerals. Tables should be typed as text, using 'tabs' to align columns. Vertical lines should not be used to separate columns. Column headings should be brief, with units of measurement in parentheses. Data that is 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. JIAS recommends 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 supporting information to the submitted paper or authors should agree to make their data available upon reasonable request.

Equations: 

In-line equations should be typed as text. Use of graphics programs and 'equation editors' should be avoided, unless part of commonly available word-processing packages (Word, WordPerfect, etc.). A full nomenclature defining symbols and terms should be provided after the Acknowledgements in the text.

Abbreviations and Units: 

SI units are preferred. Statistics and measurements should always be given in figures, e.g. 10 mm, except where the number begins the sentence. When a number is used to identify a feature (e.g. Section, Locality) it should be given in figures with the feature capitalized (e.g. Section 10, Locality 5). The word 'Figure' should be shortened to Fig. unless starting a sentence.

References:

The use of a tool such as EndNote or Reference Manager is recommended for reference management and formatting. Authors should use the system illustrated below. Only full articles that have been published or are 'in press' may be included in the reference list. In the text, references should be cited by giving the author's name with the year of publication in parentheses, and should be given in date order (e.g. Shanmugam, 2020; Basu, 2020). When reference is made to a work by three or more authors, the first name followed by et al. (Jonathan et al., 2019) should be used in the text on all occasions. If several papers by the same author and from the same year are cited, a, b, c, etc. should be put after the year of publication.
References should be listed in alphabetical order at the end of the paper in the following standard form.

Allen, J.R.L. (1970). Physical Processes of Sedimentation. Elsevier, New York, p. 239.

Basu, A. (1985), Influence of climate and relief on compositions of sands released at source areas, in Zuffa, G.G. (ed.), Provenance of Arenites, NATO-ASI, v. 148, p. 1-18.

Suttner, L.J. and Dutta, P.K. (1986), Alluvial sandstone composition and paleoclimate; I. Framework mineralogy: Journal of Sedimentary Petrology, v. 56, p. 329-345.

Shanmugam, G., Spalding, T.D., Rofheart, D.H. (1993). Process sedimentology and reservoir quality of deep-marine bottom-current reworked sands (sandy contourites): an example from the Gulf of Mexico. AAPG Bulletin, 77, 1241-1259.

In the references, papers with two authors should follow those of the first named author, arranged in alphabetical order according to the name of the second author. Papers with three or more authors should be ordered following the name of the first author in chronological order. The titles of Journals should be abbreviated as directed in Journal Abbreviations.

Supporting Information:

Supporting Information, such as data sets or additional figures or tables, that will not be published in the printed edition of the journal but which will be viewable in the online edition can be submitted. Supporting Information must be submitted to the journal with the rest of the article. Supporting Information will be published exactly as supplied and it is the author's responsibility to ensure that the material is logically laid out, adequately described, and is in a format that is likely to be accessible to readers. It is recommended that text and graphics be supplied in PDF format, data tables in native file formats such as Excel, and animations and other moving images or sound files in common Internet standard formats such as AVI, MPG, WAV, QuickTime, animated GIF or Flash.

Production Editor:

Contact the Production Editor (ias.maildesk@gmail.com) for queries concerning accepted manuscripts only. For all other manuscript enquiries, please contact the Managing Editor.

Proofs:

The corresponding author will receive an e-mail alert containing a link to a website. The proof can be downloaded as a pdf from this site. Acrobat Reader will be required in order to read this file. This software can be downloaded (free of charge) from the following website: www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html
This will enable the file to be opened, read on screen, and print-out for any corrections to be added.

Offprints:

A pdf offprint of the online published article will be provided free of charge to the corresponding author, and may be distributed subject to the Publisher's terms and conditions.

Disclaimer:

The Publisher, Journal Indian Association of sedimentologists and Editors cannot be held responsible for any errors or consequences arising from the use of information contained in this journal; the views and opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the Publisher, Indian Association of sedimentologists and Editors, neither does the publication of advertisements constitute any endorsement by the Publisher, Indian Association of sedimentologists and Editors of the products advertised.

Equity, Diversity and Inclusion:

The Journal of Indian association of Sedimentologists aims to foster inclusive science that reflects the disciplinary, human, and geographic diversity of the sedimentology research and allied science community. We recognize that many groups are under-represented in research including women, people of color, and socially disadvantaged populations, and we are committed to increasing diversity and inclusion in research and publishing from potential authors/applicants of all ethnicities, races, colors, religions, sexes, sexual orientations, gender identities, national origins, disabilities, ages, or other individual status.