Oceanography 443/444 - Style Guide

How to submit a manuscript

All submissions Be sure that the cover letter contains the corresponding author's surface and E-mail addresses, and telephone and fax numbers. Editorial Office address is:

L&O Editorial Office
343 Lady MacDonald Crescent
Canmore, Alberta T1W 1H5
CANADA

Start each part of the manuscript on a new page, and put these parts in the following order: title page, acknowledgments, abstract (omitted if the submission is a Comment), text, references, tables (each on a separate page), figure captions, and figures (each on a separate page). Do not attempt to mimic the format of papers in the printed journal.

Hard submissions

Include two copies of the cover letter.

Original submissions

The cover letter must contain the names and complete addresses (including E-mail) of four people who the authors believe to be qualified reviewers for the paper. Suggested reviewers must be free of any potential conflict of interest. Any of the following situations may constitute a conflict of interest, so persons with these potential conflicts should be omitted from your list:

someone with whom you or a co-author have had a significant and acrimonious disagreement with at any time in the past;
a co-investigator with either you or a co-author on a current research project;
a co-author with your or with one of your co-authors on the current manuscript in an article published within the past 5 years;
a close friend of yours or of a co-author's;
someone who works at your institution (or that of a co-author); or,
someone who has seen and commented on the manuscript prior to its submission to L&O.

Final Submissions We also need an electronic copy of the final manuscript that is identical to the hard copy (the hard and electronic versions must match exactly or the manuscript.)

The L&O Style

General style

Type the manuscript double-spaced on one side of non-glossy US letter" (8-1/2x11 inch; 21.6x28 cm) paper. Use 1-inch (2.5-cm) margins on all sides.

Number all pages, starting with 1 on the title page.

Do not break (hyphenate) words over lines.

Indent the first line of each paragraph.

The only allowable footnotes are for author addresses on the title page or when they are unavoidable in tables.

L&O does not publish printed appendices. We (Oceanography 443/444) do, however, accept Appendices in senior theses when and if they are absolutely necessary in order to preserve such things as data sets or detailed procedural explanations.

Do not number or letter sections of the manuscript.

Thoroughly proofread and spell-check the manuscript with a computer program.

Use a single serifed font (Times New Roman preferred); if special mathematical or Greek symbols not available in that font are needed, use the Symbol font. Note: superscripts, subscripts, italic, boldface, underline, and changes of font size are not considered to be different fonts.

Cite all figures and tables in the text and number them in the order that they appear in the text.

Do not use punctuation (commas or periods) in numbered equations.

Cite literature in the text in chronological, followed by alphabetical, order and formatted like these examples: "Campbell (1983, 1987b)," "(Smith et al. 1984; Karl and Craven 1988; Korobi 1997, 1998)." In the References section, list citations in alphabetical, followed by chronological, order.

Order the manuscript as: title page, acknowledgments page, abstract page, manuscript body, references, tables, figure legends, and figures. All papers should be formatted in this way, i.e., do NOT place author names and acknowledgments at the end of the manuscript.

Use only SI units (metric and Celsius; for detailed SI specifications, click here). The following are required formats for situations that are commonly formatted incorrectly:

Use exponents to indicate multiplication or division in units (slashes are not allowed).
Use mol L^-1 for molar concentrations ('M' is not acceptable).
Use mol quanta for photosynthetically available radiation (PAR) (Einsteins is not acceptable).
Use ml for milliliters and µl for microliters, but L for liters.
Use x for multiplication (* is not acceptable).
To indicate a power of 10, write, e.g., 5x10^-8 (5E-8 is not acceptable).

Do not italicize common Latin terms and abbreviations such as i.e., e.g., in situ, in vivo, and et al.

Describe statistical methods in enough detail to enable a knowledgeable reader with access to the original data to verify the reported results. Give degrees of freedom for F-tests as subscripts (e.g., F_3,4); for other statistics, report degrees of freedom as "df=n" following the test result (e.g., t=3.4, df=20). Use italics for symbols representing a statistic: p for probability level, r² for the correlation coefficient, and n for the sample size.

Use the same font for the same mathematical symbol regardless of where it appears in the manuscript (text, displayed equations, tables, figures, or figure legends).

The Title page:

Capitalize only the first word, proper nouns, and acronyms in the title

Do not use abbreviations in the title (e.g., use 'iron', not 'Fe'; and 'southeast', not 'SE').

Spell out state or province names in full and include postal codes. Double-space all footnotes on the title page.

For Articles and Notes, provide a condensed running head of no more than 40 characters (including spaces) at the bottom of the page.

The Acknowledgments page:

Type acknowledgments double-spaced on a separate page.

Include brief statements about granting agencies, and important aid received from institutions.

Thank anyone who made a substantial contribution to the work (e.g., data collection, analysis, or writing or editing assistance), along with their specific contributions.

You are responsible for ensuring that all persons named in the Acknowledgments section know and agree to being identified there (since it may be interpreted as endorsement of the data or conclusions).

The Abstract:

Write the abstract as a single paragraph of no more than 250 words (15 to 17 lines of text in a 12-point, Times New Roman font, where the line width is 17 cm (=6.5 in). Omit statements about the paper that do not identify actual findings (e.g., The implications of these results are investigated with a dynamic model). (In the jargon of scientific writing, L&O publishes informative and not indicative abstracts.) Summarize rather than advertise both the important findings and their significance. Because the abstract must stand on its own, it cannot include references.

Tables:

Start each table on a new page.

Format tables so that they will fit on the printed page: A 1-column table can be up to 60 characters wide, and a 2-column table up to 130.

Type captions as double-spaced paragraphs at the top of each table.

Abbreviations and acronyms:

Use abbreviations sparingly. Use periods after all abbreviations except for metric measures, compass directions, and time (s, min, h, d, yr; do not abbreviate 'week' or 'month').

Provide the full expansion of all acronyms on first use (even common ones like DNA).

Format dates like "15 June 1999" throughout the text, figures, and tables. If it is necessary to conserve space, abbreviate month names to the first 3 letters of the month name (no period) and the year to the last two digits.

Do not abbreviate state, province, city, or country names.

References:

The ratio of pages of references to pages of text (not counting the title page, abstract, and acknowledgments) must be less than 1:4.

All references cited in the text must appear in the References, and vice versa.

Double check the spelling of author names and years of publication.

Do not cite manuscripts in preparation or submitted, unpublished thesis, or other inaccessible sources in the text or list them in the References. But do cite them as appropriate, referring to the author(s) by last name and initials, e.g., Jones, A. B., followed by either 'pers. comm.' or 'unpubl.'

Verify all references against original sources; check especially journal titles, accents, diacritical marks, and spelling in languages other than English.

Make sure that each citation is complete, according to the following examples:

Article: Fenchel, T. 1986. Protozoan filter feeding. Prog. Protistol. 1: 65-113.
Book: Stumm, W., and J. Morgan. 1981. Aquatic chemistry, 2nd ed. Wiley.
Chapter: Codispoti, L. A. 1983. Nitrogen in upwelling systems, p. 513-564. In E. J. Carpenter and G. Capone [eds.], Nitrogen in the marine environment. Academic.
Thesis: Kimmance, S. A. 2001. The interactive effect of temperature and food concentration on plankton grazing and growth rates. Ph.D. thesis. Univ. of Liverpool.

Use mixed upper and lower case letters for all text in the References section. In particular, do not use all capital letters for author names because doing so makes it impossible to for the copyeditor to properly typeset names like "MacKenzie".

For abbreviations of journal names refer to Chemical Abstracts Service Source Index (CASSI) or Biosis.

Do not include part (issue) numbers after volume numbers unless each part of the volume is paginated separately.

Figures:

Figures must be "camera-ready." They must be printed at high-resolution, i.e., text and lines must be free of "jaggies" (the stairstep effect that is typical of low-resolution pixel devices).

Leave at least 2.5 cm (1 in) of white space around all sides of the figure.

Number all figures serially (L&O does not distinguish color "plates" from black-and-white figures).

Size text labels on the axes of the figures so that they will be of similar size in all figures when printed in the journal (i.e., after reduction).

Make figures as simple as possible. For example, avoid grids or boxes around symbol definitions.

Use the Times New Roman font for all text and numerals on figures. Text should be at least 8 points (2.8 mm; 0.1 in) high after reduction to the size that it will appear in the journal. If mathematical or Greek symbols are not available in Times New Roman, use the Symbol font.

Number figures with Arabic numerals in the order of their citation in the text. If panels of a figure are labeled (A, B, ...) use the same case when refering to these panels in the text (A, B, ..., not a, b,...). Panel labels must be least 0.71 cm (1/8 in) from all lines in the figure. Put scale bars on the figure, NOT in the figure legend.

Be sure that figure legends (one paragraph per figure) explain all panels (A, B, ...) and that symbols used in the figure (e.g., circles, squares, ...) are explained in a symbol table on the figure itself (i.e., not in the figure legend).

Put the lead author's name and figure number on the FRONT of each figure or plate, on both originals and review copies. Such labels must be at least 1.27 cm (0.5 in) from the printed area. Do NOT write on the back of the figures because such marks often show through when reproduced.

Photographs must be crisp black-and-white prints and submitted at the intended print size.

If a figure consists of multiple panels, put all panels on one page and repeat axes titles on each panel only if they are different.

Maps must include latitude and longitude, an indication of compass direction, and a line around the border. Ensure that all markings will be legible after reduction.

Oceanography 443/444, Autumn/Winter 05/06 Senior Oceanography Series Style Guide How to submit a manuscript All submissions Be sure that the cover letter contains the corresponding author's surface and E-mail addresses, and telephone and fax numbers. Editorial Office address is: L&O Editorial Office 343 Lady MacDonald Crescent Canmore, Alberta T1W 1H5 CANADA Start each part of the manuscript on a new page, and put these parts in the following order: title page, acknowledgments, abstract (omitted if the submission is a Comment), text, references, tables (each on a separate page), figure captions, and figures (each on a separate page). Do not* attempt to mimic the format of papers in the printed journal.* Hard submissions Include two copies of the cover letter. Original submissions The cover letter must contain the names and complete addresses (including E-mail) of four people who the authors believe to be qualified reviewers for the paper. Suggested reviewers must be free of any potential conflict of interest. Any of the following situations may constitute a conflict of interest, so persons with these potential conflicts should be omitted from your list: someone with whom you or a co-author have had a significant and acrimonious disagreement with at any time in the past; a co-investigator with either you or a co-author on a current research project; a co-author with your or with one of your co-authors on the current manuscript in an article published within the past 5 years; a close friend of yours or of a co-author's; someone who works at your institution (or that of a co-author); or, someone who has seen and commented on the manuscript prior to its submission to L&O. Final Submissions We also need an electronic copy of the final manuscript that is identical to the hard copy (the hard and electronic versions must match exactly or the manuscript.) The L&O Style General style Type the manuscript double-spaced on one side of non-glossy US letter" (8-1/2x11 inch; 21.6x28 cm) paper. Use 1-inch (2.5-cm) margins on all sides. Number all pages, starting with 1 on the title page. Do not break (hyphenate) words over lines. Indent the first line of each paragraph. The only allowable footnotes are for author addresses on the title page or when they are unavoidable in tables. L&O does not publish printed appendices. We (Oceanography 443/444) do, however, accept Appendices in senior theses when and if they are absolutely necessary in order to preserve such things as data sets or detailed procedural explanations. Do not number or letter sections of the manuscript. Thoroughly proofread and spell-check the manuscript with a computer program. Use a single serifed font (Times New Roman preferred); if special mathematical or Greek symbols not available in that font are needed, use the Symbol font. Note: superscripts, subscripts, italic, boldface, underline, and changes of font size are not considered to be different fonts. Cite all figures and tables in the text and number them in the order that they appear in the text. Do not use punctuation (commas or periods) in numbered equations. Cite literature in the text in chronological, followed by alphabetical, order and formatted like these examples: "Campbell (1983, 1987b)," "(Smith et al. 1984; Karl and Craven 1988; Korobi 1997, 1998)." In the References section, list citations in alphabetical, followed by chronological, order. Order the manuscript as: title page, acknowledgments page, abstract page, manuscript body, references, tables, figure legends, and figures. All papers should be formatted in this way, i.e., do NOT place author names and acknowledgments at the end of the manuscript. Use only SI units (metric and Celsius; for detailed SI specifications, click here). The following are required formats for situations that are commonly formatted incorrectly: Use exponents to indicate multiplication or division in units (slashes are not allowed). Use mol L^-1 for molar concentrations ('M' is not acceptable). Use mol quanta for photosynthetically available radiation (PAR) (Einsteins is not acceptable). Use ml for milliliters and µl for microliters, but L for liters. Use x for multiplication (* is not acceptable). To indicate a power of 10, write, e.g., 5x10^-8 (5E-8 is not acceptable). Do not italicize common Latin terms and abbreviations such as i.e., e.g., in situ, in vivo, and et al. Describe statistical methods in enough detail to enable a knowledgeable reader with access to the original data to verify the reported results. Give degrees of freedom for F-tests as subscripts (e.g., F_3,4); for other statistics, report degrees of freedom as "df=n" following the test result (e.g., t=3.4, df=20). Use italics for symbols representing a statistic: p for probability level, r² for the correlation coefficient, and n for the sample size. Use the same font for the same mathematical symbol regardless of where it appears in the manuscript (text, displayed equations, tables, figures, or figure legends). The Title page: Capitalize only the first word, proper nouns, and acronyms in the title Do not use abbreviations in the title (e.g., use 'iron', not 'Fe'; and 'southeast', not 'SE'). Spell out state or province names in full and include postal codes. Double-space all footnotes on the title page. For Articles and Notes, provide a condensed running head of no more than 40 characters (including spaces) at the bottom of the page. The Acknowledgments page: Type acknowledgments double-spaced on a separate page. Include brief statements about granting agencies, and important aid received from institutions. Thank anyone who made a substantial contribution to the work (e.g., data collection, analysis, or writing or editing assistance), along with their specific contributions. You are responsible for ensuring that all persons named in the Acknowledgments section know and agree to being identified there (since it may be interpreted as endorsement of the data or conclusions). The Abstract: Write the abstract as a single paragraph of no more than 250 words (15 to 17 lines of text in a 12-point, Times New Roman font, where the line width is 17 cm (=6.5 in). Omit statements about the paper that do not identify actual findings (e.g., The implications of these results are investigated with a dynamic model). (In the jargon of scientific writing, L&O publishes informative and not indicative abstracts.) Summarize rather than advertise both the important findings and their significance. Because the abstract must stand on its own, it cannot include references. Tables: Start each table on a new page. Format tables so that they will fit on the printed page: A 1-column table can be up to 60 characters wide, and a 2-column table up to 130. Type captions as double-spaced paragraphs at the top of each table. Abbreviations and acronyms: Use abbreviations sparingly. Use periods after all abbreviations except for metric measures, compass directions, and time (s, min, h, d, yr; do not abbreviate 'week' or 'month'). Provide the full expansion of all acronyms on first use (even common ones like DNA). Format dates like "15 June 1999" throughout the text, figures, and tables. If it is necessary to conserve space, abbreviate month names to the first 3 letters of the month name (no period) and the year to the last two digits. Do not abbreviate state, province, city, or country names. References: The ratio of pages of references to pages of text (not counting the title page, abstract, and acknowledgments) must be less than 1:4. All references cited in the text must appear in the References, and vice versa. Double check the spelling of author names and years of publication. Do not cite manuscripts in preparation or submitted, unpublished thesis, or other inaccessible sources in the text or list them in the References. But do cite them as appropriate, referring to the author(s) by last name and initials, e.g., Jones, A. B., followed by either 'pers. comm.' or 'unpubl.' Verify all references against original sources; check especially journal titles, accents, diacritical marks, and spelling in languages other than English. Make sure that each citation is complete, according to the following examples: Article: Fenchel, T. 1986. Protozoan filter feeding. Prog. Protistol. 1: 65-113. Book: Stumm, W., and J. Morgan. 1981. Aquatic chemistry, 2nd ed. Wiley. Chapter: Codispoti, L. A. 1983. Nitrogen in upwelling systems, p. 513-564. In E. J. Carpenter and G. Capone [eds.], Nitrogen in the marine environment. Academic. Thesis: Kimmance, S. A. 2001. The interactive effect of temperature and food concentration on plankton grazing and growth rates. Ph.D. thesis. Univ. of Liverpool. Use mixed upper and lower case letters for all text in the References section. In particular, do not use all capital letters for author names because doing so makes it impossible to for the copyeditor to properly typeset names like "MacKenzie". For abbreviations of journal names refer to Chemical Abstracts Service Source Index (CASSI) or Biosis. Do not include part (issue) numbers after volume numbers unless each part of the volume is paginated separately. Figures: Figures must be "camera-ready." They must be printed at high-resolution, i.e., text and lines must be free of "jaggies" (the stairstep effect that is typical of low-resolution pixel devices). Leave at least 2.5 cm (1 in) of white space around all sides of the figure. Number all figures serially (L&O does not distinguish color "plates" from black-and-white figures). Size text labels on the axes of the figures so that they will be of similar size in all figures when printed in the journal (i.e., after reduction). Make figures as simple as possible. For example, avoid grids or boxes around symbol definitions. Use the Times New Roman font for all text and numerals on figures. Text should be at least 8 points (2.8 mm; 0.1 in) high after reduction to the size that it will appear in the journal. If mathematical or Greek symbols are not available in Times New Roman, use the Symbol font. Number figures with Arabic numerals in the order of their citation in the text. If panels of a figure are labeled (A, B, ...) use the same case when refering to these panels in the text (A, B, ..., not a, b,...). Panel labels must be least 0.71 cm (1/8 in) from all lines in the figure. Put scale bars on the figure, NOT in the figure legend. Be sure that figure legends (one paragraph per figure) explain all panels (A, B, ...) and that symbols used in the figure (e.g., circles, squares, ...) are explained in a symbol table on the figure itself (i.e., not in the figure legend). Put the lead author's name and figure number on the FRONT of each figure or plate, on both originals and review copies. Such labels must be at least 1.27 cm (0.5 in) from the printed area. Do NOT write on the back of the figures because such marks often show through when reproduced. Photographs must be crisp black-and-white prints and submitted at the intended print size. If a figure consists of multiple panels, put all panels on one page and repeat axes titles on each panel only if they are different. Maps must include latitude and longitude, an indication of compass direction, and a line around the border. Ensure that all markings will be legible after reduction.
Last modified: 2/23/2006 8:29 PM