Information for Authors  South African Journal of Geology 

The South African Journal of Geology publishes scientific papers, notes, stratigraphic descriptions and discussions in the broadly defined fields of geoscience that are related directly or indirectly to the geology of Africa. Contributions relevant to former supercontinental entities such as Gondwana and Rodinia are also welcome as are topical studies on any geoscience-related discipline. Review papers are welcome as long as they represent original, new syntheses. Special issues are encouraged but terms for these must be negotiated with the Editors.

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All contributions to S. Afr. J. Geol. are subjected to peer review by geoscientists selected by the Editors and members of the Editorial Board. The principal criteria used to evaluate contributions are:

• The contribution must present scientific findings that are original;  i.e., they must not have appeared elsewhere and must not be under consideration by any other publication.
• The contribution must be scientifically constrained; i.e., any interpretations made or conclusions drawn must be based on the objective evaluation of scientific data.
• There must be effective separation of scientific facts and observations from interpretations and inferences.
• The article should make a contribution toward our deeper understanding of Earth processes, broadly defined.

Papers are generally limited to 40 double spaced A4 size typed pages including text, references, figures and tables.

Notes are regarded as short papers on topical issues and every attempt will be made to publish them quickly. They should not exceed 4 printed pages including text, references, figures and tables.

Discussions represent a forum in which previously published articles that appeared in S. Afr. J. Geol. can be disputed, clarified and/or discussed. Replies to such discussions will be invited from the original authors. Discussions must be submitted as soon as possible and not longer than six months after publication of the original article.

Manuscripts for peer review shall be submitted double-spaced in the style of the South African Journal of Geology, and authors are requested to consult a recent issue not older than Volume 118, Number 4 for the publication layout (of the PDF and print format).

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The title page should include the title of the manuscript, with the initials, surname, affiliation, email address, corresponding address, and (optionally) ORCID of each author. A short summary of the paper should be provided as the abstract. Avoid using deferring phrases such as “…is discussed” and include no references. Remember that your abstract may be the only part of your paper that is read so it should help readers to become quickly informed about your results and to decide if your paper is relevant to their interests. Abstracts from S. Afr. J. Geol. are circulated by international retrieval systems.

The text or main body of the manuscript should be logically organised into sections but please avoid overuse of subsection constructs. There must be a clear separation of facts and observations from interpretations and inferences. An alphabetical and then chronological list of all references cited should follow the main text.

The format of references must follow that of S. Afr. J. Geol. and can be obtained in any issue not older than Volume 118, Number 4; and the names of journals must be spelled out in full. Papers “in preparation” and “submitted” cannot be used as references. Please make a careful crosscheck of the reference list against citations in the text.

Tables should be compiled on separate sheets and designed to fit across a single or double column width on a single journal page. Use of decimal points, rather than commas, is required for all reported numbers.

Illustrations must be legible and contain only relevant information. Place names and other locations mentioned in the text must appear clearly on maps.

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Clear instructions must be provided on how mathematical symbols and equations should be printed. For Greek and non-Roman letters, authors must identify the symbol in words the first time it is used.

Stratigraphic descriptions should conform to criteria defined by the South African Committee for Stratigraphy (SACS).

The language of S. Afr. J. Geol. is English.

For peer review purposes, manuscripts shall be submitted by email to the Scientific Editor Prof. Marlina Elburg as a single PDF file of no more than 10 MB (megabytes).

  Submit manuscript to the Scientific Editor Prof. Marlina Elburg
To: marlinae@uj.ac.za  Cc: sajg@gssa.org.za

Submitted manuscripts including references should be double-spaced and in 12 font size. All pages should carry the authors’ name and be properly numbered.

Authors are encouraged to include with their submissions the names and email addresses of persons they deem suitable to be referees of their manuscript. Such persons will be considered as referees by the Scientific Editor and members of the Editorial Board.

Receipt of a submitted manuscript will be acknowledged by email.

Accepted manuscripts having undergone peer review shall be returned to the Managing Editor Dr. George Henry in digital format either as email attachments or via Dropbox or a similar cloud-based file service. In a cover letter, the authors must explain in detail how they dealt with each of the referees’ comments and suggestions.

  Return manuscript to the Managing Editor Dr. George Henry
To: ghenry@uj.ac.za  Cc: henrygeorge99@yahoo.com

Text should be in Word format and tables as Excel worksheets. Photos, figures and illustrations must not be embedded in Word files.

Photos, figures and illustrations should be submitted separately as uncompressed TIFF files, which should have minimum resolutions of 300 dpi for colour, 600 dpi for greyscale and 1200 dpi for black and white. Colour in photos, figures and illustrations should be RGB (rather than CMYK), with supporting text to be in one colour, 100% black (and not in RGB or CMYK).

There are no charges for colour photos, figures and illustrations.

Authors will receive copies of their articles (papers) as high quality PDF files. No physical copy reprints will be provided.

Early publications in the South African Journal of Geology are peer reviewed research articles (papers) that are in corrected proof format and published ahead-of-print. Each article is published online when ready using the “continuous publishing” method.

  Papers published as ahead-of-print at GeoScienceWorld
https://pubs.geoscienceworld.org/sajg/early-publication

When the article is assigned to a specific issue of S. Afr. J. Geol., it will be allocated page numbers in that issue and replace the ahead-of-print version on the GeoScienceWorld platform. The DOI will resolve accordingly. The year an article was first published online will be carried over to the finalised volume and issue.

  Papers published in current issue at GeoScienceWorld
https://pubs.geoscienceworld.org/sajg/issue/current

Despite the lack of final bibliographic details for early publications (i.e., volume, issue number and page numbers), early publications should be cited using the year of online publication and the DOI. The correct format would include the author(s), year of online publication, title, and DOI.

The South African Journal of Geology is a “hybrid open access” journal — subscription based but open access research articles (papers) are also published. Except for articles licenced for (libre) open access, copyright is vested in the Geological Society of South Africa and all rights are reserved.

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For Gold OA articles, assignment of copyright will be under one of the following licence options:

• Fully “libre open access” with Creative Commons licence CC BY 4.0. Authors are assigned copyright after remitting an APC for Gold OA. This licence allows reuse for commercial purposes and may be required by the funding body or institution. (This is the default OA licence option.)  CC BY 4.0
• Non-commercial “libre open access” with Creative Commons licence CC BY-NC 4.0 or CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Authors are assigned copyright after remitting an APC for Gold OA. (N.b., articles licenced as non-commercial will limit distribution.)  CC BY-NC 4.0  CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

Only Gold OA open access articles (papers) are levied an Article Processing Charge.

Manuscripts intended to be licenced under open access will go through peer review and production in the same way as other manuscripts. Upon acceptance of the manuscript for publication, the authors will be asked to make payment of the Article Processing Charge (if applicable) to offset the cost of open access. The APC must be cleared before the Author Accepted Manuscript is released for publication as open access. No preferential treatment will be offered other than free access and use of the published open access article as the copyright holder.

Platinum OA, Diamond OA are reserved for use by GSSA; the APC is waived for both OA types. Platinum OA - GSSA holds copyright under an (libre) open access licence (‘Some Rights Reserved’). Diamond OA - copyright is awarded to the author (of a single-authored paper) in special recognition.

Authors interested in publishing articles (papers) as open access should contact one of the Editors for more information.

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Upon submission, pending approval by the Scientific Editor, the S. Afr. J. Geol. allows manuscripts undergoing review to be made available on a preprint server. For accepted manuscripts having undergone peer-review, authors are allowed to deposit in an institutional or disciplinary repository the post-peer reviewed manuscript. Permitted is repository self-archival of the Author Accepted Manuscript (AAM) as Green OA (or Blue OA). The DOI of the article in S. Afr. J. Geol. should be on the archived manuscript and included on any corresponding preprint.

Please do not self-archive fully laid out PDFs generated by GSSA’s production process — these PDFs represent copy that have gone through layout, final proofing, and exist with the GSSA logo etc.

• Exposure to the global scientific community on GeoScienceWorld, featuring a separate split-screen responsive display for figures, tables (data), references, and citation metadata.  Browse Issues
• Manuscripts are submitted directly to the Scientific Editor with no need to establish an online account to manage submissions.
• Manuscripts undergo a rigorous and constructive peer review process that follows the highest standards for scientific articles (papers).
• Rapid peer review averages 9 weeks.
• Prompt editorial processing and production. Acceptance to online availability in less than 4 weeks.
• Each research paper is published online when ready. No backlogged manuscripts queued for publication to complete an issue.
• Each paper is assigned a DOI — a unique persistent identifier registered with Crossref resolving to the version-of-record at GeoScienceWorld.
• Papers are indexed and abstracted in:  | Science Citation Index Expanded | Current Contents Physical, Chemical & Earth Sciences | Essential Science Indicators | Zoological Record | Scopus | GEOBASE | Chemical Abstracts | GeoRef | Environment Index | EBSCO |
• Papers may be discovered with the rich set of advanced search tools at each of the three distribution channels on which S. Afr. J. Geol. is found online:  GeoScienceWorld, Sabinet, and EBSCOhost.
• Support for ORCID — unique persistent identifiers for authors and contributors.
• Gold OA and other variants of open access are supported. Platinum OA and Diamond OA are not levied Article Processing Charges. Green OA / Blue OA repository self-archival is allowed.
• Freely accessible ‘supplementary data repository’ supports additional relevant digital materials; e.g., plain text, documents, worksheets, imagery, photos, videos; as well as primary data, tables, illustrations, figures, plates, appendices, posters.  Supplemental Data
• S. Afr. J. Geol. is a not-for-profit scientific journal with a long established history, produced and published by a not-for-profit scientific society (Geological Society of South Africa) on a non-profit online platform (GeoScienceWorld).  About the Journal