Clays and Clay Minerals
Submission guidelines
Instructions to Authors
Manuscripts that can be submitted to Clays and Clay Minerals may fall under any of the following categories: Articles on original research or reviews on subjects of interest to the international community of clay scientists, Solicited Book reviews, Review Articles, and Letters to the editor commenting on papers published. Contributors must identify the type of their article during submission.
There are many important points which authors must bear in mind before submitting a paper for publication to any journal.
• What is the scientific novelty? What are you, the author, saying that hasn’t been said before, and does your work warrant publication in the journal to which you are submitting it?
• How should the author divide up the paper into sections (Abstract, Introduction, Materials and Methods, etc.) and what should appear in each section?
• What does the journal demand in terms of language? Editors should be allowed to focus on scientific content, and not be forced to read material in which the language is not of appropriate quality.
• What are the journal’s requirements in terms of layout (including headings, citations, references, etc.)
• What is the standard of artwork needed?
The pages which follow explain all of the points expected of authors in preparation for submission of their manuscripts to Clays and Clay Minerals. Many papers are returned to authors one or more times before they enter the peer review system.
Attention to the details in the paragraphs below will help to avoid such delays for your manuscript.
Organization of Manuscripts
Regarding the organization of the scientific content in the manuscript, overall, please read the superb “recipe” for a good manuscript written by former editor, the late Fred Mumpton:
Mumpton, F.A. (1990) The Universal Recipe or How to Get Your Manuscript Accepted by Persnickety Editors. Clays and Clay Minerals, 38, 631–636. It is available at: http://www.clays.org/journal/Mumpton-instructions.pdf
Once you have read it, follow its outstanding guidance. Specific matters that should be considered in preparing a manuscript for its first submission are highlighted in the following numbered items.
1. Clear identification of scientific novelty in Introduction (Statement of Purpose): Before a manuscript can be sent out for review, it must identify the novelty of the work reported in terms of advancing the frontiers of clay science. A successful manuscript should clearly identify what is new and scientifically significant about the work presented. Authors should clearly state the aim of this study (i.e., what problem is being solved, etc.). This will help readers to understand the scientific novelty of the study reported in the manuscript. Authors need to show (state clearly) how this study differs from past studies of similar clay mineral phenomena. The Introduction of the paper should define the scope of the problem to be solved by the work presented. The Introduction should provide background explaining what problem is being solved, or what gap in existing scientific-community understanding as reported in the literature is being filled, by the work reported in the paper.
The Introduction should briefly explain why this problem is not already solved or why the solution in this manuscript is better than previous solutions in some specified important way. A summary of previous work followed only by a statement that the present manuscript reports an increment of continued work along a similar direction is generally not sufficient justification for the present manuscript – a successful manuscript requires a specific statement of a specific reason that the specific continuation of previous work reported in the manuscript is required. If the purpose is primarily to describe a local deposit, then either the paper belongs in a local or regional journal or the manuscript needs to better explain the scientific novelty of the work. Is this a deposit that has significant potential to change our understanding about the existence and origin of this kind of natural material, or does it only confirm that it is much like others that have been characterized and it is just adding information about this particular deposit? How does the detailed study of this unit advance scientific understanding beyond merely characterizing this locally economically important unit? If there is no larger scientific significance, then specifically how does the characterization reported improve the use of the resource? A description of a deposit that does not have international or global significance for understanding that type of deposit is not sufficient for an international journal. Is the work reported a process that has significant potential to change scientific or applied approaches to this kind of material?
What can the community do better after the work reported here than it could do without this work? Specifically, how does the process reported in this manuscript improve upon prior art?
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更多详情：
https://www.springer.com/journal/42860/submission-guidelines
