Manuscript Composition

For the review process a *.pdf file of the complete manuscript is required and the pages should be placed in the following order: title page, abstract, text, appendices, acknowledgements, references, tables and figure captions. All pages should be numbered consecutively and, if possible, line numbers should be included.

  • Title Page: Title (concise but informative), author initials and last names, full institutional addresses of all authors, correspondence email for proofs.
  • Abstract: The abstract should be intelligible to the general reader without reference to the text. After a brief introduction of the topic, the summary recapitulates the key points of the article and mentions possible directions for prospective research. Reference citations should not be included in this section, unless urgently required, and abbreviations should not be included without explanations.
  • Sections: The headings of all sections, including introduction, results, discussions or summary must be numbered. Three levels of sectioning are allowed, e.g. 3, 3.1 and 3.1.1.
  • Footnotes: These should be avoided, as they tend to disrupt the flow of the text. If absolutely necessary, they should be numbered consecutively. Footnotes to tables should be marked by lowercase letters.
  • Appendices: These should be labelled with capital letters: Appendix A, Appendix B etc. Equations, figures and tables should be numbered as (A1), Fig B5 or Table C6, respectively.
  • Figures: Images should be labelled in consecutive Arabic numerals (1, 2, 3,). For the production of the accepted manuscript they should be submitted as separate files in *.pdf, *.ps, *.eps, *.jpg, *.png, *.tif, or *.gif format with a resolution of not less than 150-300 dpi. Composite figures containing multiple panels should be collected into one file before submission. However, in instances where figures are in portrait orientation with a small aspect ratio, it is recommended that the authors provide all subfigures as individual files to allow a splitting. Photographs and images must be saved in *.jpg, *.png, *.tif, or *.gif format, ideally converted into high-quality *.pdf, with a resolution of not less than 150-300 dpi. A legend should clarify all symbols used and should appear in the figure itself, rather than verbal explanations in the caption (e.g. "dashed line" or "open green circles").
  • Figure captions: Each illustration should have a concise but descriptive caption. The abbreviations used in the figure must be defined, unless they are common abbreviations or have already been defined in the text. Figure captions should be included in the text file and not in the figure files.
  • Tables: Any tables should appear on separate sheets after the references and should be numbered sequentially with Arabic numerals. For the production of the accepted manuscript, they should be submitted as MS WORD or included in the LaTeX file. Tables submitted as a PDF or an image file cannot be processed. Tables should be self-explanatory and include a concise, yet sufficiently descriptive caption. Horizontal lines should normally only appear above and below the table, and as a separator between the head and the main body of the table. Vertical lines must be avoided.
  • Supplementary Material: Authors have the opportunity to submit supplementary material with their manuscript, such as data sets, movies, animations, etc. These files will be published online along with the article as *.zip archive (or single *.pdf file). The overall file size of a supplement is limited to 50 MB. Authors of larger supplements are kindly asked to submit their files to a reliable data repository and to insert a link in the manuscript. Ideally, this linkage is realized through DOIs (digital object identifier).
  • File Size: Authors are kindly asked to find the best balance between the quality of figures and submitted material on the one hand, and a managable file size on the other hand. Individual figures should not exceed 5 MB, and the overall size of all submitted files, excluding supplements, should not exceed 30 MB.
  • Evaluation Criteria: While preparing their manuscript, authors are kindly requested to consider the manuscript evaluation criteria to meet the quality standards and to reduce the peer-review processing time.

References

Papers should make proper and sufficient reference to the relevant formal literature. Informal or so-called "grey" literature may only be referred to if there is no alternative from the formal literature. Works cited in a manuscript should be accepted for publication or published already. These references have to be listed alphabetically at the end of the manuscript under the first author's name. Works "submitted to", "in preparation", "in review", or only available as preprint should also be included in the reference list. Please do not use bold or italic writing for in-text citations or in the reference list.

Please supply the full author list with last name followed by initials. After the list of authors, the complete reference title needs to be named. Journal names are abbreviated according to the ISI Journal Title Abbreviations Index , followed by the volume number, the complete page numbers (first and last page) and the publication year. If the abbreviation of a journal name is not known, please use the full title. In addition to journal articles, all reference types are summarized together with examples in the Copernicus Publications Reference Types  list.

If there is more than one work by the same first author, his/her papers are listed in the following order: (1) single author papers (first author), followed by (2) co-author papers (first author and second author), and finally (3) team papers (first author et al.). Within these three categories the respective papers are then listed as follows:

  • Single author papers: chronologically, beginning with the oldest. If there is more than one paper in the same year, a letter (a, b, c) is added to the year, both in the in-text citation as well as in the reference list.
  • Co-author papers: first alphabetically according to the second author's last name, and then chronologically within each set of co-authors. If there is more than one paper in the same year per set of co-authors, a letter (a, b, c) is added to the year both in the in-text citation as well as in the reference list.
  • Team papers: first chronologically (beginning with the oldest), independent of the team author names, then alphabetically within each year according to the second (third, etc.) author. If there is more than one paper in the same year for a first author (independent of the team), a letter (a, b, c) is added to the year both in the in-text citation as well as in the reference list.

In terms of in-text citations, the order can be based on relevance, as well as chronological or alphabetical listing, depending on the author's preference.

Examples for Reference Sorting

In general, in-text citations can be displayed as "[…] Smith (2009) […]", or "[…] (Smith, 2009) […]".

Reference List Short Citation
Single author: chronologically
Smith, P.: …, 2009. Smith, 2009
Smith, P.: …, 2010a. Smith, 2010a
Smith, P.: …, 2010b. Smith, 2010b
Co-authors: alphabetically before chronologically
Smith, P. and Brown, P.: …, 2010. Smith and Brown, 2010
Smith, P. and Carter, T.: …, 2007. Smith and Carter, 2007
Smith, P. and Carter, T.: …, 2010a. Smith and Carter, 2010a
Smith, P. and Carter, T.: …, 2010b. Smith and Carter, 2010b
Smith, P. and Thomson, A.: …, 2005. Smith and Thomson, 2005
Team: chronologically before alphabetically
Smith, P., Thomson, A., and Carter, T.: …, 2006. Smith et al., 2006
Smith, P., Carter, T., and Hanson, M. B.: …, 2008a. Smith et al., 2008a
Smith, P., Carter, T., and Walter, N.: …, 2008b. Smith et al., 2008b
Smith, P., Carter, T., and Hanson, M. B.: …, 2009. Smith et al., 2009
Smith, P., Brown, P., and Walter, N.: …, 2010. Smith et al., 2010

Please do not use bold or italic writing in the reference list or for in-text citations.

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Textual and Visual Conventions

  • Mathematical Symbols and Formulae: In general, mathematical symbols are typeset in italics. The most notable exceptions are function names (e.g. sin, cos), chemical formulas and physical units, which are all typeset with the normal (upright) font. Matrices are printed in bold face, and vectors in bold face italics. A range of numbers should be specified as "a to b" or "a...b". The expression "a–b" is only acceptable in cases where no confusion with "a minus b" is possible.
  • Equations: These should be numbered sequentially with Arabic numerals in parentheses on the right-hand side, i.e. (1), (2), etc. If too long, split them accordingly. If there are chemical formulae included, i.e. reactions, please number them (R1), (R2), etc. When using WORD, the equation editor and not the graphic mode should be used under all circumstances.
  • Units: The metric system is mandatory and, wherever possible, SI units should be used. Also units should be displayed using exponential rather then potential formatting.
  • Date and Time: 25 July 2007 (dd month yyyy), 15:17:02 (hh:mm:ss). Often it is necessary to specify the time if referring to local time or Universal Time Coordinated. This can be done by adding "LT" or "UTC", respectively.
  • Abbreviations and Acronyms: Equations should be referred to by the abbreviation "Eq." and the respective number in parentheses, e.g. "Eq. (14)". However, when the reference comes at the beginning of a sentence, the unabbreviated word "Equation" should be used, e.g.: "Equation (14) is very important for the results; however, Eq. (15) makes it clear that..." The abbreviations "Sect." and "Fig." should be used when they appear in running text and should be followed by a number unless they come at the beginning of a sentence, e.g.: "The results are depicted in Fig. 5. Figure 9 reveals that..." If acronyms or abbreviations are used throughout the article, they should be defined at first occurrence, e.g.: leaf area index (LAI), National Research Foundation (NRF). If these names or concepts are also mentioned in the abstract, they should be defined there as well.
  • Capitalization: In addition to proper nouns, capitalization of the first letter is applied for titles, section headings, figure and table captions but only for the first word. Abbreviations and expressions in the text such as Chap(s)., Fig(s)., Table(s), Eq(s)., Sect(s)., Paper, Theorem, etc. should always be capitalized when used with numbers, e.g., Fig. 3, Table 1, Paper III, Sect 2. The words figure(s), table(s), equation(s), theorem(s) in the text should not be capitalized when used without an accompanying number.
  • Non-English Words and Phrases: Foreign words that have not come into general use are italicized. Words, phrases and abbreviations referenced in the Webster's are not italicized. For example, et al., cf., e.g., a priori, in situ, bremsstrahlung, and eigenvalue should not be italicized or hyphenated.

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