Terminology

Authors should adhere to IUGS terminology. SI units should be used wherever possible  (http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units). Non-SI units may be used only where this is necessary for practical understanding.

Organisation

Manuscripts should generally be organized in the following order: 1. Title; 2. Name(s) of author(s); 3. Author(s’) affiliation(s) and email address(es); in case of more than one author, please indicate who the corresponding author is, if he/she is not the first-named one; 4. Abstract; 5. Keywords (in alphabetical order); 6. Introduction; 7. Methods and materials; 8. Analyses and results; 9. Discussion and conclusions; 10. Acknowledgements; 11. References (according to the format detailed below); 12. Appendices (if any, their use should be restricted to a minimum); 13. Figure(s) and table captions; 14. Tables; 15. Figures.

The Editors reserve the right of returning a manuscript to the author for revision prior to the review procedure if it is not in the form given in this guide.

 

• The title should be as concise as possible, but leave no doubt as to the contents. Area and age of studied material should – if appropriate – be mentioned. Abbreviations in the title should be avoided. Names etc. should contain all relevant diacritical symbols required.
• The abstract should not be descriptive but rather concisely summarize the methods used, the main results and the conclusions; it must be understandable on its own and not refer to illustrations or references. It should not be longer than 500 words.
• Keywords should preferably amount to 3 - 6. They need not repeat words used in the title and should preferably be taken from the most recent American Geological Institute GeoRefThesaurus. A single keyword should not consist of more than three words, but preferably of one.
• The running text should be subdivided into sections and subsections as required. The headings are, respectively, in bold (with a white line underneath), in bold italics (white line underneath), and in italics (without white line underneath). Sections and subsections should not be numbered. Unduly long descriptions should be replaced by tables or figures, whenever possible.
• All references cited in the text are to be listed in the reference list and vice versa. The manuscript should be carefully checked to ensure that the spellings of authors’ names and publication years are exactly the same in the text as in the reference list. Do not type anything in bold or italics. Do not abbreviate journal titles. Refer in the text to the author’s name (without initials) and year of publication: ‘as suggested earlier (Smith, 1999)’ or ‘as suggested by Smith (1999) and Johnson & Petersen (2000)’. If reference is made to publications written by more than two authors, the name of the first author should be used, followed by ‘et al.’. This indication should, however, never be used in the list of references: all authors and co-authors must be named in full in the list.

References

References in the text should be arranged chronologically. The reference list should be in the form as used in recent issues of the Netherlands Journal of Geosciences – Geologie en Mijnbouw. The list of references should be arranged alphabetically by authors’ names, and chronologically per author. If an author’s name in the list is also mentioned with co-authors, the following order should be used:

• Publications by the single author, arranged according to publication year;
• Publications of the same author with one co-author, arranged alphabetically per co-author and, if necessary, per co-author according to publication year;
• Publications of the author with more than one co-author, arranged chronologically (per year, if necessary, alphabetically).

The following system should be used for arranging references:

Journal papers: names and initials of all authors, year. Title of paper. Journal name (in full) volume number: first and last page numbers of the paper. Issue numbers should be provided between brackets after the volume number only if the issues of one volume do not show consecutive page numbering.

Example: Louwye, S., De Coninck, J. & Verniers, J., 1999. Dinoflagellate cyst stratigraphy and depositional history of Miocene and Lower Pliocene formations in northern Belgium (southern North Sea Basin). Geologie en Mijnbouw 78: 31-46.

Books: names and initials of all authors, year. Title of the book. Publisher (location of publisher): number of pages.

Example: Brodzikowski, K. & Van Loon, A.J., 1991. Glacigenic sediments. Elsevier Science Publishers (Amsterdam): 674 pp.

Edited volume papers: names and initials of all authors, year. Title of paper. In: Name(s) and initials of the volume editor(s) followed by (ed.) or (eds): title of the edited volume. Publisher (location of publisher): first and last page numbers of the paper.

Example: De Jong, J.D. & Maarleveld, G.C., 1983. The glacial history of the Netherlands. In: Ehlers, J. (ed.): Glacial deposits in North-West Europe. Balkema (Rotterdam): 353-356.

In the case of publications in any language other than English, the original title is to be retained. Titles of publications in non-Latin alphabets should be transliterated, and a note such as ‘(in Russian)’ or ‘(in Japanese, with English abstract)’ should be added at the end of the reference.

Illustrations

All illustrations must be presented separately from the manuscript. The design, line widths, letter sizes (use typeface Helvetica or Arial) and scale bars should allow reproduction to column width (84 mm) or page width (174 mm, maximum height: 246 mm) in such a way that the ‘information density’ is high. All illustrations must be numbered consecutively and referred to in the text in the same order.

Photographs, micrographs, etc. must be sharp and exhibit good contrast. Image files of the photographs (.psd or .tif) must have a resolution of 300 dpi on printing scale (i.e. an image of 84 × 100 mm should be 992 × 1181 pixels at least). Bar scales on a photograph must be used rather than magnification factors in the caption.

The use of fine shading or stipples, coloured text and coloured thin lines (<0.2 mm) must be avoided.

Vector graphics (ps, eps, ai) are also acceptable.

Tables

Tables should not exceed the area of the page (174 × 246 mm). If this appears impossible, reversing columns and rows will often make the impossible possible. Large tables should be avoided and can be placed on the NJG website. Tables should be compiled on separate sheets and must be numbered according to their sequence in the text. The text must include references to all tables. Column headings should be brief, but sufficiently explanatory. Units of measurement should be given in parentheses. See the tables in recent volumes of the journal for additional details on layout, etc.

Each table must have a brief and self-explanatory caption. Explanations that are necessary to the understanding of the table should be given as footnotes, indicated by a superscript number, at the bottom of the table.

Formulae

All formulae should be presented consistently and clearly with regard to the meaning of each symbol and its correct location. Formulae must be typed throughout. All unusual symbols must, if numerous, be collected in a separate list in an appendix, giving a clear explanation of each symbol. Please, try to keep the notation as simple as possible, and avoid ambiguities. Do not use special typefaces if there is no urgent need to do so. Different formulae should be clearly separated in the manuscript, at least by punctuation marks, if not by words. Avoid breaking formulae if breaking is not strictly necessary (i.e. if the equation is less than one typed line). Do not use complicated juxtapositions of symbols. Also, try to avoid complicated subscripts and superscripts.

Formulae and text should show a clear distinction between similar symbols, (e.g., between zero (0) and the character O, between one (1) and the characters l and I, and between multiplication (・or ×) and the character x).

Footnotes

Footnotes should be used only if absolutely essential. In most cases it will be possible to incorporate them in the main text. If used, footnotes should be numbered consecutively throughout the manuscript, indicated by superscript Arabic numbers, and kept as short as possible. Extensive footnotes can be restricted to a link to the NJG website.

Proofs of articles accepted for publication will be sent to the corresponding author to be checked for typesetting/editing. The author is not expected to make changes or corrections that constitute departures from the article that was accepted by the Editors. Substantial changes may be charged to the author at cost price.

Competing Interests

All authors must include a competing interest declaration in their main manuscript file. This declaration will be subject to editorial review and may be published in the article. 

Competing interests are situations that could be perceived to exert an undue influence on the content or publication of an author’s work. They may include, but are not limited to, financial, professional, contractual or personal relationships or situations. 

If the manuscript has multiple authors, the author submitting must include competing interest declarations relevant to all contributing authors. 

Example wording for a declaration is as follows: “Competing interests: Author 1 is employed at organisation A, Author 2 is on the Board of company B and is a member of organisation C. Author 3 has received grants from company D.” If no competing interests exist, the declaration should state “Competing interests: The author(s) declare none”. 

Language

Manuscripts must be written in English. Authors, whose native language is not English, are urged to have their manuscripts checked by a native English speaker before submission. The use of a spelling checker as present in most word-processing software is strongly advised. The agreed spelling for NJG is British English. Manuscripts that would require much language correction may be rejected. If accepted, their handling may be delayed.

Publication Ethics

The Journal adheres to the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) guidelines on research and publications ethics. We take issues of copyright infringement, plagiarism, or other breaches of best practice in publication very seriously.  Text taken directly or closely paraphrased from earlier published work that has not been acknowledged or referenced will be considered plagiarism.  Submitted manuscripts in which such text is identified will be withdrawn from the editorial process. If a concern is raised about possible plagiarism in an article submitted to or published in the journal, this will be investigated fully and dealt with in accordance with the COPE guidelines. If needed the manuscript can be processed by iThenticate.

Authorship and contributorship

All authors listed on any papers submitted to this journal must be in agreement that the authors listed would all be considered authors according to disciplinary norms, and that no authors who would reasonably be considered an author have been excluded. For further details on this journal’s authorship policy, please see the journal's publishing policies policies.

Author affiliations

Author affiliations should represent the institution(s) at which the research presented was conducted and/or supported and/or approved. For non-research content, any affiliations should represent the institution(s) with which each author is currently affiliated. 

ORCID

The journal's editors strongly recommend that authors who submit manuscripts register an "Open Researcher and Contributor Identifier", a so-called ORCiD.

This registration provides a unique and stable digital author identity that ensures that the article is attributed to the correct person and improves the searchability of all the author's publications. This helps to ensure that the author receives recognition for their work. As a person's ORCiD remains the same as long as the account exists, any name changes, change of employment, department affiliation or research field do not affect the searchability of previous publications. This facilitates correspondence between research colleagues.

The journal's editors encourage all authors to include an ORCiD along with other author information when the manuscript is registered in the system. If the article is accepted, this will be published with the article.