Instructions to authors

Scope

Acta Geologica Slovaca (AGEOS) is an international peer-reviewed journal published by the Faculty of Natural Sciences at the Comenius University in Bratislava. It accepts original research papers, review articles, and short communications on all aspects of geosciences (e.g., geophysics, geochemistry, hydrogeology, engineering geology, geology of ore deposits, petroleum geology, mineralogy, palaeontology, petrology, sedimentology, stratigraphy, structural geology, tectonic geomorphology, tectonics, and related fields). Since 2016, we accept submissions in English only. The manuscripts are peer-reviewed by at least two independent reviewers. The final decision concerning the acceptance or rejection of a paper rests with the Editorial Board.

Acta Geologica Slovaca was established in June 2009. It replaced the Acta Geologica Universitatis Comenianae that ceased to be published in 2007.

Acta Geologica Slovaca is published twice a year and is listed among the periodicals of the Ministry of Culture of the Slovak Republic (registration number: EV 3721/09). An on-line version of the journal is located on the website of the Faculty of Natural Sciences, Comenius University, Bratislava: http://geopaleo.fns.uniba.sk/ageos/

Legal requirements

The authors guarantee that the manuscript is not published anywhere else in any other language and is not considered for publication in other journals. The manuscripts should present new results (with the exception of review articles) and should be of interest to a broad geoscience community. The exclusive copyright is transferred to the publishers after the acceptance of a manuscript. Along with the manuscript, the author(s) should send a copyright statement that the manuscript or any of its sections have not been published previously. Figures taken from other publications can be used with the permission of the original publisher. The copyright statement must contain the name of the author(s) and the permanent residential address.

General Instruction

All articles are published in English. Manuscript, figures and tables must be constructed and prepared according to the instructions below. The scope of the article should not exceed 40 manuscript pages (1.5 spaced, with 12-point font size), including the main text, references, tables, and figures. Larger articles can be also considered upon prior consultation with the Executive Editor. Submissions with inadequate English will be rejected. The article manuscript should be constructed by authors on A4 format with 3 cm margins on all sides. Please use line numbering throughout the whole manuscript. Pages must be numbered and the manuscript must be organized according to the following order: Title - Full names and addresses - Abstract - Keywords - Introduction - Main Text - Conclusions - Acknowledgements - Reference - Table headings and figure captions - Tables - Figures - Supplementary Material.

The manuscripts must be sent in an electronic form to the e-mail address of the Executive Editor. Articles that are not prepared in accord with the instructions to authors of the Acta Geologica Slovaca journal will be returned to authors.

Title

The article title should be as straightforward as possible and should inform about the major findings and their consequences. The headline is composed of the article name, the authors list, the name and addresses of institutions and the title of the article.

Corresponding author. Clearly indicate who will handle correspondence at all stages of review and publication, also post-publication.

Abstract

The length of the abstract must not exceed 350 words. The abstract briefly presents the major findings and their implications for a broader geoscience community, without summarizing all the manuscript content, and must be able to stand alone. It must contain explicit information about the aims or hypotheses of the study, its geographic and stratigraphic setting, methods, results, and main conclusions.

Citations and abbreviations are not allowed in abstract.

Keywords are listed at the end of the abstract on a separate line. These must not exceed seven items and should be ranked from the general to the specific, for example: Western Carpathians, Slovenské rudohorie Mts., tectonics, palaeostress, faults.

Text

Before the submission, the manuscript must be formatted according to the following requirements:

1.5-spaced text using the font family "Times", for example: Times New Roman or Nimbus Roman; size 12 points;
it can be divided into sections with headings at three hierarchical levels, and their numbering should be indicated at the beginning of the heading;
it must clearly distinguish between the data obtained and their interpretation;
it can contain embedded tables and figures, or, table and figures can be appended at the end of the manuscript and their placement in the main text can be indicated by the author; authors must ensure that the resolution of figures is sufficiently high. If the figure embedding compromises the resolution of figures, they can be submitted as separate, high-resolution files;
repetition of data from tables and images is not allowed in the text;
abbreviations should be defined at first mention and used consistently thereafter;
SI units and their abbreviations are preferred;
hyphens must be carefully distinguished from dashes;
the references are cited without the first name or its abbreviation (e.g., Hok, 2006); if several items are cited in the same place these have to be ordered chronologically and separated by semicolon (e.g., Hok, 2006; Kovac et al., 2010;... but e.g., Joniak, 2010, 2016).

Data accessibility

The data supporting analyses in the manuscript need to be publicly available. Authors should be specific about the repository of the data used in their manuscript. Full datasets can be published in the Supplementary Material.

Illustrations and Artwork

Both printed version and the electronic version of the journal can publish color images without any page charge. All illustrations are labeled as figures. Plates are not allowed. All figures must be cited in the text in a correct numerical order. Figure captions should be as concise as possible and should explain any abbreviations used in the figure.

Figures must be submitted at high quality with a resolution of 450 dpi. Authors must use uniform lettering and sizing of the original artwork. Preferred fonts: Arial (or Helvetica), Times New Roman (or Times), Symbol, Courier. Figure should conform to one or two column width (82 x 235 mm or 170 x 235 mm). Figures in 2/3 (113 mm) or 3/4 (127 mm) of the journal page width are also acceptable. Larger figures not conforming to the journal requirements are not accepted. The best figures are in vector graphics which are then exported to raster format. We prefer the following raster formats: tiff, jpg and png. If any magnification is used in the photographs, indicate this by using scale bars within the figures themselves. If possible, bar scales should be placed in the lower left corner. The preferred formats for graphics are CDR, AI, or PDF. Minimum line width is 0.25 pt. Authors must ensure that the minimum line width and minimum font size in figures will apply to the size of figures in the typeset article. Save text in illustrations as "graphics" or enclose the font. Do not supply files that are too low in resolution or are optimized for screen use (e.g., GIF, BMP, PICT, WPG). Also please, do not submit graphics that are disproportionately large for the content.

Figure parts should be denoted by capital letters (A, B, C,… or a, b, c, …). If possible, these letters should be preferably placed in the upper left corner. Final size of lettering must be taken into consideration. Letters should be not smaller than 6 points (1.6 mm) and not larger than 14 points (4 mm). Figure labels and lettering should be of consistent size, not varying within a figure, and of similar size in each comparable figure.

Make sure you use uniform lettering and sizing of your original artwork.

All figures must be cited in the text.

All figures must be properly marked on the printed or electronic version of the file name in digital form. Editors reserve the right to return images to the authors for repair or modification after language and technical corrections and to ask for replacement pictures of desired quality.

Tables

The tables should be prepared on separate pages of the manuscript. Their size may fit to one column (82 × 235 mm) or to two columns (170 × 235 mm). Larger tables that cannot be reduced to two-column size will not be accepted. All tables must be cited in the text in a correct numerical order. Boundaries of the columns of tables will not be utilized. Larger tables with raw data can be published in the Supplementary Material.

For each table, please supply a table caption (title) explaining the components of the table. Editors reserve the right to return tables to the author(s) for repair or modification after language and technical corrections and to ask for replacement tables of the desired quality.

Acknowledgements

All contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship should be listed in the acknowledgments section. It is also necessary to mention all funding sources.

References

Each article must include a "reference", as quoted in the text. References should be arranged alphabetically and then by the year of publication. For references with two authors, list alphabetically by the first author and then alphabetically by the second author. For references with three and more authors, list alphabetically by the first author and then by the year of publication. Journal name should be typed in italics.

References in languages other than English, German, Italian, Spanish or French without summary or abstract in one of these main languages should have both the original title and its translated equivalent [in square brackets], the original language is noted in square brackets at the end of the reference, e.g. [in Slovak]. If the publication includes also Abstract or Summary in one of these main languages including its official translated title, only this version should be used, however the square brackets should note languages of both original title and its translated part, e.g. [in Slovak with English Summary] or [in Czech with German Abstract].

When two or more references are by the same author(s) for the same year of issue, indexing in superscript immediately after the year of publication is required (for example: Faryad S.W., 1995^a... and then Farayd S.W., 1995^b...). The article of a single author can be cited in the text as "Plašienka (1999)”, or at the end of the text sentence as “(Plašienka, 1999)”. An article by two authors cited in the text requires the use of the ampersand "&" (Soták & Starek, 2000), and articles with three or more authors must be cited with the phrase "et al.," (Pešková et al., 2009). All authors must be spelled out in the list of references.

Journal:

Oszczypko N., 1992: Late Cretaceous through Paleogene evolution of Magura Basin. Geologica Carpathica, 43, 6, 333–338.

Soták J. & Starek D., 2000: Synorogenic deposition of turbidite fans in the Central-Carpathian Paleogene Basin: evidence for and against sea-level and climatic changes. Slovak Geological Magazine, 6, 2–3, 191–194.

Pešková I., Vojtko R., Starek D. & Sliva Ľ., 2009: Late Eocene to Quaternary deformation and stress field evolution of the Orava region (Western Carpathians). Acta Geologica Polonica, 59, 1, 73–91.

Onačila D. & Rojkovičová Ľ., 1992: Precious metal mineralization on the Hodruša ore field veins. Mineralia Slovaca, 24, 245–256. [in Slovak with English summary]

Book:

Burbank D. W. & Anderson R. S., 2001: Tectonic Geomorphology. Blackwell Science, Massachusetts, 274 p.

Ivan P., 2009: Staropaleozoický bázický vulkanizmus Západných Karpát– geochémia a geodynamická pozícia [Lower Paleozoic basic volcanism in the Western Carpathians – geochemistry and geodynamic position]. Acta Geologica Slovaca – Monograph, Comenius University, Bratislava, 110 p. [in Slovak]

Edited books, proceedings:

Mein P., 1999: The Late Miocene small mammal succession from France, with emphasis on the Rhône Valley localities. In: Augustí J., Rook L. & Andrews P. (Eds.): Hominoid evolution and climatic change in Europe, Volume 1. The evolution of Neogene terrestrial ecosystems in Europe. Cambridge University Press, New York, pp. 140–164.

Manuscript. If it is not possible to avoid the citation of such unpublished works, it should be cited as follows, e.g.:

Bakos F. & Urban M., 2013: Exploration licence Prochot. Exploration for Au-Ag, Cu-Pb-Zn, Mo mineralization. Final report, archive of ŠGÚDŠ Bratislava, 21 p.

Koděra P., Lexa J., Konečný P., Ferenc Š., Maťo Ľ. & Hók J., 2007: Zdroje fluíd a genéza epitermálnych mineralizácií neovulkanitov. [Fluid sources and origin of the epithermal mineralization in Neogene volcanic rocks]. Unpublished Report, State Geological Institute of Dionýz Štúr in Bratislava, 150 p. [in Slovak]

Supplementary material

Supplementary materials (data table, applications, images and videos) can be published online with the article. If this appendix contains one or more figures, please use the numbering with the prefix S and Refer to the supplementary files as e.g. "Supplementary Fig. S1". Supplementary material is not edited by the journal staff and is published as it is submitted.

Please do not hesitate to contact us with additional questions at the e-mail address: mbednarik[at]uniba.sk

PDF version of Instructions to authors of the Acta Geologica Slovaca journal.

Information

Forthcoming articles

AGEOS 2024, Vol. 16, Issue 2