Instructions for Authors

Submission

Manuscripts should be submitted by one of the authors of the manuscript through the manuscript tracking system. Only electronic Word (.doc or .docx) files can be submitted, and there is no page limit. Submissions by anyone other than one of the authors will not be accepted. The submitting author takes responsibility for the manuscript during submission and peer review. For technical help, contact [email protected].

Terms of Submission

Manuscripts must be submitted on the understanding that they have not been published elsewhere and are only being considered by this journal. The submitting author is responsible for ensuring that the article's publication has been approved by all the other coauthors. It is also the submitting author's responsibility to ensure that the article has all necessary institutional approvals. Only an acknowledgment from the editorial office officially establishes the date of receipt. Further correspondence and proofs will be sent to the author(s) before publication, unless otherwise indicated. It is a condition of submission that the authors permit editing of the manuscript for readability. All inquiries concerning the publication of accepted manuscripts should be addressed to [email protected]. All submissions are bound by Lithosphere's terms of service.

Authorship

Authorship should be limited to those who have made significant contributions to the concept, design, execution or interpretation of the work reported in a manuscript; others who have contributed should be acknowledged.

Nonhuman artificial intelligence, language models, machine learning, or similar technologies do not qualify for authorship because they cannot take responsibility for the submitted work. AI tools cannot be listed as an author of a paper. Authors who use AI tools in the writing of a manuscript, production of images or graphical elements of the paper, or in the collection and analysis of data, must disclose in the Methods or Acknowledgements how the AI tool was used and which tool was used.

Author order should be agreed on by all authors as should any changes in authors and order that occur while the manuscript is under review or revision. Requests for changes in authorship must be submitted to [email protected]. Changes to authorship are not permitted after acceptance of a manuscript.

Authors and co-authors should review and ensure the accuracy and validity of results prior to submission; co-authors should have the opportunity to review the manuscript before submission.

Peer Review

All submitted articles are subject to assessment and peer review to ensure editorial appropriateness and technical correctness. In order for an article to be accepted for publication, the assigned Editor will first consider if the manuscript meets minimum editorial standards and fits within the scope of the journal. If an article is within scope, then the Editor will ideally solicit at least two external peer reviewers (whose identities will remain anonymous to the authors) to assess the article before confirming a decision to accept. Decisions to reject are at the discretion of the Editor.

The editorial team at Lithosphere will occasionally seek advice outside standard peer review, for example, on submissions with serious ethical, security, biosecurity, or societal implications. We may consult experts and the academic editor before deciding on appropriate actions, including but not limited to: recruiting reviewers with specific expertise, assessment by additional editors, and declining to further consider a submission.

Article Processing Charges

Lithosphere is Open Access. Article Processing Charges (APCs) allow the publisher to make articles immediately available online to anyone to read and reuse upon publication. More information on APCs can be found here.

Preprints

Lithosphere supports the deposition of manuscripts in preprint servers, and does not consider this to compromise the novelty of the results. Articles based on content previously made public only on a preprint server, institutional repository, or in a thesis will be considered. The preprint should be cited.

Article Types

The journal will consider the following article types:

Research Articles

Research articles should present the results of an original research study. These manuscripts should describe how the research project was conducted and provide a thorough analysis of the results of the project. Systematic reviews may be submitted as research articles. We suggest you browse recent examples of research articles published in Lithosphere to get an idea of how to format your manuscript.

Review Articles

A review article provides an overview of the published literature in a particular subject area. We suggest you browse recent examples of review articles published in Lithosphere to get an idea of how to format your manuscript.

Formatting

Formatting tips are provided via Lithosphere's optional research article manuscript template. We recommend that all manuscripts include line numbers and follow the structure below:

Title and Authorship Information

The following information should be included:

• Manuscript title
• Full author names
• Full institutional mailing addresses
• Email addresses

Affiliations

GeoScienceWorld remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in institutional affiliations. Responsibility for affiliations ultimately rests with the author, although Lithosphere may request changes be made to countries listed in affiliations to ensure consistency across published output (for indexing and discovery reasons).

Abstract

The manuscript should contain an abstract. The abstract should be self-contained, citation-free, and should not exceed 300 words.

Introduction

This section should be succinct, with no subheadings.

Materials and Methods

The methods section should provide enough detail for others to be able to replicate the study. If you have more than one method, use subsections with relevant headings, e.g. different models, statistics, materials and reagents, etc.

Lithosphere has no space restriction on methods. Detailed descriptions of the methods (including protocols or project descriptions) and algorithms may also be uploaded as supplementary information or a previous publication that gives more details may be cited. If the method from a previous article is used then this article must be cited and discussed. If wording is reused from a published article then this must be noted, e.g. This study uses the method of Smith et al. and the methods description partly reproduces their wording [1].

If a method or tool is introduced in the study, including software, questionnaires, and scales, the license this is available under and any requirement for permission for use should be stated. If an existing method or tool is used in the research, the authors are responsible for checking the license and obtaining any necessary permission. If permission was required, a statement confirming that permission was granted should be included in the Materials and Methods section.

Results and Discussion

This section may be divided into subsections or may be combined.

Main Text (Review Article Only)

This section may be divided into subsections or may be combined.

Conclusions

This should clearly explain the main conclusions of the article, highlighting its importance and relevance.

Data Availability

This statement should describe how readers can access the data supporting the conclusions of the study and clearly outline the reasons why unavailable data cannot be released.

Conflicts of Interest

Authors must declare all relevant interests that could be perceived as conflicting. Authors should explain why each interest may represent a conflict. If no conflicts exist, the authors should state this. Submitting authors are responsible for coauthors declaring their interests.

Funding Statement

Authors must state how the research and publication of their article was funded, by naming financially supporting body(s) (written out in full) followed by associated grant number(s) in square brackets (if applicable). For example: "This work was supported by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council [grant numbers xxxx, yyyy]; the National Science Foundation [grant number zzzz]; and a Leverhulme Trust Research Project Grant".

If the research did not receive specific funding, but was performed as part of the employment of the authors, please name this employer. If the funder was involved in the manuscript writing, editing, approval, or decision to publish, please declare this.

Acknowledgments

All acknowledgments (if any) should be included at the very end of the manuscript before the references. Anyone who made a contribution to the research or manuscript, but who is not a listed author, should be acknowledged (with their permission). The contributions of peer reviewers are immensely appreciated at Lithosphere. Reviewers are not acknowledged in manuscripts to preserve anonymity in the single-blind peer review process.

References

Authors may submit their references in any style. If accepted, these will be reformatted in Chicago style by Lithosphere. Authors are responsible for ensuring that the information in each reference is complete and accurate. All references should be numbered consecutively in the order of their first citation. Citations of references in the text should be identified using numbers in square brackets e.g., "as discussed by Smith [9]"; "as discussed elsewhere [9, 10]". All references should be cited within the text and uncited references will be removed.

Date Formatting

Lithosphere recommends writing dates out fully to avoid confusion with different all-numeral date styles. For example, 11/10/2018 could be 10 November 2018 or 11 October 2018 depending on the reader; therefore, the date should be written out in full. For example, the date September 1, 2018 can be used rather than 01/09/2018 or 09/01/2018.

Units of Measurement

Units of measurement should be presented simply and concisely using the International System of Units (SI).

Preparation of Figures

To ensure a smooth experience for editors and reviewers, it is recommended that you follow these best practices while embedding graphics (figures/charts/graphs) in your manuscript:

Embedded figures must...

• Be of the format PNG, JPG, TIFF, EPS, JPEG
• Not be of the format BMP, GIF, WEBP, SVG or any other formats
• Have image resolution (DPI) 150 DPI or more
• Have file size less than 5 MB
• Multiple-part figures must be uploaded as a single merged figure
• Not be cropped inside Microsoft Word. Instead, cropping should be done outside (in Photoshop or any other photo editing tools), and embedded back in the manuscript
• Not be created inline using Microsoft Word tools for drawing/artwork/graphs/charts/smart objects. Such graphics should be exported and embedded back as an image or uploaded separately as additional doc/pdf/image files
• If possible, also upload the embedded figures as separate files during submission for easy post acceptance production usage
• Separate files must be of the format: PDF, PNG, TIFF, JPG, JPEG, EPS
• Maximum file size per image is 5 MB

Note: The overall manuscript file size should be less than 50 MB.

Equations

Embedded equations must...

• Be present in editable MathML or MathType format
• Not be embedded as images

Maps

GeoScienceWorld remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps. For reasons of consistency, authors are requested to use accepted standard maps as the basis for map figure drawing, for example using the latest standard base-map of Map Press. Responsibility for maps rests with the author and it is their responsibility to also provide any copyright or license information when using maps that are not owned or created by the author (e.g., Google Maps).

Preparation of Tables

Tables should be cited consecutively in the text. Every table must have a descriptive title and if numerical measurements are given, the units should be included in the column heading. Vertical rules should not be used.

Embedded tables must...

• Be in an editable format
• Not be embedded as images
• Alternatively, tables can be uploaded as separate .xlsx/PDF files

Supplementary Materials

Supplementary materials are the additional parts to a manuscript, such as audio files, video clips, or datasets that might be of interest to readers. Authors can submit supplementary material along with their manuscript through the manuscript tracking system. Supplementary files can be provided as PDF, DOC, DOCX, XSL, CSV, PNG, TIFF, or JPEG files. 

A section titled "Supplementary Material" should be included before the references list with a concise description for each supplementary material file. Supplementary materials are not modified by our production team. Authors are responsible for providing the final supplementary materials files that will be published along with the article.

Proofs

Corrected proofs must be returned to the publisher within two to three days of receipt. The publisher will do everything possible to ensure prompt publication.

Figures provided by authors can be enhanced during the Production process to ensure the the highest standard of graphics. If the changes made don't add value to any of your figures, you can request to revert changes or for your original figures to be used, when you return your proof.

Copyright and Permissions

Authors retain the copyright of their manuscripts, and all Open Access articles are distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided that the original work is properly cited.

The use of general descriptive names, trade names, trademarks, and so forth in this publication, even if not specifically identified, does not imply that these names are not protected by the relevant laws and regulations. The submitting author is responsible for securing any permissions needed for the reuse of copyrighted materials included in the manuscript.

While the advice and information in this journal are believed to be true and accurate on the date of its going to press. The authors, the editors, Technica, and GeoScienceWorld cannot accept any legal responsibility for any errors or omissions that may be made. The publisher makes no warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein.

Conflicts of Interest

Conflicts of interest (COIs, also known as "competing interests") occur when issues outside research could be reasonably perceived to affect the neutrality or objectivity of the work or its assessment. For more information, see our publication ethics policy. Authors must declare all potential interests - whether or not they actually had an influence - in a 'Conflicts of Interest' section, which should explain why the interest may be a conflict. If there are none, the authors should state "The author(s) declare(s) that there is no conflict of interest regarding the publication of this article." Submitting authors are responsible for coauthors declaring their interests. Declared conflicts of interest will be considered by the editor and reviewers and included in the published article.

Authors must declare current or recent funding (including for Article Processing Charges) and other payments, goods or services that might influence the work. All funding, whether a conflict or not, must be declared in the Funding Statement. Authors must declare the involvement of anyone other than the authors who (1) has an interest in the outcome of the work, (2) is affiliated to an organization with such an interest, or (3) was employed or paid by a funder in the commissioning, conception, planning, design, conduct, or analysis of the work; the preparation or editing of the manuscript; or the decision.

You may be asked to make certain changes to your manuscript as a result of your declaration. These requests are not an accusation of impropriety. The editor or reviewer is helping you to protect your work against potential criticisms.

If you are in any doubt about declaring a potential conflict, remember that if it is revealed later—especially after publication - it could cause more problems than simply declaring it at the time of submission. Undeclared conflicts of interest could lead to a corrigendum or, in the most serious cases, a retraction.

Data Policy

Authors should describe how readers can access the data supporting the conclusions of the study and clearly outline the reasons why unavailable data cannot be released in the Data Availability Statement.

Lithosphere requires authors to make the minimum data required to support the conclusions in their manuscript, fully available in a suitable community repository at the time of submission, in line with the COPDESS Commitment to Enabling FAIR Data in the Earth, Space and Environmental Sciences.

Authors should comply with the author guidelines stated here. Where such repositories are not available, or specific legal or ethical requirements prohibit public sharing of a dataset, authors must indicate how researchers may obtain access to the data. Please note that where the data is available on request, it is not acceptable for an individual to be named as the sole contact for obtaining access to this data. In addition, the reasons for which the data cannot be made publicly available should be given. Acceptable restrictions include:

• Location information or other unique data that may place vulnerable species or sites at risk (including endangered animals or plants, rare fossil or mineral locations, designated archaeological sites, and others).
• Data containing personal information on human subjects. Confidentiality and the specific access restrictions in this case are usually specified by an Institutional Review Board or the grant.
• Where there are specific laws regarding access to certain sensitive data and the laws provide standard means for researchers to apply for access.
• Where the data (or software) were purchased and access is available to others through the same process. For example, if a commercial software package or data set is used, the researchers can indicate where others can obtain similar access.

Where the data is available from a third party, authors must include the third-party source and verification of permission in the Data Availability Statement as well as provide proper acknowledgment in the article.

Appeals

Authors may appeal if they feel that the decision to reject was based on: (1) a major misunderstanding over a technical aspect of the manuscript, or (2) a failure to understand the scientific advance shown by the manuscript. Appeals requesting a second opinion without sufficient justification will not be considered. To lodge an appeal, please contact Lithosphere, quoting your manuscript number. Appeals will only be considered from the original submitting author.