Guide for Authors

GENERAL

 

 

Conflict of interest form

 

 

Authors_commitment_form

 

 

 

Fast screening process: Environmental Resources Research (ERR) applies a fast screening process upon receiving submissions to assess if manuscripts have the merit to be sent out for peer review. Submissions with problems related to the following may be rejected outright and not considered for resubmission:

1. Topic and its treatment should be within the scope of the journal and include novelty on the issue.
2. Presentation and good structure and grammar - manuscripts may need to be edited by a professional or native English speaker.
3. Citations in the text should be included in the reference list and each reference in the list should be complete in detail and style.
4. Adequate coverage of the literature through the references, especially more recent articles.
5. The mathematics should be clear and all variables explained/defined.
6. Figures and tables should be of good quality.

Types of paper
Types of contributions: Research articles, review papers, and commentaries.

Research articles should be succinct, high quality research results that improve the state of the art of the topics treated by the journal. The work reported should be technically sound and sufficiently unique, with the conceptual foundations of models or ideas properly documented. It is important to report on model or concept performance against data and other considerations, and the relevance to user needs.

Review papers provide an extensive overview of recent developments in specific areas that fall within the scope of the journal. These kinds of papers are expected to have an extensive literature review followed by an in-depth analysis of the subject matter, and identify challenges for future research.

Commentaries are short articles commenting on published work in International Journal of Environmental Resources Research and on topics of interest to the wide readership. They can be submitted after discussion with the Editor-in-Chief.

Contact details for submission
If you are not able to submit your paper to ERR electronically, please contact the Editor-in-Chief, Dr. A. Salmanmahiny at: Rassoulmahiny@gmail.com

BEFORE YOU BEGIN

Conflict of interest

All authors are requested to disclose any actual or potential conflict of interest including any financial, personal or other relationships with other people or organizations within three months of submission that could inappropriately influence, or be perceived to influence, their work.

Submission declaration

Submission of an article means that the work described has not been published previously (except in the form of an abstract or as part of a published lecture or academic thesis), that it is not under consideration for publication elsewhere, that its publication is approved by all authors and tacitly or explicitly by the responsible authorities where the work was carried out, and that, if accepted, it will not be published elsewhere including electronically in the same form, in English or in any other language, without the written consent of the copyright-holder.

Changes to authorship

This policy concerns the addition, deletion, or rearrangement of author names in the authorship of accepted manuscripts and only before online publication:
Requests to add or remove an author, or to rearrange the author names, must be sent to the Journal Manager from the corresponding author of the accepted manuscript and must include: (a) the reason the name should be added or removed, or the author names rearranged and (b) written confirmation (e-mail, fax, letter) from all authors that they agree with the addition, removal or rearrangement. Requests that are not sent by the corresponding author will not be considered.

Copyright

Upon acceptance of an article, authors will be asked to complete a 'Journal Publishing Agreement'. Acceptance of the agreement will ensure the widest possible dissemination of information. An e-mail will be sent to the corresponding author confirming receipt of the manuscript together with a 'Journal Publishing Agreement' form.
Subscribers may reproduce tables of contents or prepare lists of articles including abstracts for internal circulation within their institutions. Permission of the Publisher is required for resale or distribution outside the institution and for all other derivative works, including compilations and translations. If excerpts from other copyrighted works are included, the author(s) must obtain written permission from the copyright owners and credit the source(s) in the article.


Role of the funding source
You are responsible to acknowledge the role of the funding body in your paper.

 

Open access

This journal offers you the option of making your article freely available to all via the Gorgan University’s webpage platform. To prevent any conflict of interest, you can only make this choice after receiving notification that your article has been accepted for publication. Whatever access option you choose, as an author you retain the right to post a revised personal version of your article on your own website.

 

Language and language services

Please write your text in good English (American or British usage is accepted, but not a mixture of these).



Submission

Submission to this journal proceeds totally online and you will be guided stepwise through the creation and uploading of your files. The system automatically converts source files to a single PDF file of the article, which is used in the peer-review process. Please note that even though manuscript source files are converted to PDF files at submission for the review process, these source files are needed for further processing after acceptance. All correspondence, including notification of the Editor's decision and requests for revision, takes place by e-mail removing the need for a paper trail.


Peer Review Process

The journal of Environmental Resources Research (ERR) is committed to the highest standards of double-blind peer-review. The journal of Environmental Resources Research (ERR) follows the policies and guidelines of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and abides by its Code of Conduct in dealing with potential cases of misconduct.

All manuscripts are subject to a double-blind peer-review process to ensure the quality of their underlying research methodology and argument. After submitting the manuscript to the author(s) in the journal management system, the manuscript will primarily be studied based on publishing experts (maximum a week). Please follow the Instructions to Authors carefully to expedite the manuscript as precise as codification guidelines in the system and then submit it. If it is accepted in the first stage, the manuscript will be assessed by the editor-in-chief.

Upon receipt of the manuscript, the corresponding author is notified and will receive the number under which the manuscript has been registered, and the name and e-mail address of the scientific editor who will handle it. From this point onwards, authors should communicate with the editor-in-chief only about the progress of the reviewing process. The manuscript ill be sent to at least three referees, and a reply may be expected at the earliest four weeks after submission. Manuscripts can be either accepted, minor or major revisions, or rejected. If the decision is ‘revision’, the authors are requested to take the remarks of the referees and editors into account. A second reviewing process can follow. Upon final acceptance, the authors provide a final version of the manuscript inappropriate file formats (not a PDF) (text as a WORD doc. and tables as Excel file) and send these to the editor-in-chief. The authors will then be notified when the paper will be published. Only one galley proof will be sent as a PDF file to the corresponding author. This proof must be carefully corrected and sent back within two working days.



PREPARATION

Use of wordprocessing software

It is important that the file be saved in the native format of the wordprocessor used. The text should be in single-column format. Keep the layout of the text as simple as possible. Most formatting codes will be removed and replaced on processing the article. In particular, do not use the wordprocessor's options to justify text or to hyphenate words. However, do use bold face, italics, subscripts, superscripts etc. When preparing tables, if you are using a table grid, use only one grid for each individual table and not a grid for each row. If no grid is used, use tabs, not spaces, to align columns. Note that source files of figures, tables and text graphics will be required whether or not you embed your figures in the text. To avoid unnecessary errors you are strongly advised to use the 'spell-check' and 'grammar-check' functions of your wordprocessor.

Article structure

Subdivision - numbered sections
Divide your article into clearly defined and numbered sections. Subsections should be numbered 1.1 (then 1.1.1, 1.1.2, ...), 1.2, etc. (the abstract is not included in section numbering). Use this numbering also for internal cross-referencing: do not just refer to 'the text'. Any subsection may be given a brief heading. Each heading should appear on its own separate line. Do not use more than three subdivisions.

Introduction
State the objectives of the work and provide an adequate and focused background, avoiding a detailed or irrelevant literature survey or a summary of the results.


Material and methods
Provide sufficient detail to allow the work to be reproduced. Methods already published should be indicated by a reference: only relevant modifications should be described.

Results
Results should be clear and to the point.

Discussion
This should explore the significance of the results of the work, not repeat them. A combined Results and Discussion section is often appropriate. Avoid extensive citations and discussion of published literature, but justification of the significance of the results in light of other studies is encouraged.

Conclusions
The main conclusions of the study may be presented in a short Conclusions section, which may stand alone or form a subsection of a Discussion or Results and Discussion section.

Appendices
If there is more than one appendix, they should be identified as A, B, etc. Formulae and equations in appendices should be given separate numbering: Eq. (A.1), Eq. (A.2), etc.; in a subsequent appendix, Eq. (B.1) and so on. Similarly for tables and figures: Table A.1; Fig. A.1, etc.

Essential title page information

Title.Concise and informative. Titles are often used in information-retrieval systems. Avoid abbreviations and formulae.


Author names and affiliations.Where the family name may be ambiguous (e.g., a double name), please indicate this clearly. Present the authors' affiliation addresses (where the actual work was done) below the names. Indicate all affiliations with a lower-case superscript letter immediately after the author's name and in front of the appropriate address. Provide the full postal address of each affiliation, including the country name and, if available, the e-mail address of each author.
Corresponding author.Clearly indicate who will handle correspondence at all stages of refereeing and publication, also post-publication. Ensure that telephone and fax numbers (with country and area code) are provided in addition to the e-mail address and the complete postal address. Contact details must be kept up to date by the corresponding author.
Present/permanent address.If an author has moved since the work described in the article was done, or was visiting at the time, a 'Present address' (or 'Permanent address') may be indicated as a footnote to that author's name. The address at which the author actually did the work must be retained as the main, affiliation address. Superscript Arabic numerals are used for such footnotes.

Abstract
A concise and factual abstract is required. The abstract should state briefly the purpose of the research, the principal results and major conclusions. An abstract is often presented separately from the article, so it must be able to stand alone. For this reason, references should be avoided, but if essential, then cite the author(s) and year(s). Also, non-standard or uncommon abbreviations should be avoided, but if essential they must be defined at their first mention in the abstract itself.

Graphical abstract
A Graphical abstract is optional and should summarize the contents of the article in a concise, pictorial form designed to capture the attention of a wide readership online. Authors must provide images that clearly represent the work described in the article. Graphical abstracts should be submitted as a separate file in the online submission system. Image size: Please provide an image with a minimum of 531 × 1328 pixels (h × w) or proportionally more. The image should be readable at a size of 5 × 13 cm using a regular screen resolution of 96 dpi. Preferred file types: TIFF, EPS, PDF or MS Office files.

Keywords
Immediately after the abstract, provide a maximum of 6 keywords, avoiding general and plural terms and multiple concepts (avoid, for example, 'and', 'of'). Be sparing with abbreviations: only abbreviations firmly established in the field may be eligible.

Abbreviations
Define abbreviations that are not standard in this field in a footnote to be placed on the first page of the article. Such abbreviations that are unavoidable in the abstract must be defined at their first mention there, as well as in the footnote. Ensure consistency of abbreviations throughout the article.

Acknowledgements
Place acknowledgements in a separate section at the end of the article before the references. List here those individuals who provided help during the research (e.g., providing language help, writing assistance or proof reading the article, etc.).

Math formulae
Present simple formulae in the line of normal text where possible and use the solidus (/) instead of a horizontal line for small fractional terms, e.g., X/Y. In principle, variables are to be presented in italics. Powers of e are often more conveniently denoted by exp. Number consecutively any equations that have to be displayed separately from the text (if referred to explicitly in the text).

Footnotes
Footnotes should be used sparingly. Number them consecutively throughout the article, using superscript Arabic numbers. Many wordprocessors build footnotes into the text, and this feature may be used. Should this not be the case, indicate the position of footnotes in the text and present the footnotes themselves separately at the end of the article. Do not include footnotes in the Reference list.



Artwork
AUTHORS MUST EMBED THEIR FIGURES IN THE MAIN TEXT AS WELL AS UPLOAD THEIR FIGURES AS SEPARATE FILES IN IJERR.

Electronic Artwork
General points
• Make sure you use uniform lettering and sizing of your original artwork.
• Save text in illustrations as "graphics" or enclose the font.
• Only use the following fonts in your illustrations: Arial, Courier, Times, Symbol.
• Number the illustrations according to their sequence in the text.
• Use a logical naming convention for your artwork files.
• Provide captions to illustrations separately.
• Produce images near to the desired size of the printed version.
• Submit each figure as a separate file.

Formats
Regardless of the application used, when your electronic artwork is finalised, please "save as" or convert the images to one of the following formats (note the resolution requirements for line drawings, halftones, and line/halftone combinations given below):
EPS: Vector drawings. Embed the font or save the text as "graphics".
TIFF: color or grayscale photographs (halftones): always use a minimum of 300 dpi.
TIFF: Bitmapped line drawings: use a minimum of 1000 dpi.
TIFF: Combinations bitmapped line/half-tone (color or grayscale): a minimum of 500 dpi is required.

Please do not:
• Supply files that are optimized for screen use (like GIF, BMP, PICT, WPG); the resolution is too low;
• Supply files that are too low in resolution;
• Submit graphics that are disproportionately large for the content.

Color artwork
Please make sure that artwork files are in an acceptable format (TIFF, EPS or MS Office files) and with the correct resolution. If, together with your accepted article, you submit usable color figures then IJERR will ensure, at no additional charge that these figures will appear in color on the website of the Gorgan University regardless of whether or not these illustrations are reproduced in color in the printed version. For color reproduction in print, you will receive information regarding the costs from IJERR after receipt of your accepted article. Please indicate your preference for color: in print or on the Web only.
Please note: Because of technical complications which can arise by converting color figures to 'gray scale' (for the printed version should you not opt for color in print) please submit in addition usable black and white versions of all the color illustrations.

Figure captions
Ensure that each illustration has a caption. Supply captions separately, not attached to the figure. A caption should comprise a brief title (not on the figure itself) and a description of the illustration. Keep text in the illustrations themselves to a minimum but explain all symbols and abbreviations used.

Tables

Number tables consecutively in accordance with their appearance in the text. Place footnotes to tables below the table body and indicate them with superscript lowercase letters. Avoid vertical rules. Be sparing in the use of tables and ensure that the data presented in tables do not duplicate results described elsewhere in the article.

References

Citation in text
Please ensure that every reference cited in the text is also present in the reference list (and vice versa). Any references cited in the abstract must be given in full. Unpublished results and personal communications are not recommended in the reference list, but may be mentioned in the text. If these references are included in the reference list they should follow the standard reference style of the journal and should include a substitution of the publication date with either 'Unpublished results' or 'Personal communication'. Citation of a reference as 'in press' implies that the item has been accepted for publication.

Web references
As a minimum, the full URL should be given and the date when the reference was last accessed. Any further information, if known (DOI, author names, dates, reference to a source publication, etc.), should also be given.

Reference style
Text: All citations in the text should refer to:
1. Single author: the author's name (without initials, unless there is ambiguity) and the year of publication;
2. Two authors: both authors' names and the year of publication;
3. Three or more authors: first author's name followed by 'et al.' and the year of publication.
Groups of references should be listed first alphabetically, then chronologically.
Examples: 'as demonstrated (Ramsey, 2002a, 2002b, 1999; Ulanovic and Tapia, 1999). Chouduray et al. (2010) have recently shown ....'
List: References should be arranged first alphabetically and then further sorted chronologically if necessary. More than one reference from the same author(s) in the same year must be identified by the letters 'a', 'b', 'c', etc., placed after the year of publication.
Examples:
Reference to a journal publication:
Van der Geer, J., Hanraads, J.A.J., Lupton, R.A., 2010. The art of writing a scientific article. J. Sci. Commun. 163, 51–59.
Reference to a book:
Strunk Jr., W., White, E.B., 2000. The Elements of Style, fourth ed. Longman, New York.
Reference to a chapter in an edited book:
Mettam, G.R., Adams, L.B., 2009. How to prepare an electronic version of your article, in: Jones, B.S., Smith , R.Z. (Eds.), Introduction to the Electronic Age. E-Publishing Inc., New York, pp. 281–304.

Journal abbreviations source
Journal names can be preferably abbreviated according to
Index Medicus journal abbreviations: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/tsd/serials/lji.html;
List of title word abbreviations: http://www.issn.org/2-22661-LTWA-online.php;
CAS (Chemical Abstracts Service): http://www.cas.org/sent.html.

Submission checklist

The following list will be useful during the final checking of an article before sending it to the journal for review. Please consult this Guide for Authors for further details of any item.
Ensure that the following items are present:
One author has been designated as the corresponding author with contact details:
• E-mail address
• Full postal address
• Telephone and fax numbers
All necessary files have been uploaded, and contain:
• Keywords
• All figure captions
• All tables (including title, description, footnotes)
Further considerations
• Manuscript has been 'spell-checked' and 'grammar-checked'
• References are in the correct format for this journal
• All references mentioned in the Reference list are cited in the text, and vice versa
• Permission has been obtained for use of copyrighted material from other sources (including the Web)
• Color figures are clearly marked as being intended for color reproduction on the Web (free of charge) and in print, or to be reproduced in color on the Web (free of charge) and in black-and-white in print
• If only color on the Web is required, black-and-white versions of the figures are also supplied for printing purposes

AFTER ACCEPTANCE

Proofs

One set of page proofs (as PDF files) will be sent by e-mail to the corresponding author. If you do not wish to use the PDF annotations function, you may list the corrections (including replies to the Query Form) and return them to us in an e-mail. Please list your corrections quoting line number. If, for any reason, this is not possible, then mark the corrections and any other comments (including replies to the Query Form) on a printout of your proof and return by fax, or scan the pages and e-mail, or by post. Please use this proof only for checking the typesetting, editing, completeness and correctness of the text, tables and figures. Significant changes to the article as accepted for publication will not be considered at this stage. We will do everything possible to get your article published quickly and accurately – please let us have all your corrections within 5 days. It is important to ensure that all corrections are sent back to us in one communication: please check carefully before replying, as inclusion of any subsequent corrections cannot be guaranteed. Proofreading is solely your responsibility. Note that IJERR may proceed with the publication of your article if no response is received.

Offprints

The corresponding author, at no cost, will be provided with a PDF file of the article via e-mail. For an extra charge, paper offprints can be ordered via the offprint order form which is sent once the article is accepted for publication. The PDF file is a watermarked version of the published article and includes a cover sheet with the journal cover image and a disclaimer outlining the terms and conditions of use.

AUTHOR INQUIRIES

For inquiries relating to the submission of articles (including electronic submission) please visit this journal's homepage. Contact details for questions arising after acceptance of an article, especially those relating to proofs, will be provided by the publisher.

 

The questions that the reviewers answer for manuscript evaluation