Submissions

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Submission Preparation Checklist

As part of the submission process, authors are required to check off their submission's compliance with all of the following items, and submissions may be returned to authors that do not adhere to these guidelines.

  • The submission has not been previously published, nor is it before another journal for consideration (or an explanation has been provided in Comments to the Editor).
  • Please confirm that you have read, understand, and agree with our Publication Ethics and Publication Malpractice Statement
  • The authors declare no conflicts of interest or, if a real, potential, or perceived conflict exists, this has been communicated to the editor. The corresponding author—on behalf of any and all co-authors of a submitted manuscript—should disclose any personal and/or financial relationships with other parties (organisations and/or people) that could bias or otherwise inappropriately influence their work. Potential conflicts of interest include (but are not limited to) employment, consultancy work, stock ownership, and grants or other funding. It is the responsibility of the corresponding author to collect all relevant information from their co-author(s) and communicate any potential conflicts of interest to the editor on submission. This includes potential conflicts of interest with any requested editors.
  • The submission file is in Microsoft Word, OpenOffice,  LaTeX, or PDF file format.

    A template for Word can be found here and a template for LaTeX can be found here. There is also a Volcanica template available via Overleaf. Please follow the formatting instructions provided in the relevant documents. Note that PDF files are only acceptable for an initial submission: if a manuscript is accepted for publication, the author will be requested to upload the manuscript in one of the other accepted formats. Figures may be embedded in the manuscript or uploaded separately. Figures should be sized according to whether they will cover one or two columns: 85 mm or 175 mm width, respectively. Maximum figure height is 200 mm. Low-resolution images are acceptable for review purposes, provided high-resolution or vector format figures are provided for article typesetting. Tables can be created in Word's table environment and embedded in the manuscript, or uploaded as a separate document (e.g. as an .xls file).

  • Where available, DOIs for all references have been provided.
    Note that Volcanica does not allow references to articles "in prep" or "submitted," unless those materials can be accessed and verified (e.g. via another publisher or as a preprint).
  • The text adheres to the stylistic and bibliographic requirements outlined in the Author Guidelines.
  • Manuscripts can be subject to peer review anonymously, at the discretion of the author. Moreover, the reviewers can decide whether or not to reveal their identity in their review. If you wish to have your manuscript reviewed anonymously, then please follow the instructions laid out in the Ensuring blind review and Blinding manuscripts documents. Note that the responsibility is with the author to ensure they have appropriately blinded their manuscript such that it is free from identifying metadata.
  • Authors should direct readers to an open access repository where the relevant data can be accessed, and provide a statement regarding data availability (this must be included in the manuscript). Authors are strongly encouraged to make data freely available wherever possible: we recommend free repositories such as Zenodo and FigShare in order to facilitate transparent open access. We recommend versioning, archiving, and sharing code via GitHub/Zenodo; see: https://docs.github.com/en/repositories/archiving-a-github-repository/referencing-and-citing-content.
  • In order to make your research accessible for everyone, we encourage the submission of a non-technical summary along with the initial manuscript or during revision stages. In principle, a non-technical summary should explain the key methods and results of your article in a way that someone unfamiliar with your field of research can understand. The target audience may include journalists, government staff, other researchers, people involved in civil protection and disaster management, and the public in general. Your non-technical summary should be composed of one or two paragraphs (about 150 words total), covering the following main points:

    1. What is the current issue or problem that your research addresses, and why are you researching it? Try to consider why this topic is important to the larger community.

    2. Without excessive use of jargon, how did you go about collecting and analysing the data and results?

    3. What are the main conclusions of your study? Ultimately, what will the impact of your research be? What societal benefits may be realised?

    As Einstein (possibly) said: "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler".
  • A list of author contributions must be included. If you are opting for an anonymous submission, this may be uploaded as a separate document, otherwise include this information in the manuscript document.

Author Guidelines

Volcanica accepts original research in Research article, Report,  Methods, and Review format.  All article types are rigorously peer-reviewed by a minimum of two expert referees.

Research articles can be any length, addressing any aspect of physical or social science encompassed within the scope of the journal. If you are unsure whether your article is appropriate for publication in Volcanica, we recommend contacting the editor@jvolcanica.org prior to submission.

Reports are a special kind of short communication, addressing information and observations from volcano monitoring observatories, civil protection authorities, and related non-academic agencies. These may include topical research as outlined in section 3) above, but also reports of best-practice, volcanic risk reduction policies and amendments, trialled practice of evacuation procedures, and so on. Reports may or may not benefit from accelerated peer review; again, this will be decided at the discretion of the assigned Editor. Vasconez et al. (2018) and Pankhurst et al. (2022) are examples of timely Reports on volcanic eruptions in the Galápagos and at La Palma, respectively. Volcanica also has a Special Issue which includes a dozen bilingual Reports from all of the official volcano monitoring agencies in Latin America.

Communication of Methods. Volcanica encourages transparency in research; accordingly we promote short-format articles dedicated to the communication of research methods or data analyses, and the development or deployment of equipment and protocols used in collecting or analysing data. Further, Communication of Methods can be used to bring attention to openly available numerical modelling codes, accessible data, and similarly available resources. By publishing articles devoted to disseminating research methods, Volcanica aims to promote the development of best-practice methods, and assist the reproducibility of scientific research across multiple disciplines. Furthermore, we strive to make research and data available, free-of-cost, to the academic and non-academic agencies who rely on it. See Lerner et al. (2022) for an example.

Review articles constitute a summary of the current state of understanding of a particular topic or subdiscipline. See the Review of James et al. (2020) on drone applications in volcanology for an example. They may be structured as a narrative review, a systematic review, or a meta-analysis, as appropriate.  Volcanica will consider unsolicited Review proposals. Authors wishing to submit a Review should contact editor@jvolcanica.org, including the scope, potential author list, intention of review, and a statement as to why it is timely/necessary.

 

Additional article formats can be considered on a case-by-case basis. Some examples include:

1) Comments on previous studies published in Volcanica. This aim of a Comment is to constructively address a valid difference of opinion with authors of a recent Volcanica article. Comments may not include accusations of misconduct or personal remarks directed towards the author(s) of the original article, nor should Comments include requests to cite a particular author's work. Comments are limited to 1000 words and five references, and must be submitted within 6 months of the online publication date of the subject article.

2) Cutting-edge or topical research that benefits from accelerated peer review. Examples include near-real-time analysis of a continuing eruption, or situation reports pertaining to an ongoing volcanic crisis (e.g. evacuation procedures, assessment of affected population, governmental and community response). Note that a Report-style article may be appropriate in this case.

3) Original scientific research that otherwise benefits being communicated in a short format. Note that research articles that do not pertain to ongoing activity or topical research—as outlined in 2)—will not benefit from accelerated peer review. This will be decided at the discretion of the assigned Editor.

Volcanica will (very) occasionally publish Special Issues, such as our Special Issue on Volcano Observatories in Latin America. These are typically initiated by the journal, and involve a collaboration between Volcanica editors and one or more invited guest editors. All Special Issue articles are subject to the same high standard of thorough external peer-review as our standard Research, Report, Methods, and Review articles. If you have an idea for an article series that is thematically linked, this may be accommodated as part of an evolving Digital Thematic Collection in lieu of a traditional Special Issue. Please contact editor@jvolcanica.org for more information.

 

Formatting

The submission file is in Microsoft Word, OpenOffice,  LaTeX, or PDF file format. We provide a template for Word and a template for LaTeX. Our LaTeX template is also available as an Overleaf template.

Please follow the formatting instructions provided in the relevant documents. Note that PDF files are only acceptable for an initial submission: if a manuscript is accepted for publication, the author will be requested to upload the manuscript in one of the other accepted formats. Figures may be embedded in the manuscript or uploaded separately. Figures should be sized according to whether they will cover one or two columns: 85 mm or 175 mm width, respectively. Maximum figure height is 200 mm. Low-resolution images are acceptable for review purposes, provided high-resolution or vector format figures are provided for article typesetting. Tables can be created in Word's table environment and embedded in the manuscript (at the end), or uploaded as a separate document (e.g. as an .xls file). Please ensure that abstract(s) do not exceed 150 words (each).

 

Pre-print policy

Volcanica accepts manuscripts that have been hosted elsewhere as a pre-print. Pre-prints are not considered published material, because they have not been (formally) reviewed, nor are they in the final formatting of a published article. A benefit of pre-prints is that comments from the interested community can ultimately result in a better published paper, and can reduce the number of manuscripts that are ultimately rejected due to inherent flaws. As such, we encourage authors to share their pre-print prior to submission. If an article is accepted for publication, we ask that authors link from the pre-print to the final publication via its assigned DOI (digital object identifier) number. Moreover, authors can update their pre-prints with the published version (i.e. in the form of a post-print).

Copyright Notice

Creative Commons License All Volcanica articles are distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided appropriate credit is given to the original author(s) and the source. The licensor cannot revoke these freedoms as long as the license terms are followed. Specifically, appropriate credit must be given, a link to the license provided, and any changes made must be indicated.

Copyright of all material published in Volcanica is retained by the respective author(s). Submission of an original manuscript to Volcanica will be taken to mean that it represents original work not previously published, and not being considered for publication elsewhere.