Instructions for authors

Manuscript preparation

  1. General guidelines

    • Papers are accepted in English. Either British or American English spelling and punctuation may be used.
    • A typical Research Paper will be between 5,000-8,000 words . Papers that greatly exceed this will be critically reviewed with respect to length. Digital Earth Letters offers authors a route for rapid communication of advance results of research and application, and may later become the subject of a full paper. Authors submitting Letters for consideration should treat requests for revision as a matter of priority: in turn, both the Letters Editor and the Publishers will fast-track the handling of Letters. Letters must not exceed 8 printed pages of the Journal (the equivalent of 2,000 words including tables, figures and references) and will normally be published within four months of acceptance.
    • Authors should include a word count with their manuscript.
    • Manuscripts should be compiled in the following order: title page; abstract; keywords; main text; acknowledgments; references; appendixes (as appropriate); table(s) with caption(s) (on individual pages); figure caption(s) (as a list).
    • Abstracts of up to 200 words are required for all papers submitted.
    • Each paper should have three to six keywords .
    • Search engine optimization (SEO) is a means of making your article more visible to anyone who might be looking for it. Please consult our guidance here.
    • Section headings should be concise and numbered sequentially, using a decimal system for subsections.
    • All the authors of a paper should include their full names, affiliations, postal addresses, telephone and fax numbers and email addresses on the cover page of the manuscript. One author should be identified as the Corresponding Author.
    • For all manuscripts non-discriminatory language is mandatory. Sexist or racist terms should not be used.
    • Authors must adhere to SI units . Units are not italicised.
    • When using a word which is or is asserted to be a proprietary term or trade mark, authors must use the symbol ® or ™.
  2. Style guidelines

    If you have any questions about references or formatting your article, please contact authorqueries@tandf.co.uk (please mention the journal title in your email).

    Word templates
    Word templates are available for this journal. If you are not able to use the template via the links or if you have any other queries, please contact  authortemplate@tandf.co.uk

  3. Figures

    • It is in the author's interest to provide the highest quality figure format possible. Please be sure that all imported scanned material is scanned at the appropriate resolution: 1200 dpi for line art, 600 dpi for grayscale and 300 dpi for colour.
    • Figures must be saved separate to text. Please do not embed figures in the paper file.
    • Files should be saved as one of the following formats: TIFF (tagged image file format), PostScript or EPS (encapsulated PostScript), and should contain all the necessary font information and the source file of the application (e.g. CorelDraw/Mac, CorelDraw/PC).
    • All figures must be numbered in the order in which they appear in the paper (e.g. figure 1, figure 2). In multi-part figures, each part should be labelled (e.g. figure 1(a), figure 1(b)).
    • Figure captions must be saved separately, as part of the file containing the complete text of the paper, and numbered correspondingly.
    • The filename for a graphic should be descriptive of the graphic, e.g. Figure1, Figure2a.
  4. Colour

    There are a limited number of colour pages within the annual page allowance. Authors should restrict their use of colour to situations where it is necessary on scientific, and not merely cosmetic, grounds. Authors of accepted papers who propose publishing figures in colour in the print version should consult Taylor & Francis at proof stage to agree on an appropriate number of colour pages. If the colour page budget is exceeded, authors will be given the option to provide a financial contribution to additional colour reproduction costs. Figures that appear in black-and-white in the print edition of the Journal will appear in colour in the online edition, assuming colour originals are supplied.
  5. Reproduction of copyright material

    As an author, you are required to secure permission if you want to reproduce any figure, table, or extract from the text of another source. This applies to direct reproduction as well as "derivative reproduction" (where you have created a new figure or table which derives substantially from a copyrighted source). For further information and FAQs, please see http://journalauthors.tandf.co.uk/preparation/permission.asp . Authors are themselves responsible for the payment of any permission fees required by the copyright owner. Copies of permission letters should be sent with the manuscript upon submission to the Editor(s).

  6. Supplementary online material

    Authors are welcome to submit animations, movie files, sound files or any additional information for online publication.

Manuscript submission

All submissions should be made online at the International Journal of Digital Earth's Manuscript Central Site . New users should first create an account. Once a user is logged onto the site submissions should be made via the Author Centre.

Authors should prepare and upload two versions of their manuscript. One should be a complete text, while in the second all document information identifying the author should be removed from files to allow them to be sent anonymously to referees. When uploading files authors will then be able to define the non-anonymous version as "File not for review".

If email submission is not possible, please send an electronic version on disk.

This journal does not accept Microsoft Word 2007 documents. Please use Word's "Save As" option to save your document as an older (.doc) file type.