World Wide Web
of Geotechnical Engineers

EJGE
ISSN 1089-3032

INSTRUCTIONS FOR MANUSCRIPT PREPARATION

The 'paper' should contain the following:

Title block:

  • Article's title
  • Author(s) full names
  • Institution and address for all authors
  • E-mail address of author for correspondence
  • Keywords for subject search.
  • Abstract: Abstract should be self explanatory and without citations.

The paper title should be capitalized (please see this Capitalization article).

Introduction: Introduction should include a description of the background and aims of the work and what has been accomplished to date.

Materials and Methods: Include full descriptions of all numerical, analytical, or experimental procedures.

Results:Results should be clearly stated and supported by figures, tablesor graphical representations of the findings.

Discussion: The discussion should address the importance of the major findings of the work, expanding upon the results.

Conclusions: A summary of important findings and their implications to the area of research that is the paper's focus.

Acknowledgements: Should be brief.

References: References should be listed alphabetically followed by references from tables or figure legends. Examples of the normal and electronic reference styles are given below:

  1. Ellison, Betty W., and Ray Smith (1883) "Stress-Strain Modeling of Sands," Journal of Geotechnical Engineering, Vol. 1, No. 5, pp 49-55.
  2. Williams, John R., R. O'Connor, and N. Rege (1996) "Discrete Element Analysis and Granular Vortex Formation," Electronic Journal of Geotechnical Engineering, Vol. 1, October

First Name First and other conventions: The first name is what your mother calls you :) The last name is also known as the family name or surname. Normally, the first name is written first, and the last name last. Sometimes the order is reversed, as in the reference list example above; in this case, a comma should be placed after the last name (to indicate the reversal). The reason for reversal is to make it easier for the reader to locate a reference in the list, which is alphabetized for the same reason. There is no reason at all to reverse the name order for the second and other co-authors.

Any references to papers that appeared earlier in EJGE or another electronic journal, should include a standard HTML link as shown above.It is a good idea to put all the references in a separate file in a larger paper, because html links can be used in the main paper with anchors pointing to each entry in the list.

The standard format for articles is given in the following Sample Paper Format in HTML. An alternative format using the frames feature of newer browsers has been considered, and an example is given in the web page: Paper Format with frames but this format is found objectionable by many, therefore it is not recommended unless there is a good reason for using it.

FIGURES
Figures must be in the form of image files. Some equations need to beimage files also. Images should be either JPEG or GIF files with the latter preferred for black and white figures (and whenever 256 colors are adequate). The size of these image files is recommended to be under 500 kb (under 100 kb is optimal). Figures and equations that are computer generated, with MSPaint or MSPowerPoint for example, look much better than scanned images. Scanned images are acceptable but the process reduces the quality of the image. Figures should not be larger than the width of the screen, and equation fonts should be 11 or 12 pts. Figures that are too large must be reduced, with the quality being reduced in the process.

In the sample paper file, there are examples of reference anchors and a link to a figure. Smaller figures, in the form of image files, as well as equation image files, should be left in-line (with <img src="filename.gif"> tags) with the text. Larger figure files should be referred to by an anchor (link). The image file remains separate from the paper text. Be sure to include the figure caption in the image file for this linked type of figure.

  • Movies should be in MPEG, AVI or Quicktime cross-platform format linked to a html page which contains a description of the movie and its file size (in kb).

  • All links should be the html file name only unless you are linking to outside the journal. Be sure to provide links to the figures' and references' HTML files at each occurrence in the text of a reference to a figure or a citation with anchors to specific citations.

Please note that in order to facilitate rapid review and approval of your article, your HTML documents should conform closely to the format given. Copy the HTML source from the above examples or from a published paper, then insert your paper into the code, deleting the previous text.

The authors will also supply an Author's Information Page. For the format and required information in this file, please see Williams' Info Page. Save this file to your computer, then insert your own information and picture into the existing code.

File Formats

DOC/DOCX Format

This is Microsoft's word processor 'Microsoft Word's native (binary) format. It gives you any feature you may ever want in a document, from equations to drawings. It is not particularly efficient, though. An EJGE paper that takes 20k text and 50k graphics typically takes 200k in DOC format.

Recently ('07) Microsoft made up a new file format (extension .DOCX) based on the established PKZIP algorithms of file compression. The files become much smaller. EJGE will soon switch to this, more efficient format.

Word also has an 'html export' function that lets you create an equivalent html file (and bunch of gif files). The export is particularly inefficient: the file can easily become two or three times as big as the original DOC file!

Those who use Microsoft Word can employ the template provided by the EJGE for formatting the journal papers; it's available at ejgeppr.dot style file. Instructions on how to use this template are given in the page Using the Styles

HTML Format

The native language of the Web, HyperText Markup Language, is the the standard coding of Web pages, including EJGE papers. Browsers, such as Netscape and Internet-Explorer, understand files encoded by html and display the file for you.

The following links are useful for answering any questions you may have concerning the World Wide Web and HTML document preparation:

World Wide Web Frequently Asked Questions

The HTML Developers Jumpstation

HTML The Yahoo directory listing for the growing number of HTML editors available for a variety of platforms.

WWW Consortium Web info - the official site

Here is the WWW Consortium's official documentation of the current HTML 4.0 SPECS.

PDF Format

The file format created by the font and graphics software company Adobe is named Portable Document Format. It is a binary format, which can only be understood by programs developed by Adobe, since the format is a company secret. To push this format, Adobe makes their Reader program freely available. To create (or edit) PDF files, however, you need one of Adobe's programs such as Acrobat.

Which Format to Use?

Authors can submit their paper in any format. The DOC (or DOCX) format is preferred since it is the easiest one to edit and, everything being in one file, easiest to send as an e-mail attachment. The fact that the DOC format is controlled by one company, Microsoft, is undesirable, but tolerable, since other word-processing programs can also write (export, convert to) this format. The least desirable format to submit is PDF. This is not only because it is also controlled by one company, Adobe, excessive formatting that this leads the authors to do, is simply lost. The file is usually converted back to Word DOC format, edited, and then a pdf file is re-generated by EJGE. Losses (and even mistakes) can happen in all those file format conversions.