Humberside Geologist is the formal journal of the Hull Geological Society. The Society welcomes articles from members and friends. Articles for the journal are published on our website which is accessible to the public. In 2019 the Committee decided that the website should the primary means of publishing the journal. A printed version of each article will be available in PDF format on a ‘print on demand’ basis. Articles may be published in other formats later.

Preference is given to articles directly related to the geology of the area around Hull (Yorkshire Coast, East Riding and North Lincolnshire) or about the Society and its members, past and present.

These guidance notes are intended to give authors some practical hints on preparing articles and give an idea of the house style and appearance. The editors may make suggestions about the style and content of your article, and suggest corrections of factual points. Authors do not have to agree to these if they have strong feelings on the matter!

Authors may be submit different versions of the same piece. One for the website, one for a printed version (which may be edited for size) and one which may have additional data.

The Society hopes that articles will appeal to all its readers, who include complete beginners and University Professors. The articles should be factual, without excessive use of scientific jargon and should give proper acknowledgement to sources quoted.

Articles may be pieces of original scientific research, less formal descriptions of your interests, chatty reminiscences of the past meetings or about personalities in the Society, reports of field meetings, reviews of the current understanding of an aspect of local geology, etc. They do not necessarily have to be "original" in the sense of there being no publications on the topic in the past. Short articles or notes recording temporary exposures or recent 'finds' are particularly welcome. We also welcome reviews of books relevant to our region, reminiscences of the 'good old days of geology', about individual or museum collections, or original handouts from field meetings.

The copyright of Humberside Geologist belongs to the Hull Geological Society. Permission is given for authors to print as many copies of articles as they wish. Permission is usually given for other people to print single copies of articles for personal non-commercial use. We would probably allow people to make multiple copies for non-commercial educational use as long as the origin of the article is acknowledged. We would charge a fee for any form of commercial use of articles from our journal or website.

The Society does not accept any liability for any inaccuracies in the articles. It is the responsibility of the authors to check the accuracy of the article and in particular:- indicate where permission is needed for access to sites; obtain the permission of land-owners before publishing their contact details; include information about hazards and safety at locations. Please acknowledge any help received in the preparation of the article or the research work involved. If diagrams, photographs or tables are used from previous publications the author must obtain copyright permission to republish the work and state that in the article.

The style could be formal academic/scientific (impersonal and passive) or informal written from a personal standpoint. Please do not mix styles.

Please submit articles in as a Word or RTF document. Illustrations must be submitted separately. Do not submit in PDF or other fixed formats. Do not include illustrations within the text of the article. Please indicate where you would prefer the illustrations to appear, e.g. <Insert Figure 1 here>.  Line drawings should be as clear as possible, to allow for a loss of quality when printing or editing to the appropriate size for the web page. Subtle shading can be lost in the editing or photocopying process. The scale on the drawings should include a scale bar rather than a statement of magnification (e.g. " x2 ") in case the size is changed on printing or conversion for the web. The text should be single spaced. The title and author’s name should appear on the first page only; the inclusion of an address is optional. The pages must not be numbered, as the editor will number them later if necessary. An Abstract can be included at the start of a long article. We would prefer it if you do not add additional notes, but if they are necessary please produce endnotes rather than footnotes.

Standard conventions used generally in geological publications should be followed. For example fossil names should be in Italics (or underlined in a manuscript), except when used to name a bed or zone. Proper stratigraphic names should have capital letters e.g. Cave Oolite or Scarborough Formation. References should be cited in the text where appropriate (in brackets) e.g. "fauna present at Newbald (Whitham 1984)" or "Whitham (1984) describes the fauna from Newbald". Please do not use a numbered referencing system. References should be listed at the end of the piece by author and date in for following format:

References:

Anon. 1978. List of Serial Publications held in the Library of the Geological Society, London. Geological Society, London. 172 pp.

Bateman M D, D J A Evans, P C Buckland, E R Connell, R J Friend, D Hartmann, H Moxon, W A Fairburn, E Panagiotakopulu & R A Ashurst,  2015. Last glacial dynamics of the Vale of York and North Sea lobes of the British and Irish Ice Sheet. Proceedings of the Geologists' Association, 126, 712-730.

Dakyns J R & C Fox-Strangways 1886. The geology of the country around Driffield. Memoirs of the Geological Survey England and Wales, Sheet 64, 24pp.

Flenley J R 1990. Chapter 4, Vegetational History. pp 43-53 of Ellis S & D R Crowther (eds). Humber perspectives: a region through the ages. Hull University Press.

Goodmanham Parish Council Official Website (accessed 2020).   <  http://www.goodmanhamparishcouncil.co.uk/local-walks.aspx >

Harrison R & M Horne 1992. The East Yorkshire Boulder Committee, report for the years 1987 to 1991. Humberside Geologist 10, 18-22.

Ordnance Survey (accessed 2020). Digimap Historic Roam maps available via Edina.

Whitham F 1984. Evening Field meeting at North Newbald Quarry, Thursday 23rd June 1983. Humberside Geologist 4, 14-16.

Humberside Geologist - formatting.

Now that most articles are produced on computers, the Society can produce a more professional looking website and journal, with a consistent format throughout, for very little extra effort.

Format for web-pages.

The main text will usually be in a black sans serif font, 14 point, left justified, on a pale coloured background. New paragraphs should be separated from the previous one by a blank line. The Journal's name and Society logo will appear above the title of the article. The date of submission may be included at the end of the article. The web-version will be put on the web site before any printed version is published.

Some formatting and layout may be lost when the article is converted into html - the computer language used for web-pages. If you wish to submit extra pictures, diagrams, etc. you can either submit them in digital format as JPEGs or GIFs, or we can scan them in from a photo or drawing. Authors may include their e-mail addresses, postal contact address and hyperlinks to their own home-page at the end of the article.

Authors are requested to provide a list of key-words and a short description of the article; these will be added as invisible 'meta-tags' for use by search-engines.

Authors may submit the web version of an article in html format, but it may be subject to changes in format by the website editor. If the author has a preference for the layout of the web version of the article she/he should discuss it with the website editor; if not the Editor will decide.

Format for PDF version.

The Editor of the website may decide to publish the article as a PDF, if that format produces a smaller file than HTML. The PDF version for the web will keep to the format above.

There will also be a “print on demand” version in PDF that will be formatted in a style similar to the printed format (see below).

Format for printing.

If the journal is printed we will print 150 copies which are circulated to members, friends and libraries.

The print version of Humberside Geologist is produced by photocopying, so we need a good contrasty copy as a master. Articles will be printed in Times New Roman Font, 12 point, left-justified, and sufficient margins for printing and binding. The article should be single-spaced, with a blank line between paragraphs. The journal name, volume and page number will be added to the bottom of each page by the editor. The title should be centred and in bold at a larger point size. Sub-headings should be in bold, 12 point and left justified. Another font (such as Courier in 10 point) can be used if a contrast is required, within the text. The Author's name should appear below the title and may be centred or right justified. The author's contact address is optional, and should be at the end of the article. The date of submission will not be included.

Authors may submit a more “scientific” version of the article for the printed publication. There may also be a version on CDROM which have more room for high resolution colour pictures, extra data and appendices.

Relevant black and white photographs and/or line drawings may be included if agreed with the editors. The editors will decide where illustrations will be placed trying to avoid blank spaces in printed articles.  The editors may place them on separate pages or at the end of the article, if necessary. A charge for printing colour photographs might be passed on to the author. 

The references, diagrams, etc. should follow the described in the "Guidance for authors." The URL for relevant web-pages or extra data may be included towards the end of the article, after any acknowledgements.

Articles which are submitted in typed or hand-written form will be retyped into a computer using the format described above. If an author wishes a different format to be used then they should send their reasons to the editors for consideration.

Editing

Articles should be submitted to the Secretary of the Society. The Secretary may enter into some correspondence with the author. The Secretary will send the draft to the editors who are asked if the piece is suitable for the Journal and invited to suggest changes to the text. They are also required to raise any scientific queries about the article. Once there is a consensus the Secretary will report the opinion of the editors to the author and recommend any changes. The author may choose not to accept the recommendations and may wish to justify the continued publication.

The Society aims to encourage members of the Society to submit pieces for publication. We try not to reject submissions: we will reject items that are plagiarised, with poorly argued opinions or without scientific evidence.

We also publish articles outside the peer-editing process on the Hull Geological Society website, outside the “Humberside Geologist Online” journal pages. These tend to be archived news about the Society, geological guides to our region (specifically Speeton Clay, Chalk and Quaternary), “work in progress” by research projects, educational pages and unfinished work and archives left by members to the Society.