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ICARUS is devoted to the publication of original contributions in the field of Solar System studies. Manuscripts reporting the results of new research — observational, experimental, or theoretical — concerning the astronomy, geology, meteorology, physics, chemistry, biology, and other scientific aspects of our Solar System or extrasolar systems are welcome. The Journal generally does not publish papers devoted exclusively to the Sun, the Earth, celestial mechanics, meteoritics, or astrophysics. Icarus does not publish papers that provide "improved" versions of Bode’s law, or other numerical relations, unless they are accompanied by some detailed physical/chemical arguments to explain why the new relation is to be preferred. Icarus does not publish meeting announcements or general notices. Reviews, historical papers, and manuscripts describing spacecraft instrumentation may be considered, but only with prior approval by the Editor. An entire issue of the Journal is occasionally devoted to a single subject, usually arising from a conference on the same topic. The language of publication is English.

All papers are reviewed, generally by two independent referees. Authors will usually be asked to respond to criticisms and suggestions by the referees prior to publication; at the Editor’s discretion, reviewers may be consulted about resubmitted manuscripts. Authors are invited to give recommendations pro or con about potential reviewers; the Editor may use these to guide the selection of referees.

Manuscripts are accepted for review with the understanding that the same work has not been published, that it is not under consideration for publication elsewhere, and that its submission for publication has been approved by all of the authors and by the institution where the work was carried out. Furthermore, any person cited as the source of a personal communication should have approved such citation; in particular, written documentation must be sent when the manuscript is submitted if the personal communication is crucial to the arguments of the submitted paper, or critical of another’s work, or controversial. For the benefit of the reviewers, three (3) copies of all significant references cited in the manuscript as submitted or in press must accompany the paper. If you are submitting electronically, the preprints should be mailed to the Icarus Editorial Office. Please let us know in your cover letter that preprints will be mailed.

Authors submitting a manuscript do so on the understanding that if it is accepted for publication, copyright in the article, including the right to reproduce the article in all forms and media, shall be assigned exclusively to the Publisher. The Copyright Transfer Agreement should be signed by the appropriate person(s). Articles and any other material published in Icarus represent the opinions of the authors and should not be construed to reflect the opinions of the Editor or the Publisher.

There are no page charges. However, authors will be charged for color reproduction (see Color Illustrations section below) or foldout pages; the Publisher will provide an estimate of these costs.

Electronic Submission

The Icarus Editorial Office prefers the electronic submission of manuscripts via our Web-based system. See the section below on ELECTRONIC SUBMISSION OF MANUSCRIPTS for details.

Hardcopy Submission

Four copies of the manuscript, complete with figures, tables, etc., should be submitted to: Icarus Editorial Office, 413 Space Sciences Building, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York 14853-6801. Telephone: 607/255-4875. Fax: 607/255-6354. Electronic mail: icarus at astro.cornell.edu.

Please note that manuscripts submitted in hardcopy format will be scanned into PDF format for incorporation into our Web-based review system, so authors are strongly encouraged to submit electronically to maintain the maximum fidelity of their images and text.

Authors should retain an original copy of their manuscript. At least one set of figures should be of high quality and suitable for direct photographic reproduction. All manuscripts must be printed or typed with wide margins and double-spaced throughout, including references and footnotes. Number each page of the manuscript. Include on the first page the title of the paper and the names(s) and affiliation(s) of the author(s), including mailing address(es). At the bottom of the first page note the number of manuscript pages, figures, and tables. On the second page indicate a proposed running head of not more than 55 characters, and the name and address to which editorial correspondence and proofs should be directed. The third page should contain a brief abstract. Two to five key words (topics) taken from the Journal’s key word index found on our online list of Icarus keywords should be listed immediately after the abstract. The text should begin on the following page. After the main text, give appendixes, acknowledgments, references, tables, figure captions, and figures, in that order. Places where figures and tables are to appear in the published paper should be marked in the margins of the manuscript.

Please write with attention to organization, style, and especially brevity. Present results logically, with order directed by the needs of the reader. Take special care in composing the title and abstract, since these will be the most frequently read sections of the paper. In the title, specific words are preferable to general ones. The abstract should summarize the conclusions of the research, including quantitative results where appropriate, rather than merely stating the problem. Authors in Japan please note: Upon request, Elsevier Japan will provide authors with a list of people who can check and improve the English of their paper (before submission). Please contact our Tokyo office: Elsevier, 4F Higashi-Azabu, 1 Chome Bldg., 1-9-15 Higashi-Azabu, Minato-ku, Tokyo 106-0044; phone: (03-5561-5032; fax: (03)-5561-5045; e-mail: jp.info@elsevier.com.

Whenever possible, quotients in mathematical expressions should employ the solidus (/) rather than being displayed in built-up form. However, for units, exponential notation is preferred (e.g., erg cm^-2 s^-1, not erg/cm²s).

When described in the body of the text, a table should be referred to as Table X, an equation as Eq. Y, and a figure as Fig. Z (use these abbreviations everywhere except at the beginning of a sentence).

Tables are numbered consecutively with Arabic numerals in order of their citation in the text. Each table should be typed, single-spaced , on a separate sheet with due regard to the proportions of the printed page. All tables should bear appropriate headings. Unusually elaborate or long tables should be prepared as camera-ready copy.

Figures. At the time of submission of a hardcopy manuscript, a high quality original of each figure suitable for direct photographic reproduction in the published paper must be supplied. High quality laser-printed figures are acceptable, as well as photographs or pen and ink drawings. Lettering on the figures should be of professional quality and should be large enough to be legible after reduction to fit the Journal page. Each figure should be identified with the author’s name and figure number. All figures, whether line designs or halftones, should be numbered consecutively in Arabic numerals, in order of their citation in the text. Figure captions should be typewritten on a separate sheet, following the text.

Color illustrations will be accepted; however, the authors will be expected to make a contribution towards the extra cost. An estimate will be sent by the publisher once the paper has been accepted for publication. Color should preferably be done in RGB and sent as both an electronic file and a hard copy.

Color reproduction of figures in the electronic version of the article only (on ScienceDirect), with black-and-white reproduction in print, is available at no cost. However, authors must provide usable electronic files for the color versions of their figures and separate files or hard copies of the black-and-white versions of the figures. Only .tif and .eps files in RGB color mode will be accepted for Web-only color. If the electronic version of the art is unusable, Elsevier will not post the color version. Authors should clearly state in a cover letter sent to the Editorial Office at submission or at final acceptance which figures they would like reproduced in color for free in the electronic version of the article only and which figures they would like reproduced in color in the print and electronic versions at a cost to them.

Manuscript Transmission. If your manuscript is accepted for publication, the publisher requires an editable electronic copy. Authors may ftp, e-mail, or submit a disk of their electronic manuscript and/or artwork. The publisher will not accept .ps or .pdf files. Figures will be accepted in .tif or .eps formats only at 300 dpi for halftones and 1200 dpi for line art.

 

1.5. Literature Citations

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Careful compliance with the instructions for preparing the list of references is required; manuscripts with incomplete references (or missing abstracts) may be returned to the author for correction before being considered for publication.

Literature citations in the text should be in one of the following forms: Estrada and Cuzzi 1996 (for two authors); Zappalà et al. 1995 (for three or more authors); Ip 1995, p. 299 (for reference to a specific page). To distinguish two or more works by the same author(s) in the same year, use suffices a, b, etc., following the year (e.g., Encrenaz et al. 1996a, 1996b).

References to personal communications, manuscripts in preparation, unpublished work, anonymous ftp files, or databases should not be included in the bibliography, but should be cited parenthetically in the text.

Literature citations in the bibliography should be listed alphabetically (and then chronologically) according to the surname of the (first) author. The listings of authors having multiple entries should first list all papers by the author alone chronologically, then two author papers, alphabetically and then chronologically, and finally all multiple author papers. This latter group should be listed alphabetically according to the surname of the (first) author and then chronologically. Journal references should contain the names and initials of all authors, the year, the title of the article, and the standard abbreviation of the journal, the volume number, and the first and last pages. As an exception to this rule, any article with more than 10 co-authors may be listed using a style like "Belton, M.J.S., and 10 colleagues, … ." Shown below are examples of the proper reference forms for a book, a journal article, and a book chapter, respectively.

Cravens, T.E. 1997. Physics of Solar System Plasmas. Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge, UK. Harris, A.W., Davies, J.K., Green, S.F., 1998. Thermal infrared spectrophotometry of the near-Earth asteroids 2100 Ra-Shalom and 1991 EE. Icarus 135, 441-450. Banerdt, W.B., McGill, G.E., Zuber, M.T. 1997. Plains tectonics on Venus. In: Bougher, S.W., Hunten, D.M., Phillips, R.J. (Eds.), Venus II, Univ. of Arizona Press, Tucson, pp. 901-930.

 

1.6. Notes

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Short papers on especially topical subjects will be given unusually rapid handling if they satisfy the following limitations on length:

• Notes should be typed double-spaced and should be no longer than ten (10) pages, including a very brief abstract of one or two sentences.

• The sum of figures and tables should be less than, or equal to, three.

Our goal is that Icarus will publish Notes within four (4) months of submission, if no revision is required. We will try to complete refereeing and editorial handling in less than one month.

 

1.7. Preparation of supplemental material

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Elsevier now accepts electronic supplementary material to support and enhance your scientific research. Supplementary files offer additional possibilities for publishing supporting applications, movies, animation sequences, high-resolution images, background datasets, sound clips, and more. Supplementary files supplied will be published online alongside the electronic version of your article in Elsevier Web products, including ScienceDirect (http://www.sciencedirect.com). To ensure that your submitted material is directly usable, please provide the data in one of our recommended file formats. Authors should submit the material in electronic format together with the article and supply a concise and descriptive caption for each file. Please note, however, that supplementary material will not appear in the printed journal. Files can be stored on 3˝-inch diskette, ZIPdisk, or CD (either MS-DOS or Macintosh). For more detailed instructions, please visit our Author Gateway at http://authors.elsevier.com, click on “Artwork instructions,” and then click on “Multimedia files.”

 

1.8. Proofs

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Proofs of the typeset article will be sent to the corresponding author. Authors will be charged for excessive alterations in proof. Elsevier will do everything possible to get your article corrected and published as quickly and accurately as possible. Therefore, it is important that all of your corrections are sent back to us in one communication from the corresponding author. Subsequent corrections will not be possible, so please ensure your first sending is complete.

 

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2. ELECTRONIC SUBMISSION OF MANUSCRIPTS

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2.1.   Overview

2.2.   Where to Go

2.3.   File Formats for Submitted Manuscripts

2.4.   Minimizing the Amount of Work You May Have to do Later

 

2.1. Overview

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Icarus accepts new and revised manuscripts electronically. All submitted and revised manuscripts are handled through our Web site, with password-protected access granted to authors and reviewers only.

The layout and organization of manuscripts should follow the guidelines described in the Manuscripts section above. Specifically, all manuscripts must be formatted with wide margins and double-spaced throughout, including references and footnotes. Number each page of the manuscript. Include on the first page the title of the paper and the names(s) and affiliation(s) of the author(s), including mailing address(es). At the bottom of the first page note the number of manuscript pages, figures, and tables. On the second page indicate a proposed running head of not more than 55 characters, and the name and address to which editorial correspondence and proofs should be directed. The third page should contain a brief abstract. Two to five key words (topics) taken from the Journal’s key word index found on our online list of Icarus keywords should be listed immediately after the abstract. The text should begin on the following page. After the main text, give appendixes, acknowledgments, references, tables, figure captions, and figures, in that order. Places where figures and tables are to appear in the published paper should be marked in the margins of the manuscript if possible.

 

2.2. Where to Go

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When you have read and understood the limitations of the process below and you are ready to submit a manuscript, please go to this link:

http://icarus.cornell.edu/submit

and follow the instructions carefully from there.

 

2.3. File Formats for Submitted Manuscripts

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THE ICARUS EDITORIAL OFFICE ACCEPTS ONLY A LIMITED NUMBER OF FILE FORMATS. Please read and follow these directions carefully, or your electronic submission will not be processed by the editorial office.

The format for fastest editorial office processing and external peer review of initial and revised manuscripts is a single PDF (Adobe), PS (PostScript), DOC (MS Word), or WPD (Corel WordPerfect) file that: (a) is less than about 25 Mbytes in size; (b) contains all of your text, tables, and figures exactly as you would like reviewers to see them; and (c) follows the layout and organization instructions provided above.

If you need to submit using different formats than the ones just described, note that for the submission of manuscript text and tables, files will only be accepted in DOC (Microsoft Word for Mac or PC), WPD (Corel WordPerfect for Mac or PC), PS, or PDF formats. Note, however, that embedding figures within Word or WordPerfect documents may cause delays in manuscript processing because cross-platform issues often cause problems with printing and formatting. If you are writing in one of these programs, it would be best to print out your paper as a PDF or PS file, verify that it looks exactly as you would like a reviewer to see it, and then submit the manuscript as a PDF or PS file via the Web.

Authors submitting manuscripts to Icarus via the Web will be allowed to upload only two files: (a) A single file of 25 Mbytes or less in PDF, PS, DOC, or WPD format containing all text, tables, and figures and conforming to the required style for Icarus manuscripts (i.e., double spaced main text, appendixes, acknowledgments, references, tables, figure captions, and figures, in that order); and (b) A single accompanying cover letter (including responses to reviewers, if for a revised manuscript) in PDF, PS, DOC, or WPD format. Authors who prefer to use LaTeX or AAS-TeX are asked to convert their files to PostScript or PDF before submission. The responsibility for organizing text, tables, figures, etc. to meet the guidelines on layout, file format, and file size rests on the authors, and not on the editorial staff. Failure to comply with these rules will result in delays in editorial handling and could necessitate re-submission of all manuscript materials in the proper format. If you cannot comply with these electronic submission rules, it may be simpler, though slower, to submit your manuscript "the old way" in hardcopy format as described above.

Authors are responsible for verifying the typographic and image quality of electronically-submitted manuscripts. Images or text of low quality may impair reviewers' ability to assess the work and may result in delays in manuscript handling and/or may need to be re-submitted at higher quality by the authors.

Authors who use TeX, LaTeX, or AASTeX (4.0 and above) to prepare their manuscripts CANNOT SUBMIT THE TeX, LaTeX, OR AASTeX FILES TO THE WEB SITE. Instead, these authors must format the output to PS or PDF on their home machines and upload only those file types. Because of staffing and time restrictions as well as cross-platform issues, the Icarus editorial office will not process your TeX files.

Please note that authors are no longer allowed to submit individual figures (JPG, GIF, TIF, EPS) via the Icarus editorial office web site. All figures must be incorporated properly into a single PDF, PS, DOC, or WPD file less than about 25 Mbytes in size to be submitted electronically. If your manuscript is accepted for publication, you will be able to upload high resolution versions of all of your figures individually using the formats and procedures defined by the publisher, Elsevier Science, and described at: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/icarus.

It is important to reiterate that the format for fastest editorial office processing and external peer review of initial and revised manuscripts is a single PDF, PS, WPD or DOC file that: (a) is less than about 25 Mbytes in size; (b) contains all of your text, tables, and figures exactly as you would like reviewers to see them; and (c) follows the layout and organization instructions provided above.

 

2.4. Minimizing the Amount of Work You May Have to do Later

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If your manuscript is accepted for publication, the publisher of Icarus, Elsevier Science, will require an electronic version of the text and tables in editable form. For this reason, authors are encouraged to use DOC, WPD, TeX, LaTeX, or AASTeX formats for manuscript preparation. Elsevier Science will not accept PS or PDF files for accepted manuscripts because they do not easily provide the text of the manuscript in editable form; and TeX users remember that you must format your text to PS or PDF for the initial submission on this Web site. One solution is to use DOC or WPD formats for text, embed TIF or EPS format figures in the manuscript, and then print a PDF or PS version to submit electronically. If a manuscript is accepted for publication, authors will also have to supply Elsevier Science with a color-correct RGB printout of all digital color art that is intended to appear in print. Presently, Elsevier Science will accept only TIF and EPS file formats for digital figures. Further details about interacting with the publisher once your manuscript is accepted can be found at: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/icarus.

It is important to understand the distinction between file formats accepted now by the Icarus Editorial Office at Cornell and formats that will be required later by the publisher, Elsevier Science, if your manuscript is accepted for publication. We are trying to converge on a single set of file formats for the entire publication process; however, the process is difficult because of differences in computer hardware and typesetting and word processing software on both ends. We appreciate your continued patience as we try to iron all this out.

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Last modified: Tue Jul 8 12:53:02 2008	© 2000-2007 Icarus
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