Information for Authors

General Peer-Review and Editorial Procedure

All manuscripts sent for publication in our journals are strictly and thoroughly peer-reviewed by experts (this includes research and review articles, spontaneous submissions, and invited papers). The Managing Editor of the journal will perform a technical pre-check of the manuscript’s suitability upon receipt. The academic editor will be notified of the submission and invited to perform an editorial pre-check. The Editorial Office will then organize the peer-review process performed by independent experts and collect at least two review reports per manuscript. To uphold transparency and keep authors informed on the progress of the peer review, a preliminary version of the reviewers' reports, collected during the peer-review process, is made accessible to authors via the platform. Authors can see in real-time the content and how many reviewer reports have been collected. As these reviewer reports have not been checked by an academic editor, authors are recommended to refrain from undertaking any revision until the full editorial assessment has been conducted and official notification has been received by the Editorial Office. We ask our authors for adequate revisions (with a second round of peer-review if necessary) before a final decision is made. The final decision is made by the academic editor (usually the Editor-in-Chief/Editorial Board Member of a journal or the Guest Editor of a Special Issue). Accepted articles are copy-edited and English-edited.

 

  

Manuscript Preparation

  1. All manuscripts are expected to be prepared as a single PDF or MS Word document with the complete text, references, tables and figures included. Any revised manuscripts prepared for publication should be sent as a single editable Word document. LaTex paper is also acceptable for publication, but it should be in PDF for review first.
  2. Manuscripts should be written in English. Title, author(s), and affiliations should all be included on a title page as the first page of the manuscript file, followed by a 100-300 word abstract and 3-5 keywords. The order they follow is: Title, Authors, Affiliations, Abstract, Keywords, Introduction.
  3. All figures or photographs must be submitted as jpg or tif files with distinct characters and symbols at 500 dpi (dots per inch). Test your figures by printing them from a personal computer. The online version should look relatively similar to the personal-printer copy. Tables and equations should be in an editable rather than image version. Tables must be edited with Word/Excel. Equations must be edited with Equation Editor. Figures, tables and equations should be numbered and cited as Figure 1, Figure 2, Figure 3, etc. in sequence.
  4. Before submission or after acceptance, type your manuscript single spaced, and make all the characters in the text, tables, figure legends, footnotes and references in a single typeface and point size as 10 pt Palatino Linotype. This will save space, make it easier for reviewers and editors to process the submitted work, and contributes to slowing down global warming by using less paper.
  5. All references should be numbered in square brackets in the text and listed in the REFERENCES section in the order they appear in the text. Below are some examples:

References Format

  • Journal article

Fisher, J.A.; Krapf, C.B.E.; Lang, S.C.; Nichols, G.J.; Payenberg, T.H.D. Sedimentology and architecture of the Douglas Creek terminal splay, Lake Eyre, central Australia. Sedimentology 2008, 55, 1915–1930.

  • Conference paper

Chum, O.; Philbin, J.; Zisserman, A. Near duplicate image detection: min-Hash and tf-idf weighting. In Proceedings of the 19th British Machine Vision Conference (BMVC 2008), Leeds, UK, 1–4 September 2008; pp. 812–815.

  • Book with editors

Shaw, P.A.; Bryant, R.G. Playas, pans and salt lakes. In Arid Zone Geomorphology: Process, Form and Change in Drylands; Thomas, D.S.G., Ed.; John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.: Chichester, UK, 2011; pp. 373–401.

  • Book without editors

McKie, T. A Comparison of Modern Dryland Depositional Systems with the Rotliegend Group in the Netherlands. In The Permian Rotliegend of The Netherlands; SEPM Society for Sedimentary Geology: Darlington, UK, 2011; pp. 89–103.

  • Preprint

Ward, D.W.; Nelson, K.A. Finite Difference Time Domain (FDTD) Simulations of Electromagnetic Wave Propagation Using a Spreadsheet. arXiv 2004, arXiv:physics/0402096. Available online: http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0402096 (accessed on 13 October 2004).

  • Thesis

Mäckel, H. Capturing the Spectra of Silicon Solar Cells. Ph.D. Thesis, The Australian National University, Acton, Australia, 2004.

  • Patent

Sheem, S.K. Low-Cost Fiber Optic Pressure Sensor. U.S. Patent 6,738,537, 18 May 2004.

  • Company website

Proto Labs Ltd. Protolabs. Available online: https://uploads.protolabs.co.uk/es/PartUpload-MultiPart.aspx?LinkFrom=FC (accessed on 24 April 2017).

  • Software

Mathematica, version 5.1; software for technical computation; Wolfram Research: Champaign, IL, USA, 2004.

  • Data set

The Sadtler Standard Spectra: 300 MHz Proton NMR Standards; Bio-Rad, Sadtler Division: Philadelphia, PA, USA, 1994; No. 7640 (1-Chloropentane).

  • Newspaper

Squires, S. Falling Short on Nutrients. The Washington Post, 4 October 2005, p. H1.

  • Standard

Standard’s Number; Standard’s Title. Publisher: City, State, Country, Year.

  • Blog

Matthew, L. FCC Chair Willing to Consecrate XM-Sirius Union. Ars Technica (blog), 16 June 2008. Available online: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080616-fcc-chair-willing-to-consecrate-xm-sirius-union.html (accessed on 23 May 2017).

  • Unpublished work

Unpublished materials intended for publication:

Author 1, A.B.; Author 2, C. Title of Unpublished Work (optional). Correspondence Affiliation, City, State, Country. year, status (manuscript in preparation; to be submitted).

Author 1, A.B.; Author 2, C. Title of Unpublished Work. Abbreviated Journal Name year, phrase indicating stage of publication (submitted; accepted; in press).

Unpublished materials not intended for publication:

Author 1, A.B. (Affiliation, City, State, Country); Author 2, C. (Affiliation, City, State, Country). Phase describing the material, year. (phase: Personal communication; Private communication; Unpublished work; etc.)

  • Presentation

Zhang, Z.; Chen, H.; Zhong, J.; Chen, Y.; Lu, Y. ZnO nanotip-based QCM biosensors. Presented at the IEEE International Frequency Control Symposium and Exposition, Miami, FL, USA, 4–7 June 2006.

Editorial Decision and Revision

All the articles, reviews and communications published in GBP journals go through the peer-review process and receive at least two review reports. The in-house editor will discuss each step of the process with the external academic editor and communicate decisions to the authors regarding the following:

  • Accept in Present Form: The manuscript is accepted as is, with no further changes required.

  • Accept after Minor Revisions: The manuscript is provisionally accepted, pending minor revisions based on reviewers' comments. Authors are typically given five days to address these revisions.

  • Reconsider after Major Revisions: Acceptance of the manuscript is contingent upon significant revisions. Authors are required to provide a detailed point-by-point response to reviewers’ comments or a rebuttal for comments that cannot be addressed. A maximum of two rounds of major revisions are generally allowed. Authors are requested to submit the revised manuscript within ten days, after which it will be returned to the reviewers for further evaluation. For manuscripts requiring more than two months for revisions, authors are encouraged to withdraw their submission and resubmit once the revisions are complete to ensure a timely review process. Revised manuscripts will be treated as a continuation of the original submission, maintaining a clear link between versions within the system. The same reviewers will typically be invited to review the revised submission to ensure continuity in the peer-review process.

  • Reject and Encourage Resubmission: Manuscripts requiring substantial additional work or new experiments to support their conclusions will be rejected. However, authors are welcome to resubmit a comprehensively revised version to the same journal when ready. Resubmitted manuscripts will be treated as new submissions but will maintain a record of their association with the original submission. The same reviewers will generally be invited to assess the resubmission.

  • Reject: Manuscripts with fundamental flaws, serious errors, or lacking significant originality will be rejected outright, with no opportunity for resubmission to the journal.

Digital Preservation of GBP Content

To ensure indefinite preservation of our publications, all content published within an GBP journal is permanently archived in the following databases:

For record-keeping purposes, GBP maintains copies of submitted manuscripts and supporting files. However, for rejected articles, we will honor requests from authors to delete these files from our system.

Copyright

GBP adheres to the principles of Creative Commons Attribution license, meaning that we do not claim copyright of the work we publish. All articles are published under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)