Guide to Authors and General Objectives

Jan. 13, 2011, REVISED 22 June 2011 (target page lengths bold)

Co-Editors: Dan Fornari, Jim Holden, Lauren Mullineaux, Maya Tolstoy, Stace Beaulieu
Dan Fornari dfornari@whoi.edu
James Holden jholden@microbio.umass.edu
Lauren Mullineaux lmullineaux@whoi.edu
Maya Tolstoy tolstoy@ldeo.columbia.edu
Stace Beaulieu sbeaulieu@whoi.edu

Dear Contributors:

We are organizing a special issue of Oceanography magazine to be published in March 2012 to highlight the scientific advances and legacy of the Ridge 2000 (R2K) Program. We are encouraging articles that will address two broad topics in particular:

1) Articles that address themes and fundamental questions from the R2K Program Plan: http://www.ridge2000.org/science/info/science_plan.php

1. What are the relationships among mantle flow, mantle composition, ridge morphology, and segmentation?
2. How is melt transport organized within the mantle and crust?
3. How does hydrothermal circulation affect characteristics of the melt zone, crustal structure and composition, and ridge morphology?
4. How does biological activity affect vent chemistry and hydrothermal circulation?
5. What are the forces and linkages that determine the structure and extent of the hydrothermal biosphere?
6. What is the nature and space/time extent of the biosphere from deep in the subseafloor to the overlying water column?
7. How and to what extent does hydrothermal flux influence the physical, chemical, and biological characteristics of the overlying ocean?

2) Articles that highlight new scientific insight(s) that occurred primarily because the research was facilitated by the unique multidisciplinary and/or geographically focused studies of the R2K Program.

We are not encouraging articles for this Special Issue that are broad overview papers (e.g., review papers as previously published in the InterRidge Oceanography issue or similar contributions).

The Special Issue will include four types of articles:

• Full-length articles – approximately 8 printed pages each, which are likely to be synthetic and interdisciplinary in nature and will highlight specific advances in knowledge made as a result of R2K research. Note: this corresponds to about 5000 words (including references and figure captions) and 3-4 figures. Also note that this is less than the "Feature Articles" Length Limitations as described on the Oceanography author guidelines webpage.;

• Short articles – approximately 4 printed pages each, which may be research or technology focused, and could be more discipline-specific. Note: this corresponds to about 2500 words (including references and figure captions) and a couple figures. This corresponds loosely with the "Review and Comment Pieces" Length Limitations as described on the Oceanography author guidelines webpage.;

• Boxes – 1-2 printed pages each, which also may be research or technology focused, and could be more discipline-specific. Note: examples of this content type can be found, for example in last year's "Mountains in the Sea" special issue: http://www.tos.org/oceanography/issues/issue_archive/23_1.html

• ISS – specific articles, which will be descriptive and include both historical background for each site as well as the new scientific insights learned from R2K studies at each sites. Each ISS article will consider and address explicitly at least some of the questions in the R2K Program Plan. These articles will also include an excerpt of references from the R2K MGDS References Database.

The publication budget includes production of color figures where appropriate and we are seeking excellent imagery and graphics that highlight R2K science. Graphics produced specially for this issue will be archived in the R2K Media Bank.

Authors will need to include reference(s) to metadata and/or data repositories (e.g., R2K Data Portal) for data described in their articles.

The expected publication date of this special issue is March 2012.

The target date for manuscript submissions is September 1, 2011.

For deadlines and a PDF file of the latest Table of Contents, please CLICK HERE.

For Oceanography's author guidelines, please see:
http://www.tos.org/oceanography/guidelines.html