Author Guidelines

Seismica manuscripts should contain no more than 10,000 words and 10 display items (i.e., figures, tables) in the main text. Seismica publishes three types of manuscripts:

Research articles, which present advances in scientific knowledge or understanding. These are typically from 3,000 to 10,000 words in length (excluding references and figure captions) and up to 10 figures, and can address any aspect of seismology and earthquake science within the journal's scope (see Scope). Authors who have long articles of over 10,000 words that cannot be shortened should contact the Executive Editor for Production ahead of submission to see if this can be accommodated.

Fast Reports, which are high quality, time-sensitive manuscripts (typically submitted within several weeks following an event) written in short form (typically ~3000 words, with 2-3 display items). An earthquake report may include: original observations and ground motion recordings, source inversions, felt reports and impacts on the built environment, or secondary hazard assessments (e.g., tsunami, landslides). However, submissions offering little more than information routinely provided by earthquake monitoring agencies (e.g. USGS, Geoscope, EMSC) will not be considered. To be accepted for Seismica, the Fast Report must be brief, but the research must be neither overstated nor overly summarized; it must include multiple analyses of the event in question, must be scientifically sound, and must provide new information. Fast Reports also welcomes articles that could be perceived as critical and urgent for science strategy, policies, or standards (e.g., building codes). Fast Reports go through an accelerated review process managed by a dedicated team of editors which includes a minimum of one expert review from outside of the editorial team, and Seismica aims to publish Fast Reports about 30 days after submission. Manuscripts which are too long (without prior permission of the editor), out of scope, or for which accelerated review is not adequately justified will be rejected with an invitation to submit in another article type. Fast Reports must conform to Seismica's guidelines for authorship, conflict of interest, and code and data availability. Authors are strongly encouraged to submit in Seismica's LaTeX template to reduce delays in revisions and typesetting. If "major revisions" are required prior to acceptance, the manuscript may be transferred out of Fast Reports to another article type. In order to facilitate rapid publication, authors are expected to respond to emails from the Seismica team quickly during the review/revision period and preparation for publication. Supplementary material may be included (<1000 words and <10 display items).

Reports, which contribute peer-reviewed useful information to the public sphere but may not represent a substantive advance in scientific understanding in themselves. Reports should also have at most 10,000 words and 10 figures. Reports include:

• Null results / failed experiments: While null results are often ignored in the scientific literature, they can be useful in advancing science, for instance through highlighting difficulties in reproducing published results or by documenting the circumstances in which particular methods or approaches may be unsuccessful. Due to the lack of editorial interest and the difficulty in defining the value of negative results, very few journals offer the possibility for such publications. Seismica is willing to consider publications of null results where they are illuminating or instructive in the context of previous published studies. Null-result manuscripts should include sections on: the background to the study, methods, details of the null results, discussion of the null results in the context of previous work, and scientific and/or technical insights drawn from the null results. This last element is essential for a good null-result report - the insights presented there should serve as a 'take-home message' for other researchers in that field.
• Software Reports: The goals of Software Reports in Seismica are to document new codes, to facilitate community use of them, and to ensure reproducibility of their outputs. Software Reports should include a main paper, plus a user manual and source code that should be uploaded to a public domain repository. The main paper should describe the scientific context and the methods employed, and should detail aspects such as test case simulations and model verification, evaluation, and performance. Including the examples and test cases mentioned in the main paper as tutorials within the repository is strongly recommended. All code repositories must be privately accessible by the editors and reviewers upon submission and publicly accessible upon acceptance, and the codes included are subject to peer review. See the Ethical Guidelines for more information on data and code availability.
• Data-based Reports (e.g., Large Community dataset initiatives, Instrument Deployments, and Field Campaigns): These submissions allow seismological and other field data collection (e.g., logging a paleoseismic trench or collecting photogrammetric data) to be documented via a citable and peer-reviewed reference that describes the data collected, the experiment design, and relevant collaborators. Ideally these manuscripts should be submitted as soon as possible - i.e., after the instruments and/or data are recovered, and initial data quality assurance (e.g., noise analysis) is completed. Datasets must be publicly available or be made available within two years via a public domain data repository such as the IRIS Data Management Center or Zenodo. If the data are embargoed, then the end date of the embargo and the repository for the data must be stated in the article. Reports are constructed given a specific structure: Scientific background and motivation; Description of the instrument deployment or field experiment (including technical details of the instrumentation, such as instrument response, make and model, etc.); Description of obtained data (including repository details), Preliminary observations and interpretations. For rapid, temporary deployments or experiments, the Editorial process will follow that of Fast Reports.

Opinion articles and reviews, which are invited papers about a scientific idea, controversial topics and/or innovative concepts. Authors may contact the Editorial Board with ideas of subjects for editorial articles.

Special Issues may include specific criteria for inclusion of different article types. Consult the main page for any open Special Issue for details.

Commentaries - see Section 4 of the Ethical Guidelines for information about submitting a Commentary.

All article types will be published under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC-BY 4.0) license by default. Specific licenses required by authors' employers or requested by authors may be used as needed.

Seismica considers for publication manuscripts that have been hosted elsewhere as preprints. A preprint is an author's original version of a research manuscript prior to formal peer review at a journal which is deposited on a public server. Seismica encourages posting of preprints on any channel of the authors' choice, including preprint servers, authors' personal websites, or institutional websites.

Preprints may be posted and shared at any time during the peer-review process. However, authors should disclose details of preprint posting, including DOI and licensing terms, upon submission of the manuscript (via the 'Comments to the Editor' box in the submission system) or at any other point during consideration at Seismica (by email or using the 'Discussion' functionality of the manuscript system, to the handling editor if post-submission).

Authors may choose any license of their choice for the preprint, but we recommend a Creative Commons CC-BY license. Before selecting a license, consult the terms of author employment or any grant related to the publication, as some programs enforce specific licenses for preprints.

Once the manuscript is published, the author's responsibility is to ensure that the preprint record is updated with a publication reference, including the DOI and a URL link to the published version of the article on the Seismica website. This will ensure that citations of the preprint and published article are linked.

Seismica also permits the archiving of postprints - accepted manuscripts, which include modifications based on referees' suggestions before copyediting and proof correction, or final published and copy-edited manuscripts - on any channel of the authors' choice. If uploading an accepted manuscript, once the manuscript is published, the authors should update the archived accepted version with a publication reference, including the DOI and a URL link to the published version of the article on the journal website.

Seismica considers submissions containing material that has been published in a conference proceedings paper or submitted to the authors' funders, university, or employer as a research activity report or thesis. However, the submission should provide a substantial extension of results, methodology, analysis, conclusions, and/or implications over the previously published work; the final decision on what constitutes a substantial extension is made by the handling editors. Authors are invited to contact the Editorial team for consultation prior to submission (info@seismica.org).

Authors must provide details of the previous work with their submission, including relevant citations in the submitted manuscript. Authors must obtain all necessary permissions to reuse any previously published material and attribute it appropriately.

The following section outlines the baseline requirements for submitting a manuscript to Seismica, for both formatting and ethical authorship. These guidelines are also summarized in Seismica's submission checklist.

The following sections are required as part of each submitted manuscript:

• Abstract (in English), maximum 200 words, no references included.
• Author contributions statement, using only the Contributor Roles Taxonomy (CRediT). The Seismica article templates include a section for a CRediT statement. Please follow the policies on authorship outlined in the Ethical Guidelines.
• A Data and Code Availability Statement, detailing where all data and codes used in the study can be accessed. Statements along the lines of "please contact the authors for data access" are not acceptable for data which could be distributed digitally. If the data are not available, the data availability statement should explain why. Please see the Ethical Guidelines for more details. Questions about data and code sharing may be asked in advance of submission or posed in the Comments to the Editor.
• A list of all references cited in the study including DOIs if available. LaTeX submissions should use our bibtex style file included in the Seismica templates; other submissions should use APA reference style, including the full author list for each entry. Citations to unpublished work (ie "submitted" or "in review") are not permitted unless the work has been preprinted and the preprint DOI is provided. "Personal Communication" citations are not permitted, and information obtained from personal communications may instead be acknowledged in the "Acknowledgements" section. Seismica strongly suggests that authors consider ensuring that their citations are inclusive and conscientious. Citation Diversity Statements are not required, but efforts should be made to cite widely, such as citing non-English works, non-academic works, and policy documents.

The following sections may be included, but are not required:

• Authors are encouraged to include, in addition to the English version of the abstract, up to two additional language translations of the abstract to be included in the typeset paper, also with a maximum of 200 words each. Please note that the additional-language abstract may undergo a technical review (at the discretion of the Handling Editor). Seismica does not guarantee reviews of additional language abstracts, so it is the responsibility of the authors to ensure correct translation.
• To make your research accessible for everyone, Seismica encourages the inclusion of a non-technical summary with the initial manuscript, explaining the essential methods and results of your article so that someone unfamiliar with your field of research can understand. The target audience may include journalists, government staff, other researchers, people involved in civil protection and disaster management, and the public in general. Your non-technical summary should be one or two paragraphs (about 200 words total), covering the following main points:
  • What is the current issue or problem that your research addresses, and why are you researching it? Try to consider why this topic is vital to the larger community.
  • Without excessive use of jargon, how did you go about collecting and analyzing the data and results?
  • What are the main conclusions of your study? Ultimately, what will the impact of your research be? What societal benefits may be realized?
• Supplementary material. Supplemental pdf files containing text and figures should be uploaded into the journal submission system. All other supplementary files (e.g., data tables, videos) should be uploaded to a relevant separate repository. Seismica recommends tagging the Seismica community repository in Zenodo.
• Appendices. Your article may include appendices if necessary, but please think carefully about how the information you want to put in an appendix relates to the rest of your paper. If it is necessary for understanding the work, should it be incorporated into the main text instead? If it is not essential to understand the work but should be included for completeness, could it be supplementary material instead? Note that supplementary material is included in the review process but is not typeset, which reduces the burden on our copy/layout team.

Formatting for submission: For initial submission, authors should submit a PDF file containing the manuscript and figures, and a separate PDF for any Supplementary Materials. Minimum formatting requirements for initial submission of a manuscript are:

• PDF document(s) for article and any supplemental materials
• Line numbers
• Double spacing
• Font size 12 or larger
• Figures included in text at the appropriate points
• Corresponding author ORCID provided in the text (contributing authors are also encouraged to provide ORCIDs)

We strongly encourage authors to use one of the Seismica templates (docx, odt, or tex) for initial submission, but this is required only for accepted manuscripts to be sent to typesetting and copy editing. Adherence to the template reduces Seismica's volunteer editor time commitments by several hours for each manuscript and will be strictly enforced if an article is accepted for publication. Seismica's style guide provides some guidance on preferred formats for dates and times, units, and abbreviations. Please follow these guidelines to the best of your ability. See Post-acceptance for more details.

Authors must run a complete spelling and grammatical check before submission (e.g., using (free) online tools such as Grammarly). Seismica has no preference for British vs American spellings, as long as manuscripts are self-consistent throughout. If the level of writing in a submission is such that it cannot be understood by the editor, then the editor at their discretion may return to the authors for correction before the manuscript is sent out for peer review.

Figures and tables: Figures should be sized so that their text is readable at either full or half A4 page width (i.e., 180 or 86 mm width). The maximum figure height is 200 mm. Authors should provide figures at a minimum of 300 dpi resolution. Figures with multiple parts must be combined in a single file that conforms to the figure size limits. Since Seismica is relying on volunteers from the community to typeset articles, any table that is included in Supplementary Material instead of in the main text will be greatly appreciated; if tables are included in the main text, production of an accepted article will take longer. However, tables can also be created in Word's table environment and embedded in the manuscript or uploaded as a separate document (e.g., .xls file). Figures do not need to be uploaded as separate, publication-ready files until the manuscript has been accepted. Color palettes used in figures should be perceptually-uniform when possible and color-vision-deficiency (CVD) friendly (see Crameri et al., 2020, Nat. Comms. for further details over these issues). Revisions may be requested to figures based on choice of colormaps. Seismica recommends using the perceptually uniform and CVD-friendly Scientific Colour Maps package. Coblis is a useful tool for checking colormap accessibility.

Data and code archiving: Authors should archive data and code in public repositories. Physical samples should be adequately cataloged with curation to insure access for the long-term. Where the study has used data from a seismic network, the full FDSN citation should be given if it exists. Examples of open-access, DOI citable repositories for data and code include Figshare, Zenodo, Dryad, GFZ Data Services, and the ISC Dataset Repository. Personal websites and code repositories like GitHub do not meet the standards for long-term, DOI citable archiving because authors make changes to the repository in the future that are not documented in the publication. Fortunately, it is easy to archive a GitHub repository in Zenodo for a DOI-citable version.

Code should include comprehensive documentation, and a license specifying how it may be used or reused by others. See the Ethical Guidelines for more detail.

The corresponding author must register at Seismica.org to create an account. Prior to initiating submission, authors should select the appropriate article type (See Publication types and their sections).

Suggesting potential reviewers. The authors should suggest potential peer reviewers in the Comments to Editor box in the online submission form (see the Peer Review section below for more details). Authors should suggest recommended reviewers in the relevant subject area. Where a submission focuses on a specific geographical location, we recommend that the authors offer at least one reviewer based in that region (assuming that the reviewer has a reasonable degree of expertise in the subject area). This effort ensures a broader diversity of reviewers and increases the impact of the scientific work. Authors may list reviewers who should not be contacted due to conflicts of interest, or other concerns. Authors can help the journal improve the diversity of Seismica's reviewer pool by including women, early career scientists, and members of other underrepresented groups in their lists of suggested reviewers.

Licensing and copyright considerations. Articles accepted to Seismica are published under a CC-BY 4.0 license with copyright retained by authors by default. If you anticipate needing a different license to comply with regulations or job requirements (e.g., as government employees), please note this during submission in the Comments to Editor box.

Submitting a manuscript for double-anonymous review. Research has shown that double-anonymous review may decrease reviewer bias which preferentially impacts authors from under-represented groups and early career authors. However, some work has suggested that reviewers may be biased against authors due to their selection of double-anonymous review mode. Seismica's authors and reviewers are asked to be aware of this potential for bias and consider selecting double-anonymous review as a means to familiarize the research community with the potential positive benefits of this review mode. At the author's request, manuscripts can instead be subjected to fully anonymous (i.e., double-anonymous) peer review, where author identities are not shared with reviewers. Reviewers can always choose whether or not to reveal their identity in their review.

Authors may request double-anonymous review in the "Comments to the Editor" during submission. Note that remaining completely anonymous may not be possible since authors may be publicly linked to datasets they collected or may have previously presented preliminary work at conferences with published abstracts. For double-anonymous review, it is the authors' responsibility to anonymize their submitted manuscript file to the best of their ability; identifying data will be collected during manuscript submission but will not be passed on to reviewers with the manuscript file. The submitted manuscript PDF should not include author names and affiliations, an author contributions statement, identifiable details within a data and code availability statement, or acknowledgements. However, a statement on data/code availability should be included in a cover letter or Comments to the Editor. Identifying information may be used by the editors to confirm that the work is in compliance with Seismica's policies on open data, but will not be shared with reviewers. If the article is accepted, author names and affiliations, author contributions, a complete data and code availability statement, and acknowledgements are required in the post-acceptance formatted files submitted for typesetting. If authors choose to use the Seismica LaTeX submission template, it has an "anonymous" option which will produce a pdf without author names, affiliations, and contributions.

To save time for authors and peer-reviewers, only papers that seem likely to meet our editorial criteria will be sent for formal review. Papers may be rejected by the handling editor(s) (after consulting with the Production Editor and one additional handling editor) without external review for any of the following reasons:

• of insufficient interest
• outside the scope of the journal (see Scope)
• not original (see Ethical Guidelines on originality)
• written with grammatical or other errors sufficiently severe as to prevent meaningful scientific review
• non-compliance with data requirements
• otherwise inappropriate

If a paper is rejected without external review as per the reasons above, it is Seismica's policy to provide clear reasons for this decision and constructive guidance on whether additional modifications could potentially improve the paper to the expected standard of a submitted manuscript. Guidance may also be given on whether the manuscript may be re-submitted as, or directly changed to, a different publication type (see Publication types).

Seismica uses a transparent peer-review system, where we publish the full editorial decisions, reviewer comments to the authors, and author rebuttal letters. Referees will be anonymous if the referees have not confirmed they would like to be identified to the authors. Seismica also offers a double anonymous peer review option. Authors who choose this option at submission will be given the same respectful consideration and will remain anonymous to the referees throughout the consideration process. The authors are responsible for anonymizing their manuscript accordingly (see manuscript submission). This peer review mode can be chosen by notifying the Handling Editor in the 'Comments to the Editor' box of the submission system.

Seismica aims to maintain communication between editors and authors throughout the publication process. This includes progress updates, explanation of any delays, and explanation and guidance around all decisions made about the paper. Editors aim to return a first decision within eight weeks after submission.

Authors need to provide the following files for a revised manuscript to be assessed by the handling editor:

• A detailed 'response-to-reviewers' document that states each separate point raised by each reviewer and the editor, followed by the authors' response, and a clear statement of the associated changes made to the manuscript where they are needed. Authors should respond to reviewer comments by making edits to the manuscript, and use the response letter to guide the editor to the changes or explain the rationale for a response to reviewer comments. Avoid duplication as much as possible to keep the response letter more streamlined (for example, by cross-referencing similar comments by different reviewers).
• A version of the revised manuscript clearly showing the in-line changes made to the manuscript. Ideally, deleted/edited text should be signified by strikethrough presentation, with new text in a different color.
• A cleaned-up version of the revised manuscript (showing no comments, strikethroughs, or tracked changes).

Seismica will normally expect a revised version of the manuscript, together with a rebuttal letter, to be submitted within 6 months of receiving the peer review comments. Authors should ensure that revisions to manuscripts are more than sufficient to answer the level of recommended changes to prevent multiple rounds of review/reviewer fatigue. The response letter should fully represent changes made to the manuscript. The response letter should not be terse or vague.

Authors should ensure that their response to reviews is respectful. Any personal or abusive attacks are unacceptable and will be escalated to an independent appeals committee and will be grounds for outright rejection by the editor. Politely pointing out that the reviewer is mistaken is, of course, okay. Please consult Seismica's Code of Conduct for more guidance.

Authors should be cautious of any implicitly biasing and racially/gender-specific coded language. To avoid misaddressing the reviewers and editors, we strongly recommend writing in a passive, gender-neutral style (e.g. "the reviewer says ..." rather than "he/she says"), especially if pronouns have not been provided.

Peer review reports and rebuttal letters will be published online alongside the published paper if the manuscript is accepted. Review reports will not include reviewers' names unless the reviewers chose to sign their review reports. If a manuscript is rejected, the process remains confidential, and reviewers' reports and authors' answers are not published.

For additional information on the review process at Seismica, please refer to the Editor Guidelines and Reviewer Guidelines.

Once an article has been accepted, Seismica will only publish the typeset, formatted version of the paper - not the pre-typeset postprint. We recommend that authors wishing to share unformatted accepted post-prints instead use repositories such as EarthArXiv. The authors are free (and encouraged) to share the typeset version of record on platforms like ResearchGate, institutional repositories, and personal websites. After acceptance, the corresponding author is responsible for the accuracy of all content in the manuscript, including co-authors' names, addresses, and affiliations.

Following acceptance, authors are requested to upload the manuscript using the Seismica template in Microsoft Word, OpenOffice, or LaTeX format (found on the Templates page) with figures included in the text, along with separate publication-ready figures in .png or .pdf format at a minimum of 300 dpi resolution. Any Supplemental Material should remain a separate file or files, not part of the article text, and does not need to be formatted using a template. Seismica will not typeset supplemental material. Manuscripts that do not conform to a Seismica template will be sent back to authors for correction, which will delay the publication.

Seismica provides templates in docx, odt, and tex formats for authors' convenience, but please note that a submission in docx or odt format will likely take several extra days in production while volunteers of the Standards & Copyediting Team convert the file into tex. Including tables in a docx or odt file will further delay production. Authors who want their article processed more rapidly are advised to use the tex template. More detailed advice on template usage and best practices for rapid publication is on the on the Templates page.