Author Guidelines
General Policy
Papers should be as concise as possible. They may include original results, applied and policy research data of national or international significance, current reviews, or discussions on techniques, research programs, organisations, information, or national and international policies in geoscience.
Submission of Papers
Only papers that have not been published elsewhere will be considered for publication. Authors must agree not to publish elsewhere a paper submitted and/or accepted. Originality detection services may be used to check your manuscript to verify its originality.
All papers will be subjected to review by two or more reviewers. Authors wishing to include published and unmodified figures or text passages are required to obtain permission from the copyright owner(s). Authors of English papers are strongly urged to have their manuscript edited for language before submission by a person whose first language is English.
The Editor reserves the right to reject all or any part of the paper submitted. The Geological Society of Malaysia assumes no responsibility for statements made by authors.
Preparation of Manuscript
The paper can be written in Bahasa Malaysia (Malay) or English. For English papers, use either British or American spelling but not a combination of both. The paper should be checked thoroughly for spelling and grammar. The manuscript must be prepared at 1.5 spacing in a single column on A4 paper size. All pages should be numbered. Length of paper should be between 3,000 and 10,000 words for the Bulletin, excluding abstract, references, tables and illustrations. Metric units should be used and all non-standard symbols, abbreviations and acronyms must be defined.
Title – Title must be informative and reflects the content of the paper. Title in Malay should include an English translation. It should be concise (less than 20 words). Avoid using abbreviation in the title.
Author’s Address – Affiliations, address and email of all authors must be provided. The addresses should be sufficient for correspondence.
Abstract – Abstract in Malay (optional for manuscript in English) and English, each in one paragraph and should not exceed 300 words. It should clearly identify the subject matter, results obtained, interpretations discussed and conclusions reached. The abstract should not contain any undefined abbreviations or references.
Keywords – Please include 4 to 8 keywords (or phrases) (including in Malay language for manuscript in Malay) that best describe the content of the manuscript.
Acknowledgements – Acknowledgements to reviewers and institutions or agencies must be included at the end of the text. All funding sources must be mentioned in this section and acknowledged accordingly.
Author Contributions – A statement of the roles played by each author, e.g. data analysis, experimental design is required.
Conflict of Interest – The Bulletin requires a declaration of any conflict of interest upon submission online. If the manuscript is published, conflict of interest information will be communicated in a statement in the published paper.
References –
In the text, references should be cited by author and year and listed chronologically (e.g. Smith, 1964; Jones et al., 1998; Smith & Tan, 2000). For both Malay and English paper, all references must be listed in English. Title of non-English articles should be translated to English. Where available, include Digital Object Identifier (DOI) and URLs for the references that have been provided.
To avoid excessive self-citation of their own work, authors are advised to limit self-citations to 15% of the total citations in the paper.
The list of references should only include articles cited in the text and in captions of figures/tables. The list should be arranged in alphabetical order. Please ensure that the reference list is complete and the bibliographical details are accurate. The references should be in the following manner:
Journal article:
Suntharalingam, T., 1968. Upper Palaeozoic stratigraphy of the area west of Kampar, Perak. Bulletin of the Geological Society of Malaysia, 1, 1-15.
Book:
Hutchison, C.S., 1989. Geological Evolution of South-east Asia. Clarendon Press, Oxford. 368 p.
Chapter of book and Symposium volume:
Hosking, K.F.G., 1973. Primary mineral deposits. In: Gobbett, D.J. & Hutchison, C.S. (Eds.), Geology of the Malay Peninsular (West Malaysia and Singapore). Wiley-Interscience, New York, 335-390.
Article in Malay:
Lim, C.H. & Mohd. Shafeea Leman, 1994. The occurrence of Lambir Formation in Ulu Bok Syncline, North Sarawak. Bulletin of the Geological Society of Malaysia, 35, 1-5. (in Malay with English abstract)
Online document:
Smith, J., 2019. Minerals and rocks are valuable natural resources. Minerals Web Society. http://minerals.org/articles/12/32/index. Accessed 20 July 2020.
Tables – Please use the table function in Word to insert tables. Do not submit tables as images. All tables should be cited in the text and numbered consecutively. Tables should have a concise title and a legend explaining any abbreviation or symbol used. Insert the caption at the top of each table and list all the captions at the end of the manuscript. The captions begin with the term Table followed by the number and a colon, all in bold. The text after the colon should be in regular font. Avoid excessive tabulation of data. Tabulated data may be included as Appendix or Supplementary Data.
Illustrations – Please make sure that all illustrations are useful, necessary and of good quality. Generally, a maximum of ten (10) illustrations (photographs, graphs and diagrams) are allowed and these should be cited in the text and numbered consecutively as Figures. The scales for maps and photomicrographs should be drawn on the figure and not given as a magnification. Illustrations should be drawn to fit and be legible at a maximum one full page of A4 size. High resolution illustrations, photographs, drawings, figures, and images shall be requested upon acceptance for publication.
Each figure should have a caption describing the figure accurately and concisely. Insert the caption after each figure and list all the captions at the end of the manuscript. The captions begin with the term Figure followed by the number and a colon, all in bold. The text after the colon should be in regular font.
Preferred Software –
- Text: Microsoft Word.
- Tables: Microsoft Word or Microsoft Excel.
- Illustrations – Vector Graphics: Adobe Illustrator (preferred), CorelDraw and Freehand. Final line thickness should be at least 0.5 point or 0.17 mm. For other software, please submit one copy in the native file format and export one copy as a PDF file with all fonts embedded and one copy as a high resolution TIFF or JPEG image.
- Photographs or bitmap (raster) images: Adobe Photoshop. Please save as TIFF or PSD files. Save/scan line art at 600 to 1200 dpi and greyscale figures at 300 to 600 dpi. High resolution JPEG, TIFF or GIF files from other sources are also acceptable. The resolution must be high enough for printing at 300 dpi.
- All illustrations, figures, and tables are placed within the text at the appropriate points, rather than at the end.
