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Valuing the ReaderGuidelines for BAMS Authors The American Meteorological Society is a diverse organization of oceanographers and meteorologists and hydrologists, bioscientists and computer scientists, researchers and practitioners, students and teachers, doctors and lawyers, lawmakers and citizens, retirees and teenagers. BAMS, the Society’s membership magazine, makes every effort to communicate with them all.We represent the members of the Society—to one another as well as to the world. Most of our members speak a common scientific language by virtue of education, but their access to information is often limited by the specialized scientific jargon developed within specialties. BAMS aims to cut through this Babel of scientific “dialects,” thus making your article accessible to people outside the Society who may influence or sponsor your work, or benefit from your ideas. To make this possible, BAMS is edited for the readers’ sake. Authors need to translate their specialist’s understanding into general information and to persuade readers to read. Articles thus need to be sufficiently urgent, important, interesting, and/or rewarding for readers. In BAMS, colleagues examine professional and scientific issues, discuss common concerns and interests, exchange ideas and opinions, and analyze trends and achievements. BAMS is a common ground for sponsors, providers, and customers; for hydrologists, oceanographers, meteorologists, and other scientists. It facilitates exchange between otherwise isolated communities of researchers, practitioners, educators, students, entrepreneurs, and broadcasters. BAMS publishes
BAMS also emphasizes
Send the Proposal First Manuscripts submitted without a prior proposal often experience review delays or extensive revisions. A proposal consists of a single abstract of 250 words or less, written in language appropriate for an informed layperson, plus an additional paragraph of 250 words or less explaining
Form Follows Function: Article Categories The basic categories of submissions for formal peer-review are
Several other sections are open to submissions: In Box, Map Room, Nowcast, Meeting Summaries, 45 Beacon, Readings, and Letters to the Editor. In Box Articles The “innovative” aspect means we are looking for descriptions of initiatives, projects, products, and ideas that are breaking new ground for our sciences and services. In Box is a good place to quickly and broadly sketch for readers what’s new and unusual about what you are doing or proposing to do. The “insight” aspect extends to essays that explore new directions for our field, trends, markets, priorities, and accomplishments, or that describe projects and products with an emphasis on what has been learned from this work (and what readers can learn from their work). In this way In Box should inspire by example. Whether a topic is more appropriate for the Articles section or the In Box section is a matter of editorial judgment. We encourage authors to discuss this with the Editors of BAMS at the proposal stage. Map Room Nowcast Articles Nowcast is flexible, but basic types of articles are
None of these contributions use formal citations/references or include abstracts. See a recent issue of BAMS for further examples. Nowcast is also a space for you to be creative…anything that sheds light on our sciences, our professions, our goals, our natural world, including the visual arts. Contact mgillespie@ametsoc.org or dgershman@ametsoc.org for specific guidelines about submitting graphics, photos, or art. Otherwise, for guidelines about contributions to various standing sections of Nowcast, including News and Notes, Chapter Channel, Technology, and Product Announcements,, contact the BAMS News Editors (Matt Gillespie, at mgillespie@ametsoc.org, and Rachel Thomas-Medwid, at rthomas@ametsoc.org). Meeting Summaries BAMS restructured its Meeting Summary guidelines as of January 2006. The new guidelines allow us to process meeting summaries faster than ever before and make them more attractive to a wide audience. We now promise a fast-track production cycle (from submission to publication) for meeting summaries: qualifying articles submitted by January 15, for instance, will be published no later than the April issue. Meeting Summaries are basically news articles and should be treated with the same regard for timeliness and news value as our Nowcast section. Authors should thus focus only on the newsworthy findings, recommendations, and transactions from their meetings. Articles that qualify for the Meetings Summary section will be edited and published by BAMS within three months of submission once the article meets these basic criteria:
Authors who wish to supplement these meeting summaries with documents, tables, or figures may submit material for up to the equivalent of three pages in BAMS, which can be published online only in our freely accessible permanent archive. This allows for approximately 2,000 words of online text, or the equivalent space in tables and figures. Publication of supplemental material may delay publication of the meeting summary by up to one month. Two types of articles that commonly have been submitted to the Meeting Summary section should now be directed to other sections of BAMS. These are: 1. Informal review articles surveying a discipline or pressing challenge. These now must be written for either our Articles section or our In Box section. A mini-review of the state of a field, with recommendations from a group of authors stemming from a workshop or meeting, will often fit very well within the peer-reviewed In Box section, which focuses on insights and innovations in our sciences. 2. Group statements and reports, often in the form of recommendations, short white-papers, or other opinion essays or documents—usually with a polemical slant and representing a consensus of participants or a broad selection of diverse views, all formulated at a meeting or workshop. Again, this can usually be written as an essay—or collection of short essays—highly suitable for the BAMS In Box section or Articles section, depending on technical or other considerations. In some cases, after discussion with the BAMS Editor-in-Chief during the proposal process, the authors may choose to write a fast-track report for the Meeting Summary section and also submit a related essay or review for publication in another section of BAMS.
Readings Letters to the Editor Less Is More: Some Writing Tips Appendices and supplements. An appendix is appropriate for technical methods that aren’t fully necessary for all readers to absorb. Also, sometimes an appendix is a good space for quantifying work while the main text makes more qualitative arguments.
Sidebars. Specialized content in articles distracts readers from basic, new, surprising, or otherwise memorable content—sometimes it can be moved to a sidebar more readily than to a footnote, appendix, or supplement. Often this specialized material is in the traditional “methods” section of a paper. We generally think of anything up to about 500 words as appropriate for a sidebar; most articles should not have more than two sidebars. A very short aside for specialists, on the other hand, might be best placed as a footnote. Captions. There is no need to duplicate caption information in the main text. For instance, information about how to read a figure should be in captions, not in the main text. And there is no better place to discuss the implications of a graphic than in the caption itself, unless those implications are central to the main point of the article. Think of captions and images as a type of sidebar or footnote. Equations. Equations are essential and often an elegant way to communicate science. However, sometimes well-known equations are best left to references—rather than reprint them in the article. Also, if your paper is highly mathematical, consider running it as a BAMS supplement (electronically on our Web archive), and craft a shorter, less detailed version in print. Accessible style. We ask for “active voice” wherever possible—passive voice is wordy and harder to read. Keep your paragraphs under 150 words when possible. Wherever possible, give a good example; readers retain interesting specifics. When you quantify something, remember that not all readers have a sense of small and large in all types of units and all situations—so make enlightening comparisons to help readers understand. Ultimately, a good BAMS article should be readily accessible—at least in the main text and captions—by a second-year college student majoring in meteorology or oceanography. Achieve a linear flow. Make reading a linear experience by achieving a logical, compelling flow. We’d rather you trim some detail on some points, in order to focus on just a few essential ideas, and thus give more space to establishing the context and logical flow. The best way to make such a flow an inexorable momentum that sweeps readers to your concluding paragraphs is to make one, overarching point early, and organize everything else in the article in such a way that it argues (pro or con) and amplifies that point. Everything inessential to that flow is good material for an appendix, a sidebar, and/or electronic supplement. Eliminate Redundancy. Redundancy is a sign of poor flow. The standard article format—Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion, Conclusion—encourages repetition. So does a good lecture format, in which you tell students what you’re going to tell them, tell them, and then tell them what you told them. This works with a captive audience, but not with readers. If you find yourself referring to a previous section or later section of the article, or if you find yourself summarizing a previous point, you will be dissuading a reader from continuing. They’ll jump ahead…or quit reading. Make sure your conclusions take the next logical step in the article, not repeat what has already been said. Nor should the introductory pages be an abstract or summary of the following pages. In the opening of the article, you should establish a context, and give readers a reason to continue by making your one good point worth explaining in the following paragraphs. Avoid Lists. We prefer exposition and discourage long bulleted and numbered sections. Your article shouldn’t look like an outline or a list. Lists lack the context, transition, and relationships that are necessary for flow and retention of information. Subheads. Multiple levels of subheads are another form of outlining that discourage necessary context and flow. Subheads can become a crutch in place of an agile transition, so limit your subheads to one or two levels. Also in BAMS, we never start an article with a subhead. Formatting Your Manuscript
All text must be double-spaced. Hard copies of copyright forms (downloadable from the AMS Web site)—signed by each author—must be received by mail at AMS Headquarters in Boston (c/o Melissa Fernau) in order for the article to proceed to peer review. Send Your Manuscript Electronically Revisions are normally expected from authors within a month of the initial decision. Authors may be granted longer revision periods for complex revisions, or may be granted an extension by the editor in charge of the manuscript in appropriate circumstances. BAMS production generally requires up to five months from acceptance to printing.
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