BAMS: Submission Guidelines

Valuing the Reader
Guidelines 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.

What We Publish
BAMS covers the development of the atmospheric, oceanic, and related sciences in research and education; the informed and innovative application of these sciences in public service and private enterprise; and the use of these sciences in making a prosperous, healthy, and sustainable world.

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

• descriptions of field programs
• descriptions of research and operational organizations/initiatives
• reviews of scientific research
• new findings, results, and theories of general interest
• history of science
• discussions of research priorities
• discussions of scientific issues of general interest
• discussions of trends/priorities in forecasting and other operational fields
• educational issues
• meeting/workshop summaries (see special guidelines below)
• commentaries on issues of a wide variety

BAMS also emphasizes

• applications of scientific knowledge for public benefit
• innovative commercial ventures
• analyses of emerging markets for sciences and related services
• multidisciplinary research and services
• societal impacts of atmospheric, oceanic, and hydrologic processes
• mitigation and prevention of adverse impacts of those processes
• education—K–12 as well as continuing education

BAMS Editor-in-Chief
American Meteorological Society
45 Beacon St.
Boston, MA 02108-3693

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

• the intended purpose of the article
• the factors making the article timely, important, or interesting for a general BAMS readership
• the expected length of the article
• the type and approximate number of illustrations to be included, and if they require unusual production considerations
• the anticipated use of electronic supplements in the BAMS online archive.

Form Follows Function: Article Categories
Consider the best way to communicate your message, even if this means proposing a nontraditional article for BAMS.

The basic categories of submissions for formal peer-review are

• Articles of less than 7,500 words (not including abstract and references, and with some allowance for additional online supplements). We expect the average article in this category to be about 4,500 words; authors should justify additional length in their proposals.

• Essays based on experience, opinion, and qualitative or quantitative analysis. These peer-reviewed contributions are designated within the Articles section as a “Forum” selection. They should be less than 5,000 words and average about 3,500 words.

• Comments and Replies making technical points about papers published in BAMS. The Comment should be less than 1,500 words and the author of the originating article is offered an opportunity to write a Reply. Nontechnical comments are often published as Letters to the Editor.

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
In Box was specifically created for short articles that inform and analyze in a relatively brief, informal mode. The “In” refers to “innovative” and “insight,” not just “informative” and “informal.”

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.
 
In Box articles are limited to roughly 2,500 words and use citations sparingly. The citations are not the linked citation–reference system used by AMS journals and articles in BAMS. In Box (and Nowcast—see below) use a brief bibliographical listing called “For Further Reading,” rather than references and citations.

Map Room
Particularly targeted toward operational meteorologists as well as up-and-coming forecasters and students, Map Room features interesting forecast situations in relatively straightforward language. The discussion is akin to a “map room” briefing with good visual documentation, with discussion of models where necessary, but with emphasis primarily on concepts: lessons learned or applications of science to everyday or unusual weather scenarios. The articles are usually less than 2,000 words and use the minimal, informal citation style used in In Box. A brief list of “For Further Reading” takes the place of “References” and citations—usually with less than 10 entries.

Nowcast Articles
Nowcast is the magazine within the magazine covering developments in the atmospheric and related sciences and services. Nowcast articles are notable for their simplicity, urgency, or importance, and will often promote ideas and good work by being informative. Unlike the sections defined above, Nowcast is not, strictly speaking, a peer-reviewed section, though the editors will sometimes choose to conduct a peer review for an article, anyway.

Nowcast is flexible, but basic types of articles are

• Opinion columns—a shorter form for expressing insights, these essays can be anywhere from 600 words on up to about 1,500
• Q-and-A with interesting people in the field
• Educational programs and ideas, often with ample illustration (usually 500–1,500 words)
• Newsworthy trends and research efforts, broadly applicable methods, interesting applications and products, usually between 500 and 2,000 words
• On the Web, for short contributions (generally less than 500 words) about Web pages of interest to members

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
Reports on recent meetings and workshops should synthesize topics, helping readers navigate the meeting’s main focus. Don’t try to cover every presentation or outline the agenda; focus on what was accomplished rather than on what was intended. The best meeting summaries read like a letter from a participant to a colleague who couldn’t attend.

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:

1. Requisite copyright forms are in hand for all authors upon submission.
2. The article is no more than 1,500 words (roughly two full pages in BAMS) and is in a readable, double-spaced electronic document uploaded to the AMS Author Resource Center (http://www.ametsoc.org/au_upload/index.cfm). Authors must follow AMS style guidelines presented at the AMS Author Resource Center.
3. The article has demonstrated news value to the community—in particular, the meeting occurred no more than four months prior to submission of the manuscript.
4. The article may have no more than one table or figure printable within one-half page space in BAMS.
5. The article may not have an unreasonably large amount of special formatting required that may make reading or production awkward (for instance, no more than a third of the article should be in “bullet listing” format).
6. The authors must provide the name of at least one participant of the meeting or workshop—not including the authors—who has read the summary and verified the accuracy of the contents.
7. The deadline for submission is the 15th of each month. Submission by January 15 means publication no later than the April issue; by February 15 means publication no later than the May issue, etc.

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.

45 Beacon
For short articles about issues or projects directly related to the Society or membership in the Society, submit to the 45 Beacon section. This section includes articles about the conduct of professional meetings, announcements, various AMS programs such as the Broadcast Seal, journals, government relations, scholarships, and continuing education. Most of the articles in the section are written by AMS staff, or members involved in specific AMS committees and initiatives, but other submissions on AMS-relevant activities are welcome. For information on submitting Obituaries or content for About Our Members, contact the BAMS News Editors.

Readings
Authors interested in writing essays about books or publishing should contact the BAMS News Editor/Book Editor (Matt Gillespie at mgillespie@ametsoc.org). The Readings section also publishes reviews (by invitation) and book excerpts.

Letters to the Editor
Letters to the Editor are encouraged. They should be less than 500 words and can be submitted by e-mail to letterstotheeditor@ametsoc.org. Remember to include a city or affiliation with your name.

Less Is More: Some Writing Tips
Few people actually read long articles—they don’t have the time. We offer plenty of techniques to help you meet or better our intended average of 4,500 words in the Articles section. Intelligent use of appendices, supplements, sidebars, footnotes, and captions can be particularly helpful.

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.

• Similarly, the permanent online archive--easy to find through the AMS Web site—offers additional space for peer reviewed material, alongside the stored version of the printed article. Supplements should have strong relevance to the article, but offer an excellent avenue for going into detail and thus keeping the main text short and readable.
• An electronic supplement is also useful for large tables that might be unnecessary for the general reader.

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
Manuscripts submitted to BAMS follow the same formatting as manuscripts for the other AMS publications. This includes several sections, each of which begins at the top of a new page:

• Title page with authors listed and affiliations for all authors, plus contact information (mail, phone, e-mail) for the corresponding author
• Abstract of no more than 250 words
• Capsule—one sentence (less than 35 words) summing up the major point of the article. This isn’t meant to be a comprehensive summation of the contents, rather a pointed statement of the thrust of the article and if possible imply its value to the reader.
• Main Text, followed by Acknowledgments (Acknowledgments should be less than 200 words)
• References (see AMS Author’s Guide for style instructions)
• Figure and Table Captions
• Table (one per page, with no caption printed on the page)
• Figures (one per page, with no caption printed on the page)

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
Authors may submit paper copies or electronic files. Electronic files are strongly encouraged, and even if an article is submitted on paper via mail, authors may be asked to make electronic files available later to expedite print production.

Electronic submissions should be uploaded to the AMS Web site. See the Web site for specific instructions. We strongly encourage you to also send the text (without figures) in a Microsoft Word, WordPerfect, or text-only file as an e-mail attachment to editorinchief@ametsoc.org. This may also expedite review and production of the manuscript.

For paper submissions, send five copies of the manuscript to:

Editor-in-Chief
BAMS
American Meteorological Society
45 Beacon St.
Boston, MA 02108-3693

Receipt of your manuscript will be acknowledged. Thereafter you will be notified of which editor on the editorial board has taken charge of obtaining peer reviews for the manuscript. Further correspondence about the manuscript should be directed to that editor. Authors can expect an initial decision (accept, accept with revisions, reject) within 12 weeks of sending the article.

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.


Page Charges
BAMS encourages the use of color by authors and does not levy additional charges for color figures. All sections of BAMS to which authors may contribute, with the exception of "Letters," are subject to page charges and the author's institution is expected to honor these charges. So that all sectors of the Society can participate in publishing in BAMS, a low page charge is assessed for the first four printed pages. The higher page charges assessed for longer articles allow the charges associated with color printing to be spread among all authors so that color can be used generously in the publication. The page charges are
$100 per page for pages 1–4
$275 per page for pages 5–8
$385 per page for pages 9 and beyond
$50 per page for additional electronic supplementary material
Reprints are available at an additional charge. All articles published in BAMS become part of the collection on the AMS Journals Online. The BAMS portion of this online collection does not require a subscription and is open to all, providing even broader dissemination of the articles published in BAMS.