Near Surface Geophysics

Near Surface Geophysics

Announcements

EAGE acknowledges the use of generative AI tools, like ChatGPT, Bard, etc, in research publications, books, articles and abstracts. However, some concerns have been raised about these tools and therefore EAGE has some rules in place. Refer to the EAGE statement on AI generated content for papers for more details.

In accordance with the statement from the EAGE board on the war inflicted by the Russian Federation on Ukraine, we are sorry to say that EAGE won't accept any submissions coming from Russian based entities. This includes EAGE events and all EAGE journals. Russian individuals, however, are welcome to submit at personal title.

Near Surface Geophysics is published in online-only format effective with the 2022 volume. This is a proactive move towards reducing the environmental impact caused by the production and distribution of printed journal copies and will allow the journal to invest in further innovation, digital development and sustainability measures. Published articles will continue to be disseminated quickly through the journal’s broad network of indexing services, including ISI, MEDLINE and Scopus. Articles will also continue to be discoverable through popular search engines such as Google. All colour images will now be reproduced digitally and published free of charge.

Author Guidelines

Announcement - Online Publication from 2022

Sections

1. SUBMISSION

Authors should kindly note that submission implies that the content has not been published or submitted for publication elsewhere except as a brief abstract in the proceedings of a scientific meeting or symposium.

New submissions should be made via the Research Exchange submission portal https://wiley.atyponrex.com/journal/NSG

Should your manuscript proceed to the revision stage, you will be directed to make your revisions via the same submission portal. You may check the status of your submission at anytime by logging on to submission.wiley.com and clicking the “My Submissions” button. For technical help with the submission system, please review our FAQs or contact [email protected].

Data Protection

By submitting a manuscript to or reviewing for this publication, your name, email address, and affiliation, and other contact details the publication might require, will be used for the regular operations of the publication, including, when necessary, sharing with the publisher (Wiley) and partners for production and publication. The publication and the publisher recognize the importance of protecting the personal information collected from users in the operation of these services, and have practices in place to ensure that steps are taken to maintain the security, integrity, and privacy of the personal data collected and processed. You can learn more here.

Data Sharing and Data Accessibility

Please review Wiley’s policy here. This journal expects data sharing.
Near Surface Geophysics recognizes the many benefits of archiving research data. Near Surface Geophysics expects you to archive all the data from which your published results are derived in a public repository. The repository that you choose should offer you guaranteed preservation (see the registry of research data repositories at https://www.re3data.org/) and should help you make it findable, accessible, interoperable, and re-useable, according to FAIR Data Principles (https://www.force11.org/group/fairgroup/fairprinciples). All accepted manuscripts are required to publish a data availability statement to confirm the presence or absence of shared data. If you have shared data, this statement will describe how the data can be accessed, and include a persistent identifier (e.g., a DOI for the data, or an accession number) from the repository where you shared the data. Authors will be required to confirm adherence to the policy. If you cannot share the data described in your manuscript, for example for legal or ethical reasons, or do not intend to share the data then you must provide the appropriate data availability statement. Near Surface Geophysics notes that FAIR data sharing allows for access to shared data under restrictions (e.g., to protect confidential or proprietary information) but notes that the FAIR principles encourage you to share data in ways that are as open as possible (but that can be as closed as necessary). Sample statements are available here. If published, all statements will be placed in the heading of your manuscript.

Preprint Policy

Near Surface Geophysics will consider for review articles previously available as preprints. Authors may also post the submitted version of a manuscript to a preprint server at any time. Authors are requested to update any pre-publication versions with a link to the final published article.

Refer and Transfer Program

Wiley believes that no valuable research should go unshared. This journal participates in Wiley’s Refer & Transfer program. If your manuscript is not accepted, you may receive a recommendation to transfer your manuscript to another suitable Wiley journal, either through a referral from the journal’s editor or through our Transfer Desk Assistant.

2. AIMS AND SCOPE

Near Surface Geophysics is an international journal for the publication of research and development in geophysics applied to the near surface. It places emphasis on geological, hydrogeological, geotechnical, environmental, engineering, mining, archaeological, agricultural and other applications of geophysics as well as physical soil and rock properties. Geophysical and geoscientific case histories with innovative use of geophysical techniques are welcome, which may include improvements on instrumentation, measurements, data acquisition and processing, modelling, inversion, interpretation, project management and multidisciplinary use. The papers should also be understandable to those who use geophysical data but are not necessarily geophysicists.

3. MANUSCRIPT CATEGORIES AND REQUIREMENTS

Original Papers - concentrate on reporting original research results representing a significant progress or innovative case studies contributing to new useful knowledge in geophysics applied to the near surface. The impact of the presented results should be significant. Excessive references to commercial products or services may result in a revision request or rejection of the paper. For a typical manuscript, the number of words is 4000-5000 (excluding title page, abstract, references, figure captions and figures/tables) and the number of images (figures, photos and/or tables) is between 6 and 10. As exceptions, longer or shorter manuscripts will be considered.
Comprehensive Reviews - critical reviews of the literature, including systematic reviews and meta-analyses.
Special Issues and Special Sections on topics of interest are also regularly published.

4. PREPARING THE SUBMISSION

Manuscripts must be written in English and should ideally be submitted as a Word file. They should be typed double-spaced on A4 pages with wide margins (3 cm), preferably in Times New Roman (font size 12 pt). The pages and the lines must be numbered.

Excessive references to commercial products or services may result in a revision request or rejection of the paper.

Cover Letters

Cover letters are not mandatory; however, they may be supplied at the author’s discretion.

Parts of the Manuscript

The manuscript should be submitted in separate files: main text file including all figures and figure captions; separate files with high-quality figures only (one filer per figure).

Main Text File

The text file should be presented in the following order:

A short informative title containing the major key words. The title should not contain abbreviations (see Wiley's best practice SEO tips);
A short running title of less than 50 characters;
The full names of the authors;
The authors institutional affiliations where the work was conducted, with a footnote for the author’s present address if different from where the work was conducted;
Acknowledgments;
Abstract and keywords;
Data Availability Statement;
Main text (consisting of introduction, methods, results, discussion, conclusion);
References;
Tables (each table complete with title and footnotes);
Figures;
Figure legends;
Appendices (if relevant).

Figures and supporting information should also be supplied as additional files. Sections and subsections should be clearly headed (but not numbered). Leave extra space between the end of a section and the heading of the following section.

Authorship

Please refer to the journal's Authorship policy in the Editorial Policies and Ethical Considerations section for details on author listing eligibility.

Acknowledgments

Contributions from anyone who does not meet the criteria for authorship should be listed, with permission from the contributor, in an Acknowledgments section. Financial and material support should also be mentioned. Thanks to anonymous reviewers are not appropriate. Conflict of Interest Statement Authors will be asked to provide a conflict of interest statement during the submission process. For details on what to include in this section, see the 'Conflict of Interest' section in the Editorial Policies and Ethical Considerations section below. Submitting authors should ensure they liaise with all co-authors to confirm agreement with the final statement.

Wiley's Author Name Change Policy

In cases where authors wish to change their name following publication, Wiley will update and republish the paper and redeliver the updated metadata to indexing services. Our editorial and production teams will use discretion in recognizing that name changes may be of a sensitive and private nature for various reasons including (but not limited to) alignment with gender identity, or as a result of marriage, divorce, or religious conversion. Accordingly, to protect the author’s privacy, we will not publish a correction notice to the paper, and we will not notify co-authors of the change. Authors should contact the journal’s Editorial Office with their name change request.

Abstract

Please provide an abstract of no more than 300 words containing the major keywords. The abstract should be only one paragraph with no indentation. Special attention should be paid to the preparation of the abstract, because the abstract is the most widely read part of the article. The abstract should be self-contained. The abstract should be understandable to a wide audience. The abstract must not simply list the topics covered in the paper, but must briefly state the scope/impact, the problem statement, the principal objectives of the research, briefly describe with justification the key methods used, summarize the results, and give the principal conclusions highlighting new findings/developments. It should not include speculation or material that is not in the main document. No references, figures, tables, or equations are allowed in an abstract. Do not use new terminology in an abstract unless it is defined or is well known from prior publications.

Keywords

Please provide two to five keywords selected from the following list: 2D, 3D, airborne EM, amplitude, aquifer, archaeology, archaeogeophysics, attenuation, complex conductivity, conductivity, chargeability, cone-penetration-test, data acquisition, data processing, density, dielectric properties, dielectrics, drainage, electrical, electrical resistivity tomography, electrode, electromagnetic, embankment, engineering, environmental, ERT, faults, filtering, finite-difference, finite-element, foundation, fracture, frequency, geohazard, geophone, georadar, geotechnical, geothermics, GPR, gravity, ground-penetrating radar, groundwater, heterogeneity, H/V spectral ratio, hydrogeology, hydrogeophysics, imaging, induced polarization, integration, interpretation, inversion, IP, landslide, magnetic, MASW, migration, modelling, near-surface, non-destructive, nuclear-magnetic-resonance, permeability, phase, pollution, porosity, potential field, reflection, refraction, resistivity, seismic, shallow marine, shallow subsurface, sinkhole, site characterization, site effect, soil, stiffness, storage, surface wave, S-wave, TEM, tomography, transient, traveltime, tunnel, uncertainty, variability, velocity, water saturation, waveform, waves.

Main Text

The journal uses British spelling; however, authors may submit using either British or US spelling, as spelling of accepted papers is converted during the production process.
Footnotes to the text are not allowed and any such material should be incorporated into the text as parenthetical matter.
The introduction section should provide sufficient background information to understand the context and significance of the problem. It presents the nature and scope of the addressed problem, a review of the strictly pertinent, previously published literature, the motivation and objectives, leading to a very brief outline of the sections to follow.
The methodology used in the work should be described in sufficient detail, referring to previous publications whenever necessary.
The results section should contain application of the presented methodology. This may include justification, description, results and data analyses of synthetic experiments or modelling, laboratory tests, and/or field experiments, preferably presented with graphical illustrations and tables. It is important to be selective when presenting the results. Redundancy should be avoided. Results of minor variations on the main experiment should be summarized rather than included. Details appearing in figure captions and table heads should not be repeated in the text. The focus should be on the innovative aspects of the work and newly derived results insights.
Advantages, limitations, further analyses and implications, and future prospects of the presented method and the illustrated results should be detailed in the discussion. Agreements and disagreements with previously published work should also be discussed here.
The conclusion section should summarize in a systematic manner the main inferences derived from the presented work and not be a repetition of the results. The merits and limitations, the significance and the novelty, and future implications should be briefly presented at the end. The conclusion should not include figures, tables, equations, or reference citations.

References

In the text refer to the author's last name(s) and year of publication in parentheses and. Examples: Brucksaw (1954), Morton and Ober (1998), (Brucksaw 1954; Morton and Ober 1998).

All references cited in the text should be listed in the Reference section at the end of the paper.

References with three authors are given in full at first mention; et al. thereafter. References with four or more authors are always et al.

If an author cited has had two or more works published during the same year, the reference, both in the text and in the reference list, should be identified by a lower case letter like a and b after the date to distinguish the works. Examples: Gelchinsky et al. (1999a,b), (Gelchinsky et al. 1999a,b).

References to articles in periodicals should include: author's name(s) and initials cited, year of publication, title of paper, full journal name, volume, first and last page number and doi link.

Example: Koefoed, O., (1967) Units in geophysical prospecting. Geophysical Prospecting 15, 1-6. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2478.1967.tb01768.x

References to articles in periodicals with alphanumeric page numbers should include the issue number in parentheses.

Example: Stavrev, P., Reid, A.B., (2007) Degrees of homogeneity of potential fields and structural indices of Euler deconvolution. Geophysics 71, (1), L1-L12.

References to books should include: author's name(s) and initials cited, year of publication, title of book, volume and page number (if appropriate), and publisher.

Example: Chui, C.K., (1992) An Introduction to Wavelets. Academic Press.

Manuscripts based on conference papers

Authors presenting papers in the Near Surface Geoscience meeting of EAGE are encouraged to submit full paper manuscripts for consideration for publication in Near Surface Geophysics. These submissions should be journal-quality versions of their work with fresh expressions of the ideas, additional insights, data and illustrations, rather than a duplication of the conference abstract. Excessive overlap with the conference abstract may result in a revision-request or rejection of the paper. Information about the initial paper presentation must accompany the submission. These manuscripts will go through the regular review process of the journal.

Tables

Tables should be self-contained and complement, not duplicate, information contained in the text. They should be supplied as editable files, not pasted as images. Legends should be concise but comprehensive - the table, legend, and footnotes must be understandable without reference to the text. All abbreviations must be defined in footnotes. Footnote symbols: †, ‡, §, ¶, should be used (in that order) and *, **, *** should be reserved for P-values. Statistical measures such as SD or SEM should be identified in the headings.

Figure Legends

Legends should be concise but comprehensive - the figure and its legend must be understandable without reference to the text. Include definitions of any symbols used and define/explain all abbreviations and units of measurement.

Figures

Although authors are encouraged to send the highest-quality figures possible, for peer-review purposes, a wide variety of formats, sizes, and resolutions are accepted. Click here for the basic figure requirements for figures submitted with manuscripts for initial peer review, as well as the more detailed post-acceptance figure requirements.

Color figures.

Figures submitted in colour may be reproduced in colour online and in the printed version free of charge. Please note, however, that it is preferable that line figures (e.g. graphs and charts) are supplied in black and white so that they are legible if printed by a reader from the online version in black and white.

Appendices

Appendices will be published after the references. For submission they should be supplied as separate files but referred to in the text.

Supporting Information

Supporting information is information that is not essential to the article, but provides greater depth and background. It is hosted online and appears without editing or typesetting. It may include tables, figures, videos, datasets, etc.

Click here for Wiley's FAQs on supporting information.

Note: if data, scripts, or other artefacts used to generate the analyses presented in the paper are available via a publicly available data repository, authors should include a reference to the location of the material within their paper.

General Style Points

The following points provide general advice on formatting and style.

Abbreviations: In general, terms should not be abbreviated unless they are used repeatedly and the abbreviation is helpful to the reader. Initially, use the word in full, followed by the abbreviation in parentheses. Thereafter use the abbreviation only.
Equations: Equations should be numbered sequentially with Arabic numerals. All equations should be numbered regardless of whether or not they are referred to in the text. Do not provide equations as images, but typed in Math type (using Times new roman, 12 pnt.).
Units of measurement: Measurements should be given in SI or SI-derived units. Visit the Bureau International des Poids et Mesures (BIPM) website for more information about SI units.
Numbers: Numbers under 10 are spelt out, except for: measurements with a unit (8mmol/l); age (6 weeks old), or lists with other numbers (11 dogs, 9 cats, 4 gerbils).
Trade Names: Chemical substances should be referred to by the generic name only. Trade names should not be used.
Trade Marks: The manuscript should be free of trademarks (such as ™, © or ®)

Wiley Author Resources

Article Preparation Support

Wiley Editing Services offers expert help with English Language Editing, as well as translation, manuscript formatting, figure illustration, figure formatting, and graphical abstract design – so you can submit your manuscript with confidence.

Also, check out our resources for Preparing Your Article for general guidance about writing and preparing your manuscript.

5. EDITORIAL POLICIES AND ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS

Peer Review and Acceptance

The acceptance criteria for all papers are the quality and originality of the research and its significance to journal readership. Papers will only be sent to review if the Editor-in-Chief determines that the paper meets the appropriate quality and relevance requirements.

Wiley's policy on the confidentiality of the review process is available here.

Research Reporting Guidelines

Accurate and complete reporting enables readers to fully appraise research, replicate it, and use it. Authors are encouraged to adhere to recognised research reporting standards. We also encourage authors to refer to and follow guidelines from:

Conflict of Interest

The journal requires that all authors disclose any potential sources of conflict of interest. Any interest or relationship, financial or otherwise that might be perceived as influencing an author's objectivity is considered a potential source of conflict of interest. These must be disclosed when directly relevant or directly related to the work that the authors describe in their manuscript. Potential sources of conflict of interest include, but are not limited to: patent or stock ownership, membership of a company board of directors, membership of an advisory board or committee for a company, and consultancy for or receipt of speaker's fees from a company. The existence of a conflict of interest does not preclude publication. If the authors have no conflict of interest to declare, they must also state this at submission. It is the responsibility of the corresponding author to review this policy with all authors and collectively to disclose with the submission ALL pertinent commercial and other relationships.

Funding

Authors should list all funding sources in the Acknowledgments section. Authors are responsible for the accuracy of their funder designation. If in doubt, please check the Open Funder Registry for the correct nomenclature: https://www.crossref.org/services/funder-registry/

Authorship

All listed authors should have contributed to the manuscript substantially and have agreed to the final submitted version.

Data Sharing and Data Accessibility

The journal encourages authors to share the data and other artefacts supporting the results in the paper by archiving it in an appropriate public repository. Authors should include a data accessibility statement, including a link to the repository they have used, in order that this statement can be published alongside their paper.

Publication Ethics

This journal is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). Note this journal uses iThenticate's CrossCheck software to detect instances of overlapping and similar text in submitted manuscripts. Read Wiley's Top 10 Publishing Ethics Tips for Authors here. Wiley's Publication Ethics Guidelines can be found here.

In particular, authors are reminded that any of the following are considered to be serious breaches of scientific ethics, which will result in the immediate rejection of their paper: (a) submitting a paper to more than one journal at the same time, (b) plagiarism, including self-plagiarism, (c) personal attacks directed at referees, editors or other authors. All submitted manuscripts to Near Surface Geophysics are processed by a plagiarism-detection tool. Using an author's own previously published work without appropriate citation is unacceptable. Even though the author wrote the material, the copyright could be held by the publisher.

ORCID

As part of the journal's commitment to supporting authors at every step of the publishing process, the journal encourages the submitting author (only) to provide an ORCID iD when submitting a manuscript. This takes around 2 minutes to complete. Find more information here.

6. AUTHOR LICENSING

If a paper is accepted for publication, the author identified as the formal corresponding author will receive an email prompting them to log in to Author Services, where via the Wiley Author Licensing Service (WALS) they will be required to complete a copyright license agreement on behalf of all authors of the paper.

Authors may choose to publish under the terms of the journal's standard copyright agreement, or OnlineOpen under the terms of a Creative Commons License.

Standard re-use and licensing rights vary by journal. Note that certain funders mandate a particular type of CC license be used. This journal offers a choice of Creative Commons License.

Self-Archiving Definitions and Policies: Note that the journal's standard copyright agreement allows for self-archiving of different versions of the article under specific conditions. Please click here for more detailed information about self-archiving definitions and policies.

Open Access fees: Authors who choose to publish using OnlineOpen will be charged a fee. A list of Article Publication Charges for Wiley journals is available here.

Funder Open Access: Please click here for more information on Wiley's compliance with specific Funder Open Access Policies.

7. PUBLICATION PROCESS AFTER ACCEPTANCE

Accepted Article Received in Production

When an accepted article is received by Wiley's production team, the corresponding author will receive an email asking them to login or register with Wiley Author Services. The author will be asked to sign a publication license at this point.

Accepted Articles

The journal offers Wiley's Accepted Articles service for all manuscripts. This service ensures that accepted 'in press' manuscripts are published online shortly after acceptance, prior to copy-editing or typesetting. Accepted Articles are published online a few days after final acceptance, appear in PDF format only, and are given a Digital Object Identifier (DOI), which allows them to be cited and tracked. After publication of the final version article (the article of record), the DOI remains valid and can still be used to cite and access the article.

Proofs

Once the paper is typeset, the author will receive an email notification with full instructions on how to provide proof corrections.

Please note that the author is responsible for all statements made in their work, including changes made during the editorial process - authors should check proofs carefully. Note that proofs should be returned within 48 hours from receipt of first proof.

Publication Charges

Page Charges: The journal does not apply any page charges.

Early View

The journal offers rapid publication via Wiley's Early View service. Early View(Online Version of Record) articles are published on Wiley Online Library before inclusion in an issue. Note there may be a delay after corrections are received before the article appears online, as Editors also need to review proofs. Once the article is published on Early View, no further changes to the article are possible. The Early View article is fully citable and carries an online publication date and DOI for citations.

8. POST PUBLICATION

Access and Sharing When the article is published online:

The author receives an email alert (if requested).
The link to the published article can be shared through social media.
The author will have free access to the paper (after accepting the Terms & Conditions of use, they can view the article).
For non-open access articles, the corresponding author and co-authors can nominate up to ten colleagues to receive a publication alert and free online access to the article.

Promoting the Article

Wiley Editing Services offers professional video, design, and writing services to create shareable video abstracts, infographics, conference posters, lay summaries, and research news stories for your research – so you can help your research get the attention it deserves.

Measuring the Impact of an Article

Wiley also helps authors measure the impact of their research through specialist partnerships with Kudos and Altmetric.

9. EDITORIAL OFFICE CONTACT DETAILS

Contact the journal's Editorial Assistant at [email protected].

Author Guidelines updated 19 July 2022