Brief Scope: American Mineralogist is an international journal that publishes mineralogical papers of broad interest to the geoscience and materials science community. Manuscripts whose implications are of only regional interest or those that do not have a significant, broad scientific impact on the readership will not be accepted for publication by American Mineralogist. In your cover letter, authors must explain the importance of their research, and why their results would be of interest to an international audience. For more information on Am Min’s Scope & Mission, click here.

Ethical collecting and collaboration. American Mineralogist expects authors performing research involving sample collection to acquire the samples responsibly and abide by all rules and regulations of sample collection and export for those localities in which they work. This is particularly true for samples that may have cultural or historical significance. Furthermore, we expect that local people will be involved in the research and hope that local scientists’ contributions to the research are sufficient for co-authorship on papers emerging from the research. If the contributions do not rise to the level of co-authorship American Mineralogist expects those contributions to be explicitly stated in the “Acknowledgments” section of the manuscript.

Guidelines Importance: These guidelines explain the American Mineralogist publication procedures, standardized units, and style in brief. We have organized the information in helpful sections to make reference easier. Remember editors, reviewers, and associate editors are all volunteers and vital to maintaining our standards of quality; therefore, make the most of their time and yours by following these instructions. Failure to adhere to these guidelines may delay submission, review, or production of your paper.

Submit manuscripts to our online submission site (OSS). Note that updating your contact info on this website does not "transfer" to the MSA membership database (contact the MSA Business Office to update your info).

Brief OA info: Submissions that are accepted must not be already published online on any preprint archive, unless the authors are willing and intend for the paper to be Open Access. Click here if open access/open archive is desired or needed. All Open Access/Archive fees must be paid before publication, at the proof stage. MSA is the publisher; we do not belong to De Gruyer’s Rightslink although we are pleased they are a disturber of the journal. We are not at this time a transformative journal.

Quick links to further info:

• Manuscript Format
• Manuscript Types
• Tables
• Figures
• References
• Units & Symbols
• Nomenclature
• Experimental Documentation Requirements
• CIF Info
• Deposit Info
• Online Submission Info
• New Submission Checklist (PDF)
• Revised Submission Checklist (PDF)
• Open Access/Open Archive Info
• Page Proofs

IMPORTANT: Authorship Statement

* Note: Although LaTex or Tex files can be uploaded to the peer review system, accepted manuscripts must be provided as doc(x) or .rtf files. Likewise, WordPerfect format files are not permitted.

# Express option: want to upload just one file? You can insert tables and figures at the end of the text in a .doc or .rtf file and thus upload just one Article File. But if accepted (or on revision), then each image must be supplied upon request as a proper high-resolution figure file. (A whole PDF could be uploaded as well, but unless you put line numbers on it, it will not have line numbers. Please do try to include line numbers.)

The parts of the manuscript should appear in this order:

1. Title

2. Word Count
3. Authors and affiliations
4. Abstract and keywords
5. Body of paper with...
6. Implications section (required)
7. Acknowledgments, if desired
8. References cited list
9. List of figure captions
10. Appendix text (if any), Footnote, Deposit Items (text)

11. Tables
12. Figures

Titles should be concise, but descriptive and indicate the basic importance of the paper.

Word Count: Above the title to the right or left, please put your word count, e.g. "Word Count: 7899". If near or over 10,000 words please explain the need in the cover letter.

Author list: To facilitate web discoverability and protect authorship, it is generally recommended that authors spell out first names rather than use initials only-- unless for some reason you are known and established in the literature by your initials.

Affiliations: Please give complete addresses, including postal codes. Add a footnote for authors who have moved (to give a Present address).

Abstract guidelines: Should be 250-800 words (max!); concise; capture broad interest; indicate why results are significant; indicate suitability to an international audience; include important numbers/ranges; followed by list of keywords. Cut and paste your full abstract on OSS. More information here.

You want to entice people who skim abstracts to click on your paper. These are the basic components of a good abstract (adjust these to fit your paper):

1. Motivation/problem statement: Why do we care about the problem? What practical, scientific, theoretical or other gap is your research filling?
2. Methods/procedure/approach: What did you actually do to get your results?
3. Results/findings/product: As a result of completing the above procedure, what did you learn?
4. (1) Conclusion/Implications: What are the larger implications of your findings, especially for the problem/gap identified in 1 above? 

General text details:

• Use American (not British) spelling conventions.
• Be sure to use proper super- and subscripts, not raised or lowered type.
• Use boldface and italic fonts appropriately and consistently. In general, variables are italic; vectors are bold. Molar concentrations are plain M (not italic).
• Close up percent signs with terms, i.e., wt%, mol%, etc.
• Terms from "Latin" such as "et al." and "ab initio" are kept in Roman/plain style and not italic. The exception is biological species names.
• Spell out the units in the text if not accompanied by a unit. Example: several inches vs. 23 cm.
• A zero should precede the decimal point for values less than one, e.g., 0.25 rather than ".25". (Decimal points are periods, never commas.)
• Polytypes (letters) are italic (e.g., 2M1) but site labels are plain, e.g., M1, O(2).
• Note that "micro", "pseudo" and "multi" are not words by themselves, combine with words or hyphenate, e.g., microanalysis, pseudo-Voigt.
• Do not use the word "micron" in text, figures, or tables. Use micrometer or μm.
• Other abbreviations (plain type); cf. = compare; e.g., = for example; et al. = and others; etc. = and other things; i.e., = that is; p./pp. = page(s); vs. = versus.

Special characters/notations:

• Use the "Symbol" font for greek letters as much as possible. Note: Greek letters are already "special" and should not be further italicized.
• Do not use handmade characters such as lowercase, superscript "o" for the degree sign.
• DO use Equation Editor for display equations that are complicated; this is not necessary for small inline expressions, such as stacked characters or overbars. If X0i is your expression, we will know to stack it. Or you can say {note to typesetting} if you are concerned about notation at any point, for example {note to typesetting, these minus signs are overbars on top of the 1}.
• Many common notations are familiar to our staff, i.e., fO2 (2 would be subscript to O) and overbars. When we aren't sure, we leave things as they appear on the submitted manuscript. Feel free to include notes to typesetting to help us out.

Equations:

• Use Word Equation Editor or MathType to create display equations.
• If you refer to an equation in the text, use display equations (set off from the text) and number them sequentially, like this "(1)". Simple equations can be typed by hand rather than using a special tool.
• Also use display equations when labels (such as mineral names) have to be lined up beneath formulas, with a note to typesetting if necessary.
• For equations that are not referred to by number, keep them in line with the text as much as possible.

Acknowledgments: The acknowledgments section should be brief but inclusive. Please double check grant numbers and spelling of personal and company names. Do not use titles, such as Dr.

Only three orders of headings may be used. Note if subheadings are used, there must be at least two (e.g., two or more 2nd/3rd-order headings under a superior-order heading; a single 2nd/3rd-order heading by itself is not allowed). Descriptions follow and are also examples:

Authors should follow their "Discussion" section, with a final section titled "Implications". This section should be forward-looking; it is intended to provide authors with the opportunity to place their results into a broader context. That context should highlight the importance of the work, and emphasize relevance to and beyond the sub-discipline. This section is not to be confused with a "Conclusions" section, which like the abstract only summarizes the paper (such sections will be cut, regardless of how they are titled). The Editors will look to the Implications section to help judge whether a paper should be highlighted, and to judge whether a paper is suitable for the journal. We also advise authors to report Implications within the Abstract.

Precision of measurement may be indicated as 1.781 ± 0.002, if 0.002 represents a subjective estimate of the measurement error. Where sufficient data permit calculation of the estimated standard deviation (e.s.d.), indicate it with parentheses e.g., 1.781(2) and 1.781(11) indicate an e.s.d. of 0.002 and 0.011, respectively. Only significant digits shall be given for the observed value, i.e., e.s.d. values in parentheses should be given as single or double digit integers. American Mineralogist as a policy requests that all measured values have to be accompanied by some indication on the uncertainty. Ideally this should be a properly calculated standard uncertainty. Only in exceptional cases, if scarcity of sample or some other special circumstances prohibit any even subjective estimation of an uncertainty, can this rule be waived.