Guidelines for Authors

1.   Article types

Acque Sotterranee - Italian Journal of Groundwater publishes open-access and no-fee contributions (papers and technical reports, technical notes, news, column essay) in English or Italian.

The Scientific Papers and the Review articles are blind peer-reviewed original contributions. The appropriate manuscript length is normally of about 5000 to 7000 words.

The Technical note is a not peer-reviewed (and as such not-indexed in SCOPUS database) brief contribution (in Italian or English). The appropriate length for this type of contribution is about 2500 words.

The Column essay is a not peer-reviewed contribution (and as such not-indexed in SCOPUS database) by invitation only. This kind of contribution (in Italian or English) cannot exceed 1600 words including title, references and maximum 2 figures or tables.

Authors whose native language is not English are kindly invited to have their manuscript checked by a language editing service, or by an English mother-tongue colleague prior to submission. Please, ensure that your work is written in correct English before submission.

An Italian translation of Title, Abstract, key words and figure/table captions is always necessary in any kind of contribution. In the case of non-Italian native speakers, the Editorial Board will assist the authors with the Italian translation.

Manuscript will be carefully scrutinized for evidence of plagiarism, duplication and data manipulation. In particular, images will be carefully examined for any indication of intentional improper modification.

The Corresponding Author must submit the manuscript online-only through our Manuscript Submission System:

https://www.acquesotterranee.net/index.php/acque/about/submissions

1.1 Peer-review policy

All manuscripts submitted to our journal as paper or technical report undergo a deep double blind review and are critically assessed by external and/or in-house experts in accordance with the principles of peer review, which are fundamental to the scientific publication process and the dissemination of sound science. Each paper is first assigned by the Editors-in-Chief to an Editor. The Editor has experience and knowledge in the field discussed in the manuscript. The first step of manuscript selection takes place entirely in-house and has two major objectives: i) to check the article's appropriateness for our journal readership; ii) to define the manuscript's priority ranking relative to other manuscripts under consideration, since the number of papers that the journal receives is greater than those it can publish. If a manuscript does not receive a sufficiently high priority score to warrant publication, the editors will proceed with a quick rejection. The remaining articles are reviewed by at least two external referees (second step or classical peer review).

1.2 Authorship and Contributorship

All persons designated as authors should qualify for authorship. Each author should have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for the content. Authorship credit should only be based on substantial contributions to: i) conception and design, or analysis and interpretation of data, and to ii) drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content; and on iii) final approval of the version to be published; and iv) agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work. Those who do not meet all four criteria should not be listed as authors, but they should be acknowledged. Those whose contributions do not justify authorship may be acknowledged individually or together as a group under a single heading.

1.3 Protection of Human Subjects and Animals in Research

When reporting experiments, authors should verify whether the procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation (institutional and national) and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2013. Guidance on animal research ethics is available from the World Medical Association (2016 revision). When reporting experiments on ecosystems involving non-native species, Authors are bound to ensure compliance with the institutional and national guide for the preservation of native biodiversity.

 

2.   Manuscript preparation

2.1 Scientific Papers

This kind of contribution is double-blind review. Papers and Technical reports normally consist of about 5000 to 7000 words.

A Scientific Paper usually encompasses (in example): i) new scientific results of general interest, ii) innovative techniques to evaluate the hydrogeology of an area, or iii) regional or subject-oriented reviews; iv) the application of conventional techniques to evaluate the hydrogeology of an area, or v) the hydrogeology of an area.

For not-Italian authors the translation of abstract, keywords and captions will be made by the editorial staff of the journal.

2.2 Submission checklist

Please, before submitting for review, use this list to carry out a final check of your files. Check the following files have been prepared for submission:

  • FILE 1: Cover letter, including:
  • reasons on why your manuscript should be published in the Acque Sotterranee - Italian Journal of Groundwater,
  • names and contacts of four potential reviewers
  • FILE 2: Title page, including:
  • Paper title in English
  • List of authors and affiliations
  • Abstract
  • Keywords
  • FILE 3: Manuscript including:
  • Paper Title
  • Abstract
  • Riassunto (only for Italian authors)
  • Keywords
  • Manuscript
  • All figures (include relevant captions)
  • All tables (including titles, description, footnotes)

Every manuscript to be submitted under consideration, as our journal applies double blind review, should be submitted without the names and affiliations of the authors. As such we require this information in a separate file that is the "Title Page" (FILE 2).

Please before submission check:

  • Manuscript has been 'spell checked' and 'grammar checked';
  • All figure and table citations in the text match the files provided
  • All references mentioned in the Reference List are cited in the text, and viceversa
  • Permission has been obtained for use of copyrighted material from other sources (including the Internet)
  • Journal submission guidelines have been reviewed and followed.
  • FILE 4: Declaration of competing interests
  • The corresponding author, on behalf of all the authors of a submission, must disclose any financial and personal relationships with other people or organizations that could inappropriately influence (bias) the submitted work.
  • All authors, including those without competing interests to declare, should provide the relevant information to the corresponding author (which, where relevant, may specify they have nothing to declare). or “The authors declare no competing interest”.
  • FILE 5: Supplementary files (if applicable)

2.3 Cover letter

We require you submit a cover letter that includes the following information:

  • an explanation of why your manuscript should be published in our journal;
  • confirmation that all authors have approved the manuscript for submission;
  • confirmation that the content of the manuscript has not been published, or submitted for publication elsewhere;
  • if you are submitting a manuscript to a particular special issue, please refer to its specific name in your covering letter;
  • the name and contacts (e mail) of four potential reviewers.

2.4 Title page

Authors must submit a Title page (.doc/.docx format) as a separated file containing:

  • Title of the paper in English and Italian
  • Authors and their affiliation and e-mail (also indicating the Corresponding Author)
  • English abstract and Riassunto (in Italian)
  • Keywords and Parole chiave (in Italian).

Please, take extra-care to Title, Keywords and Abstract in English because they will be used for indexing the paper.

 

2.5 General instructions on the Manuscript preparation

2.5.1 Text formatting: Manuscript

The complete manuscript in .doc or .docx format (see structure details further) must be submitted without authors' names and affiliations. The file text has to include figures at low resolution and tables already well positioned within the text, including also progressive numbered captions. Main file cannot exceed 8 MB and must be submitted using the following formatting:

  • Font: 11-point Arial
  • Justified paragraph
  • Double spaced
  • Use the automatic page numbering and continuous line numbering functions
  • Save your Manuscript file in .doc or .docx format, without reporting Authors' name, neither their affiliation
  • Title and Abstract should appear in English first and then in Italian (even for papers written in Italian).

Tables: they must be entered in the manuscript text as a .doc file, no image, to facilitate the review and pagination.

Figures: they must be uploaded as separated single files after the revision process and the acceptation of the manuscript. Figures at high resolution: min 300 dpi if color, min 600 dpi if black and white, considering the final dimension of the image.

2.5.2 Manuscript content (main file)

Please check that neither Authors' names nor their affiliation are reported within the manuscript.

Main text must include sections (and sub section if needed) as in the following example:

Title: concise (in English and Italian)

Abstract: the abstract must be in English. Suggested length of the abstract is 300 words. The abstract cannot contain abbreviations and references. It must synthetize the whole contribution: introduction, materials and methods, results and conclusions.

Riassunto: Italian authors must translate the Abstract into Italian following the same instructions for the Abstract. The author must declare that any submitted translation is consistent with the original. In the case of non-Italian native speakers, the Editorial Board will assist the authors with the Italian translation.

Keywords: From three to six keywords have to be specified. Key words must be in English followed by the Parole chiave, in Italian. In the case of non-Italian native speakers, the Editorial Board will assist the authors with the Italian translation. If the contribution is related to a particular area, we suggest to include the name of the location and country in the Keywords, if not yet in the Title. Examples of keywords (in English and Italian):

Keywords : Pianura Padana, Groundwater, GIS, Nitrate, Hydrogeochemical modelling.

Parole chiave: Pianura Padana, acque sotterranee, GIS, nitrati, modelli idrogeochimici.

Introduction: in this section the aim of the study and a short review of literature about the manuscript’s topics (with a considerable number of citations) must be defined.

Material and Methods: in this section all information about the available data and the used methodology must be reported ensuring the reproducibility of the described experience. Please include in this section the presentation of the case study area/site under investigation section, if any. This section in Review articles will be replaced by the Review method section.

Results: in this section the results of the study must be described. Data should be presented in a synthetic way also using figures and tables. In Review articles this section may be omitted.

Discussion: in this section, results are normally interpreted and compared with other cases of literature cited in the introduction, appropriately introduced in this section. A combined Results and Discussion section is often appropriate.

Conclusions: in this section, aim and results of the study, limitations and further works are briefly resumed. The authors should also consider the scientific relevance of their work and the impacts of their findings.

Acknowledgements: Authors may use this section to acknowledge support or contribution related to the work.

Funding source: List funding sources for the presented study. In example:

This work was supported by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs [grant numbers xxxx, yyyy].

Declaration of competing interest: This is prepared by the editorial staff following the submitted declaration of competing interests.

Author contributions: Please describe the role each author had in the research/paper preparation. In example:

Collection of data, aa; data processing, aa; interpretation of results, aa, xx, bb; writing-original draft preparation, cc; writing-review and editing, cc, aa, bb; visualization, aa and cc; supervision, zz; project administration, cc. All authors have read and agreed to the final version of the manuscript.

References: only works (published or accepted for publication) cited in the manuscript should be listed in the references list, and all references must be cited within the text. Personal communications must be included just in the text [surname (max. 2 allowed, otherwise use surname of first author et al.), affiliation (of first author or of Institution), personal communication, year]. Do not use footnotes for references.

In-text references

Citations must be reported always in English format, even if the paper is in Italian, using the author's surname and year in brackets according to the APA 7th international standard (https://libguides.usc.edu/ld.php?content_id=51859788).

 

The citations must be listed alphabetically and then by date. See the following cases as example:

  • …saline intrusion has a substantial impact on coastal aquifers (Custodio, 2002)…
  • …as reported by Petitta et al. (2018), groundwater role is frequently underestimated …
  • …model calibration is a crucial activity (Spitz & Moreno, 1996)…
  • …groundwater contamination by nitrates (Almasri, 2007; Canter, 2019; Levallois et al., 1998; Nas & Berktay, 1996).
  •  

If two or more citations by the same author(s) are listed, they must be combined as: (Llamas et al., 2006; 2015; Chilton, 1999; 2003).

If two or more papers published by the same author(s) in the same year are listed, they must be distinguished by adding a, b, c, etc. after the publication year: (Gremaud & Goldscheider, 2010a; 2010b; Aureli et al., 2008a; 2008b). The corresponding letter must also appear with the date in the reference list.

 

2.5.3 References style

The references list style should be composed according to the APA 7th international standard (https://libguides.usc.edu/ld.php?content_id=51859788).

When a DOI  - digital object identifier- (for journal articles), or ISBN -International Standard Book Number (for books)- is present please add it at the end of the reference as in the following examples.

Should the cited reference be not in English, an English translation of the original title of the reference is always needed in italics, after the original one. In case of use of automatic bibliographic systems, the translated article title should be inserted in the system or in the text manually.

 

Examples:

Journal paper

In text citation:

(Custodio, 2002)

Reference:

Custodio, E. (2002). Aquifer overexploitation: what does it mean?. Hydrogeology journal, 10(2), 254-277. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10040-002-0188-6

In text citation:

(Petitta et al., 2018)

Reference:

Petitta, M., Bodo, B., Cseko, A., Del Bon, A., Fernandez, I., Alibrandi, C. M. G., ... & van der Keur, P. (2018). The KINDRA project: sharing and evaluating groundwater research and knowledge in Europe.  Acque Sotterranee - Italian Journal of Groundwater, 7(1), 7-16. https://doi.org/10.7343/as-2018-324

In text citation:

(Hergert & Kimmel, 2022)

Reference:

Hergert, F., & Kimmel, M. (2022). Bildung von Senkungsmulden in Lösslehm durch subterrane Erosion. Formation of sinkholes in loess loam caused by subsurface erosion. Grundwasser, 27, 213–218. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00767-022-00515-4

Book

In text citation:

(Spitz & Moreno, 1996)

Reference:

Spitz, K., & Moreno, J. (1996). A practical guide to groundwater and solute transport modeling. 461 pp. John Wiley and sons. ISBN : 9780471136873

 

Book chapter

In text citation:

(Canter, 2019)

Reference:

Canter, L. W. (2019). Fundamental Aspects of Nitrates in Groundwater. In Nitrates in Groundwater (pp. 1-18). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.1201/9780203745793

 

Online resource

The full URL and the date when the reference was last accessed should be given.

In text citation:

(Neri, 2008)

Reference:

Neri, M. (2008). Groundwater in ancient times. Royal Society of Chemistry. Available online at: http://www.rsc.org/dose/groundwater - last accessed 10/10/2016

In text citation:

(Acque Sotterranee – Italian Journal of Groundwater, 2022)

Reference:

Acque Sotterranee – Italian Journal of Groundwater (2022) Guidelines for Authors. Available online at: https://acquesotterranee.net/index.php/acque/guide - last accessed 3/5/2022

2.5.4 Tables

They must be entered in the manuscript text as .doc (i.e., not as images) to facilitate the review and pagination.

  • File name of every table must be Tab_n, such: Tab_2.doc.
  • Tables must be numbered using Arabic numbers. Tables must be cited within the text consecutively.
  • Every table field must be in English. Every table needs a caption (to be reported in the.doc file) written in English (and the relative Italian translation – for non Italian authors the Editorial Team will work this out) which explains the table content. Captions must start with the table number and the text such as:
    3 - Indexes used to define intrinsic vulnerability classes. Indici utilizzati per definire le classi di vulnerabilità intrinseca.
  • In case of published data in tables, please cite the reference at the end of captions.
  • The decimal separator is a point and not a comma.

2.5.5 Figures

  • Figures must be submitted, as separated files after the revision process and the acceptation of the manuscript, in the original file format (at least 300 dpi or greater that the scale of reproduction).
  • File name of every figure must be Fig_n, such: Fig_2.jpg. Figures must be numbered using Arabic numbers.
  • Every figure needs a caption reported in the main file text written in (and the relative Italian translation – for non Italian authors the Editorial Team will work this out), which explains the figure content. Captions must start with the figure number and the text such as:
    1 - Geographical setting of the investigated area. Assetto geografico dell'area investigata.
  • Parts of figures must be indicated by lowercase letters (a,b,c, ...) and reported in the caption.
  • Figures must be cited within the text consecutively.
  • Text written in figures must be in English.
  • When a case study is presented, a geographical map (with scale bar and North arrow) of the study area, with reference of the state, and area of the Country is necessary.
  • For maps the text should be in English, if it is possible. The same holds true for legends in maps.
  • For graphs the axis units are needed.
  • The decimal separator is a point and not a comma.

The reproduction of previous published Figures and Tables is allowed following the provision of a written authorization for their use, if they undergo to copyright laws. 

The authorization has to be required to the owner of the copyright (Editors, Authors or Authorities). The Authors of the submitted manuscript must quote the Author of the original work/Figure/Table and provide the authorization before the publication of the manuscript.

Such step is necessary for the reproduction of previous published Figures and Tables, both as in their entire or partial form.

2.5.6 Equations

For writing equations, please use an Equation editor.

 

 

 

3.   Technical note

This kind of contribution is not peer reviewed, but it is quality-checked by one of the members of the Editorial Board. This section is just for those contributions reporting a brief experience on technical issues, hydrogeological professional expertise as drilling, well construction, withdrawal techniques application, groundwater sampling, monitoring, remediation and low enthalpy plant design, etc.

Text formatting of Technical Notes:

  • Font: 11-point Arial
  • Justified paragraph
  • Double line spacing
  • Use the automatic page numbering and continuous line numbering functions
  • Save your file in .doc or .docx format
  • File text has to include figures at low resolution and tables already well positioned within the text, including also progressive numbered captions.

Title: should appear first in English and then in Italian (even for notes written in Italian).

Text structure: if possible, the structure of the text of the technical notes should be organized as follows, but on the basis of the argument, bearing in mind that what follows may not always indicate a chapter of its own, but also, and only a brief reference in the text.

Introduction: very brief introduction of the problem

Setting of the study area: mainly focusing on hydrogeological setting

Description: technical description of the experience

References: (optional) must follow the standards listed in these Guidelines

Approximately 2500 words and up to Maximum 4 figures or tables are allowed for this kind of contribution. The manuscript must follow the standards listed in this Guideline. The figures or tables captions must be in English and Italian. They must have captions in Italian and English.

 

 

4.   Column essay

These invited-only contributions are not peer-reviewed, but are quality-checked by one of the members of the Editorial Board.

Text formatting of Column Essay

  • Font: 11-point Arial
  • Justified paragraph
  • Double line spacing
  • Use the automatic page numbering and continuous line numbering functions
  • Save your file in .doc or .docx format

Title: should appear in English first  and then in Italian (even for notes written in Italian).

Keywords: From three to six keywords have to be specified. Key words must be in English followed by the Italian Parole chiave. See section 2.5.2 for details.

Approximately 1600 words and 2 figures are highly recommended.

 

Support

In case of problems with the submission process, please contact: emanuela.fusinato@pagepress.org

Corresponding authors are invited to carefully check their manuscript before the first submission and in the following review process in order to avoid many corrections.