ETJPE mock-up paper

[Mccoy]

I have made up a mock paper to be submitted to ETJPE and sent it to SRE. He should post it soon in his website.
SRE if you can please correct my mistake on the original, I reversed the consonants and the heading reads EJTPE instead of ETJPE.
I made a few tests, and this one, once printed, was pleasant enough to me: no-frills, reasonably esthetical and sure practical. Also I finalized the guidelines draft.
I just modified, in some places substantially, some guidelines sent by BigH.
Of course the experiment is open to whatever remarks you wish to express, one thing I insist upon, though, is not to adopt too a diminuished font size. It often happened I had to give up reading something because it was too tiny and didn't have reading glasses at hand. If necessary, I had to do it all the same, but with no fun whatsoever. That's simply bad marketing strategy, reducing the number of potential (and satisfied) readers.
I didn't insert backgrounds, an unobstrusive grid background for short notes sounds good, and a scroll-type background for notes-of-wisdom sounds definitely great!
It remains to be seen if there are more problems related to .pdf conversion, but at least the subject draft makes up a starting point to decide.
Best to you all

 

[BigH]

Thanks - looking forward to seeing it.

 

[SlideRuleEra]

Mccoy - Good looking documents. I made the corrections that you mentioned and have posted them on a non-public portion of my website at this link

http://www.slideruleera.net/Draft-index-ETJ.html

The draft documents are on the "Peer Review & Publications Requirements" page.

I made the conversion from Word (.doc) format to Adobe (.pdf) and have posted both. The .pdf looks good to me.

http://www.SlideRuleEra.net

 

[Panars]

Looks good. Here are my comments.

1. Item 7 in the guidelines should be "Headings".

2. Paper size 8.5x11 is shorter than A4, so the page number gets clipped off when the paper is printed on 8.5x11. Perhaps change the footing margin to 3/4" (20 mm).
(why is the page number in a frame?)

3. In the guidelines it says the title should be centered, but in the example it is full-justified. My choice would be centered.

 

[Mccoy]

Panars,

about your comments:

1. Thanks for the correction, "holdings" instead of "headings" is an error I dragged from the previously existing draft

2. Sorry but I was totally unaware that other sheet sizes were routinely used, I've always only used the A4 size which is 210 X 297 mm^2. The 8.5" X 11" converts into 215.9 X 279.4 mm^2, hence is wider and shorter. If 3/4" as a footing margin is good for 8.5X11, it's also OK for A4, I just printed a test page. Unless there are more paper formats around, adopting a 3/4" footing margin would do. The framed page number is probably printer-code-related or something like that: in my hardcopy it appears unframed.

3.That was a personal glitch. Wether to center or not the title is an issue open to debate. I went back and checked a few proceedings and journals, but I realized there is no fixed rule: centered, justified, off-centered, you name it.
You all can visually compare the difference (centered versus justified) and express an opinion.

 

[BigH]

Gentlemen - sorry but I'll be off, likely for a while in transit to Indonesia. I'll touch base with each as soon as I can. We also now need to develop some papers for the first edition. I'll try to push a few people to do it. Great work McCoy. I'll listen to some Tyner for you later on the plane, hopefully!
to one and all.

 

[Mccoy]

BigH, let us know also where exactly you'll be based, I'm curious. But I think few places are going to be more remote than the Tarim Basin in China, where I take it you've been before India.
One more topic which is probably necessary to add to the guidelines is measure units: should it be consistent units, or just metrics? I confess anytime I come across something like PSF, KIPS, TSF (you never know which kind of tons they are) I cringe (as maybe colleagues from the USA cringe at the sight of KPa, MPa, mm, cm...). If pure metrics appears to be restrictive, conversion factors should probably be indicated in a specific paragraph (for example, after "aknowledgments").

 

[BigH]

I personally would like to suggest the following:

1/ Authors who are using SI (System Internationale) are to use SI units (i.e., metres for length, kN/m3 for density, kPa (kN/m2), MPa (MK/m2) - and not N/mm2 - for pressure and kN for force. No tonnes or kg/cm2, etc.

2/ Authors who choose to use English units may use psf, ksf or tsf (short tons) for pressure, pcf for density and feet (in decimal form) for length, and kips or tons for force.

Authors should have choice to use units of their choice. But, no dual units. Have a listing at the end.

More later.

 

[Mccoy]

I'm updating the guidelines list with the suggestions coming from this forum.
I realized the "paper lenght" voice has no indication other than "page numbers lower right".
What would be a reasonable treshold for paper lenght (in # of pages)?

 

[BigH]

Sorry - I am using an internet cafe site and ran out of time on my previous post. To summarize, let the author decide the units - but we should ensure that they are standard units - we don't want pressure in bars, etc. I would suggest the ones I've given. There should be, somewhere, perhaps as a table in front of the journal - like ASCE of "approximate" conversions - e.g., 1 kPa = 20 psf (although it is, I think 20.88, really) - or that 10 kN = 1 ton. The author can always, on graphs, use a dual value on an axis - say in psf and kN. For formulas derived where units make a difference due to "constants" in the formula, he can write both formulas in his paper.

Papers, I would think should be in the order of 10 to 12 pages or so as a maximum size. Of course, this should be only a guideline - if he has some dynamite stuff, he can make a longer paper. But longer papers have a tendency, in my view, of taking too much time to wade through and we want the practising engineer to be able to "use" what he reads without delay.

Take care one and all. The new assignment will be on the island of Sulawesi - haven't found the location of the town we will be in yet, though.

 

[Mccoy]

Ah, well, the destination is not the remotest part of the nation, I figured it might have been Irian Jaya = cannibals or Kalimantan = headhunters!
But even Sulawesi = active volcanoes should be pretty much out of the touristique routes, as far as I remember.

I'll try to put things together in a few days, and send a revised version of the guidelines to SREra.

 

[MRM]

Hello! I've been away for a while, as you probably can tell. The format on SRE's site looks good. I like the single units idea with some standard conversion table within the document. Have we played with some examples of the short note background and the note-of-wisdom background?

 

[Mccoy]

MRM,
I didn't experiment with grid backgrounds yet simply because don't know if there is such a setting in Word, and how to find it.
Ditto for the scroll background. Maybe, once the final formats have been selected, we should put some empty document on SRE's site, pre-set with those backgrounds, as a sort of blueprint on which to write?

 

[BigH]

The backgrounds you can add to the document after you transfer into .pdf - at least with Acrobat. Any background can be added as a "watermark".

Am settling in (no pun intended). Area is beautiful - they even have a golf course that looks quite nice. Housing is good but I'm a tad nervous on taking the driving test - never drove a stick with a left hand shift before. More later.

We need to get some papers together. I'll think of some ideas and see who we can cop to do some; others helping would be appreciated. I think that Mccoy might be able to help in Europe - there is a lot of ground treatment stuff that is done there rather routinely that hasn't caught on yet in North America.

Best to all - BigH

 

[Mccoy]

Sorry BigH,
but ground treatment is totally out of my turf. Can try and ask people anyway. Didn't know old Europe is ahead in that.
My area is the one where the Marchetti dilatometer was developed (I met Marchetti only a couple of times, I'm familiar with one of his former students, though, who now owns a drilling firm). If dilatometer is of interest, I can ask him if he can come up with some original material.
I didn't know about watermark backgrounds in .pdf; sounds easy to apply, I'll make a test.

 

[BigH]

I think that would be good. As soon as I can get into my "computer" from before I will look up a couple of European engineers that we might solicit from. I will try to put together a small technical note that I've tried to sit down and write for years for the first edition. Anyone out there ready to write a paper? or technical note? let us know.

 

[Mccoy]

I'm sending to SRE a revised version of the guidelines.
Corrections are based upon the suggestions received.
Please also do not hesitate to advise linguistic corrections, since English is not my mother tongue.

 

[SlideRuleEra]

Have posted McCoy's "Draft Guidelines - Version 2" in .doc format on my site. For convenience, here is the link to this non-public section

http://www.slideruleera.net/Draft-index-ETJ.html

http://www.SlideRuleEra.net