Why publish with Thomas Telford and the Institution of Civil Engineers?

Profile - The Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE) has an international membership of over 70,000. Thomas Telford, as the publishing arm of ICE is the only publisher that brings you direct access to this readership base. Our journals are sold in large numbers all over the world and are subscribed to by most of the major international engineering libraries. Papers published with us are fully indexed by Google making your paper entirely visible. We will ensure that your work reaches the widest possible audience in print and on-line, through creative promotion and marketing, and through our constantly developing electronic initiatives.

Quality - our journals' reputation for quality is unsurpassed ensuring that the originality, authority and accuracy of your work will be fully recognised. Our refereeing procedures are fair and open, with the usual aim of helping authors develop and improve their work. We have been producing journals for over 160 years; this accumulated knowledge has resulted in journals of the highest quality.

Papers published within the suite of Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers are also eligible for prizes awarded by the ICE. A full list of the latest prize winners is held on the site.

Author services - we provide a rapid response service to all our authors, with dedicated support staff for each journal, and a point of contact throughout the refereeing and production processes. You will also benefit from author copies of your journal, and free offprints. Our aim, to ensure that the production process is as smooth as possible, is borne out by the high number of authors who publish with us again and again.

How to publish with Thomas Telford/ICE

Sample copies of each of the journals are available via the journal home page. Please look at these to try and assess whether your paper falls within our subject area first. This will also help to give you an idea of the kind of material we are publishing. The next step is to submit an abstract of 150-200 words to the journal secretary for the particular title you wish to publish in (see the Contact page for details). We will then contact you to help you take the process to the next stage and prepare your full paper.

Author guidelines

Click here for the full author guidelines in PDF format; these are also available on each journal’s home page. Please read these in full before preparing your paper. Click here for guidelines about preparing references; click here for a submission checklist; these documents are also available on each journal's homepage. There are some general guiding principles that should be taken into account when preparing your submission.

Text: The title of your paper should not exceed 8 words in length, if after acceptance your paper title is still too long the title will be edited by our team before you see your proofs (see “The publishing process” below). Your paper should be saved as a .rtf (Rich Text File format) file and the document should be named using the lead author surname. Your text should be double line spaced. Every figure or photograph must have a caption and must be cited in the paper. All references should have as much information as possible (at least enough so a reader can find the source information) and again must be cited in the text.

You should write an abstract of 150-200 words, which summarises the objectives, and conclusions of your paper. The abstract should not include references, figure citations or acronyms, but it should stand alone, and include the key words that will help promote your work. The abstract is very important as this is the primary source of reference for many search engines. It is also freely available to all users of our website, so it should be written with this in mind in order to draw readers in to your paper.

Please remember the journals (except Civil Engineering, Geosynthetics International and Structural Concrete) are printed in black and white and as such all material must be suitable for reproduction in black and white. Tints are not acceptable and cross-hatching or something similar must be used.

Cover photographs: Each of the suite of Proceedings journals carries a colour cover image. When submitting your paper please identify any good quality, high resolution colour photographs which could be used as the cover shot.

Copyright and originality: Copyright permission must have been sought for all submissions. It is your responsibility to have gained copyright permission for all material used in your paper. Thomas Telford and ICE will not take responsibility for copyright. Similarly, your submission must be original and must not have been published, or be under consideration elsewhere.

The review process: Your paper will assigned a unique reference number; this will be quoted in all correspondence from us. When contacting us with any queries regarding your paper please have the name of the journal it was submitted to and this reference number to hand as this will speed up the processing of your query.

Your paper will be sent to two referees from our list of experts. They will both prepare reports on your paper and grade whether it is acceptable for publication. You will be sent referees’ comments and may be asked to revise your paper. Please return your revisions as soon as you can as at this stage you are very close to acceptance. Your revisions will be sent to an assessor from the Editorial Panel who will make the final decision to accept or reject your paper. You will then be sent a letter from the journal secretary informing you of the Panel’s decision.

We will send you a decision on your paper within 100 days of submission (average for ICE journals). Whatever happens, we will do our best to keep you informed throughout the process.

The publishing process: After your paper has been accepted for publication it is received in the production department at Thomas Telford. The journal production editor will become your day-to-day contact until publication. Your paper will then go through the following stages:

• Copy-editing: a freelance copy-editor will edit your paper for house style and consistency. They will also raise author queries which will come back to you with your proofs.
• Typesetting: your paper will be set into the format in which it will appear in the journal, your artwork will be relabelled to our artwork font and proofs will be produced.
• Proofs: proofs will be sent to you and to a freelance proofreader. At this point you need to answer any copy-editing queries, replace any figures that are too poor quality and check your paper carefully. This is not the time to make substantial changes and charges may be made for excessive proof changes. We do not send revised proofs to authors. Please return your proof comments as soon as possible as this could make the difference between making the current issue and the next.
• Issue make up: according to our schedules, papers will be selected by the chairman of the editorial panel for publication in an issue and then the papers are collated to make the issue.
• Revises: this is the very last stage and any final queries must be answered very promptly at this stage as the issue is just days away from press.
• Printing and web release: as the files go to press we receive web files and once checked and approved the issue goes live on-line. At the same time email alerts are sent to those signed up to our mailing list, with the latest table of contents, and our partner agencies are made aware that the issue is available, to assure maximum exposure.

Offprints and reprints: When you are sent your proofs you will also be sent an offprint order form. The lead author of each paper will receive 25 free copies of the paper (offprints) to be shared among any co-authors. Additional copies can be ordered using the form. The lead author will also receive a copy of the journal for each of the co-authors and it is the lead author’s responsibility to distribute these. If you would like to buy additional copies these should be ordered when offprints are ordered to ensure the best price.