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SCA Proceedings

Purpose
The SCA Proceedings were established in 1988 to provide a publication outlet for papers presented at the Society's Annual Meetings. All papers presented at the Annual Meeting are eligible for publication, with the exception of those that have previously appeared in other publications. Thus, the Proceedings serve as a forum for all who participate in this annual celebration of California's rich and diverse past: archaeologists and Native Americans, avocationalists and professionals, professors and students, historians and prehistorians, and government staff and the public they serve. The Proceedings are published annually, thus ensuring prompt dissemination of research results. Beginning in 2009, the SCA Proceedings are published in electronic format on the SCA's webpage.


Responsibilities
The current Proceedings Committee and duties are as follows:

Committee Chair and Editor:
Don Laylander - (858) 486-1761; dlaylander@jps.net

Assistant Editors:
Sharon Waechter - sharon@farwestern.com
Martin D. Rosen - mrosen@dot.ca.gov
Shelly Davis-King - shellydk@frontiernet.net
Sherri Andrews - sandrews@asmaffiliates.com

All coordination with authors will be handled by the Editor. The Editor will use the list of presenters to broadcast (via e-mail) a call for submittals to all paper senior authors.


Submission of Papers
This year's deadline for submissions has been changed. All manuscripts must be submitted to the SCA Business Office no later than July 1, 2010. Submissions received after that date will be returned, unless prior arrangements have been made with the Editor.

Please submit one electronic copy, delivered via e-mail or on a CD, zip disk, or flash drive.

Draft papers, including all graphics and tables, should be submitted to the SCA Business Office.

Submissions should include titles; abstracts; names, affiliations, and contact information of the author(s); captions; and references cited.

On receipt of draft submissions, the Editor will confirm receipt via return e-mail, phone, FAX, or letter to the primary author, and also will confirm with the author that the submitted paper is substantively consistent with the paper presented at the Annual Meeting and that it has not appeared in another published forum. (Note that papers may appear in another forum after they have been published in the Proceedings.)


Schedule
The Editor will compile all submittals and reformat them, as needed, to meet style-guide provisions (see below). The Editor will then distribute electronic copies to the individual paper editors.

The editors will review and make comments on the electronic copy, then return the electronic copy with comments to the Editor.

The Editor will then revise the papers per the editors' comments, and produce versions for authors' review no later than October 1.


Editorial Policies
Individual papers are published without formal peer review, except as required by the Proceedings editors to meet style, grammatical, and graphical standards, and ensure conformance with the Society's By-Laws and Ethical Guidelines. Authors are responsible for accuracy of content, for attribution of citations and quotations, and for the legal right to publish any co-authored material. Authors must secure written permission for figures, tabular materials, or any other material protected by copyright law.

Primary authors must be members of the Society for California Archaeology in the year concurrent with presentation of the paper (unless authors participated in a symposium by special invitation).

Submitted papers must be substantively consistent with the paper presented at the Annual Meeting. The Proceedings will not publish papers that have appeared in the Society's Newsletter.

Maps and text should not identify the locations of archaeological sites that may be vulnerable to vandalism so precisely that vandals may be assisted in relocating them (for instance, more precisely than to the nearest 1 mi2 section).


Formatting Guidelines
These guidelines were revised February 3, 2010 and supersede all previous versions.

The editors of the Proceedings strive to maintain quality and professionalism in the publication. To meet that goal, we require that all authors follow the most recent style guide for American Antiquity (http://www.saa.org/Publications/StyleGuide/styframe.html), except where otherwise noted in these guidelines. If a submitted paper does not meet these guidelines, it may be returned to the author(s) for correction.

Manuscripts should not exceed 8,000 words and should include no more than eight graphics. Longer manuscripts may be accepted under certain circumstances, but we reserve the right to edit these to meet the word-count requirements. Please include full names, affiliations, and addresses for all author(s). The editors may contact authors for clarifications.

In addition to the American Antiquity style guide, authors are asked to follow these specific guidelines:

Text
  • Submit documents in Microsoft Word format.
  • Use no more than three ranked headings, as follows:
    • HEADING 1: CENTERED, CAPS, BOLD
    • Heading 2: Left Aligned, Bold
    • Heading 3: Left Aligned, Italics
  • Use consistent heading format throughout the document.
  • Designate a quotation longer than four typed lines by setting it off from the text with right and left indents.
  • Do not use footnotes. Endnotes should be indicated in the body text by sequential superscript Arabic numbers (1, 2, 3, etc.) and compiled at the end of the text.
  • The initial reference to a site should include the trinomial designation in parentheses. Site numbers should be state trinomials, when available. After the first use, it is not necessary to preface trinomials with CA-.
  • Use of metric units for measurements is preferred, but use of English units (mi., ft., in., etc.) is acceptable.
  • For decimal fractions, include a leading zero (e.g., "0.2 g", not ".2 g").
  • Trailing zeros should be used to indicate consistent levels of precision (e.g., "2.00 g, 0.01 g, and 0.70 g", not "2 g, 0.01 g, and 0.7 g," unless the precision of the different measurements is actually different).
Tables
  • Do not submit tables as image files.
  • Do not submit tables that use tabs to align text into columns.
  • Submit tables using the table feature in Microsoft Word.
  • All tables must have captions and must be cited somewhere in the text. Number the tables sequentially. Table captions should be in title case (e.g., Table 1. Radiocarbon Dates from Seven Sites in Owens Valley).
Figures
  • Refer to all maps, drawings, photos, and other graphics as "figures."
  • Submit all graphics as separate files, not embedded in a Word document.
  • For graphics, .jpg or .tif format is preferred. Resolution should be 150 dpi. Graphics may be in color or black-and-white.
  • All figures must have captions and must be cited somewhere in the text. Number the figures sequentially. Figure captions should be in sentence case (e.g., Figure 1. Radiocarbon dates from seven sites in Owens Valley).
References Cited
  • Use authors' and editors' full names, not merely initials, unless only the initials were used in the original publication.
  • For unpublished reports, it is sufficient to list the agency or company responsible for the report and the city in which it is located, without including information cocerning to whom the report was submitted or where it is on file.

Errata
Minor errors that are identified subsequent to initial publication of an article may be corrected by notifying the Editor of the required change. If the error has been identified by someone other than the article's author, the author will be notified by the Editor prior to posting the corrected version if the author's email address is on file with SCA. The corrected version will be annotated with the date of the change (e.g., Corrected October 2009).


Comment and Rebuttal
SCA members may contribute brief, signed, professionally respectful commentaries that will be appended to Proceedings articles that have previously been published online. For instance, a comment may provide additional context on a subject, suggest alternative interpretations, or correct perceived errors in the original article. While a comment may challenge the accuracy or cogency of an article's content, it may not make derogatory statements impugning the personal competence or character of the author. A comment may not exceed 1,000 words and should follow the same formatting conventions as an article (including reference citations).

The Editor will check comments and return them to the contributor if they do not meet the requirements concerning length, content, or SCA membership. An acceptable comment will be forwarded to the original article's author (if an e-mail address for the latter is available), giving the author an opportunity to submit a rebuttal within 30 days. The author?s rebuttal also may not exceed 1,000 words and must be professionally respectful. If a rebuttal is received, it will be forwarded to the comment's contributor, who will have a 30-day window within which to revise the comment (for instance, to remove particular criticisms which the author has adequately refuted) or to withdraw it. The author will then have a similar 30-day window to revise the rebuttal, and so on. Once stasis is reached, the comment and any rebuttal to it will be dated and posted on the web.

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