Advice to Contributors
General Notes
The preparation of Slingshot is carried out by volunteers. To best assist The Society wherever possible please submit your valued efforts on CD or send the Editor an e-mail with your file(s) attached. If requested, the Society will return any material sent. Supplying your work in this format saves the Society having to retype or electronically scan the material. The Society can accept a wide range of different formats, but if you have any queries please contact the Editor who will be happy to assist you.
Notes on Photographs and Illustrations for Slingshot
With the introduction of the new format Slingshot (issue 258 onwards), we encourage contributors to submit photographs, diagrams and other graphics to illustrate their articles. A picture often speaks a thousand words! In order to reproduce these in the best light, the guidelines below may be helpful:
Photographs
Photographs taken with a modern digital camera should be sent electronically and, wherever possible, in colour. If not taken with a digital camera, then please send colour scans of original photographic prints. If necessary, prints can be sent and we will scan them. Please include SAE for return of prints. Photographs used within Slingshot are reproduced at 600 dpi in monochrome. Original images in colour are preferred for these pictures as translation to monochrome often involves filtering different colours to achieve a good contrast.
Diagrams, Maps and Illustrations
Electronic submission is preferable to paper copy, which will be scanned. Native files drawn using Microsoft Visio or PowerPoint are best. Alternatively, if the image has been produced on a different drawing package, then saving it in a vector format such as Windows MetaFile (WMF), Enhanced MetaFile (EMF), Scaleable Vector Graphics (SVG), PGML or VML is preferred as it produces a better result if the image needs to be stretched to fit into Slingshot. If none of the above can be generated, then any of the common graphic formats, such as JPG, GIF, PNG, TIFF, BMP or even PDF can be used, but may produce an inferior picture when printed in Slingshot.
As noted above, inside pages of Slingshot are printed in monochrome. Therefore use of multiple colours in diagrams, etc, should be avoided wherever possible. Differences in filled areas are often best highlighted by varying fill styles. Attention should also be paid to the legibility of text, especially if the diagram needs to be shrunk to fit in Slingshot. Electronic draughting of hand-drawn diagrams can be arranged, but please contact the Editor first.
Use of Images from the Internet or other Publications
The resolution of images from either the internet or from printed publications is generally low and such images will usually take up no more than a column's width within Slingshot. Contributors should also respect the copyright of any such material.
General Notes
The Editor reserves the right to crop, change, redraw or discard any images sent to him. Images sent to the Society will only be reproduced in Society publications.
A note on copyright and sources
Contributors to Slingshot, and members thinking of contributing might benefit from the following advice:
The rights to most published work and all unpublished ones are protected by copyright law. This protection extends for some years after the author's death, and applies to illustrations as well as words.
Copyright prevents extensive copying but still allows "Fair Use" of protected work. This is not precisely defined, but it may depend on how much of the copyrighted material is used and in what way. "Fair Use" should include acknowledgement of the sources.
Ideas themselves are not protected by copyright. However, it is normal practise in academic circles, and is certainly simple politeness, to acknowledge works that have influenced you, even if you are not directly quoting or reproducing from them.
The Society is an amateur body run by volunteers, and does not have the resources to set up a system of referees to check members' submissions for any improper copying. We rely totally on the good faith of our members. Please do not risk embarrassment -or worse- to the Society by unfairly copying others' work.
The copyright of any articles printed in Slingshot revert to the author on publication, unless indicated. Note that, the laid out content from Slingshot remains copyright the society (i.e. the author owns the content, but the Society retains the right to prevent direct copying of Slingshot articles). The editor's preference is that articles not be reprinted elsewhere in the same year that it's published in Slingshot, but we will not enforce this, merely express the preference. By and large, if an article has already been published elswhere, the author should indicate this to the editor when sending in their contribution; our preference is not to republish, in particular, material which is already widely available to Slingshot's audience (for example, already published on the Internet).
As of 2009, the Society will be seeking direct permission of authors to reprint articles in media other than Slingshot, and you may find various committee members re-contacting author's to establish whether permission to do so has been granted.