[amsat-bb] AMSAT Journal Call for Articles

[JoAnne Maenpaa]

The AMSAT Journal is continuously searching for news, articles, 
and photos related to all of the activities of amateur radio 
in space. In the past this has included satellite development, 
satellite history, ground stations, antennas, hardware devel-
opment, software. We find that some items related to SDR, VHF, 
UHF, and microwave operating or roving are directly applicable 
to satellite operations.

Educational outreach has been identified as a key area which AMSAT
may use to leverage launch opportunities. The Journal welcomes 
news, photos, and articles of ARISS contacts, University research
and development, and STEM programs.

Amateur satellite operators have the gear and expertise to also
receive interesting transmissions from non-amateur spacecraft and
EME. Articles discussing how this is done are useful to our readers
discovering they can do more with the station they have built.

The deadlines for each AMSAT Journal, which is published six times 
per year, are:

                   ISSUE                DEADLINE
             ---------------------    --------------
             1. January/February       December 20
             2. March/April            February 20
             3. May/June               April 20
             4. July/August            June 20
             5. September/October      August 20
             6. November/December      October 20

Our editors will work with you to finalize your article for publi-
cation. Please send the following:

1. Electronic copy of your article in any of the popular word pro-
   cessing formats (MS-Word, OpenOffice, plain-text Notepad, etc.)
   PDF files containing a custom layout with embedded graphics can-
   not be used.

2. Your text must be single column wide. You do not need to do any 
   formatting to make it appear in the 3 column layout of the fin-
   ished magazine. We have to remove all your hard work of pre-
   formatting before publication so save yourself the problems of
   trying to get columns to line up, etc.

3. You may send a copy of your article with the photos where you
   recommend they appear with the text but this is not the version
   that will be published. This gives the editors some cues to 
   maintain continuity with photos/captions and text.

4. We require a text-only copy your article. Embedded photos will
   not publish during the layout process. You can leave in a ref-
   erence in the text related to the photo associated with that
   point in your article as shown here:

   ... text ... text ... text ... text ... text ... text ...
   ... text ... text ... text ... text ... text ... text ...

   (Insert Graphic 1234 here)
   Figure 2.  Sample Lorem Ipsum Text

   ... text ... text ... text ... text ... text ... text ...
   ... text ... text ... text ... text ... text ... text ...

5. Send a separate text file with the captions to each of the 
   graphics.

6. Send photos and graphics as separate files. Use as high resolu-
   tion pixel format as you can. The preferred graphic format for
   the Journal is JPG.

   The Journal can publish additional graphic formats including
   GIF, BMP, and PNG. Contact the editor before submitting these
   formats. 

   Note that a photo which appears nicely on a web page does not 
   publish well on the high resolution finished magazine product. 
   Photos from digital cameras in mega-pixels work well. You do 
   not need to compress or shrink the file for us.

7. If you use printed circuit board software or schematic drawing
   programs we can usually import a PDF copy of the diagram into
   the publishing software. Please do not send PDF formatted copies 
   of the article however.

8. We can freely republish papers you have submitted to prior AMSAT
   Symposiums. If you have a good idea that you would like to get
   out the AMSAT Journal is an excellent way to expand your audience.
   We find that 200-300 copies of the Symposium Proceedings are dis-
   tributed. The AMSAT Journal reaches 4000 additional satellite 
   operators.

9. If your article was previously published in another AMSAT organi-
   zation's Journal, or magazine (QST, CQ, CQ VHF, etc.) we will
   work with you to secure the permission to republish your work.

Our Journal editors will be happy to work with you to assist getting
your article published. We can help you develop an idea into a fin-
ished article as well as a ready-to-print submission. Ask us via 
e-mail and we can get rolling with your article.

During the preparation process it is quite likely that an editor
working on the article might personally contact you with questions 
and suggestions. Those suggestions might include extra pictures or 
maybe additional references, keeping in mind that some readers 
might not have an extensive background on the topic being discussed.

Send your articles and photo/graphics files as attachments to 
e-mail to journal at amsat.org.

--
73 de JoAnne K9JKM
k9jkm at amsat.org 
Editor, AMSAT Journal