Articles will be accepted in one of the following categories:

• Scientific research papers
• Descriptive papers on new plants, processes, equipment or techniques
• Review articles

For each of these categories, there are three criteria which apply with slightly differing interpretations as follows:

1.IMPORTANCE AND SIGNIFICANCE

Referees are asked to provide a quantitative rating between 0 - 10 for this criterion.

Scientific/Research Papers:

Ideally the paper should make an important new contribution to basic or applied knowledge. At the other end of the scale, papers that are trivial in content, i.e. that merely replicate known results and conclusions, or are obvious or inconsequential, should not be accepted. Papers that merely record data without deriving useful conclusions are, in general, also unacceptable. Reporting negative results or work that proved to be unsuccessful is also generally not acceptable unless these represent a surprising or unusual departure from accepted concepts. However, controversial results and conclusions if scientifically well founded are of great importance in publications and should receive a high rating.

Descriptive Papers:

The referees must carefully watch for attempts to use the publication merely as a means of advertising known products or services. The article should represent a significant new contribution to technology of economic importance. Long detailed descriptions of mines or plants comprising standard well known components or techniques are to be down rated.

Review Articles:

It is required that a review article be reasonably comprehensive and indicate worthwhile new advances, new directions for research and deficiencies in knowledge. A review article merely recording published work without any critical comments and conclusions is not acceptable.

2. VALIDITY OF METHODS

Referees are asked to provide a quantitative rating between 0 - 10 for this criterion.

The scientific community is becoming increasingly concerned with the number of fraudulent results and conclusions being published. However, it is impossible for most referees to check in detail the scientific validity of all papers and the following guidelines can be used to assess the validity.

2.1Scientific/Research Papers:

• Sufficient details of the experimental methods should be given to enable those skilled in the art to repeat the experiments reported.
• The precision and accuracy and repeatability of results should be clearly indicated and discussed in terms of standard statistical methods.
• There should be a clear indication of the original work of the author as compared with that of others and appropriate references should be given to the work of others.
• The origin of samples and the text to which they are adequately representative should be indicated.
• Where computerised recording and interpretation of data are used the precautions taken to calibrate, standardise and check the accuracy of these systems should be indicated.
• The relevance of conclusions derived by extrapolation and interpolation of data in the form of graphs and figures should be discussed.

2.2 Descriptive Papers

• Records of data from plants and processes should be available for inspection and certification of summarised results.
• The variability of feed and processed materials and of plants operating characteristics should be indicated.
• Sampling and analytical methods and their validity should be indicated.
• Important operating parameters such as on-line factors, breakdown problems and the durability of plants should be discussed and where appropriate, economic considerations should be referred to.

2.3 Review Articles:

• Critical comment should be made on the validity of the work under review.
• Indications regarding the accuracy and precision should be indicated.

3. CONFORMITY WITH ACCEPTED NORMS FOR SCIENTIFIC PUBLICATIONS

Referees are asked to provide a qualitative rating between 0-5 for this criterion.

The Institute has publishing standards which are required for papers submitted to the Journal and the extent to which these are adhered to, are of importance. We are hoping that more papers will be received from non-English speaking countries and the Institute is prepared to undertake a reasonable amount of grammatical editorial work. Spelling and grammatical/idiomatic errors should not be heavily penalised. The amount of editorial work that will be undertaken depends on the “value” of the paper. If the paper would be of great interest to Members then it is worth while for the Institute to attend to the grammer/English. Please comment as required.

• Nevertheless all categories of papers should conform to the following requirements:
• Conciseness and avoidance of long-winded and repetitive writing.
• Unambiguous phraseology and clarity of concepts.
• Correct use of scientific terminology, units and conversions regarding equations
• and references.
• Properly presented diagrams and tables with appropriate headings, designation of
• axes and legibility of data.
• An abstract representing a meaningful summary of the paper (this is of particular importance should the abstract be made available on the SAIMM web site).

4. JOURNAL PAPERS AND TECHNICAL NOTES

If the paper does not meet the requirements for the Transactions, but you still believe it would be of interest to our members and worth publishing, the paper could be considered for publication as a Journal Paper or a Technical Note.

5. MEDALS AND CERTIFICATES

Papers that are written by Members of the Institute and are published in the Journal are eligible for recognition by the awarding of the Institute’s Gold or Silver Medal.

5.1 Criteria for the award of a Gold Medal

The Gold Medal will be awarded to Members of the Institute who have submitted papers of distinction. The papers should be of world class standard, and judged to be publications that will become key references in their mining or metallurgical field in the future. They will usually display a considerable degree of originality in their subject matter, but this is not an essential criterion for the award. The presentation should be of a very high order and should do credit to the proceedings of the Institute.

5.2 Criteria for the award of a Silver Medal

The Silver Medal will be awarded to members of the Institute who have submitted papers which have made a considerable contribution to the industry but did not necessarily display a particular degree of originality or research. It is recognised that the very high standards needed to justify the award of a gold medal must not be compromised. On the other hand, it is equally important to recognize that there will be important papers presented which make a major contribution to the professions of mining and metallurgy and to the prestige of our Institute which falls short of the gold medal standard in spite of their merit. The topics that might be covered will also be broader than highly innovative papers to be considered for the award of gold medals.

5.3 Certificate of Merit

The Certificate of Merit would be awarded in conjunction with a gold or silver medal, to co-authors of prize-winning papers who are not members of the Institute.

If you feel that this paper meets any of the above criteria then please include your appropriate comments.

6. GENERAL

Referees are required to make available their comments and ratings on the attached sheet which will be sent to the author to assist with the final preparation of the paper or if the paper is adjudged by the Publications Committee to be unacceptable. It is proposed that an aggregated rating of less that 13 by more that one of the referees would be regarded as an unacceptable figure. Referees will remain unknown to the author, but they should be prepared to discuss their comments with the representatives of the Journal Publications Committee. If the Referee wishes to discuss a paper with the author, they may do so at their discretion. It would be appreciated if the Publications Secretary was notified of such decisions.