Civil Engineering Author's Guide

Writing for Civil Engineering

Civil Engineering is a monthly four-color magazine that serves as the primary outlet for articles that present information about significant projects, events, and trends of interest to civil engineers. The mix of articles included in each issue is designed to appeal to a broad range of readers, who represent the full spectrum of civil engineering disciplines: architectural engineering, structural engineering, geoenvironmental and geotechnical engineering, transportation engineering, coastal engineering, and environmental and water resources engineering. Regardless of length, articles are designed to provide readers with substantive information about a topic so that when taken as a whole, each issue of the magazine contributes to the readers’ knowledge of the practice and profession of civil engineering.

Civil Engineering has the largest audience of civil engineer readers of any publication in the world, reaching more than 100,000 engineers here and abroad. The magazine is indexed and abstracted by ASCE (both ASCE Publications Information and Civil Engineering Data Base), Engineering Index, Applied Science & Technology Index and others. Abstracts will also be posted on the ASCE Web site. For these reasons, it has long been a practice not to pay honorariums for contributed articles.

Feature articles range in length from approximately 3,000 words to approximately 12,000 words, depending on the topic. It is best to query the editors first to determine their interest in a topic. Queries should be sent to CE magazine.

Author/Editor Teamwork

Once your manuscript has been accepted for publication and scheduled for an upcoming issue, you will be asked to sign a copyright transfer agreement. This form gives ASCE and Civil Engineering magazine the rights to the published article, which will be published in the magazine as well as on a password-protected, members-only Web site. This form must be signed and returned before the editing process begins.

At this point, the article will be assigned to a staff or freelance editor. Together, you will produce the version that will appear in the magazine. The editor will make changes for style, readability, and length, and will ask questions to clarify certain points.
The editor will then send a final draft to you for review. It is important that you respond promptly—by phone, fax, or e-mail—so that production deadlines are maintained.

Manuscript Checklist

1. Please send the article on a CD to the Managing Editor, Civil Engineering, 1801 Alexander Bell Drive, Reston, VA  20191, or through e-mail as an attached file. Either way, please save the text as a Microsoft Word document without images. Images must be sent separately and are discussed below.
2. On the first page, list the author’s or authors’ full name(s), P.E. if applicable, Ph.D., if applicable, membership in ASCE if applicable, title, name of firm(s) or organization(s), mailing and e-mail addresses, and telephone and fax numbers. In addition to bylines, author taglines—which include the name(s) of the author(s), their titles, and their places of business will be published at the end of the article.
3. On a separate page, include an abstract.

Art Specifications

1. Photos should be sent as high-resolution (300 dpi) files.
2. Send original drawings or sketches with clear, sharp linework, if possible. Note: We CANNOT open CAD files, so if an image was created in CAD software, please save it directly from its native program as a .jpg, .pdf, or .tif file.
3. Identify each photo, drawing, or chart.
4. Please provide caption information.
5. You will be sent an image release form that you or the copyright holder of the image(s) must fill out, sign, fax, and mail to us prior publication.

Directions for posting images on our ftp site from the Internet Explorer browser:

• From your browser, type in ftp.asce.org (no www or http)
• Once at that site, in the upper left-hand corner, click on File
• Click on Login As
• You will see a dialog box with spaces for a login name and password. Both are the same: pub1
• Hit enter and you should see our site. You can create a folder and click-and-drag images to it.
• If this does not work, please check to see if your firm has established a firewall that prevents you from accessing our ftp site. If so, call your assigning editor to determine the best way to post or send images.