PRASA Author's Kit:

Welcome to the PRASA Author's Kit.

The Author's Kit contains the information you need to prepare your paper for PRASA. Please have a look at the sample paper and the LaTeX template.

Please note:

• 6 Pages Maximum.
• Date of RECEIPT (not postmark) is paper submission deadline.

Please read this document in its entirety before proceeding with your paper preparation.

If the layout instructions are not followed, or if your material is not received by the above due date, your paper will not be included in the proceedings. There will be absolutely no exceptions to these requirements.

1. GENERAL INSTRUCTIONS

The full paper (see section 2) must be transmitted to the PRASA Secretariat on or before the closing date, by either: Email, Post or Courier.

• Unless there are good reasons, no hard-copy papers will be accepted.
• No papers will be accepted after the paper submission deadline.
• Papers exceeding 6 pages will be rejected.
• The author presenting the paper must be registered for PRASA. Papers will not be accepted without the registration of the presenter.

2. INSTRUCTIONS FOR FULL PAPER PREPARATION

• All manuscripts must be in ENGLISH.
• Use Times-Roman font for your paper because this will contribute to giving the proceedings a more uniform look.
• To be included in the Proceedings, your paper must be in the following format:
  • Single-spaced.
  • Two (2) columns.
  • The text must be black on a white background.
  • No smaller than nine (9) point type throughout the paper, including figure captions. In nine-point type, capital letters are 2 mm high.
  • Test print the paper on A4 (21 x 29.7 cm, 8.27 x 11.69 inches) paper, following the exact margins described in this document. All electronic text should be within the following margins:
    • All text and figures must be contained in a 17 cm x 23.2 cm (6.67 inch x 9.13 inch) image area.
    • The left margin for A4 is to be 2.0 cm (0.8 inch).
    • The right margin for A4 is to be 2.0 cm (0.8 inch)
    • The top margin for A4 is to be 2.8 cm (1.1 inch).
    • The bottom margin for A4 is to be 3.7 cm (1.46 inch)
    • Centre each page within this image area in a two-column format.
    • Columns are 8.22 cm (3.24 inches) wide.
    • Columns are separated by 0.5 cm (0.2 inches) of white space.
    • Your first or title page should have the paper title, author(s), affiliation(s) and email address(es) centred on the page across both columns. The remainder of the text must be in the two-column format, staying within the indicated image area. Follow the style of the Sample Paper with regard to title, authors, addresses, abstract, heading, and subheadings.
    • Ship the manuscript on suitable media or mail it electronically as described in section 4.

3. PREPARATION OF MACHINE-READABLE FULL PAPER

• We are able to accept papers in Postscript and PDF formats.  Due to incompatibilities between different versions we will not accept Microsoft Word documents.  There are numerous free Word to PDF converters on the web.
• A LaTeX template is available here.
• To prepare an electronic version of your manuscript for PRASA, we suggest that you take the following steps:
  • Create a Machine-Readable Version of your Full Paper in one of the formats above.
  • To create a PostScript file when using a typical word processing program you must first ensure that you have a PostScript printer driver installed and selected. Then you must select Print to file (or something similar) and then print the file. The output file should be a standard PostScript file. (Note that recent versions of MS Word will produce a file with a .prn extension. As long as you are using a PostScript printer driver, it will actually be a PostScript file and you should rename it to have a .ps extension when you have finished.)
  • Check that the pages are in the correct order (not reverse order). After generating the file, test it by sending it to your printer, and proofreading the output. Name the file according to the file naming conventions outlined in the next section.
  • The filename should be: Base.ps, Base.pdf or Base.doc. The Base of each filename should be the surname of the principal author followed by initials, eg. ForbesKA.pdf. Authors submitting more than one paper should append a number, eg. ForbesKA1.pdf and ForbesKA2.pdf.

4. SUBMISSION OF FILES

Electronic upload

The preferred method of submission is by electronic upload, which you can do from here.

Email

If the electronic upload fails for some reason, then send the compressed manuscript by email to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it with a cover note describing the file. You may send the compressed file as a binary attachment to your email. Do not email files larger than 3MByte.

Mail

If all else fails, mail the document on a CD-ROM/DVD to: