We need authors and reviewers for this important project! If you have significant practical experience in process safety, please join us. As an author you will be recognized by having your name next to the title of the chapter or subchapter that you authored. As a reviewer, you will be listed among the book’s reviewers.
To get started please send us a full resume, indicating the area(s) of expertise and the companies/universities where you have worked with a timeline and the topic that you would love to write about or serve as a reviewer. Write to hjpasman@gmail.com or hermanusp@tamu.edu.
If meeting the required qualifications, the second step will be a conversation with one of the members of the editorial board (see Contact Us) to see if there’s alignment with the goals of the book. Following that, the prospective author will provide within two weeks an outline of the proposed contribution. The author may also decide to team up with another person to carry out the task and this would be indicated in the outline.
The assigned editor will then review the outline and discuss with the author(s) suggestions or modifications and how to proceed. It is expected that a draft of the manuscript will be delivered within two to three months after agreeing on the scope of the work. The editor will be available during the writing process for consultations. Approval of an outline is not a promise to publish. The editor will ensure that the contents of the whole book are coherent and not repeated by several authors. This may entail deleting or moving certain parts of a manuscript if they fit better elsewhere in the volume.
When the first draft of the completed contribution is delivered, the editor will start the review process which involves previously identified peer reviewers for the topic. All contact with the reviewers will be through the editor, and the reviewers will remain anonymous, unless they agree to identify themselves. If the finished product meets the approval of the editorial board, the contribution will be slated for publication.
To aid authors and reviewers the contents of Lees’ 4th and earlier editions will be made available to them.
Notes and Guidelines
1. All authors, co-authors, reviewers, and editors work voluntarily. All material produced will become the copyright of the publisher, which is Elsevier.
2. The target audience is global; industry, academia, and government; managers, and technical personnel who may not be process safety or loss prevention specialists but need to solve process safety and risk prediction problems.
3. Lees has been structured to accommodate audiences at all levels of expertise from beginners to experts in the field. Thus, a topic may be split between Volume 1 (Process Safety Practice) and Volume 2 (Process Safety Science and Technology) with links between the two parts, but each part should be independent even if there is some repetition. A reader should be able to read and understand each part without having to go to the linked part. Only when more in-depth understanding is needed the linked part would be accessed.
4. The structure of a chapter will be as follows:
a. Each chapter will begin with an abstract or summary, explaining the importance of the and its relevance to process safety.
b. Next comes a list of definitions and keywords used because of their potential use as links to another subsection. The editor will guide you on this.
c. The following subsections deal with the topics to be discussed. It is important that a reader finds a solution to the problem that made him/her search Lees’ Handbook. Now, solutions come with various levels of depth. Whenever possible, take the approach to describe:
i. Proven knowledge and well-established methods and applications in industry, addressing common, often seen loss prevention issues. For practitioners, it may be a relatively simple method or approximation of qualitative or semi-quantitative nature and not considering all aspects of the problem.
ii. References to internationally recognized standards, norms, and recommendations may be of significant help. Highlight, if relevant, differences in approaches between different major regions (US, EU, Asia).
iii. Mention, if relevant, the developments or improvements proposed in recent years.
iv. Indicate limitations of methods mentioned: when 'simple' methods are good enough, and when to seek more advanced solution methods, in which case references to journal papers should be provided.
v. A (brief) section on issues still open or that are part of ongoing research for coming years. If these issues are elaborated in Volume-2 a reference shall be made.
d. In Volume 1 the subchapters have a size limitation of 7 pages A4 on single-spaced 12-point Times New Roman text incl. figures and tables; in Volumes 2 and 3 there is no restriction, yet content should be concise.
e. For uniformity spelling and dates will use the US standard. Each draft should include a version number above the title (e.g. v.1) and the date using the international standard (e.g. September 1, 2024, will appear as 20240901).
f. References to standards, books, articles, or other relevant material will utilize APA style 5. See “Elsevier’s Standard Reference Style Guide”. When available, DOI numbers must be added.
Copyrights and Permissions
A paper submitted to Lees will be copyrighted by Elsevier (Lees’ Publisher) but the underlaying intellectual property is retained by the author. Thus, the paper cannot be reproduced as published without permission from the publisher. But a similar paper can be submitted by the author to other publishers if there are sufficient differences in content and format.
Figures and photographs appearing in the submitted paper will be part of the paper’s copyright if they appear for the first time in the publication. If they have appeared in other publications - a journal, magazine or blog, a citation must be provided under the title of the graph. If there’s a copyright associated with it, permission must be obtained from the copyright holder, and such permission noted under the graph, together with the copyright notice.
A resource for finding the copyright owner is at https://marketplace.copyright.com/rs-ui-web/mp