Authors Guidelines
Download: Authors Guidelines
Download: 3 Templates | Sample of Cover
Letter
Download: Sample of Cover
Letter
[top]
Cover Letter | File formats
| Preparing main manuscript text |
Title page | ABSTRACT | Key words | Correspondence | BACKGROUND | MATERIALS AND METHODS |
RESULTS | DISCUSSION |
CONCLUSIONS | List of abbreviations | Acknowledgments
| Authors' contributions | Competing
interests | Availability of data and materials
|
Consent for publication
| Ethics approval consent to participate
| REFERENCES | Examples of the
reference
style
Special Notes on Taxonomic Paper | Preparing
Tables | Preparing figures | Figure
Legends | Figures format
Zoological Studies publishes
original research papers in five major fields: Animal Behavior, Comparative Physiology, Evolution, Ecology, and Systematics and Biogeography.
Manuscripts are welcome from around the world and must be written in
English. When the manuscript concerns the use of animals or specimens
in research, a statement must be included to the effect that the
author(s) has adhered to the legal requirements of the country in which
the work was carried out or to any institutional guidelines.
Authors
are encouraged to provide the names and e-mail addresses of 4 possible
Reviewers or more, and 3 Associate Editors from our Editorial Board
(*Please check carefully the research fields of AE to match with your
MS.
Inappropriate or random selection of AE gives the Editor in Chief
impression that you are not serious about your submission). The
Editorial Board has final authority concerning acceptance or rejection
of any manuscript. Once the manuscript is published, copyright belongs
to Zoological Studies. If the
author(s) does not have clear title to the copyright of any part of the
manuscript, it is the sole responsibility of the author(s) to obtain
written permission from the copyright holder and present it to the
editor of Zoological Studies.
The following format guidelines should be followed for all papers
submitted.
Submission procedure
Manuscripts must be submitted to Zoological
Studies Online Submission as electronic files.
The text should be submitted as a PDF file, which
allows reviewers to insert comments on the electronic copy (pdf file,
included text, figures, tables for review) and Archive (.zip or .rar
file, respectively - .doc or .docx text, figures,
tables...).
Figures should be included at the end of the PDF
file containing the text; but for publication of accepted manuscripts,
separate text and figures are requested as described below.
To reduce the PDF file size for more-efficient
transmission, embed fonts, use the “optimize” function in Adobe Acrobat
(or other program), and use no more than 200 dpi resolution for
figures.
Important
Before submitting your manuscript to Zoological Studies,
you may wish to have your manuscript professionally edited or edited by
native-English speakers with scientific background, particularly if
English is not your first language. This is not a compulsory step, but
may help to ensure that the content of your manuscript is fully
understood by our editors and reviewers. We strongly suggest your
manuscript be checked by one of the professional English editing
services if you are not completely fluent in English. Professional
editing of English may include multiple rounds, if our editors do not
feel it is of sufficient English quality. At present, Zoological Studies
is collaborating with a professional English editor. We can provide you
further information in English editing upon on your request. Please
mail brczoostudies@gate.sinica.edu.tw
if you want to acquire further English editing information.
Cover Letter (.pdf):
A cover letter is compulsory for manuscripts submitted to Zoological Studies.
Authors are strongly encouraged to include reviewers who know the
authors know their research areas that suitable for reviewing
manuscripts. The reviewer name list provided here is only for
references in case the authors cannot provide reviewers themselves.
Download: Sample of Cover
Letter
The cover letter must include 6 parts:
1) Why your manuscript is suitable for consideration
in Zoological Studies.
2) An affirmation that your manuscript has not been
send to other journals for consideration at the same time.
3) Please check carefully the research fields of AE
to match with your MS. Inappropriate or random selection of AE gives
the Editor in Chief impression that you are not serious about your
submission. (should be listed in the Cover letter)
4) List 3 suggested reviewers or more. Each with the
following
information:
Name of reviewers:
Affiliation of the reviewers:
E-mail of the reviewers:
Research area of the reviewers:
5) Compliance with Ethics (should be listed in the
Cover letter and manuscript text):
a) Authors’ contributions
b) Competing interests
c) Availability of data and
materials
d) Consent for
publication
e) Ethics approval consent to
participate
6) Line spacing set to single and font set to size
10 Times New Roman.
**Cover letter without the above information will send back to the
author without being sent for review.
File formats
The following word processor file formats are
acceptable for the main manuscript document:
Microsoft Word (doc, docx)
Portable Document Format (pdf) for review
Preparing main manuscript
text
1) Line spacing should be set to 1.5 lines, with a minimum of 2 cm
margins (Top/Bottom/Left/Right),
for the full text (Abstract to the References).
2) Numbered lines should be marked through the text
to make it easier to refer to corrections in the review process.
3) The full-length papers and should not exceed 8000
words (including main body text plus title page). (exclude tables,
figure legends, Acknowledgement;
Authors’ contributions; Competing interests; Availability of data and
materials; Consent for publication; Ethics approval consent to
participate; REFERENCES)
4) The font of the entire manuscript should be set
to 12 point Times New Roman. Scientific binomials should be
italicized.
Manuscripts for Research articles
submitted to Zoological Studies should be divided into the following
sections (in this order):
Title page
Provide the title of the article
List the full names of all authors, such as Lily
Smith, Judy Collins, and Sam Kim
Institutional addresses and email addresses for all
authors, and should be italicized.
Please place the
date of submission.
Indicate the corresponding author(s) with ( * )
If there are two authors contribute equally to this
work, please note “ §L Smith and J Collins contributed
equally to this work. ”
ABSTRACT: The
Abstract of the manuscript should not exceed 500 words. It should
be a factual condensation of the entire paper, including a statement of
purpose, a clear description of observations and findings, and a
concise presentation of the conclusions. Please minimize the use
of abbreviations and do not cite references in the abstract.
Key words: Five
key words representing the main content of the article
Correspondence: Provide the contact
information of the corresponding
BACKGROUND: The
Background section should be written in a way that is accessible to
researchers without specialist knowledge in that area and must clearly
state - and, if helpful, illustrate - the background to the research
and its aims. The section should end with a brief statement of what is
being reported in the article.
MATERIALS AND METHODS:
The
Materials and Methods section should include the design of the study,
the type of materials involved, a clear description of all comparisons,
and the types of analyss used, to enable replication.
RESULTS: The
Results and Discussion sections should be separated into two sections
with headings. The Results section of systematics papers should be in
the order of scientific name, synonyms, material examined (inc.
holotype and paratype), etymology, diagnosis, description (inc.
measurements), then distribution.
DISCUSSION: The
Discussion section should be concise and focus on interpreting the
results. It should not repeat any information from the Results section.
CONCLUSIONS: This
should state clearly the main conclusions of the research and give a
clear explanation of their importance and relevance. Summary
illustrations may be included.
List of abbreviations: If
abbreviations are used in the text they should be defined in the text
at first use, and a list of abbreviations can be provided preceding the
Competing interests and Authors' contributions.
Acknowledgments
Authors' contributions: The
individual contributions of authors to the manuscript should be
specified in this section.
Competing interests: Authors
must declare all relationships or interests from the work conducted in
the manuscript. The conflict of interest statement should list each
author separately by name:
LT declares that she has no
conflict of interest.
LW has received research
grants from the MOST, Taiwan.
If multiple authors declare no conflict of interest, please write the
following sentence:
LT and LW declare that they
have no conflict of interest.
Availability of data and
materials: Authors
should fill in the Availability of data and materials section
concerning the data involved in the paper to be available to readers. Zoological Studies recommends the
key datasets of the manuscript be either deposited in publicly
available repositories (e.g.,
Genbank for DNA sequences data) or presented as additional files in a
computer reader format (e.g.,
excel, doc or pdf formats).
Consent for publication:
Papers
involving personal data in any form must obtain consent to publish from
that person (parent/legal guardian for data involving <18 years
old). Please state “Not applicable” if the paper does not include any
personal data.
Ethics approval consent
to participate: For
all procedures involving human subjects or laboratory animals that
contributed to research for the manuscript, author must declare they
have followed the ethical standards of the responsible committee on
human or laboratory animal experimentation (institutional and national
– please include names of the ethics committee). For studies that do
not contain studies with human or laboratory animal subjects, please
state “Not applicable.”
REFERENCES: Citation
by name and year can be given entirely in parentheses or by citing the
name in the text and year in parentheses. Adhere to the following usage:
One author: (Miller 1998)
Two authors: (Miller and Smith 2001)
More than two authors: (Miller et al. 1999)
More than two citation: (Miller et al. 1999; Smith and Browns 2001; ...)
More than two citation/ years: (Miller et al. 1999; Smith and Browns
2001; ...) (Miller et al. 1999 2013 2015)
Examples of the
reference style (provide
the doi numbers for each citation, if possileb)
Article within a journal
Smith J, Jones M Jr, Houghton L. 1999. Future of health insurance. N
Engl J Med 965:325–329.
Article by DOI (with page numbers)
Slifka MK, Whitton JL. 2000. Clinical implications of dysregulated
cytokine production. J Mol Med 78:74–80.
doi:10.1007/s001090000086.
Article by DOI (before issue publication and with page numbers)
Slifka MK, Whitton JL. 2000. Clinical implications of dysregulated
cytokine production. J Mol Med. doi:10.1007/s001090000086.
Article in electronic journal by DOI (no paginated version)
Slifka MK, Whitton JL. 2000. Clinical implications of dysregulated
cytokine production. Dig J Mol Med. doi:10.1007/s801090000086.
Journal issue with issue editor
Smith J (ed). 1998. Rodent genes. Mod Genomics J 14(6):126–233.
Journal issue with no issue editor
Mod Genomics J. 1998. Rodent genes. Mod Genomics J 14(6):126–233.
Book chapter, or an article within a book
Brown B, Aaron M. 2001. The politics of nature. In: Smith J (ed) The
rise of modern genomics, 3rd edn. Wiley, New York.
Complete book, authored
South J, Blass B. 2001. The future of modern genomics. Blackwell,
London, UK.
Complete book, edited
Smith J, Brown B (eds). 2001. The demise of modern genomics. Blackwell,
London, UK.
Complete book, also showing a translated edition [Either edition may be
listed first.]
Adorno TW. 1966. Negative Dialektik. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt. English
edition: Adorno TW (1973) Negative Dialectics (trans: Ashton EB).
Routledge, London, UK.
Chapter in a book in a series without volume titles
Schmidt H. 1989. Testing results. In:
Hutzinger O (ed) Handbook of environmental chemistry, vol 2E. Springer,
Heidelberg, p. 111.
Chapter in a book in a series with volume titles
Smith SE. 1976. Neuromuscular blocking drugs in man. In: Zaimis E (ed) Neuromuscular
junction. Handbook of experimental pharmacology, vol 42. Springer,
Heidelberg, pp. 593-660.
OnlineFirst chapter in a series (without a volume designation but with
a DOI)
Saito, Yukio, and Hyuga, Hiroyuki. 2007. Rate equation approaches to
amplification of enantiomeric excess and chiral symmetry breaking.
Topics in Current Chemistry. doi:10.1007/128_2006_108.
Proceedings as a book (in a series and subseries)
Zowghi D. 1996. A framework for reasoning about requirements in
evolution. In: Foo N, Goebel R (eds) PRICAI'96: topics in artificial
intelligence. 4th Pacific Rim conference on artificial intelligence,
Cairns, August 1996. Lecture notes in computer science (Lecture notes
in artificial intelligence), vol 1114. Springer, Heidelberg, p. 157.
Article within conference proceedings with an editor (without a
publisher)
Aaron M. 1999. The future of genomics. In: Williams H (ed) Proceedings of
the genomic researchers, Boston, 1999.
Article within conference proceedings without an editor (without a
publisher)
Chung S-T, Morris RL. 1978. Isolation and characterization of plasmid
deoxyribonucleic acid from Streptomyces fradiae. In:
Abstracts of the 3rd international symposium on the genetics of
industrial microorganisms, University of Wisconsin, Madison, 4-9 June
1978.
Article presented at a conference
Chung S-T, Morris RL. 1978. Isolation and characterization of plasmid
deoxyribonucleic acid from Streptomyces fradiae. Paper presented at the
3rd international symposium on the genetics of industrial
microorganisms, University of Wisconsin, Madison, 4–9 June 1978.
Patent
Norman LO. 1998. Lightning rods. US Patent 4,379,752, 9 Sept 1998.
Dissertation
Trent JW. 1975. Experimental acute renal failure. PhD Dissertation,
University of California, USA.
Book with institutional author
International Anatomical Nomenclature Committee (1966) Nomina
anatomica. Excerpta Medica, Amsterdam, Netherlands.
In press article
Major M. 2007. Recent developments. In:
Jones W (ed) Surgery today. Springer, Dordrecht (in press).
Online document
Doe J. 1999. Title of subordinate document. In:
The dictionary of substances and their effects. Royal Society of
Chemistry. Available via DIALOG. http://www.rsc.org/dose/title of
subordinate document. Accessed 15 Jan. 1999.
Online database
Healthwise Knowledgebase. 1998. US Pharmacopeia, Rockville.
http://www.healthwise.org. Accessed 21 Sept. 1998.
Supplementary material/private homepage
Doe J. 2000. Title of supplementary material.
http://www.privatehomepage.com. Accessed 22 Feb. 2000.
University site
Doe J. 1999. Title of preprint.
http://www.uni-heidelberg.de/mydata.html. Accessed 25 Dec. 1999.
FTP site
Doe J. 1999. Trivial HTTP, RFC2169.
ftp://ftp.isi.edu/in-notes/rfc2169.txt. Accessed 12 Nov. 1999.
Organization site
ISSN International Centre. 2006. The ISSN register.
http://www.issn.org. Accessed 20 Feb. 2007.
Data Archiving
Data are important products of the
scientific enterprise and should be preserved and usable for decades in
the future. Zoological Studies thus requires that all data (or, for
theoretical papers, mathematical and computer models) supporting the a
paper’s results be archived in an appropriate public archive, such as
Dryad, Treebase, NERC data centre, GenBank, figshare or another archive
of the author's choice that provides comparable access and guarantees
comparable preservation. Authors may elect to have the data made
publicly available at the time of publication or, if the archive
technology allows, may opt to embargo access to the data for a period
of up to a year after publication.
Special Notes on
Taxonomic Papers
Taxonomic papers submitted to Zoological Studies will be considered
based on the based on if the editors perceive the study makes an
important contribution to the taxa of study (e.g.,
a formerly poorly described taxonomic group). Authors describing
a new species are encouraged to incorporate a revision of that
particular group or relationships to existing species. Simple
taxonomic descriptions are no longer considered for publication in Zoological Studies. Papers
submitted to Zoological Studies should follow these style conventions:
1) Upon the first mention of a species or
infra-familial in both the abstract and text, the author of the animal
taxon must be cited referring to the International Code of Zoological
Nomenclature. Do not abbreviate the generic name of a taxon upon
first mention or at the beginning of a sentence. The names of authors
of a taxon must not be abbreviated except for Linnaeus (as L.) and
Fabricius (as Fabr.). When multiple authorships are involved,
authors’ names should be separated by “et” or “and”. When citing
authors of a taxon, citation of the year is optional. If used,
however, the year must be enclosed within parentheses or square
brackets, and the citation must be considered a reference citation
within the article and be listed in the references.
2) New taxa or synonymies that are erected should be
clearly and appropriately marked as: comb. nov., com. rev., nom. nov.,
sp. nov., stat. nov., stat. rev., syn. nov., etc. A new taxon must list
the name of the describing author(s) after the binomial or trinomial,
even if it is the same as the manuscript author(s).
3) Types: Descriptions and revisions also require
comments on the types involved. Comments on types should be in a
separate paragraph and include collection data and deposition
information.
4) Keys: Keys are not essential in taxonomic work,
but are highly recommended. Keys must be concise, clear, easy to
follow, and have reversibility provisions. Keys must also be in
adjacent couplet style, and each couplet should preferably contain more
than a single, non-overlapping attribute.
5) Materials examined: Holotype and paratype(s) must
be designated if a new taxon is being published. Designation of
an allotype is not necessary. The collecting site, number of
specimens examined, sex, date, and collector should be stated.
6) The Results section of systematics papers should
be in the order of scientific name, synonyms, material examined (inc.
holotype and paratype), etymology, diagnosis, description (inc.
measurements), then distribution.
7) New genus,
species, or subspecies:
authors should register the published work (add in Acknowledgment: “This
work and the new species name were registered with ZooBank under
urn:lsid:zoobank.org:pub:###”), new nomenclatural acts, and
authors. The LSID code of new nomenclatural acts should be
mentioned in the publication (for publication: urn:lsid:zoobank.org:pub:###), new species (add under the title of the
new species, urn:lsid:zoobank.org:act:###).
The authors will be
asked to provide this code after acceptance and before the
publication. Since Zoological Studies is published
electronically, this is important for all authors.
Preparing Tables
Tables should not duplicate material found in the
text or accompanying illustrations. Tables must be numbered
consecutively in the order mentioned in the text, and be described in
brief but complete legends. All tables must be typed
single-spaced in the correct column without vertical lines. All
symbols (a, b, c, etc.) and abbreviations used must be briefly and
clearly explained in the table footnotes. Asterisks should be
used to indicate levels of significance: a single asterisk (*) for p ≤ 0.05, double asterisks (**) for
p ≤ 0.01, and triple asterisks
(***) for p ≤ 0.001).
Preparing figures
Figures should be provided as separate files, not
embedded in the text file. Each figure should include a single
illustration and should fit on a single page in portrait format. If a
figure consists of separate parts, a single composite illustration file
should be submitted that contains all parts of the figure. There is no
charge for the use of color figures.
Figure Legends
Each figure should be accompanied by a title and
explanatory figure legend. All associated descriptive legends
should be typed (double-spaced) on a separate sheet; sufficient detail
should be given in each legend to understand the figure independent of
the text.
Figures should be in the
following format
1) Figures must be in finished form and ready for
reproduction.
2) Number the figures using Arabic numerals
according to the order of mention in the text.
3) Appropriate lettering and labeling should be used
with letters and numbers which will be at least 1.5 mm high in the
final reproduction.
4) The lettering should be in Arial font. All
figures should be one or two column widths (either 8 or 17 cm) in size.
The maximum page height is 23 cm. Include scale bars where appropriate.
Color and grayscale photographs should be saved in EPS or TIFF format.
Files that can be opened in Adobe Illustrator are preferred.
5) Color photographs should be at a resolution of
300 pixels/inch. Grayscale photographs should be saved in 8
bits/channel. Photographs should be saved in CMYK which is
suitable for printing. Do not save the format in indexed color.
6) Line drawings should be prepared in TIFF format
at a resolution of 1200 pixels/inch. Figures are edited using
EXCEL, so please provide the original files.
7) Authors should prepare any TIFF- or EPS-formatted
figures at the intended final size which is suitable for editing, and
also prepare figures with no labels or words after the manuscript is
accepted.
8) If all parts of a figure can be clearly seen in
the printed version, then this is a good indication that the figure
will be acceptable.
9) The maximum size for all originals should not
exceed the size of a printed page. High-quality original artwork or
glossy prints should be submitted for reproduction mounted on
appropriate mounting cards. Authors may indicate the size they prefer
their figures be (i.e.,
“two-column width,” “do not reduce,” etc.). All lines must be dark and
sharply drawn. Reproductions may be used for review copies of a
manuscript.
[top]