Authors Guidelines

Submission

Download: Authors Guidelines
Download: 3 Templates
| Sample of Cover Letter
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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.
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.
    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.

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