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Instructions for
Authors |
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Ecología Austral is the scientific journal of the Argentine Ecological Society. It publishes original scientific
articles on any area of the environmental sciences.
Articles
may be:
Articles are peer reviewed at least by two
referees. Reviewers will remain confidential, unless a referee decides otherwise.
The Editor may reject, before submission to referees, those manuscripts that do
not conform the Instructions for Authors, or that are not within the scope of
subjects and purposes of Ecología
Austral.
The maximum length should be about 30
pages for Original Articles, and about 20 pages for Reviews, Debates, Teaching
Aids, and Short Communications. Manuscripts should be in Spanish, English or
Portuguese. Authors should provide a version of the title, summary, keywords
and legends of tables and figures in another language: in Spanish if the
article is in English, or in English if the article is in Spanish or
Portuguese.
Manuscripts should be sent in format
native to the word-processor used (e.g., "doc"). Submit the
manuscript using the corresponding form available at http://www.ecologiaaustral.com.ar/submit.php. Format the document for A4 paper size,
with all margins of 2.5 cm, and all pages and lines numbered. Include all the
material in a single file, with figures, tables and the corresponding legends pasted
at the end of the document, each in a different page.
Page proofs will be sent to the author,
shortly before printing, as an "Adobe
Acrobat portable document" format (PDF) file. The Acrobat file
retains font, page layout and graphics information; it can be delivered across
networks, viewed on screen and printed from most PC platforms. You will need
the "Adobe Acrobat
Reader" in order to view these files; if you do not have one,
you may download a free copy from www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readermain.html.
At this stage, you may find minor
alterations to conform to scientific, technical, stylistic or grammatical
standards. Typeset proofs are checked before they are sent to the authors;
however, it is the responsibility of the author/s to review page proofs
carefully and check for citations, formulae, omissions in text, etc. Authors
should return their corrections before a week since the page proofs were sent;
if not, the manuscript will be printed as in the page proofs.
There are no publication costs.
Cover Page: Titles
and Authors
The cover page must contain:
If the authors' present address is
different from the institutional affiliation of the author during the period
when all or most of the research was carried out, this should be mentioned as a
note at the bottom of the title page.
The abstract (up to 300 words) should
focus on the purpose of the study, the major findings and main conclusions. In
addition, you must provide an abstract in a second language (in Spanish if the
article is in English, or in English if the article is in Spanish or
Portuguese). Do not include bibliographic citations in the abstract.
Write with precision, clarity, and
economy. Use the active voice and first person where appropriate (passive voice
is preferred in describing methods and results; active voice may be used to
emphasize a personal opinion, typically in the Introduction and Discussion
sections).
Use an ordinary 12-points serif typeset
(Times New Roman or similar) and double line spacing. Number all pages, including
cover page, references, acknowledgments, figures and tables. Do not indent
paragraphs or titles. Use left alignment and do not hyphenate. Do not use the
carriage return (enter) at the end of lines within a paragraph. Use two returns
at the end of paragraphs (i.e., one empty line between paragraphs). Use
consistent punctuation; insert only a single space between words and after
punctuation.
Try not to use more than two title levels
to organize the text, and definitely no more than three. You can use any
headings and subheadings that you think useful. Preferred headings are
(in order):
It is strongly recommended that authors
try to keep Results and Discussion sections separately. Type headings (in
capital letters) and subheadings on separate lines. If you use a third title
level, type it underlined in the same paragraph that the following text. Try to
keep them short so that they will fit within a single column (aprox. 30
characters, including spaces, for headings and 40 characters for subheadings).
For instructions on bibliographic
citations jump to References.
Give the Latin names of the species in full
at their first mention in text (even after a full mention in the title) with
the authority for its name (or cite a checklist or authority work which may be
consulted by the readers); genera names may be abbreviated to a single letter
thereafter (or two, only if needed) if no confusion will result.
Space limitations in tables or figures may
require use of a "code" (such as the first letters of the genus and
species names) that should be in italics, like the original scientific name. If
this is the case, codes must be identified in the legend or, if they are too
many of them, in an appendix at the end of the paper.
Use "." (point) as decimal
symbol. Do not use any symbol to separate thousands digits. Use leading zeroes
(at the left) with all number <1, including probability values (e.g., P< 0.001).
Numbers from one to nine should be spelled
out in the text, except when used with units or in percentages (e.g., two
trees, 12 species, 5 seconds, 3.5%). At the beginning of a phrase always spell
out numbers (e.g., "Thirty-two devices were...").
Use 24 hours time format, with
":" as separator (e.g., 15:45 h). Use day/month/year as date format
(e.g., 25 September 2000, or 25/09/00 if needed in tables or figures). Give
years in full (e.g., "1994--2000").
Define all symbols, abbreviations and
acronyms the first time they are used. In the text, when only one unit appears
in a denominator, use the solidus or slash "/" (e.g., g/m2 ); for two
or more units in a denominator, use negative exponents (e.g., g.m-2.h-1) . Use
"L" instead of "l" for liters. Use "h" for hours
and do not abbreviate "day". Mathematical expressions should be
carefully represented.
If possible, please format formulae in
their final version (for example, you may use the equations editor included in
MS Word or in WordPerfect); otherwise, make them understandable enough to be
formatted during typesetting (e.g., use underlining for fractions and type
numerator and denominator in different lines).
Include, at the end of the manuscript, a
list of any non-keyboard, special symbols used in text or legends (e.g., Greek
letters, mean, plus/minus, circles or squares). Name them under a "List of
special symbols" and then insert each symbol and describe it briefly (e.g.,
±: plus/minus symbol; π: Greek letter lower
case pi;≥: bigger than or equal symbol; etc.).
Italicize scientific names and the symbols
for all variables and constants (letters used as symbols for quantities ,e.g., n, x, F, t, Z, P, and X) except Greek letters
and certain statistical and mathematical terms (e.g., ln, e, exp, max, min,
lim, SD, SE, CV, and d.f.). Symbols should be italic in the illustrations to
match the text. All books, journals and periodical titles are set in italic.
Italics should rarely be used for emphasis.
Keep them short and specific to direct
contributions to the paper and the research involved. Use the initials and the
surname of the people you acknowledge, but do not include their institutional
affiliation. Include in this section all acknowledgments to institutions,
positions and grants that you consider appropriate and that are not included in
your affiliation (detailed on the cover page).
Before submitting the manuscript, check each
citation in the text against the literature cited to see that they match
exactly (date and spelling) and that all the required bibliographical details
are given. Total page number are preferred, but optional; place (city and
country) of publication of books are also optional for international publishers
or for easily available publications (but provide it for local publishers or
rare publications). Give full surnames for papers up to six authors (or provide
the initial five and use "et al." for the rest).
For papers still in press, use "in
press" to replace the date in reference list and citation in the text, and
consider them as the latest in the chronological order. The list should conform
in order and punctuation to that in any recent issue of Ecología Austral (the
last names of authors should carry only the first letter in upper case, and the
remaining letters should be in lower case or small caps; the initials of the
names should be in upper case and should have no periods nor spaces between
them). Below several examples are given (with notes between brackets):
Author1, AB & BC Author2. 1989. Title
of article. Brief Journal Title in Italics, 00(0):000–000
Author1, AB; B Author2; CD Author3; DE
Author4; FG Author5 et al. [if more than six] (eds). In press. Book
Title in italics. Publisher [optional: City, Country. 000 pp.]
Author1, A & B Author2, Jr. 1989.
Chapter title. [Chapter number] Pp. 00–00 in: AB Editor (ed.). Book
Title in Italics. Vol. 1. 2nd edn. Publisher [optional: City, Country. 000
pp.]
Author, A. 1989. Paper title with
lower-case initials to all words and italics. PhD thesis, University.
[City, if not obvious from the University name, and Country].
For manuscripts in Spanish, replace
"in:" for "en:" and "In press" for "En
prensa" in the entire list, irrespective of the language of the reference
title (see the Spanish version of these instructions). Similar changes are
expected for manuscripts in Portuguese. Do not use the expression "ibid." (ibidem, as above) in the
reference list: the full reference details must be repeated.
All journal titles should be abbreviated
according to Biological Abstracts or another recognized standard; if unknown,
spell them out completely.
References should be ordered alphabetically
in the reference list. For compounded surnames, the capital letter usually
indicates the alphabetical order (e.g., V Van Gogh under "V", but L
van Beethoven [van Beethoven, L] under "B"; O McDonald under
"Mac"; A Di Meola under "D", but C de Burgh [de Burgh, C]
under "B"). Where several references correspond to the same authors
they should be placed in chronological order in the list. If there is more than
one reference by the same series of authors they should be listed in
alphabetical order of the subsequent authors, and then chronologically.
Do not include in the References:
abstracts, unpublished material or papers in proceedings not widely distributed
and easily available. These materials may be listed in the text as personal observations (by
one of the authors of the manuscript, citing it as "Author1, pers.
obs.", or just "pers. obs." if by all the authors), unpublished data (similar
to the previous category, as "Author1, unpubl. data"), personal communications
(information from third parties: "Author, affiliation, pers. comm.), or public communications
(information in published abstracts, or information publicly distributed over
the Internet but not permanently archived: "Author, affiliation, public
comm.").
Cite references in the text as
"Author (Year)" or, if in parenthesis, as "(Author Year)"
[e.g., Pérez (1998) or (Pérez 1998)]. Use "et al." for more than two
authors, as in "Author1 et al. (Year)", and "&" for
papers by two authors, as in "(Author1 & Author2 Year)"]. Use
lower-case letters to distinguish between two papers by the same authors in the
same year [e.g., Pérez et al. 1998a and Pérez et al. 1998b]. This distinction
must be also present in the References. Separate with "," (comma)
papers by the same authors in different years [e.g., Pérez et al. (1996, 1999).
List multiple citations in chronological,
not alphabetical, order [e.g., (Joe 1996; John 1999; Jack et al. 2001)], using
";" (semicolon) to separate references by different authors. The only
exception is for papers by the same authors, that you should cite together in
the chronological order of the older one [e.g., (Joe 1996, 1999; John 1998,
Jack et al. 2001)]. You may refer to specific pages in a work by putting, in
the text, the page numbers after the year, e.g. Joe (1996:57-85); in the
"Literature Cited" list, the reference should be to the entire work.
The expressions "in
litt." and "op.
cit." should be avoided. The following form should be used:
(Joe 1967, cited in John 1989). Both should appear in full in the reference
list.
Keep tables as simple as possible. Table
legends should go above the tables, and provide information as to completely
interpret the table without resorting to the text; if there are measures or
counts all numbers should have explicit units. Never repeat the same material
in figures and tables; when either is equally clear, a figure is preferable. Do
not include any type of information in tables that is not discussed in the text
of the manuscript.
Tables formatted in MS Word or WordPerfect
(or as RTF tables), each in a different page, are preferred; if this is not
possible, separate each field or data with tabs (never with spaces). Tables
structured for column width (70 mm) is preferred over those for page width (145
mm). Do not divide tables in two or more parts.
Do not use vertical lines and try to
minimize the horizontal ones. You should use tables in recent issues of Ecología
Austral as a guideline.
Do not use vertical lines and try to
minimize the horizontal ones. You should use tables in recent issues of Ecología Austral as a
guideline.
Each figure must be self-explanatory and
be referenced in text. Avoid repeating information among tables, figures, and
text. Nomenclature, abbreviations, symbols, and units used in a figure should
match those used in the text.
Figures prepared for column width (70 mm)
are preferred over page width (145 mm). Figures should be designed at final
size in their original software, with the size of the letters between 6 and 12
points (ideally 8-10 points). Lettering is best in a sans-serif face (e.g.,
Arial, Helvetica, Century Gothic, Verdana, Tahoma, News Gothic) capitalizing
only the initial letters.
Figures should not be boxed; try to
minimize the number of lines (e.g., do not draw top and right lines in an
ordinary scatterplot). Do not use titles or identifying letters (as a) and b))
on the graphs. Do not send color figures. Use black, white (open) and bold
hatching for bars and symbols.
Try to avoid gray shades or use them as
distinctly as possible (only 50%, or 25%, 50% and 75%). Preferred symbols are
open or closed black circles, squares and triangles. Symbols should be of
approximately 1.5 mm in their final size. Include symbol keys within the body
of the illustration rather than in the legend. Some straightforward symbols can
be included within legends, but only if it is essential to do so.
If possible, include the figures in your
word-processed file, pasting them as "image" or Windows Metafile
Format (WMF) in different pages of the document (e.g., in Windows you may copy
and paste through the Clipboard).
For example, in MS Word for Windows you
can
The image must be in its final size (70 mm
wide preferred). Do make sure that the image in the word-processor file adjusts
to what you expect (e.g., texts and symbols size); it helps to design the
figures at final size in the original software. If made in Excel, Corel Draw, Statistica for
Windows, Sigma Plot or
KyPlot, in addition to the figures in the word-processor file,
please also send the original file/s.
If you cannot follow these procedures, you
can paste or insert the figures in the word-processed file (and also send it
apart) as a bitmap (TIFF format is preferred; GIF, PCX or BMP are also
acceptable) of 600 dpi, in grayscale depth (8 bits) and the final estimated
size (better for one column wide=70 mm, not more than 145 mm wide). You may get
the bitmap from the original application (graphics and drawing packages usually
provide an export option) or by scanning a good quality print of your figure.
Supplying uncompressed TIFFs is preferable but if the image size is very large
compressed versions are acceptable (LZW, ZIP, ARJ).
For figures consisting of more than one
element (e.g. parts a), b) and c)), please supply the different parts
separately (i.e. paste or insert them separately in the same word-processor
page). The reason for this is that the components of the figure may require
some modification of their layout. Each figure should be centered on a
different page and at final size with the correct orientation.
If you find any problems in applying the
above methods, you can contact the Assistant Editor by e-mail (at manuscritos@ecologiaaustral.com.ar) for help and/or specifications. If the
above methods are unavailable to you, send good quality paper versions of the
figures, following the directions for design, size and layout. However, this
might slow down your paper's publication time.
Eventually authors may be contacted by the
Assistant Editor after manuscript acceptance to provide modified versions of
the figures.
Photographs should only be included if
they convey information that is essential to the understanding of the article.
They should be "clear" and have high contrast. Name and number them
as explained for figures.
They should be sent as electronic files,
scanned at grayscale (8 bits) depth at least at 300 dpi, preferably for a final
size of one column (=70 mm wide). They should be saved as TIFF (.tif) or GIF
(.gif) files, available as exporting formats in most graphic and scanning
packages. Supplying uncompressed TIFFs is preferable but if the image size is
very large compression software are acceptable (LZW, ZIP, ARJ).
If the above electronic method is
unavailable to you, send copies in photographic paper (they may not be
returned). However, this might slow down your paper's publication time.
Maps should only be included if they
convey information that is essential to the understanding of the article. Name
and number them as explained for figures. Plan them preferably for a final size
of one column (=70 mm wide). Include north, graphic scale and coordinates. As
in figures, use black, white, hatches and very different shades of gray (25%,
50%, 75%), and include keys in the image rather than in the legend. Send
them as recommended for figures.