Author Guidelines
There is no set limit for article length but clear, concise language is recommended. Casual records will be published providing that their relevance is clear. Once accepted, articles will be published immediately. All rights are reserved by the authors, who authorise the journal to publish the article. Papers are published under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License: no part of the published paper may be reproduced or reused unless the source is cited.
Utilities
Authors may use Reference Manager program files to simplify compliance with publication norms. The corresponding file with Arxius de Miscel·lània Zoològica format can be downloaded from the web-page (AMZ_eng.os) to compile references and bibliography in accordance with Arxius de Miscel·lània Zoològica publication norms (PDF).
Author guidelines
Submission of manuscripts
Manuscripts that authors wish to submit for consideration for publication by the Editorial Committee of Arxius de Miscel·lània Zoològica should be sent by e-mail to: amz@bcn.cat.
They should be accompanied by a cover letter to the same e-mail address. The letter should state that the article reports on original research, has not been published elsewhere, and is being submitted exclusively for consideration in AMZ. This cover letter must also include the agreement of all authors and their e-mail addresses. In addition, if necessary, it must include a statement that any live animals involved in the study were treated and housed in accordance with approved guidelines (these should be stated), that the authors are in possession of necessary permits, and that they complied with the pertinent protection regulations in force. In studies conducted on rare or protected species it must be accredited that the legislation in force has been respected. Infringement of any environmental regulation undetected by the journal’s editors will be the sole responsibility of the authors. Papers are published under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Authors may suggest possible experts for reviewing their paper in the cover letter. Non–receipt of the cover letter with the requested information implies that the article will not be able to start the reviewing process.
Changes to authorship
The editors of this journal will not consider changes to authorship once a manuscript has been accepted for publication. It is important that authors carefully consider the authorship list and order of authors and provide a definitive author list at original submission.
Format of original papers
The preferred format is Rich Text Format (RTF), Word (DOC), or Open Office (ODT). The entire manuscript should be double spaced throughout. Texts should be complete with figures and tables. Tables with field or laboratory data which make up the basis of analytical results (inventories, biometric tables, etc.) may be sent on separate files on Excel (XLS), Access (MDB) or Open Office (ODS).
Please contact the Editorial Committee regarding the possibility to send tables or figures in other formats in order to ensure their inclusion in the full text version of the article.
Supplementary tables, figures or illustrations (photographs, drawings, etc.) must be correlatively numbered as annexes (e.g. Annex 1) within the main text. The Editorial Committee will clarify any doubts concerning where they should appear in the manuscript. Articles can be submitted in Catalan, Spanish or English. Please use a clear, concise, comprehensive style as grammatically correct as possible. Make readability a priority.
Scientific names of genera, species, subspecies and untranslatable neologisms should be in italics. Quotations in any language must be typed in quotation marks.
The common name of a species should be given in small letters. When referring to a species for the first time in the text, give both the common and scientific names when possible. Place names may appear either in their original form or in the language of the manuscript, but please use the same criteria throughout the text.
Numbers one to nine should be written in full in the text except when preceding a measure. Higher numbers should be written in numerals except at the beginning of a sentence.
Dates must appear as follow: dd/mm/yyyy; 28/06/2019; 28, 30/06/2019 (days 28th and 30th); 28–30/06/2019 (days 28th to 30th).
Footnotes should not be used.
Structure of articles
Do not number general section titles in the article (Introduction, Material and methods, Results, Discussion, Acknowledgements and References). Use no more than two levels of headings.
First page
Title. The title should be concise but informative. Including part numbers (Part I, II, etc.) from a series of articles should be avoided and will be subject to the Editor’s consent.
Name of author or authors
Abstract in English, of no more than 12 typewritten lines (860 characters) highlighting introduction, material, methods, results and discussion. Avoid speculation and quotation. Abstracts must begin with the title in italics.
Key words in English (no more than six) should identify the subjects under which the article may be indexed, in order of importance
Resumen in Catalan and Spanish, translation of the Abstract. Summaries of articles by non-Spanish and non-Catalan speaking authors will be translated by the journal on request.
Palabras clave in Spanish and Catalan equivalent to the Key words.
Author’s address, will be published as they appear in the manuscript file.
Researcher identifiers (ORCID, ResearcherID,…), at least from the first and the corresponding authors.
(Title, Author/s name/s, Abstract, Key words, Resumen, Palabras clave, Author’s address and Researcher identifiers should constitute the first page.)
Sections of the articles
Introduction. This should cover the historical background of the subject and the aims of the paper.
Material and methods. Provide relevant information on the species studied, study area, methods for collecting and analysing data. Sample localities should be geocoded and the geographical reference system informed.
Results. This section of the text will present the dataset that defines the results and the analysis conducted. We encourage authors to publish data in formats that facilitate their reuse, preferably deposited in open access repositories and with clear indications of links to sources and their identifiers, for example DOI, in this Results section.
Biodiversity data occupy a preferential place in the journal AMZ. For their publication, the consultation and reuse formats supported by GBIF have been adopted: https://www.gbif.org/dataset-classes. The data paper format: https://museucienciesjournals.cat/en/amz/info/com-es-publica) provides a solution for the majority of articles that are published by AMZ. Authors can present results in whichever way they find most convenient, but furthermore they must provide the information on biodiversity in tables that are as close as possible to the standard templates. These tables will be published as complementary resources housed on GBIF. The editorial department will provide any help necessary to transform the tables into resources adapted to the models envisaged by GBIF.
Show data that explain the results and analyses carried out. If results are published as a data paper format, authors should deposit their raw datasets in data repositories and the links to these resources should clearly be pointed out in this section. In case of depositing more than one dataset in different repositories, interlinked references are needed: the DOI assigned to a GBIF dataset, for example, should be mentioned in an ecological dataset uploaded in another repository and vice versa.
Discussion. The results and a comparison with related studies should be discussed according to the hypothesis and the aims considered in the introduction.
Acknowledgements. Optional.
References. All articles must include a bibliography of the publications cited in the text. References should follow the Harvard method:
- Journal articles:
Nekola, J. C., 2002. Effects of fire management on the richness and abundance of central North American grassland land snail faunas. Animal Biodiversity and Conservation, 25(2): 53–66.
- Books or other non–periodical publications:
Hubbell, S. P., 2001. The Unified Neutral Theory of Biodiversity and Biogeography. Monographs in Population Biology, 32. Princeton University Press, Princeton.
- Contributions or chapters of books:
Bonner, J. T., Horn, H. S., 2000. Allometry and natural selection. In: Scaling in biology: 25–35 (J. H. Brown, G. B. West, Eds.). Oxford University Press, Oxford.
- PhD thesis:
Merilä, J., 1996. Genetic and quantitative trait variation in natural bird populations. PhD thesis, Uppsala University.
Regarding the digital documents the references should follow the ISO 690-2 rule as in the following examples:
- Electronic texts, databases and software:
Font, X., De Cáceres, M., Cuadrada, R. V., Navarro, A. Banc de Dades de Biodiversitat de Catalunya [online]: Generalitat de Catalunya i Universitat de Barcelona. <http://biodiver.bio.ub.es/biocat/homepage.html> [visited: 7 January 2004].
- Articles in electronic journals:
Cordero, A., Andrés, J. A., 2002. Male coercion and convenience polyandry in a calopterygid damselfly [online]. 7 pp. Journal of Insect Science, 2.14. <http://www.insectscience.org/2.14/> [visited: 8 January 2004].
Work in press should only be cited if it has been accepted for publication.
References must be set out in alphabetical and chronological order for each author, adding the letters a, b, c,… to the papers of the same year. Bibliographic citations in the text must appear in the normal form : “…according to MacArthur (1972)…”; “…has been defined by Nee et al. (1995)…”; “…the prospections that have been carried out (Español and Mateu, 1945)…”.
DOIs (Digital Object Identifiers) should also be included where available.
Tables. Tables must be numbered in Arabic numerals, 1, 2, 3,… always with references in the text. Large tables for inclusion in the text itself (not those tables added at the end of articles as annexes) should be narrow (across the page) and long (down the page) rather than wide and short, to fit into the journal column width. Tables not meeting this criterion must be dealt with as Annexes.
Figures. All illustrations (graphs, drawings, photographs.) must be termed figures, numbered consecutively in Arabic numerals and show reference in the text. All maps and drawings must include a scale. Figures should clearly contribute to the comprehension of the text. Figures included as illustrations of organisms or landscapes should be included as Annexes.
Figure and table legends must be clear, concise, and written both in the language of the article and in English.
Annexes. Detailed data matrices, lists, inventories and other supplementary information may be presented as annexes, numbered separately in the sequence they are mentioned in the text in Arabic numerals and with reference in the text. Take into account that raw datasets are preferably deposited in data repositories (see Results section).
Tables in this section should include a legend with a clear concise definition of each field in the language of the article and also in English. The fields to be included should be as informative as possible in relation to the casuistry of the article. Avoid redundancy, e.g. a paper describing samples collected from the same province or county or of the same taxon, Family or Order, should discard such information in tables if it is detailed in the main text.
Contents of tables included as Annexes may be:
- Taxonomic fields: genus and species, etc.
- Place names: locality, municipality, county, province,…
- Coordinates: coordinates of position expressed as geographic coordinates in decimal degrees or UTM coordinates. Altitude or depth in meters.
- Temporal fields: date and hour.
- Environmental fields: associated vegetation, soil conditions, temperature,….
- Other.
Each field will constitute a column of the table. The section Material and methods should provide information on the procedures for giving field values; in particular, the geographic reference system and the environmental parameters.
The Editorial Committee will offer advice in case of questions or doubts.
Notes
Notes should follow the same procedure as other articles and they will undergo the same review process. They should not exceed 2,300 words including title, abstract, figure and table legends, acknowledgements and references. The abstract should not exceed 100 words, and the number of references should be limited to 20. Section headings within the text are optional. Brief communications may have up to two figures and/or two tables.
On the protection of sensitive data
Information on collection sites may place at risk the taxa under study when the precision of data opens a door to possible misuse of this knowledge. It is recommended that geographical data be masked (by reducing their precision, for example) when related to endangered, rare, threatened, protected or vulnerable species or those with a commercial value. The information will be partially hidden in the public presentation, but it will be accessible in all its detail through the work’s authors. When a collector has undertaken a field expedition lasting several days in diverse and specific localities, the sensitive species data may remain hidden in the overall presentation of the work but it is important to ensure they cannot be deduced using the field expedition diary.
Acceptance of articles
Once an article has been accepted authors should send text, figures and tables on separate files. Text and tables in DOC, RTF or ODT format; figures in TIFF or GIF format if they are graphs or drawings or TIFF or JPEG for photographs; Annexes in a different format when previously agreed upon.
Electronic proofs sent to the first author for correction should be returned to the Editorial Committee within 10 days. The article should then be ready for publishing. There in no prevision for publishing posterior versions of the same article.
Authors will receive an electronic copy in PDF-A format with the text and all the annexed tables.
Final note
Authors are advised to consult recent back issues of the journal and follow its conventions by means of examples of accomplishment of the present guidelines.
Publishing in Arxius de Miscel·Lània Zoològica is free of charge. Expenses due to any substantial alterations of the proofs will be charged to the authors.
