Author Guidelines

INSTRUCTIONS FOR AUTHORS

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Editorial policy | Welfare and legal policy | Submission  | English-language editing | Article types | Specifications | Accepted Papers  | Exclusive Licence Form |  Author Services |Proofs | Early View publication | Open access | Offprints

The British Ecological Society publishes five international journals that between them cover research in all aspects of the science of ecology. The subject matter and types of paper accepted vary between journals, but all journals employ a uniform format. Please follow these instructions carefully to ensure that your manuscript is dealt with speedily.  There are no pages charges for authors.

Journal of Animal Ecology only accepts submissions online. When your manuscript has been prepared in accordance with the following instructions, please access the online submission site at http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/jae-besjournals. You must select the Journal of Animal Ecology when you log on.  Instructions (and a helpline) for the submission web site are accessible from the 'Get Help Now' icon on the ScholarOne Manuscripts submission site.

Editorial policy and process
Journal of Animal Ecology publishes original papers on any aspect of animal ecology, from molecular to community ecology. We aim to publish papers that make a substantial contribution to our understanding of animal ecology. They should also offer insights into issues of general interests to ecologists. Types of paper published: Standard, Essay Review, Forum and In Focus (by invitation).

To achieve our aim of publishing top-quality papers, we have an editorial process consisting of two stages; pre-review and peer review.

After submission, a paper enters the pre-review stage. The aim of pre-review is to identify papers that have the potential to make novel, interesting and significant contributions to broad ecological areas rather than being mainly taxon- or system-specific in these respects. Rejecting papers at pre-review that lack the potential we are looking for ultimately saves everyone time and reduces the burden on our referee community and editorial system. The pre-review assessment is based on the following criteria.

1. Does the paper fall within the broad remit of Journal of Animal Ecology?
2. Does the paper address a broad rather than narrow ecological subject area?
3. Does the paper have the potential to make a substantial contribution to the development of a broad ecological subject area?
4. Is the subject area covered by the paper topical and, hence, potentially of interest to a wide readership?
5. Is the paper appropriately formatted for Journal of Animal Ecology?

A member of the editorial team undertakes the pre-review assessment, and they then communicate a decision to the corresponding author if the paper is to be rejected. About 20-30% of papers submitted to the journal will be rejected at this stage.

If a paper is not rejected at the pre-review stage it then goes into peer-review. This process is comparable to that used in the past - each paper is typically reviewed by two independent referees and a member of the editorial team then makes a decision concerning publication, i.e.

• Reject - the paper is not acceptable for publication and re-submission is not possible,
• Decline without prejudice - the paper is rejected but the option is open to submit a completely new version of the paper that has undergone considerable changes,
• Major Revision - the paper requires major changes and needs to go through the review process again with no guarantee of acceptance, or 
• Minor Revision - the paper is provisionally accepted, subject to conditions that need to be addressed in producing a final version of the manuscript.

Journal of Animal Ecology endeavours to maintain a high standard of reviewing manuscripts, coupled with a prompt turnaround of getting decisions to authors. The average time from submission to first decision is approximately 40 days.

Welfare and legal policy
Researchers must have proper regard for conservation and animal welfare considerations. Attention is drawn to the 'Guidelines for the Treatment of Animals in Research and Teaching'. Any possible adverse consequences of the work for populations or individual organisms must be weighed against the possible gains in knowledge and its practical applications. Authors are required to sign a declaration that their work conforms to the legal requirements of the country in which it was carried out (See below), but editors may seek advice from referees on ethical matters and the final decision will rest with the editors.

This journal is a member of and subscribes to the principles of the Committee on Publication Ethics.

Typescripts
Papers are expected to be no more than 10 published pages in length (8500 words maximum), unless otherwise agreed or invited by the editor. There is no page charge to authors.

Submission
Manuscripts must be in English and spelling should conform to the Concise Oxford Dictionary of Current English. 

• Lines must be numbered, preferably within pages.
• Manuscripts should be in double-spacing.
• Use the 'cover letter' section to highlight anything about your paper that needs to be drawn to the attention of the Editors or the Editorial Office.
• Editors reserve the right to modify manuscripts that do not conform to scientific, technical, stylistic or grammatical standards.

During submission, all authors must confirm that:

• the work as submitted has not been published or accepted for publication, nor is being considered for publication elsewhere, either in whole or substantial part;
• the work is original and all necessary acknowledgements have been made;
• all authors and relevant institutions have read the submitted version of the manuscript and approve its submission;
• all persons entitled to authorship have been so included;
• the work conforms to the legal requirements of the country in which it was carried out, and to accepted international ethical standards, including those relating to conservation and animal welfare, and to the journal's policy on these matters (see 'Welfare and Legal Policy' above).

Pre-submission English-language editing
Authors for whom English is a second language may wish to consider having their manuscript professionally edited before submission to improve the English. A list of independent suppliers of editing services can be found at www.blackwellpublishing.com/bauthor/english_language.asp. All services are paid for and arranged by the author, and use of one of these services does not guarantee acceptance or preference for publication.

Types of Paper

STANDARD PAPERS
A standard paper should not normally be longer than 10 printed pages (8500 words). (A page of printed text, without figures/tables carries c. 800 words.) The passive voice is preferred in describing methods and results. The active voice may be used occasionally to emphasize a personal opinion (typically in Introduction and Discussion sections). The typescript should be arranged as follows, with each section starting on a separate page.

Title page. This should contain:

1. A concise and informative title (as short as possible). Do not include the authorities for taxonomic names in the title. Titles with numerical series designations (I, II, III, etc.) are acceptable provided the editors agreement is sought and that at least Part II of the series has been submitted and accepted before Part I is sent to the printer. Such series must begin in one of the journals of the BES.
2. A list of authors' names with names and addresses of Institutions.
3. The name, address and e-mail address of the correspondence author to whom proofs will be sent.
4. A running headline of not more than 45 characters.

Summary. This should summarize the main results and conclusions of the paper, using simple, factual, numbered statements. It must not exceed 350 words.

• Summaries should be understandable in isolation.
• Summaries must start with point 1 describing, for example, the broad conceptual question addressed by the study
• Summaries should end with a final point highlighting the broader conceptual implication of the results and conclusions of the current study.
• Advice for optimizing your Summary (and Title) so that your paper is more likely to be found in online searches is provided at http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/bauthor/seo.asp 
   

Key-words. Listed in alphabetical order, the key-words should not exceed 10 words or short phrases.

Please pay attention to the keywords you select: they should not already appear in the title or abstract. Rather, they should be selected to draw in readers from wider areas that might not otherwise pick up your paper when they are using search engines.

Introduction. This should state the reason for doing the work, the nature of the hypothesis or hypotheses under consideration, and should outline the essential background.

Materials and methods. This should provide sufficient details of the techniques to enable the work to be repeated. Do not describe or refer to commonplace statistical tests in Methods but allude to them briefly in Results.

Results. This should state the results, drawing attention in the text to important details shown in tables and figures.

Discussion. This should point out the significance of the results in relation to the reasons for doing the work, and place them in the context of other work.

Acknowledgements.  In addition to acknowledging collaborators and research assistants, include relevant permit numbers (including institutional animal use permits), acknowledgment of funding sources, and give recognition to nature reserves or other organizations that made this work possible. Do not acknowledge Editors by name.

References (see Specifications).

Tables (see Specifications). These should be referred to in the text as Table 1, etc. Do not present the same data in both figure and table form.

Figure legends (see Specifications). Figures should be referred to in the text as Fig. 1, etc. (note Figs 1 and 2 with no period).

Illustrations (see Specifications) should be referred to as Figures.

REVIEWS
The editors welcome short review articles on topical subjects which are of general interest to the readership. Intending authors are advised to consult with the editors before preparing essays for submission.

FORUM
This section of the journal is designed to stimulate scientific debate. Contributions may be short articles presenting new ideas (without data), opinions or responses to material published in the journal.  A cover letter is a requirement for all forum pieces.

IN FOCUS
In Focus articles are short pieces designed to draw attention to papers of high expected interest in each issue of the journal. The In Focus articles act as mini-reviews that expand the context of the paper they are featuring, and they are generally commissioned by the Editors and Associate Editors. Guidelines for invited authors are available on the ScholarOne Manuscripts site at http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/jae-besjournals.

BOOK REVIEWS
Journal of Animal Ecology no longer publishes book reviews.

For general tips and guidance for authors or article preparation and submission visit the Wiley-Blackwell Author Services site.

Specifications

Figures
The publishers would like to receive your artwork in electronic form. Please save vector graphics (e.g. line artwork) in Encapsulated Postscript Format (EPS), and bitmap files (e.g. half-tones) in Tagged Image File Format (TIFF). Ideally, vector graphics that have been saved in a metafile (.WMF) or pict (.PCT) format should be embedded within the body of the text file. Detailed information on the Wiley-Blackwell digital illustration standards is available at: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/bauthor/illustration.asp

Figures should not be boxed (superfluous bounding axes) and tick marks must be on the inside of the axes. Where possible, figures should fit on a single page in the submitted paper. In a final version they will generally be reduced in size by about 50% during production. Wherever possible, they should be sized to fit into a single column width (c. 70mm final size). To make best use of space, you may need to rearrange parts of figures (e.g. so that they appear side by side). Please ensure that symbols, labels, etc. are large enough to allow reduction to a final size of c. 8 point, i.e. capital letters will be about 2 mm tall. Lettering should use a sans serif font (e.g. Helvetica and Arial) with capitals used for the initial letter of the first word only. Bold lettering should not be used. Units of axes should appear in parentheses after the axis name.  Please note that line figures should be at least 600 dpi and half-tones (photos) should be at least 300 dpi.

Images in the printed version of the Journal of Animal Ecology are in black and white as it is the policy of the Journal of Animal Ecology for authors to pay the full cost for colour paper print reproduction (currently £150 for the first figure, £50 thereafter). Free colour reproduction is available for the on line version: if authors require this, they should write their figure legend to accommodate both versions of the figure, and indicate their colour requirements on the Colour Work Agreement Form. This form should be completed in all instances where authors require colour, whether in print or online. Therefore, at acceptance, please download the form and return it to the Production Editor (Penny Baker, Wiley-Blackwell, John Wiley & Sons, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK. E-mail: penny.baker@wiley.com). Please note that if you require colour content your paper cannot be published until this form is received.

Figure legends
Legends should be grouped on a separate sheet. Furnish enough detail so that the figure can be understood without reference to the text. In the full-text online edition of the journal, figure legends may be truncated in abbreviated links to the full screen version. Therefore, the first 100 characters of any legend should inform the reader of key aspects of the figure.

Tables
Each table should be on a separate page, numbered and accompanied by a title at the top.

Supporting Information
Journal of Animal Ecology rarely publishes Appendices in the printed version. However, Supporting Information that is referred to in the text may be made available in the online version of the article. Guidelines for the preparation of Supporting Information are available here.

For the printed version, any Appendices should be listed under 'Supporting Information', and added after the References, with the opening statement: 'The following Supporting Information is available for this article online' followed by brief captions for the Appendices/Figs/Tables to be included. These should be numbered Appendix S1, Fig. S1, Table S1, etc.

Any literature referred to in the Appendix or online Supporting Information should also be referenced in the Appendix or online Supporting Information so that it is a self-contained piece of work. This may mean duplicating references if any literature is cited in both the main text and the Supporting Information.

All Supporting Information should be submitted online as part of the main manuscript. Please name your online supporting files as ‘online supporting information' and upload them with the main document. This allows the submission web site to combine all the relevant files together but keep them separate when it comes to publication stage.

References
References in the text to work by up to three authors should be in full, e.g. (Johnson, Myers & James 2006). If there are more than three authors, they should always be abbreviated thus: (Nilsen et al. 2009). When different groups of authors with the same first author and date occur, they should be cited thus: (Jonsen, Myers & James 2006a; Jonsen, James & Myers 2006b), then subsequently abbreviated to (Jonsen et al. 2006a, b).  The references in the list should be in alphabetical order with the journal name in full. The format for papers, entire books, chapters in books, and PhD theses is as follows.

Underwood, N. (2009) Effect of genetic variance in plant quality on the population dynamics of a herbivorous insect. Journal of Animal Ecology, 78, 839–847.

Jonsen, I.D., Myers, R.A. & James, M.C. (2006) Robust hierarchical state–space models reveal diel variation in travel rates of migrating leatherback turtles. Journal of Animal Ecology, 75, 1046–1057.

Nilsen, E.B., Linnell, J.D.C., Odden, J. & Anderson, R. (2009) Climate, season, and social status modulate the functional response of an efficient stalking predator: the Eurasian lynx. Journal of Animal Ecology, 78, 741–751

Otto, S.P. & Day, T. (2007) A Biologist's Guide to Mathematical Modeling in Ecology and Evolution. Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey, USA.

Conway. G. (2007) A Doubly Green Revolution: ecology and food production. Theoretical Ecology: Principles and Applications, 3rd edn (eds R. May & A. McLean), pp. 158–171. Oxford University Press, Oxford.

Stevenson, I.R. (1994) Male-biased mortality in Soay sheep. PhD thesis, University of Cambridge, Cambridge.

References should only be cited as 'in press' if the paper has been accepted for publication. Other references should be cited as 'unpublished' and not included in the list. Work not yet accepted for publication may be cited in the text and attributed to its author as: author name (including initials), unpublished data. In press articles should be uploaded with the manuscript as ‘supplementary files’.

We recommend the use of a tool such as EndNote or Reference Manager for reference management and formatting.
EndNote reference styles can be searched for here:
http://www.endnote.com/support/enstyles.asp

Reference Manager reference styles can be searched for here:
http://www.refman.com/support/rmstyles.asp

Citations from the World Wide Web
Citations from the world-wide-web are only allowed when alternative hard literature sources do not exist for the cited information. Authors are asked to ensure that:

• Fully authenticated addresses are included in the reference list, along with titles, years and authors of the sources being cited.
• The sites or information sources have sufficient longevity and ease of access for others to follow up the citation.
• The information is of a scientific quality at least equal to that of peer reviewed information available in learned scientific journals.
   

Units, symbols and abbreviations
Authors are requested to use the International System of Units (SI, Système International d'Unités) where possible for all measurements (see Quantities, Units and Symbols, 2nd edn (1975) The Royal Society, London). Note that mathematical expressions should contain symbols not abbreviations. If the paper contains many symbols, it is recommended that they should be defined as early in the text as possible, or within a subsection of the Materials and methods section.

Scientific names
Give the Latin names of each species in full, together with the authority for its name, at first mention in the main text. If they appear in the Summary/Abstract, use the common and Latin name only in the first instance, then the Latin or common name thereafter. If there are many species, cite a Flora or checklist which may be consulted for authorities instead of listing them in the text. Do not give authorities for species cited from published references. Give priority to scientific names in the text (with colloquial names in parentheses, if desired).

Makers' names
When a special piece of equipment has been used it should be described so that the reader can trace its specifications by writing to the manufacturer; thus: 'Data were collected using a solid-state data logger (CR21X, Campbell Scientific, Utah, USA)'.

Mathematical material
Mathematical expressions should be carefully represented. Suffixes and operators such as d, log, ln and exp will be set in Roman type; matrices and vectors will be set in bold type; other algebraic symbols will be set in italic. Make sure that there is no confusion between similar characters like 'l' (ell) and '1' (one). Also make sure that expressions are spaced as you would like them to appear, and if there are several equations they should be identified by eqn 1, etc.

Numbers in tables
Do not use an excessive number of digits when writing a decimal number to represent the mean of a set of measurements (the number of digits should reflect the precision of the measurement).

Numbers in text
Numbers from one to nine should be spelled out except when used with units; e.g. two eyes but 10 stomata and 5°C.

Accepted papers
At the conditionally accepted stage all authors are asked to submit their final manuscript text in word format with figures and tables conforming to the specifications above and must include all required forms (nb Colour Artwork form for any colour figures and Exclusive Licence form).

Exclusive Licence Form
Authors will be required to sign an Exclusive Licence Form (ELF) for all papers accepted for publication. This can also be downloaded via the 'Instructions and forms' icon located on the ScholarOne Manuscripts website. Please read carefully before signing: conditions are changed from time to time and may not be the same as the last time you completed one of these forms.
Signature of the ELF is a condition of publication, and papers will not be passed to the publisher for production unless a signed form has been received. Please note that signature of the Exclusive Licence Form does not affect ownership of copyright in the material. After submission, authors will retain the right to publish their paper in various media/circumstances (please see the form for further details).

Production tracking is available for your article through Author Services
Author Services enables authors to track their article, once it has been accepted, through the production process to publication online and in print. Authors can check the status of their articles online and choose to receive automated e-mails at key stages of production. The author will receive an e-mail with a unique link that enables them to register and have their article automatically added to the system. Authors can nominate up to 10 colleagues to have complimentary access to the article once published on line. Visit our Author Services site for more details on online production tracking, tips on article preparation and submission, and more.

Please ensure that a complete e-mail address is provided when submitting the manuscript. Visit our Author Services site for more details on online production tracking, tips on article preparation and submission, and more.

Handling the proofs
The correspondence author will receive an e-mail alert when the proof, an Acrobat PDF (portable document format) file, can be downloaded from the e-proofing site. Acrobat Reader will be required in order to read this file. This software can be downloaded (free of charge) from the following web site: www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html

This will enable the file to be opened, read on screen, and printed out for any corrections to be added. Further instructions will be sent with the proofs. Proofs will be posted if no e-mail address is available; in your absence, please arrange for a colleague to access your e-mail to retrieve the proofs.

Alterations in the text, other than printers errors, may be charged to the author. Proofs must be returned by e-mail, first-class mail, or fax within 3 days of receipt to:
Journal of Animal Ecology,
Wiley-Blackwell
John Wiley & Sons
9600 Garsington Road,
Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK.
Tel: +44 (0) 1865 476477
Fax: +44 (0) 1865 476772
E-mail: penny.baker@wiley.com

Foreign contributors might consider nominating someone in the UK to correct their proofs for them; they should do this when submitting their revised manuscript. The editors reserve the right to correct the proofs themselves, using the accepted version of the manuscript, if the authors corrections are overdue and the journal would otherwise be delayed.

Early View publication
Journal of Animal Ecology is covered by the Early View service. Early View articles are complete, full-text articles published online in advance of their publication in a printed issue. Articles are therefore available as soon as they are ready, rather than having to wait for the next scheduled print issue. They have been fully reviewed, revised and edited for publication, and the authors' final corrections have been incorporated. To register to receive an e-mail alert when your Early View article is published, click here and log-in to Wiley InterScience.

Because Early View articles are in their final, complete form, no changes can be made after online publication. Articles are given a Digital Object Identifier (DOI), which allows them to be cited and tracked before allocation to an issue. After print publication, the DOI remains valid and can continue to be used to cite and access the article. More information about DOIs can be found at http://www.doi.org/faq.html

OnlineOpen
OnlineOpen is available to authors of primary research articles who wish to make their article available to non-subscribers on publication, or whose funding agency requires grantees to archive the final version of their article. With OnlineOpen the author, the author's funding agency, or the author's institution pays a fee to ensure that the article is made available to non-subscribers upon publication via Wiley InterScience, as well as deposited in the funding agency's preferred archive. For the full list of terms and conditions, see http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/authorresources/onlineopen.html#OnlineOpen_Terms. 

After acceptance, any authors wishing to send their paper OnlineOpen will be required to complete the payment form available from our website at: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/pdf/JAE_OOF.pdf.

All authors will be required to sign an Exclusive Licence Form (ELF) as well.

The copyright statement will read:
© [date] The Author(s). Journal compilation © [date] British Ecological Society.
Re-use of this article is permitted in accordance with the Terms and Conditions set out at http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/authorresources/onlineopen.html

Prior to acceptance there is no requirement to inform an Editorial Office that you intend to publish your paper OnlineOpen if you do not wish to. All OnlineOpen articles are treated in the same way as any other article. They go through the journal's standard peer-review process and will be accepted or rejected based on their own merit.

Offprints
The corresponding author will receive a PDF file of their article free of charge at the time of publication within an issue of the journal (i.e. once the article is paginated). Printed offprints are normally dispatched by surface mail c.3 weeks after publication of the issue in which the paper appears; however, please note that they are sent by surface mail so delivery of overseas orders may take up to 6 weeks. Please contact the publishers if they fail to arrive.

The PDF file is e-mailed to the correspondence author at the e-mail address given on the title page of the paper (unless advised otherwise); therefore, please ensure that the name, address and e-mail of the correspondence author are clearly indicated on the manuscript title page if he/she is not the first author of the paper. A copy of the Publisher's Terms and Conditions for the use of the PDF file will accompany it and the file can only be distributed in accordance with these requirements. Authors can also nominate up to 10 colleagues to receive complimentary access to their article by registering for Author Services.

 

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