Guidelines for Authors

Submission of a paper implies that it has not been published previously, is not under consideration for publication elsewhere and, if accepted, will not be published elsewhere in the same form and/or similar content, in English or any other language, without the written consent of the Publisher. By the same token, papers previously published with proceedings or any other journal in any other language should not be submitted without significant modification.

Manuscripts submitted under multiple authorships are reviewed on the assumption that all listed authors concur with the submission and that a copy of the final manuscript has been approved by all the authors and tacitly or explicitly by the responsible authorities int he laboratories/organisations in which the work was carried out.

It is understood that with the submission of this article the authors have complied with the institutional policies governing the humane and ethical treatment of the experimental subjects, and that they are willing to share the original data and materials if so requested.

Types of Contibutions

The IUCN-SSC Otter Specialist Group Bulletin accepts viewpoints, research articles, review papers, short communications, research reports, letters to the editor, replies and discussion papers. Please note that papers of a routine nature and lacking originality, novelty and uniqueness will not be accepted for publication.

A short communication should be of significant scientific merit (a novel finding that warrants immediate publication)

General: Manuscripts must be in double-spaced form with wide margins. A font size of 12 pt is required. The corresponding author should be identified – include a full postal address, fax number and email address. Photos of all authors in .jpg format should be submitted together with a final version of the manuscript. The editors reserve the right to adjust style to certain standards of uniformity. 

Line Numbers: to facilitate the review process, continuous line numbers should be inserted in the text of the manuscript

Paper Length: the editors generally encourage brevity for all research papers. Every page of the manuscript, including the title page, references tables etc should be numbered.

Abstracts: abstracts should not exceed 250 words, and should not contain references.

Keywords: 4-6 keywords must be included on a separate line below the main abstract and labelled “keywords”. To optimise searching, avoid keywords already used in the title.

Text: follow this order when composing manuscripts: title; authors; affiliations; abstract; keywords; text. The text should be divided into: introduction; animals, material and methods – or whatever is appropriate – results, discussion, conclusion and where relevant acknowledgements, reference, figure captions, figures and then tables. Figures and tables may also be inserted into the text. The corresponding author should be identified with an asterisk and footnote.

Non-English Summaries: whenever possible, Spanish and French summaries will be included. Authors are encouraged to find a native speaker and organise the translation. Other languages may be discussed with the editor.

Units: use SI unites. If other units are necessary, include the conversion factor and add the non-standard unit in in parenthesis. Units should be in the form “g cm-1” rather than “g/cm” 

Animals: please note that if handling of animals has been performed, the relevant chapter has to be called “animals, materials and methods” and an ethical statement on acceptance of the animal experiment (authority etc) has to be given in the text.

Maths: avoid double suffix. Punctuate carefully. Use dy/dx = a +bx. Statistical programs used for calculations have to be identified in the Materials and Methods section. Significant differences should be states as: *P<0.05; **P<0.01; ***P<0.001

References: all publications cited in the text should be presented in a list of references following the text of the manuscript. In the text refer to: the author’s name (without initials) and a year of publication (eg “since Anton (1993) has shown that…” or “this is in agreement with results obtained later (Berta, 1994; Cesar et al., 1998; Dora and Frieda, 1999)”). Please follow the chronological order. For three or more authors use the first author followed by “et al.” in the text

List of References: these should be arranged alphabetically by author’s name. The manuscript should be carefully checked to ensure that the spelling of author’s names and dates are exactly the same in the text as in the reference list. International abbreviations should be used for journal names as determined by the ISI. For a listing please refer to this link
References to personal correspondence or to unarchived material obtained from the web are discouraged. “Anonymous” is not acceptable as an author. Citations in other languages that do not contain an English abstract are discouraged. Citations in other languages should have the addition (in “language” with English abstract)

Illustrations: photographs, charts and diagrams are all to be referred to as “figure(s)” and should be numbered consecutively in the order to which they are referred. They should accompany the manuscript and may be included in the text. All illustrations should be clearly marked with the figure number. All figures are to have a caption. 
Line drawings: lines should be black, of an adequate thickness (around 1pt) and curves should be smooth. Shading (tints) that simulate grey should not be used and replaced by line shading (hatched)
Photographs: no restrictions on the use of photographs. Submitting a photograph implies that the author holds the copyright. If necessary, a scale should be marked on the photograph. Please note that photocopies of photographs are not acceptable.
Colour: colour illustrations are encouraged and no extra costs apply.

Tables: tables should be numbered consecutively and given a suitable caption. Footnotes to tables should be typed below the table and should be referred to by superscript lowercase letters. No vertical rules should be used. Tables should not duplicate results presented elsewhere in the manuscript (eg in graphs)

Multimedia Files: the IUCN-SSC Otter Specialist Group Bulletin accepts electronic supplementary material to support and enhance your scientific research. Supplementary files offer the author additional possibilities for publishing supporting applications, movies, animation sequences, high-resolution images, background datasets, sound clips and more. Supplementary files supplied will be published online alongside the electronic version of your article on our Bulletin section.

Miscellaneous: be careful about the use of significant figures: provide concise description about QA/QC of your data, use periods for your decimal points, define acronyms when they first appear in the text, be consistent in the format of your unit expressions.

Proofs: PDF proofs will be sent by email to the corresponding author. To avoid delay in publication, only necessary changes should be made and corrections should be returned promptly. 

Copyright: authors are responsible for obtaining from the copyright holder permission to reproduce any material for which copyright already exists.

Online Publication: your article will appear on the Bulletin section of this website

Author Services: for queries relating to the submission of articles and the status of manuscripts under review, please contact iucnosgbull@yahoo.co.uk