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Submission Preparation Checklist

As part of the submission process, authors are required to check off their submission's compliance with all of the following items, and submissions may be returned to authors that do not adhere to these guidelines.
  • The submission has not been previously published, nor is it before another journal for consideration (or an explanation has been provided in Comments to the Editor).
  • The authors have reviewed The British Herpetological Society's Ethical Policy and Guidelines (available at https://www.thebhs.org/info-advice/134-bhs-ethics-policy) and confirm that their research adheres to this.
  • The manuscript is written in British English
  • The authors have provided the names, institutions and email address of four potential reviewers in the "Comments to Editor" box below.
  • The manuscript file is in OpenOffice, Microsoft Word, or RTF document file format (PDF's are not accepted)
  • The text is double-spaced; uses a 12-point font, and employs italics rather than underlining (except with URL addresses).
  • The text adheres to the stylistic and bibliographic requirements of the Herpetological Journal
  • Figures should be uploaded as separate files and should be in JPG, PNG or PDF format with a minimum resolution of 300dpi
  • Tables are pooled into a single "tables file" in OpenOffice, Microsoft Word, or RTF document file format
  • Where applicable, supplementary material is included as a single file, separate to the manuscript
  • Where available, URLs for the references have been provided.

Author Guidelines

All research should meet The British Herpetological Society's Ethical Policy and Guidelines, a full version of which can be found here.

Papers should be concise with the minimum number of tables and illustrations. Submitted manuscripts should be double spaced with wide margins all round. The usual rules of zoological nomenclature apply.

 

For all papers, the title page should contain only the following:

•   Title of paper; name(s) and brief addresses of the author(s)

•   A running title of eight words or less

•   Up to six key words

•   The name, full address and email of the corresponding author.

 

The text of the paper should begin on page 2 and be produced in the following order: Abstract, Main Text, Acknowledgements, References, Figure Legends.

Full papers should contain the following sections in the main text: Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion. Authors are encouraged to make use of Supplementary Material if required.

Short Notes should be less than six manuscript pages and accompanied by a single data set, i.e. one table or one figure. The main text should be produced as continuous text, preceded by an abstract of no more than 150 words. Authors are encouraged to make use of Supplementary Material if required.

Reviews and Opinion Pieces should have the main text divided into sections as appropriate.

 

Papers should be written in British English (including figure labels) and spelling should be that of the Oxford English Dictionary.

Times and dates should conform to the following formats: for time of day use 0900, 1000 etc; for dates: 7 July 2017. Please avoid using bold text, all caps or small caps for emphasis or for headings. If emphasis is required, use italics.

Tables should be provided in a separate Word file. Tables should be numbered in arabic numerals, e.g. Table 1. They should be as simple as possible and typed double-spaced on separate sheets with a title/short explanatory paragraph above the table. Horizontal and vertical lines should be avoided, as should tables that split over more than one page or that need to be set in landscape format.

All Figures should be submitted as separate JPG or PDF files, with a minimum resolution of 300dpi and a maximum file size of 5MB. Graphs, line drawings and photographs should be numbered in sequence in arabic numerals, e.g. Figure 1. If an illustration has more than one part, each should be identified as (a), (b), etc. A metric scale must be inserted in micrographs etc. Legends for illustrations should be included at the end of the main text.

References in the text should be given as in the following examples: "Smith (2017) stated –"; "- as observed by Smith & Jones (2017)." "- as previously observed (Smith, 2017; Jones, 2016; Smith & Jones, 2017)". For three or more authors, the first author's surname followed by "et al." should be used (Smith et al., 2015). In the list of references, the full title of the journal should be given. Articles "submitted" or "in prep." may not be cited in the text or references. Authors should consult a recent edition of the Journal for general guidance.