NEW Policy on the use of generative AI
Firstly, upon their submission, authors are requested (1) to declare that they did not utilize generative artifical intelligence (AI) tools in the composition of their manuscript, or, if any part of this work did involve the use of such tools, the authors are required (2) to clearly specify the nature of the AI's involvement. The latter includes detailing the purpose(s) of using generative AI and naming the specific AI tool(s) used as well as highlighting directly in the manuscript any content that was AI-generated.
Secondly, to facilitate the process of evaluating manuscripts upon resubmission, authors are requested to refrain from replacing entire paragraphs using "change-tracking" mode of the text-processing program. Instead, all modifications should be made as in-line changes using "change-tracking". This approach ensures that each alteration is clearly visible and directly comparable with the original text.
Myrmecological News publishes peer-reviewed Original and Review Articles, and Focus and Forum contributions on any empirical or theoretical aspect of ant research. We seek high-quality contributions, expected to be of genuine interest to myrmecologists and of enduring relevance to ant research. For details, please see Aims and Scope.
In detail, we publish these types of contributions:
Original Article: Original Articles present new results from primary research; they are refereed by at least two peer reviewers. Click to download a template for an Original Article.
Review Article: Review Articles are invited and present well-balanced reviews of research literature on topics of broad interest; they are refereed by at least two peer reviewers; suggestions for Review Articles are very welcome. Click to download a template for a Review Article.
Focus: Invited or uninvited, “Focus” is a venue for communicating thoughts or perspectives of outstanding scientific interest, or inspiring and reasonable suggestions of research avenues. Submissions should not contain results from primary research but should be supported by literature references. Items submitted to “Focus” are refereed by at least three peer reviewers. Click to download a template for a Focus contribution.
Forum: Invited or uninvited, “Forum” provides a venue for communicating constructive points of view and comments, fair criticism, relevant meeting reviews and abstracts of meeting contributions, and reports or announcements of far-reaching importance to the myrmecological community, including logistical aspects. Submissions should not contain results from primary research, but, whenever appropriate, need to be supported by literature references. Items submitted to “Forum” are refereed by at least three peer reviewers.Click to download a template for a Forum contribution.
Book Review: Invited, not refereed; suggestions for Book Reviews are very welcome.
Irregular contributions include Obituary (invited or uninvited, not refereed) and Laudatio (invited or uninvited, not refereed).
Submission of manuscripts
Please submit your manuscript by E-mail (choose "Submission" in the menu to the left or send E-mail to info (at) myrmecologicalnews (dot) org).
Contact authorship
With multi-authored manuscripts, all correspondence with Myrmecological News prior to publication will be handled by a single author throughout. For correspondence with the community after publication, multiple individuals among first (including potential co-first) and senior (including potential co-senior) authors can be designated as contact authors.
Copyright, licensing, and article-processing charges
Please find all information under Open access.
Manuscript preparation
We are keen on short manuscript turnaround times and now also consider initial submissions not in Myrmecological News format as long as they are consistently formatted; manuscripts formatted inconsistently will be returned to the author. Please note that upon invitation to revise such manuscripts, they must then be formatted according to Myrmecol. News instructions. This is a one-year test period after which we will evaluate if turnaround times have decreased indeed.
Important: Please make sure that the manuscript you submit does not contain any (including white) shading or highlighting of text. Likewise, please ensure that you do not use automatic numbering and bulleting.
Please take care you use page and line numbers throughout the manuscript.
Footnotes are not acceptable.
Do not use any formatting (including style sheet in the word processing program) except: genus and species names in italics (e.g., Linepithema humile) and authors of taxa and publications in small caps (e.g., Linnaeus, 1758). Any other formatting complicates editing of the manuscript.
Manuscripts should be written in English (British or American English, but consistently throughout the manuscript). In exceptional cases, other languages can be accepted. We highly recommend authors who use a non-native language to have their manuscripts revised linguistically before initial submission.
Manuscripts should be organised as follows:
Original Article: Front page with title; name(s) and address(es) of the author(s) and designation of a contact author in case of more than one author; key words; number of manuscript pages; number of figures and tables.
Main body of the manuscript: Title; Author(s); Abstract; Key words; Address(es); Introduction; Material and methods; Results; Discussion; Acknowledgements; References; Table and Figure legends.
Keep the article concise and its length appropriate given the amount of information presented.
Review Article: Front page with title; name(s) and address(es) of the author(s) and designation of a contact author in case of more than one author; key words; number of manuscript pages; number of figures and tables.
Main body of the manuscript: Title; Author(s); Abstract; Key words; Address(es); organisation of "Introduction", "Results", and "Discussion" up to author; Acknowledgements; References; Table and Figure legends.
Please try to keep the total word count below 20,000 words.
Focus: Front page with title; name(s) and address(es) of the author(s) and designation of a contact author in case of more than one author; number of manuscript pages.
Main body of the manuscript: Title; Author(s); text; References.
Please keep the total word count below 1600 words (equalling two edited pages).
Forum: Front page with title; name(s) and address(es) of the author(s) and designation of a contact author in case of more than one author; number of manuscript pages.
Main body of the manuscript: Title; Author(s); Abstract possible but not compulsory; Key words possible but not compulsory; Address(es); organisation of "Introduction", "Discussion" and other potential content up to author; Acknowledgements; References; Table and Figure legends.
Please try to keep the total word count as low as feasible, but below 3,200 words (equalling four edited pages); at the discretion of the editorial team, Forum contributions can be longer than four edited pages. Be aware that referees will be asked whether they consider a manuscript as being as compact as possible.
Book Review: Front page with book title; name(s) and address(es) of the author(s) and designation of a contact author in case of more than one author; number of manuscript pages.
Main body of the manuscript: Bibliographic inform on the book, i.e., title, author, publisher, place of publication, number of pages, ISBN, price; Author(s); text; References (if any).
Please try to keep the total word count below 750 words (equalling one printed page).
Species authorities
Give author (small caps) and year of description for each species at its first mention, e.g., Lasius niger (Linnaeus, 1758). Apply this to the abstract and start anew with it in the main text, irrespectively of whether a species has already been mentioned in the abstract or not. Please note that references to species authorities (I) have a comma between author and year, in which they differ from references to the literature; (II) have parentheses only if a taxon was originally described under another genus than it is currently allocated to; (III) do not entail necessity to list the source under References.
Abbreviated genus name
Abbreviate genus name by using its first letter only. Do not abbreviate genus name at beginning of sentence, at first mention in a paragraph even when already mentioned in an earlier paragraph, nor if use of the abbreviation would introduce ambiguity, such as when different genera mentioned in the manuscript have the same first letter.
Citation of material examined
Either exactly as given on a specimen label, indicated by quotation marks; or as in the following example (using majuscules for Roman numerals): Austria: Vienna, Johannserkogel (48° 11' N, 16° 31' E), 22.XI.2004, leg. S. Schödl, 2 workers (NHMW).
Voucher specimen repositories
Acronyms of collections should consist of up to four letters for the institution (e.g., NHMW – Natural History Museum, Vienna). List acronyms in the Material and methods section.
References
References in the text should be given as follows:
Ehrhardt (1987), Hölldobler & Wilson (1990), Buschinger & al. (2003), or in apposition: (Ehrhardt 1987).
All references (and no other works) must appear in the References. Do not abbreviate journal titles and places of publication. Titles of references should only be translated if the original titles are in non-Latin letters. Please note that references to papers "submitted" are not permitted.
Examples
Journal article:
Andersen, A.N. 1997: Functional groups and patterns of organization in North American ant communities: a comparison with Australia. – Journal of Biogeography 24: 433-460.
Book chapter:
Ehrhardt, W. 1987: Biosystematics of the slavemaking ant genus Chalepoxenus. In: Eder, J. & Rembold, H. (Eds.): Chemistry and biology of social insects. – Verlag J. Peperny, München, pp. 39-40.
Book:
Czechowski, W., Radchenko, A. & Czechowska, W. 2002: The ants (Hymenoptera, Formicidae) of Poland. – Muzeum i Instytut Zoologii PAN, Warszawa, 200 pp.
Website on the internet:
Espadaler, X. & Bernal, V. 2004: Lasius neglectus, a polygynous, sometimes invasive, ant. – <http://www.creaf.uab.es/xeg/Lasius/Ingles/index.htm>, retrieved on 5 May 2008.
If you use EndNote, please download here the EndNote output style for Myrmecological News.
If you use Zotero, please download the Zotero output style for Myrmecological News from the official repository for csl styles: http://zotero.org/styles
Symbols
Contributors are asked to use (and separately explain) common symbols such as $ and § instead of ♂ and ♀.
Tables
Tables should be adapted to a width of either 8.1 or 17.0 cm.
Figures
Only high-quality figures can be accepted. Please provide figures of a maximum file size of 15 MB (in excess of this size, there is no gain for reproduction). Name figure files "Author-Fig1.pdf" etc. Colour figures are strongly encouraged.
In preparing figure files, please distinguish between (i) photographs and (ii) charts, plots, and line graphics. For (i) photographs, high-quality JPG files in original resolution are preferred. In case of figure plates consisting of mounted photographs, additionally add the uncut originals. For (ii) charts, plots and line graphics, vector graphics (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vector_graphics) are preferred (as PDF). If graphics cannot be exported as vector graphics, a high-resolution TIFF is preferred.
Whichever type of figure (i, ii) you are preparing, to assure the legibility of small details and any text, please test-print figures before submission, in the size they will be reproduced. In doing so, note that figures are set using the following resolutions: at minimum 2010 pixels wide for a width of 170 mm (double-column), at minimum 969 pixels wide for a width of 82 mm (single-column), or rarely at minimum 1488 pixels wide for a width of 126 mm (1.5-column).
In case of figure plates, please use capital letters in black or white (whichever stronger contrasts the background) 10 pt (at reproduction size) Arial bold to label figure parts and put these labels into the lower-left corners; in exceptional cases, if this is not possible for content-based reasons, use the lower-right corners. Also, take care that the various parts of a figure plate are visually well separated – in many instances, use of narrow white frames of figure parts is advisable.
NEW For a brief visual guide to figure sizing and labelling, look here.
Digital supplementary materials
Film sequences, large tables, reference collections, and other supplementary material can be deposited at the journal's homepage. Refer to the digital supplementary material in the manuscript by "Appendix, as digital supplementary material to this article, at the journal's web pages". The content of any digital supplementary material will be subject to the same scientific editorial processing as the manuscript it accompanies. However, the author is responsible for copyediting and layout.
Resubmission
Our aim is to provide rapid means of publication. Thus, we request that revised manuscripts be resubmitted within one month after the editorial decision has been issued. If delayed beyond one month, resubmissions will be considered and handled as new submissions.
Proof-reading
The contact author receives the proofs and is asked to return any corrections within two working days. The contact author is responsible for errors remaining after proof-reading. Please note that at the stage of proof-reading, no changes to the paper other than corrections of errors are possible.
Comments on the editorial workflow and tips for authors
A manuscript …
… which the assigned Subject Editor considers eligible for peer review, but which is not properly formatted according to the journal instructions, contains illegible figures, or suffers from weak writing will be returned to the authors to correct these problems before the submission will be processed. In some cases, authors may need to seek out a biologist mastering English very well to improve the grammar, punctuation, and clarity of the text. Authors will profit from this measure in that it will prevent the referees’ annoyance by any of the shortcomings mentioned.
… submitted following a "rejection with permission to resubmit" decision will, after successfully passing the Subject Editor’s screening, be allowed just one further evaluation round by external peer reviewers in which it must become clear that the earlier criticism leading to the rejection has been successfully addressed. The time span until the final decision will thus be better foreseeable for authors and the final decision more likely to be positive when authors use this single chance thoroughly.
… submitted following a minor-revision decision (and potentially even a major-revision decision) will be sent out for re-evaluation by peer reviewers only in instances where re-evaluation by referees is considered unavoidable. Authors can actively speed the process by avoiding additional peer reviewing – convince your editors by succinct and satisfactory replies to all criticism!