Author Guidelines
VISION
The European Journal of Taxonomy (EJT) is published and fully funded by a consortium of (European) Natural History Institutes. Therefore, neither authors, nor readers are required to pay open access fees or subscriptions. By coordinating institutional resources to create a single publishing platform, the journal encourages excellence, prevents redundancy, and increases efficiency in the dissemination of taxonomic data. It provides a secure, long-term publication platform at minimum cost.
EJT is thus a high-quality, fully free taxonomic journal that will offer all the modern interactive web-based facilities expected of a high-level, high-impact journal. EJT endeavours to set a high standard in taxonomic publishing.
SCOPE
See the “Focus and scope” section here.
CATEGORIES OF PAPERS PUBLISHED BY EJT
EJT publishes the following categories of papers:
- Research articles: contributions to the field of descriptive taxonomy, including (re-) descriptions of taxa or global checklists, taxonomic revisions, etc.
- Monographs: papers falling into the categories listed above and exceeding 50 printed pages.
- Opinion papers: in which authors offer information and interpretation of issues related to theory and history of biological systematics and taxonomy, and science policy making.
EJT will not publish correspondence, short notes, book reviews or any other kind of announcements. Submitted manuscripts will need to have sufficient critical mass to be considered by EJT. For example, manuscripts describing a single or very few species will need to demonstrate the general relevance of their publication. Larger and revisionary papers are preferred. Note also that EJT publishes such longer papers in FREE open access!
JOURNAL POLICIES
Editorial policy
Authors are required to register type specimens in an official natural history collection with public access prior to publication.
Submitted manuscripts will be checked for language, presentation and style. Scientists who use English as a foreign language are urged to have their manuscript read by a native English-speaking colleague or a professional proofreader.
Papers which conform to journal scope and style will be sent to at least two referees by a member of the editorial board, who will then act as the handling editor.
Copyright
EJT is a free open access journal licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following conditions:
- Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work’s authorship and initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal’s published version of the work (e.g. post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
Authors are NOT PERMITTED to post their submitted work online (e.g. in institutional repositories or on personal websites) prior to or during the submission process, as it may lead to nomenclatural problems arising.
SUBMISSION AND REVIEW
Papers submitted for publication in EJT should be uploaded in the NESTOR system, by following the instructions on the screen. By registering in the NESTOR system, authors agree to the journal’s Privacy Policy and to the Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement. Hard copy submissions or submissions to one of the editors as email attachments will not be considered. The entire review process will be conducted online through the NESTOR system, up to the final decision (accept or reject). Authors will be able to track the status of their submission online at any stage. If there are multiple authors for one article, only the corresponding author is able to track the submission status.
Manuscripts should conform to standard rules of English grammar and style. Either British or American spelling may be used as long as usage is consistent throughout the manuscript. Although no page limit is imposed, manuscripts should always be as concise as possible.
Submitting a paper to EJT implies that the manuscript has not been submitted to another journal, and that it will not be for at least 6 months after initial submission to EJT.
Authors should adhere meticulously to these instructions.
Manuscripts returned to authors with referee reports should be revised and sent back through the NESTOR system within 4 weeks. If a major revision of a manuscript is requested, the revised manuscript will be sent out for re-review. Final decisions on acceptance or rejection will be made by the Editor-in-Chief. Papers will be published online individually as soon as corrected proofs have been received and processed.
TECHNICAL INSTRUCTIONS
Structure of manuscripts
Only the structure of ‘opinion’ manuscripts is flexible, all other contributions should follow the IMRAD format: Abstract, Introduction, Material and Methods, Results, Discussion, Acknowledgements, References.
Authors should submit the following elements on the NESTOR system:
- manuscript file (pdf) of less than 50 MB, containing the text, tables, figures and captions. Ideally, the figures and tables are placed in the document closely to their first citation in the text.
- text file: MS Word (.doc, .docx or .rtf) or Open Office/Libre Office (.odt) file including the main text as well as all captions for tables and figures.
- cover letter: in this letter, you can motivate why you have chosen to send your contribution to EJT and why you consider it relevant to this journal; suggest up to four reviewers (including their full name, shortened affiliation, and reason why you selected them as possible reviewers); specify opposed reviewers (with a strong reason for this suggestion).
- each table as an individual file (.doc, .docx, .odt and .rtf formats accepted)
- each figure as an individual file (.tif, .jpeg) of less than 20 MB
- any supplementary material (individual files, less than 20 MB) related to the paper: dataset, additional illustrations, document for methodology, video file...
Only the terms ‘tables’ and ‘figures’ should be used. Other categories (e.g. ‘plates’) are not accepted. Monographs can include a table of contents and an index.
For a revised version of the manuscript, authors should submit the following elements on the NESTOR system:
- revised manuscript file (pdf) of less than 50 MB
- revised text file without track changes (.doc, .docx, .rtf, .odt)
- revised text file with track changes (.doc, .docx, .rtf, .odt)
- cover letter: in this letter, you should reply to the reviewers’ suggestions and comments and answer any specific questions from the reviewers. If you disagree with any reviewers’ observation, please motivate why you do not wish to follow a particular suggestion
- if some tables, figures or supplementary files were also revised, delete the original file in the submission module, and upload the revised file.
Format of manuscripts
General information
Text should be in Times New Roman font size 12, double-spaced. The margin width should be at least 3 cm on all sides. All pages of the text file should be numbered sequentially. Each line of the text should be numbered throughout the document.
Bold font should be only used for headings and sub-headings. Bold italic font should only be used in the for taxa names in treatment headings and within an identification key.
Italic font is used in the main text for genera and infrageneric names.
EJT operates XML conversion for material citations, allowing the rich specimen data and relative nomenclatural acts to be distributed to biodiversity databases and linked back to the article (see ‘FAIR & Open Science’). To achieve optimal results, it is recommended to use certain standardised formats that will allow the data to be accurately harvested and efficiently disseminated. Detailed guidelines on how to format the specimen citations for the material examined are given in the ‘Material Citations Formatting Guide’ (pdf to download).
First page
The first page should contain the title (max. 110 characters, spaces included), the list of authors in the desired order, followed by their various addresses, then emails. Each author is designated in the list by a superscript number, which also precedes the address(es) and email of this author. The corresponding author is additionally differentiated with a superscript asterisk. Please refer to recently published examples of EJT articles to format the author’s list. If any authors possess a personal LSID and/or ORCID, these should also be included on the first page.
A running title (max. 50 characters) should be provided.
The title should always include the reference to the two higher hierarchical taxonomic categories of the taxon under discussion, e.g.:
‘On a new genus of ostracods (Crustacea, Ostracoda) from South Africa.’
The title page should also include the disclaimer ‘The present paper has not been submitted to another journal, nor will it be in the 6 months after initial submission to EJT. All co-authors are aware of the present submission.’
Second page
The second page should contain the abstract and 5 keywords.
Abstracts are typically less than 200 words, except for monographs with many new taxa and alterations in the taxonomy. Abstracts should contain neither references, nor unexplained abbreviations.
Introduction
The Introduction should provide a succinct overview of past work in the field, illustrate why the present work is needed and in which domain it is situated. The progress offered by the present contribution should be summarised in one or two paragraphs at the end of the introduction.
Material and methods
In Material and Methods, only acronyms of collections and herbaria should be cited (not a detailed account of all museum material used, which should be given in the Results section). Additionally, authors might add the origin of the new material, technical equipment used, major technical literature applied, and software used for analyses or illustrations. If molecular analyses are performed, the methodology should be described in detail so that all procedures are reproducible.
All abbreviations used within the article (parts of animals/plants, collections, localities, etc.) should be listed and explained here.
Results
The main part of the paper will be found under the Results, including taxonomic descriptions, ecology, (molecular) phylogeny, biostratigraphy, etc. This section should start with a contextual account of the current taxonomic hierarchy of the target taxon. Each taxon account should, at least, include the following items in the order listed:
- accepted taxon name with author and year of description;
- reference to illustrations or tables in the present paper;
- list of synonymies, with full references to cited papers, including figures (see format below);
- for new species, diagnosis (in Latin or English for botanical papers) and differential diagnosis;
- etymology (for new taxa);
- material examined (download recommended format here), separated into type material (with collection registry and deposition) followed by additional material, indicating full (type) locality data (including geocoordinates) and other relevant collection data, where available;
- full description of all relevant characters;
- taxonomic remarks, ecology and distribution.
If no holotype was originally designated from the available type material (syntypes), it is strongly recommended to designate a lectotype.
Redundancy of data should be avoided.
Discussion
The Discussion will consider the findings of the paper in the context of the wider literature and indicates progress made within the field.
References
References in the main text should be written in lower case and without commas as follows: ‘(Smith 2000)’, ‘(Smith et al. 2000)’, ‘Smith (2000)’ and ‘Smith et al. (2000)’. Multiple references should be cited as ‘(Smith 2000; Jones et al. 2001; Smith & Jones 2002)’. Papers published in the same year and containing the same author surnames should be differentiated as follows: ‘Baker & Smith (2000a)’, ‘Baker & Smith (2000b)’. In the references list, the same convention (letters a, b, c, etc.) should be used.
At the end of the manuscript, references are listed in alphabetical order, based on the surname of the first author. If two first authors share the same surname, the alphabetical order is then based also on the first name initial of each author: Miller P. comes after Miller J.
References sharing the same first author surname and initial are arranged according to the following order:
1°) single-authored papers are listed first and arranged chronologically (from the oldest to the newest year of publication)
2°) two-authored papers are then listed, arranged alphabetically based on surname of second author; when papers share the same authorship in this list, they are arranged chronologically
3°) three-or-more-authored papers are then listed, arranged chronologically.
When three-or-more-authored papers share the same year of publication, they are listed according to surname of second author, surname of third author, etc. The alphabetical order of second author surname, third author surname determines the use of letters a, b, c, etc.
The format adopted for the list of references has been kept simple: italics should be used for journal names and book titles only (and of course for infraspecific and genus names); no bold font should be used in the references; journal names should be given in full and not abbreviated.
DOI (Digital Object Identifier) numbers of references must be provided where available. You can easily find DOIs using the following tool: https://doi.crossref.org/simpleTextQuery
Examples of appropriate formats for references are:
- Article in a journal
Smith J.A. 2000. On a new genus of spiders from South America. Journal of natural History 205: 1034–1054.
- Article in a journal, with a doi (Digital Object Identifier) reference
Milá B., Tavares E.S., Muñoz Saldaña A., Karubian J., Smith T.B. & Baker A.J. 2012. A Trans-Amazonian screening of mtDNA reveals deep intraspecific divergence in forest birds and suggests a vast underestimation of species diversity. PLoS ONE 7 (7): e40541. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0040541
- Article in a thematic volume of a journal
Guyot M. 2000. Intricate aspects of sponge chemistry. In: Vacelet J. (ed.) Porifera 2000: Volume in honour to Professor Claude Lévi. Zoosystema 22 (2): 419–431.
- Book
Ruiter R.H. & Debelius H. 2006. World Atlas of Marine Fishes. IKAN-Unterwasserarchiv, Frankfurt.
- Book belonging to a series
Griswold Ch.E. 1994. A Revision and Phylogenetic Analysis of the Spider Genus Phanotea Simon (Araneae, Lycosoidea). Annales Sciences zoologiques 273, Musée royal de l’Afrique centrale, Tervuren.
- Chapter or article in a book
Rougier G.W. & Wible J.R. 2006. Major changes in the ear region and basicranium of early mammals. In: Carrano M., Gaudin T.J., Blob R. & Wible J.R. (eds) Amniote Paleobiology: Phylogenetic and Functional Perspectives on the Evolution of Mammals, Birds and Reptiles: 269–311. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
- Book with several volumes or parts
Nairn A. et al. (eds) 1995. The Ocean Basins and Margins. Vol. 4: The Western Mediterranean. Plenum Press, New-York.
- Contribution in a Proceedings book, Conference report, etc.
Shandra P. & Mirad D. 1999. On the taxonomy of carabids (Coleoptera, Carabidae) from mountain forest in Zimbabwe. In: Merger T., Formsfield J. & Brooke D. (eds) Insect Diversity in Southern Africa. Proceedings of the First International Symposium on African Insect Diversity: 117–128. Royal Museum for Central Africa, Tervuren.
- Thesis
DeRijk P. 1995. Optimisation of a Database for Ribosomal RNA Structure and Application in Structural and Evolutionary Research. PhD thesis, University of Antwerp, Belgium.
Note that references to so-called ‘grey literature’, such as theses, should be avoided.
- Website, software
QGIS Development Team 2020. QGIS Geographic Information System. Ver. 3.16. Open Source Geospatial Foundation. Available from https://qgis.org [accessed 19 Mar. 2021].
Illustrations
For publication, illustrations must be high quality, of high resolution and in portrait format. Standards for size and resolution are: maximum width of 16 cm, for a resolution of at least 300 dpi for photographs or 1200 dpi for line drawings, in .jpeg or .tiff format.
As EJT is published online, illustrations in full colour are accepted free of charge. Scale bars are required for each figure. Lettering should be uniform and consistent, using Arial font, size 12. Composite figures are always preferred and it is strongly recommended to use A, B, C, etc. to denote the different illustrations. Figures must be numbered sequentially as they first appear in the text.
In accordance with the EJT FAIR & Open Science policy, published illustrations are archived individually on the Biodiversity Literature Repository (Zenodo), where they are assigned an individual DataCite-DOI. To explicitly identify the specimens illustrated in this context, it is highly recommended to include specimen codes in the captions wherever possible. Also, authors are encouraged to prefer figures presenting a single species, rather than composite images comparing different species, but this is not mandatory.
Tables
Authors are free to present tables the way it suits their publication best, but all tables must have a title, be numbered sequentially as they first appear in the text and preferably presented in portrait format. The accepted formats are .doc, .docx, .odt and .rtf.
Supplementary files
Authors are free to publish underlying/complementary data that supports the study as supplementary files if the format is not suitable for inclusion within the article (e.g., high volume of material or incompatible file type).
Nomenclature
The International Code of Zoological Nomenclature (Zoology, Entomology, Fossil animals), the International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi and plants and the International Code of Nomenclature for Cultivated Plants should be followed rigorously. Genera or infrageneric names should always be in italic font, names of higher taxonomic categories should not be in italic font. For uniformity, authors should use the following abbreviations: ‘sp. nov.’, ‘gen. nov.’, ‘fam. nov.’ at each occurrence of a new taxon, ‘comb. nov.’ for each new combination, ‘syn. nov.’ for each new synonym, etc. All new taxa names, new combinations and new synonymies must be recorded in the abstract. When citing a taxonomic name for the first time in the core text, author and year of publication should always be noted.
Described taxa presentation
- Botany and palaeobotany
For botany and palaeobotany, the synonymy list, if provided, should be presented as follows:
- Homotypic synonyms, listed in chronological order, with full references to cited papers, including figures; followed by the mention of the type material examined.
- Heterotypic synonyms, listed in chronological order, with full references to cited papers, including figures; each heterotypic synonym is followed by the mention of its type material.
- Illegitimate or invalid names, listed in chronological order, with an abbreviation of the name’s status with full references to cited papers. Here is an example:
Macrolobium palisotii Benth. (nom. illeg.; superfluous) Bentham 1865: 308.
- Examples of presentation
Trianthema sedifolia Vis.
Fig. 1, Table 3
Plantae quaedam Aegypti ac Nubiae enumeratae atque illustratae: 19 (de Visiani 1836). — T. crystallina var. sedifolia (Vis.) Hiern, Catalogue of the African plants collected by F.Welwitsch 1 (2): 415 (Hiern 1898). — Type: Sudan, Khartoum, s.d., Brocchi s.n. (holo-: BASSA, n.v.).
Trianthema sedifolia Vis. var. microphylla Courbon, Annales des Sciences Naturelles, Botanique. Sér. 4, 18: 156 (Courbon 1862). — Type: Eritrea, Dahlak Island, Dessie (Dissée), lieux argilleux de la plaine du village, s.d., Courbon s.n. (holo-: P, n.v.).
Trianthema glandulosa Peter, Feddes Repertorium Beihefte 40 (2): 30 (Peter 1932). — Type: Tanzania, Masai District, Emugur Belekj, alt. 870 m, 15 Jul. 1926, Peter 42741b (holo-: B).
Trianthema transvaalensis Schinz
Vierteljahresschrift der Naturforschenden Gesellschaft in Zürich 60: 396 (Schinz 1915). — T. salsoloides var. transvaalensis (Schinz) Adamson, Journal of South African Botany 28: 248 (Adamson 1962). — Type: South Africa, Transvaal, in arenos prope Matsaba, alt. 730 m, 4 Mar. 1897, Schlechter 4876 (holo-: Z; iso-: K).
Trianthema salsoloides var. stenophylla Adamson (Journal of South African Botany 28: 249 (Adamson 1962). — Type: South Africa, Transvaal, Kruger National Park, Gudjane Rd on turn, 20 Apr. 1954, van der Schijff & Marais 3734 (holo-: K; iso-: PRE).
- Zoology, entomology and palaeozoology
For zoology, palaeozoology and entomology, the synonymy list, if necessary, should be presented as follows:
- First: actual synonyms, listed in chronological order, with full references to cited papers, including figures;
- Second: non-original uses of taxonomic names, considered as synonyms of the described taxon, listed in chronological order with references to the cited papers, including figures. To avoid confusion with the previous list, these taxa names and their bibliographic references are separated by an ‘en-dash’, example as follows:
Myrtea venusta – Hedley 1913: 266, pl. 16, fig. 10.
- Third: incorrect referral to a taxon: these names are listed in chronological order and preceded by ‘non’, with full references to cited papers. These names are also separated from their bibliographical references by an ‘en-dash’.
- Examples of presentation
Crossopalpus hirsutipes Collin, 1960
(Figs 79–83)
Crossopalpus hirsutipes Collin, 1960: 387.
Crossopalpus hirsutipes – Smith 1967: 2 (in key), figs 5, 6. — Pont 1995: 80 (type material). — Shamshev et al. 2006: 232, figs 1–7 (re-description).
Lepidolucina venusta (Philippi, 1847) comb. nov.
(Fig. 21A, B, E–H)
Lucina venusta Philippi, 1847: 206, pl. 1, fig. 2.
Lucina (Myrtea) layardii A. Adams, 1855: 225.
Lucina (Myrtea) strangei A. Adams, 1855: 226.
Lucina venusta – Reeve 1850: pl. 3, fig. 15.
Codakia strangei – Hedley 1909: 187.
Myrtea venusta – Hedley 1913: 266, pl. 16, fig. 10.
Phacoides (Lucinisca) venustus – Lamy 1920: 186.
Material examined
The required elements to present for type material used to describe new taxa are the collection registry and deposition codes with the acronym of the repository (as given in the Material and Methods section), as well as full data on the type locality (including geocoordinates), date of collection and collector. Detailed guidelines on how to format the specimen citations for the material examined are given in the ‘Material Citations Formatting Guide’ (pdf to download).
Compliance with the Nomenclature Codes
Printed versions of EJT papers will be stored in the Natural History Institutions that are part of the EJT Consortium and distributed to other major natural history museums and institutions in compliance with the rules of the different nomenclatural codes regarding electronic publishing of new taxa. Authors are encouraged to disseminate their work; they can directly download the pdf files of their articles from the platform, and distribute printed copies among their colleagues.
Authorship citation
EJT adheres to the CETAF e-publishing recommendations for authorship citation, as detailed by Bénichou et al. (2018) (https://doi.org/10.5852/ejt.2018.475). Authors are encouraged to apply Appropriate Citation of Taxonomy: the authors who want their citations of taxonomic names to be considered as references (and consequently to appear in the references list) should formally cite the taxonomic papers where they originate in their articles. See the required format in the “References” section.
For example, instead of writing “Chlamydotheca Saussure, 1858 was first described from South America”, write: “Chlamydotheca was first described from South America (Saussure 1858)”. In the latter case, the reference “(Saussure 1858)” is a real reference and citation (name and date not separated by a comma), in the former it is the authorship of the taxon (name and date separated by a comma). Works given in the References section but only cited in the text as taxon authorship will be removed, with the exception of the synonyms given in a taxonomic treatment that provide precise page references.
Taxon authority
The authority should be cited at the first mention of the taxon in the abstract and the main text and all keys, as well as figure and table captions.
- Format
Zoology, palaeozoology: Author, YYYY. E.g. Eviulisoma ejti Enghoff, 2018. When a species-group name is combined with a generic name other than the original one, the name of the author of the species-group name, along with the date, is to be enclosed in parentheses (IZCN Art. 51.3).
Botany, palaeobotany: Author after the taxon name, e.g. Begonia wattii C.B.Clarke. “When a genus or a taxon of lower rank is altered in rank but retains its name or the final epithet in its name, the author of that earlier name, if it is legitimate (i.e. if it is the basionym; Art. 6.10), is cited in parentheses, followed by the name of the author who effected the alteration (the author of the name)” (ICN Art. 49.1).
Bibliographic references
Authorship is only to be considered as a bibliographic reference if it is formally cited as a reference in the article, by indicating, for instance, the page number. In this case, it is mandatory to report the reference under the References section.
