Submissions

Author Guidelines

INSTRUCTIONS FOR AUTHORS - Cuadernos de Herpetología (revised March/2024)

Scope and Editorial Policy of the Journal: Cuadernos de Herpetología is a multi-disciplinary journal that leads in Argentina the publication of scientific works related to Amphibians and Reptiles, covering topics such as: systematics, taxonomy, anatomy, physiology, embryology, evolution, ecology, genetics, behavior, conservation, paleontology, etc. It includes the following sections: Works, Revisions, Notes and Zoogeographic News. The accepted languages ​​are Spanish, Portuguese and English. Cuadernos de Herpetología is published twice a year, in May and September. Cuadernos de Herpetología does not charge authors for their publication. It is available in electronic format as an Open Access journal.  Articles published in this journal were under a licence Creative Commons Attribution-NonComercial 3.0 Unported in 2011 (Volumen 25) and under a licence Attribution-NonComercial 2.5 Argentina since year 2012 (Volumen 26). From 2022 (Volumen 36), the articles are under the license Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International.

Submission of Manuscripts: Manuscripts must be sent through the Online Submissions system of the Portal of the journal. For this, it is necessary to register and identify yourself to be able to send manuscripts and check their status. Enter the following address https://cuadernosdeherpetologia.com/index.php/CdH/user/register and follow the registration instructions. You must register under the Author role in order to submit manuscripts. The manuscripts will be received by the Director/Editor (director.cuadherpetol@gmail.com) who will distribute them among the Associate Editors. Manuscripts that do not follow the editorial style will not be considered for publication and will be returned to the authors. Recent issues of Cuadernos de Herpetología can be consulted before submitting a manuscript. As of 2015, the format of the journal has undergone substantial changes that are requested to be taken into account. The works must be original and must not have been sent simultaneously, or have been accepted in another journal. Authors who submit a manuscript for publication accept responsibility for all persons who are included as authors of the work.

As part of the submission process, the authors agree to meet all of the criteria listed below. In addition, the authors accept that submissions that do not comply with these indications may be returned and/or rejected by the Editorial Committee of the journal:

• The submitted work complies with the "Instructions for Authors" and "General aspects in the preparation of the manuscript".
• The content of the manuscript has been tacitly or explicitly approved by the responsible authorities where the research and/or fieldwork was carried out.
• The work has not been published in any medium and will not be sent to another scientific journal or any other form of publication, while the evaluation in Cuadernos de Herpetología lasts.
• All authors are responsible for the content of the article.
• All authors tacitly or explicitly state whether or not there was a conflict of interest.
• If the work includes graphics, tables, or large sections of text that have been previously published, the author(s) have obtained written permission from the original copyright holder to reproduce these parts of articles in the current manuscript, both online and offline. in the print publication of the journal.
• All funding sources are listed.
• The writing of abstracts in the language in which the article was written and in English, with keywords and with a length that does not exceed what is indicated in the section policies for each type of article.
• The checklist has been completed before sending the material.

Once received, the manuscripts will undergo a process of review, arbitration, and opinion, being sent to an Associate Editor who in turn will select two reviewers specialized in the subject matter of the manuscript. The opinion process of the peer reviewers strictly preserves their anonymity.

AUTHOR RULES

Ethical standards. The Ethical Guidelines for Publishing exist to: ensure high-quality scientific publications, that authors receive credit for their ideas, and to ensure public confidence in scientific findings. All articles not in accordance with these standards will be removed from the journal if negligence is discovered at any time, even after publication. Cuadernos de Herpetología is committed to publishing only original material, that is, material that has not been published, nor is it under review on other sites or journals. All authors of the manuscript must have made a significant scientific contribution to the aforementioned research at work and have tacitly approved it. Manuscripts that have fabricated or falsified results (including the manipulation of images and figures) and manuscripts that are considered plagiarism (in whole or in part) of other authors' manuscripts (published or unpublished) will incur sanctions. Sanctions include (i) Immediate rejection of the manuscript. (ii) Immediate rejection of any other manuscript submitted to the journal by any of the authors of the infringing manuscript. (iii) Prohibition for all authors to new submissions to the journal Cuadernos de Herpetología, either individually or in combination with other authors of the infringing manuscript, as well as in combination with any other author This ban will be imposed for a minimum of 2 years.

From the editors. The acceptance of a manuscript to start the review process will be based exclusively on academic pertinence, originality, and relevance without regard to gender, sexual orientation, ethnic origin, nationality, political opinions, institutional affiliation, or seniority of the authors. Manuscripts will be treated confidentially. Editors are not allowed to disclose information about manuscripts (content, status in the publication process, opinion of reviewers, or final decision) or the identity of reviewers. Editors agree, under penalty of penalty, not to use unpublished information obtained from a manuscript under review for their benefit. The editors will excuse themselves from reviewing manuscripts in which there may be a conflict of interest, whether due to competition, collaboration, or another previous relationship with the authors. Editors undertake to respond as quickly as possible to all accusations or suspicions of misconduct raised by readers, reviewers, or other editors. The directors of the Cuadernos de Herpetología may request an investigation by the Asociación Civil Herpetológica Argentina to solve the problem. Each complaint will be taken into account and may be submitted to the Asociación Civil Herpetológica Argentina, even if it was discovered years after its publication.

Of the reviewers. All manuscripts received for review are confidential and as such the reviewers are not allowed to disclose information about them, discuss them with third parties or use information obtained from them for their benefit. The reviews must be objective and the reviewers must not be influenced by their possible relationship, gender, sexual orientation, ethnic origin, nationality, political opinions, institutional affiliation, or seniority of the authors. If there is any ethical impediment for the reviewers to proceed with the manuscript, they should decline the invitation. Any reviewer who finds any indication of falsification of data, plagiarism, or other misconduct must inform the editors who will proceed with the investigation process in this regard.

From the authors. All authors are equally responsible for the content of the article and the veracity of the data presented. Fraudulent or deliberately inaccurate statements constitute unethical behavior and are unacceptable. Any conflict of interest on the part of the authors concerning the editors and/or possible reviewers must be indicated at the time of sending the manuscript to be considered by the Asociación Civil Herpetologica Argentina or the Editorial Committee. When submitting a manuscript, the authors declare that they have followed all the legal regulations corresponding to their country of residence and have obtained the necessary permits from the corresponding authorities in the cases of experimentation and/or collection. The review and opinion process The review and opinion process contemplates 4 main correlative stages: 1) preliminary evaluation of the topic, quality, and presentation of the manuscript (by the Director/Editor); 2) evaluation of the content of the manuscript by 2 external referees and the Associate Editor; 3) opinion of the referees and the Associate Editor indicating that the work has been: (i) rejected without options to send it again; (ii) evaluated with major corrections that will allow their revision by the authors who will be able to resubmit the corrected manuscript for a new round of revision; (iii) evaluated with minor changes that must be incorporated by the authors before the definitive acceptance of the article and (iv) accepted without changes. The author(s) will be informed –within an estimated period of 4 weeks– about the results of the evaluation and the steps to follow if the manuscript is evaluated with corrections or accepted for publication.

GENERAL ASPECTS IN THE PREPARATION OF THE MANUSCRIPT

Preferably the manuscript will come from a file including the text, in Word or RTF format. The images will be sent in independent files in JPG format; Lower quality graphics will be accepted during the review process. If the work is accepted, the graphics must be sent in good quality, in JPG format. Manuscripts must be double-spaced, leaving wide margins and numbering both the pages and the lines of text continuously from the abstract to the legends of tables and figures (without restarting the numbering on each page). The beginning of each paragraph should be indented. Do not separate paragraphs from each other with extra spaces. Scientific names should be in italics, taxonomic groups (Example; Squamata: Teiidae), and geographical references with the first letter in capital letters. The titles must only go with the first letter in capital letters and on the left margin, the subtitles in lower case, and bold on the left margin. The first page must indicate: 1) Complete title with the first letter in capital letters and the rest in lower case; 2) Full name of the authors (Name and Surname consecutively) with only the first letter of the name and surname in capital letters with a numerical superscript to indicate the address; 3) Addresses of the authors including an email address only for the author for correspondence; 4) Name of the author(s) abbreviated for page header (if there are one or two names, indicate the initial and last name in capital letters; if there are three or more, indicate the initials of the first name and the last name of the first author in capital letters, followed by et al. followed by the abbreviated Title (no more than forty characters including spaces).

Articles, should be structured as follows: Title, Author or Authors, Summary, Abstract, Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results (can be Results and Discussion, or Results, Discussion and Conclusions), Acknowledgments (optional), Cited Literature, Table Legends and Figures and Tables and Figures (both with the numbering corresponding to the legends).

Reviews, can be structured in the same way as Works, although it is up to the author(s) to organize the manuscript in another way, including other sections or excluding some, except for the Abstract, Acknowledgments and the Literature cited, which must have the indicated format plus below.

Notes, should not be divided into sections, except for the Abstract, Acknowledgments, and Literature Cited, which should follow the format indicated below.

Title: It should be brief, and self-explanatory.

Abstract: It must be concise, describing the main results and conclusions; bibliographic citations should be avoided. The length should not exceed 300 words for Papers and Reviews. It will be written in the language in which the entire manuscript was written.

Keywords: up to five and preferably not included in the title. Each must be in capital letters and separated by semicolons.

Abstract: It must be written in English. It must have the same content and length as the Abstract for the Papers and Reviews and 150 words for the Notes. Before the text, it must include the title of the manuscript translated into English. If the manuscript has been written in English, the authors may opt for a summary in the other accepted languages ​​(Spanish or Portuguese). This option does not apply to Notes. It must have the same content as the Keywords but in English.

Bibliographic references in the text: the format to follow will be: Last name of the author(s) in uppercase and lowercase letters with the year separated by a comma and everything in parentheses. In the case of two authors, both surnames will be separated by "and". Example: (Reig and Limeses, 1963). When there are more than two authors, the surname of the first followed by “et al.” must be indicated. Example: (Reig et al., 1990). In the text, author lists must be ordered chronologically (separated by “;”).

Acknowledgments: they must be brief and include the sources of financing if any. If the study requires legal permits, the agency that granted the permits must be indicated and the identification of the permit if any (numbers or codes). Personal references should be listed with Last Name and First Initial only.

Cited literature: Authors should be careful to include in the cited literature all works indicated in the text and vice versa. It must be in alphabetical order, without numbers. The surname(s) must be written in uppercase and lowercase letters. For periodical publications, the format to follow will be: first, the surname of the first author, comma, followed by the initials of his name followed by a period and without spaces between the initials; then the last name of the following author followed by the initials of the names; authors are separated by semicolons and the last with "&". After the last author, period, year of publication, period, title of the article, period, full name of the journal in italics, volume, colon, and pages separated by a hyphen. The name of the journal is written in full and in italics. Example: Vega, L.E.; Chani, J.M. & Trivi de Mandri, M. 1988. Observations on the feeding habits of Ameiva ameiva (Sauria: Teiidae). Herpetological Review 19: 53-54.

Books or non-perIniodical publications will follow the following format: Author, year. Title. Publisher and/or publisher. Edit City. Example: Pisanó, A. & Barbieri, F.D. 1977. Comparative Anatomy of Vertebrates. Eudeba. Buenos Aires. If it is a book chapter, it should go: Author. Year. Chapter title: chapter pages. «In» Publisher/s followed by (ed/s.), Title of the book. Publisher, City of edition. Example: Campbell, H.W. & Christman, S.P. 1982. Field Techniques for Herpetofaunal Community Analysis: 193-200. In: Scott, N.J. Jr. (ed.), Herpetological communities: A symposium of the Society for the Study of Amphibians and Reptiles and Herpetologists’ League, August 1977. U.S. Doc. Fish and Wildlife Service Research Report 13. Washington, DC.

If it is a resource published on the Internet, and sufficiently recognized as valid reference material, it should go: Author, year. Title. Version (version date if any). "Available at: " (http:// address). Last accessed: (date of last visit to page or resource. Example: Frost, D.R. 2014. Amphibian Species of the World: an Online Reference. Version 6.0. Available at: http://research.amnh.org/herpetology /amphibia/index.html Last access: December 12, 2014.

Abstracts of Congresses, Conferences, or Meetings that have not been published in journals or Congress Annals that have an ISBN or ISSN will not be considered citations and must be indicated in the body of the text as personal communications or unpublished data.

Appendices. If applicable, after the cited literature, appendices (numbered in Arabic format) will be included to detail materials examined, lists of localities, etc. Manuscripts of taxonomic or systematic review will not be accepted without the corresponding appendix of studied specimens with the corresponding acronyms of the institution where they are deposited. Alternatively, they may be listed in some sections of the text or as tables.

Legends of Tables and Figures: The Tables must be referred to first and then the Figures.

Tables: they include numerical or alphanumeric data. They must be prepared using a text editor that allows tables to be built and not to use tabs or spacing to separate columns. Do not include vertical lines. See a Table format published in a recent Cuadernos de Herpetología article to follow the format. The tables must be numbered corresponding to the number of the legends. In the text, they should be cited with the first letter in capital letters. Example: The species were differentially distributed in low or high sectors (Table 1).

Figures: These include drawings, maps, graphs, or photos. Digitized images with a minimum of 300 dpi and in JPG format will be accepted as originals. The numbering of the figures must correspond to their legends. The size of the figures must not exceed 30 x 20 cm; the desired proportions are 1.5 x 1. If several graphs are gathered in the same Figure, they must be as homogeneous as possible (same axis scale and avoid repeating axis titles). Explain all the symbols used. Color images are allowed. In the text, they should be cited with the first letter in capital letters and abbreviated. Ex: Only in one site was no species recorded (Fig. 1).

Zoogeographic Novelties must be structured as follows:

Title: Including the scientific name of the taxon, mentioning the author of the taxon. Author(s): Name, professional address, email address of the corresponding author. Location: you must mention the Country, Province, Department, Location, and Geographic Coordinates (or coordinates of a nearby site). More than one related locality may be mentioned. Collection date. Manifold. Deposit collection and number of the reference copy: (give preference to the acronyms suggested by Levinton et al.,(Copeia, 1985 (3): 802-832). The authors are responsible for the correct identification of the material. Comments: They must be brief, of a biogeographical nature (range extension), that complement the capture data (microhabitat, behaviors, etc.) and the bibliography on which they are based (e.g. last revision) Cited Literature: must have the same format indicated more up.

It is the policy of the Cuadernos de Herpetología and the Asociación Civil Herpetológica Argentina to make specific reference to the biological material examined; therefore, at least reference material (Voucher) and public institution where it is deposited must be consigned. The acronyms should be followed where possible Leviton et al. (op. cit.).