Acta Zoologica Bulgarica

INSTRUCTIONS TO AUTHORS

General Information

Acta Zoologica Bulgarica is an international journal published by the Institute of Biodiversity and Ecosystem Research – Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. We consider for publication contributions in all branches of zoology dealing with diversity, ecology and evolution of animals:

  • systematics and phylogenetics
  • zoogeography and faunistics
  • terrestrial ecology and behaviour
  • aquatic ecology
  • parasitology
  • palaeozoology
  • archaezoology
  • zoomorphology
  • developmental biology
  • conservation biology
  • biological invasions
  • applied zoology

The geographical scope of the journal is worldwide but a priority is given to the Bulgarian and Balkan fauna as well as the fauna of associated regions (e.g. Black Sea, Danubian Basin, Southeast Europe and Eastern Mediterranean).

Descriptions of new zoological methods, short reviews of zoological books and information about scientific events are also accepted.

Manuscripts must conform strictly with the instructions to authors before being sent to the editor.

Papers should follow the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature – Fourth Edition, 1999 (https://www.iczn.org/the-code/the-code-online/).

Manuscripts are considered on the assumption that they are in agreement with the following ethical standards:

  • they have not been published elsewhere
  • they do not contain fabricated and manipulated data
  • they are free of plagiarism
  • they have not been simultaneously submitted to another journal
  • all the listed co-authors have contributed in the research process and (or) in the manuscript preparation
  • all the listed co-authors are informed about the submission
  • ethical principles of animal research and biodiversity conservation are followed (clearly documented in the manuscript)
  • authors are aware that they have to transfer the page fee prior to publication

Manuscripts detected to be in conflict with the ethical standards are immediately rejected by the editors. 

Evaluation Procedure

Each incoming manuscript is initially judged by the editor-in-chief and the co-editor with expertise in the field of the proposed article. If the manuscript is acceptable as corresponding to the scope of the journal and representing a major contribution deserving publication in an international journal, it will be forwarded to reviewers (minimum two) for anonymous peer-review evaluation. After completing the first tour of peer-review assessment, the manuscript is returned to the authors accompanied with the anonymous reviewers’ reports and comments by the editor; at this stage, the editorial decision includes one of the following options:

(i) acceptance

(ii) minor revision (only few textual corrections are needed)

(iii) major revision (extensive textual corrections are needed; additional analyses are required)

(iv) rejection

Revised manuscripts are either assessed by the editors or sent for a second tour of peer-review procedure prior to be accepted or rejected.

After the approval of the final version by the editors, the manuscript will be accepted for publication. 

Manuscripts

Manuscripts must be submitted in correct English by e-mail. They should be in Winword or another compatible format. The text should be left-justified, font size 12, no column or page breaks, double-spaced (c. 30 lines per page), without word hyphenations, A4 format. The pages must be numbered in Arabic numerals. Lines should be numbered in continuing mode throughout the entire manuscript. Places of figures and tables within the text should be indicated. Generic and species names must be spelled out at least once in the text (preferably, when mentioned for the first time) and should be in italic. Family names of authors of taxa should be in regular font.

Four categories of contributions are published, with the following size of standard manuscript:

  1. Research articles: max. 20 pages, including the list of references, figures, captions to figures and tables (on separate sheets);
  2. Review articles (invited or consulted with the editor before the submission): 10-25 pages;
  3. Short communications: up to 8 pages;
  4. Book reviews: up to 3 pages.

Information about scientific events, past or forthcoming, will also be accepted (up to 3 pages).

The manuscripts should conform to the following format:

Title: It should be concise and enough informative. Superior taxa should be noted in the title in parentheses, e.g. (Order: Family).

Author(s): Full first name(s), middle initials and surname(s) in bold and italic.

Address(es): As complete as possible, including e-mail address(es).

Abstract: It should consist of only one paragraph of maximum 15 lines, briefly describing main results and conclusions with no description of methods, discussions, references or abbreviations.

Key words: Normally 3-6 items suitable for information-retrieval system, not repeating already those contained in the title.

The standard order of sections should be: Introduction, Material and Methods (including Study Area, if relevant), Results, Discussion, Conclusions (optional), Acknowledgements and References. The journal does not accept manuscripts, in which results and discussions are joined in one section.

Tables: They must not repeat information already presented in the illustrations or in the text. Each table must be self-explanatory and as simple as possible; it should be double-spaced within an A4 page size. Tables must be numbered consecutively. They should be typed on separate sheets and enclosed after the references. An explanatory caption, located on the top of the table, should be provided.

Illustrations: Lines and letters in figures must be able to be enlarged or reduced without reduction in quality. They should conform to the size of the type area (16.5 x 24 cm), which is the limit for all illustrations. Magnification should be shown by scale bars. Illustrations must be submitted in electronic version in TIF format in minimum 300 DPI. Black and white photographs must be sharp, of high quality, presented on plates (maximum 14 x 17 cm in size). Figures must be numbered consecutively and should be provided with an explanatory legend on a separate sheet (titled ‘Text under figures’).

All tables and figures must be referred to in the text.

The printed version of the journal may contain only greyscale illustration. The electronic version can contain colour versions of the same illustrations.

Citations and References

Each citation in the text must be accompanied by a full reference in the list of references. Each reference included in the list of references should be cited in the text. The in-text citations are as follows (cited authors’ names should be in small caps): (Buresh 1941), (Buresh 1941: 35) [if a certain page should be cited]; Buresh & Zonkov (1941); (Buresh 1941, Petrov 1956, Ivanov 1996) [in chronological order] or Buresh et al. (1949), if three or more authors are cited.

The references should be arranged primarily alphabetically by the first author’s family name and by year of publication in case of multiple publications by the same author(s).

In case of papers written in letters other than Latin, if there is an English title in the summary, it may be used instead. If there is not such a summary, the author’s name must be transliterated and the title of the paper must be translated into English; in this case, the original language of the cited reference should be noted in parentheses at the end of the paragraph, e.g.: (In Bulgarian).

Examples of bibliographic descriptions of references:

Author A. V. 1990a. Title of the article. Full Title of the Journal 56 (3): 35–105.

Author A. V. & Author C. P. 1990a. Title of the article. Full Title of the Journal 56 (2): 35–105.

Author A. V., Author B. B. & Author C. P. 1990a. Title of the article. Full Title of the Journal 56 (1): 35–105.

Author A. V. 2000b. Title of the book. Place of publication: Publishing House. 220 p.

Author A. V. & Author C. P. 1990. Title of the contribution. In: Editor V. A. (Ed.): Title of the book or volume. Place of publication: Publishing House, pp. 235–265.

Preprint Processing, Proofs and Corrections

Authors agree, with the acceptance of the manuscript, that the copyright is transferred to the publisher. 

The editor reserves the right to make editorial changes.

Manuscripts, proofs, reviews and other correspondence concerning editorial matters should be addressed to the Editorial Office, e-mail actazoologicabulgarica@gmail.com.

The editor reserves the right to make editorial changes. Authors agree, with the acceptance of the manuscript, that the copyright is transferred to the publisher. Manuscripts, proofs, reviews and other correspondence concerning editorial matters should be addressed to the Editorial Office, e-mail actazoologicabulgarica@gmail.com. The corresponding author will receive only one proof for checking (PDF file). Only printing errors may be corrected. The corrected version should be sent back to the journal editor within two weeks.

 

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