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Contact Prof. Frederick R. Schram, General Editor, JCB

Manuscript tracking at JCB

JCB Abstracts Online

If you are not a native English speaker and wish to submit to JCB, see below under Submission of Manuscripts for a recommendation by the editorial staff.

 

 

Information for Contributors  
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 Content

 The Journal of Crustacean Biology contains papers of broad interest dealing with any aspect of crustacean biology, biographies of notable carcinologists, notices of business transacted at meetings of The Crustacean Society, book reviews of works on Crustacea, obituary and memorial pieces, and pertinent announcements. We also can entertain submissions from time to time on other groups of marine arthropods such as pycnogonids and merostomes.  Papers will be published in English only, but abstracts or summaries in French, German, Portuguese, or Spanish may be added when appropriate. Descriptions of single new species may be accepted if accompanied by significant information on zoogeography, ecology, phylogenetic relationships, or other biological concerns.

You do not have to be a member of the Society to publish in the Journal of Crustacean Biology, but there are benefits of membership that are specified below.

  Publication Costs

(1) The Journal of Crustacean Biology accepts papers for publication on the basis of merit. Page charges are optional for society members, but members are requested to pay full page charges, if able. Authors unable to pay full charges are requested to pay as large a share of the page charges as possible. However, lack of funds for page charges will not prevent a paper from being published.  Alternatively, successful authors who are not members of the society must pay for all charges in full.

(2) The cost of printing color plates is in addition to the regular page charges and is very expensive. The author must pay for the printing of color. The Crustacean Society cannot cover that additional cost. If an author is unable to pay for color, the figure will be printed in black and white. 

(3) The cost of reprints is in addition to the page charges and is billed separately to the author by the printer. The Crustacean Society and the journal are not involved in the production or sale of reprints. If your paper is published, the printer will send you a reprint order form that shows the cost of reprints, and you will pay the printer directly.

(4) If you are a member of The Crustacean Society, the society will send you a free PDF file of your paper, regardless of whether you purchase printed reprints.  The PDF file should not be posted on a public website for two years, but it can be distributed like a reprint to colleagues.  

Current Policies Concerning Author Costs

 1.  PAGE CHARGES

Nominal page charges requested from authors are US$75.00 per printed page, which is less than the true cost to the society to publish a page. Page charges are optional for members of The Crustacean Society, but members are requested to pay full charges if able to do so. Authors unable to pay full charges are requested to pay as large a share of the page charges as possible.  If an author is without funds and unable to pay page charges, the Society will, to the best of its ability, cover the cost, but this may result in a delay of the publication date. Alternatively, successful authors who are not members of the society must pay for all page charges in full.  However, it is easy to become a member, and a membership form is downloadable from elsewhere on this site.

 2. CHARGES FOR AUTHOR'S ALTERATIONS MADE IN PROOF

Authors must pay for each alteration to text made in proof, not to include corrections of printer's errors or editor's errors, and not to include the updating of references listed as "in press" that have since been published or updates to an author’s address.  The charge is US$5.00 per alteration. The formula used by our printer to count the number of alterations will be used. This charge is not waived for authors who are members of the society.

 3.  MANDATORY CHARGES FOR PRINTING COLOR FIGURES

The cost of printing color figures is in addition to all other charges.  Authors must pay the full cost of printing color figures after the manuscript has been accepted but before it is published.  For recent issues of the journal, the costs of printing color figures has ranged from US$692.50 to US$832.50 for each signature in the final complied journal. The cost varies depending on the size and composition of the figures and whether or not they are submitted as hard copy or as electronic image files.

 4.  BILLING

 Authors will be billed for all charges in paragraphs 1-3 on a single invoice, which will be sent immediately after publication of the paper (payments for color plates, see below).

 Papers with color illustrations will not be published with the illustrations in color before the full cost is paid by the author.  An invoice for printing color figures will be sent to the author when the manuscript is accepted but before it has been sent to the printer.  Failure to pay for color illustrations in advance will result in printing the illustrations in black and white.

 5.  PENALTIES

 Authors who fail to pay a promised page charge (full or partial) or the mandatory charges (figures, tables, alterations in proof) will not have other papers published in JCB until the deficit is paid.  JCB will not publish papers from authors who will not pay the nominal page charges but offer to pay for color plates or excess illustrations or tables. Authors who pay no page charges or pay only partial page charges must be aware that their manuscript may not be published as quickly as those from authors paying in full.  

 Submission of Manuscripts

 

Before you submit a manuscript, and if you are not fully fluent or a native speaker of English, we recommend the following.  American Journal Experts (AJE) provides professional language editing services to authors around the globe who wish to publish in scientific, technical, medical, and humanities journals.  We urge authors who are not well versed in the English language to use this service to improve a paper's English and, therefore, its overall quality. Seeking this assistance is suggested before an article is submitted to JCB for peer review and certainly before it is finally accepted for publication.

 

AJE has over 500 editors from Harvard, Stanford, MIT, Berkeley, and Duke; these editors are native English speakers and subject-matter experts in a wide variety of fields. They will check your manuscripts not only for terminology and language specific to your field but also for proper English usage, grammar, punctuation, spelling, verb tense, and phrasing. In addition, AJE's professional editors will make sure the text reads naturally and the sentences are well constructed. Visit AJE's website for more information, or to submit a document for their scientific proofreading service use this link: www.JournalExperts.com?rcode=JCB1  

When you are secure about your text, manuscripts should be submitted on line to www.jcb.allentrack2.net

While embedded figures can suffice for the review process, by the final revision process, separate text and TIF-figure files will be needed saved at the appropriate resolution.

 Form of Manuscripts

The printed manuscript must be typed double-spaced leaving margins of at least 2.54 cm (one inch) all around. Use triple spacing above primary headings. Number pages consecutively in the upper right corner.

Sequence of material should be as follows: Running head, including author name and brief title; Title; Author(s) name(s); Mailing and e-mail address(es) of author(s) (see journal for format); Abstract; Key words; Article body; Acknowledgements; References; Appendix; Tables; Figure captions; Figures (each numbered and identified).

The title page should give the running head; the title of the paper, typed in all capital letters; and the author name(s), followed by affiliation(s) including e-mail address(es). In the case of multiple authorship, list all authors' names first, then each author's initials should be enclosed in parentheses before the appropriate mailing address; the e-mail address should be within parentheses immediately following the mailing address. The running head should contain the first author's surname, a colon, and an abbreviated title in the case of a single author. When there are two authors, include both authors' surnames before the colon. In the case of three or more authors, use only the first author's surname followed by - et al. The running head should not exceed about 52 characters.

The abstract should not exceed one double-spaced page. It should contain a summary of significant findings and note the implication of those findings. The section title "ABSTRACT" should be in all capital letters and centered within the margins.

In the text, the Journal of Crustacean Biology follows the style of the most recent of the journal.  When in doubt, consult the editor.  JCB allows both American and British spelling, but spelling format should be consistent within an article. Metric units of measurement prevail.

Tables and figures should be self-explanatory, not requiring reference to the text. Each table should start on a separate page and must be double-spaced throughout, even if it extends onto multiple pages. Headings and format must be consistent with the style used in Journal of Crustacean Biology; see previous issues for format. Vertical rules and excessive horizontal rules should not be used. For treatment of large tables of gene sequences, see below.

Figures must be proportioned to fit nicely within the journal's margins when reduced. Figures will be reduced to either 176 mm width (full page) or 84 mm width (column width) and a maximum height of 237 mm (including the space for caption beneath). For figures with multiple parts (A, B, C, etc.), all of the parts must be together on one figure, not spread over multiple separate photographs.  For electronic submission of figures, see below.

All papers referred to in the text should be listed in the "References" section alphabetically by the authors' surnames, then chronologically for multiple papers by the same author(s), e.g., Smith, 1999, followed by Smith and Brown, 1998, followed by Smith and Jones, 1996, followed by Smith and Jones, 1997. Use only the authors' surnames and initials in the References; place a space between an author's initials. Names of periodicals should be written out in full and should not be italicized. Do not use issue numbers of continuously paginated volumes. Use a hanging indent for multiple lines within one citation (see below for more about hanging indents).  All citations in the article must be in the References, INCLUDING the authors of taxonomic names.

A sample citation of an article by a single author in a serial journal follows:

Smith, J. Q. 1981. The distribution of swimming crabs. Journal of Crustacean Biology 1: 105-119.

A sample citation of an article by two authors follows:

Martin, G., and P. Juchault. 1999. Androgenic hormone specificity in ten species of lobsters.  Journal of Crustacean Biology 19: 684-689.

 A sample citation of an article in an edited work follows:

Garth, J. S. 1991. Taxonomy, distribution, and ecology of Galapagos Brachyura, pp. 123-125. In, M. J. James (ed.), Galapagos Marine Invertebrates. Plenum Publishing Company, New York.

 Some Things To Do or Not To Do When Preparing the Manuscript

Do not use a type size smaller than 12 points.  We prefer a Times New Roman font.

Do not use boldface type anywhere except to highlight a new taxon.

Do not justify the right margin.

Use italics only for the scientific names of genera and lower categories; do not use underlining.

Do not italicize "et al." and fully spelled Latin words such as "sensu" or "ad libitum", but make no other typesetting indications. Do not underline them.

Do not use running headers on each page of the manuscript; however, do number every page in the upper right corner.

Do not use line numbers in the submitted version.  These will be added by the AllenTrack system automatically when it converts your source files into reviewable PDFs.

Center primary and secondary section headings within the margins; primary headings should be in small capital letters, and secondary headings should be in uppercase and lowercase letters. Tertiary (third-level) headings should be even with the left margin, upper and lower case letters, and followed by a period and an em-dash (or three hyphens). Quaternary (fourth-level) headings should be avoided, but if required they should be indented from the left margin, upper and lower case Roman letters, and followed by a period and an em-dash (or three hyphens).

Do not begin a sentence with an abbreviation, especially of a genus-level Latin name of an organism.

Do not use an ampersand (&) for "and", even between authors' names in text citations.

Do not quadruple-space text between paragraphs.

Indent the first line of each paragraph except for the first paragraph after a first- or second-level heading or when a third-level heading is used, which is set flush left on the margin (see above). Do not use the space bar to indent the line; either use the tab key (not preferred) or set a first-line-indent distance in paragraph formatting with the word processor settings (preferred).

In synonymies used in taxonomic papers, use a hanging indent if the references listed after a scientific name extends onto multiple lines (see below for more about hanging indents).

One can use United States Postal Service initials for states and territories of the United States.  European Union country abbreviations can be included in postal code formulae, e.g., NL-1092 AD.

Start the text of your paper with an Introduction section.

Place a space between the author's initials in the References section (see above).

Do not use issue numbers of continuously paginated volumes in the References section (see above).

Shorten the title of your paper by eliminating the author and date of a taxon name (they will appear in the text) and by not using "Crustacea: " within parentheses when giving the classification of the organism (this is the Journal of Crustacean Biology; abstract services will know to place your article in the subject Crustacea).

N.B.:  Include the author and date of publication of each species-level name the first time it appears in the body of the text or in the tables (but not in the title or abstract).  In addition, these citations also must appear in the Reference section.

In References, place two spaces between the components of the citation: Author(s).  date.  Title.  Journal with volume and pages. Separate the ranges of the pages with a simple hyphen. (Do not italicize journal titles.)

In the References section, do not create a hanging indent by pressing the "enter" or "return" key at the end of each line and the "tab" key at the start of indented lines. Use the software's paragraph formatting feature to make a hanging indent. Otherwise, when the printer translates the file, the line breaks and tabs end up in arbitrary places.

Do not try to create the look of certain characters by creating your own symbol. For example, a superscript letter "o" will not translate as a degrees symbol; it will translate as a superscript "o", which is unacceptable for degrees.  Similarly, an apostrophe will not translate as a minute or prime symbol; a prime mark should be used for minutes in latitude-longitude coordinates.

Do not create plus-minus signs by underlining a plus sign. Use the plus-minus symbol instead.

Provide long tables or appendices of character-state data used in phylogenetic analyses as an electronic image file (not text file), because they will be treated as figures in order to avoid retyping them and introducing errors. Provide the table title for such a table on a separate page, because it will be typeset.

Do not submit long tables or appendices of gene sequences.  Submit sequence data to an appropriate repository, e.g., GenBank, and publish only the accession numbers.

Do not use unusual fonts. Use the Symbol, Times/Times New Roman, or Palatino fonts.  Serif fonts are preferred over sans-serif fonts for ease of reading.

Be consistent in the representation of each symbol throughout the document. The correct representation of special symbols is critical if the printer is to use the file.

Distinguish between similar-looking but disparate symbols, such as with the letter "x", a multiplication symbol, and the Greek letter Chi. Use the proper symbol, not the similar-looking letter, i.e., do not use "X" when you mean it to be a multiplication symbol.

Proofs

The printer will send galley proofs to the corresponding author for correction and approval. Changes other than correcting printer's or editor's errors or for updating references listed as "in press" to add the publication date or to update an author’s address will be charged to authors.  Printed reprints, available by purchase from the printer only (see Publication costs, above), may be ordered at the time proofs are returned. Separate artwork is discouraged since all images should be submitted as TIF files at the proper resolution of 600 d.p.i. for photographs and 1200 d.p.i. for line art, so separate artword will be returned only upon request.

Read and return your proofs PROMPTLY to the editor, including also the separate figure proofs.  If you will be away from your office aaround the time proofs are scheduled (around 3 months before the scheduled publication date) make provisions for someone to open and correct the proofs.  Delays in returning proofs will cause delays in printing the issue.

Final Submission

Upon final submission, not all parts of the document should be in one electronic file, as they could be upon initial submission. Parts of the document that should be included in a single electronic file are as follows: Running head; Title; Author(s) name(s) and affiliation(s)/ addresses; Key words; Abstract; Article body starting with Introduction; Acknowledgements; References; Non-tabular appendices; and Figure captions.

If the electronic version of your table is to be used, you must create them using the word processor's "Table" command or use a single tab (not space bar) between columns and a hard return between rows. Use no rules except those created by the word processor's Table-menu commands, i.e., do not use underlining to create a rule. Use no borders or shading and no text boxes.

For guidelines on the submission of figures electronically, see below.

 

Guidelines for Submitting Electronic Art Files to JCB

Separate electronic art files along with the text files must be submitted at the time final revisions are completed.

Line art must be scanned at 1200 dots per inch (472 dots per centimeter). Halftones must be scanned at 600 dpi (236 dpc). Combination halftones, i.e., continuous grade plus line art, must be scanned at 600 dpi.  Color must be scanned at 350 dpi.

Only Tagged Image File Format (TIFF) [or possibly Encapsulated Postscript (EPS)] formats for both Macintosh and Windows platforms are acceptable. Indicate the file format of the image in the file name, examples: "fig1.tif" or "fig2.eps". [Images in JPEG or GIF format will be 72 dpi and are UNACCEPTABLE for the printing process.  Powerpoint, Excel, DeltaGraph, and other similar files are UNACCEPTABLE for the printing process.]

 The screen and printer font files for any text added to the figure electronically must be included on the disk. Only Adobe Postscript fonts for either Macintosh or PC platforms are acceptable. Do NOT use True-Type or system "bitmap" fonts.  In EPS files, type can be converted to outlines to avoid the necessity of submitting font files.

Do not send multiple versions of the same figure.

Submit electronically

If you have any questions regarding these instructions, contact the JCB Editor at: jcb@whidbey.com.

Last updated: 16 April 2009.