Journal of Insect Science Online Submissions System

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Author Guidelines

Format for text and citations



Use doc format, Times New Roman font, 12 point. Single space. Separate paragraphs with a space. Left justify the text. Do not use page breaks.

Include e-mail addresses for all of the authors.

Include full names of all authors, given name, middle initial, family name.

Use bold for titles of major sections (Abstract, Introduction, Methods and Materials, Results, Discussion, Acknowledgments, References) and sub sections within major sections.

Use of the passive voice helps to put the focus on what was done rather than the person doing it. For example saying "Smith (1900) used decapitation to examine the effect of brain factors on egg development" puts the emphasis on Smith. Restating it in the passive voice focuses on the technique used: "Decapitation has been used to examine the effects of brain factors on egg development (Smith, 1900). But there are times when the active voice is more appropriate: "Figure 1 shows the results".

The Methods and Results should be written in the past tense: " "Total RNA was extracted using...." " There was a sharp increase...", but reference to tables and figures is in the present tense: "The data are shown in Table 1" (note that the word data is plural). However, use of the present tense is sometimes appropriate in the Introduction: "The purpose of this paper is...". In contrast, the past tense is best used in the Discussion as when citing previous work done by others, and in making conclusions from your work.

The past tense is appropriate for scientific reports because the work was done in the past under conditions that existed in the past. Use of the present tense violates the basic scientific assumption that it remains to be seen if the results you obtained are repeatable.

Avoid the use of personal pronouns (I, we). Say "The insects were collected." not "I collected the insects." The interest of the reader is what you did, not the fact that you did it, which is obvious from the list of authors. The conclusions drawn from the research should flow directly from the results, not from your opinion of the results. Say "These data show" not "We show". However, personal pronouns are appropriate when you are distinguishing your work from the work of other people: "In contrast to Smith (1980) we found that ...".

Include the taxonomy and authority of the species being studied in both the abstract and text, e.g. Bombyx mori L. (Lepidoptera: Bombycidae). The taxonomy and author should not be given for species not used in your study.

The title should include the common name and species name, but not the taxonomy, e.g. the silkworm, Bombyx mori, not Bombyx mori L. (Lepidoptera: Bombycidae).

Where possible avoid abbreviations. Species names should substituted by a common name. For example in a paper on the Colorado potato beetle use L. decemlineata, not 'CPB' or 'potato beetle'. Do not use Manduca for Manduca sexta, or Drosophila for Drosophila melanogaster.

Tables and figures should be included at the end of the text. But tables and figures should also be submitted as Excel and tif documents using the specifications described in the checklist.

Citation format in the text:

References in the text should by cited as follows (Smith et al. 2000; Jones 2003; Williams 2005, 2006, 2007). Note the absence of a comma before the year, the use of a semicolon between citations, and that the references are cited in order with the oldest citation first.

Reference style is shown in the examples below.
Please note that journal names should be fully spelled out in the references. Pay attention to the location of periods and commas.

Wigglesworth VB, Beamont JWL. 1950. The respiratory mechanisms of some insect eggs. Quarterly Journal of Microscopical Science 91(4): 429-452.

Tschinkel WR, 2004. Nest architecture of the Florida harvester ant, Pogonomyrmex badius. Journal of Insect Science, 4:21, Available online, http://www.insectscience.org/4.21.

Purcell AH. 2005. Xylella fastidiosa- A scientific community Internet resource on plant diseases caused by the bacterium Xylella fastidiosa. Available online, http://nature.berkeley.edu/xylella/

Books should be cited as follows:

Zar JH. 1996. Biostatistical Analysis, 3rd edition. Prentice Hall.

Articles or chapters in a book should be cited as follows:

Smith WA, Combest WL. 1985. Role of cyclic nucleotides in hormone action. In: Kerkut GA, Gilbert LI, Editors. Comprehensive Insect Physiology Biochemistry and Pharmacology, 8: 263-299. Pergamon Press.

Bekoff M. 1979. Quantitative studies of three areas of classical ethology: social dominance, behavioral taxonomy and behavioral variability. In: Hazlett BA, Editor. Quantitative Methods in the Study of Animal Behavior, pp. 1-47. Academic Press.

 

Submission Preparation Checklist

As part of the submission process, authors are required to check off their submission's compliance with all of the following items, and submissions may be returned to authors that do not adhere to these guidelines.

  1. The manuscript is an RTF Microsoft Word document file or a OpenOffice file.
  2. The format of the manuscripts usually includes an abstract, introduction, materials and methods, results and discussion. Taxonomic papers and reviews often have a different format. You may include additional abstracts in languages other than English.
  3. The text is single-spaced with a 12-point font. Italics, rather than underlining are used for species names. Text lines are numbered. Page breaks are not used.
  4. The text adheres to the stylistic and bibliographic requirements outlined above, in Author Guidelines.
  5. All authors are provided online in the order shown in the manuscript (i.e. do not put the submitter's name first). Given name first, family (surname) second. E-mail addresses of all authors of the manuscript must be provided both in the text and online. All authors agree to its submission.
  6. Key words are different from those in the title.
  7. A list of abbreviations with definitions is included. Abbreviations should not be used unless the abbreviation is used repeatedly.
  8. Tables are included at the end of the text. Legends are above the table. Explanatory notes are below the table. All tables are also submitted as Excel files.
  9. All figures are included at the end of the text, with their legends below the figures. Text figures can be jpg. All figures are also sent as tiff files. All figures have a resolution of at least 350 ppi (pixels per inch) and a width of between 5-6 inches. Color images are in 24 bit RGB or CMYK format. Black and white halftones are in 256 Gray (8-bit grayscale).
  10. DNA and RNA and deduced amino acid sequences are submitted in Rich Text Format (rtf) files using Courier font, 10 points. They are not submitted as images.
  11. If your files are larger than 25 megabytes in size they can be sent to jis@insectscience.org using Pando.com (freeware).
  12. Vidoes are submitted as AVI files.
    Sound files are submitted as WAV
  13. If your manuscript is accepted for publication JIS charges an author fee of $250 to cover the cost of editing and formatting the paper for publication. For those who do not have sufficient funds this fee can be waived, no questions asked.
  14. All authors have contributed to the work which can include conception, design, execution, analysis, and interpretation. Acquisition of funding, or general supervision of the laboratory does not confer authorship. Honorary or guest authorship is not acceptable. The senior author is responsible for the integrity of the work, ensuring that the data obtained from all authors are complete, accurately presented, and interpreted.
  15. This paper has not been submitted to another journal.
  16. JIS does not publish papers reporting insecticidal tests on insects.
 

Copyright Notice

JIS uses the Creative Commons Attribution 3 License for licensing. This gives the copyright to the author with limited rights to publish the paper given to JIS.

The author and reader can:
To copy, distribute, and display the paper
To make derivative works and distribute them only under a license similar to the Creative Commons license
To make non-commercial use of the work

Under the following conditions:
You must attribute the paper to the Journal of Insect Science.
For any reuse or distribution, you must make these terms clear to others

The author can deposit the paper in a personal or institutional repository

This license can be viewed at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/

 

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