Submissions

Author Guidelines

FOCUS AND SCOPE

• Papéis Avulsos de Zoologia (PAZ) – ISSN (online) 1807-0205 and ISSN (print) 0031-1049 – primarily covers the areas of Zoology, publishing original contributions in systematics, paleontology, evolutionary biology, ecology, taxonomy, anatomy, behavior, functional morphology, molecular biology, ontogeny, faunistic studies, and biogeography.
• The journal is of interest to researchers and professionals from Zoology, Biodiversity, Ecology, Biology, and related areas.
• The journal also encourages the submission of theoretical and empirical studies that explore the principles and methods of systematics.
• Its abbreviated title is Pap. Avulsos Zool., which should be used in bibliographies, footnotes, bibliographical references, and strips.
• All contributions must follow the rules and recommendations of the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN Code).
• Relevant specimens must be deposited in national or international public museums or collections.
• Tissue samples should be referred to their voucher specimens and all nucleotide sequence data (aligned as well as unaligned) should be submitted to GenBank or European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL).
• The journal has adopted a continuous flow of publication (rolling pass) in a single annual volume from 2018 on.

ZOOBANK REGISTRATION

• ZooBank is the Official Register of the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN Code) for registration of new nomenclatural acts, published works, and authors.
• The editorial team of Papéis Avulsos de Zoologia is going to register articles that contain nomenclatural acts in ZooBank. Such articles will receive a Life Sciences Identifier (LSID) that is going to be included in the published version.
• The registration of new names in ZooBank is recommended (not a requirement) to authors.

PUBLICATION FREQUENCY

• Continuously updated (which means that the article is published as soon as it is ready for publication).

DIGITAL ARCHIVING AND PRESERVATION

• The journal is part of PKP Preservation Network (PN), which uses the LOCKSS system for digital preservation of the journal’s content (Access the LOCKSS Publisher Manifest page here).

OPEN ACCESS POLICY

• Papéis Avulsos de Zoologia adopts for publication the Creative Commons attribution-type CC-BY.
• This journal provides immediate open access to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge.

COPYRIGHTS AND PERMISSIONS

• All content of the journal, except where identified, is licensed under a Creative Commons attribution-type CC-BY.
• A Term of Assent and Cession of Copyright should be signed and sent to the Editor, prior to publication of the manuscript (template here).
• Articles accepted for publication become the property of Papéis Avulsos de Zoologia.
• This is an open-access journal which means that all content is immediately freely available without charge to the public under Creative Commons attribution-type CC-BY. According to that license, the article and all its content can be shared, adapted, reused, copied, and redistributed in any medium or format, for any lawful purpose, since the authors receive the appropriate credits for their work.
• Authors can share the published version of the manuscript with their colleagues and deposit it in institutional repositories when necessary.

PUBLICATION ETHICS

• Research or publication misconduct (plagiarism, self-plagiarism, fabrication or falsification of data and results, conflict of interest, etc.) will be treated in accordance with the Commission on Publication Ethics (COPE) guidelines.
• From May 2020 on, the journal has adopted the tool Originality Check (Turnitin) to prevent duplication and plagiarism occurrences.
• Ethical issues concerning the editorial and peer-review processes will also be treated in accordance with the COPE guidelines.
• To avoid self-plagiarism occurrences, it is recommended to cite and include in references list the author’s previous works used to produce the manuscript. If the manuscript is derived or is part of the author’s thesis or dissertation, it can be cited in the text (for instance, in the Material and Methods section) and included in the list of references.
• Allegations, corrections, and doubts must be sent to the Editor (contact information). All allegations/cases will be evaluated and, when necessary, retractions, corrections, or expressions of concern will be published.
• Authors must cite in the Material and Methods section all pertinent permits, licenses, and authorizations that were mandatory to conduct the study (environmental authorities, health safety authorities, ethics committees, etc.) and, when necessary, must state any adherence to international and/or national protocols related to experiments and laboratory procedures.
• Animal Experimentation: The authors must follow all guidelines established by the local ethics committees on animal research and provide a statement confirming that all relevant institutional and national animal welfare laws, guidelines, and regulations were followed in the care and use of experimental animals. For Brazilian researchers, please refer to the guidelines established by the National Council for Animal Experiment Control (Concea, Brazil) available at https://www.gov.br/mcti/pt-br/composicao/conselhos/concea/paginas/publicacoes-legislacao-e-guia/guia-brasileiro-de-producao-manutencao-ou-utilizacao-de-animais-para-atividades-de-ensino-ou-pesquisa-cientifica . 

 

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (AI) TOOLS USE

• Authors of manuscripts submitted to Papéis Avulsos de Zoologia must disclose in the Material and Methods section any use of AI tools in the writing of a manuscript, production of images or graphical elements of the paper, or in the collection and analysis of data, as well as the AI tools used. 
• The journal adopts the COPE position on the use of AI tools in research publications, which states that AI tools cannot meet the requirements for authorship as they cannot take responsibility for the submitted work. As non-legal entities, they cannot assert the presence or absence of conflicts of interest nor manage copyright and license agreements.
• The authors are fully responsible for the content of their manuscript, even those parts produced by an AI tool, and are thus liable for any breach of publication ethics.

 

PEER REVIEW PROCESS

• Initially, the Editor checks all submitted manuscripts to verify whether it fits within the journal scope and policies. The article can be rejected directly; returned to the author for improvement and re-submission; or can be sent to the next step of the editorial process.
• In order to verify text similarity and prevent duplication or plagiarism occurrences, all manuscripts approved in the first trial will be submitted to the tool Originality Check (Turnitin).
• After that, the manuscript is sent to the Coeditor or Associated Editor according to its subject. The editor responsible for the submission will manage all the review process including the designation of referees.
• Authors are invited to suggest referees at the moment they submit their manuscript through a message to the editor on the OJS platform.
• All submissions are subject to analysis by at least 2 (two) referees qualified to evaluate the manuscript and one Editor.
• The peer-review type adopted is “single-blind”, in which the names of the reviewers are hidden from the author.
• If there are divergent or conflicting reviewers’ recommendations, the editor can analyze them and decide to accept or reject the paper or, if necessary, send it to a third reviewer.
• Once a manuscript is accepted, providing the changes suggested by the referees, the author is requested to return a revised version incorporating those changes (or a detailed explanation of why the reviewer’s suggestions were not followed) within a maximum of 15 (fifteen) days upon receiving the communication by the Editor.
• After final approval, the editor must inform the journal technical support whether the manuscript needs to be sent to an English language editing service for writing improvements and corrections.
• The name of the editor responsible for the submission is presented in the published version of the article.

Editors are expected to:

• Declare any conflicts of interest to the Editor-in-Chief before accepting to conduct a peer-review process.
• Conduct the peer-review and editorial process of the manuscript following the journal policies present in the Author Guidelines.
• Decide do Accept or Reject based on scientific quality and overall style according to the Author Guidelines and to good practices in clear and concise academic writing.
• Preserve the reviewers’ identity.
• The journal has adopted the Commission on Publication Ethics (COPE) guidelines on publication ethics. It is recommended to read the COPE Core Practices on publication Ethics (click here).

Reviewers are expected to:

• Declare any conflicts of interest before starting the review process.
• Assess the manuscript as to the quality and relevance of research, clarity of text, and compliance with the Author Guidelines.
• Keep the confidentiality of the data and information obtained by reviewing the manuscript.
• When the research data is deposited in a Research Data Repository, the reviewer should test the link informed by the authors in the manuscript, confirm if it is cited in the Material and Methods section, and finally if its reference is included in the references list. See the Research Data section in the Author Guidelines.
• The journal has adopted the Commission on Publication Ethics (COPE) guidelines on publication ethics. It is recommended to read COPE Ethical Guidelines for Peer Reviewers (click here).

PROOFS

• Page-proofs with the revised version will be sent by email to the corresponding author.
• Page-proofs must be returned to the Editor, preferentially within 48 (forty-eight) hours.
• Only necessary corrections in proof will be permitted.
• The omission of returning the proof will mean automatic approval of the version with no changes and may result in a delay in publication.

ARTICLE PROCESSING CHARGE (APC)

• There is no publication fee to submit or publish in Papéis Avulsos de Zoologia.

AUTHOR SELF-ARCHIVING

• Authors can share the published version* of the manuscript with their colleagues and post them on personal websites or institutional repositories for academic purposes while providing bibliographic details that credit, if applicable, its publication in this journal.

* Published version – the article published in PDF format is available at the Papéis Avulsos de Zoologia website.

• Instead of sending a PDF file of your article to colleagues, the journal recommends to the authors share the reference of their article with the DOI as an active link, so it will be possible to count all article statistics of views and download.

PREPRINT POLICY

• In order to avoid the invalidation of nomenclatural acts and misunderstandings with publication dates, Papéis Avulsos de Zoologia does not accept manuscripts deposited in preprint repositories. The electronic version of Papéis Avulsos de Zoologia is not “preprint” but final and immutable, hence available for the purposes of zoological nomenclature. The date indicated on the electronic version is exactly the same as the printed version and should be considered the actual publication date. For further information refer to Articles 8 and 9 of the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN Code) of the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN).

SUBMISSION OF MANUSCRIPTS

IMPORTANT: You must correctly complete all fields for each AUTHOR: Name, Middle Name, Last Name, Email, ORCID, URL (if there is), Institution/Affiliation, Country, and Biography Summary.

• From 2019 on, the inclusion of the ORCID ID for each author is mandatory.
• The fields for the manuscript should also be filled with the information: Title, Abstract, Area, and Sub-Area of Knowledge, Keywords, Language, and Funding/Support Agencies.
• The manuscript must be sent only in ENGLISH.
• Manuscripts should be sent in the format “.DOCX” or “.RTF” to the journal submission system, along with a submission letter explaining the importance and originality of the study.
• All submissions are performed through the “Portal de Revistas da USP“.
• Pictures, graphics, and illustrations even inserted in the text must necessarily be sent in separate files, in the original format in which they were created.
• The files must be sent in separate files formats: “.PSD”, “.TIF”, “.JPG” “.PCX”, “.GIF” or “.BMP” for figures; “.EPS”, “.CDR”, “.WMF”, “.AI”, “.PPTX” or “.XLSX” for graphics; and “.MOV”, “.AVI”, “.MPG”, “.MP4” or “.M4V” for videos.
• Tables should be placed at the end of the manuscript.
• Always keep updated the email and the address of the author(s) or corresponding author.
• The authors may suggest potential reviewers.

AUTHORS WHOSE NATIVE LANGUAGE IS NOT ENGLISH ARE ENCOURAGED TO HAVE THEIR MANUSCRIPTS REVISED BY A NATIVE ENGLISH-SPEAKING BEFORE SUBMISSION

MANUSCRIPT FORMAT

• The manuscripts must be double-spaced between lines, justified text, and Calibri font, body 11 (eleven) (except for special symbols not included in this font).
• The text should be organized in the following sections, each started on a new page, in the order, and numbered consecutively: Title Page, Abstract with Keywords, Body Text, Acknowledgments, References, Appendices, Tables, and Figure Legends.
• Scientific names of species and genera, and other Latin terms, must be italicized in all sections of the manuscript.

(1) TITLE PAGE: Should include the Title, Running Title, Author(s) Name(s), ORCID numbers(s), Institution(s), and Address(es). The title should be concise and, where appropriate, should include particulars about families and/or taxa of higher categories. New taxa names should not be included in the titles.

(2) ABSTRACT WITH KEYWORDS: All papers should have an abstract and keywords in English. The quality of the abstract is of great importance since it can be reproduced in other vehicles. Therefore, it must be written in an intelligible form as it may be published separately and should summarize the main facts, ideas, and conclusions of the article. Telegraphic abstracts are unacceptable. Finally, the abstract should include all new taxonomic names for reference purposes. Abbreviations should be avoided. It should not include bibliographical references. Abstracts and keywords must not exceed 350 (three hundred and fifty) and 5 (five) words, respectively.

(3) BODY TEXT: The main body text varies with different types of papers, but should usually include the following sections: Introduction, Material and Methods, Results, Discussion, Conclusion, Acknowledgments, and References. The main headings of each section of the body of the text should be written in capital letters, bold and centered. Secondary headings should have only the first letter capitalized, bolded, and centered. Tertiary headings should be the first letter capitalized, in bold and indented left. In all cases, the text should start on the next line.

(4) REFERENCES: Citations in the text should be given as follows: Martins (1959) or (Martins, 1959) or (Martins, 1959, 1968, 2015) or Martins (1959a, b) or Martins (1959: 14-20) or Martins (1959: figs. 1, 2) or Martins & Reichardt (1964) or (Lane, 1940; Martins & Chemsak, 1966a, b) or Martins et al. (1966) or (Martins et al., 1966), the latter when the article contains 3 (three) or more authors. There is no need to provide a full reference when authors and date are presented only as an authority of taxa.

(5) REFERENCES MODELS: References should be arranged alphabetically and according to the following format, respecting the titles in italics. Journal titles must be written in full (not abbreviated):

• Journal Article – Author(s). Year. Article title. Journal name, volume: initial page-final page.
• Journal Article (print and online version with different dates, for instance: ahead-of-print, online first, etc.) – Author(s). Year online. Article title. Journal name, volume: initial page-final page, Year on print.
• Books – Author(s). Year. Book title. Publisher, Place of publication.
• Books Chapters – Author(s). Year. Chapter title or part. In: Author(s) or Editor(s), Book title. Publisher, Place of publication, volume or part, initial page-final page.
• Dissertations and Theses – Author(s). Year. Title of dissertation or thesis. (Masters Dissertation or Doctoral Thesis). University, Place of publication.
• Electronic Publications – Author(s). Year. Document title. Available: electronic address. Access: DD/MM/AAAA.
• Datasets – Author(s). Year. Title. Version. Publisher. [dataset]. Available: (preferably the DOI number as URL). Access: DD/MM/AAAA. – See more in the Research Data section.

For all reference types, when available, authors should provide the DOI number as url.

TABLES

• All tables should be numbered in the same sequence in which they are cited in the text.
• Legends should be self-explanatory, without the need to resort to text.
• Tables should be formatted preferentially towards the portrait, remaining the sense landscape for exceptional cases.
• In the text, tables should be referred to as Table 1, Tables 2 and 4, Tables 2-6.
• Use “TABLE” in the table(s) heading(s).

FIGURES

• All figures should be numbered in the same sequence in which they are cited in the text.
• Each illustration of a composite figure should be identified by a capital letter and referred to in the text as, for example: Fig. 1A, Fig. 1B.
• When possible, the letters must be positioned in the lower-left corner of each illustration of a composite figure.
• Photographs in black and white or color must be sent at high resolution (300 DPI minimum).
• Use “Fig(s).” for referring to figures in the text, and “fig(s).” when referring to figures in another paper.
• Use “FIGURE” in the figure(s) heading(s).
• The figures will be printed in black and white but maintained in color in the final PDF file.

THIRD-PARTY CONTENT

• Previously published content as figures, tables, illustrations, etc. must be accompanied by written permission from the copyright holder to reproduce.

RESPONSIBILITY

• The scientific content and the opinions expressed in the manuscript are the sole responsibility of the author(s).

AUTHORSHIP AND AUTHORS’ CONTRIBUTIONS STATEMENT

All Authors must meet the two minimum criteria:

• Actively participate in the results discussion.
• Review and approve the final version of the paper.

An authors’ contributions statement must be included in a section at the end of the article for works written by 2 (two) or more authors. The statement has to include the individual contribution of each author.

From November 2020 on, the journal adopts the Contributor Roles Taxonomy (CRediT), which means that every contribution statement must be described using the CRediT 14 (fourteen) contributor roles as follows: Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal Analysis, Funding acquisition, Investigation, Methodology, Project administration, Resources, Software, Supervision, Validation, Visualization, Writing - original draft and Writing - review & editing. Click on the items to see the definition of each role.

Example:

AUTHORS’ CONTRIBUTIONS: NS, AL: Conceptualization; NS: Methodology, Software, Data curation, Formal analysis, Writing – original draft, Visualization, Investigation; NS, AL, HR: Writing – review & editing; AL: Funding acquisition; AL, HR: Supervision. All authors actively participated in the discussion of the results, they reviewed and approved the final version of the paper.

Acknowledgments section may contain a declaration of other kinds of contributions.

CONFLICT OF INTEREST

• Authors must declare if there is any conflict of interest at the submission of the manuscript.
• If there is no conflict of interest, the authors should select in the submission form the option: “Authors declare that there is no conflict of interest”; otherwise, it must be specified in “Comments to the Editor”.
• A section with the statement of Conflict of Interest must be included after the Acknowledgments section.

Example:

CONFLICTS OF INTEREST: Authors declare there are no conflicts of interest.

• Coeditors, Associated Editors, and Reviewers must declare to the Editor any conflict of interest before starting the review process.
• For further information on Conflict of Interest refer to Council of Science Editors White Paper on Publication Ethics (English or Portuguese versions).

FUNDING INFORMATION

• Research grants from funding agencies (please inform the research funder and the grant number) or any financial support must be declared in the Acknowledgments section.

RESEARCH DATA

• Papéis Avulsos de Zoologia recommends the deposit of scientific data in appropriate repositories and its citation in accordance with FAIR principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Re-usable).
• As described in the “General Information” section of this Instructions to Authors, all nucleotide sequence data (aligned as well as unaligned) should be submitted to GenBank or European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL). All articles that contain nomenclatural acts are registered in ZooBank by the journal staff and the Life Sciences Identifier (LSID) of the article is included in the published version.
• Authors are encouraged to deposit their data in a repository that is best suited to their dataset. Some examples of repositories are the University of São Paulo Data Repository, Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), Environmental Data Initiative (EDI), Dryad, Figshare, Zenodo, etc.
• Authors of accepted manuscripts may choose to deposit their data in the journals’ in Dataverse in Scielo Data.
• Before depositing the dataset, please read the SciELO Data Terms and Conditions of Use and SciELO Research Data Preparation Guidelines.
• For submitting the dataset, please follow the SciELO Research Data Deposit Guidelines.
• After saving the dataset as a draft, authors have to edit the Terms and choose the Creative Commons License that better suits their dataset (see step 7 on page 6 of the Guide). For more on Creative Commons Licenses please refer to https://creativecommons.org/licenses.
• Authors must make sure that they activated the option “submit for review” (see step 8 on page 7 of the Guide).
• Data curation level: according to the SciELO Data methodology, this journal will perform the Level 1 of Data Curation (Basic Curation), in which the content and metadata are quickly checked. Any doubts or corrections will be addressed to the dataset authors. For more on Data Curation Policy, please, refer to the SciELO Data Guidelines in Portuguese or in English.
• Please, contact the journal team for further information.
• The data repository chosen must guarantee the preservation of the data and provide a persistent identifier such as a DOI or Handle system so it can be accessible and citable.
• Journal will make exceptions for sensitive information such as the location of endangered species.
• Dataset citation: Datasets used in the research, deposited in a scientific research data repository, should be cited in the “Materials and method section” and its reference (with the DOI number) should be included in the reference list.

DATASETS REFERENCES EXAMPLES:

Dataset deposited in a scientific research data repository:

• Botham, M.; Roy, D.; Brereton, T.; Middlebrook, I. & Randle, Z. 2013. United Kingdom Butterfly Monitoring Scheme: species trends 2012. NERC Environmental Information Data Centre. [dataset]. Available: https://doi.org/10.5285/5afbbd36-2c63-4aa1-8177-695bed98d7a9. Access: 13/04/2019.
• United States Department of Health and Human Services. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. Office of Applied Studies. 2015. Treatment Episode Data Set – Discharges (TEDS-D) – Concatenated, 2006 to 2011. Version V5. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 23 Nov. 2015. Available: https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR30122.v5. Access: 30/09/2019.

Article supplementary information deposited in a scientific research data repository:

• Yoon, J; Sofaer, H.R.; Sillet, T. S.; Morrison, S.A. & Ghalambor, C.K. 2017. Data from: The relationship between female brooding and male nestling provisioning: does climate underlie geographic variation in sex roles? Journal of Avian Biology, 48(2): 220-228. Available: https://datadryad.org/stash/dataset/doi:10.5061/dryad.f89h2 . Access: 07/07/2019.

Dataset published as data paper:

• Bovendorp, R. S.; Villar, N.; Abreu Junior, E. F. de; Bello, C.; Regolin, A. L.; Percequillo, A. R. & Galetti, M. 2017. Atlantic small-mammal: a dataset of communities of rodents and marsupials of the Atlantic forests of South America. Ecology, 98(8): 2226-2226. [data paper]. Available: https://doi.org/10.1002/ecy.1893. Access: 07/10/2019.

CONTENT

• For more details of the manuscript preparation format, see CSE Style Manual, available at the electronic address of the Council of Science Editors.
• Papéis Avulsos de Zoologia is a publication of the Museu de Zoologia da Universidade de São Paulo (MZUSP).
• Always consult the Instructions to Authors updated on the electronic pages: www.revistas.usp.br/paz or www.scielo.br/paz.