Covered in the Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE)

 

 

Submit a manuscript

 

Zoology in the Middle East publishes original articles in the fields of zoogeography, faunistics, ecology, conservation research, taxonomy and systematics in the Middle East. Papers on the animal life of adjacent areas may be considered for publication, if they are related to the Middle East. The taxonomic focus of Zoology in the Middle East is on vertebrates (Mammalia, Aves, Reptilia, Amphibia, Osteichthyes, Chondrichthyes), insects, arachnids and molluscs. Papers on other animal taxa are considered for publication and are preferrably published as short communicatons.

 

If you are unsure whether your article is suitable for publishing in Zoology in the Middle East you are advised to consult a recent issue of the journal. The Table of Contents of all issues together with the abstracts of all articles and a few sample articles are available in the internet and give a comprehensive overview of the scope of papers published in Zoology in the Middle East.

 

We receive for Zoology in the Middle East much more manuscripts than we can publish. While high quality standard is the prime factor that is responsible for manuscript selection, please be noted that our attempts to offer a balanced selection of papers in respect to geographic regions and animal groups has also a great impact on manuscript selection.

 

In order to accelerate the editorial process, you may wish to give us together with your manuscript submission the names and contact details of experts in your field, who might be capable and willing to review your manuscript. These experts should have not been involved in the preparation of your manuscript and should not be contacted by you prior to manuscript submission. Of course we do not guarantee we will use those referees you recommend.

 

Before you submit your manuscript, go through this checklist:

·        Does your research fall within the journal’s scope?

·        Has your manuscript been formatted according to the Instructions for Contributors?

·        Have you assented that the submitted manuscript has not been published, or submitted for publication, elsewhere?

·        Are all authors aware of the fact that you are submitting the manuscript to Zoology in the Middle East (it will automatically lead to the rejection of the manuscript if one of the authors is not aware his/her co-authorship)?

·        Have you taken notice of the costs for compulsory reprints (and page charges for extremely long papers)?

·        Do you want to suggest referees who might be capable and willing to evaluae your manuscript?

 

 

The editorial process

 

To help you better understand the editorial process, the main steps of manuscript evaluation, selection and processing are briefly described here.

 

Step 1. Manuscript submission. Send us your manuscript to the editorial office, preferably by email with figures and photographs in low resolution. We prefer emails with a size less than 1 MB.

 

Step 2. Acknowledgment of receipt of manuscript. We will acknowledge receipt of your manuscript whenever possible within a week but it may take longer especially during holiday season. Please contact us if you have not heard from us 15 days after manuscript submission.

 

Step 3. Pre-selection of manuscripts. We exclude those manuscripts from the following peer-review process which are apparently not suitable for publication in Zoology in the Middle East. We inform you, if this is the case with your manuscript.

 

Step 4. Peer-review process. We identify two experts with relevant expertise for your manuscript. After they have agreed to evaluate your manuscript, we send it to them. Their recommendations are an important basis for our decision on the acceptance of a manuscript for publication. While we ask the referees to let us know their observations and opinions on your manuscript within approximately 6 weeks, the entire review process may last considerably longer. It often takes quite some time to identify proper experts, and they work on a completely voluntary basis and ask for more time (many experts are overloaded with manuscript evaluations). You may recommend us potential referees for your manuscript (see above).

 

Step 5. Manuscript revision. We inform you about the acceptance or non-acceptance of your manuscript for publication. If accepted, we send you the observations and recommendations by the referees and ask you to take them into account. In order to accelerate the process, we do not summarise the referees’ observations but send them to you exactly in the form they come in, often in the track-changes modus in your manuscript. After having taken these remarks into account, we expect from you the final version of the manuscript. You should send us now also your figures in high resolution. Non-native speakers should now ask an English native speaker to read their manuscripts, prior to submitting the final manuscript version to us.

 

Manuscripts that have been declined from publication in Zoology in the Middle East cannot be submitted again. The process is not open to negotiations.

 

Step 6. Copyediting and typesetting. We will then copyedit and typeset your manuscript, and send it to you by email for proof-reading. You can make your corrections and amendments directly in the electronic version of the manuscript, provided you use different colours or the track-changes function of WORD which allows us to follow all your modifications. Together with the proofs, we will send you the consent-to-publish form to be signed and returned to us. Note that publishing in Zoology in the Middle East is free, but we charge for compulsory reprints and fees for exceedingly long manuscripts.

 

Step 7. Final proof-reading and language-editing. Before publishing we will read your manuscript once again, and also our language-editor, an English native speaker, will check the manuscripts. As we expect from you that you have given your manuscript to a native-speaker before and only minor corrections will thus be necessary at this stage, we will not ask you for approving linguistic and other minor changes to the text.

 

Step 8. Publication. Once your manuscript has been published in Zoology in the Middle East, you will get your reprints and/or a specimen copy of the relevant issue.

 

 

How can you maximize the chances of your article being published?

 

Obviously this depends on the article itself but a decision will be made about your article more swiftly if you ensure that it has been formatted according to the Instructions for Contributors and that your citations and bibliography are complete. A manuscript that is poorly written, difficult to understand and does not follow the formal standards of Zoology in the Middle East has hardly a chance to get accepted for publication, even it presents interesting scientific results.

 

 

Manuscript preparation

 

1. Manuscript preparation. Papers are published in the English language only. Non-native speakers are strongly advised to consult a native speaker prior to the submission of their manuscripts. Manuscripts which have not been checked by native-speaker may be linguistically improved by the editors even without further consultation with the author(s).

 

Do not type title, subtitle, names of persons (authors) or any other part of the manuscript entirely in capital letters “”CAPITAL LETTERS”)! For author names you may use Small Caps.

 

All papers must conform to the latest issue of the "International Code of Zoological Nomenclature".

 

2. Title and name(s) of author(s). If the name of a genus or species is included in the title of a paper, it should also give the English trivial name of that taxon (if available). The first surname of the author(s) should be given in full.

 

3. Abstract. The abstract should be concise, intelligible in itself and should draw attention to the significant contents of the paper and the author's main conclusions. Description of methodology and material, as well as an introduction to the subject of the paper should be avoided. Abstracts should normally not exceed 250 words and should contain no uncommon abbreviations or references to literature.

 

Please note that the abstract should summarise your results: it should not describe what you have done but describe what you have found. Please note that the abstract will be widely disseminated and provides an excellent opportunity for your paper to wider gain attention in the scientific community.

 

4. Key words. Up to seven keywords should be suggested by the author. Key words should focus on words which do not appear in the title, but which describe the contents of the paper.

 

5. Subject matter. Scientific names of animals: Scientific names of genera, species, and subspecies should be given at least once - usually when the respective taxon is first mentioned - including the name(s) of author(s) (spelled out in full!) and the year of publication. The use of parentheses must adhere strictly to the International Code.

 

Discriptions of new taxa: When the name of a taxon proposed as new to science is given, it must be followed by the abbreviation gen. n., sp. n. or ssp. n. The description must contain the following sections: Material, Diagnosis, Description, and Affinities. Holotype and paratypes must be clearly identified, the museum or institution in which the type material has been deposited, and the catalogue numbers should be given. The designation of "syntypes, "cotypes" or "allotypes" must be avoided.

 

Geographic names: Exact locality data (preferably including coordinates) should always be given, in order to allow unequivocal identification of the collecting sites. Geographic co-ordinates are given in the general form XX°XX’N, XX°XX’E (do not use decimal system and do not use seconds). This is above all important for type localities of new taxa. The spelling of geographic names must be consistent throughout the text.

 

Species names: As a standard for Zoology in the Middle East, species names are always capitalised (e.g. Red Fox, not red fox). Give the full species name including its author when mentioned first in a paper, e.g. Sailfin Molly Poecilia latipinna (Lesueur, 1821).

 

 

6. Tables, footnotes and cross-references. You should use the table function of WORD for creating tables –  not the tab stop (            ) function.

 

this	is	the	table
function	of	MS-WORD

 

Footnotes and cross-references: Footnotes and cross-references by page must be avoided.

 

7. References to literature. In both the text and bibliography, the name-year-system must be used. Only those publications referred to in the paper may be included (all others have to be deleted). The author is urged to make sure that all references (Arabic, Cyrillic) should be given in normal English alphabetical order. Titles of journals are spelled out in full.

 

 

Literature citations must be in the form “Miller (1928)” (no comma between author name and year such as “Miller, 1928” or similar). Never use UPPER CASE LETTERS for author names (and elsewhere), use Small Caps instead! If you are unable to use small caps font, please use normal font.

 

If you cite more than one paper, do it in the following form “Burger 1990, Miller 1928” (do use comma as a separator, nor semicolon).

 

8. Author's address. This is placed at the end of the manuscript (after list of references, never in the title section at the beginningof a paper)and contains: Title, initial(s) and name(s) of author(s), and address(es) for correspondence. One email address (corresponding author) will be given. You may wish top add your academic titles (Dr, Prof.) in the address section (not obligatory!).

 

9. Illustrations. Illustrations should include a scale line to show the fact of magification. Black-and-white photographs, line drawings, maps and graphs are regarded as figures. In the text, figures are referred to as "Fig. 2, Figs 4-7" etc. Authors are encouraged to submit photographs along with their manuscript for illustration. All figures must be submitted as separate files, preferrable as .jpg or .tif files.

 

10. Submission of manuscripts. The manuscript should be submitted in the final, fully corrected form to the editorial office of Zoology in the Middle East, attention to Dr Max Kasparek: Email: Kasparek@t-online.de.

 

11. Evaluation of manuscripts. Manuscripts submitted to Zoology in the Middle East will be evaluated by the editors and referees on the basis of their contents. Manuscripts that do not meet the standards of presentation required in these guidelines may be returned to the author(s) for formal revision before being reviewed. The editors reserve the right to refuse any manuscript submitted, whether on invitation or otherwise, and to make suggestions and modifications before publication. Papers are accepted on the understanding that they have not been and will not be published elsewhere.

 

12. Proofs and reprints. The author will receive proofs of his (her) paper in electronic format. Corrections should be indicated by the author in different colour or with a “track changes” function. Corrections in the text other than printers' errors must be kept to a minimum. The author may be charged for excessive corrections. Compulsory reprints will be provided at cost price. No PDF files can be provided.

 

13. Consent-to-publish agreement. The authors will be asked to sign a consent-to-publish form prior to the publication of their paper: an example of the consent-to-publish form may be downloaded as PDF file under: consent-to-publish form.

 

 

14. Others:

 

Do not use	Zoology in the Middle East standard
Ladiges and Schumacher	Ladiges & Schumacher
(Mayer, 1956)	(Mayer 1956)
MAYER (1956)	Mayer (1956) [never use UPPER CASE LETTERS throughout; use for author names Small Caps instead]
organize	organise [Brit. English]
fertilize	fertilise [Brit. English]
program	programme
Km.	km
g.	g
Ha.	ha
percent	%
Approx.	approximately
Literature Cited	references
golden beaver	Golden Beaver [animal names are capitalised]
28.23455N 35.56756576E	28°23’N, 35°57’E

 

 

 

 

Kasparek Verlag

Mönchhofstr. 16, 69120 Heidelberg

Fax 06221 / 471858, E-mail: Kasparek@t-online.de