TopAuthor Guidelines

Online submission and review available
Full instructions for preparing and submitting manuscripts online are provided at the submission site: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/jeb. Please do not duplicate your submission by submitting online and by post.

Manuscript categories
Journal of Evolutionary Biology publishes ordinary Research Articles (typically 6-10 printed pages), Short Communications (typically 3-5 pages; results and discussion may be combined), Review Articles (also short 'Mini Reviews') and Target Reviews. The latter are typically commissioned and authors should contact the Reviews Editor before submitting one. Manuscripts in all categories include an abstract.

Submission and handling of manuscripts
Manuscripts are handled by Editor in Chief, Reviews Editor or one of the Deciding Editors. Manuscripts are typically reviewed by two members of the Editorial Board, although occasionally external reviewers are asked for expert advice on specialized topics. Manuscripts can be declined without review if their contribution to the journal's goals is deemed to be marginal or if it seems unlikely that they would fare well in the review process. Due to increasing number of submissions, these immediate rejections are becoming more frequent.

Journal of Evolutionary Biology strongly encourages online submission of manuscripts through ScholarOne Manuscripts at http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/jeb. Submission online enables the quickest possible review and online manuscript tracking. Manuscripts can be submitted online as a Word (.doc) or Rich Text Format (.rtf) document. Each of these file formats will be automatically converted to PDF for reviewing. Please upload the entire manuscript, with figures, tables and Supporting Information as one file. Full upload instructions and support are available online from the submission site via the 'Get Help Now' button. You can also email for online Submission support. If submitting to ScholarOne Manuscripts using LaTeX, please upload a PDF file of the manuscript for the reviewers. Note that upon acceptance we will require your TeX/LaTeX source files to edit and typeset the article.

All submitted manuscripts should be accompanied by a covering letter stating that the enclosed work is not under consideration for publication in another journal or book; that its submission for publication has been approved by all relevant authors and institutions; and that all persons entitled to authorship have been so named. Submitting authors should also assert that all authors have seen and agreed to the submitted version of the manuscript. The covering letter should give the word count of the full text, excluding abstract, references, tables and figure legends. In the case of online submissions, please note that you should submit your covering letter or comments to the Editor-in-Chief when prompted online.

Submitting authors are also asked to identify four, or more, members of the Editorial Board as potential referees.

In order to expedite production, authors are required to submit their revised manuscripts online or on a disk containing text, figures and tables. It is in the interests both of the authors and of the journal that amended manuscripts be returned promptly. A revised paper will retain its original date of receipt only if it is received within 4 weeks of the date of return to the author. Revised papers returned after this interval will be treated as new submissions. All final decisions will rest with the Editorial Office and authors will receive decision letters from the Editorial Office.

Artwork will be produced from electronic files if at all possible (see below). On request, authors should provide two sets of the original figures.

Online production tracking is now available for your article through Author Services. This enables authors to track their article - once it has been accepted - through the production process to publication online and in print. Authors can check the status of their articles online and choose to receive automated e-mails at key stages of production so they do not need to contact the production editor to check on progress. Visit http://authorservices.wiley.com/bauthor/ for more details on online production tracking and for a wealth of resources including FAQs and tips on article preparation, submission and more.

Presentation of manuscripts
Manuscripts should be written in clear, concise, and grammatically correct English; manuscripts that are inadequately prepared will be returned to the authors. Manuscripts submitted by non-native English speakers must be thoroughly corrected by a native English speaker prior to submission. Manuscripts should be typewritten in double-spacing on one side of 297 mm x 210 mm (ll inch x 8.5 inch) white paper, with 2.5 cm (1 inch) margins on all sides. All pages should be numbered consecutively, and line numbers should be printed on each page to facilitate ease of reference for reviewers.

Length of the manuscripts: Manuscripts should not typically exceed 10 printed pages (including figures and tables). In general, allow 900 words per printed page and subtract 160 words for each figure and table.

Title page: The title page should contain the article title, full name(s) of author(s), affiliation(s), a short running title (abbreviated form of title) less than 45 characters including spaces, and the name and complete mailing address, including telephone and fax numbers and e-mail address of the person to whom correspondence should be sent.

Abstract page: The abstract page should contain a short summary not exceeding 150 words and include up to 10 keywords.

Main text
The organization of the main text should be chosen to fit the work reported. All papers should begin with an introduction that describes why the work is important and end with a discussion of the significance of the results and their relation to other work. The following format is recommended for empirical studies:
(1) lntroduction. The introduction should summarise briefly the background and aims, and end with a very brief statement of what has been achieved by the work.
(2) Materials and methods. This section should contain sufficient detail so that all procedures can be repeated (in conjunction with cited references).
(3) Results. The Results section should present the experiments that support the conclusions to be drawn later in the Discussion. The Results Section should conform to a high standard of rigour. Extended lines of inference, arguments or speculations should not he placed in the Results.
(4) Discussion. The Discussion section should he separate from the Results section. It allows authors to propose their interpretation of the results, and to suggest what they might mean in a wider context. It should end with a clear statement of the main conclusions of the research, and a clear explanation of their importance and relevance.
(5) Acknowledgments. The acknowledgments (e.g. of financial support) should be brief.
(6) References. References to papers by up to two authors in the text should be in full, e.g.. (Able & Charles, 1986). If the number of authors exceeds two, they should always be abbreviated thus: (Frank et al., 1986). When different groups of authors with the same first author and date occur, they should be cited thus: (James et al., 1986a,b). References should be listed in chronological order in the text, e.g.. (Lowe et al., 1986; Able et al., 1997). At the end of the paper, references should be listed in alphabetical order. Names and initials of all authors, year of publication, the full titles of papers, chapters and books, the abbreviated titles of journals (manuscripts with full journal titles will be returned to the author for revision), volumes and inclusive pagination should he provided. Do not include the doi (digital object identifier) if the journal article is already published within an issue, instead simply state the volume and page range. Examples of reference style are given below:

Smith, D.R., Crespi, B.J. & Bookstein, F.L. 1997. Fluctuating asymmetry in the honey bee, Apis mellifera: effects of ploidy and hybridization. J. Evol. Biol. 10: 551-574.

Calsbeek, R. 2009. Experimental evidence that competition and habitat use shape the individual fitness surface. J. Evol. Biol., doi: 10.1111/j.1420-9101.2009.01626.x

Rönn, J.L., Katvala, M. & Arnqvist, G. 2009. Interspecific variation in ejaculate allocation and associated effects on female fitness in seed beetles. J. Evol. Biol., in press.

Ridley, M. 1996. Evolution, 2nd edn. Blackwell Science, Oxford.

Simon, C. 1992. Molecular systematics. In: Proceedings of First International Symposium on Molecular Techniques in Taxonomy (J.C. Avise, ed.), pp. 23-34. Denton, Texas, 4-6 November 1992. Springer, Berlin.

Lynch, M. 1989. The gauge of speciation: on the frequencies of modes of speciation. In: Speciation and its Consequences (D. Otte & J.E. Endler, eds), pp. 527-553. Sinauer Associates, Sunderland, Massachusetts.

References to a paper 'in press' are permissible provided that it has been accepted for publication (documentary evidence of acceptance must be provided). A reference to 'unpublished work' is only permissible if it concerns essential information; it should be available from the cited authors on request, and the names of all persons involved should be cited (forename initial(s) followed by surname) in parentheses as 'unpublished data'; any person cited as the source of a 'personal communication' must have approved the reference; both of these types of citation are permitted in the text only, not in the list of references. The use of 'in preparation' or 'submitted for publication' is not permitted.

References to material available on the World Wide Web can be given, but only if the information is available on an official site and without charge to readers. Authors may provide electronic copies of the cited material for inclusion on the Journal of Evolutionary Biology Homepage at the discretion of the Editors. The format for citations is as follows:

Beckleheimer, J. 1994. How do you cite URL's in a bibliography? See http://www.nrlsscnavy.mil/bibliography.html

An EndNote style file is available (Click Here). Right-click on the link and select 'save target as'. Navigate to your EndNote styles folder and save.

We have endeavoured to make this style file as comprehensive as possible, but complex or unusual reference types and variations in reference data quality in EndNote may result in missing information or formatting problems. If you have any comments or suggestions for improvement, please contact the journal Production Editor at: jeb@wiley.com

Submitting electronic files
Accepted manuscripts will be published from the electronic version wherever practicable and must also be provided in this form at the revision stage. The material can be submitted online, on disk or CDR and should be accompanied by a covering letter specifying manuscript number, operating system and software program. Please submit the first version of a manuscript as one single file, including figures, tables and appendices. Separate figure files may be required once the manuscript is accepted.

Text
Files should be formatted double-spaced with no hyphenation and automatic wordwrap (no hard returns within paragraphs). Please type your text consistently, e.g.. take care to distinguish between '1 (one) and 'I' (lower-case L), and '0' (zero) and 'O' (capital O), etc. (if nonstandard fonts are used (e.g. symbols, greek letters) they should be embedded in the word-processor file. Please number each page and activate line numbering in your text file.

Tables
Tables should be typed as text, using 'tabs'. The use of graphics programs and 'table editors' should he avoided.

Electronic artwork
We would like to receive your artwork in electronic form. Please save vector graphics (e.g. line artwork) in Encapsulated postscript Format (EPS), and bitmap files (e.g. half-tones) in Tagged Image File Format(TIFF). Detailed information on our digital illustration standards is available on the BPL Homepage at http://authorservices.wiley.com/bauthor/illustration.asp

Specifications

Tables
Tables should he cited consecutively in the text and numbered with Arabic numerals (Table 1, Table 2, etc.). Each table should be titled and typed double-spaced on a separate sheet. Units must be clearly indicated for each of the entries in the table. Footnotes to tables should be identified by the symbols *, †, ‡, §, ¶ (in that order) and placed at the bottom of the table. No vertical rules should be used.

Figures
Figures should be cited consecutively in the text (e.g. Fig. 1, Fig. 2, etc.) and should be grouped together at the end of the paper or in a separate file(s). Legends should be grouped at the end of the paper. Line figures and combination figures should preferably be submitted in vector graphics format (e.g. either embedded as vector graphics in a Word document or saved separately in PDF or EPS format). If this is not possible, they should be saved separately as pixel-based graphics at 600 d.p.i. at the required print size, and they should be saved in tif (not jpg) format or embedded as such in Word. Note that vector graphics is the preferred format for line and combination figures because figure quality can then be maximized in the online PDF publication. Photographic figures should be saved at 300 d.p.i. in tif format, or jpg format with low compression. Figures should be drawn/submitted at their smallest practicable size to fit a single column (max. width 80 mm), two-thirds page width (max. width 110 mm), or a double column (max. width 166 mm). Over-sized figures will be reduced by the Production Editor. If figures are drawn larger than reproduction size, component parts such as symbols and text must be large enough to allow for the necessary reduction. For full instructions on preparing your figures, see our Electronic Artwork Information for Authors page. See section 'Publiation (colour) charges', below, for information on colour costs.

Scientific names
Give the Latin names of each species in full, together with the authority for its name, at first mention in the main text. If there are many species, cite a flora or checklist which may be consulted for authorities instead of listing them in the text. Do not give authorities for species cited from published references. Give priority to scientific names in the text (with colloquial names in parentheses if desired).

Units and symbols
Authors are requested to use the International System of Units (SI, Systme International d'UnitŽs) where possible for all measurements (see Quantities, Units and Symbols, 2nd edn., 1975, The Royal Society, London). Note that mathematical expressions should contain symbols not abbreviations. If the paper contains many symbols, it is recommended that they should be defined as early in the text as possible, or within a subsection of the Materials and Methods section. In-line equations should be typed as text. The use of graphics programs and 'equation editors' should be avoided. Displayed equations will normally be re-keyed by our typesetter.

Web materials
Supporting Information can be published online at the Editors' discretion. This may include information e.g. on sampling locations, data underlying analyses or figures, additional analyses not presented in the manuscript, or relevant multimedia files (e.g. mating song audio clips). Supporting Information must be formatted and supplied by the author in a ready-to-publish form. Further guidelines for authors are available at: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/bauthor/suppmat.asp

Statistical results
In-line statistical results should be presented as test-statistics, degrees of freedom as subscript(s) to test-statistics (e.g. F1,1 2=... or t 8=...), P 0.05) results should be always quoted as being such (e.g. p=0.78. Statistical results in tables should comprehensive, allowing future meta-analyses. Depending on the details of the analyses.

Cover image
Authors who have their paper accepted for publication are encouraged to submit a photograph(s) illustrating their work (please do not submit photographs until your paper has been accepted). These should be of publishable quality, both in terms of content and image quality. They should be up to 300 d.p.i. when sized to about 15 cm height (max.) by 21.2 cm width (fixed), and if saved in jpg format a low compression setting should be used. Please crop image to these stated dimensions if possible. Resolutions below about 200 d.p.i. will generally not be of high enough quality for publication.

Images should be uploaded to the journal ftp site which can be accessed through your web browser (ftp://Author-access:bpl2000pub@ftp.edn.blackwellpublishing.com) or using ftp software (ftp.edn.blackwellpublishing.com, username 'Author-access', password 'bpl2000pub'). Files should be clearly labelled and include the manuscript number (e.g. JEB-2007-00381-photo1.jpg), and must be uploaded to the subfolder 'JEB/Cover photos'. After successful upload, authors should e-mail jeb@edn.blackwellpublishing.com. A brief caption (20 to 40 words) can be uploaded at the same time, or sent by e-mail. This should include a photo credit. If photographs are not the author's, permission for use must have been obtained prior to submission. The photographer of the cover image that is chosen will be required to sign a release form.

Publication (colour) charges
Except for authors of Review Articles, there are publication charges for printed colour figures, as set out in the Colour Work Agreement Form . If you have no funds to cover colour printing costs, the journal offers free colour reproduction online (with black-and-white reproduction in print), known as Colour on the Web. If you require this, you should write your figure legend to accommodate both versions of the figure, and indicate the colour requirements on the Colour Work Agreement Form. As this form is a prerequisite for publication, it should be completed and returned with your Exclusive Licence Form in all instances where authors require colour in their main article (it is not required for colour figures that form part of any online Supporting Information). Note that if you require Colour on the Web, interpretation of your figure must be possible even when printed in black and white (for the paper edition of the journal), otherwise a separate black-and-white version of the figure must also be prepared.

Author material archive policy
Please note that unless specifically requested, Blackwell Publishing will dispose of all hardcopy or electronic material submitted two months after publication. If you require the return of any material submitted, please inform the editorial office or production editor as soon as possible if you have not yet done so.

Proofs and offprints
Proofs will be sent to the corresponding author via email as an Acrobat PDF file. Only corrections and essential changes should be made at this stage. Authors will be charged for extensive alterations.

To avoid delay in publication, corrected proofs shoud be returned to the Production Editor within three working days of receipt.

The Editors reserve the right to make minor modifications to manuscripts that do not conform to accepted standards/Journal style. Such alterations will always be submitted to the authors for approval at the proof stage.

A PDF offprint of the online published article will be provided free of charge to the corresponding author, and may be distributed subject to the Publisher's terms and conditions. Paper offprints of the printed published article may be purchased if ordered via the method stipulated on the instructions that will accompany the proofs. Printed offprints are posted to the correspondence address given for the paper unless a different address is specified when ordered. Note that it is not uncommon for printed offprints to take up to eight weeks to arrive after publication of the journal.

Early View
The Journal of Evolutionary Biology is covered by Wiley-Blackwell's Early View service. Early View articles are complete full-text articles published online in advance of the publication in a printed issue. Articles are therefore available as soon as they are ready, rather than having to wait for the next scheduled print issue. Early View articles are complete and final. They have been fully reviewed, revised and edited for publication, and the authors' final corrections have been incorporated. Because they are in final form, no changes can be made after online publication. The nature of Early View articles means that they do not yet have volume, issue or page numbers, so Early View articles cannot be cited in the traditional way. They are therefore given a Digital Object Identifier (DOI), which allows the article to be cited and tracked before it is allocated to an issue. After print publication, the DOI remains valid and can continue to be used to cite and access the article.

Toll-free author links
Authors may wish to links to their published article on Wiley InterScience from their personal website or from an Institutional Repository. If so, please complete the form at http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/authors/toll_free.asp and a Blackwell Publishing representative will contact you to let you know that access has been set up. (Please note that access can not be set up until the article is published live on Wiley InterScience).

Exclusive Licence
Authors will be required to sign an exclusive licence form (ELF) for all papers accepted for publication. Signature of the ELF is a condition of publication and papers will not be passed to the publisher for production unless a signed form has been received. Please note that signature of the exclusive licence form does not affect ownership of copyright in the material. (Government employees need to complete the author warranty sections, although copyright in such cases does not need to be assigned.) After submission authors will retain the right to publish their paper in various media/circumstances (please see the form for further details). To assist authors an appropriate form will be supplied by the editorial office. Alternatively, authors may like to download a copy of the form here

Online Open
OnlineOpen is available to authors of primary research articles who wish to make their article available to non-subscribers upon publication, or whose funding agency requires grantees to archive the final version of their article. With OnlineOpen the author, the author's funding agency, or the author's institution pays a fee to ensure that the article is made available to non-subscribers upon publication via Wiley InterScience, as well as deposited in the funding agency's preferred archive. For the full list of terms and conditions, see http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/authorresources/onlineopen.html#OnlineOpen_Terms.

Any authors wishing to publish their paper OnlineOpen will be required to complete the payment form available from our website at:

http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/pdf/JEB_OOF.pdf

Please note this form is for use with OnlineOpen material ONLY. Please return the completed OnlineOpen form to the Production Editor at the time of final acceptance (preferably within 24 hours to avoid any delays in processing). Prior to acceptance there is no requirement to inform an Editorial Office that you intend to publish your paper OnlineOpen if you do not wish to. All OnlineOpen articles are treated in the same way as any other article. They go through the journal's standard peer-review process and will be accepted or rejected based on their own merit.

Free access in the Developing World
Free online access to this journal is available within institutions in the developing world through the HINARI initiative with the World Health Organization (WHO), the AGORA initiative with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the OARE Initiative (Online Access to Research in the Environment) with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).

Additional material
Submission to Journal of Evolutionary Biology implies that the authors are prepared to distribute freely (or at a nominal price) to academic researchers for their own use any materials (i.e. strains, clones, antibodies, etc.) used in the experiments described. The editors and publisher of this journal expect authors to make the data underlying published articles available. An investigator who feels that reasonable requests have not been met by the authors should correspond with the Editor-in-Chief. Authors must use the appropriate database to deposit detailed information supplementing submitted papers, and quote the accession number in their manuscripts.

Please note: papers that are narrow in scope, and/or address an issue from a circumscribed taxonomically-oriented view rather than emphasise general evolutionary issues, are liable to editorial rejection.