Guidelines for Authors

Manuscripts will be carefully scrutinized for evidence of plagiarism, duplication and data manipulation; in particular, images will be carefully examined for any indication of intentional improper modification.

Any suspected misconduct ends up with a quick rejection and is then reported to the US Office of Research Integrity.

Ensure that your work is written in correct English before submission. Professional copyediting can help authors improve the presentation of their work and increase its chances of being taken on by a publisher. In case you feel that your manuscript would benefit from a professional a professional English language copyediting checking language grammar and style, you can find a reliable revision service at:

Desk reject criteria
The editorial team of the Journal of Limnology applies desk review to filter out papers that will not be processed; these are papers that are not aligned with the aims and scope of the journal, or that lack essential information in one or more sections of the paper or has not been submitted as per the correct procedure. In such cases, the paper will be desk rejected: this means that it will be sent back to the submitting author, and will not be reviewed.

The Corresponding Author (multiple corresponding authors are not allowed) must submit the manuscript online-only through our Manuscript Submission System.

The Authors' metadata must be duly completed, by adding "contributors" when needed. Metadata are crucial for the indexing of the paper and of authors, and for attribution of copyright to ALL authors.
Attention: Any submission received for a manuscript with more than one contributor, in which only one author has been inserted in the metadata, will result in immediate rejection, asking for a correct re-submission.
The author names and affiliations inserted in the online submission system will be those which will be published in PubMed and all other indexes. The Editorial staff is therefore not responsible for eventual inaccuracies or mistakes in the affiliations inserted during the submission process.

Authors are kindly invited to suggest potential reviewers (names, affiliations and email addresses) for their manuscript, if they wish.

Manuscript language and ethical compliance

Manuscripts should be in either British or American English consistently throughout. Check for consistent spelling of names, terms, and abbreviations, including in tables and figure captions. Ensure that your work is written in correct English before submission.
Manuscripts submitted must not have been published or accepted for publication in any other journal and must not be under consideration for publication anywhere else.
The manuscript publication must have been approved by all co-authors, if any, as well as by the responsible authorities – tacitly or explicitly – at the institute where the work has been carried out.
The publisher will not be held legally responsible should there be any compensation claims.

The manuscript must be prepared for the single-blind peer-review.

Permissions

When citing someone else's work or considering reproducing figures or tables from a book or journal article, authors should make sure that they are not infringing a copyright. In case extracts (text passages/figures/tables) from other copyrighted works are included, the author(s) must obtain written permission from the copyright holder(s) and credit the source(s) in the article  (for example: "Adapted from Gacia et al., J. Limnol. 2009;68:25-36; with permission"), and to include evidence that such permission has been granted when submitting their papers. The procedure for requesting permission is the responsibility of the Authors; the Publisher will not refund any costs incurred in obtaining permission.
The editorial office of the Journal of Limnology needs to receive a copy of the written permission before proceeding with publication.
Please download here the "License and Disclaimer" agreement.

 

The manuscript has to be prepared and structured as follows:

The manuscript must be prepared with a standard word processor (preferably Microsoft Word or OpenOffice). Pages should be in A4 format and numbered. Times New Roman 12 pt is the advised font. Lines should be left numbered in continuum, to make the referees' work easier, and double-spaced.

Page 1: title of the contribution, full given name(s) and surname(s) of the author(s), mail address(es) and e-mail address for the corresponding author, up to six key words, a condensed running head, number of tables and figures, the compulsory Declarations.

Page 2: Abstract (between 350-400 words).

The body of the text, beginning on page 3, should be organized as follows:

• INTRODUCTION
• METHODS
• RESULTS
• Sub-heading(s) (if any)
• DISCUSSION
• Sub-heading(s) (if any)
• CONCLUSIONS
• REFERENCES
• Tables
• Figures
• Figure legends

When reporting results from DNA-based studies, Authors should ensure to have all permissions according to the Nagoya protocol. 

Declarations
All manuscripts must contain the following sections (compulsory):

• Availability of data and material
• Competing interests
• Funding
• Authors' contributions
• Acknowledgments
• Declaration of generative artificial intelligence and artificial intelligence-assisted technologies in the writing process

Please see below for details on the information to be included in these sections.

If any of the sections are not relevant to your manuscript, please include the heading and write 'Not applicable' for that section. 

Availability of data and materials
All manuscripts must include a statement about the availability of data and materials. Data availability statements should include information on where to find data supporting the results reported in the article, such as hyperlinks to publicly archived datasets analyzed or generated during the study. Please check the previous paragraph "Research Data". 

Data availability statements can take one of the following forms (or a combination of several if multiple datasets are involved):

• The datasets generated and/or analyzed during this study can be found in the [NAME] repository, [PERSISTENT WEB LINK TO DATASETS].
• The datasets used and/or analyzed during the current study are available upon reasonable request from the corresponding author.
• All data generated or analyzed during this study are included in this published article.
• The datasets generated and/or analyzed during the current study are not publicly available due to [REASON WHY DATA ARE NOT PUBLIC], but are available upon reasonable request from the corresponding author.
• The data that support the study's findings are available from [third party name], but there are restrictions on their availability because they were used under license for the current study and thus are not publicly available. However, the authors' data are available upon reasonable request and with the permission of [third party name].

Competing interest
This section requires the declaration of all competing financial and non-financial interests. Please contact the editorial office if you are unsure whether you or any of your co-authors have a competing interest. In this section, please use the authors' initials to refer to each author's competing interests. If you have no competing interests, please state in this section "The authors declare that they have no competing interests".

Funding
All sources of funding for the research reported should be declared. If the funder has a specific role in the conceptualization, design, data collection, analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript, this should be declared.
If you do not have funding, please write "Not applicable" in this section.

Authors' contributions
The individual contributions of authors to the manuscript should be specified in this section. The submitting author is responsible for accurately reporting all co-authors' contributions. Before submission, all authors must review and mutually agree on their designated roles.
This contribution statement will be published with the final article and must be a true reflection of each person's work.
Criteria for authorship can be found below (section Authorship and Contributorship). Contributor taxonomy roles (CRediT) are requested. For more information, please see the taxonomy website.

Acknowledgments
Please acknowledge anyone who contributed to the article but does not meet the criteria for authorship, including anyone who provided professional writing services or materials. Authors should obtain permission to acknowledge from all those mentioned in the Acknowledgements section.
If you do not have anyone to acknowledge, please write "Not applicable" in this section.

Declaration of generative artificial intelligence and artificial intelligence-assisted technologies in the writing process
In that statement, authors are asked to specify the tool that was used and the reason for using the tool.
Example of format for this statement:
"During the preparation of this work, the author(s) used [NAME TOOL / SERVICE] in order to [REASON]. After using this tool/service, the author(s) reviewed and edited the content as needed and take(s) full responsibility for the content of the publication".

Particular attention should be taken to ensure that manuscripts exactly adhere to the journal style. In particular, take into account the following notes:

• Names of plants and animals and occasional expressions in Latin, Greek or languages other than English should be typed in Italics.
• Authors must comply with the rules of biological nomenclature, as expressed in the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature, the International Code of Botanical Nomenclature, and the International Code of Nomenclature of Bacteria. When a species name is used for the first time in an article, it should be stated in full, and the name of its describer should also be given. Descriptions of new taxa should comprise official repository of types (holotype and paratypes), author's collections as repositories of types are unacceptable.
• Genus and species names should be in italics.
• Formulas should be centered, marked in the margin with an Arabic numeral in brackets, and separated from the text above and below by a blank line.
• Citations of figures and tables should be indicated as follows: (Fig. 1); (Figs. 1 and 2); (Tab. 1); (Tabs. 1 and 2).
• Symbols and combined expressions must be presented using negative exponents. Examples are given below:

Tables

If tables are used, they should be double-spaced on separate pages of the manuscript, not embedded throughout the text. They should be numbered and cited in the text. Tables should be provided as editable Word files (not as embedded images), and authors should ensure they are presented in a publication-ready format. Considering how a table fits on a page in a wordprocessing program can often provide insight into how it will appear on a journal page. Larger or more complex tables will be made available online as supplementary material at the Editorial Office's sole discretion, including ensuring efficient readability of the paper publishing format.
Each table should be numbered with Arabic numerals. It should have a title or explanatory legend at the top. 

Figures
The number of figures should be reasonable and justified: no more than 20% of the article. They must be numbered with Arabic numerals and placed at the end of the manuscript. Figures should be designed using a well-known software package. Please note that the Publisher's Production Office will not redraw or re-letter any image.
Lettering must be provided by the author(s). Letters, numbers and symbols must appear clearly, but not oversized. A suitable final size for lettering is 2 mm after reduction of the figure. It is recommended that one uniform lettering size be used throughout the manuscript. Graphs and histograms should be two-dimensional and scale marks provided. All lines (including boxes) should be clear, but not too thick and heavy. Black and white figures, including drawings and maps, must be originals executed in black on a clean white background. Photographs should be of excellent quality, with clear details and sufficient contrast. Colored figures and graphs are accepted. Lettering of figures must be clearly labeled. Figures with different panels have to be grouped into a plate, and panels marked with letters.

In case of paper acceptance, authors are required to provide the figures as .tiff or .jpg files, with the following digital resolution:

1. Color (saved as CMYK): 300 dpi - maximum width 17 cm - minimum width 8.5 cm
2. Black and white/grays: 600 dpi - maximum width 17 cm-  minimum width 8.5 cm

Please be aware that if the Production Manager does not receive the high-resolution images, the Editorial Office will be notified that the figures/graphs will not be able to be included in the final paper.

 

Scientific names: give the Latin names of each species in full and in italics.

Abbreviations
Abbreviations should be defined at first mention (in the Abstract and in the first manuscript section) and used consistently thereafter.

Nomenclature
Authors should comply with the rules of biological nomenclature, as expressed in the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature (http://iczn.org), the International Code of Botanical Nomenclature (www.iapt-taxon.org/nomen/main.php), and the International Code of Nomenclature of Prokaryotes (www.the-icsp.org/bacterial-code). When a species name is used for the first time in an article, it should be stated in full, and the name of its describer should also be given, with the style of each of the codes of nomenclature.

References
Cite literature in the text in chronological, followed by alphabetical, order and formatted like these examples: "Campbell (1983, 1987b)," "(Smith et al., 1984; Karl and Craven, 1988; Korobi, 1997, 1998)." In the References section, list citations in alphabetical, followed by chronological, order. All publications cited in the text should be listed alphabetically after the first author.

• For a single author, references are to be arranged chronologically. If an author published several papers in the same year, they should appear as: White JH, 1970a. - White JH, 1970b.
• If all authors are identical for two or more citations, chronological order of publication should dictate the order of citations.
• Papers in press should be cited only if formally accepted for publication. In this case the year should be that of the acceptance and indicated in brackets: White H, Brown J, (1990). (in press).
• Journal citations should be abbreviated based on "World List of Scientific Periodicals" published by Butterworths, London. If the title of the journal is a single word do not abbreviate.
• Notations such as "Vol., n., nr.", etc. are superfluous and should be dropped.
• Citations such as personal communication, unpublished data, etc. are not accepted.

Some examples of correct citations are given below:

• Callieri C, Stockner JG, 2002. Freshwater autotrophic picoplankton: a review. J. Limnol. 61:1-14.
• Hutchinson GE, 1975. A treatise on limnology. 3. J. Wiley & Sons, New York: 660 pp.
• de Bernardi R, Giussani G, Lasso-Pedretti E, 1979. Food suitability and availability, demographic parameters and population growth in Daphnia obtusa Kurz under laboratory conditions. In: R. de Bernardi (ed.), Proc. Symp. Biological and Mathematical aspects in population dynamics. Mem. Ist. ital. Idrobiol. Suppl. 37:233-242.
• Muyzer G, Brinkhoff T, Wawer C, 1998. Denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis (DGGE) in microbial ecology, p. 1–27. In: A.D.L. Akkermans, J.D. van Elsas and F.J. Bruijn (eds.), Molecular microbial ecology manual. Kluwer Academic Publishers.
• Botosaneanu L, 1965. [Neue Trichopterologische fänge in Polen, Rumänien und Bulgarien].[Article in German]. Latvijas Entomologs 10:53-60.

We recommend the use of a tool such as EndNote for reference management and formatting.

EndNote reference styles for Journal of Limnology is available here:
http://www.jlimnol.it/public/jlimnol.ens

Reference Manager reference styles can be searched for here:
http://www.refman.com

Supplementary Material
Any additional material that does not fit within the main body of the manuscript but could be useful and relevant to have, such as further detailed information on methods, figures, tables, large datasets, videos, etc. is welcome as supplementary material.

 

Manuscript format for Short Communications:

A Short Communication is a concise report representing a significant contribution to limnology, which is however not suited as a full research article. It should not include subheadings (Introduction, Materials and Methods, etc.) but should follow this pattern, if appropriate. The total length of the article should not exceed 2500 words in text with a maximum of 15 references and a total of 2 figures and/or tables. The Abstract should not exceed 100 words.

Data Publication

We encourage publication of all data in online repositories; accession numbers from those repositories should be explicitly provided in the manuscript. Compulsory publication of data is required for:

• DNA sequence data, for example in Genbank (www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Genbank), ENA (www.ebi.ac.uk/ena), BOLD (www.barcodinglife.org), or others.
• description of new species of animals, using ZooBank (www.zoobank.org).

Authors are warmly encouraged to place all species distribution records in a publicly accessible database such as the national Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) nodes (www.gbif.org) or data centres endorsed by GBIF, including BioFresh (www.freshwaterbiodiversity.eu). Authors are encouraged to make any other type of data available online, for example through: Morphbank (www.morphbank.net), Morphobank (https://morphobank.org), TreeBASE (www.treebase.org), BioModels (www.ebi.ac.uk/biomodels), or other repositories.

The corresponding author will receive a PDF proof and is asked to check it carefully (the publisher will execute a cursory check only).
Corrections other than printer errors should be avoided. Costs associated with such corrections will be charged to the authors.
Please be aware that the Publisher is unable to accept corrections made in ways other than specified at https://www.pagepress.org/guidance

All manuscripts submitted to our journal are critically assessed by external and/or in-house experts in accordance with the principles of peer review, which is fundamental to the scientific publication process and the dissemination of sound science. The first step of manuscript selection takes place entirely in-house and has two major objectives: i) to establish the article appropriateness for the readership of our journal; ii) to define the manuscript priority ranking relative to other manuscripts under consideration, since the number of papers that the journal receives is much greater than it can publish. If a manuscript does not receive a sufficiently high priority score to warrant publication, the editors will proceed to a quick rejection. The remaining articles are reviewed by at least two different external referees (second step or classical peer review).

All persons designated as authors should qualify for authorship according to the ICMJE criteria. Each author should have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for the content. Authorship credit should only be based on substantial contributions to: i) conception and design, or analysis and interpretation of data, and to ii) drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content; and on iii) final approval of the version to be published; and iv) agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work. Participation solely in the acquisition of funding or the collection of data does not justify authorship. General supervision of the research group is not sufficient for authorship. Authors should provide a brief description of their individual contributions. Those who do not meet all four criteria should not be listed as authors, but they should be acknowledged. Those whose contributions do not justify authorship may be acknowledged individually or together as a group under a single heading. Authors can find detailed information on the Publisher's web site.

Changes in Authorship
Authors are expected to carefully consider the list and order of authors before submitting their manuscript and provide the definitive list of authors at the time of the original submission. Any addition, deletion or rearrangement of author names in the authorship list should be made only before the manuscript has been accepted and only if approved by the journal Editor:  Authors are requested to sign and send to the Editors a statement of agreement for the requested change from all listed authors and from the author(s) to be removed or added.

Please note that if your manuscript is accepted for publication, you will not be able to make any changes to the authors or order of authors. 
No changes to the Authors or Corresponding Author can be made after publication of the article. Instead, a corrigendum may be considered by the Editor(s) and Publisher..

This policy establishes transparency standards for authors, readers, reviewers, and editors regarding the use of Generative AI and AI-assisted technologies in the writing process. It does not govern the use of AI tools for data analysis or the generation of research insights. PAGEPress will monitor developments in this field and revise this policy as needed in response to the rapid evolution of AI technologies and related publishing standards. Authors are required to disclose the use of AI-assisted technologies—such as Large Language Models (LLMs), chatbots, or image-generation tools—in the Disclosure section of their manuscript (see "Preparing your Manuscript"). AI tools, including chatbots such as ChatGPT, cannot be listed as authors: authorship requires accountability for the accuracy, integrity, and originality of the work, a responsibility that cannot be assigned to any AI system. Since AI-generated content may appear authoritative while being inaccurate, incomplete, or biased, authors must carefully review and edit all AI-generated material and ensure their manuscripts are free from plagiarism before submission.

When reporting experiments on human subjects, authors should indicate whether the procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation (institutional and national) and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2013. If doubt exists whether the research was conducted in accordance with the Helsinki Declaration, the authors must explain the rationale for their approach and demonstrate that the institutional review body explicitly approved the doubtful aspects of the study. An Informed Consent statement is always required from patients involved in any experiments.
When reporting experiments on animals, authors should indicate whether the institutional and national guide for the care and use of laboratory animals was followed. Further guidance on animal research ethics is available from the World Medical Association (2016 revision).
When reporting experiments on ecosystems involving non-native species, authors are bound to ensure compliance with the institutional and national guide for the preservation of native biodiversity.
When reporting results from DNA-based studies, authors should ensure to have all permissions according to the Nagoya protocol.