Guidelines for Authors

The Journal of Limnology publishes the following article types:

Overview

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.

 

Submission Procedure

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.

 

Preparing your manuscript

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 claims for compensation.

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.

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
  • ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
  • REFERENCES
  • Tables
  • Figures
  • Figure legends

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

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 that 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.

Acknowledgments
Acknowledgments of people, grants, funds, etc. should be placed in a separate section before the reference list. The names of funding organizations should be written in full.

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 that 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 Communication:

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:

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.

Peer-review policy

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).

Authorship and Contributorship

All persons designated as authors should qualify for authorship according to the COPE 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.

Artificial Intelligence (AI)-Assisted Technology

Authors must disclose whether they used artificial intelligence (AI)-assisted technologies (such as Large Language Models [LLMs], chatbots, or image creators) in the creation of submitted work. Chatbots (such as ChatGPT) should not be listed as authors because they cannot be held accountable for the work's accuracy, integrity, and originality, all of which are required for authorship. Because AI can generate authoritative-sounding output that is incorrect, incomplete, or biased, authors should carefully review and edit the result. Authors should be able to assert that their paper contains no plagiarism, including text and images generated by AI. Large Language Models (LLMs), such as ChatGPT, do not currently satisfy our authorship criteria. Notably an attribution of authorship carries with it accountability for the work, which cannot be effectively applied to LLMs. Use of an LLM should be properly documented in the Methods section (if a Methods section is not available, in a suitable alternative part) of the manuscript. Use of an LLM for language editing must be stated in the Acknowledgments section.
We will review this policy on a regular basis and, if necessary, adapt it as we anticipate rapid development in this field in the near future.

Changes in Authorship
If authors request removal or addition of an author after manuscript submission or during the peer-review process or at article acceptance, the journal editors should receive a letter clearly explaining the reason for the change. Authors are also requested to sign and send to the Editors a statement of agreement for the requested change from all listed authors and from the author to be removed or added. No changes to the Authors or Corresponding Author can be made after publication of the article. Instead, a corrigendum may be considered by the journal editor.

 

Protection of Human Subjects and Animals in Research

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.