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Instructions for authors

 

 

Manuscripts submitted to the Pan-American Journal of Aquatic Sciences must comply with the following ethical principles:


a) Manuscripts must be original, not published before (except in the form of an abstract, or as part of a published lecture, or thesis), not under consideration for publication elsewhere.


b) When applicable, they must be approved by all authors as well as by the responsible authorities - tacitly or explicitly - at the institute where the work has been carried out, prior to submission.


c) Authors are responsible for obtaining the consent of their co-authors in order to include their names in the publication. Only the authors will be responsible for any disagreement arising after their article is published online at Pan-American Journal of Aquatic Sciences' site. Once published, no request from any co-author to delete his/her name from the publication, or any sort of modification in the publication's content will be accepted. In order to avoid authorship issues, please state in the cover letter that all co-authors agreed with its content and submission to our Journal, and that everyone meriting authorship have been so named.


d) For studies including experimentation with humans, in the submission letter authors should make clear that the investigation was approved by the appropriate institutional and/or specific research ethics committee, and that it was performed in accordance with all relevant ethical and legal standards. Please note that in many cases anonymity must be observed. For accepted manuscripts a statement will be included immediately after the Acknowledgments section disclosing these matters.


e) For studies which involve experimentation with animal or harm to animals in any way, in the submission letter authors must inform that appropriate permits for animal collection and all relevant animal welfare issues were observed and approved by the local committee(s) or authorities responsible for such permits. For accepted manuscripts a statement will be included immediately after the Acknowledgments section disclosing these matters.


f) Authors should make sure they have permissions for the use of proprietary software, questionnaires/(web) surveys and scales in their studies.

Our Journal will not be held legally responsible should there be any claims for compensation.


Following submission (electronically to panamjas (at) gmail.com), the manuscript will be pre-reviewed by the Editors and/or one of our Permanent Advisors (in the area of the manuscript). This might take some time. If pre-approved, it will be forwarded to three Reviewers according to the scope and specific area. Anonymity for both authors and reviewers will be preserved.

 

Acceptance will be based on the quality of the science, the appropriateness of the manuscript for our Journal and the quality of the English grammar. Authors whose mother tongue is not English should have their texts revised by a professional translator or an English native speaker colleague, otherwise such manuscript would be rejected. Each manuscript must stand on its own merits and be a substantial contribution to the field.

 

Original manuscripts must be electronically submitted in a document attached to a formally sent e-mail to the Editors. Text in ODT, SXW, DOC, DOCX or RTF file formats are acceptable Authors are asked to use A4 page size with 2 cm margins, Times New Roman 11 font and 1.5 lines as paragraph spacing. Figures may have high quality to allow electronic (PDF) viewing with enough details.

During the publication process, authors might be asked to change some formatting or submit equations, tables or pictures separately, if necessary.

 

Submitted files must not exceed 2 MB in total to allow e-mailing. If high quality images are to be included in the article and that excessively increases the size of the file, authors may send them separately to the Editors who will create a draft version of fair quality to be sent to the Reviewers. However, we strongly recommend sending the complete manuscript in a single file, with Figures and Tables inserted in the correct place. Please, be aware that simply pasting figures in some text editors will create unnecessarily large files. Paste them properly to avoid this (using the "paste special" utilities, for instance). Full quality pictures will be included, though, in the article when editing the final (corrected) version.

 

Manuscripts not formatted according to the present Instructions for Authors will be immediately returned to the authors. Please, see one of our published articles or contact the Editors to eliminate any doubts.

 

Submit, along with the manuscript, the names and e-mail addresses of 3 or more potential Reviewers (Referees), not from the same institution and with no recent collaboration links with the authors. All manuscript must be sent by e-mail to the following electronic address: panamjas (at) gmail.com, exclusively.

 

Manuscripts arrangement:

 

Authors are responsible for the content of submitted manuscripts, which have to be written in English. Non-English speakers must submit the manuscript to a native speaker or professional translator prior submission to Pan-American Journal of Aquatic Sciences.

 

Sentences must not start with an abbreviation. Acronyms must be written in full on their first occurrence and SI units should be used. Scientific names should be italicized (not underlined) and not abbreviated in legends of Figures and Tables. 

 

1) Research articles:

 

Title: concise and informative. The higher taxa containing the taxa dealt with in the paper should be indicated in parentheses: e.g. A taxonomic revision of the genus Atlantoraja (Elasmobranchii, Arynchobatidae).

 

Running headline: a short running headline of no more than 45 characters (including spaces) must be also provided.

 

Author(s): first names, middle names/initials, last names; postal addresses and e-mail addresses (Telephone/Fax number is not required). When authors belong to different institutions, an Arabic superscript number must be added and their addresses detailed below. Only the e-mail of the corresponding author must be indicated immediately after the postal address as in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. E-mail: author@webmail.org. Do not add all authors' e-mails. Also, information on the professional or academic status (professor, PhD., student, trainee, etc.) must be avoided. Please inform the way the authors' names should be abreviated (and, later, cited), for this differs in English, Spanish and Portuguese cultures.


Abstract plus one Resumen (Spanish) or Resumo (Portuguese): It must concisely outline the scope of the manuscript (no more than 200 words for Research articles, or three (3) lines for Scientific notes), informing the main findings and conclusions without methodologies or discussions. Any new names or new combinations proposed in the paper should be mentioned. The second language abstract must include the title of the article in the corresponding language.

 

Key Words: up to five, that do not appear in the title, in English and in the language of the second abstract. Do not insert a full stop after the last key word.

 

Following sections should include: Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results, Discussion, Acknowledgments* (optional and brief) and References (see format below), as usual. Sections names must appear in low case and bold font and centered. Sub-section titles must appear also in low case and bold font aligned to the left.

 

*Acknowledgments: identify individuals by first initial and full surname (do not list professional titles), and institutions. Author may include collecting permits acknowledgments and any additional information concerning research grants, etc. If used, voucher-specimens must be identified with catalog number and name of the institution.

 

Tables: Should be numbered consecutively in Roman numerals and embedded in the manuscript as text, not pasted as a figure. If sent in a separate file (ex. in a spreadsheet file) consider that either the length or the width must fit an A4 page with 2 cm margins. Avoid abbreviations, except in the case of units. Each table must have its own title on the top, formatted in Times New Roman 10 font. In the text, tables should be referred as Table I, Tables II and III, Tables II-V, etc. The font in the tables as well as inside the figures must be Times New Roman, as for the text.

 

Figures: all figures must be embedded in the text. Please choose high resolution pictures. Prefer figures with the following extensions: jpg, tiff, png, bmp, gif. Other formats may be accepted after consulting the Editorial Board. Please, try not to exceed 1 MB per file in the initial submission. High quality color or black and white photographs, or computer-generated figures (e.g. maps) are acceptable. After the article's acceptance authors may be asked to send original, higher resolution figures. Figures should be referred to in the text as Figure 1, Figures 1 and 2, Figures 1-4, Figure 2a, (Fig. 1), (Fig. 1a), (Figs. 1-4), (Figs. 1a-1d), etc. Always use bar scales to indicate the size of photographed items. The legends must be concise but informative, formatted in Times New Roman 10 font. The species name must not be abbreviated in the legends.

 

Formulas: may be written in a single line even if they require special fonts (Symbol, Courier New or Wingdings), or may be part of the text. Ex: H2O, y=a+xb, etc. We recommend the use of an appropriate equation editor for better results.

 

Citations: Author citations in the text must follow the pattern: Garcia et al. (2004) or (Garcia et al. 2004), (Loebmann & Vieira 2006), Velasco et al. (2007), Oddone (2005). When referring to several publications in a row they must be cited in chronological order; e.g. (Bertalanffy 1938, Kinas 2000, Christensen & Walters 2004). Two or more publications by the same author must be cited as (Walters 2003, 2007) or (Bakun 2009a,b).

Personal communication of unpublished data must be accompanied by the person's full name and professional address as a foot note.

 

References: see format examples below (please note spaces, bold, italic, commas and full stop usage). Grey literature must be avoided (e.g. symposium abstracts, unpublished institutional reports and monographs). If included (for example, being the cited reference the only publication of a particular subject), theses must include the full name of the institution, along with its city and country. See examples below.

 

Note that a space must be added between authors (and eventually editors) initials, as follows: Compagno, L. J. V. instead of Compagno, L.J.V. Moreover, authors' initials must always follow the surname and not the opposite, for instance: Compagno, L. J. V & Vooren, C. M. instead of Compagno, L. J. V. & C. M. Vooren.

 

Examples:

 

Books:

 

Margalef, R. 1995. Ecología. Omega, Barcelona, 951 p.

 

Seeliger, U., Odebrecht, C. & Castello, J. P. (Eds.). 1997. Subtropical Convergence Environments: The coastal and sea in the Southwestern Atlantic. Springer, Berlin, 380 p.

 

Book chapters:

 

Chao, L. N., Vieira, J. P. & Pereira, L. E. 1985. Estuarine fish community of the dos Patos Lagoon, Brazil: A Baseline Study. Pp. 429-450. In: Yañes-Arancibia, A. (Ed.). Fish community ecology in estuaries and coastal lagoons: Towards an ecosystem integration. UNAM Press, Mexico DF, Mexico, 654 p.

 

McDiarmid, R. W. 1994. Diversidad e historia natural de los anfibios: Una síntesis. Pp. 5-15. In: Heyer, W. R., Donnelly, M. A., McDiarmid, R. W., Hayek, L. A. C. & Foster, M. S. (Eds.). Medición y monitoreo de la diversidad biológica: Métodos estandartizados para Anfibios. Editora Universitaria de la Patagonia, Chubut, Argentina, 348 p.

 

Journal papers:

 

Araújo, J. N., Mackinson, S., Stanford, R. J., Sims, D. W., Southward, A. J., Hawkins, S. J., Ellis, J. R. & Hart, P. J. B. 2006. Modelling food web interactions, variation in plankton production and fisheries on the Western English Channel ecosystem. Marine Ecology Progress Series, 309: 175-187.

 

Calliari, D. & Antezana, T. 2001. Diel feeding rhythm of zooplankton size-fractions from Coliumo Bay, Central Chile. Scientia Marina, 65(4): 269-274.

 

Freire, K. M. F., Christensen, V. & Pauly, D. 2007. Assessing fishing policies for northeastern Brazil. Pan-American Journal of Aquatic Sciences, 2(2): 113-130.

 

Workshop and Symposium Proceedings:

 

Castello, J. P. 1990. Synopsis on the reproductive biology and early life history of Engraulis anchoita and related environmental conditions in Brazilian waters. Annex VII. IOC Workshop on Sardine/Anchovy Recruitment Project (SARP) in the Southwest Atlantic, UNESCO, 65: 1-5.

 

Piola, A. R., Campos, E. J. D., Moller, O. O., Charo, M. & Martinez. C. 1999. Continental shelf water masses off eastern south America - 20° to 40° S. 10th Symposium on global change studies, Dallas, Texas, USA, 9-12.

 

Theses:

 

Reis, E. G. 1992. An assessment of the exploitation of the white croaker Micropogonias furnieri (Pisces, Sciaenidae) by the artisanal and industrial fisheries in coastal waters of southern Brazil. PhD. Thesis. University of East Anglia, Norwich, England, 223 p.

 

Electronic publications:

 

Froese, R. & Pauly, D. 2007 (Eds.). FishBase - World Wide Web electronic publication, accessible at http://www.fishbase.org. (Accessed MM/DD/YYYY).

 

 

2) Scientific notes:

 

Must include the title, authors' names and addresses, and the two abstracts as the regular papers (see above), but the abstracts must have up to three lines, each. The following text must be written without the regular sections (Introduction, Materials and Methods, etc.). Acknowledgments and References must follow, and Tables and Figures included just as in the Research articles.

 

Overall, submitted notes must have less than nice (9) pages, including tables, figures and references.


It is not recomendable for such short communications to have more than three (3) authors.

 

The text must be organized as follows: the first paragraph must contain the information that would correspond to the Introduction; the second paragraph must briefly summarize the collection of the samples and the methodology. Finally the results and discussion must be presented in the following paragraphs (no more than three).



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