Author Guidelines

The submission process

Manuscripts for ACTA should be send to the editor-in-chief, in electronic form, on the following e-mail: acta@musmacscinat.mk. Following an initial check, it will be forwarded to the most appropriate member(s) of the editorial board. The author(s) will be informed on the preliminary eligibility of the paper usually within a week of submission, and the manuscript will be sent to at least two reviewers. It is reviewers’ decision whether they will stay anonymous, or not. Following the review process, articles will be either published without or after minor corrections, returned to the authors for major corrections, or rejected. In cases when major revisions to the manuscripts are required, or when rejected manuscripts are re-submitted, they will undergo a full reviewing process again.

Following an acceptance for publication, technically edited articles will be published on-line as a PDF file within a month, and printed version will follow within the same calendar year. Supplementary materials (baseline data, technical information on the methodology or computing codes, larger number of photographs, shape-files or similar), will be published only on-line.

In order to have their article published in the current year, authors should consider submitting their manuscripts in the first half of the year, to allow sufficient time for incorporating major revisions when needed. Typically, the time from submission to on-line publication will be about three months for manuscripts in need of minor revisions, and more than six months for manuscripts that will require major changes.

Manuscript preparation guidelines

The main language of the article is English. Authors from the Republic of Macedonia should also summaries into Macedonian language; for non-Macedonian authors, the translation will be provided by the editorial board. Authors should use standard text-editing software (Microsoft Word or Open Office). Tables should be incorporated in the text, but graphics (charts, images) must be submitted separately from the main text in tiff, jpeg or similar format with resolution of 300 dpi and properly named. Position of illustrations should be clearly marked in the text. In the text, use abbreviations when referring to tables and figures (Tab. 1, Fig. 2), but in the tables or figures’ captions, use Table 1, or Figure 2. Use sentence case throughout the manuscript (including the title, authors’ names and affiliations, key words, etc.). Do not format the text, except words that should appear in bold, italic or should be underlined. Use italic for genera, species (binomial nomenclature) and lower taxonomic categories, but not for the higher-level categories or species’ authorities. Font type and size is irrelevant as long as they support special characters (e.g., those for sexes, ♀ and ♂).

Give a title that clearly describes the content of the manuscript and include full names of the author(s), in the following order: Given name, Middle name (if used by the author), Family name(s). Include authors’ affiliation and addresses, and point out the corresponding author and his e-mail address. Provide an abstract, with a maximum of 300 words, giving short introduction of the subject, the research hypothesis or problem addressed, used methodology and/or study area, shortly list the most important results and the conclusions. Have in mind that the abstract should and will be used by other researchers to decide whether they will read the entire article. Also, supply 4 to 8 key words that are not already contained in the manuscript title, in alphabetical order. Typically, the manuscript will have the following structure: Introduction, Material and methods (including the study area), Results, Discussion and References. Authors might also include chapter Conclusions or further substructure the chapters (e.g., under Material and Methods, include sub-chapters Field work, Laboratory analyses, Statistical analyses etc.). Merging of two main chapters into one (e.g., Results and discussion) is discouraged.

Use of references

We strongly encourage use of a reference manager software in order not to omit any titles in the list of references.

In the text, cite the used publications as in the following examples: Dorazio (2015), (Colwell 2009), (Beckerman and Petchey 2012), (Tewes et al. 1998, Ruiz-González et al. 2014), depending on the context. When citing two or more references in the same context, arrange them in order of publication, the oldest first. In the list of the references, cite:

Journals and on-line journals

Dorazio, R.M., 2015. Bayesian data analysis in population ecology: motivations, methods, and benefits. Population Ecology 58: 31–44.

Ruiz-González, A., Gurrutxaga, M., Cushman, S.A., Madeira, M.J., Randi, E., Gómez-Moliner, B.J., 2014. Landscape genetics for the empirical assessment of resistance surfaces: the European Pine Marten (Martes martes) as a target-species of a regional ecological network. PLoS ONE 9, e110552. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0110552

Conference proceedings

Tewes, E., Terrasse, M., Bagnolini, C., Sánchez Artéz, J.J., 1998. Captive breeding of the European Black Vulture Aegypius monachus and the reintroduction project in France. pp. 417–435, in: Chancellor, R.D., Meyburg, B.-U., Ferrero, J.J. (Eds.), Proceedings of the International Conference Holarctic Birds of Prey, ADENEX-WWGBP, Mérida & Berlin

Books

Beckerman, A.P., Petchey, O.L., 2012. Getting Started with R: An introduction for biologists. Oxford University Press. Oxford. 125 pp.

Chapter in book

Colwell, R.K., 2009. Biodiversity: Concepts, Patterns, and Measurement. pp. 257–263, in: Levin, S.A., Godfray, H.C.J., Kinzig, A.P., Loreau, M., Losos, J.B., Walker, B., Wilcove, D.S. (Eds.), The Princeton Guide to Ecology. Princeton University Press, Princeton and Woodstock, 844 pp

Use the title in one of the mostly used international languages (English, German, French). If the source has no title in the mentioned languages, translate into English and state the original language in brackets at the end of the reference (e.g. in Macedonian). Do not translate the name of the publication.