Submissions

Author Guidelines

Please read these guidelines in full before submitting. Manuscripts that do not follow them, or that fall outside the journal's scope, are returned to the authors without review. A manuscript returned for these reasons has not been judged on its scientific merit, and a corrected version may be resubmitted.

Before you submit

• Check that the work fits the journal's aims and scope and one of its six sections.
• Prepare the manuscript in the journal's Word templates. Their use is required.
• Have the English checked. The journal does not provide language editing, and manuscripts that are difficult to follow are returned. Authors may use any language service; doing so does not affect the editorial decision.
• Register on the journal site and submit through it. Submissions sent by email are not accepted.

Files to upload

• Title page, from the title-page template: the title; every author's full name, affiliation, email address and ORCID iD; the corresponding author; acknowledgements; funding; the declarations listed below; and the names and email addresses of three suggested reviewers who are not at the authors' institutions and have not co-authored with any of them in the last three years.
• Anonymised manuscript, from the manuscript template, with no author names, affiliations, acknowledgements or funding details. Refer to the authors' own earlier work in the third person, for example "Rao et al. (2021) showed", and remove names from the file's properties.
• Supplementary files, if any, also anonymised.

For review, place figures and tables in the manuscript near where they are first cited. High-resolution figure files are requested only after acceptance.

Structure

Research articles follow this order:

• Title, of no more than 20 words, naming the taxon and place where relevant.
• Abstract of up to 250 words in a single paragraph, covering context, methods, results and conclusions, with no citations.
• Keywords, four to six, that do not repeat words in the title.
• Introduction, ending with the question or aim of the study.
• Materials and methods, including the study area with coordinates, the study period, and the numbers of any research permits.
• Results, Discussion, and Conclusions (optional).
• References.

Other sections adapt this structure. Short communications may combine results and discussion. Field and practice notes use the headings Context, What was done, Outcomes and Lessons. Data papers use Dataset description, Methods, Quality control, Data access and Reuse potential. Review articles describe how the literature was searched and selected; systematic reviews follow PRISMA. Perspectives may use any structure.

Style

• Use either UK or US English, consistently.
• Use SI units. Write dates as 12 March 2026 and times in the 24-hour clock.
• Italicise scientific names and give the authority at first mention, for example Tectona grandis L.f. Use currently accepted names, for example those in Plants of the World Online for vascular plants.
• Vernacular names are welcome alongside scientific names. Name the language, for example Kannada or Konkani.
• Give coordinates in decimal degrees (WGS 84).
• Report each statistical test with its test statistic, degrees of freedom and exact p value, and name the software and version used.
• Define abbreviations at first use.
• Maps that show India's national boundary must follow the boundary published by the Survey of India. Every map needs a scale bar and a north arrow.

References

Use APA style, 7th edition. Cite in the text as (Rao, 2021), (Rao & Kumar, 2021) or (Rao et al., 2021). Give the DOI of every reference that has one, written as a full link. Government reports, working plans and other grey literature may be cited if readers can obtain them. Authors are responsible for the accuracy of every reference, and manuscripts with incomplete or inconsistent references are returned.

Journal article: Author, A. A., & Author, B. B. (Year). Title of article. Journal Name, volume(issue), pages. https://doi.org/xx.xxxx/xxxx

Book: Author, A. A. (Year). Title of book. Publisher.

Report: Organisation. (Year). Title of report (Report No. xx). Publisher. URL

Dataset: Author, A. A. (Year). Title of dataset (Version x) [Data set]. Repository. https://doi.org/xx.xxxx/xxxx

Figures and tables

• Number figures and tables in the order they are cited, and cite each one in the text.
• Supply tables as editable Word tables, not as images.
• After acceptance, supply each figure as a separate TIFF, PNG or JPEG file of at least 300 dpi at its printed size.
• Give every photograph a credit naming the photographer.

Declarations

Give these on the title page, each under its own heading:

• Funding, with grant numbers, or a statement that there was none.
• Conflicts of interest, financial or otherwise, or a statement that there are none.
• Author contributions, using the CRediT roles.
• Ethics and permits: approvals and research permits with their reference numbers, or a statement that none were needed.
• Consent: for work involving people or traditional knowledge, how prior informed consent was obtained.
• Data availability: where the data can be found, or why they cannot be shared.
• Use of AI tools: any use of generative AI beyond spelling and grammar checks, naming the tool and its purpose.

Data

Authors are encouraged to deposit their data in a public repository such as Zenodo, Dryad or Figshare, and species occurrence records in GBIF. Data papers must deposit their dataset, with a DOI, before submission. Precise locations of threatened species may be withheld or generalised; say so in the data availability statement.

After acceptance

• Final files, in the template and with high-resolution figures, are due within 14 days of acceptance.
• Authors receive one set of proofs, to be returned within three working days. Only typographical and factual errors may be corrected at this stage. If no reply is received in that time, the journal may publish the article as it stands.
• Once published, an article is changed only through a formal correction.

Manuscript template

Two Word templates are provided, and both must be used: one for the title page and one for the anonymised manuscript. They set the page layout and heading styles, and each section holds an instruction for authors to replace with their own text. The templates can be downloaded from the For Authors page.

Page setup

• A4 paper with 2.5 cm margins
• Times New Roman, 12 point, with 1.5 line spacing
• Continuous line numbers, so reviewers can point to exact passages
• Page numbers at the foot of each page

Title-page template

• Section of the journal
• Title, and a running title of up to 50 characters
• Authors, with affiliations, email addresses and ORCID iDs
• Corresponding author
• Word count
• Acknowledgements
• Declarations: funding, conflicts of interest, author contributions, ethics and permits, consent, data availability, and use of AI tools
• Three suggested reviewers

Manuscript template

• Section of the journal and title, with no author details
• Abstract and keywords
• Headings for research articles, with the alternative headings for the other sections
• References in APA style, 7th edition, with examples
• An example table and figure caption, placed where they are first cited