Author Guidelines

Articles must conform with the guidelines below, but this is not necessary at the initial submission stage. Authors are advised to apply the journal’s style upon final acceptance, before the manuscript is copyedited.

Submissions must be in English. Abstracts in languages other than English are encouraged. The editors are happy to assist authors in improving English style or more generally with the construction of manuscripts. 

Authorship

Each of the manuscript’s authors should meet all three of the following criteria: (1) has made a substantial contribution to the design of the study, the collection of the data, or the analysis or interpretation of the data; (2) has drafted the manuscript or helped revise it, shaping its intellectual content; (3) has approved of the submitted manuscript. Each author should be able to take public responsibility for a portion of the paper’s content, and should be able to identify the co-authors who are responsible for the remaining material.

Types of articles 

Articles can be as long as is required to communicate the information they contain, but wording should be concise and information content restricted to that directly relevant. The editors are happy to help authors with this, but in their turn request consideration of the following recurrent matters in the journal’s submissions in recent years:

  • Superfluous, generalised statements on the roles of small carnivores in ecosystems, their morphology, and general biology, and the importance of their conservation.
  • Recommendations for more research, when the research is not a justifiable conservation priority.

The editors spend considerable time removing superfluous material from a high proportion of submissions and/or editing research recommendations. Although statements on the importance of small carnivore conservation, for example, would be appropriate for a generalist journal, these statements are not sought here: species conservation requires an emphasis on the peculiarities of the species in question. Recommendations for further research are apt only where it is explained why the research is a priority for conservation, and any such text should focus on recommendations that could not have been predicted before the information the article documents was generated.

Guidance on content and length follows.

Notes: These are short articles (typically fewer than 3000 words), detailing incidental records or observations. Examples include natural history observations, observations of potential or known threats, spotlighting records, or a report of a small (e.g. under five) number of camera-trap records. Abstracts should be included, but are not a requirement: submissions can be written as simple notes detailing the record(s) or observation(s). The editors can provide guidance if required.

Reviews: These include compilations and reviews of camera-trap records, including by-catch; literature reviews; and assessments of a species's (or multiple species’) national, regional or global conservation status. Submissions can be any length.

Original documentation: This covers any survey or research for which a primary or significant target of the investigation was small carnivores. Submissions can be any length.

Style

English is a second language for many, so writing should be clear and direct. Capitalise English names of species, e.g. Selous’s Mongoose, Stripe-backed Weasel, Large-toothed Ferret Badger, but not group names, e.g. mongooses, skunks. Give both English and scientific names at first mention of a taxon, using neither parentheses nor comma, e.g., Stripe-necked Mongoose Herpestes vitticollis.

Figures

Figures should be prepared at proportions and text size suitable for reproduction onto an A4 page. Colour illustrations are allowed, but contributors are advised to design them so that they can be understood when printed in greyscale. We recommend the use of Arial or similar sans-serif font for any lettering (such as axis labels) used on graphs. Images (photographs, artwork, maps, diagrams) may be submitted in digital TIFF (at least 300 dpi resolution and 8″ × 11″) or JPEG (maximum quality) formats. All figures, tables and captions must be included at the end of the manuscript, after the references.

Locality data

Give geographical locations as latitude/longitude in degrees/minutes using a ° sign (or d if this is not available), e.g. 37°14′S, 6°04′E; do not use 37.14°S, because this is ambiguous.

Measurements

With measurements use a space between number and unit: 34 mm, not 34mm (but for %: 34%). Dates must be unambiguous: use 3 April 1967, not 3/4/67. Use only the 24-hr clock, e.g. 07h55, 19h14, for times. Statistical testing is encouraged where appropriate (the Editor-in-Chief is happy to advise), but it often is not: manuscripts about little-known species are particularly sought, whether or not results are amenable to statistical testing. Similarly, given the paucity of information for many of ‘our’ species, speculative discussion is strongly encouraged, but the data should justify any conclusions.

References

Citation to unpublished information is welcomed (otherwise, it may never appear in public). To help future readers, give the person’s full name, mode (written = in litt., spoken = verbally), and year, e.g. “Mark Toghill (verbally 1992) found that...”. Include the full name and institutional affiliation in the acknowledgements. Minimise citation to secondary internet sources; give date of access and internet address.

Cite literature in the text as follows: (Dao Van Tien 1978, Bollen et al. 1982b, 1982c, 1983, Raselimanana & Goodman 2004), with items in date sequence. Order the reference list alphabetically by first word of family name (e.g. H. Van Rompaey under ‘V’, Mao Zedong under ‘M’) or, if no family name, by the first-written or otherwise predominant name. Give titles of periodicals in full. Capitalise significant words in titles of journals but not (in English) in titles of papers and books. Give the country as well as town of publication. Non-English titles of articles, books, reports and book chapters (but not names of journals) should be followed by English translations, in square brackets.

Examples

For all citations, note that a comma within the name indicates it has been reversed from normal usage. So, where, in normal usage the first-written name is also the family name, as in Vietnamese and Korean, no comma is to be inserted. Note also that a stop indicate an abbreviation and if the last component before the year is not an abbreviation, it carries no stop.

Articles in journals

Heubel, F. 1940. Beobachtungen und versuche über das Sinnesleben und die Intelligenz bei einem Palmenroller (Arctogalidia stigmatica). [Observations and experiments on the sensory life and intelligence of a Small-toothed Palm Civet (Arctogalidia stigmatica).] Archives Neerlandaises de Zoologie 4: 369–400.

Thomas, O. 1927. The Delacour exploration of French Indochina–mammals. Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London 1927: 41–58.

Veron, G., Gaubert, P., Franklin, N., Jennings, A. P. & Grassman, L. I., Jr 2006. A reassessment of the distribution and taxonomy of the endangered Otter Civet Cynogale bennettii (Carnivora: Viverridae) of South-East Asia. Oryx 40: 42–49.

Jones, L. 2021. A reassessment of the diet of Honey Badgers. Badger Journal 40: article no. 14.

Books and reports

Smith, I. N. & Diego, E. (eds) 1996. Current status of rabies in the Caribbean. 3rd edn. Buenos Aires, Argentina: Institute of Wildlife Diseases.

Lekagul, B. & McNeely, J. A. 1977. Mammals of Thailand. Bangkok, Thailand: Association for the Conservation of Wildlife (1988 reprint).

Ternovsky, D. V. 1977. [Biology of the Mustelidae]. Novosibirsk, USSR: Nauka. (In Russian.)

Chapters in books and proceedings

Lim B. L., Ratnam, L. & Nor Azman Hussein 2003. Small mammal diversity in Pasoh Forest Reserve, Negeri Sembilan, peninsular Malaysia. Pp. 403–411 in Okuda, T., Manokaran,N. , Matsumoto, Y., Niiyama, K., Thomas, S. C. & Ashton, P. S. (eds) Pasoh—ecology of a lowland rain forest in Southeast Asia. Tokyo, Japan: Springer-Verlag.

Material not fully in the public domain, widely accessible, or permanent

Wright, L., de Silva, P. K., Chan, B. & Reza Lubis, I. & Basak, S. 2021. Asian Small-clawed Otter. Aonyx cinereus. The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2021: e.T44166A164580923. Accessed at https://www.iucnredlist.org/species/44166/164580923 on 13 June 2021.

Anonymous 2017. Raccoon rampages around Northampton family’s home. BBC News. Accessed at https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-northamptonshire-39948024 on 15 June 2022.

Roberton, S. in prep. Conservation status review of small carnivores in Vietnam.

Stuebing, R. B. & Wong, L. L. 2005. An integrated approach to biodiversity conservation for a planted forest in Sarawak. Draft of presentation at the 14th Malaysian Forestry Conference,12–16 September 2005, Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, Malaysia.

Xavier, F. 1994. A study on Small Indian Civet (Viverricula indica) as a sustainable wildlife resource. Ph.D. thesis. Thiruvananthapuram, India: University of Kerala.