Instructions for authors

Scope

Limnetica publishes original research papers on ecology of continental waters. Its scope includes ecology of rivers, lakes, reservoirs, lagoons and wetlands, biogeochemistry, paleolimnology, development of new methods, taxonomy, biogeography, and all aspects of theoretical and applied continental aquatic ecology, like management and conservation, impact assessment, ecotoxicology and pollution. Limnetica will accept for publication scientific papers presenting advances in knowledge or technological development, as well as papers derived from new practical approaches on the topics covered by the journal.

PhD or Masters students who act as corresponding authors for a manuscript submitted to Limnetica can apply for Fast-track review: This will seek to reach a first decision, including a round of peer review, within a maximum of four weeks. To opt for Fast track review, the author must add a letter from his/her supervisor certifying your status as Masters or PhD student. This is mandatory.

Limnetica has no objections about considering preprints for publication. If an author submits a manuscript that has been previously published as a preprint, authors should include the preprint server name and DOI in the cover letter. Further, we ask that upon publication in Limnetica, the authors update the preprint version to provide a link to the final published paper.

Authors are encouraged to place all species distribution records in a publicly accessible database such as the national Global Biodi-versity Information Facility (GBIF) nodes (gbif.org) or data centers endorsed by GBIF, including BioFresh (freshwaterbiodiversity.eu)

Limnetica encourages authors depositing their dataset on which their paper is based (including codes and other artefacts used to generate the analyses presented) in repositories that can mint a persistent digital identifier, preferably a digital object identifier (DOI), and recognize a long-term preservation plan. We recommend open access repositories. To search for a suitable repository you can go to  FAIRsharing and re3data.org or for more generalist data repositories you can use Figshare, Dryad or Zenodo among others. The data repository name, link to the data set (URL) and accession number, DOI or handle number of the data set must be provided in the paper, and data should be presented in a format that facilitates readability and reuse.

Authors should comply with the rules of biological nomenclature, as expressed in the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature (iczn.org), the International Code of Botanical Nomenclature (iapt-taxon.org/nomen/main.php) and the International Code of Nomenclature of Prokaryotes (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. 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.

A cover letter must be sent along with the manuscript.

For transparency, we encourage authors to include in the cover letter an author statement outlining their individual contributions to the paper using the relevant CRediT roles: Conceptualization; Data curation; Formal analysis; Funding acquisition; Investigation; Methodology; Project administration; Resources; Software; Supervision; Validation; Visualization; Roles/Writing - original draft; Writing - review & editing. Authorship statements should be formatted with the names of authors first and CRediT role(s) following.

Sample CRediT author statement:

Zhang San: Conceptualization, Methodology, Software Priya Singh.: Data curation, Writing- Original draft preparation. Wang Wu: Visualization, Investigation. Jan Jansen: Supervision.: Ajay Kumar: Software, Validation.: Sun Qi: Writing- Reviewing and Editing,

Limnetica will require authors to confirm that the work as submitted has not been published or accepted for publication, nor is being considered for publication elsewhere, either in whole or substantial part.

Please, include in the cover letter the names, institutional affiliations, and institutional e-mail addresses of 3 to 5 potential reviewers. When choosing potential reviewers, please be inclusive in terms of age, gender, ethnicity and nationality.

Manuscript presentation

Manuscripts should be submitted through the web site: http://recyt.fecyt.es/index.php/Limnetica. The corresponding author will need to create an account. The digital copy should include one file with text, tables and figures following the present instructions, made with PC-compatible text-edition software (preferable MSWord).

Manuscript will be typed at double space on A-4 sheets. Papers can be written in Spanish or English, and must not exceed around 25 printed pages. Long lists, annexes and additional information can be published in the web site of the journal as a supplementary material. Papers that do not follow the present instructions will be rejected.

Limnetica’s Editorial Board will decide whether to publish or not the received manuscripts, and will tell their decision to the authors. If the Editorial Board considers that the English style is inadequate, authors should attach a certificate of the language revision by a native speaker. Prior to publication, authors will get gallery proofs to be corrected. When the paper has been published, the leading author will get a copy in PDF format.

Manuscript structure

The manuscript must include page and line numbers.

For manuscripts in Spanish, words in UPPER CASE will be accentuated when convenient, both in the title and section headings (INTRODUCCIÓN, etc.).

The first page must include:

  • Title in lower case.
  • Full name of the authors. Indicating the corresponding author, whose e-mail address must be shown.
  • Complete postal address of authors.
  • Running title.
  • ORCIDs if available.

The second page will include Abstract and key words, both in English and Spanish or Portuguese. Abstracts must start with the title and not exceed 300 words.

Following pages must be structured in sections following the scientific style. Section headings and text will have no left indent.

Sections and subsections will not be numbered, and must adjust to the following format:

Main section: Bold, upper case (INTRODUCTION)
2nd level section: Bold, lower case.
3rd level section: Italics.
4th level section: Plain text, underlined.
Lower-level sections will go numbered: (1), (1.1), (1.1.1), etc.

Tables must be drawn as compact as possible. Tables can be 1-column (8 cm) or 2-column (16 cm) wide, and their length cannot exceed 25 cm. They will be included at the end of the manuscript and numbered in Arabic numbers. In the text they will be written in complete form (e.g., as can be seen in Table 6..., or Data (Table 6) show that...), never in abbreviated form (neither Tab. 6 nor tab. 6). Table captions will be written in both English and Spanish or Portuguese. No vertical lines can be drawn in tables, and column headings must be short. No table will be published that shows information presented in figures.

Figures will have Arabic numbers, and legends will go below, both in English and Spanish or Portuguese.

Figures can fit three box-sizes: 8 cm, 12.5 cm, or 16 cm. Authors must make sure that font size and line thickness can be easily read after reduction, otherwise figures will be rejected.

Figure legends and table captions will go in a page after Literature cited and before Tables and Figures.

Figure calls must be made in complete, lower case form when in the text (e.g., Location of sampling sites is shown in figure 1), in abbreviated, upper case when going in a parenthesis (e.g., Samples were taken monthly at five sites along the river (Fig. 1).

Units must be expressed preferably following the International System (I.S.), with abbreviated symbols when preceded by numeric expressions. Values combining two units must be expressed with the corresponding arithmetic sign, like m/s, mol/m3, ind/l, but when there are more than two units exponentials must be used (mgC m-2 h-1).

Decimal numbers will be expressed with a dot (4.36), thousands with 4 digits, with no blank space or symbols (4392), and figures over ten thousand will have blank space markings (13 723 or 132 437). Whenever possible the scientific notation will be used, with the smallest possible number of decimals (13.7 x 103 , 13.2 x 104).

References should be listed alphabetically by name. In text citations the author's last name and the year of publication should appear in the text, for example, (Smith, 1998, Dolz & Velasco, 1990, Pérez-Uz et al., 2021 or in narrative citation Pérez-Uz et al. (2019)), and a complete reference should appear in the reference list at the end of the paper. References should refer only to material listed within the text.

References are styled according to the seventh edition of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (APA). We recommend the use of a tool such as Mendeley for reference management and formatting (selecting APA citation style).

Unpublished papers should not be included among the references. References to materials hard to get (reports, conference abstracts, etc.) must be limited to the minimum possible.

A sample of the most common entries in reference lists appears below,

  • Journals:
    2 to 7 authors: Rueda, F. J., Moreno-Ostos, E., & Armengol, J. (2006). The residence time of river water in reservoirs. Ecological Modelling, 19, 260-275. DOI: 10.1016/j.ecolmodel.2005.04.030
    More than 7 authors: Pérez-Uz, B., Velasco-González, I., Murciano, A., Sanchez-Jiménez, A., García-Rodríguez, M., Centeno, J. D., …. Martín-Cereceda, M. (2021). Rain-fed granite rock pools in a national park: extreme niches for protists. Limnetica, 40(1), 169-182. DOI: 10.23818/limn.40.01
  • Book edition:
    Kalff, J. (2002). Limnology. Prentice Hall. NJ. USA.
  • Book chapter:
    Sear, D. A. (2010). Integrating science and practice for the suitable management of in-channel salmonid habitat. Chapter 4. In: P. S. Kemp (ed.). Salmonid Fisheries: Freshwater habitat management. (pp. 81-119). Wiley-Blackwell, Chichester. UK.
    Castro, M., Martín-Vide, J., & Alonso, S. (2005). El clima de España: pasado, presente y escenarios de clima para el siglo XXI. J. M. Moreno Rodríguez (ed.): In: Evaluación preliminar de los impactos en España por efecto del Cambio Climático. (pp.113-146). Ministerio de Medio Ambiente, Madrid, Spain.
  • PhD and Master Dissertations:
    Valiente, N. (2018). A multidisciplinary approach for assessing natural attenuation of pollutants in a highly saline lake-aquifer system: the case of Pétrola lake, Spain. (PhD. Tesis. Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha, España). Retrieved: https://ruidera.uclm.es/xmlui/handle/10578/19673

Authors should guarantee the English grammar quality of their manuscript. It is mandatory to include a letter of the language revision at the end of the revision process.

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