Author Guidelines
Submitting a manuscript
Submitting a manuscript implies the explicit statement by the author(s) that the paper has not been published before, nor accepted for publication in another journal or other means of scientific diffusion. Contributions are the entire responsibility of the author(s) and not of the Research Institute of Biological Resources Alexander von Humboldt, or the journal or their editors.
Papers can be written in Spanish, English or Portuguese, but we prefer contributions in English in order to have shorter publication times and greater visibility and impact. Manuscripts should not exceed 25 pages (with paragraph lines spaced at 1.5) including tables, figures and appendices.
Biota Colombiana receives scientific research articles, as well as notes, reviews, bibliographic novelties and data papers.
Manuscripts must be submitted through the online platform of the journal (http://revistas.humboldt. org.co/index.php/biota). To complete the submission the main author for correspondence must register as an user and make only one submission per manuscript. New versions of the same submission during its editorial process must be submitted in the "Review" section under "Upload Author Version".
Coauthors must be added in "Submission Metadata". Author names should be written uniformly as they appear in other publications, and it is mandatory to include ORCID number for each author.
Evaluation
Manuscripts will be reviewed by at least two scientific peers. Results of peer review may include any of the following: a) accepted (it is assumed that no change, omission or addition to the article is required and may be published as presented.); b) conditional acceptance (the manuscript is accepted and recommended for publication only if indicated corrections are made; corrections may be minor and a second evaluation is not necessary or major and a second evaluation is necessary); and c) rejected (reviewer considers that the contents and/or form of the paper are not in accordance with requirements of publication standards of Biota Colombiana). For a manuscript to continue its editorial process, it must have been accepted by at least two reviewers.
Preparation of manuscripts
For the preparation of the text of the manuscript, use a word processor (preferably Word) and adjust the text to the template required by the journal. To submit a manuscript, a cover letter that clearly indicates the following must be uploaded to the platform as a supplementary file:
- Full names, institutional affiliations, and e-mail addresses of all authors (please note that email addresses are essential for direct communication)
- Complete title of the article
- Declaration of originality and conflict of interest
- Names, sizes and types of files provided
- List of the names and e-mail addresses of at least four peers who are qualified to review the manuscript
*The author accepts the Copyright Notice
**For information regarding the preparation of data papers, continue to “Details for Data Papers-> Preparation of Data Paper”
Use of language
- Manuscripts must be written correctly with a clear and concise style. Those with poor writing, punctuation or grammar will be returned to authors. Please seek assistance in writing and ask for help from a native speaker of the language you use in your paper.
Format
- For the submission of the manuscript, please use the submission template.
- Avoid the use of bold or underlined font.
- Scientific names of genera, species and subspecies must be in italics, as well as Latin technical terms (p. e. sensu, et al.).
- Avoid underlining any word or title. Do not use footnotes.
- For abbreviations and the metric system, use the standards of the International System of Units (SI). Leave a space between the numeric value and the measure unit (p. e. 16 km, 23 ºC). For relative measures such as m/sec, use m.sec-1.
- When expressing a percentage, include a space between the number and the symbol (ctrl+shift+space).
- Write the numbers from one to ten in letters, except when it precedes a measuring unit (p. e. 9 cm) or is used as a marker (p. e. lot 2, sample 7). Numbers greater than ten must be written in Arabic numerals. If numbers both lesser than ten and greater than ten appear in the paragraph, all should be written in Arabic numerals.
- Thousands, millions, etc. should not be separated by commas nor periods (p. e. 54000). Use periods to separate decimals (p. e. 3.1416). Hours should be represented in military time from 0:00 to 24:00.
- Years should be written without commas or periods (p. e. 1996-1998). In English months and days of the week are capitalized (January, July, Saturday, Monday), whereas in Spanish the first letter of months and days of the week are written with lower-case letters (enero, julio, sábado, lunes).
- Cardinal points (north, south, east and west) must be written in lower case letters, and only be capitalized if used in abbreviation N, S, E, W or as part of a proper name (p. e. North Carolina). Correct use of coordinates is: 02º37´53´´N-56º28´53´´O. Elevation should be expressed as 1180 m a. s. l. and 1180 m s. n. m. in Spanish.
- All abbreviations must be explained the first time they are used.
- When citing in-text references, follow APA citation norms (American Psychological Association Publications Manual, Seventh Edition). Include last names of authors if there are only one or two authors, or the first author followed by et al. (in italics) if there are three or more authors. In the case of two authors, last names must be separated by “&” (p. e. Cochran & Goin, 1970). If many references are cited, they must be ordered chronologically and separated by semicolons (p. e. Rojas, 1978; Bailey et al.<%2
Copyright Notice
The works published in the journals of the Alexander von Humboldt Biological Resources Research Institute are subject to the following terms, in relation to copyright:
1. The patrimonial rights of the published works are assigned to Instituto de Investigación de Recursos Biológicos Alexander von Humboldt. The authors or institutions that elaborate the document agree to transfer the patrimonial rights to the Humboldt Institute with the sending of their articles, which allows, among other things, the reproduction, public communication, dissemination and dissemination of works.
2. The works of digital editions are published under a Creative Commons Colombia license:
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Atribución-NoComercial-SinDerivar 4.0 Internacional.
> Attribution - Non-commercial - No Derivative: This license is the most restrictive of the six main licenses, it only allows others to download the works and share them with others, as long as their authorship is acknowledged, but they cannot be changed in any way, nor can they be used commercially.
3. The authors, when submitting articles to the editorial process of the magazines published by the Humboldt Institute, accept the institutional dispositions on copyright and open access.
4. All items received will be subjected to anti-plagiarism software. The submission of an article to the magazines of the Humboldt Institute is understood as the acceptance of the review to detect possible plagiarism.
5. The works submitted to the editing process of the magazines of the Humboldt Institute must be unpublished.
