Manuscript guidelines

1 Submission

For descriptions of the publication types and research scope accepted see Publication types.

Submissions are made on the Open Palaeontology platform here.

Detailed author guidelines can be downloaded here, and should be followed as closely as possible.

The .doc submission template can be downloaded here.

Material submitted to Open Palaeontology must be original and not published or concurrently submitted for publication elsewhere in any language (except for preprints; see section 2). Plagiarism or duplicate submission will result in the immediate rejection of any manuscript, or, if detected post-publication, in retraction. The authors must also declare any actual, potential, or perceived conflicts of interest that may exist. By submitting an article to Open Palaeontology, authors confirm that they have read, understood, and agreed to follow Open Palaeontology’s editorial policies and code of conduct.

1.1 Language

All submitted documents should be written in British or American English; whichever is chosen, its use should be consistent throughout all submitted files. Open Palaeontology encourages all authors to use inclusive and non-discriminatory language in their manuscripts (e.g., ‘they’ instead of ‘he/she’), and to use the native names of places in addition to ‘westernised’ names (e.g., “the Kaikōura Canyon is located east of Te Waipounamu (the South Island of NZ)”. Where applicable, acknowledgement of indigenous peoples and their lands should be given.

As a non-profit journal run by volunteers, we do not have the capacity for extensive checking and editing of language, nor do we expect our peer reviewers to perform this duty. Please ensure that you thereby carefully check and edit your submission to ensure it is free of obvious spelling and grammatical issues, and that the content of the text is clearly understandable to English-language readers from any language-background. Text rewriting and copy editing will not usually be performed by journal editors – please ensure you are happy with your text before submitting. If your text is not understandable from a scientific perspective, the manuscript will be returned to you by a Handling Editor. In cases in which the writing needs extensive improvement, but the science is understandable and the article's merits clear, this will be flagged in either peer review or following acceptance, and an editor will be designated to provide writing improvement suggestions.

1.2 Submission form

The submission form will include the following fields:

• section, in which you must choose an article type
• comments to the Editor, in which you can suggest a Handling Editor, suggest reviewers, make reviewer exclusion requests (requests will be considered based on given reason but cannot be guaranteed, and ask for your submission to be preprinted
• a checklist of submission requirements (please make sure you read these).

No cover letter is needed for submission.

1.3 Manuscript file

The manuscript file for submission should consist of one single file (Microsoft Word or Open Office document: .doc, .docx, .odt; or .pdf file), formatted using the Open Palaeontology template for the appropriate publication type (a .doc template is available here). Manuscripts must include:

1. title
2. abstract (max. 250 words)
3. 5–8 keywords
4. The details of all co-authors, including email addresses, institutions and ORCid identifications if possible. The corresponding author should be indicated, and joint first/last (etc.) authorship should be noted if applicable
5. Figures and tables, with captions, embedded in the text where appropriate, or listed at the end of the manuscript.
6. A data availability statement specifying the location for supplementary data needed to replicate the study, available open access.
7. An author contributions statement following the CRediT taxonomy.
8. An ethics and AI use statement verifying that appropriate protocols and permissions have been followed and describing any use of AI in the research and manuscript preparation (see Code of conduct).
9. A funding statement detailing all funding sources relevant to the research and manuscript preparation, and including grant numbers.
10. A conflict of interest statement (see Code of conduct).
11. Reference list of citations included in the manuscript text, following the format below.

Open Palaeontology also supports accessible multimedia publication formats, which do not follow the same manuscript file requirements as above. Video and audio submissions must be accompanied by a full script, a full written description of the methods, and a complete reference list. All code and data should be made available in the same way as with a written manuscript, and the statements required above (points 6–10) should also be provided.

Authors are encouraged to include, in addition to the English language version of the abstract, additional language translations of the abstract to be included with the published version (up to 250 words each). These may or may not be reviewed, so it is the responsibility of the authors to ensure correct translation.

Open Palaeontology also encourages the inclusion of a non-technical summary with the submitted manuscript, explaining the essential methods and findings at the level of someone unfamiliar with the field of research. The non-technical summary should be up to 250 words total, avoiding jargon.

1.4 Figures and tables

Figures and tables should be embedded within the document text where deemed appropriate by the authors, or listed at the end of the file. A single PDF containing all figures and tables in a high-resolution format should also be included. All figures and tables should be clearly numbered with an appropriate caption below (for figures) or above (for tables). After acceptance, figures and tables should be uploaded as separate files. Please see this detailed document for full figure and table guidance.

1.5 Supplementary data

Supplementary data (including character matrices and raw data, such as measurements, coordinates, photographs, etc.) should be uploaded as a single .zip file, or alternatively may be hosted on an open-access data repository, such as OSF, GitHub, etc. If the supplementary data files are present on an external repository the URL or DOI link of the data should be reported within the manuscript text. Open Palaeontology encourages authors to deposit supplementary data with both a repository and during their submission, to ensure long-term data accessibility. Authors should ensure that all results reported in the manuscript are reproducible given the supplementary data files provided.

1.6 Graphical and video abstracts

Authors can optionally provide a graphical, audio, and/or video abstract alongside their written abstract. 

2 Preprints

Manuscripts that have been made available elsewhere as preprints are eligible to be submitted for publication in Open Palaeontology. Please indicate at submission the DOI of any published preprints relevant to the manuscript. Open Palaeontology actively encourages the use of external preprint servers, and this will never be penalised. When an article is accepted for publication in Open Palaeontology, authors should update their preprint with the DOI of the final publication. 

Additionally, Open Palaeontology offers the ability to publish your manuscript as a preprint prior to peer review, rather than using an external preprint server. Please indicate this under publication type or in a comment to the editor when submitting your manuscript.

3 Formatting and article templates

3.1 Initial submission formatting

Please format your initial submission manuscript using Open Palaeontology’s template available here. Text grammar and spelling should be in British or American English, and follow the Open Palaeontology’s style guide available here.

Submitted articles should have clear, numbered sections, including (where necessary for the publication type): 1. Introduction; 2. Geological setting (if necessary); 3. Material and methods; 4. Results; 5. Discussion; 6. Conclusions; 7. Acknowledgements; 8. Conflict of interest; 9. Data availability; 10. Author contributions; 11. Ethics and AI use; 12. Funding; 13. References. Use double spacing for text, and include continuous line and page numbers in the document.

Abbreviations should be avoided in the abstract, and should be defined at their first usage in the text. All units used should follow the International System of Units (SI). 

3.2 Figure and table formatting

Figures and tables should be referred to in the text as follows: ‘Fig. X’ in parentheses, ‘Figure X’ in normal text, and ‘Table X’. Figure and table captions should follow the format: ‘Figure/Table X. Caption.’ Refer to the detailed Open Palaeontology Figures and tables guidelines about size, quality, and format.

3.3 Reference formatting

Open Palaeontology supports active efforts to cite the primary literature in which findings were first reported, to give appropriate credit. This may be done in addition to citing reviews or compilations of data, but the original observations and data sources should be cited if at all possible. 

References cited in the manuscript can be any of peer-reviewed articles, preprint articles, special issue chapters, theses of any level (with online link), databases or other data sources, informative websites (with online link and access date), published field guides, or other accessible references as long as they are freely available. Please refrain from citing personal communications, conference abstracts, or other non-accessible references.

References cited directly in the text should be arranged as ‘Palaeontologist et al. (2000)’. References cited indirectly in the text should appear in parentheses as ‘(Palaeontologist et al., 2000)’. References cited within parentheses should be listed chronologically, with semicolons between them. If there are multiple references from the same author they should be listed as so ‘(Palaeontologist et al., 2000, 2002; Archaeologist, 2003)’.

The reference list should appear at the end of the manuscript. References should be listed alphabetically, then chronologically when the author list is the same. References should be structured following the examples below. The DOI should be provided for every entry in the reference list, where possible. Reference manager styles can be downloaded here. 

Journal article:

Palaeontologist, A.B., Archaeologist, C.D. and Geologist, E.F. 2000. This is an example reference. The Journal of Examples 1:2, 1–20. DOI.

Book chapter:

Palaeontologist, A.B. 2000. An example book chapter title. In: Archaeologist, C.D. and Geologist, E.F. (Eds.) The title of the entire book. The Book Publisher. 1–20. DOI.

Entire book:

Palaeontologist, A.B. 2000. An example book title. The Book Publisher. 100 pp. DOI.

Webpage:

Palaeontologist, A.B. 2000. The title of my webpage. Accessed: 22nd August 2024. URL.

Newspaper article:

Palaeontologist, A.B. 2000. The title of my newspaper article. The Example Newspaper. Accessed: 22nd August 2024. URL [if available].

3.4 Post-acceptance formatting

When submitting the final version of a peer-reviewed written article (of any publication type), please consider formatting it using the LaTeX template available here and submitting the resulting compiled PDF and LaTeX file. Full instructions for the layout and for including figures and tables are given in the LaTeX file. Author-driven formatting is not mandatory, but will enable faster publication of your peer-reviewed article!

4 Copyright

Manuscripts are published using a CC-BY 4.0 licence. Authors retain copyright of their manuscript, all manuscript contents, and the intellectual property thereby represented. Open Palaeontology has no embargo period, and authors are free to update their personal/institutional repositories with the fully formatted version of their Open Palaeontology article at any time after publication.