The Royal Society of Tasmania

The advancement of knowledge

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INSTRUCTIONS TO AUTHORS

Manuscript preparation process

Style

Referees are not expected to correct grammatical or spelling mistakes; papers should be well written, with the minimum of jargon. Remember that many of the readers of this journal are not specialists in your field; do not exclude them.

The Editor reserves the right to adjust the text for clarity, conformity to style, and publication standards. In general, the Editor follows the conventions in the current edition of the Style Manual for Authors, Editors and Printers published by the Australian Government Publishing Service, and the spelling in the Macquarie Dictionary.

Text format

  • use 12 point serif type
  • print double-spaced (not one-and-a-half spaced) for hard copy, but use singe-spaced copy for electronic submission.
  • do not justify (i.e., use ragged right)
  • number all pages consecutively, including references, figure legends, appendices
  • number every fifth line (automatic in Word) to assist reviewers
  • submit an electronic version of the text (Word) and figures (TIF, JPG, PDF or EPS).
  • supply key words (2–10) for the use in abstracting journals
  • include an abstract of no more than 200 words

Citation format

  • published material e.g., Brown (1983), Brown & Green (1985), Brown et al. (1987), Brown et al. (in press), (Brown 1983)
  • note any information supplied personally to the author(s) e.g., (T.O. White pers. comm.); do not include in the list of references; obtain permission from the informant (preferably in writing) to quote him or her
  • include the relevant page number of a lengthy cited work e.g., (1983, p. 110)
  • do not refer to papers “in preparation”; cite these as (author(s) unpubl. data).

References format

The reference list should conform to the format used in recent volumes of the journal. Common examples are as follows:

Single author paper:

Bingham, M. 1998: The distribution, abundance and population trends of Gentoo, Rockhopper and King penguins in the Falkland Islands. Oryx 32: 223–232.

Two author paper:

Hawke, D.J. & Newman, J. 2005: Using isotope analysis to identify incorporation of marine nutrients in terrestrial birds at Snares Islands. Notornis 52: 108–111.

Multiple author paper:

Ainley, D.G., Veit, R.L., Allen, S.G., Spear, L..B. & Pyle, P. 1995: Variations in marine bird communities of the California current, 1986–1994. California Cooperative Oceanic Fisheries Investigations Reports 36: 72–77.

Book:

Davison, A.C. & Hinkley, D.V. 1997: Bootstrap Methods and their Application. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge: 592 pp.

Edited work:

Marchant, S. & Higgins, P.J. (eds) 1993: Handbook of Australian, New Zealand and Antarctic Birds. Volume 2: Raptors to Lapwings. Oxford University Press, Melbourne, Australia: 1048 pp.

Chapter in an edited work:

Artyukhin, Y.B. & Burkanov, V.N. 2000: Incidental mortality of seabirds in the drift net salmon fishery by Japanese vessels in the Russian Exclusive Economic Zone, 1993–1997. In Kondratyev, A.Y., Litvineko,N. M. & Kaiser, G.W. (eds): Seabirds of the Russian Far East. Ottawa, Canadian Wildlife Service Special publication: 105–116.

Thesis:

Charleton, K.J. 2002: Variation in Sooty Shearwater burrow entrance density, burrow use and chick emergence: Science and Traditional Environmental Knowledge approaches. Unpublished MSc thesis, University of Otago, Dunedin.

Electronic version of journal:

Chiswell, S.M. & Rickard, G.J. 2006: Comparison of model and observational ocean circulation climatologies for the New Zealand region. Journal of Geophysical Research 111: C10011, https://doi.org/10.1029/2006JC003489.

Website:

IUCN 2001: IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2001 Categories & Criteria (version 3.1), www.iucnredlist.org (accessed 22 January 2007).

Report:

MacKenzie, D.I. & Fletcher, D. 2005: Characterisation of seabird captures in NZ fisheries. Report to Ministry of Fisheries for Project ENV2004-04. April 2006. Unpublished Report to the Ministry of Fisheries, Wellington: 99 pp.

Tables and Illustrations

Number consecutively in the order of the first reference to them in the text

PLEASE NOTE that an en-dash should be placed between page numbers NOT a hyphen.

Tables

The preferred dimensions for tables are either (a) 65 lines or less in depth, each line of no more than 130 characters and spaces in length, or (b) 42 lines or less in depth, each line of no more than 190 characters and spaces. These dimensions include the title, explanatory material and column headings.

  • tables should be “stand-alone”, with sufficient information for the table to be understood without reference to the text. Format for headings is as follows:

TABLE 1

Correlation coefficients between spatial properties of Wedge-tailed Shearwater burrows at Radar Reef, Rottnest Island

  • explain symbols and abbreviations (e.g., n.d. = no data) in the footnotes to the table which should be superscripted by sequential numbers.
  • should have the fewest possible lines; do not use the grid “default” in Word

Illustrations (figures and plates)

The maximum dimensions for illustrations, when printed, are 250 by 167 mm, including captions. Wherever possible, illustrations will be fitted into a single column (width 80 mm).

Illustrations:

  • colour illustrations are acceptable with no extra cost to the author
  • line drawings are figures, photographs are plates
  • in text refer as fig. 1 or pl. 1
  • supply captions for all illustrations. Format for captions is as follows:

FIG. 1 — Location of Rottnest Island. Note that there is a space followed by an Em-dash followed by a space after FIG. 1

Or

PLATE 1 — Rottnest Island vegetation. Note that there is a space followed by an Em-dash followed by a space after PLATE 1

  • use keys within the artwork to explain symbols or colours used in the illustrations
  • add bar scales or objects of known or stated dimensions to show the scale of illustrations wherever appropriate
  • lines, letters and symbols must be of a size and weight to stand the likely reduction to the printed size without breaking up, becoming too faint, filling in or becoming too small for ready legibility; the smallest letter or number, after reduction, should be not less than 2 mm high and, on the axes of graphs, 2.5 or 3 mm high.
  • electronic figures should be made available in TIF, JPG, EPS or PDF formats as single files. Do not embed illustrations (figures and plates) in a Word or Powerpoint document. They immediately lose resolution and are difficult to retrieve.

Appendices

Material presented as Appendices (labelled 1, 2, 3, etc.) are accepted at the Honorary Editor’s discretion, but may be printed in a smaller type than the body of the paper.

Conventions

The Botanical, Zoological and Stratigraphic Codes of Nomenclature should be fully observed.

Use of SI units of measurement is strongly preferred where consistent with the means of measurement.

Use of Copyrighted Materials or Permission to Reproduce

Verbatim quotations of text must be acknowledged and the source given (with the relevant page number/s). Authors must specifically acknowledge the source of illustrations that have been previously published elsewhere and are not their property, and must obtain permission for publication of text or illustrations covered by copyright.

Permission to use material previously published by The Royal Society of Tasmania can be obtained upon application to the Council via the Honorary Editor.

Submission process

Submissions should be sent with text and figures/illustrations in separate files. Manuscript text should be in in Microsoft Word (figures may also be embedded in these documents for ease of peer-review but must also be provided separately). To aid peer-review, pages and lines must be numbered continuously.

Please submit your paper electronically either

(a) by email to the Honorary Editor at editor@rst.org.au . If illustration files are too large to email (10Mb in total) a file sharing site such as dropbox.com should be used.

or

(b) posting a USB thumb drive containing your paper to the Honorary Editor, The Royal Society of Tasmania, GPO Box 1166, Hobart, TAS 7001, Australia. Please include your email address and the name of the person the editor can contact with editorial queries, proofs etc.

Peer-review process

All submissions are sent for peer-review by independent reviewers. The Editor will take into consideration the advice of at least two reviewers before deciding for or against recommending the paper for publication to the Society’s Council. That decision will be final. If the paper is not accepted, a copy will be retained by the Society. Once accepted, papers and their copyright belong to the Society. However, an author may copy his or her paper for distribution as a reprint, and reproduction of synopses in abstracting journals is authorised. PDF files of papers are available for purchase by authors.

Publication charges

No page charges are levied for the first ten pages of the formatted final paper. As such, to keep publication costs down, texts should be concise, and tables and illustration should be used sparingly, both for economy and for maximum effect in the published form. Page charges will normally be levied on the eleventh and each subsequent page of a paper as printed.

Authors are responsible for the costs of changes, other than minor corrections, to proofs.