Scope and language

Novitates Caribaea journal publishes original scientific content in three major areas: zoology, paleobiology and geology, covering different aspects and approaches within these fields: molecular and morphological systematics, taxonomy, natural history, ecology, biogeography, evolution, genetics, embryology, behavior, conservation, comparative anatomy, paleoecology, paleogeography, geomorphology, and stratigraphy, among others. In all cases, we focus exclusively on the Caribbean region as a geographic scope.

The official language of the journal is Spanish, but works in English are also accepted, provided that the author or one of the co-authors is proficient in English; or by means of a certification from an English-speaking professional who has proofread the manuscript.

Publication Frequency

The Novitates Caribaea journal is published twice a year (January and July). Manuscripts may be submitted year-round, but always for publication in January or July. Generally, the deadlines for the inclusion of articles in a January or July issue are November or May, respectively.

Submission Types

We publish two types of scientific content: articles and notes.

1. a) Articles. Manuscripts should have a minimum length of 10 pages and a maximum of 30 pages, including bibliographical references, tables, and figures. Acceptance for review of submissions that exceed the maximum number of pages remains at the discretion of the editors. The expected structure for this submission type is detailed below (“Structure and format of Articles”).


2. b) Notes. Brief information on unique findings, new species records (not localities within the same country) or new contributions resulting from ongoing research projects or studies. Notes must be longer than three pages but shorter than 10 pages, including bibliographical references. Notes do not need to include all the sections required for the articles (“Structure and format of Notes”).

Structure and Format of Articles

New submissions must be uploaded as a Word document sent to the journal’s email address (novitatescaribaea@mnhn.gov.do). Manuscripts should be in Times New Roman font, 11 points, 1.5 line spacing and titles (main and paragraphs) in capital letters. Under the title in the submitted language should be a translation of the title in the second language (English or Spanish, as the case may be). Figures (high resolution JPG) and tables must be sent separately, in addition to being inserted in the body of the manuscript in low resolution. Submissions must be signed with the names of the authors, their institutional affiliation, e-mail address, Orcid and/or Redalyc ID, and an indication of the corresponding author. Articles must be structured with the following components:

(1) TITLE. In Spanish and English, concise and relevant to the content of the work. The manuscript title should not exceed three lines written in capital letters. The authorship of species or of the major taxonomic categories should not be included in the title, unless the content of the manuscript focuses on status of a species or taxonomic group, or if the submission is a new report of a pest species. However, the names of the taxonomic categories (Class, Order, Family) can be included in the title, albeit without their authorship. The title must correspond to the essential aspects of the content.

(2) ABSTRACT and KEYWORDS. Abstracts must be written in both languages ​​(Spanish and English), each followed by a list of 3-6 keywords in the corresponding language. The abstract must be informative and concise (maximum of 300 words) and should offer a panoramic view of the manuscript’s content, including introductory aspects, the methodology and the most outstanding findings of the article. No citations or references should be included in the Abstract.

(3) INTRODUCTION. This section should include the necessary citations and references to reflect the most up-to-date literature on the subject, while giving the reasons and justification for the investigation. The artificial use of unnecessary references should be avoided.

(4) OBJECTIVES. Brief and precise. Must be written as sentences with verbs in the infinitive tense, in two or three lines.

(5) MATERIALS AND METHODS. This section should give a full account or support of all the results that are presented later in the manuscript. It must duly report what was done, how, where and what materials and equipment were used; the statistical analysis performed, if any, and how the results were organized. In all the points that are being considered, the pertinent references should be provided. The authors may subdivide this section into the necessary sub-sections, such as "study area", "materials used" and "statistical analysis".

(6) RESULTS. This section could include several sub-sections, with their respective subtitles, in order to organize the contents of the section as appropriate for the work submitted. The inclusion of tables and/or figures is highly recommended as a guide to order and present results. The presented results should not be interpreted within this section, but in the DISCUSSION. If the submission is a description of new taxa, under RESULTS, the authors must include: Diagnosis (in both languages), Description of the Holotype, Types (origin and destination, locations, collectors and dates) and Etymology (of the genus or of the specific epithet, according to the case). We suggests authors register the nomenclatural act in ZooBank and include the assigned url (LSID). The record of the new species published in Novitates Caribaea should also be recorded in the Zoological Record (Clarivate Analityc). In the case of new DNA sequencing, registration in the GenBank repository is recommended. The name of the new taxon should be indicated with the inscriptions sp. nov. or gene nov., depending on the case, each time it appears in the text (in bold type). All generic and specific names must appear in italics, and must be abbreviated from their first reference in the text by the initial letter of the genus followed by a period and the specific name (example: Achromoporus heteromus…A. heteromus). In general, for names and all nomenclatural acts, authors and publishers will be governed by the rules established in the latest edition of the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature, prepared by the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature. The inclusion of other RESULTS blocks in these taxonomic manuscripts, such as Natural History and Comments, will be optional.

Tables and Figures: all tables and figures (graphs, drawings, photos, maps or other elements) will be included in the RESULTS section, duly identified with a concise title and numbered sequentially, using Roman numerals for tables and Arabic numerals for figures. The authors will include their figures in the manuscript as a suggestion of their location, but they must also send them separately in high resolution, as indicated below. Any explanatory notes and/or legends of Tables will go at the bottom of these (a space below) and in some special cases at the bottom of a column, using asterisks or floating numbers. Drawings must be made on white paper with black ink, well defined and assembled in sheets if there are several and the work requires it. All figures to be included in the manuscript must also be sent by email, in individual files with a BMP or JPG extension and with a resolution of 270-300 DPI. The scale must be indicated both on the drawings and on the photos. Figure captions must have a general title and details of their parts or components, separated by letters or numbers. All names and subtitles within the figure should be in Times New Roman, size 11.

(7) DISCUSSION. The length of this section will vary according to the content of the results presented, but the content must be precise and explain or interpret the results of the study, without being redundant. This section may not be necessary in taxonomy articles, and in other cases, in which the authors could use a RESULTS AND DISCUSSION combined section.

(8) CONCLUSIONS. Their presentation style will be left to the discretion of the authors, but in any case, they should be clear and precise, and closely linked to the DISCUSSION. In some Articles, as would be the case of those that consist of the description of new species, the CONCLUSIONS section will not be necessary. In other works, this section could be accompanied with pertinent recommendations, in this case title the section as CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS.

(9) ACKNOWLEDGMENTS. It is recommended to be brief in the mention of institutions and people who collaborated with the work, without mentioning academic titles or other titles. For ethical reasons of great importance, the authors are asked to mention the official permits under which specimens were collected or facilities were utilized for the handling of animals, as well as the names of the institutions that financed the research.

(10) REFERENCES. The bibliographical references must have an exact correspondence with the citations or mentions included in the body of the text. All the citations in the body of the work must appear duly referenced in REFERENCES. Avoid overloading the content with unnecessary citations or references.

Composition and Format of Notes

The sections required for this type of contribution are the following: TITLE (in both languages), ABSTRACT and KEYWORDS, followed by the body of the text without dividing it into sections. That is, the information related to Introduction, Objectives, Materials and Methods, Results and Conclusions, would be included within the body of the work, but without highlighting them with headings. Then, ACKNOWLEDGMENTS and at the end REFERENCES, with the same observations and recommendations for these sections stated in the previous paragraphs for Articles.

Citations and Bibliographical References

As of issue 20 (July 2022), the Novitates Caribaea journal follows APA standards for citations and references in its latest version (current: seventh edition, 2020). This style applies to Articles and Notes. For the organization of references in the REFERENCES section, the use of bibliographic managers is recommended, some of which are open source, but the author could also do it manually.

Whenever an author refers to the ideas and thoughts of another author, and even more so when the author uses phrases from another, they must give credit to the referred author through citations, otherwise it will be considered plagiarism. It is always recommended to use the primary sources, and if they are not available for reasonable reasons, the author must refer to it in the text together with the secondary source consulted, even if only the secondary source appears in the list of references (see APA 2020). Following APA standards, this journal uses the Author-Date system for citations. In the case of textual or direct citations, they may be presented in two basic formats, narrative citations or based on the author and parenthetical citations or based on the text, contemplating some variants within these two. a) Narrative citation or based on the author: Espinosa and Robinson (2021) point out that for the living terrestrial malacofauna of Hispaniola “612 taxa distributed in three subclasses, 129 genera and 39 families are reported” (p. 71); Parenthetical citation or based on the text: For the living terrestrial malacofauna of Hispaniola "612 taxa distributed in three subclasses, 129 genera and 39 families are reported" (Espinosa & Robinson, 2021, p. 71). In the case of direct citations with more than 40 words, other instructions apply (see APA 2020). However, given the very nature and thematic scope of this journal, most of the quotes used are paraphrased, that is, quotes within which the author narrates or inserts in his own words ideas and approaches of other authors; in these cases, quotation marks will not be used, nor will page indication be required: For Hispaniola, 129 genera have been reported, which are arranged in 39 families within three subclasses (Espinosa & Robinson, 2021). But in these paraphrasing citations, the author-date indication cannot be absent, being necessary to take into consideration the following details: 1) each paraphrased idea, consideration or result must be precisely referenced in parentheses, even if some of them have to be repeated; 2) do not group references indistinctly in the same parentheses in relation to different results or ideas, coming from different sources; 3) self-citations are not recommended, but when necessary, and seeing that the author needs to insert their own ideas or previously published results, they must include the corresponding references in parentheses, thus avoiding self-plagiarism.

In all the above cases, for the author-date references within the textual body, the following will be taken into account: 1) order them by year of publication and separate them with a semicolon (Bouzan et al., 2017a; Bouzan, Iniesta, & Brescovit, 2018b; Bouzan, Pena-Barbosa, & Brescovit, 2017b); 2) in all citations with three or more authors, the expression et al. after the first author in all cases, except when some ambiguity may arise in the information (see APA 2020); 3) in the previous case, the surname and initial of the name will be put in the list of references (REFERENCES) up to 20 authors, applying what APA mandates from 21 authors onwards (see APA 2020); 4) in the cases of two or more publications by the same author in the same year, letters should be used at the end of the year to differentiate them (a, b, c...), assigning these letters according to the alphabetical ordering of the titles of those publications (Hedges, 2004a)… (Bueno-Villegas, 2020a,b).

The list of references will begin on a separate page, under the title REFERENCES, centered at the top, like the rest of the headings, without underlining and without quotation marks. In this list, each entry should have a hanging indent one-half inch from the left margin:

REFERENCES:

Alonso, R., Crawford, A. & Bermingham, E. (2012). Molecular phylogeny of an endemic

radiation of Cuban toads (Bufonidae: Peltophryne) based on mitochondrial

and nucleargenes.Journal of Biogeography, 39: 434–451.

https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2699.2011.02594.x

Gao, D. & Perry, G. (2016). Species–area relationships and additive partitioning of diver

sity of native and nonnative herpetofauna of the West Indies.Ecology and Evolution,

6:7742–7762. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ympev.2008.09.014

Kumar, S., Stecher, G., Suleski, M., & Hedges, S. B. (2017). TimeTree: a resource for

timelines, timetrees, and divergence times.Molecular biology and

evolution,34(7), 1812-1819.

As can be seen in these examples, the following components must be present: 1. Surname (comma) and initial of the name (dot) of each author; 2. Year, in parentheses; 3. Title of the article (in bullets) or of the book (in italics); 4. Title of the magazine, if it is not a book (in italics); 5. Volume (in italics) and number (in parentheses); 6. Number of the beginning page-number of the final page (separated with “in dash”); 7. Retrieval source (doi, url, publisher data).

The above guidelines only attempt to summarize the fundamental aspects of citations and references, but the obligatory reference will always be the APA 2020 standards themselves.

Peer review

The editors of Novitates Caribaea will make a first review of the submitted manuscript to confirm the relevance of its content with the objectives and scope of the journal, as well as compliance with our editorial standards as established in the document “Guidelines for Authors”. The results of this initial review will be communicated to the author within a period not exceeding three weeks, from the publication of each number (January and July). In a second stage, the manuscript will be submitted for peer review following the double-blind system: the author and the reviewers will only have communication with the editors, keeping their identities hidden from each other. The referees or reviewers will deliver the results of their evaluation to the editors within a time not exceeding four months. In case of delay, the authors will be notified. These results will be formalized in our Review form, a document that can be downloaded from this same site. The editors will make biunivocal communication between authors and reviewers possible, maintaining their anonymity, while guaranteeing respect for the considerations of both parties and the incorporation of the pertinent changes in the approved manuscript or the communication of its rejection, if this is the case. In case of rejection for publication, the editors will send the authors the corrections and considerations of the referees, but the decisions of the latter will be final, as long as they justify their decision before the editors. The approved works, after incorporating all the changes resulting from the review, will be submitted to a final style review, in agreement with the author. The editors undertake to send the author a proof PDF with the final work diagrammed, requiring their approval prior to publication.

Detection of Plagiarism

The entire editorial process for scientific publications must adhere to clear and firm ethical standards. This principle is fundamental to Novitates Caribaea. From the outset, in their letter of intent, the authors must attest, in writing and with their signature, that the article or note they submit has not been previously published in any type of format. Once received, the content will be evaluated by anti-plagiarism programs. We currently use Plag.es, but this will not be our only tool. Google Scholar and other web resources will be used, in addition to the expert opinion of the referees, who will be familiar with the literature published in the corresponding area. There are different levels of plagiarism, and all will be firmly rejected by this journal, even in the case of inadvertent repetition by the authors, but with flagrant fraud attempts we will be drastic, and any future publication attempts with the names of those involved will be forever banned.

Open access policy

All the contents published in Novitates Caribaea are freely accessible, following the definition of the Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI10), which states:

By "open access" [to peer-reviewed scientific literature], we refer to its free availability on the public Internet, allowing any user to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or add a link to the full text of those articles, track them for indexing, enter them as data into software, or use them for any other purpose that is lawful, without financial, legal, or technical barriers, other than those inseparable from access to the Internet itself. The only limitation on reproduction and distribution, and the only role of copyright (property rights) in this area, should be to give authors control over the integrity of their works and the right to be properly acknowledged and cited.

Novitates Caribaea is an Open Access Diamond journal, so the submission or application, processing, review, publication and reading of the contents is free of any charge, for authors and readers.

Copyright

All the contents published in Novitates Caribaea are protected under the Creative Commons CC BY-NC 4.0: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International license. The following conditions apply a) The authors retain the copyright and give the journal the right of first publication, with the work registered with the Creative Commons attribution license that allows third parties to use what is published as long as they mention the authorship of the work and the first publication in this journal. b) The authors may make other independent and additional contractual agreements for the non-exclusive distribution of the version of the article published in this journal (e.g., deposit it in an institutional repository or website, publish it in a book) provided that they clearly indicate that the work was first published in this journal. c) The commercial use of the contents is prohibited.

File Preservation

Novitates Caribaea journal uses the Lockss and Clockss programs, implemented by the PKP Preservation Network (PKN PN), incorporated into OJS. Additionally, files (backups) are made from the server.

Interoperability protocol

The Novitates Caribaea journal uses the OAI-PMH protocol, which can be located and consulted on the following link: https://novitatescaribaea.do/index. php/novitates/oaiverb=ListRecords&metadataPrefix=oai_dc

Waiver of liability

The content of published contributions will always be the responsibility of the authors.

Privacy statement

The names and email addresses entered in this magazine will be used exclusively for the purposes stated in it and will not be provided to third parties or used for other purposes.