Scope
The journal publishes articles and notes on amphibians and reptiles of Caribbean islands. Articles that focus on species from other areas are not considered.
For Authors
Submit all manuscripts to the Editor-in-Chief (E-mail). Manuscripts are initially screened for relevance and significance, and some are returned to authors without review. All manuscripts considered further are assigned to an associate editor and are peer-reviewed. Those recommended by the associate editor are considered by the Editor-in-Chief for publication. After acceptance, some editorial changes may occur during processing for publication, to ensure consistency with journal style. Currently, there is no charge to authors for publication.
General format of manuscripts
Submit manuscripts as single-spaced MS Word files, initially with continuously numbered lines to assist review. Titles should be concise, usually less than 20 words, and not have pre-titles with colons. Common names (see caribherp.org) should be listed in the title, followed by the species name. Provide the author of a taxonomic name at first use (e.g., in title), but only use the year of description if it is taxonomically relevant. For the same reason, do not list references for descriptions of names unless the article is about taxonomy. Abstracts and subheadings are used for articles but not for notes. Plates combining multiple panels must be fully assembled by the author (i.e., do not submit figure panels separately); use 14 pt sans serif (arial) regular font for panel letters, which are placed in the upper left corner of each panel (black letters on pale background; white letters on dark background). Compose the figure for the journal full-width aspect (6 inches = 152 mm), making sure that it is minimally 300 dpi (an image = raster), or 600 dpi (text and/or lines = vector, or combination of raster and vector). Crop photos so that the animal or object fills the view as much as possible. No lettering in the figure can be less than 6 pt. Submit each figure or plate as a JPEG file that has been saved in the highest quality setting only once. Saving and editing and resaving JPEGs will cause over-compression and lower the quality of the figure. It is best to work with a graphics file (e.g., psd, eps) or TIFF until you are ready to export as a JPEG for submission. Double-check that all references cited are listed in the reference section and vice-versa. All authors should provide their Orcid numbers (see orcid.org). Only use decimal degrees for location without degree symbol or direction; just the number, with a negative sign (-) for longitude. All GPS, Google Maps, and Google Earth use the same datum, WGS84, so there is no need to state the datum used. If you obtained locations from a topographic map that used an older datum, please convert to WGS84 by finding the location in Google Earth.
Submission of Articles
Articles are papers that go into detail about a subject and usually report the results of a study. They often contain tables and graphs describing data and results. Articles always include an abstract and usually have subsections, such as an Introduction, a Methods, and a Results and Discussion. Papers reporting new taxonomic names are always considered articles and will be registered in Zoobank. See recent articles for examples of format.
Submission of Notes
Notes are short reports of one or a few pages in length and usually less than 1000 words. Typically they focus on one or two species, such as a new and significant distributional record or natural history observation, and may include data from multiple individuals. For examples of format, see the most recent notes in this journal because earlier notes used an older, discontinued format. For a submission to be considered as a Note, it should be noteworthy (significant) and not just an observation. For example, a significant distributional note would be a new country record for a species or an exceptional and suprising range extension. For things like minor range extensions, and new records of common species, consider other outlets such as iNaturalist. Voucher evidence of any record must be provided, preferably as a museum specimen accession number or an image.
References
Beginning with CH 87, the journal now follows the Council of Science Editors Style Manual (2006), except that "et al." is used after 10 authors. Do not abbreviate journal names. For each reference in the manuscript, include the DOI link on a separate line. Below are formatting examples.
JOURNAL ARTICLE: van Wagensveld T, van Staa S, Butôt R. 2020. Discovery of the Leeward Blindsnake, Antillotyphlops geotomus (Thomas), on St. Eustatius, Caribbean Netherlands. Caribbean Herpetology 69: 1–3. https://doi.org/10.31611/ch.69
BOOK: Schwartz A, Henderson RW. 1991. Amphibians and reptiles of the West Indies: descriptions, distributions, and natural history. Gainesville, Florida: University of Florida Press. 720 p.
BOOK CHAPTER: Powell R, Henderson RW, Farmer MC, Breuil M, Echternacht AC, van Buurt G, Romagosa CM, Perry G. 2011. Introduced amphibians and reptiles in the greater Caribbean: patterns and conservation implications. In: Hailey A, Wilson BS, Horrocks JA, editors. Conservation of Caribbean island herpetofaunas. Volume 1. Conservation biology and the wider Caribbean. Leiden (The Netherlands): Brill. p. 63–143.
ELECTRONIC RESOURCE: Hedges SB. 2022. Caribherp: amphibians and reptiles of Caribbean Islands. Available from: http://www.caribherp.org. Accessed: January 23, 2022.
