Editorial Polices

1. Focus and Scope
2. Publication Assistance
3. Publication Policies
4. Peer Review Process
5. Subscriptions
6. Subscription Information 
7. Instructions for Authors

1. Focus and Scope

AJOCC (ARCHAIUS, THE JOURNAL OF CHAMELEONOLOGY AND CHAMELEONOCULTURE) is a peer-reviewed international journal for rapid publication of high quality papers on any aspect of Chamaeleonology (defined as Part of Zoology, with special focus on the members of the family Chamaeleonidae) and Chameleonoculture (defined as Part of Herpetoculture, dealing with naturalistic captive husbandry and reproduction of chameleons), of the following scale:

• Large original works,
• Reviews and Revisions,
• Compendiums,
• Short notes,

and, on the following topics:

• Systematics and taxonomy,
• Zoogeography,
• Life history,
• Captive management,
• Health and diseases.

The Journal is divided formally into three parts:

• CHAMELEONOLOGY - marked with blue: for original scientific papers,
• CHAMELEONOCULTURE - marked with red: for original papers on the aspects of keeping chameleons in captivity,
• CHAMELEONOPROMOTION - marked with green: for free style communications on any aspects of chameleon existence not covered with the previous two topics.

The allocation of the papers to the formal parts should be done by authors upon submission.

AJOCC considers papers on all aspects of chameleon existence, especially encouraging publication of short communications on original observations.

Open access publishing option is the policy of AJOCC.

2. Publication Assistance

AJOCC offers a unique service for unexperienced authors, based on mentoring by senior authors and/or co-authorship with them. Inquiries are to be sent to the chief editor.

3. Publication Policies

AJOCC guarantees open submissions, all publications are indexed and peer reviewed.

The publication of any paper is free of charge and will be published usually within one month from their acceptance by the editors.

In case of urgent publication requests, special fees as per policy (require at the head editor) are applicable: 1000/500/300 EUR for the guaranteed publication within a week/two weeks/month in case of manuscripts not longer than 4000 characters, including the peer-review process. For longer manuscripts, individual conditions are to be agreed.

4. Peer Review Process

All manuscripts will be subjected to peer review before acceptance by editors.

5. Subscriptions

Subscriptions Contact

Email: SUBSCRIPTIONS.AJOCC@gmail.com

6. Subscription Information

AJOCC is available as electronic version only, PDFs are available upon request or will be sent automatically within 48 hours after the publication. The papers will be available in open access 2 months after their publication.

The subscriptions are available in the following key:

Subscriptions information
Payment method: bank transfer, money order, Paypal or Western Union. 

7. Instructions for Authors

Three categories of papers are considered.

1) Research article

Research articles are significant papers of three or more standard printed pages reporting original research.

AJOCC encourages large comprehensive works. There is no upper limit on the length of manuscripts.

It is thought to be written in high quality scientific format with comprehensive citations of sources.

2) Practice report

Practice report especially on the field observations and captive husbandry observations of three or more standard printed pages reporting original research.

AJOCC encourages large comprehensive works. There is no upper limit on the length of manuscripts.

It is thought to be written in high quality common language format with the statement, all are original observations of the authors if not stated otherwise (in verb., in litt.) or cited.

3) Short note

High quality and important short manuscripts of normally 1 to 3 pages are considered to be published to keep the original information available for citation. AJOCC publishes the following types of short notes:

• INTERESTING NOTE: opinions and views on current issues of interests to the readers of AJOCC
• COMMENTARY: commentary on or additions/corrections to papers previously published in AJOCC
• IN MEMORIAM: obituary in memory of deceased chamaeleonologists and chameleonoculturists
• TAXONOMY NOTE: taxonomic/nomenclatural notes of importance
• REVIEW: book reviews meant to introduce readers to new or rare books or publications
• FIELD NOTE: papers reporting on field observations of special behavior, predation or interaction
• RANGE NOTE: papers reporting on field or museum observations of biogeography like range extensions, introductions, new localities and reproduction sites

A Short note should have no more than 10 referencesand its total length should not exceed three printed pages (except editorials).Neither an abstract nor a list of key words is needed; major headings (Introduction, Material and methods...) should NOT be used. It should consist of

• a short and concise title,
• author name and (email address),
• a series of paragraphs of the main text, and
• a list of references if any. The first or last paragraph may be a summary.

Commentaries on published papers are intended for scholarly exchange of different views or interpretations of published data and should not contain personal attack; authors of concerned papers will be invited to reply to comments on their papers.

Preparation of manuscripts

General

All papers must be in English. Authors whose native language is not English are encouraged to have their manuscripts read by a native English-speaking colleague before submission. Nomenclature must be in agreement with the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature (4th edition 1999), which came into force on 1 January 2000. Author(s) of species name and year of description must be provided when the scientific name of any animal species is first mentioned. Authors of plant species names need not be given. Metric systems should be used. Use any common font and use as little formatting as possible. The style of each author is generally respected but they must follow the following general guidelines.

The title

should be concise and informative. The higher taxa containing the taxa dealt with in the paper should be indicated in parentheses.

The name(s) of all authors

of the paper must be given and should be typed in the upper. The email address of each author should be given in each starting a separate line.

The abstract

should be concise and informative. Any new names or new combinations proposed in the paper should be mentioned. Abstracts in other languages may also be included in addition to English abstract. The abstract should be followed by a list of key words that are not present in the title. Abstract is not needed in short correspondence.

The main text

The arrangement of the main text varies with different types of papers, but should usually start with an introduction and end with a list of references. References should be cited in the text as Smith (1999), Smith & Smith (2000) or Smith et al. (2001) (3 or more authors), or alternatively in a parenthesis (Smith 1999; Smith & Smith 2000; Smith et al. 2001). All literature cited in the text must be listed in the references in the following format.

References

Journal paper: Smith, A. (1999) Title of the paper. Title of the journal in full, volume number, page range x-y.

Book chapter: Smith, A. & Smith, B. (2000) Title of the Chapter. In: Smith, A, Smith, B. & Smith, C. (Eds), Title of Book. Publisher name and location, ###pp.: page range x-y.

Book: Smith, A., Smith, B. & Smith, C. (2001) Title of Book. Publisher name and location, ###pp.

Internet resources: Author (2002) Title of article, website, database or other resources, Publisher name and location (if indicated), number of pages (if known). Available from: https://xxx.xxx.xxx/ (Date of access). For websites, it is important to include the last date when you see that site, as it can be moved or deleted from that address in the future. It is strongly recommended for the author to make screenshots of the cited internet resources and store them safely for further reference.

Dissertations resulting from graduate studies and non-serial proceedings of conferences/symposia are to be treated as books and cited as such.

Papers not cited must not be listed in the references.

Please note that:

• journal titles must be written in full (not abbreviated)
  
• journal titles and volume numbers are followed by a ","
• page ranges are connected by "n dash", not hyphen "-", which is used to connect two words.

Legends of illustrations

should be listed after the list of references. Small illustrations can be grouped into plates, especially if a comparison is subject of showing the illustration

Tables

should be given at the end of the manuscript. Please use the table function in your word processor to build tables so that the cells, rows and columns can remain aligned when font size and width of the table are changed.

Illustrations

are to be delivered as individual picture files (photographs, scans) in the JPEG or BMP or PNG formats, with the resolution of not less than 640 x 480 pixels (0,3MPix), preferably more.

Each file should be named as follows: A B C D, where:

A ... is a running number of the picture according to the legend,

B ... is short name of the content, in case of animals, generic and specific name is required,

C ... additional important information like locality, daytime, sex etc.,

D ... full name of the author.

Videos

are encouraged to be added if necessary, the rules of attached files is same as in photographs, it is encouraged to upload the videos to some website, YouTube or similar and mention also the link.

Deposition of specimens

Whenever possible, authors are advised to deposit type specimens in national or international public museums or collections and provide registration numbers of deposited material. For the reason of protection of the localities of rare animals against illegal collecting, exact localities and their coordinates can be hidden, in that case, an appropriate comment is required.

Submission

Please follow the above basic guidelines and check if your manuscript has been prepared according to the style and format of the journal. Authors are encouraged to submit manuscripts by e-mail as attachments to the Chief Editor.

When you submit your manuscript to your editor, it will be more expedient to the review process if you offer the names of three or more potential reviewers with their email addresses. It is also important to include the following statements in your cover letter:

• All authors agree to its submission and the Corresponding author has been authorized by co-authors;
• This Article has not been published before and is not concurrently being considered for publication elsewhere;
• This Article does not violate any copyright or other personal proprietary right of any person or entity and it contains no abusive, defamatory, obscene or fraudulent statements, nor any other statements that are unlawful in any way.

These are the conditions for your manuscript to be processed.

In submitting the final version of revised manuscript to editors, authors are asked to provide the following information to all proper typesetting and indexing of the manuscript:

Authors need to complete and return an Assignment of Copyright form when paper is accepted for publication. Authors of institutions that do not allow transfer of copyrights to publishers (e.g. government institutions such as USDA, CSIRO) should attach a copyright waiver or similar documents.

Review process

When a manuscript is received by the Editor, he/she will have it reviewed by at least two peers qualified to evaluate the manuscript and he/she normally asks the reviewers to complete the review in one month. However, the reviewing process will sometimes take longer, depending on the length of the manuscript and reviewer's responses.

Publication

Once the manuscript is accepted by your subject editor, final files, produced according to AJOCC requirement, will be forwarded to the chief editor, who will then link with author and the printer to ensure that the paper is published without unnecessary delay. Normally the proof will be sent to the author for checking 1 to 3 weeks after the final files are accepted. The paper will usually be published with two weeks (for larger papers it will take longer) once the corrections to the proof are received.

Open access. AJOCC endorses the open access of all information so that the info becomes widely available for the scientific community and wide interested public.

Archives. AJOCC is stored and archived at the official website of the National Library of the Czech Republic (https://text.nkp.cz), WEBARCHIV (https://www.webarchiv.cz) and at ZENODO (https://zenodo.org).

Reprints. Each author will be given a free e-reprint(PDF) for personal use (printing a copy for own use or exchange with other researchers, but not for deposition in a library/website/ftp-site for public access).

Important links

International Code of Zoological Nomenclature (4th edition 1999)

Nomenclator Zoologicus

ZooBank

https://www.webarchiv.cz/

https://zenodo.org