Editorial Policy and Procedure

Peer-review policy

All manuscripts submitted to our journal are critically assessed by external and/or in-house experts in accordance with the principles of peer review, which is fundamental to the scientific publication process and the dissemination of sound science. The first step of manuscript selection takes place entirely in-house and has two major objectives: i) to establish the article appropriateness for the readership of our journal; ii) to define the manuscript priority ranking relative to other manuscripts under consideration, since the number of papers that the journal receives is much greater than it can publish.
If a manuscript does not receive a sufficiently high priority score to warrant publication, the editors will proceed to a quick rejection. The remaining articles are reviewed by at least two different external referees (second step or classical peer review). 

 


Publishing in Tropical Zoology 

Tropical Zoology consists of two volumes each year, continuing the sequence of its predecessor, the Monitore zoologico italiano Supplemento (1961–1987). A separately numbered supplement series will be published when manuscripts and funding permit.
In order to satisfy the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN, Fourth Edition, International Trust of Zoological Nomenclature, London; amendment to Article 8, Zootaxa, 3450: 1–7, ZoKeys, 219: 1–10), the Authors are required to register the names in ZooBank before publication and the LSIDs will be indicated on the first page of each paper. The Journal will be archived in Portico and CLOCKSS so that all new names (and nomenclatural acts) published in the electronic-only Journal will be considered published and available. 

Publishing options

Tropical Zoology is a hybrid open access journal. Once the article is accepted for publication, authors will have the option to choose how their article is published:

  1. Traditional publishing model– published articles are made available to institutions and individuals who subscribe to Tropical Zoology or who pay to read specific articles.
  2. Open Access– when an article is accepted for publication, the author/s or funder/s pay an Article Processing Charge (APC). The final version of the published article is then free to read for everyone.

Authors are to adhere to the guidelines in the Guide for Authors. Papers submitted to this Journal must not have been submitted or be under review elsewhere unless they have been withdrawn or rejected. It is recommended, where possible, that representative material examined in manuscripts submitted to TZ be deposited in the Zoological Collections of the Natural History Museum of the University of Florence.
The Corresponding Author (multiple corresponding authors are not allowed) must submit the manuscript online-only through our Manuscript Submission System.

 


Authorship and Contributorship

All persons designated as authors should qualify for authorship according to the COPE criteria. Each author should have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for the content. Authorship credit should only be based on substantial contributions to: i) conception and design, or analysis and interpretation of data, and to ii) drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content; and on iii) final approval of the version to be published; and iv) agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work. Participation solely in the acquisition of funding or the collection of data does not justify authorship. General supervision of the research group is not sufficient for authorship. Authors should provide a brief description of their individual contributions. Those who do not meet all four criteria should not be listed as authors, but they should be acknowledged. Those whose contributions do not justify authorship may be acknowledged individually or together as a group under a single heading. Authors can find detailed information on the Publisher's website.

Artificial Intelligence (AI)-Assisted Technology
Authors must disclose whether they used artificial intelligence (AI)-assisted technologies (such as Large Language Models [LLMs], chatbots, or image creators) in the creation of submitted work. Chatbots (such as ChatGPT) should not be listed as authors because they cannot be held accountable for the work's accuracy, integrity, and originality, all of which are required for authorship. Because AI can generate authoritative-sounding output that is incorrect, incomplete, or biased, authors should carefully review and edit the result. Authors should be able to assert that their paper contains no plagiarism, including text and images generated by AI. Large Language Models (LLMs), such as ChatGPT, do not currently satisfy our authorship criteria. Notably an attribution of authorship carries with it accountability for the work, which cannot be effectively applied to LLMs. Use of an LLM should be properly documented in the Methods section (if a Methods section is not available, in a suitable alternative part) of the manuscript. Use of an LLM for language editing must be stated in the Acknowledgments section. We will review this policy on a regular basis and, if necessary, adapt it as we anticipate rapid development in this field in the near future.

Changes in Authorship
If authors request removal or addition of an author after manuscript submission or during the peer-review process or at article acceptance, the journal editors should receive a letter clearly explaining the reason for the change.  Authors are also requested to sign and send to the Editors a statement of agreement for the requested change from all listed authors and the author to be removed or added. No changes to the Authors or Corresponding Author can be made after publication of the article, either as an “Advance Online Article” or in the regular issue. Instead, a corrigendum may be considered by the journal editor.

 


Protection of Human Subjects and Animals in Research

When reporting experiments on human subjects, authors should indicate whether the procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation (institutional and national) and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2013. If doubt exists whether the research was conducted in accordance with the Helsinki Declaration, the authors must explain the rationale for their approach and demonstrate that the institutional review body explicitly approved the doubtful aspects of the study. An Informed Consent statement is always required from patients involved in any experiments. When reporting experiments on animals, authors should indicate whether the institutional and national guide for the care and use of laboratory animals was followed.  Further guidance on animal research ethics is available from the World Medical Association (2016 revision). When reporting experiments on ecosystems involving non-native species, Authors are bound to ensure compliance with the institutional and national guide for the preservation of native biodiversity.

 


Editorial Procedure

The Editorial Board of the journal will immediately screen all articles submitted for publication in that journal. Articles that fail to reach the scientific standards of the journal may be declined without further review. Articles that satisfy the requirements of the Editorial Board will be sent to a maximum of three referees who are experts in the field and have agreed to provide a rapid assessment of the article. Every effort will be made to provide an editorial decision as to acceptance for publication within 4-6 weeks of submission.
Referees may request a revision of the article to be made. In this case, the manuscript is returned to the author with the Referees’ and Editor’s recommendations. The author is required to respond to each of the comments and incorporate necessary changes into the manuscript. The author should also justify any disagreement with the recommendations. The revised manuscript should be single-spaced throughout, without line numbers, in Times New Roman 12-point font and should be returned to the
 Editor following the instructions. Manuscripts will only be accepted once the author has addressed all of the Referees’ recommendations or comments, and has ensured that the format of the manuscript and illustrations comply with the format of the Journal. If the formatting of the corrected manuscript is found to be unacceptable, the Editors may request that authors reformat the manuscripts (also applicable to figures, illustrations, and tables). This could result in a delay in publication.

 


Production

Manuscripts accepted for publication are checked by a copyeditor for spelling and formal style. Any discrepancies that could be found between the accepted manuscript and the journal style and format are pointed out to the authors for corrections. 

 


Typesetting and image processing

The copyedited text and the figures will be processed by the typesetting system to produce the galleys. The authors will be requested to provide better-quality figures if the original figures are unsuitable for reproduction. Please note that the Production Office will not redraw or re-letter any images.

 


Proofing procedure

The Corresponding Author will receive a PDF proof via e-mail including a hyperlink and is asked to check it carefully (the publisher will execute a cursory check only). The Authors are requested to check for typesetting or errors and the completeness and accuracy of the text, tables and figures; the proofs should be sent back to the Production Office within one week, following the instructions given. 
Please be aware that at the proofreading stage, it is not possible to make any changes other than minor amendments: please restrict your alterations to the correction of factual errors or misspellings. Avoid changes that will cause large amounts of text to move to different pages as it will affect the numbering of index entries, creating extra work and cost. Costs associated with such corrections will be charged to the authors.
Please be aware that the Publisher is unable to accept corrections made in ways other than specified at https://www.pagepress.org/site/guidance
Usually, revised proofs will not be sent to the author. 

 


Publication

Once the initial proof has been corrected and finalized, the article is ready for publication; the article will receive its unique DOI (Digital Object Identifier) and be included in the current issue of Tropical Zoology.  
Please note: After the article's online publication, no corrections (including the order of the authors' names) can be made. Changes can only be made in the form of an Erratum, which will be hyperlinked to the article.