Encyclopedia of Ecology, Second Edition: Author Instructions
This document explains the elements you should include in your article. Please use this alongside the
Author Template document.
Please submit your manuscript in MS Word format using the provided author template. We need this
editable format in order for your chapter to be reviewed, copyedited and typeset.
1. Length and focus
Your article should be 5,500 to 6,000 words long. Encyclopedia articles are designed to be
authoritative sources of foundational knowledge, used mainly as teaching tools (high-level
undergraduate and postgraduate) and by researchers to enable them to quickly understand a
concept or subject either within or outside their immediate field of expertise.
2. Text
a. Spelling
•
American spelling should be used
• Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary will be followed for spelling and hyphenation.
(After acceptance, minor changes may be made to your manuscript to reflect this).
b. Emphasis
•
It is our house style not to use italics, bold or underlining to emphasise text
• Single quotation marks or italics may be used to define new terms, but are not used for
general emphasis of words within the text
c. Headings
• Use ‘Heading One’ for your chapter title. All text must be prefaced by a heading, use up to
five levels of heading (as below). Finer levels or organization should be captured using bullet
lists.
1
1.1
1.1.1
1.1.1.1
1.1.1.1.1
Heading One
Heading Two
Heading three
Heading four
Heading five
3. Units and Nomenclature (include if applicable)
•
SI units should be used, expressed in the form m s−1 (not m/s)
• Where the community commonly uses non-SI measures (such as gal. ha−1), the standard
units should be given, with the SI equivalent in parantheses. Examples below:
A
Cross-sectional area of laser cut, m2
cpl
Specific heat of liquid material, J kg−1 K−1
cps
Specific heat of solid material, J kg−1 K−1
4. Bibliography
a. Further Reading
The Further Reading list is intended to be the next step for the interested reader, and as such should
include chapters in books, major review articles, or seminal journal articles. The Further Reading list
should include no more than 10-15 items and these, regardless of source, should be arranged
alphabetically by author’s last name. Titles of journals should be given in full. Multi-authored articles
should list all authors if there are up to five of them, or the first three, followed by “et al” if there
are more than five. More than one mention from the same Author(s) in the same year must be
identified by the letters “a”,“b”, “c”, etc., placed after the year of publication.
Books
Surname, A. B. (2000). Title with capital letters only for first word and Proper Names. Place:
Publisher.
Surname, A. B. and Surname, C. D. (2000). Title as above (3rd ed.). Place: Publisher.
Surname, A. B. (ed.) (2000). Title as above. Place: Publisher.
Surname, A. B., Surname, C. D. and Surname, E. F. (eds.) (1985–2000). Title as above for
multivolume series (4 vols.). Place: Publisher.
Surname, A. B., Surname, C. D. and Surname, E. F. (eds.) (1991). Title as above for series 4:
Title of individual volume. Place: Publisher.
Articles in edited books
Surname, A. B. (1999). Article title with capital letters only for first word and Proper
Names. In Surname, C. D., Surname, E. F. & Surname, G. H. (eds.) Book title as above. 3rd
ed, pp 3–56. Place: Publisher.
Articles in journals
Surname, A. B. (1991). Article title with capital letters only for first word and Proper
Names. Journal Title with all Content Words in Capital Letters 24, 128–156.
Proceedings
Surname, A. B. (2003). Article title with capital letters only for first word and Proper
Names. In: Surname C. D. (eds.) Proceedings of International Conference of Scientific
Reference Works, pp.1099–1111. Place: Publisher.
Patents
Surname, A. B. (1994). Br. Pat. 1 099 184 (Journal Title with all Content Words in Capital
Letters, 1995 6, 56).
b. Website citations
Websites may not remain active for the life of publication and may not be peer-reviewed. Please
only submit the top-level of any website addresses and not deeply-linked sources as they are
unlikely to remain active for the life of the publication. Please supply a short title with each web
address, as guidance for the reader (e.g. ‘BBC News’ www.bbc.co.uk/news). Websites should be
cited in a “List of Relevant Websites” section at the end of the article, not in the text. Web addresses
may be used in tables in the text, but please note that the links in these will not be active in the
online environment.
5. Figures
Figures can be submitted as separate files and should be labelled to indicate clearly where you wish
them to be placed in your article. Figures should be submitted in the resolution detailed in the table
below.
File Format
Line drawings
Halftones/photographs
Min
72dpi,
line
weight
0.35-1.5pt
Do not send halftones in this format

EPS
X
Min 1000dpi
Min 300dpi


Tiff
Do
not
send
line
drawings
in
this
Discouraged as resolution often too

JPEG
X
PDF
Word
Excel
PowerPoint
ChemDraw





format
Min 1000dpi

X
X
X
X
low for print
Min 300dpi
Do not send halftones in this format
Do not send halftones in this format
Do not send halftones in this format
Do not send halftones in this format
6. Multimedia
Multi-media annexes are files (sound, video, spreadsheets, Word documents, etc) that provide
supplementary information to your article. Please supply a description for each multimedia annex
supplied. When published online, the descriptive text will appear as captions alongside links to the
multimedia annexes. These should be not less than 50 words or greater than 1000.
7. Change History
This applies to updated chapters only, and gives readers an overview of what has changed in the
update. It doesn’t need to be a detailed list of every single change, but rather an overview, some
examples are below:
Change History Example 1
• Change History: July 2015. C Chintiroglou and C Antoniadou updated Abstract,
Extended synopsis, the Polychaete/Amphipods index, the reference section, Figures
1, 3, and added Figures 2, 4 and 5, and added Table 1.
• Change History: March 2014. C Chintiroglou introduced small edits in the text of the
article including citations, added the sections “Applications” and “References”, and
added Figure 6.
• Change History: September 2013. C Chintiroglou and C Antoniadou updated Table 1
by adding eight new zeolite species and reformatted the way the formulae are
presented, to be consistent with current International Zeolite Association usage.
Change History Example 2
• Change History: June 2015. VR Meyer updated the text and further readings to this
entire article, and added new Figure 2.
• Change History: November 2014. P Jandera made changes in sections ‘Non-aqueous
normal-phase separations of strongly polar and ionic compounds’ and ‘Applications
of Normal-Phase HPLC’, added a new reference in ‘Further Reading’ section, and
deleted the old Figure 5, and added a new Figure 5 and Figure 8.
Change History Example 3
• Change History: April 2015. DM McFarlane updated the sections ‘Physiology’, and
the ‘References’.
• Change History: August 2013. DM McFarlane revised Tables 1 & 2, added new
Figures 3-7, and deleted Figure 8.
8. Permissions
Please see the Permissions Template for detailed information on permissions.
Every author has a responsibility to obtain permission to use any figures that have already been
published. This also includes figures that have previously been published by Elsevier, although there
will be no charge for permission, it should still be obtained. To request permission please go to:
http://www.copyright.com. For more information on permissions, please use the Permissions
Template.
If you have any questions, please feel free to ask the Elsevier Project Management team at [email protected].