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.
As of January 2020, Tropical Zoology became an Open Access publication. 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 Publisher will 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. All articles published by Tropical Zoology are freely downloadable from www.tropical-zoology.it for non-commercial purposes.

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 Papers submitted to this Journal must not have been submitted or be under review elsewhere unless they have been withdrawn or rejected.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 web site.

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 from 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. Those articles which fail to reach the scientific standards of the journal may be declined without further review. Those articles which 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 Associate 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 provide justification for 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 Associate 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 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 the proofs via e-mail including a hyperlink. The Authors are requested to  check for typesetting or errors and for 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 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. 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 is included into the current issue of Tropical Zoology, to be immediately available to the scientific community.  
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.