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Instructions for authors

1. Manuscripts

The Acta Biologica Slovenica journal publishes original scientific articles and reviews articles in the wider field of biology. We accept:

• Original Research: these are comprehensive descriptions of original research and include a theoretical survey of the topic, a detailed presentation of results with discussion and conclusion, and a bibliography according to the IMRAD outline (Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion). In this category, ABS also publishes methodological articles, as they present an original method, which was not previously published elsewhere, or they offer a new and original usage of an established method. The originality is judged by the editorial board if necessary after consultation with the referees (MS Word Template).
• Reviews: will be published in the journal after consultation between the editorial board and the author (MS Word Template).
• Brief Notes: generally takes one of the following forms: i) a substantial re-analysis of a previously published article in Acta Biologica Slovenica or in another journal; ii) an article that may not cover 'standard research' but that is of general interest to the broad readership of Acta Biologica Slovenica; iii) a brief report of research findings adequate for the journal's scope and of particular interest to the community (MS Word Template). Brief notes may be edited for clarity or length and may be subject to peer review at the editors' discretion. Brief reports of research work will be peer reviewed.
• Data Article: these are short, digestible articles that describe and provide access to research data (MS Word template).
• Field Note: these are new records of plants, algae, fungi, and animals for a joint column under the title Significant records of plants, algae, fungi, and animals in SE Europe and adjacent regions with selected relevant data (MS Word template). Submission should be sent directly to handling editors for the appropriate field: Simona Strgulc Krajšek (plants and algae), Tina Klenovšek (animals), and Matevž Likar (fungi).

All articles will be reviewed before the publication. The authors are responsible for manuscript content and originality. The editors decide the form and date of publication of the article.

2. Peer review process

Pre-check

Immediately after submission, the journal's Editorial Team will perform the technical pre-check to assess:

• Overall suitability of the manuscript to the journal;
• Manuscript adherence to high-quality research and ethical standards;
• Standards of rigour to qualify for further review.

During the editorial pre-check phase, the section editor will assess the suitability of the submission with respect to the journal's scope, as well as the overall scientific soundness of the manuscript, including the relevance of the references and the accuracy of the applied methodology. Section editors can decide to reject the manuscript, request revision before peer review, or continue with the peer review process and recommend suitable reviewers.

Peer Review

Once a manuscript passes the initial checks, it will be assigned to at least two independent experts for peer review.

In this phase, the Editorial Team will invite experts to act as potential reviewers. These experts may also include other members of the Editorial Team. Potential reviewers suggested by the authors may also be considered. Reviewers should not have published with any of the co-authors during the past three years. They should not currently work or collaborate with any of the institutions of the co-authors of the submitted manuscript.

Editorial Decision and Revision

All articles, reviews, and communications published in Acta Biologica Slovenica undergo a peer review process and receive at least two reviews. The Section editor will communicate the decision to the authors. The following choices are possible:

• Accept after Minor Revision: The paper is accepted after revision based on the reviewer's comments. Authors are given seven days for minor revision.
• Reconsider after Major Revision: The acceptance of the manuscript would depend on the revision. The author needs to provide a point-by-point response or provide a rebuttal if the reviewer's comments cannot be revised. A maximum of two rounds of major revision per manuscript is typically offered. Authors will be asked to resubmit the revised paper within a suitable time frame (typically 30 days), and the revised version will be returned to the reviewers for further comments.
• Reject and Encourage Resubmission: If additional experiments are needed to support the conclusions, the manuscript will be rejected, and the authors will be encouraged to resubmit the paper with these experiments included.
• Reject: The article has serious flaws, and/or makes no original significant contribution. No offer of resubmission to the journal is provided.

All reviewer comments should be responded to in a point-by-point fashion. Where the authors disagree with a reviewer, they must provide a clear response.

If the journal's editorial office is unable to maintain communication with the author during the manuscript review or production process, the journal reserves the right to withdraw the manuscript following a designated period of inactivity (three failed attempts at communicating with the authors and 60 days, followed by the final warning).

Author Appeals

Authors may appeal a rejection by sending an email to the Editorial Office of the journal. The appeal must provide a detailed justification, including point-by-point responses to the reviewers' and/or Editor's comments. Appeals can only be submitted following a "reject and decline resubmission" decision and should be submitted within three months of the decision date. Failure to meet these criteria will result in the appeal not being considered further. The Editorial Team will be asked to provide an advisory recommendation on the manuscript and may recommend acceptance, further peer review, or uphold the original rejection decision. The Editor-in-Chief will then validate this decision. A rejected decision at this stage is final and cannot be reversed.

Production and Publication

Once accepted, the manuscript will undergo professional copy-editing, English editing, proofreading by the authors, final corrections, pagination, and publication on the Acta Biologica Slovenica website.

Typically, it is not permissible for authors to change the main text after acceptance (except for layout, English grammar, etc.). If authors wish to revise the main text, they should notify the journal's editorial office and provide their reasons. Then, another round of academic decisions will be made based on the manuscript and the authors' responses.

3. Originality

On submitting a manuscript for publication, the authors should declare that the work submitted is original and unpublished and is not in the process of being considered for publication at any other publisher. They should also declare that the work (in whole or in part) will not be sent to other publishers before the decision of the editorial board on its publication. By submitting a manuscript to Acta Biologica Slovenica you agree to comply with the Publication Ethics and Malpractice State as an authored.

Large Language Models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT do not currently meet our authorship criteria. In particular, the attribution of authorship carries its own responsibility for work that cannot be effectively applied to the LLM. The use of LLM should be adequately documented in the Methods section (and if a Methods section is not available, in an appropriate alternative section) of the article.

The rapidly developing field of artificial intelligence generative imaging has created new regulatory issues with copyright and research integrity. As publishers, we strictly adhere to applicable copyright law and best practice regarding publication ethics. As the legal issues surrounding AI-generated images and videos remain largely unresolved, they cannot currently allow their use for publication. The use of non-generative machine learning tools to manipulate, combine or enhance existing images or graphs must be disclosed in the appropriate section of the article and will be judged on a case-by-case basis.

4. Scope of manuscripts

Manuscripts must be prepared with these instructions. Articles should not exceed 30,000 characters with spaces. In exceptional cases and in agreement with the editor, articles may be longer than this.

5. Language

Acta Biologica Slovenica publishes scientific articles in Slovene or English. All articles have titles, abstracts, keywords, images, and table captions in both Slovene and English. Authors are responsible for the quality of the language. The editorial board proofreads Slovene texts (entire text) and English titles, abstracts, keywords, chapter headings, images, table captions, and summaries. In the case of foreign authors, Slovene-language translation of the required bibliographic elements (title, abstract, keywords, table and figure captions) will be provided by the editorial board.

6. Article title

The title of the article should be brief and understandable and should summarise the essence of the presented research. The title should be written in Slovene and English and should not contain abbreviations or formulas. For foreign language authors, the editorial board will take care of translating these into Slovene.

7. Authors and affiliations

All names are listed together and separated by commas. Provide exact and correct author names as these will be indexed in official archives. Affiliations should be keyed to the author's name with superscript numbers. The corresponding author(s) should be marked with an asterisk in the author list. Provide the exact contact email address of the corresponding author(s) in a separate section.

The authors who have contributed equally should be marked with a symbol (†) in the author list of the manuscript. Please use the appropriate standard statement(s) to indicate equal contributions:

• Equal contribution: These authors contributed equally to this work
• First authorship: These authors share first authorship
• Last authorship: These authors share last authorship

8. Abstract

For all articles, the authors must prepare an abstract in both English and Slovene. The abstract must give concise information on the content of the article and should not exceed 300 words. For foreign language authors, the editorial board will take care of translating these into Slovene.

9. Keywords

The authors should provide up to eight keywords in English and Slovene, and these must represent the research field covered in the article. For foreign language authors, the editorial board will take care of translating these into Slovene.

10. Body of the article

The articles should have the structure of a scientific work with the following chapters when appropriate: Introduction, Material and Methods, Results, Discussion, Conclusions, References and Appendix. Appendices are marked with small letters (a, b, c, ...). The Results and Discussion sections can be grouped into the Results and Discussion section.

11. Tables and figures

The tables should be clear and adjusted to the dimensions of the journal (A4). The font size used should not be less than 8 point. Figures (drawings, photographs, graphic images, charts, etc.) should be clear, sharp, and high-resolution (300 dpi). The positions of tables and images should be clearly indicated in the text. The number of tables and figures should be appropriate for the scope and content of the article. All captions for the tables and figures must be listed in both English and Slovene. The caption for a table is written above the table, while the caption for a figure is written below the figure. With regard to positioning, the images should be included in the text and added to the manuscript as image files in an appropriate format.

Examples:

Table 1. MLST sequence type, virulence-associated genes and virulence plasmid-associated sequences among the E. coli isolates from the dishwasher rubber seals.

Figure 1. Kemijska struktura polimerne različice 1,3-oktilpiridinijeve soli (APS8).

12. Citation of the references in the text

We use the APA standard of citing to quote the references in the text and at the end (References). We quote the authors according to the following principles: one author (surname, year), e.g. (Cankar, 1984); the work of two authors (surname & surname, year), e.g. (Cankar & Prešeren, 1984); the work of more than two authors (surname et al., year), e.g. (Cankar et al., 1984). If the author's name is stated in the text, it is enough to write only the annotation year, e.g. Cankar (1984). When we cite two or more sources, they should be sorted according to the year of publication and separated by semicolons (Cankar, 1984; Prešeren et al., 1985). Standards are indicated only with the abbreviation of the standard and year of issue, for example (SIST EN 113, 1996). Legislation is referred to by the abbreviation appearing in the Official Journal, for instance (BPD 98/8 / EC, 1998). Only publicly accessible literature should be provided. Citing internal reports, expert opinions, unpublished data, etc., should be avoided.

13. CRediT author statement

Use the CRediT approved 14 role taxonomies. CRediT is an initiative that enables authors to share an accurate and detailed description of their diverse contributions to a published work.

Example: F. P.: Conceptualization, Methodology I. C.: Original draft preparation I. T.: Visualization, Investigation

14. Scientific names of taxa

The scientific names of genera, species and intraspecific taxa are written in italics (Picea abies (L.) Karst.).

15. Format and form of the manuscript

The article should be written and saved in a Word template and exported to pdf format. The figures should be included in the text and sent as image files for positioning. Manuscripts with all attachments should be submitted using the online form by following the given instructions.

16. Graphic design

To ensure their correct position, the authors should insert all graphic elements in the text. The backgrounds of the charts must be white. In the case of bar diagrams with only one row of columns, the columns should be white with a black border, and hatching or other forms of shading are unnecessary. 3D charts are to be avoided, and 2D charts are used whenever possible.

17. Images

• Images taken with a digital camera must have a resolution of at least 2.1 million pixels (the width should be at least 80 mm for one column, at 300 dpi resolution).
• Images should be scanned at a resolution of 300 dpi.
• All images must be sent in the original tiff, jpg or equivalent format. The correct position should also be indicated in the text.
• Images that have important colour shades must be stored in the CMYK colour system and TIFF format.
• All images should be captioned in the manuscript. At the end of the caption, the source or author should be added in brackets.
• Drawings should be made in one of the standard computer drawing programs. A minimum line thickness of 0.25 points or 0.15 mm must be used. We do not accept bad photocopies and drawings made with a pencil. If possible, avoid drawing in Word.

18. Section "References"

We use the APA method of citing. References should be arranged in alphabetical order based on the first authors' surnames. Some examples:

Book

Jackson, L. M. (2019). The psychology of prejudice: From attitudes to social action (2nd ed.). American Psychological Association. https://doi.org/10.1037/0000168-000

Book chapter

Aron, L., Botella, M., & Lubart, T. (2019). Culinary arts: Talent and their development. In R. F. Subotnik, P. Olszewski-Kubilius, & F. C. Worrell (Eds.), The psychology of high performance: Developing human potential into domain-specific talent (pp. 345–359). American Psychological Association. https://doi.org/10.1037/0000120-016

Journal article

Thandra, K. C., Barsouk, A., Saginala, K., Aluru, J. S. & Barsouk, A. (2021). Epidemiology of lung cancer. Contemporary Oncology, 25(1), 45. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.5114%2Fwo.2021.103829

If there are more than seven authors, mention the first six and last authors.

Zhu, X., Pan, S., Xu, M., Zhang, L., Yu, J., Yu, J., ... Luo, S. (2020). High Selectivity of an α-Conotoxin LvIA Analogue for α3β2 Nicotinic Acetylcholine Receptors Is Mediated by β2 Functionally Important Residues. Journal of Medicinal Chemistry, 63(22), 13656–13668. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jmedchem.0c00975

Computer program

Oksanen, J., Kindt, R., Legendre, P., O'Hara, B., Simpson, G. L., Solymos, P., Stevens, M. H. H. & Wagner, H. (2008). vegan: Community Ecology Package (R package version 1.15-1)

For more examples, please visit

• http://www.apastyle.org/learn/faqs/index.aspx
• https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/02/