INSTRUCTIONS FOR AUTHORS


“BIOLOGICAL DIVERSITY AND CONSERVATION ” is an international, peer-reviewed scientific journal published in online and printed form, in accordance with the principles of independency and impartiality. This journal is a peer reviewed journal on the topics of biological diversity and conservation that uses independent, unbiased double-blinded peer review principles.
BIOLOGICAL DIVERSITY AND CONSERVATION publishes experimental studies, compilations on current issues, case reports, editorial comments and editorial letters prepared in accordance with the ethical guidelines, about on all areas of biological diversities. Descriptive or experimental studies presenting clear research questions are accepted. BIOLOGICAL DIVERSITY AND CONSERVATION has been added to the journal list of the Medical Reads (RRS) program together with the “Biology and Medical Journals”. The journal’s publication language are English and Turkish.
The manuscripts submitted to Biological Diversity and Conservation will go through a double-blind peer-review process. Each submission will be reviewed by at least two external, independent peer reviewers who are experts in their fields in order to ensure an unbiased evaluation process. The editorial board will invite an external and independent editor to manage the evaluation processes of manuscripts submitted by editors or by the editorial board members of the journal.
An approval of research protocols by the Ethics Committee in accordance with international agreements is required for experimental, clinical, and drug studies and for some case reports. If required, ethics committee reports or an equivalent official document will be requested from the authors.
A declaration text including the written consent should be added in the manuscripts concerning experimental research on humans related to that the patients and the volunteers were informed about the procedures of the performed and to be performed studies on them. In addition, information about patients’ approval, the name of the ethics committee, and the ethics committee approval number should be addressed in the Materials and Methods section of the manuscript. In the studies carried out on animals, the precautions taken to prevent pain and suffering of the animals should be clearly indicated.

Authorship Contribution Form
The journal of BIOLOGICAL DIVERSITY AND CONSERVATION, in order to protect the rights of the authors and to prevent such situations as ghost / honorary authorship, requires the author to submit a signed and a scanned copy of the Authorship Contribution Form (which can be downloaded from http://www.biodicon.com).

Policy of Screening for Plagiarism
All submissions are checked by a similarity detection software iThenticate program for determination of plagiarism and non-ethical situations. In cases where the application is alleged or suspected as plagiarism, citation manipulation and data forgery/production, the Editorial Board will follow and act in accordance with the COPE rules.
If the editorial board gets suspicious about a case of ‘gift authorship’, the application will be rejected without being reviewed. As a part of article submission the responsible author should send a short statement text affirming that s/he takes all the responsibilty of the article during the submission and review stages of the manuscript.

ICMJE Conflict of Interest form
BIOLOGICAL DIVERSITY AND CONSERVATION journal asks and encourages its authors and submitted articles to disclose any existing or potential conflicts of interests, including financial, consultant and institutional ones, that may lead to potential bias or conflicts among individuals involved in the evaluation process. Any material grants or other support received for a study sent from individuals or institutions should be reported to the Editorial Board. In order to disclose a potential conflict of interest, The Potential Conflict of Interest Disclosure Form (ICMJE) must be signed by all contributing authors and forwarded to the journal editorial board.

Appeals and Complaint
All appeals and complaint cases are dealt with in the framework of the COPE trial rules by The Editorial Board of the journal. In such cases, the authors should directly make a contact with the editorial office in relation to their appeal and complaints.

Copyright
When submitting an article to the journal of Biological Diversity and Conservation, the authors agree to give the copyright of their articles to the journal. If the publication is rejected, the copyright of the article will be assigned back to the authors. Biological Diversity and Conservation requires each article application to be carried out together with the Copyright Transfer Form (which can be downloaded from
When using previously published content, permission from the copyright owner must be obtained by the authors.
The statements or opinions contained in the articles published in the Journal of Biological Diversity and Conservation reflect the views of the author(s); the editors, the editorial board, and the publisher don’t accept any responsibility or liability for such materials. All the responsiblity belongs to the authors about the published content.

PREPARATION OF MANUSCRIPT
Authors are required to prepare manuscripts in accordance with the STROBE guidelines for observational original research studies, STARD guidelines for studies on diagnostic accuracy, PRISMA guidelines for systematic reviews and meta-analysis, ARRIVE guidelines for experimental animal studies, TREND guidelines and CONSORT guidelines for randomized research studies for non-randomized public behaviour. The manuscripts should be prepared in accordance with ICMJE-Recommendations for the Conducting (http://www.icmje.org/icmje-recommendations).
Manuscripts can only be submitted through the journal’s online manuscript submission and evaluation system, available at Submissions that do not comply with the rules of the journal will be returned to the submitting author with the requests of correction requets.

Authors are required to submit the following
a) Copyright Transfer Form,
b) Author Contributions Form,
c) ICMJE Potential Conflict of Interest Disclosure Form (should be filled in by all contributing authors) during the initial submission. These forms are available for download at
d) Similarity Form (iThenticate: According to the Plagiarism Detection Software programme the similarity index of the article should not exceed 20% after all references and less than 1% matches have been removed.)

Preparation of the Manuscript (General rules for all manuscript types)
Title page: The first page of the article should include the title of manuscript, authors’ names and institutions, an abstract, and keywords. Title, abstract, and keywords must be provided both in English and Turkish. The corresponding author should be indicated by a footnote and besides his/her full open mail address, and an e-mail address should also be provided.
A separate title page should be submitted for all submissions and this page should include:
 Full title of manuscript as well as a short title of up to 50 characters (title)
 Name(s) , address and highest academic degree of the author (s),
 Providing information about supporting institutions (if any),
 Name, address, telephone, fax numbers and e-mail address of the corresponding author,
 Acknowledgment of the individuals who contributed to the preparation of the manuscript.

Abstract: The abstract of Original Articles should be structured with subheadings (Objective, Methods, Results, and Conclusion). Abstract should be written both in English and in Turkish up to 300 words. First the English name of the article, then the English abstract should be written. After that the Turkish name of the article and a summary in Turkish should be written If the article is written in English and sent from outside Türkiye, Turkish abstract it is not necessary. Please check Table 1 below for word count specifications.

Keywords: Key words should not exceed 3-5 words. Keywords should start with lowercase letters except for italic words and special names.

MANUSCRIPT TYPES
Original Research
The first page of the article should include the title of manuscript, authors’ names and institutions, an abstract, and keywords. Title, abstract, and keywords must be provided both in English and Turkish. . If the article is written in English and sent from outside Turkey, Turkish Title, abstract and Keywords it is not necessary. The corresponding author should be indicated by a footnote and besides his/her full open mail address, and an e-mail address should also be provided.

Title: Must be provided both in English and Turkish.
Abstract: It should not include subheadings and should be limited to 350 words
Keywords: This section should contain at least three and at most six items and should be provided just below the abstract.
Main Text: The text should start with the Introduction, and be divided into appropriate sections. Sections must be numbered consecutively. Section headings must be written minisculely flush left and bold with their numbers (as, 1. Introduction, 2. Material and method, 3. Results, 4. Conclusions and discussion). Subsections must be numbered as “1.1”, “1.2”, etc., using the section number and must be written minisclulely flush left. All acronyms and abbreviations used in the manuscript should be defined at first use, both in the abstract and in the main text. In the final section there must be Acknowledgements (if any) , References and Appendices (if any).Please check Table 1 for the limitations. It should include Introduction, other subheadings and Conclusion sections and should be limited to 5000 words except for the references.
References: The reference list should be placed just below the main text and the number of references should not exceed 50.
Tables, Figures and Images: The appearance of Tables, Figures and Images should be provided in the text. The visuals should be original or the written permission obtained from the copyright holder should be sent to the Editor-in-Chief’s Office.

Review
Reviews prepared by the authors who have a broad knowledge in a specific area and represented in the international literatüre by a high number of publications and citations, are evaluated.
Title: Must be provided both in English and Turkish.
Abstract: Abstract shouldn’t include subheadings and should be limited to 350 words.
Keywords: This section should include at least three and at most six items and should be provided just below the abstract.
Main Text: It should include Introduction, other subheadings and Conclusion sections and should be limited to 5000 words excluding the references.
References: The reference list should be placed below the main text and the number of references should not exceed 55.
Tables, Figures and Images: Tables, Figures and Images: The appearance of Tables, Figures and Images sholud be provided in the text. The visuals should be original or the written permission obtained from the copyright holder should be sent to the Editor-in-Chief’s Office. Please check Table 1 for the limitations.

Research note, Case Reports, Case Series and Literature Review
The text should include Introduction, Case reports, Discussion and Conclusion subheadings. Please check Table 1 for the limitations for Research Note.

Letters to the Editor
Discusses important parts, unobserved aspects or missing parts of a previously published article. Letters to the Editor should not include Abstract, Keywords and Tables, Figures, Images, and other media. The text should be unstructured. The commented article must be properly identified in the letter to the editor (Table 1).

Table 1. Limitations for each manuscript type

Tables

Tables should be included in the main document, and they should be numbered consecutively in the order they are referred to within the main text. Their appearance in the text should be provided. A descriptive title must be placed above the tables. Abbreviations used in the tables should be defined below the tables by footnotes. Tables should be created using the “insert table” command of the word processing software.

Figures, Graphics and Photographs
Figures, graphics, and photographs should be submitted as separate files (JPEG format) through the submission system. The files should not be embedded in a Word document or in the main document. Any information within the images that may indicate an individual or institution should be blacked out. The minimum resolution of each submitted figure should be 300 DPI. All submitted figures should be clear in resolution and large in size. Figures , tables and illustrations should be inserted to the appropriate positions where they are mentioned in the text. All drawings, graphics, photographs, etc. should be regarded as figures. Figures should be numbered consecutively (as Figure 1.).

References
While citing publications, the latest and the most current publications should be preferred. At least half (50%) of the references should be published within the last 10 years. Unpublished results and personal communications are not recommended in the reference list, but may be mentioned in the text. Journal titles should be abbreviated in accordance with the journal abbreviations in Index Medicus/ MEDLINE/PubMed. When there are 6 or fewer authors, all authors should be listed. If there are 7 or more authors, the first 6 authors should be written, the space should be “...” left behind and the last author should be written. In the main text of the manuscript, references should be cited by using numbers in parentheses [as 3]. Authors are responsible for the accuracy of references. The reference styles for different types of publications are presented in the following examples. Reference must be made according to APA 6th. Please refer to the details;

Reference form

References should be made in accordance with "APA" guidelines.

No author

[1] Regional perspectives on aid for trade. (2014). Paris, FR: Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.

Journal article with DOI

[1] Sengün, Y. (2012). The wild plants consumed as a food in Afyonkarahisar. Biological Diversity and Conservation, 5(2), 95-105. https://doi:10.1242/jeb.103937
[2] Yücel, E., & Ezer, T. (2018). The bryophyte flora of Eskisehir Province (Turkey). Arctoa 27, 164–171. https://doi: 10.15298/arctoa.27.16
[3] Author, A. (year). Title of article: Title of Journal, volume(issue), page range. Doi:xx xxxxxxxxxx.


Journal article with DOI

[1] Eroğlu, G., Kaşik, G., & Öztürk, C. (2015). Three new myxomycete records from Turkey. Biological Diversity and Conservation, 8(1), 16-18.
[2] Brown, L. F., Yeo, K., Berse, B., Yeo, T. K., Senger, D. R., Dvorak, H. F., & Van De Water, L. (1992). Expression of vascular permeability factor. The Journal of Experimental Medicine, 176(5), 1375-1379.

Journal article published in a supplement

[1] Lock, M. (2015). Eclipse of the gene and the return of divination. Current Anthropology, 46(Suppl. 5), S47-S70. Retrieved from https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/432452

Books

[1] Fleer, M. (2015). Science for children. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
[2] Berkes, F. & Kışlalıoğlu, M. (1990). Ekoloji ve çevre bilimleri. İstanbul: Remzi Kitabevi.
[3] Langlais, B., Reckhow, D. A., & Brink, D. R. (1991). Ozone in water treatment. London: UK: CRC Press.
[4] Brown, M., Shields, J., Kaine, S., Dolle-Samuel, C., North-Samardzic, A., McLean, P., … O’Leary, P. (2016). Managing employee performance and reward: Concepts, practices, strategies (2nd ed.). Port Melbourne, VIC: Cambridge University Press.

eBook

[1] Bull, M. (2015). Punishment and sentencing: Risk, rehabilitation and restitution. Retrieved from http://CURTIN.eblib.com.au/patron/FullRecord.aspx?p=1985996

Chapter in an edited print book

[1] Petermann, E. (2015). Monster mash-ups: Features of the horror musical. In L. Piatti-Farnell & D. L. Brien (Eds.), New directions in 21st century gothic: The gothic compass (4th ed., pp. 71-83). New York, NY: Taylor and Francis.

Conference paper

[1] Novak, D., & Verber, D. (2015, July 21). Assessment of the influence caused by random events within real- time strategy game engine on a game bot gameplay. Paper presented at the 8th Annual International Conference on Computer Games, Multimedia and Allied Technology, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.5176/2251-1679_CGAT15.27