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Article types

JMBA publishes the following article types:

• Research Article
• Review Article
• Marine Record: Marine Records are short research articles, detailing novel or alien species in new marine ecosystems. They will often be a 'first sighting' or 'first description'. Marine Records are intended to ensure the ranges, populations and expansions of marine organisms are well-documented in the scientific literature. These articles should focus on documenting and reviewing changes in geographical ranges of marine species, including the effects of the introduction of novel or alien species to marine ecosystems, and of taxonomic studies relevant to these changes.
• Letter to the Editor: Letters are invited that discuss or comment on papers published in the Journal. They should not, however, be used as a means of publishing new work. Letters should be concise, normally less than one printed page, have no more than 10 references and should not contain figures or tables. Acceptance will be at the discretion of the Editorial Board, and editorial changes may be required. Wherever possible, letters from responding authors will be included in the same issue.
• Obituary

Preparing your manuscript for submission

Manuscript format

Manuscripts should be submitted as line-numbered Microsoft Word files, and include the following sections:

Title page

The title page should include:

• Article title: should be no more than 20 words with no authorities associated with the species
• Running head: a shortened version of the title (not more than 43 characters) should be suggested
• Author names
• Author affiliations: please provide an affiliation for each author that includes department, institution, city and country, and identify each author’s affiliation by a superscript number. Author affiliations should represent the institution(s) at which the research presented was conducted and/or supported and/or approved. For non-research content, any affiliations should represent the institution(s) with which each author is currently affiliated. For more information, please see our author affiliation policy and author affiliation FAQs.
• Email address and mailing address for the corresponding author. For more details about the responsibilities of the corresponding author, please see our FAQs.
• Abstract: a concise abstract of no more than 250 words should outline the scope, main results and conclusion(s) of the paper without discussion or authorities associated with species. Species name(s) will be roman (normal). General guidance on writing an abstract can be found here.
• Keywords: please provide at least three and no more than ten keywords. General guidance on selecting keywords can be found here.

Main text

The main text should include the following sections: Introduction; Materials and Methods; Results; Discussion.

Data

Manuscripts with a Data Availability Statement should include it here.

Acknowledgements

You may acknowledge individuals or organizations that provided advice and/or support (non-financial). Formal financial support and funding should be listed in the following section.

Author contributions

Please provide a very brief description of the contribution of each author to the research. Their roles in formulating the research question(s), designing the study, carrying out the study, analysing the data, interpreting the findings and writing the article should be stated for each author.

Financial support

Please provide details of the sources of financial support of all authors, including grant numbers. For example, ‘This work was supported by the Medical Research Council (grant number XXXXXXX)’. Multiple grant numbers should be separated by a comma and space, and where research was funded by more than one agency, the different agencies should be separated by a semi-colon, with ‘and’ before the final funder. Grants held by different authors should be identified as belonging to individual authors by the authors’ initials. For example, ‘This work was supported by the Wellcome Trust (A.B., grant numbers XXXX, yyyy), (C.D., grant number ZZZZ); the Natural Environment Research Council (E.F., grant number FFFF); and the National Institutes of Health (A.B., grant number GGGG), (E.F., grant number HHHH)’. Where no specific funding has been provided for research, please provide the following statement: ‘This research received no specific grant from any funding agency, commercial or not-for- profit sectors’.

Conflict of interest

Please provide details of all known financial, professional and personal relationships with the potential to bias the work. Where no known conflicts of interest exist, please include the following statement: "The author (s) declare none."

For more information on what constitutes a conflict of interest, please see our Research Publishing Ethics Guidelines.

Ethical standards

Research involving vertebrates and regulated invertebrates should comply with relevant national and international animal welfare guidelines and where possible, be approved by an ethics committee. The name of the ethics committee and the ethics committee approval number should be included here, along with the national and international guidelines that were followed. Research reporting animal research should follow the ARRIVE reporting guidelines. 

References

References and citations should be formatted correctly in journal style when the article is submitted to the journal but formatting is not grounds for rejection at the submitting phase.

References in the text should refer to the author’s name (no initials) and year of publication. Two authors should be cited using ‘&’ (Rainbow & Dellinger, 1993); for more than two authors, the name of the first author followed by ‘et al.’ (Lallier et al., 1987). Where an article is published but yet to be allocated to an Issue, the citation should take the form (Relles et al., published online 24 August 2018). Online resources should be cited following the convention (Continuous Plankton Recorder Survey, accessed online 23 September 2018). When citing more than one publication use date order and a semi-colon as a separator, e.g. (Mykels & Skinner, 1985a, b; Skinner, 1996; Gorind et al., 1997).

All literature quoted in the text must be listed in alphabetical and chronological order of author names at the end of each manuscript, following the Cambridge A style. When more than one publication with the same first author is cited the following order alphabetically applies: (a) single author, according to publication dates; (b) same author and one co-author; (c) same author and more than one co-author.

The manuscript should be carefully checked to ensure the details of authors and dates cited in the text exactly match those in the reference list. Cross checking of references in the text to the cited literature and vice versa is the responsibility of the author.

The style follows the full name according to the ‘World List of Scientific Periodicals’ latest edition, London. Titles of journals must be written in FULL (not abbreviated) and references to books should include the place of publication and the publisher.

Examples of correct forms of references are given below.

Journals; article allocated to an Issue:

Marshall SM, Nicholls AG and Orr AP (1939) On the growth and feeding of young herring in the Clyde. Journal of the Marine Biological Association of the United Kingdom 23, 427–455.

Journals; article published online ahead of Issue allocation:

Relles NJ, Patterson MR and Jones DOB. Change detection in a Marine Protected Area (MPA) over three decades on Bonaire, Dutch Caribbean. Journal of the Marine Biological Association of the United Kingdom. Published online: 24 August 2018.

Books:

Cushing DH (1981) Fisheries biology, a study in population dynamics. 2nd edition. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.

Chapters from books:

Weir BS (1990) Intraspecific differentiation. In Hillis D.M. and Moritz C. (eds) Molecular systematics. Sunderland, MA: Sinauer Associates, pp. 373–410.

Symposium proceedings:

Cinelli F, Fresi E, Mazzella L, Pansini M, Pronzato R and Svoboda A (1977) Distribution of benthic phyto- and zoocoenoses along a light gradient in a superficial marine cave. In Keegan B.F., Ceidigh P.O. and Boaden P.J.S. (eds) Proceedings of the Eleventh European Symposium on Marine Biology, University College, Galway, 5–11 October 1976. Biology of benthic organisms. Oxford: Pergamon Press, pp.173–183.

Book series:

El Haj AJ, Whiteley NM and Harrison P (1992) Molecular regulation of muscle growth over the crustacean moult cycle. In El Haj A.J. (ed.) Molecular biology of muscle. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 151–165. [SEB Seminar Series, no. 46.]

Occasional Publications:

Moore P G (1984) The fauna of the Clyde Sea area. Crustacea: Amphipoda. University Marine Biological Station Millport, Occasional Publications, no. 2, 84 pp.

Reports:

Gaard E (1987) An investigation of the squid Loligo forbesi Steenstrup on Faroe Bank. International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (CM Papers and Reports), CM 1987/K:18, 9 pp.

Baird Jr FT (1953) Observations on the early life history of the giant scallop (Pecten magellanicus). Research Bulletin. Department of Sea and Shore Fisheries, Maine, no. 14, 7 pp.

Theses:

Leighton DL (1968) A comparative study of food selection and nutrition in the abalone, Haliotis rufescens Swainson, and the purple sea urchin, Strongylocentrotus purpuratus Stimpson. PhD thesis. University of California, San Diego, USA.

Online resources:

Continuous Plankton Recorder Survey. Phytoplankton Colour Index – Annual Mean, 2014. Geospatial Representation of CPR Data (North Atlantic). https://www.cprsurvey.org/data... Accessed online 23 September 2018.

Figures

Figures should be referred to in numerical order and in full in the body of the text (e.g. Figure 1). If figures are in parts, please label with upper case letters (A, B, C etc.) in the top left corner of each part. Figure legends should be placed in the main manuscript file following the references, and take the following style:

Fig. 1. Ceratothoa collaris Schioedte & Meinert, 1883, adult female: (A) pereopod 1; (B) pereopod 7; (C–G) pleopods 1–5 ventral view; (H) uropods. Scale bars: A–G, 2 mm; H, 3 mm.

Please note that all figures must be supplied as separate files; figures supplied as embedded objects in Microsoft Word cannot be accepted. Please consult the journal artwork guide for a detailed specification on accepted file formats.

Authors must obtain permission from the original publisher if they intend to use figures from other sources, and due acknowledgement should be made in the legend as follows: Permission to replicate this figure has been given to the authors by XXX. For detailed instructions on securing permissions, please see here.

From 2022, JMBA will be published online only and so there will be no charges for colour images.

The JMBA uses a different colour image for the cover of each new Issue. If you exclusively hold copyright in a high-quality image either used within your accepted article, or directly related to it, that you believe might make a suitable cover image, please highlight on article submission. The Journal will then contact you should it wish to discuss further.

Tables

Tables should be placed in the main manuscript file at the end of the document, not within the main text. The journal cannot accept text formatted with tab characters or images of tables embedded in word files.

Authors must obtain permission from the original publisher if they intend to use tables from other sources, and due acknowledgement should be made in the legend as follows: Permission to replicate this table has been given to the authors by XXX. For detailed instructions on securing permissions, please see here.

Supplementary material

Online publishing gives authors the opportunity to include data that would be impossible or impractical to include in the printed version. These data might substantially enhance the importance of the research and might also be of benefit to readers.

Authors may include tables and figures as well as data such as videos, 3-D structures/images, extensive datasets and any other supplementary material not suitable for print duplication. All supplementary material must be submitted with the original manuscript and cited in a relevant place in the text of the paper. Supplementary data should be referred to in the text with the prefix "S" (e.g. Supplementary Table S1, Supplementary Figure S1).

Supplementary files will be peer reviewed but not copy-edited or typeset, and will be published as supplied.

Taxonomy

Please refer to the current volume for examples of how to present taxonomy.