Instructions for authors

Knowledge and Management of Aquatic Ecosystems is a peer-reviewed open access Journal published online by EDP Sciences with no article processing charges for authors and readers. Authors may share freely their articles with anyone, on any platform or via any communication channel.

Knowledge and Management of Aquatic Ecosystems publishes the following types of articles: Original research, Review, Short communication, Opinion and Data papers. KMAE also welcomes Special Issues on topics of current interest in the field. These special issues should be discussed at an early stage with the Editor-in-Chief.

Submission of an article implies that its content has not been published or submitted for publication elsewhere. Submitted articles must be written in English. Authors for whom English is not the first language should consider asking a native speaker for text editing before submission.

Research articles

Research articles should present new results. There are no formal limits to the length of research articles, but we expect most papers being no longer than 7,000 words (including title page, abstract, main text, references, figure and table legends). Long tables and similar material should be provided as electronic-only material (see section Electronic-only material below).

Review articles

KMAE wishes to publish review papers dealing with up-to-date advances in hydrobiology research and current important debates about freshwater ecology, and aquatic ecosystem management, etc. Review papers may be sponsored by the Editorial board, or submitted on authors’ initiative. In that case, authors are encouraged to submit first their project to the Editor-in-Chief with some few indications about the potential content prior writing their review. The length of review papers may vary according to the importance of the material.

Short communications

Short communications present concise information on topics within the scope of the KMAE. Abstract, key-words and references are required; the remainder should be presented as continuous text. The paper must be short (c. 2500 words) and comply with the general instructions given below.

Opinion papers

KMAE makes this new option available to allow fast publication of opinions, novel ideas and any other matter of scientific debate. Opinion papers should not present new results. Papers should be sent with a brief cover letter providing a few clues about the topic addressed and the debate underlying the paper. Such papers must be quite short, and follow the usual rules of the journal. They will be handled by the board of Editors and a quick decision about suitability for publication will be made.

Data papers

Data papers present datasets of ecological interest and include an abstract, a short summary, a methodological section and a detailed description and validation of the data records. The data must be made public at time of publication by depositing them in a stable online repository. A code availability should appear in the published paper.

Submission

Electronic submission via the online article submission and editorial system Editorial Manager® is the mode of submission for research articles, reviews and opinion papers. Editorial Manager® for Knowledge and Management of Aquatic Ecosystems is available at http://www.editorialmanager.com/kmae/. Please follow the instructions displayed on the screen after accessing the website.

Contact office for further detail

Further information and requests: Editorial Office of KMAE, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .

Manuscript processing

Knowledge and Management of Aquatic Ecosystems is aware that fast processing and rapid publication is a key to the diffusion of knowledge and innovation. Electronic submission and electronic management of manuscripts are used as one tool to speed up the review process. A simplified circuit for peer-reviewing allows the time period from submission to publication to be kept low. The first acceptance response will be no later than two months after submission, and online publication will take no longer than 4 months unless in-depth revision is required.

Open access

Knowledge and Management of Aquatic Ecosystems and its publisher EDP Sciences are in favour of broad and easy access to all published scientific information and will favour measures taken in this direction. All papers are in open access at no cost for authors (*).

General presentation of manuscripts

The manuscripts should be double-spaced with margins of at least 3.5 cm at the top, bottom and sides. Lines must be numbered in the margins with a continuous numbering from the start of the manuscript. The manuscript should be arranged as follows: (i) title page, (ii) second page with abstract in English, followed by the sections (iii) introduction, (iv) materials and methods, (v) results, (vi) discussion, (vii) acknowledgments, (viii) references, (ix) tables, (x) captions of figures and (xi) figures. The language should have been edited by a native English speaker before submission.

Title page

The title page should include: title of the article, first name, middle initial(s) and surname of each author (format: "Albert EINSTEIN"), department and institution where the study was carried out, detailed postal address, telephone and fax numbers and e-mail address of the corresponding author (this author being identified by an asterisk), a short title (running head) of no more than 45 characters, including spaces, and additional keywords.

Abstract

The abstract (max. 200 words) should be in a form suitable for abstracting services. It should provide a clear view of the content of the manuscript with a brief description of the main results and conclusions. The abstract should be presented as successive small sections providing:

• an introduction into the context of the study;
• a clear statement of the research questions;
• the most important results;
• a conclusion.

The number of sections is not limited. Footnotes, references, cross-references to figures and tables and undefined abbreviations must be avoided. A French abstract should be provided if the authors are proficient in this language. Otherwise, the editorial office will take care of the translation.

Keywords

Up to five keywords should be supplied. Keywords may be taken from the abstract or text but not from the title. The plural form and uppercase letters must be avoided. Keywords should be written in italics, separated by commas.

References

The number of references should not be excessive and only really relevant citations should be integrated in the manuscript. In the reference list, the references should appear in alphabetical order. The authors' names are listed in alphabetical order, and in chronological order for each author. If there are more than one author, the order is as follows: publications of a single author in chronological order; publications of the same author with one co-author in alphabetical order of the second author, and in chronological order; publications of the author with more than one co-author in chronological order. The references are cited in the text by the name of the first author followed by the year of publication enclosed in brackets like (Dupont, 2007). In case there are several authors, only the first author should be cited and followed by: "et al." (Dupont et al., 2002). All entries in the reference list must correspond to references in the text and vice versa.

The titles of journals should be abbreviated according to the rules of the Biosciences Information Service (Biosis) or those of the Liste d'abréviations de mots des titres de publications en série (conforming to ISO 4, Centre international de ISSN, Paris). Words for which no abbreviation is given should be written in full.

Examples are given below of the layout and punctuation to be used in the references. Please use these formats consistently in the manuscript.

In text citation:

(Dupont, 1999) (Durand, 1998; Dupont, 1999; Smith, 2001)
(Dupont and Durand, 2007)
(Dupont et al., 2006)

Article:

Dupont G. 2009. The title. Knowl Manag Aquat Ecosyst 90: 80–95.
Dupont A, Cortes RMV, Smith D. 2006. The title. Knowl Manag Aquat Ecosyst 382: 1–18.

Book:

Dupont PJ, Smith TT. 1980. The title, McGraw-Hill, New York, 670 p.

Article in a book:

Dupont S, Durand H, Smith K. 1979. The title. In: Dupont S, ed. The title of the Book, Elsevier, Amsterdam, 59–75.

Illustrations (figures and tables)

Illustrations should be numbered in Arabic numerals for figures and tables, and should be referred to in the text by their number (Fig. 1, Tab. 1). Lettering (symbols, numbers, etc.) should not differ from figure to figure and should be of sufficient size to remain legible after reduction (letters 1-2 mm high after reduction). High-definition electronic figures should be provided with the final accepted version for printing in one of the following formats: JPEG, TIFF, PICT or EPS. Half-tones should contain high-definition pictures and should be originals (i.e. not already reproduced); line drawings should have a white background. Photographs should be high-resolution JPEG files. The figure captions should be explicit so that the illustrations are comprehensible without reference to the text, and should be presented together on a separate sheet at the end of the paper. Tables should not exceed 84 characters per line (140 if in landscape format). The title should be written above the corresponding table. Figures and tables published elsewhere cannot be accepted without the prior written consent of the publisher and the author(s).

Electronic-only material

Electronic-only material is designed to provide supplementary information that is designed specifically for the Web, such as small videos, large databases, etc. Electronic-only material may include, but is not restricted to: (large) tables; appendices; programs; images; videos, etc. Electronic-only material must be submitted together with the body of the manuscript for evaluation. In case of video, provide only a url to an external resource.

Production process

At the production stage, a PDF file is not sufficient. EDP Sciences requires the "native" electronic files of the text (Word, RTF, Latex, etc.) and of the figures (EPS (preferably), TIFF, BMP or JPEG) for the final processing of the manuscripts. The electronic publication of the text and colour figures is free of charge.

Proofs

Proofs will be sent electronically to the corresponding author indicated on the title page. They should be carefully corrected and returned to the publisher within 5 days of reception. If this period is exceeded, the galleys will be proofread only by the editorial staff of the publishing house and published without the author's corrections. Should substantial changes to the original manuscript be requested, they will be made at the author's expense. The PDF file of the article is provided free of charge. The file is sent to the corresponding author.

Copyright

The author returns the signed transfer of copyright and publishing agreement form with the corrected proofs. The electronic version of the published articles will be made freely available at the date of publication. Authors are allowed to make their articles available on personal sites, or their institution's website and Open Archive Initiative sites, provided the source of the published article is cited and the ownership of the copyright clearly mentioned. These sites must be non-profit sites. Reprint and postprint may be used (with the publisher's PDF). Authors are requested to create a link to the published article in the publisher's internet service. The link must be accompanied by the following text "The original publication is available at http://www.kmae-journal.org/."

Statement of Informed Consent

Patients have a right to privacy that should not be infringed without informed consent. Identifying information, including patients' names, initials, or hospital numbers, should not be published in written descriptions, photographs, and pedigrees unless the information is essential for scientific purposes and the patient (or parent or guardian) gives written informed consent for publication. Informed consent for this purpose requires that a patient who is identifiable be shown the manuscript to be published.

Identifying details should be omitted if they are not essential. Complete anonymity is difficult to achieve, however, and informed consent should be obtained if there is any doubt. For example, masking the eye region in photographs of patients is inadequate protection of anonymity. If identifying characteristics are altered to protect anonymity, such as in genetic pedigrees, authors should provide assurance that alterations do not distort scientific meaning and editors should so note, authors should identify Individuals who provide writing assistance and disclose the funding source for this assistance.

Statement of Human and Animal Rights

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). If doubt exists whether the research was conducted in accordance with the ethical standards, the authors must explain the rationale for their approach, and demonstrate that the institutional review body explicitly approved the doubtful aspects of the study. When reporting experiments on animals, authors should be asked to indicate whether the institutional and national guide for the care and use of laboratory animals was followed.

(*) Article Processing Charges (APC) are sponsorized by Office français de la biodiversité