To submit an article online, and to check the status of your submission, you need to have an account with Elem Sci Anth
Don't have an account? Register Here.
Start SubmissionArticle Types & Format | Supplemental Material & Data | Submission, Review, & Decision | Submission Components | Copyediting | References
Submissions should be made electronically through this website.
Elementa publishes the following types of articles:
Elementa also welcomes Special Features, a set of related articles addressing themes or projects of broad interest, typically 4–10 articles in each group, usually including a synthesizing Commentary. Special Features may fall within a single knowledge domain or be cross-listed under two or more domains; in either case, a single Editor-in-Chief will be responsible for the entire Special Feature. For more information, see our Special Features informational page.
Supplemental Material
We encourage authors to include supplementary information with their submissions, including audio, video, three-dimensional representations, and other rich media as well as additional figures and tables, or other data integral to the published manuscript. Supplemental material provides information that enhances the main text and is directly referenced within the text, but is not critical to its assertions. We encourage authors to always consider clarity and ease of use for readers when presenting supplemental material: consider whether some supplementary files work best in a composite file (e.g. text, table, and figure in one downloadable document – see sample template here) or whether there is a strong reason to publish these individually (e.g. very large tables, movie, audio files). Please note that Editors are free to request changes in how supplemental files are presented to ensure clarity for readers.
Although we do not limit the number or type of supplemental material items authors may include, we do require that they provide a relevant and useful expansion of the article, and that they are as well described as are figures and tables included within the body of the article. Good metadata of this material are key to discoverability and usefulness.
For detailed information on formatting and submitting supplementary information, please see our guidelines on Supplemental Material & Data.
Datasets
An inherent principle of publication is that others should be able to replicate and build upon the authors’ published claims. Therefore, we require that all datasets associated with an article be made openly available, unless there are clear reasons and agreement from an Editor-in-Chief to restrict access. Datasets should be archived and published in any stable domain-specific or general repository.
For more information, please see our guidelines on Supplemental Material & Data.
Submissions to Elementa must meet the following requirements to be considered for publication:
Initial manuscripts should be submitted via this website, and should typically include the following elements:
Authors are encouraged to provide the names and contact information for 3–5 external reviewers, though Associate Editors are not obligated to use these suggestions. Authors may also indicate researchers whom they feel should not review the submission.
For more information, please see our guidelines on Manuscript Preparation below.
The Review Process
Each of Elementa’s six knowledge domains are led by an Editor-in-Chief and supported by an international Board of Associate Editors, comprised of respected researchers in relevant fields. We are committed to providing Elementa authors with a fair and timely review process, constructive feedback, and a supportive environment. We publish articles that are scientifically, methodologically, and ethically sound, that are worthy of inclusion in the scholarly record, and that further research and discourse in the relevant field of study.
Our goal is to make initial decisions on submissions within 30 calendar days. After acceptance, the manuscript and supporting files will be immediately processed for publication, a process taking approximately 15 business days, if all supporting files are in order.
Our review process follows these steps:
Authors are asked to submit revised manuscripts within four weeks of receiving an invitation to revise from the Editor-in-Chief, unless advised otherwise. Two extensions of two weeks each will be granted upon request to the editorial office. Further extensions require approval of the pertinent Editor-in-Chief. If a revised manuscript is not received within four months, the author(s) may be required to resubmit the manuscript as an entirely new submission.
To keep costs as low as possible, Elementa articles are not subject to detailed copyediting. We encourage authors whose native language is not English to enlist the aid of a native English-speaking colleague to review the manuscript for correct usage and clarity prior to submission and after revision, or to employ language or copyediting services. These services can be found on the Web using search terms such as “scientific editing service” or “manuscript editing service.”
Submissions to Elementa consist of the following components:
A diagram of the upload order can be found below.
Please write an approximately one-page cover letter that:
Authors are also encouraged to provide the names and contact information for 3–5 external reviewers, though Associate Editors are not obligated to use these suggestions. Authors may also indicate researchers whom they feel should not review the submission.
Please do not include requests to waive publication fees in your cover letter. If your submission is accepted for publication, you will have the opportunity to request a waiver then.
Organization
We do not have arbitrary restrictions on manuscript length. We do, however, encourage you to employ a clear and concise writing style. Please note that a request to be more concise is legitimate feedback during the review process, despite no arbitrary restrictions being in place. If you believe your manuscripts would benefit from professional editing, we encourage you to utilize a copyediting service—or ask a colleague whose native language is English for assistance. Copyediting services can be found on the Internet using search terms as “scientific editing service” or “manuscript editing service.”
All submissions should begin with the following sections:
All submissions should end with the following sections:
We have no explicit requirements for section organization between these beginning and ending sections. Articles may be organized in different ways and with different section titles, according to the authors’ preference and type of article. For research articles, sections typically include:
The title must be 150 characters or fewer and set in sentence case (only the first word and proper nouns capitalized). It should be specific, descriptive, concise, and comprehensible to readers outside the subject field. Avoid abbreviations if possible.
Example:
Proactive ecology in the Anthropocene: A shift to a leadership role in defining problems and possibilitiesAll persons designated as authors should qualify for authorship, and all those who qualify should be listed (see Editorial Policies). Each author must have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for appropriate portions of the content. Those who contributed to the work but do not qualify for authorship should be listed in the acknowledgments.
When a large group or center has conducted the work, the author list should include the individuals whose contributions meet the criteria defined above, as well as the group name.
One author should be designated (with an asterisk) as the corresponding author, and his or her email address should be included on the manuscript cover page. This information will be published with the article, if accepted.
All author names should be listed in the following order:
Each author should list an associated department, university, or organizational affiliation and its location, including city, state/province (if applicable), and country. If the article has been submitted on behalf of a consortium, all author names and affiliations should be listed.
Example:
AnneMarie Luijendijk, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey, United States
– or –
AnneMarie Luijendijk1
1Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey, United States
The abstract should provide a clear description of the main objective(s) of the submission, explain how the study was done (as applicable), and summarize the article’s most important conclusions and their significance to a potentially wider audience. Abstracts should not exceed 300 words, and should not include sub-headings.
Please do not include citations in your abstract and avoid the use of abbreviations, if possible.
ReferencesPublished works, works accepted for publication, and citable datasets should appear in the reference list. Mentions of unpublished work should be cited parenthetically within the main text of the article as personal communications.
Elementa employs the name-year (or “Harvard”) system of in-text references, in which the author’s surname and year of publication are cited in the text of your work, enclosed in parentheses. The reference list (appearing at the end of the article) should be in alphabetical order by author. Journals’ titles should be abbreviated following the ISI Journal Title Abbreviation List, but set in title case and italicized.
EndNote users can download the Elementa Endnote template here.
Detailed information on formatting references can be found in our Reference Style Guide. We use Scientific Style and Format: The CSE Manual for Authors, Editors, and Publishers as our primary style guide and highly recommend that authors consult it.
ContributionsPlease indicate author contributions as clearly as possible, according to the following criteria:
Example:
People who contributed to the work but do not fit our author criteria should be listed in the acknowledgments, along with their contributions. You must ensure that anyone named in the acknowledgments agrees to being so named.
Funding sources should not be included in the acknowledgments.
Funding informationPlease provide a list of the sources of funding, as well as the relevant grant numbers, where possible. List the authors associated with specific funding sources. You will also enter this information in a form during the submission process, but it must be repeated here.
In order to provide readers of articles with information about interests and relationships that might influence, or might be perceived to influence, the interpretation of articles published in Elementa, all individuals involved with a submission (authors, editors, external reviewers) are required to declare all competing interests. Corresponding authors must provide a statement of competing interests on behalf of all authors and, if no competing interests exist, state this specifically.
Authors who are also editors at Elementa play no role during the review process of their specific paper, and this is ensured by the publisher. However, authors who are also editors should still declare this (and corresponding authors should be aware of this on behalf of other authors who are also editors).
Erring on the side of full disclosure is best. For guidance, we encourage authors and editors to consult the NSF’s Conflict of Interest Policies and the thoughtful guidelines provided by PLoS One.
Supplemental materialAlthough we do not limit the number or type of supplemental material items authors may include, we do require that they provide a relevant and useful expansion of the article, and that they be as well described as are figures and tables included within the body of the article. We encourage authors to always consider clarity and ease of use for readers when presenting supplemental material: consider whether some supplementary files work best in a composite file (e.g. text, table, and figure in one downloadable document) or whether they are most useful downloaded separately as individual files. Please note, Editors are free to request changes in how supplemental files are presented to ensure clarity for readers. Good metadata of this material are key to discoverability and usefulness. All supplemental material should include the following:
Example:
Video S1. Selection of video footage showing typical examples of observed fish species attracted to baited remote underwater video systems in New Zealand waters. Representative footage from three locations (Three Kings Islands, Great Barrier Island and White Island) and seven depth strata are presented (50, 100, 300, 500, 700, 900 and 1200 m). (MP4)
Data accessibility statementWe require that authors include a “data accessibility statement” (DAS) with their submission. This should list the database(s) and the respective accession numbers and DOIs for all data from the manuscript that has been made publicly available.
Example:
The following datasets were generated:
Figure titles and legends (captions) for all figures should be included in the main article file, not as part of the figure files themselves. Each figure caption should be inserted immediately after the embedded figure in the article file, and should include the following information:.
Example:
Figure 2. Ordination of fish assemblages with depth at each of three New Zealand locations.
Non-metric MDS plot on the basis of Jaccard resemblances between fish assemblages consisting of averages from n = 6 baited remote underwater stereo-video system deployments within each combination of depth (50, 100, 300, 500, 700, 900 or 1200 m) and location (White Island, Great Barrier Island or the Three Kings Islands).
TablesTables should be cited in ascending numeric order upon first appearance. Each table should be inserted immediately after the first paragraph in which it is cited in the article file. All tables should have a concise title. Table footnotes can be used to explain abbreviations. Citations should be indicated using the same style as outlined above. Tables occupying more than one printed page should be avoided, if possible. Larger tables can be published as supplementary material. Please consult Table Preparation for detailed guidelines on formatting tables.
File TypesYou may submit your manuscript files in Microsoft Word (.doc or .docx), OpenOffice, LaTeX (as .pdf), or RTF format. Only RTF and .doc/.dox files can be used during the production process.
LaTeX submissions. Articles prepared in LaTeX must be submitted in PDF format for use during the review process. The PDF file is both necessary and sufficient for the review process. After acceptance, however, .tex files and formatting information will be required as a zipped file.
Submissions with EquationsMicrosoft Word Submissions with Equations. Editable versions of equations are required for production. If using a version older than Word 2010, please format equations using MathType. Do not insert your equations as Graphic Objects and do not use of Symbol font.
Figures should be included in the manuscript file, to aid with the review process, but must always also be uploaded as separate files in the exact order that they appear in the manuscript, to our manuscript submission system. Detailed instructions for formatting figures can be found in our Figure Preparation section.
Information integral to a full understanding of the article but are in formats that (a) cannot be rendered in two dimensions or (b) are too large to be clearly represented in current viewing systems (Web browsers, e-readers, PDF) should be submitted as supplemental material. Examples of this category of supplemental material include very large tables, audios, videos, three-dimensional visualizations, interactive graphics, and so on. Please consult Supplemental Material & Data for additional information.
Multimedia files (.avi or .swf files) must be uploaded as supplementary material and not main figures. See Supplemental Material & Data for more information.
Users of EndNote can download the Elementa template here.
Elementa’s LaTeX template can be downloaded as a zip file here. The folder contains a BibTeX file to ensure correct reference formatting.
For authors submitting manuscripts in Microsoft Word, we have created a Word style template(.dotx) that includes preferred styles. We strongly encourage authors to review this template for submission components and ordering, and then install the template, as follows:
1. Download the template file and save it to your computer
2. Open your manuscript file in Word
3. Delete any embedded styles from your Word document:
4. Attach the Elementa template to your document:
The Elementa paragraph styles should now appear in the Styles list of the Format toolbar, as follows:
As part of the submission process, authors are required to check off their submission's compliance with all of the following items, and submissions may be returned to authors that do not adhere to these guidelines.
The names and email addresses entered in this journal site will be used exclusively for the stated purposes of this journal and will not be made available for any other purpose or to any other party. For more information, see the full Privacy Policy here.
Thank you for your interest in publishing in Elementa. Elementa is a fully open access journal, meaning that there is no charge to read, download, or use any content published, and content is published with open reuse licenses. In order to keep the journal free to read, the University of California Press charges a flat article processing charge (APC) of $1,450 for most articles published in the journal except for a Commentary and Comment & Reply articles that are charged at $650. This fee helps us recover the costs of production, hosting, and a number of other services related to article publication and overall journal management. A portion of every APC collected from authors (currently, $250 per article) is automatically allocated to a fee waiver fund that is used to help authors who lack external or institutional funding pay their publication fees.
UC Press has partnered with Copyright Clearance Center (CCC) to process author APC payments. Upon acceptance of a paper for publication the primary author, also known as the corresponding author, will receive an email with detailed instructions and a link to either pay the fee through CCC’s secure e-commerce system or generate an invoice, which can be used to pay by check, wire, or other means. Accepted articles will not be published until funds have been received. Because we try to keep our APCs low, and because a portion of the proceeds is diverted to a waiver fund, we ask that all of those who have the means to pay refrain from requesting fee waivers and other discounts. Your payments ensure that as many researchers as possible have the opportunity to publish in the journal.
The University of California Press offers several discount and waiver programs in order to try to ensure that anyone wishing to publish in the journal has the opportunity to do so without regard to their ability to pay. In some cases, the discount may be applied automatically, and in other cases, it must be requested.
University of California fee waiver—Fees are currently waived for all faculty, staff, and students of the University of California system. The Editorial Committee of the Academic Senate has allocated funding specifically for this use. The waiver will be applied upon acceptance of the article.
Discount for authors from low and middle-income countries—Corresponding authors whose primary affiliations are eligible for the Research4Life program, Groups A & B, are currently automatically offered a 75% discount through CCC’s e-commerce system. This discount will be applied when an eligible author clicks the link to pay their fees or generate an invoice for payment.
Full Fee Waivers— If you are unable to pay the APC for your article, you may request a fee waiver from the University of California Press. Our manuscript submission system will guide you through this process. A member of the UC Press team will be in contact with you regarding your waiver request as soon as it is received. Waiver requests are subject to the availability of funding in the fee waiver fund.
We thank you in advance for your support of Elementa. Our wish is to continue to maintain the journal’s high quality and standards, and your prompt attention to the payment of article processing charges ensures that we can continue our focus on delivering an outstanding experience to authors, researchers, and readers.