Manuscript formatting

For general instructions on how to submit a new manuscript, see Submissions.

Use either British or American English consistently throughout the manuscript. Write in a clear style and avoid unnecessarily complicated language. Preferably avoid the use of passive voice, but use the pronouns I (we), me (us), and my (our). If the language is found to be inadequate, the manuscript may be returned for further corrections.

Use exclusively the NORMAL style setting of your word processor for the entire manuscript (no indentation, boldface, capitalisation, multiple spaces, tabulators, or other unusual formatting). Insert a blank line before each element of the text (headings, subheadings, paragraphs, tables). Do not use section or page breaks.

Generally, manuscript should follow the order title page, introduction, material and methods, results, discussion, acknowledgements, references, figure captions, tables, and appendices.

1. Title page   2. Tenses   3. Dashes   4. Numbers   5. Italicization   6. Symbols   7. Units   8. Time and dates   9. Geographic nomenclature   10. Footnotes, equations   11. References   12. Tables, figures, appendices

1. Title page

• Title: Not capitalised, not in boldface, not centred.
• Authors: List all authors with first name in full followed by possible initials and surname (i.e., James T. Brown, not J. T. Brown). If available, include Orcid identifier in parentheses after each author's name.
• Affiliations: As complete as possible, including the corresponding author's e-mail. Each author's affiliation should be identified with numbers in superscript. Please note that an institutional affiliation indicates the institution where the actual research work was done.
• Abstract: One paragraph of up to 150 words. References to literature are not allowed.

2. Tenses

• Established knowledge (results of previous studies) is given in the present simple tense.
• Describe your methods and results in the past simple tense.
• Attributions (e.g. Jones (1995) reported that ...) are in the past simple tense.
• So-called 'perfect tenses' (e.g. present perfect) are rarely needed.

3. Dashes

• A hyphen (the shortest dash "-") is used e.g., in hyphenation and compound words.
• An en-dash ("–"; coded in a manuscript with two hyphens "--") is chiefly used in ranges of values or dates (2–5, meaning from two to five) and as a minus in subtraction (5 – 2, NOTE: spaces before and after the dash)
• An em-dash (the longest dash "—"; indicated in a manuscript with three hyphens "---") is chiefly used in references (see below).

4. Numbers

• Always use decimal points '.', NOT commas ','.
• Always use leading zeros in decimal fractions.
• In long numerals (five or more digits), the digits should be marked off in groups of three by spaces (e.g., 15 369).
• Numbers from 1 to 10 (also ordinals) in the text should be written out (not '5' but 'five').

5. Italicization

• Latin names of genera and lower taxa (e.g., Salmo trutta).
• Words which are originally not English (e.g., in vitro).
• Titles of books and ship (vessel) names
• For italicisation of symbols, see below.

6. Symbols

• One-letter symbols representing variables or constants, regardless of their position (normal, in subscript or superscript), are italicised.
• Multi-letter symbols representing variables or constants are not italicised.
• Vectors are set in boldface italic.
• Matrices are set in boldface but not italics.
• Multiplication symbol in equations is 'x', not a dot.
• Avoid unnecessary non-standard abbreviations and acronyms (e.g. tot. instead of total).

7. Units

• Only SI units should be used (with some exceptions e.g., 1 μm not 10^–6 m).
• In composite units, use numbers in superscript instead of divisions (e.g. 30 m s^–1 not 30 m/s), also in figures and tables.
• In graphs, give units after the axes in parentheses '()' not brackets '[]' or after a comma.

8. Time and dates

• The 24-hour system should exclusively be used. The day begins at midnight (00:00) and ends at 23:59.
• Dates should be written in the order day.month.year; months should be written in full or abbreviated: e.g., 12 Dec. 1972 or 12 December 1972.

9. Geographic nomenclature

Always use internationally recognised and existing names. In questionable cases, refer to the Merriam-Webster's Geographic Dictionary to make sure that a name you intend to use is listed in its index and the spelling is correct. Use of coordinates (latitude and longitude) is strongly recommended

10. Footnotes, equations

• Footnotes are usually allowed only in tables.
• Each equation occupies a separate line. Place an equation's number on the right-hand side e.g.: N = 0.3Wln(a + b) (1). Equations should be referred to as "Eq.", followed by an equation number. Long equations (over column width), should be split in two or more parts connected with operators. Equations embedded in the text should preferably be written with either MSEquation Editor of MathType.

11. References

The references should be verified by the authors against the original documents. If an article has not been read by the authors but its conclusions found in another publication (secondary source), it may be cited in the text only as follows: e.g. Miller's (1972) results as cited in Ashworth (1996)... In the reference list, however, only the secondary source (i.e. Ashworth 1996) is given.

Referring to a website: Place the URL (link) in the text where appropriate, not in the reference list. The URL should lead directly to the information referred to, not to a main page of the online resource: e.g., Betula pubescens f. barbara is a synonym of B. pubescens var. pubescens (https://powo.science.kew.org/taxon/urn:lsid:ipni.org:names:550980-4).

Material in preparation, unpublished or submitted cannot be included in the reference list. It can be referred to in the text using the author's name followed by "unpubl. data" or "pers. comm.".

Citing literature in the text

• Publication with one author only: Hänninen (1990) or (Hänninen 1990).
• Publication with two authors: Kurtén and Anderson (1980) or (Kurtén & Anderson 1980).
• Publication with more than two authors: Mihok et al. (1985) or (Mihok et al. 1985).
• If you wish to indicate specific pages that contain information used in the paper, please give these page numbers after the reference (e.g. Hänninen 1990: 160).
• When referring to more than one publication, arrange according to the year of publication (ascending; same year publications arrange alphabetically).
• If referring to figures or tables published elsewhere, the citation should be followed by 'fig.' or 'table', respectively (e.g., Turchin et al. 2003: fig. 3).

The reference list

• Arrange the references as follows
1. Authors' alphabetical order
2. Year of publication
• With few exceptions (e.g., PLoS), journals' names should be given in full and italicised.
• Article in a journal
• Always include DOI if available. For online-only journals, if DOI does not exist, give URL instead.
• One author: Floden A. 2025: Lectotypification of eleven names in Polygonatum (Asparagaceae). --- Annales Botanici Fennici 62: 1--9, https://doi.org/10.5735/085.062.0101.
• Two authors: Fortelius M. & Werdelin L. 2024: Double exposure: recollections of Björn Kurtén. --- Annales Zoologici Fennici 61: 47--55, https://doi.org/10.5735/086.061.0105.
• More than two authors (list all auhors regardless of their number): Minh B.Q., Schmidt H.A., Chernomor O., Schrempf D., Woodhams M.D., von Haeseler A. & Lanfear R. 2020: IQ-TREE 2: New models and efficient methods for phylogenetic inference in the genomic era. --- Molecular Biology and Evolution 37: 1530--1534, https://doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msaa131.
• In a foreign language with English abstract: Hytönen J. & Wall A. 1997. Metsitettyjen turvepeltojen ja viereisten suometsien ravinnemäärät [Nutrient amounts of afforested peat fields and neighbouring peatland forests]. --- Suo 48: 33--42. [In Finnish with English summary].
• In an online-only journal without page numbers: Gupta A., Ahmad M. & Wagh V.V. 2024: Pouzolzia friisii (Urticaceae, Boehmerieae), a new species from north-east India. --- Nordic Journal of Botany 2024: e04474, https://doi.org/10.1111/njb.04474.
• Chapter in a book: Hänninen H. 1990: Modelling dormancy release in trees from cool and temperate regions. --- In: Dixon R.K., Melhdahl R.S., Ruak G.A. & Warren W.G. (eds.), Process modelling of forest growth responses to environmental stress: 159--165. Timber Press Portland.
• All the authors and editors listed, book's title italicised, with the publisher's name and location.
• The page numbers are those of the first and last pages of the chapter that is refrerred to. If you wish to indicate specific pages that contain information used in the paper, please give these pages in the in-text citation (e.g. Hänninen, H. 1990: 160--162).
• Book
• Anderson R.M. & May R.M. 1982: Population biology of infectious diseases. --- Springer-Verlag, Berlin.
• Finnish Meteorological Institute 1989: Climatological data 1988. --- Meteorological Yearbook of Finland.
• All the authors and editors listed, book's title italicised, with the publisher's name and location.
• Article or book printed in non-Roman scripts (e.g. Cyrillic, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese)
• Include the transliterated authors' names, the transliterated book publisher's name and place, or journal's title, and the original language in the end in brackets.
• With English summary or abstract: Korbut V.V. 1989: Nest building of hooded crows. 1. Utilisation of different substrata. --- Zoologicheskii Zhurnal 68: 88--95. [In Russian with English summary].
• Without English summary
• Only include the English translation of the title in brackets. If not given in the publication please provide your own.
• Abramov A.L. & Abramov I.I. 1956: [Mnium immarginatum (Lindb.) Broth. from Mongolia]. --- Botanicheskii Zhurnal 41: 89--91. [In Russian].
• Ho T.N. 1985: [A study on the genus Gentiana of China, IV]. --- Bulletin of Botanical Research 5(4): 1--22. [In Chinese].
• Article in press: Include at least the name of the journal and the publication year. "[In press]" should be added at the end of the reference.

12. Tables, figures, appendices

• A table, figure or an appendix with its caption should be comprehensible without reference to the main text.
• All tables, figures and appendices must be cited in the text and numbered (e.g. Fig. 1, Fig. 2, etc.) in the order in which they appear in the text.
• Refer to tables, figures and appendices parenthetically (i.e., "The number increased throughout the year (Fig. 1)", NOT, e.g., "Fig. 1 shows...").
• All supplementary material (tables and figures) should be presented in appendices.
• If referring to figures or tables published elsewhere, the citation should be followed by 'fig.' or 'table', respectively (e.g., Turchin et al. 2003: fig. 3).
• See also the specific instructions on how to prepare your figures.

Tables

• Prepare tables with your word processing programme (NOT e.g., Excel). Do not insert line breaks (¶) and/or preceding/trailing spaces inside table cells (i.e. there can be only one line of text within a cell; see the example).
• Table should fit a B5-sized page.
• Place the the tables at end of the text file, after references.
• Table should not be divided into parts or sections identified with letters.