Publication Guidelines - Notes and Records

GENERAL BACKGROUND | FORMAT FOR TEXT | REFERENCES | TABLES AND FIGURES | NOTES AND RECORDS

Notes (Botanical, Fish, Geological, Turtle and Zoological) and Records (Plant Records, Cetacean Notes, Field Records - Insects) have their own particular points of style and format. In all cases the text should be as concise as is possible whilst still presenting a comprehensive scientific report.

• Abbreviations should be used whenever possible, in particular in giving compass points and names of collectors etc. In the latter case, if a name appears more than two-times then the initials should be used with a key being included at the beginning of the note.
  The following represent a number of commonly-used abbreviations and these should be used whenever necessary: Circa - c; County - Co (NB. no full stop); Counties - Cos; near - nr; river - R; Mountains - Mtns; Lough - L; Department of the Environment (Northern Ireland) - DoE(NI); right - R; left - L; hectare - ha; Linnaeus - L.; north - N; south - S; east - E; west - W. NB: 'N' should not be used for 'Northern' etc.

• For all records, the date of collection and the Irish grid reference (as e.g. 'J450680') of the site should be given (it is not necessary to precede it with'Grid ref.').

• For the Irish vice-counties it is sufficient to give these as the number preceded by 'H'. It is not necessary to indicate that it is a vice-county number, i.e. by preceding it by 'v.c.'.

• References should be given in the body of the text of a note in one of the following formats:
  
  '… as noted in Corbet, G. B. and Southern, H. N. (1977 The handbook of British mammals. Second edition. Blackwell, Oxford)…';
  '… based on mandible length (Morris, P. A. 1979 Journal of Zoology, London 189:540-545) …';
  '… reviewed by Nash (R. 1985 Irish Naturalists' Journal 21:463-464).

• When a reference is cited more than once in a note the second and subsequent references should be referred to by the author's name and year of publication followed by op. cit. e.g; '… Corbet and Southern (1977 op. cit.) …' '… (Morris 1979 op. cit.) …' '… Nash (1985 op. cit.) …'

• Titles for all notes should be in bold sentence case and left-justified for. Titles for Records and Notes should always include the vice-county number where this is appropriate.

• The name(s) and addresses) of the author(s) should appear at the end of the note: the name(s) in bold, left-justified followed by the address, also left justified, in italics but not emboldened.

SPECIFIC POINTS TO NOTE

• Abbreviations which are a contraction of the word they represent, and which therefore end in the same letter as the word, should not be followed by a full stop, e.g. 'Mr', 'Dr', 'Handbk'' etc.

• The limits in a range of dates should be separated by a hyphen, e.g. '18-19 October'; '1989-90'.

• The abbreviations 'sp', 'ssp', 'var', 'coll', 'det' and c' (for circa) should be given without a full stop.

• When initials of authors or collectors etc. are given in place of the names full stops should not be used. Initials preceding a surname should be followed by full stops, e.g. RNG, R. N. Govier.

• The '-ize'-ending should be used in preference to the '-ise' form of a word. e.g.: 'colonize', 'organize', 'emphasize', 'recognize'.

• Names of ships should be given as e.g.'… MV Titanic …'

• Terms such as 'natural history', 'entomology' etc. should not be given capital letters.

• The generic name of an organism should be given in full at first mention, at the start of a sentence and at the first mention in any section of a paper. At all other times it should be abbreviated to the initial letter capitalized and followed by a full stop. e.g. ' Calluna vulgaris', 'C. vulgaris', unless another species with a generic name starting with the same letter has been mentioned since that generic name last appeared in full.

• Decades should be indicated as e.g. '… in the 1980s …'

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