Instructions for Contributors

We welcome submissions to Ecological Restoration from any part of the world. Submissions should relate to the restoration of plants, animals, ecological communities, or landscapes. We understand ecological restoration to be a multidisciplinary and diverse effort and welcome manuscripts considering ecological, social, and cultural aspects of restoration, as well as political, economic, legal, philosophical, and regulatory issues, urban restoration, and other subjects related to the ongoing development of the endeavor of ecological restoration. Relevant topics also include techniques and tools for planning, site preparation, species introduction, undesired species control, and monitoring. Manuscripts dealing with plant or animal community composition or general ecology must relate the work explicitly to ecological restoration practice and theory. Similarly, material dealing with reclamation or rehabilitation in a broader sense, or with restoration for economic purposes -- economic forestry, range management, waste disposal -- must be connected to ecological restoration.

Material may be submitted for the following categories (listed as they are encountered in the journal):

Letters to the Editor

Observations/Editorials/Commentary/Policy Reports

Restoration Notes (shorter items describing project updates, new collaborations, events, innovative technologies, preliminary or unusual findings, thought-provoking concepts, imaginative solutions, etc.)

Full-length feature articles on ecological restoration theory, practice, and research (case studies, research reports, photo essays, experiments, etc.)

Book, journal, web, or movie reviews

Authors of full-length articles, reviews, or general inquiries should send their material to Editor Mrill Ingram, mingram@wisc.edu. Manuscripts must be submitted with a cover letter stating that the material has not been previously published, and has not been submitted elsewhere and will not be until a final decision has been reached by the editor.

Authors of Restoration Notes should submit their manuscripts to Associate Editor Chris Reyes, cmreyes@wisc.edu.

If e-mail is unavailable, send a copy of the typed manuscript to Ecological Restoration, 1207 Seminole Hwy., Madison, WI 53711 USA.

Review and Editing Process

All efforts are made to find appropriate peer reviewers for research and practitioner-oriented manuscripts submitted to the journal (typically a minimum of three anonymous reviewers). The process requires approximately four to six months. Authors are welcome to suggest appropriate reviewers.

Restoration Notes are reviewed and edited in-house unless additional expertise is required to evaluate the submission.

Authors can expect to work closely with the editors to prepare manuscripts for a broad audience. The editors reserve the right to edit for style and clarity.

Style

Ecological Restoration reaches readers with a wide variety of backgrounds and interests. Practitioners of ecological restoration are both a core audience and source of contributions to ER. Contributors should use a straightforward style free of unnecessary technical terms and jargon. We prefer the active voice (for example, "We measured three trees" instead of "Three trees were measured"). We do not require the standard research publication format (literature review, methods, results, discussion), and encourage alternative formats. These include case studies with well-developed discussions of lessons for the general ecological restoration community, or articles on a specific study, beginning with a brief overview and relevance to a broader group of readers and including a discussion of the practical applications for ecological restorationists and their work.

Manuscript Specifications and Format

Manuscripts should be in English with one-and-one-half or double spacing and one-inch margins. Submissions should include a brief but descriptive title, followed by the author name(s). Affiliation and contact information should be provided at the end of the article after the references. Authors of full-length articles should include a 250-word abstract plus a set of no more than five alphabetized keywords. On-line appendices are available for extensive quantitative data or detailed statistical analyses in full-length articles.

We appreciate full-length manuscripts kept below 6,000 words, although we will accept longer pieces when appropriate. Restoration Notes are generally a maximum of 1,500 words and may include up to two accompanying graphics. Book reviews are typically less than 2,000 words.

Avoid footnotes in articles, Restoration Notes, and tables. We use metric measurements. Write out numbers ten and under, except when supplying measurements or in tables. Spell out each acronym the first time it is used in the text and captions: warm-season grasses (WSG). Limit text format to bold and italic instead of defined styles and use carriage returns to create additional spacing between lines.

Scientific names for all species should be presented in italics and parentheses after the first usage of each common name in the text: Culver's root (Veronicastrum virginicum). The Integrated Taxonomic Information System is our default nomenclatural authority, but authors may use regional taxonomic sources when cited appropriately. Statistical terms and other measures should conform to the Council of Biology Editors Style Manual. Please consult the Chicago Manual of Style (15th ed.) for additional style and format information and the Merriam-Webster Dictionary (11th ed.) for spelling and hyphenation preferences.

We use the author-date system for citations: (Xi et al. 2008a, 2008b, Smart and Dick 1999, Jordan 2003, ISCO 2006). References should be in alphabetical order by author and single spaced with a hanging indent. If different works by the same author are referenced, list them in chronological order. Please see examples below or refer to past issues of Ecological Restoration for reference formats. Authors of Restoration Notes and book reviews should keep references to a few key citations.

Sample References

Illinois State Climatologist Office (ISCO). 2006. ISWS climate data: Monthly data for station 113320 (Galesburg). www.sws.uiuc.edu/data/climatedb/choose.asp?stn=113320

Jordan, W.R., III. 2000. Restoration, community, and wilderness. Pages 21-36 in P.H. Gobster and R.B. Hull (eds), Restoring Nature: Perspectives from the Social Sciences and Humanities. Washington DC: Island Press.

___. 2003. The Sunflower Forest: Ecological Restoration and the New Communion with Nature. Los Angeles: University of California Press.

Kilvington, M., J. Rosier, R. Wilkinson and C. Freeman. 1998. Urban restoration: Social opportunities and constraints. Paper presented to the Symposium on Restoring the Health and Wealth of Ecosystems, Christchurch, New Zealand, September 28-30.

Richburg, J.A., A.C. Dibble and W.A. Patterson III. 2002. Woody invasive species and their role in altering fire regimes of the northeast and mid-Atlantic states. Pages 104-111 in K.E.M. Galley and T.P. Wilson (eds), Proceedings of the Invasive Species Workshop. Miscellaneous Publication No. 11. Tallahassee FL: Tall Timbers Research Station.

Smart, R.M. and G.O. Dick. 1999. Propagation and establishment of aquatic plants: A handbook for ecosystem restoration projects. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Technical Report A-99-4.

Wood, S.H. 1975. Holocene stratigraphy and chronology of mountain meadows, Sierra Nevada, California. PhD dissertation, California Institute of Technology.

Xi, W., R.K. Peet, J.K. DeCoster and D.L. Urban. 2008a. Tree damage risk factors associated with large, infrequent wind disturbances of Carolina forests. Forestry DOI 10.1093/forestry/cpn020.

Xi, W., R.K. Peet and D.L. Urban. 2008b. Changes in forest structure, species diversity, and spatial pattern following hurricane disturbance in a Piedmont North Carolina forest, USA. Journal of Plant Ecology 1:43-57.

Tables, Photos, and Illustrations

We encourage authors to take tables and figures and their captions seriously. Each caption should be useful and detailed, consisting of 1-3 sentences explaining the content and photo credits when appropriate. Photographs can be used to illustrate points made in the manuscript or to augment the article with additional information about the people, plants, animals, or technologies that were involved. Figures will be reproduced in black and white in the print version of Ecological Restoration (usually requiring higher contrast) and can be reproduced in color in the online version. We use color photos on the front and back covers of the journal and welcome submissions of eye-catching, informative, high-quality photographs.

For all graphic material submitted electronically, please use a consistent file name beginning with the first author's name and then numbered sequentially as the graphics are referred to in the manuscript (e.g., Anderson Photo1.tif; or Anderson Table 2.doc). Label multiple tables and figures and refer to them in the body of the manuscript. MS Word tables are the preferred format for tables. Figures must be of quality suitable for reproduction with a minimum resolution of 300 dpi for photos (tif or pdf preferred, jpg acceptable), 400 dpi for images containing text, and 600 dpi for images containing fine details (pdf and eps preferred, ai, ps, psd acceptable). Original submissions may include graphics as part of the document file, but once accepted, separate higher quality graphic files will be required. Please refer to www.wisc.edu/wisconsinpress/journals/preparing_illustrations.html for detailed information on the preparation of figures for publication.

If no electronic versions of photos are available, please contact the editors.