Guidelines for Authors

The scientific journal Natural History Sciences (NHS) was founded in 2014 to publish original research in all fields of natural sciences. The journal was historically preceded by Atti della Società Geologica residente in Milano (1855), Atti della Società italiana di Scienze naturali (1859) and Atti della Società italiana di Scienze naturali e del Museo civico di Storia naturale in Milano (1896) and continues their distinguished tradition.

The scientific journal Natural History Sciences publishes the following article types:

Manuscripts will be carefully scrutinized for evidence of plagiarism, duplication and data manipulation; in particular, images will be carefully examined for any indication of intentional improper modification.

Any suspected misconduct ends up with a quick rejection and is then reported to the US Office of Research Integrity.

Submission checklist

You can use this list to carry out a final check of your submission before you send it to the journal for review. Please check the relevant section in this Guide for Authors for more details. Ensure that your work is written in correct English before submission.

Ensure that the following items are present:

One author (multiple corresponding authors are not allowed) has been designated as the corresponding author with contact details:

      • E-mail address
      • Full postal address

All necessary files have been uploaded:

      • Manuscript file
      • Include keywords (no more than five)
      • All figures (include relevant captions)
      • All tables (including titles, description, footnotes)
      • Ensure all figure and table citations in the text match the files provided

Further considerations

      • Please prepare your manuscript for the single-blind peer review;
      • Ensure that all references mentioned in the Reference List are cited in the text, and vice versa
      • Permission has been obtained for use of copyrighted material from other sources (including the Internet)
      • A competing interests statement is provided, even if the authors have no competing interests to declare
      • Journal policies detailed in this guide have been reviewed
      • Referee suggestions and contact details provided, based on journal requirements
      • Manuscript has been 'spell checked' and 'grammar checked'. Ensure that your work is written in correct English before submission. Note that submitted manuscripts will not go through language-focused copyediting with the journal prior to or after acceptance; language-focused copyediting is the responsibility of the authors prior to submission. Authors whose native language is not English are strongly recommended to have their manuscript checked by a language editing service. Professional copyediting can help authors improve the presentation of their work and increase their chances of being taken on by a publisher. In case you feel that your manuscript would benefit from professional English language copyediting checking language grammar and style, you can find a reliable revision service at:

 

Submission Procedure

The Corresponding Author (multiple corresponding authors are not allowed) must submit the manuscript online-only through our Manuscript Submission System. The Authors' metadata must be duly completed, by adding "contributors" when needed. Metadata are crucial for the indexing of the paper and of authors, and for attribution of copyright to ALL authors.

Attention: any submission received for a manuscript with more than one contributor, in which only one author has been inserted in the metadata, will result in immediate rejection, asking for a correct re-submission.

Authors are kindly invited to suggest potential reviewers (names, affiliations and email addresses) for their manuscript.

Declarations

All manuscripts must contain the following sections (compulsory):

  • Availability of data and material
  • Competing interests
  • Funding
  • Authors' contributions
  • Acknowledgements

Please see below for details on the information to be included in these sections.

If any of the sections are not relevant to your manuscript, please include the heading and write 'Not applicable' for that section. 

Availability of data and materials
All manuscripts must include a statement about the availability of data and materials. Data availability statements should include information on where to find data supporting the results reported in the article, such as hyperlinks to publicly archived datasets analyzed or generated during the study, if applicable.
If your manuscript does not contain any data, please state 'Not applicable' in this section.

Competing interest
This section requires the declaration of all competing financial and non-financial interests. Please contact the editorial office if you are unsure whether you or any of your co-authors have a competing interest. In this section, please use the authors' initials to refer to each author's competing interests. If you have no competing interests, please state in this section "The authors declare that they have no competing interests".

Funding
All sources of funding for the research reported should be declared. If the funder has a specific role in the conceptualization, design, data collection, analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript, this should be declared.

Authors' contributions
The individual contributions of authors to the manuscript should be specified in this section. Criteria for authorship can be found below (section Authorship and Contributorship). Please use initials to refer to each author's contribution in this section, for example: "FC, study concept, data analysis and interpretation, manuscript original drafting; RH, statistical analyses, histological examination, contribution to manuscript writing and editing. All the authors read and approved the final version of the manuscript and agreed to be accountable for all aspects of the work”.

 Acknowledgements
Please acknowledge anyone who contributed to the article but does not meet the criteria for authorship, including anyone who provided professional writing services or materials. Authors should obtain permission to acknowledge from all those mentioned in the Acknowledgements section.
If you do not have anyone to acknowledge, please write "Not applicable" in this section.


Preparing your manuscript

The Editorial Board will not accept papers that do not meet the following guidelines:.
Contributions MUST be written in English. 
Manuscripts should be submitted as a single WORD file containing the full paper, references, tables and figures captions. Tables and figures should be submitted as separate files.

First and second pages

The first page must contain:

  1. Title of the paper (lowercase), without acronyms;
  2. first name and family name of each author, separated by commas;
  3. affiliation(s) of each author (in English);
  4. full name and full postal address of the corresponding author (please note that multiple corresponding authors are not allowed). Phone, fax number and e-mail address for the correspondence should also be included;
  5. key words (no more than 5).
  6. acknowledgments;


The second page should contain:

  1. authors' contributions, e.g., information about the contributions of each person named as having participated in the study (role of authors and contributors);
  2. all the above-detailed Declarations;
  3. further information (e.g., conference presentation).


Tables and Figures

If tables are used, they should be double-spaced on separate pages of the manuscript, not embedded throughout the text. They should be numbered and cited in the text. Tables should be provided as editable Word files, and authors should ensure that they are presented in a publication-ready format. Considering how a table fits on a page in a wordprocessing program can often provide insight into how it will appear on a journal page.

Larger or more complex tables will be made available online as supplementary material at the Editorial Office's sole discretion, including ensuring efficient readability of the paper publishing format.

If figures are used, they should be numbered and cited in the text and inserted at the end of the manuscript. Figures should be designed using a well-known software package. Please note that the Production Office will not redraw or re-letter any image.

A different caption for each figure must be provided at the end of the manuscript. Figures with different panels have to be grouped into a plate, and panels marked with letters.

In case of acceptance, authors are required to provide the figures as .tiff or .jpg files, with the following digital resolution:

  1. Color (saved as CMYK): 300 dpi - maximum width 18 cm - minimum width 8.5 cm
  2. Black and white/grays: 600 dpi - maximum width 18 cm - minimum width 8.5 cm

Permissions

When citing someone else's work or considering reproducing figures or tables from a book or journal article, authors should make sure that they are not infringing a copyright.
In case extracts (text/figures/tables) from other copyrighted works are included, the author(s) must obtain written permission from the copyright holder(s) and credit the source(s) in the article. A copy of the written permission has to be provided before publication (otherwise the paper cannot be published) and appropriately cited. The procedure for requesting permission is the responsibility of the Authors; PAGEPress will not refund any costs incurred in obtaining permission.


Article types
Articles should be normally divided into Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results, Discussion, and References. The text must be preceded by an Abstract, in both English and Italian (Riassunto) that must be analytically informative. The Italian abstract must include the translation of the title. Key words (max 5) must be provided, in both English and Italian (Parole chiave). Captions of figures and headings of tables must be bilingual (English and Italian). Non-Italian speaking authors will be assisted in the translation by the editorial team.

Short Communications are papers with a simple layout, containing limited data (no more than two figures or tables) and a small number of citations. They should be limited to 2000 words of text (figure captions, table headings and reference lists are additional to this limit). See above paragraph for further instructions.

Scientific names
Common names of organisms should always be accompanied, when first cited, by their complete scientific name in italics (genus, species, authority and year of description). All papers must conform to the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature (ed. IV, 1999) and subsequent updates (http://iczn.org/code); the International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi, and plants (Melbourne Code) (http://www.iapt-taxon.org/nomen/main.php) and for standard abbreviations follow the International Plant Names Index (http://www.ipni.org/index.html). When first mentioned, a plant or animal should include the full scientific name and the author of the zoological name unabbreviated, except for Linnaeus (L.) and Fabricius (F.).

Geographical names should follow the Times World Atlases style (http://www.timesatlas.com/Pages/default.aspx).

Remarks must be preferably avoided; when necessary, they should be presented at the end of the text and identified by Arab numerals in superscript.


References

References must be formatted according to the following examples:

      • Article:
        • Biancardi C.M., Rigo V., Azzolini S. & Gnoli C., 2014 – Eurasian badger (Meles meles) habitat and sett site selection in the northern Apennines. Natural History Sciences, Milano, 1 (1): 41-48. doi: 10.4081/nhs.2014.56
      • Book chapter:
        • Brandbyge J., 1993 – Polygonaceae. In: The families and genera of vascular plants. Flowering plants. Dicotyledons. Magnoliid, Hamamelid and Caryophyllid families. Kubitzki K., Rohwer J. G. & Bittrich V. (eds.). Springer, Berlin, 2: 531-544
      • Monograph:
        • Dorst J. & Dandelot P., 1969 – A field guide to the larger mammals of Africa. Collins, London (UK).
      • Web site:
        • Thiers B., 2014 onwards – Index herbariorum: a global directory of public herbaria and associated staff. New York Botanical Garden. <http://sweetgum.nybg.org/ih/> (retrieved on December 2014).

Please list papers by more than two authors, but with the same first author, by year sequence and alphabetically within each year. Citation of authors in the text should appear in the form: (Polaszek, 1996). Authors should be cited in chronological order as: (Blackman et al., 1994; Roberts & Kumar, 1995).

 

Peer-review policy
All submissions to Natural History Sciences are first checked for completeness (criteria for desk reject are available in the Guide for Authors) before being sent to an Editor, who decides whether they are suitable for peer review. If an Editor is on the author list or has a competing interest in a particular manuscript, another member of the Editorial Board will be assigned to oversee peer review. When making a decision, Editors will consider the peer-reviewed reports, but they will not be bound by the opinions or recommendations contained in them. A single peer reviewer's or the Editor's concern may result in the manuscript being rejected. Peer review reports are sent to authors along with the editorial decision on their manuscript.

Please see the About the Journal page for more information.

Authorship and Contributorship
All persons designated as authors should qualify for authorship according to the ICMJE criteria. Each author should have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for the content. Authorship credit should only be based on substantial contributions to: i) conception and design, or analysis and interpretation of data, and to ii) drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content; and on iii) final approval of the version to be published; and iv) agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work. Participation solely in the acquisition of funding or the collection of data does not justify authorship. General supervision of the research group is not sufficient for authorship. Authors should provide a brief description of their individual contributions. Those who do not meet all four criteria should not be listed as authors, but they should be acknowledged. Those whose contributions do not justify authorship may be acknowledged individually or together as a group under a single heading. Authors can find detailed information on the Publisher's website.

Artificial Intelligence (AI)-Assisted Technology 
Authors must disclose whether they used artificial intelligence (AI)-assisted technologies (such as Large Language Models [LLMs], chatbots, or image creators) in the creation of submitted work. Chatbots (such as ChatGPT) should not be listed as authors because they cannot be held accountable for the work's accuracy, integrity, and originality, all of which are required for authorship. Because AI can generate authoritative-sounding output that is incorrect, incomplete, or biased, authors should carefully review and edit the result. Authors should be able to assert that their paper contains no plagiarism, including text and images generated by AI. Large Language Models (LLMs), such as ChatGPT, do not currently satisfy our authorship criteria. Notably an attribution of authorship carries with it accountability for the work, which cannot be effectively applied to LLMs. Use of an LLM should be properly documented in the Methods section (if a Methods section is not available, in a suitable alternative part) of the manuscript. Use of an LLM for language editing must be stated in the Acknowledgments section.

We will review this policy on a regular basis and, if necessary, adapt it as we anticipate rapid development in this field in the near future.


Changes in Authorship
Authors are expected to carefully consider the list and order of authors before submitting their manuscript and provide the definitive list of authors at the time of the original submission. Any addition, deletion or rearrangement of author names in the authorship list should be made only before the manuscript has been accepted and only if approved by the journal Editor:  Authors are requested to sign and send to the Editors a statement of agreement for the requested change from all listed authors and from the author(s) to be removed or added.
Please note that if your manuscript is accepted, you will not be able to make any changes to the authors, or order of authors, of your manuscript once the editor has accepted it for publication.
No changes to the Authors or Corresponding Author can be made after publication of the article. Instead, a corrigendum may be considered by the journal editor.


Early Access
This journal offers the Early Access service to authors and lets users access peer-reviewed and accepted articles well before publication in a regular issue.
The Early Access papers are newly published articles (Version of Records) but not yet assigned to an issue. These articles are searchable and citable by their DOI (Digital Object Identifier). 


Role of the funding source
Authors are requested to identify who provided financial support for the conduct of the research and/or preparation of the article and to briefly describe the role of the sponsor(s), if any, in study design; in the collection, analysis and interpretation of data; in the writing of the report; and in the decision to submit the article for publication. If the funding source(s) had no such involvement, it is recommended to state this.

Protection of Animals in Research

When reporting experiments on animals, authors should indicate whether the institutional and national guidelines for the care and use of laboratory animals were followed. Further guidance on animal research ethics is available from the World Medical Association (2016 revision).
When reporting experiments on ecosystems involving non-native species, Authors are bound to ensure compliance with the institutional and national guide for the preservation of native biodiversity.