The current journal is mainly focused in zoological systematics. According to Systematics Agenda 2000 (1994), systematics is the science built on the following tasks: Taxonomy—the science of discovering, describing, and classifying species or groups of species (together termed taxa); Phylogenetic analysis—the discovery of the evolutionary relationships among a group of species; and Classification—the grouping of species, ultimately on the basis of evolutionary relationships.
1 General.
Manuscript submissions should be written in English and in either RTF or Word format. If possible, use Times New Roman 10 point font; minimize formatting by using bold and italics only where necessary; indent the beginning of all paragraphs by 4 characters. Taxonomic names must agree with the articles and recommendations of the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature.
hyphens "-": for words. For example: fishtail-shaped; finger-like.
n-dash "–": for ranges. For example: Leg I–III; 1977–1981; Figs 5–34.
m-dash "—": for appositions that may replace commas, colons and parentheses. For example: It is hard to recognize the Camellia fruit borer—Neoblastobasis camelliae—a new species of Blastobasidae.
Do not insert spaces when using either n-dashes or m-dashes.
2 Title, authors and affiliations
The title of the paper should be informative yet concise. Indicate higher taxonomic categories using parenthesis and list in hierarchical order (Order: Family: Subfamily 1, Subfamily 2). Place a colon “:” between different hierarchical levels and a comma ",": between the same levels. Give common names to facilitate reading by non-specialists.
For example: A taxonomic revision of the hawk moth genus Lapara (Lepidoptera: Sphingidae).
Give the full name of all authors and start each name with capital letters. For Chinese names, the given name should be connected by a hyphen "-" if it is not a single character. For example: Xiao-Ming Wang.
The author addresses should be in italics as follows: institutional affiliation (university, institute), city, state/province (if applicable), postal code, country, E-mail. Designate one corresponding author. For example: Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100101, China, E-mail: dwfl@ioz.ac.cn.
3 Abstract
The abstract should be a concise summary of the significant content and salient conclusions of the work. Explicitly mention all taxonomic changes proposed in the paper. For example: Our analyses discovered three new taxa: taxon A, taxon B and taxon C.
From three to eight key words should follow the abstract and separate using commas. The key words should not be present in the title and abstracts.
4 Main text
The main text should include an Introduction, Materials and methods, Results, Discussion, Acknowledgements and References. If applicable, list the Funding support before the Acknowledgements. For taxonomic works: the Materials and methods can include the deposition of specimens, methods used for drawings and photos, terminology in text, etc.
Use either simple or short compound sentences for clarity. Authors who are not native English-speakers are strongly encouraged to have their manuscript read by native speakers before submission. For taxonomic works, use complete sentences rather than the "subject+object” model in the description section of the Introduction, Diagnosis, Remarks, etc.
4.1 Number the heading levels
The following format is suggested for Zoological Systematics.
1 Introduction
2 Material and methods
3 Results/Systematics/Taxonomy
3.1 Result 1
3.2 Result 2
4 Discussion
Funding
Acknowledgements
References
4.2 Table
Tables should immediately follow the References. The font should be in Times New Roman and 9 point.
4.3 Figures
Figures should be JPG, JPEG, GIF, TIFF or PNG files of publishable quality. For the review, lower-quality figures can be embedded in the Word document after the tables, if they exist. Figures of higher quality may be required upon acceptance. Color photographs and drawings are preferred, although B&W figures are acceptable. Software, such as Adobe Illustrator® or Adobe Photoshop®, can be used to clean up the background and number the figures. For the initial submission, combine all figures into one large PDF file. Size the document to ≥23cm×16cm and ≥300dpi (Word size: 10 points).
In the text, refer to figures as follows: Fig. 1; Figs 2, 3. Number compound figures sequentially first from top to bottom then from left to right. Provide scales in all figures depicting morphological characters. For example: Figs 1–3. Adults. 1, species A; 2, species B. Scale bar =1cm. Fig. 1. Genus species. A, Habitus; B, C, male genitalia; D–F, head (D), thorax (E) and abdomen (F). Scale bar = 1cm.
4.4 References
Journal:
Authors. Year. Title of the paper. Title of the journal (in full when possible), volume number (issue number): page range. doi number (if possible).
Book chapter:
Authors. Year. Title of chapter. In: Editor(s) (ed./eds.), Title of the book. Publisher location: Publisher. pp. page range.
Book:
Authors. Year. Title of the book. Publisher location: Publisher. Pages pp.
Internet resource:
Authors. Year(s). Title of website, database or other resources. Available from http://....../ (Date of access).
4.5 Description of a species
When describing a taxon, the following order is suggested.
1) Taxon name. Scientific name (with author and year); citation. All citations of the taxon should be listed in references section.
2) Diagnosis. Only diagnostic characters from similar species.
3) Description. All characters of the taxon.
4) Material examined.
Holotype ♂, China: Beijing, Badaling (40.35ºN, 116.02ºE; elevation 1300m), 5 September 1992, leg. Xin-Ming Wang (Deposition and register no.). Paratypes 5♀, same data as holotype. Other material examined. Country: State, locality A (geographic coordinates and elevation), ♂♀, date, collecter (Collection and registration no.); locality B (geographic coordinates and elevation), ♂♀, date, collector (Collection and registration no.).
5) Biology. Biological habits, life cycle, hosts, etc.
6) Distribution. For example: China (Beijing, Hebei, Shanxi, Tianjin); India, Japan, Korea, Mongolia, Nepal, Russia.
7) Etymology. Language of origin for word (stem) (Latin, Greek); adjective, noun in apposition.
8) Remarks/Notes/Discussion/Other.
5 Molecular data
When applicable, all DNA sequence data must be deposited in a public repository, such as GenBank, before publication.