Plant Diversity of Central Asia

Aims and scope

Plant Diversity of Central Asia is a peer-reviewed scientific journal publishing original research and review papers on all aspects of plant (including algae, and bryophytes) and fungi biodiversity and biodiversity conservation.

Papers in any of the following and related fields will be considered: systematics, phylogenetics and phylogenomics, biogeography (including phylogeography), ecology, vegetation science, ethnobotany, conservation biology and palaeobotany, with a geographical focus on Central Asia. Research with a sampling basis outside Central Asia is accepted when is relevant for Central Asia (e.g. evolutionary lineages related to current plant diversity in Central Asian biomes) or in the context of special issues focused on topics of worldwide interest to the community of plant systematic, evolutionary and plant conservation biologists.

Editorial policy

The manuscripts submitted to the Journal are first assessed by the editor-in-chief, and either rejected at this stage or entered into a review process. The members of the editorial board manage peer review and make recommendations to the editor-in-chief. Then editor-in-chief makes final decisions. We strive for a rapid review process with editorial decision for the first submission to be within one month of receipt.

Submission of a manuscript implies that:

- the work described has not been published before and is not being considered for publication elsewhere;

- all authors have contributed sufficiently to the work, approved the final version and agree to be listed exactly as submitted to the journal;

- the authors agree to automatically transfer the copy-right for accepted manuscripts to the publisher;

- that the manuscript will not be published elsewhere in any language without the consent of the copyright holder.

Manuscript Submission

Submit your manuscript online via ........ In case of difficulty, you may alternatively submit directly to the editor-in-chief ....... as e-mail attachment. You should submit manuscript as single file inclusive of main text, tables, figure caption and figures; editable/source files only (MS Word preferred) and supporting information, if any, as a separate file.

Submission guidelines

Language: The journal‘s language is English. Authors are responsible for ensuring the language quality prior to submission.

Text Formatting: number all pages and lines consecutively, use double line spacing and US English spelling, avoid hyphenation and footnotes. Preferred format is MS Word. Make sure to report all relevant sampling and statistical details (e.g. number of replicates, df, statistical power, etc).

Suggesting / excluding reviewers: Authors are welcome to provide names of suitable reviewers (with the corresponding E-mail addresses) or request the exclusion of certain individuals from the reviewing process. The suggested reviewers should not be connected to the submitted work in any way. It is strongly recommended to suggest a mix of reviewers from different countries and different institutions.

The Contribution types include research articles, reviews, botanical checklists and taxonomic notes. Research articles report the results of substantial original research. For taxonomic research <link> articles, a more comprehensive work is preferable, and descriptions of new species should be written in an attractive and interesting for a worldwide readership way. Reviews focus on a specific topic and summarize previously published studies, rather than report new findings or analyses. Reviews may consist of a monography about individual taxa or ecosystem types. Botanical Checklists are authoritative lists of taxa or vegetation types. Botanical checklists should provide a significant update of the study system or region. Taxonomical Notes are short updates about the systematics or nomenclature of native taxa from Central Asia, including the description of new species.

Format of manuscripts

Title: This should be short, concise and informative.

Running head: provide a shortened title (3 to 6 words).

Authors: give the full names and affiliations of all authors, clearly identify and give the e-mail address of the corresponding author.

Abstract: state the goals, methods, principal results and major conclusions of the work.

Key words: list alphabetically up to 6 keywords useful for indexing and information retrieval without duplicating words used in the title.

Structure: Typical manuscripts should consist of the sections Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results, Discussion, (Conclusions), Acknowledgements, References, with sub-headings where appropriate.

Acknowledgements: briefly give credit to those people who have made a contribution to the study and list all relevant grants.

Examples of statements about funding:

•This work was supported by … (Grant number … )

•Partial financial support was received from ...

•This research received funding from … under Grant Agreement No ….

•This study was funded by …

•No funding was received for conducting this study.

Supporting Information: organize the ancillary information into any desired format (i.e. tables, data sets, figures, movie files etc), provide the files with a descriptive caption, and cite them (e.g., Fig. S1, Table S1) within the main text of the manuscript.

Citation in the text: cite references in the text by name and year in parentheses and arrange by year (e.g. Ivanov 1991; Smith et al. 1995a, b; Deng and Sun 1999, 2000).

Reference list should include only work that has been published or accepted for publication. Personal communications and unpublished works should only be cited in the text. Alphabetize the list entries according to the following rules: 1) For one author, by name of author, then chronologically; 2) For two authors, by name of author, then name of coauthor, then chronologically; 3) For more than two authors, by name of first author, then chronologically.

 Each entry must conform to PDCA style that can be downloaded from.  Formatted according to this style major types of publication are as follows:

• Journal article - Wilson B, Dolotbakov A, Burgess BJ, Clubbe C, Lazkov G, Shalpykov K, Ganybaeva M, Sultangaziev O, Brockington SF (2021) Central Asian wild tulip conservation requires a regional approach, especially in the face of climate change. Biodiversity and Conservation 30: 1705-1730

• Book - Laguna E (2001) The micro-reserves as a tool for conservation of threatened plants in Europe. Strasbourg: Council of Europe

• Book chapter - Guerrant EOJ, Raven A (2003) Supporting in situ conservation: the Berry Botanic Garden, an ex situ regional resource in an integrated conservation community In: Smith RD, Dickie JB, Linington SH, Pritchard HW, Probert RJ (eds), Seed conservation: turning science into practice. The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, London, pp. 879-896

• Online document - Eastwood A, Lazkov G, Newton A (2009) The red list of trees of Central Asia. Fauna and Flora International. https://www.iucn.org/content/red-list-trees-central-asia

• Dissertation - Avishai M (1977) Species relationships and cytogenetic affinities in section Oncocyclus of the genus Iris. PhD Thesis, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Important note:

Upon request authors should be prepared to send relevant documentation or data in order to verify the validity of the results presented.

Anti-plagiarism policy

To guarantee the originality of the published research, the journal uses software to screen for plagiarism. In an event of detecting high similarity between a submitted text and those published previously, the manuscript will be rejected.

Authors of botanical names must be abbreviated according to Authors of Plant Names (Brummitt and Powell 1992). Use International Plant Name Index (IPNI) for help. Authors should be given the first time a name is mentioned, or alternately in a table where all relevant names are listed (e.g. table of voucher specimens).

Taxonomic manuscripts

Taxonomic papers desirably should be framed within the broader context and present additional analyses (e.g. morphology, anatomy, phylogenetics, distribution modeling). New species descriptions preferably should form part of a revision of a genus or infrageneric taxon, with multiple new species from the same genus in one article rather than a single new species. Introduction must provide context of the higher taxon to which the target taxon or taxa belong, and refer to recent taxonomic literature on the group. Other relevant contexts should be mentioned (e.g. flora, conservation efforts). Discussion, when available, should provide additional information (e.g. morphology, phylogenetic placement, conservation assessment, level of endemism). Illustrations (line drawings, pictures or a combination of both) should clearly show the taxa diagnostic characters. Taxonomic nomenclature must follow the rules of the most recent edition of the International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi and plants. Nomenclatural types for newly described taxa are deposited in a public herbarium and the acronyms follow the Index Herbariorum. Examples: Deng et al. 2013, Quintanar et al. 2020.

Checklists, Vegetation surveys and Species distribution data, to be published, must contain new scientific information of general interest. Examples: Whaley et al. 2019, Conti et al. 2019,  Zervas et al. 2020, Celesti-Grapow et al. 2010, Wasowicz et al. 2014.

Authors are strongly encouraged to make publically available the species occurrence records at Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF).

Identifier for fungi

Authors describing new fungal taxa (including fossil fungi and lichen-forming fungi) should register the names with a recognized repository, such as Mycobank, and request a unique digital identifier which should be included in the published article.