Manuscripts submitted through the online submission system (MPS) are assigned to a Handling Editor, who is responsible for sending the manuscript to the reviewers. Based on the reviewers’ reports, the Handling Editor will assess whether the manuscript is suitable for publication.

As far as accepted, the articles will be immediately formatted and published online in the final pdf format, in the chronological order of acceptance, within the appropriate section. This is a time saving procedure that can be very helpful to authors, particularly in fast-moving disciplines.

All accepted and published articles remain in our databases and archives in perpetuity for worldwide exposure and visibility.

iForest does not have issue numbers, each volume corresponds to a calendar year.

iForest can only accept manuscripts written in English.

Please note that iForest will not edit submitted manuscripts for style or language and editors may reject immediately a manuscript if it is compromised by grammatical errors or inadequate style.

Thus, non-native speakers of English or authors which do not have excellent and well-documented skills in writing scientific English are asked to make use of an independent copy-editing service, e.g.

• International Science Editing: http://www.internationalscienceediting.com/
• ScienceDocs: http://www.sciencedocs.com/
• Write Science Right: http://www.writescienceright.com/
• Genedits: http://www.genedits.com/

All services are paid for and arranged by the author.

Manuscripts should be submitted electronically to iForest using the Manuscript Processing System (MPS).

Text (main text including tables and figure legends) and figures must be submitted as separate files, i.e. one file for the main text and one file for each of the fugures.

There is no explicit limit on the length of articles submitted, but authors are encouraged to be concise. There is also no restriction on the number of figures, tables or additional files that can be included with each article online. Authors should include all relevant supporting data with each article.

The main text (including tables and figure legends) must be submitted as a single MS Word file.

If the first author is e.g. Newton, an appropriate name for the file will be "Newton.doc" or "Newton.rtf".

All figures and tables must be referred to along the main text using Arabic numerals (Fig. 1, Fig. 2, Table 1, Table 2, etc.).

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Use double line spacing.

Type the text unjustified, without hyphenating words at line breaks.

Use hard returns only to end headings and paragraphs, not to rearrange lines.

Capitalise only the first word, and proper nouns, in the title.

All pages should be numbered.

All lines should be numbered.

Use italics only for scientific names of plant and animal species.

Footnotes to text should not be used.

Greek and other special characters may be included. If you are unable to reproduce a particular special character, please type out the name of the symbol in full. Please ensure that all special characters used are embedded in the text.

Abbreviations should be used as sparingly as possible. They can be defined when first used or a list of abbreviations can be provided preceding the acknowledgements and references.

SI Units should be used throughout (cm, litre and molar permitted).

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Manuscripts should be structured in appropriate sections, although no rigid format is required for Reviews, Progress reports and Comments. All submitted manuscripts must contain a Title page and an Abstract.

In case manuscripts do not meet the required format, they could be rejected immediately.

It is advised to submit a standard research article formatted into the following sections:

• Title page
• Abstract
• Introduction
• Material and methods
• Results
• Discussion
• Conclusions
• List of abbreviations (if any)
• Acknowledgements
• References
• Tables and captions (if any)
• Figure legends (if any)
• Description of additional data files (if any)

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This should list:

• title of the article, which should include an accurate, clear and concise description of the reported work, avoiding abbreviations;
• full names of the authors;
• full names of institutional addresses, and e-mail addresses for all authors;
• indication of the corresponding author;
• up to five key-words and a concise running title.

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The abstract of the manuscript should not exceed 350 words. It should highlight: the context and purpose of the study, the main findings, the potential implications. Please minimize the use of abbreviations and do not cite references in the abstract.

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It should be written from the standpoint of researchers without specialist knowledge in that area and must clearly state the background to the research and its aims. The section could end with a short statement of what is being reported in the article.

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This should be divided into subsections if several methods are described.

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The Results and Discussion may be combined into a single section or presented separately. They may also be broken into subsections with short, informative headings.

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This should state the main conclusions of the research and give a clear explanation of their importance and relevance. Summary illustrations may be included.

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If abbreviations are used in the text either they should be defined in the text where first used, or a list of abbreviations can be provided.

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The individual contributions of authors to the manuscript can be specified in this section. We suggest the following kind of format (please use initials to refer to each author’s contribution): AB carried out the field measurements, JY carried out gas exchange measurements in the laboratory, MT performed the statistical analysis, FG conceived the study and helped to draft the manuscript, etc.

Acknowledge also in this section anyone who does not meet the criteria for authorship but contributed to the work. Authors should obtain permission to acknowledge from all those mentioned.

List here the sources of funding for the study.

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All the in-text citations must be listed in the reference list and vice-versa.

Citations along the text must report the name of the author (and wherever appropriate of the second author) followed by the year of publication.

In case of more than two authors, the name of the first author is followed by "et al." (no italic). Papers by the same authors and published in the same year will be labelled with the letters a, b, c, etc.

Multiple citations along the text must be in chronological order, separated by commas. Example of in-text citations:

• (Comps 1990)
• (Comps & Thiébaut 1990, Comps et al. 1990)
• (Comps et al. 1990a, Comps et al. 1990b, Thiébaut & Comps 1995)

Please note that only articles and abstracts that have been published or are in press, or are available through public e-print/preprint servers, may be cited

Unpublished abstracts, unpublished data and personal communications should not be included in the reference list, but may be included in the text. Obtaining permission to quote personal communications and unpublished data from the cited author(s) is the responsibility of the author.

Notes/footnotes are not allowed.

Full name of journals (not abbreviations) should be reported in the reference list in which citations, listed in alphabetical order, must conform to the following style:

• Ovington JD (1957). Dry-matter production by Pinus sylvestris L. Annals of Botany 21: 287-314.
• Pereira JS, Chaves MM (1993). Plant water deficits in Mediterranean ecosystems. In: Water Deficits. Plant Responses from Cell to Community (Smith JAC, Griffiths H eds). Bios Scientific, Oxford, UK, pp. 237-251.
• Jones X (1996). Zeolites and synthetic mechanisms. In: Proceedings of the “First National Conference on Porous Sieves” (Smith YS ed). Baltimore (MD, USA), 27-30 June 1996. Butterworth-Heinemann, pp. 16-27.
• Smith WK, Hinckley TM (1995). Resource Physiology of Conifers. Academic Press, San Diego, USA.
• Kohavi R (1995). Wrappers for performance enhancement and oblivious decision graphs. PhD thesis, Stanford University, Computer Science Department, pp. 170.

Web links cited in the text should be included in the reference list. They should be provided in full, including both the title of the site, the URL and the retrieval date.

Citing an article from an online magazine: Zeng N (2008). Carbon sequestration via wood burial. Carbon Balance and Management 3:1 [online 3 January 2008] URL: http://www.cbmjournal.com

Citing a professional site: IPCC (1996). Revised 1996 IPCC Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas. [online 7 February 2008] URL: http://www.ipcc-nggip.iges.or.jp/public/gl/invs1.htm

Citing a personal site: Rug G (2008). Home page. [online 25 January 2008] URL: http://www.student.cornell.edu/~greg/

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Tables, with their captions, should be placed at the end of the main text.

Each table (numbered in sequence using Arabic numerals - i.e., Table 1, 2, etc.) must be included on a single page preceded by a self-explaining caption.

Avoid as far as possible large tables.

Do not use special formats like borders, paragraph sign, cell unions, etc.

Wherever apply, column headers should be labelled with abbreviations referred to in the caption.

Detailed legends may follow the table, but should be concise.

Commas should not be used to indicate numerical values.

Colour and shading should not be used in tables.

Please note that it is the responsibility of the author to obtain permission from the copyright holder to reproduce tables that have previously been published elsewhere.

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The legends should be included in the main manuscript text file, immediately following the references, rather than being a part of the figure file.

For each figure, the following information should be provided: Figure number (in sequence, using Arabic numerals - i.e., Figure 1, 2, 3 etc); short title of figure (maximum 15 words); detailed legend, up to 300 words.

Please note that it is the responsibility of the author to obtain permission from the copyright holder to reproduce figures that have previously been published elsewhere.

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Each figure should be submitted as a separate file, numbered with Arabic numerals according the way the figure is referenced in the main text (e.g. for Fig. 1 an appropriate file name could be fig1.jpg).

Avoid as far as possible large and too complex figures.

Each figure should include a single illustration and should be closely cropped to minimize the amount of white space surrounding the illustration. Text within figures should use either Arial or Helvetica fonts.

Graphs should not be gridded.

For figures with multiple panels, each panel should be labelled with capital letters (A, B, etc.) and referred to in the legend.

Please note that, if a figure consists of separate parts, it is important that a single composite illustration file be submitted which contains all parts of the figure.

Figures should be designed such that all information is legible when viewed at a width of 600 pixels, since this is the default size for a iForest illustration on the web.

Photographs should be provided with a scale bar if appropriate., as well as high-resolution component files.

The following file formats can be accepted:

• EPS (preferred format for diagrams)
• PDF (also especially suitable for diagrams)
• JPEG (preferred format for photos or images)
• Microsoft Word (version 5 and above; figures must be a single page)
• PowerPoint (figures must be a single page)
• PNG
• BMP
• GIF

Although iForest does not restrict the length and quantity of data in a paper, there may still be occasions where an author wishes to provide data sets, tables, movie files, or other information as additional information. These files can be uploaded using the ’Additional Material’ button in the Online Submission Form.

Additional files will not be displayed in the final article, but a link will be provided to the files as supplied by the author.

Tabular data provided as additional files can be uploaded as an Excel spreadsheet (.xls) or comma separated values (.csv). As with all files, please use the standard file extensions.

The maximum file size for additional files is 10 MB each, and files will be virus-scanned on submission.

If additional material is provided, please list the following information in a separate section at the end of the manuscript text:

• File name
• File format (including name and a URL of an appropriate viewer if format is unusual)
• Title of data
• Description of data

Additional datafiles should be referenced explicitly by file name within the body of the article, e.g. “See additional file 1: Movie1 for the original data used to perform this analysis”.

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Ideally, file formats for additional files should not be platform-specific, and should be viewable using free or widely available tools. The following are examples of suitable formats.

• Additional documentation (preferred): PDF (Adobe Acrobat)
• Animations: SWF (Shockwave Flash)
• Movies: MOV (QuickTime)
• MPG (MPEG):Tabular data
• XLS (Excel spreadsheet)
• CSV (Comma separated values)

As with figure files, files should be given the standard file extensions. This is especially important for Macintosh users, since the Mac OS does not enforce the use of standard extensions. Please also make sure that each additional file is a single table, figure or movie (please do not upload linked worksheets or PDF files larger than one sheet).