Author Guidelines

If you are the author or co-author of a manuscript recently accepted or already published in Applied Vegetation Science, Journal of Vegetation Science, Vegetation Classification and Survey or Palaearctic Grasslands, you are very welcome to prepare a blog post about your paper.

First, choose the type of contribution you wish to write. Then check the section Preparing the post for details on how to prepare the post; note that we offer Word templates for each post type and we kindly ask you to use them when preparing the post. Finally, check information in Submitting the post to see how to submit your post for consideration in the blog.

Types of contributions

You may choose one (or even more than one) of the following post types:

  • Behind the Paper – a longer post describing what was happening behind the scenes of your research, possibly written in a rather informal way, and including several photographs or figures.
  • Plain Language Summary – a short (up to 500 words) summary written in plain English, describing your research in everyday language which is understandable also to the non-research audience and including 1-2 illustrative photographs or figures.
  • Video summary – if you have prepared the presentation of your research (for a past or future conference meeting, university seminar, working group meeting), you may record a short (up to 10-15 minutes) commented video with the slide presentation.
  • Linking to elsewhere – if you already wrote a post about your paper for another blog or media, we may publish a short announcement (with photograph or figure) advertising the paper and including the link to that post.

Other types of contributions in our blog include:

  • Guest post – invited posts focused on interesting or trending topics in vegetation ecology. If you have an interesting idea about some topic related to vegetation ecology, let us know!
  • Commentaries – a short comment on the topics related the focus of the blog or to vegetation ecology in general (for example opinions on current policies in publications, issues with some theoretical concepts, book reviews etc.).
  • Interview with the author(s) – personal or online interview with authors of recently accepted papers about their research. Contact us if you would be interested in doing the interview with us.
  • News from Editors – short announcements, written by journal chief-editors or blog editors and usually related to newly published journal issues, remarkable papers, awards, or updates in journal or blog policies.

Preparing the post

Behind the paper. A longer text, written more like an essay. Please use the Behind the paper template (MS Word) template to prepare the post. You are welcome to include personal opinions and insights, stories from the fieldwork and even speculations if these are labelled as such. Select interesting photographs or figures which illustrate your research and which are not included in the original paper, and include a short caption (include the name or source of the photograph if applicable). You can insert images into the Word document, but make sure that you also append the original image files in high resolution to the submission email. Be personal, include alternative explanations or caveats of the research. Such a post could be an excellent opportunity to stir less formal discussion about results or background of your study. The length is not limited, but shorter contributions are more likely to be read in full extent.

Plain language summary. Up to 500 words long text in plain English. Please, use the Plain language summary template (MS Word) to prepare the text. While writing the post, you need to get rid of field-specific terms (jargon) and words which may have a different meaning to non-scientists. Also, try to explain your research without expecting that the reader is familiar with a specific context of your field. Explain what you did, what you found and why it matters, but remember not to overstate or overblow your results. Choose one or two photographs or figures which well summarise or illustrate your study, and don’t forget to include image captions (containing also the name of the photo author if applicable). You can insert images into the Word document, but make sure that you also append the original image files in high resolution to the submission email. Such a summary, if short and informative and shared by social media, may attract the attention of a wider audience than the scientific abstract of your paper.

Video summary. Up to 15 minutes long video recordings, stored in some of the common video formats. This can be done simply by using your computer with a microphone (and optionally also web camera if you wish to record also your face in some stage of the presentation to add the presentation a personal feeling), and you need to install dedicated software for screen recording (both free and paid versions do exist; consider e.g. screencast-o-matic.com). When you submit the video file, we will upload to the dedicated video hosting platform (vimeo.com). The blog editor will be happy to assist you with preparation and technical advice on how to do that.

Submitting the post

Prepare the draft of a post using the appropriate MS Word template (provided above) and sent it to the blog editors at editor@vegsciblog.org. In the email, include also the original files with photographs or figures (if possible in high or at least HD resolution). For the Video summary, the video file can be sent directly if the file size permits (< 10 MB), or via some third-party online storage service (e.g. wetransfer.com). Feel free to contact the editors at editor@vegsciblog.org for more details or assistance.