The Newsletter of the IUCN/SSC Mollusc Specialist Group
Species Survival Commission • International Union for Conservation of Nature
ISSN 0958-5079

 

Tentacle is the Newsletter of the Mollusc Specialist Group of the Species Survival Commission of the IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature).

If you plan to submit an article to Tentacle

PLEASE READ THESE GUIDELINES - AND FOLLOW THEM VERY CAREFULLY

This will make the life of the editor a lot easier

 

The guidelines are also available towards the end of each issue of Tentacle

 

Your submission must be relevant to mollusc conservation

 

I usually make only editorial changes to submitted articles and in the past have accepted almost everything sent to me. However, before I accept an article I will assess whether it really includes anything explicitly relevant to mollusc conservation and whether any conclusions drawn are supported by the information presented. For example, new records of non-native species and lists of non-native species will not be accepted unless there is a clear and significant relevance to mollusc conservation. So, fully explain the conservation relevance in your article and be sure not to speculate too wildly. Unjustified statements (even if probably true) do a disservice to conservation as they permit our critics to undermine our overall arguments. Tentacle, however, is not a peer-reviewed publication and statements made in Tentacle remain the authors’ responsibilities.

 

I stress that Tentacle is not a peer-reviewed publication. Please do not see Tentacle as an easy way to get your original data published without going through the rigours of peer review. Tentacle is a newsletter and so it is primarily news items that I want, including summaries of your ongoing studies, rather than full, data-rich reports of your research. Those reports should be submitted to peer reviewed journals. I will increasingly decline to publish articles that I feel should be in the peer-reviewed literature, especially if they are long.

 

There is, therefore, a limit of three published pages, including all text, illustrations, references, etc., for all articles that I accept for publication in Tentacle (though I reserve the right to make rare exceptions if I consider it appropriate).

 

Please make every effort to format your article, including fonts (Times New Roman), paragraphing styles, heading styles, and especially citations, in a way that makes it easy for me simply to paste your article into Tentacle, which is created in Microsoft Word. Please pay special attention to the format (paragraphing, fonts, font sizes, etc.) in past issues. TEMPLATES FOR ARTICLES ARE AVAILABLE (ASK ME). Conformance to the guidelines has improved – perhaps because of my many many reminders! But it still takes many many hours to format your submissions – please do it for me! Especially, please pay very careful attention to the format of references in the reference lists, especially punctuation – it still takes inordinate amounts of time deleting commas, inserting colons, changing journal titles to italics, putting initials after not before names, deleting parentheses around dates and so on. Here are examples of how it should be done – please follow them very carefully:

 

Cowie, R.H., Régnier, C., Fontaine, B. & Bouchet, P. 2017. Measuring the sixth extinction: what do mollusks tell us? The Nautilus 131(1): 3-41.

Cowie, R.H., Evenhuis, N.L. & Christensen, C.C. 1995. Catalog of the Native Land and Freshwater Molluscs of the Hawaiian Islands. Backhuys Publishers, Leiden. vi + 248 p.

Cowie, R.H. 2011. Snails and slugs. In: Encyclopedia of Invasive Introduced Species (ed. Simberloff, D. & Rejmánek, M.), p. 634-643. University of California Press, Berkeley.

 

Also note that illustrations and tables must fit in a single column, so make sure your maps, diagrams and tables are readable and show what you intend when they are reduced to this size. Any text on a figure must be large enough to read.

 

Metric Système International units are used throughout Tentacle. Please do not use miles, inches, gallons, etc.

 

Tentacle is published using British English not American English, e.g. “mollusc” not “mollusk”!

 

Although membership of the Mollusc Specialist Group is by invitation only, everyone is welcome to submit articles to Tentacle and to promote its distribution as widely as possible. Since I announce the publication of each new issue to all who are on my Tentacle e-mail distribution list, please keep me updated with your current e-mail address so that you do not drop off the list. I also announce the availability of each issue on the MOLLUSCA listserver and the Unitas Malacologica members e-mail list.

 

The content of Tentacle depends on what you send me. So I encourage anyone with anything relevant to mollusc conservation to send me something now, and it will be included in the next issue (published once a year, usually in January-March). I usually set 31 December as the deadline for submissions, but feel free to send me contributions at any time and I will hold them until the next issue.

 

Disclaimer 1: Tentacle is not issued for purposes of zoological nomenclature. All or any names or nomenclatural acts in it are disclaimed for nomenclatural purposes. See the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature, Fourth Edition, Article 8.

Disclaimer 2: Views expressed in Tentacle are those of the authors of individual articles. They do not necessarily reflect the views of the Editor, nor of the Mollusc Specialist Group, the Species Survival Commission or of IUCN.

 

Robert H. Cowie
Editor

This page last updated 24 March 2021