Author Guidelines

Prospective authors should consult these instructions carefully before preparing manuscripts for submission. Authors may find recent articles in Letters on Evolutionary Behavioral Science to be useful models for the instructions outlined below.

Article Type

We have two article types - Original and Opinion articles. Unpublished manuscripts written in English will be considered for publication.
Original articles: This article type includes original, unpublished manuscripts based on experiments, surveys, models or computer simulations.
Opinion articles: This article type includes original, unpublished reviews or commentaries based on previously published papers in the field of evolutionary behavioral sciences.

Submission

Click here to download a manuscript template. Manuscript must be a single MS Word file containing all graphics, tables and an abstract. The Word file must be submitted through the editorial system at https://lebs.hbesj.org. It must consist of (1) a cover page, which includes the title, running head, author names and affiliations, e-mail address(es) of the corresponding author(s), and word count, (2) an abstract page, which includes 3-6 keywords, (3) a main text (approximately 2500 words), (4) acknowledgements (optional), (5) author contribution, (6) ethical statement (optional), (7) data accessibility & program code (optional), (8) supplementary material (optional), (9) references, (10) tables with titles and footnotes (optional), and (11) figures and figure legends (optional). We recommend authors submit supplemental files in order to meet the word limit. The authors are also solicited to make all the data they used accessible in supplemental files or open access databases.

Decision Policy

Quick review process and wide distributions are the most significant features of LEBS. A submitted manuscript must be examined by responsible editor(s) who would decide whether it is acceptable or not. To maintain quick reviewing processes, manuscripts that require major revision should be rejected. Poor presentation and language would also be a justifiable reason for rejection. However, minor revision may be requested in some cases.

Content License

LEBS applies the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license to the articles. This means that authors of articles published in LEBS agree to make their articles legally available for anyone to copy, transform, and redistribute, without permission or fees, for any purpose, even commercially, as long as the authors and original source are properly cited. For further details of the Creative Commons license see here.

Specific Points

Arrange manuscripts in the following order: title, running headline, authors’ names, academic affiliations, author correspondence (e-mail address), abstract, 3-6 key words, text, acknowledgments, references, appendices, and figure legends.

The style of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (APA Manual; 7th Edition) must be followed with respect to handling of references, footnotes, tables and figures, and abbreviations and symbols (including hyphens, en dashes, and em dashes).

Tables and Figures

Each table and figure should be embedded within the text after its first callout. Alternatively, tables and figures may be placed on separate pages after the reference list.

References

For references within the text, give full surnames for papers by one or two authors.  For papers by three or more authors, give only the surname of the first author followed by 'et al.' (note that 'et al.' is not underlined).  Cite references in the text as, for example, Hasegawa & Hiraiwa-Hasegawa (1983) or, if in parentheses, as (Hiraiwa-Hasegawa, 1993). Use lower-case letters to distinguish between two papers by the same authors in the same year (e.g. Oda, 2002a,b). List multiple citations in alphabetical order (e.g. Hiraiwa-Hasegawa, 1993; Nakamaru, 2006; Oda, 2001), using a semicolon to separate each reference. Cite references in the reference list in alphabetical, and then chronological, order according to the authors' surname and date.

Type references in the following form.

Book:

Darwin, C. (1859). On the origin of species by means of natural selection. John Murray.

Article in Journal:

Hasegawa, T., & Hiraiwa-Hasegawa, M. (1983). Opportunistic and restrictive matings among wild chimpanzees in the Mahale Mountains, Tanzania. Journal of Ethology, 1, 75–85. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02347833

Oda, R., Naganawa, T., Yamauchi, S., Yamagata, N., & Matsumoto-Oda, A. (2009). Altruists are trusted based on non-verbal cues. Biology Letters, 5(6), 752–754. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2009.0332

Article in Book:

Oda, R. (2001). Lemur vocal communication and the origin of human language. In T. Matsuzawa (Ed.), Primate origins of human cognition and behavior (pp. 115–134). Springer-Verlag.

Authors should quote digital object identifiers (DOIs) - standardized article reference codes - where known, in addition to providing full citations. For papers in the course of publication, use 'in press' to replace the date and give the journal name in the references. Cite unpublished manuscripts (including those in preparation or submitted), talks and abstracts of talks in the text as 'unpublished data' following a list of all authors' initials and surnames. Do not include these in the reference list.

Electronic supplementary material

Authors should inform us by e-mail beforehand if they are going to upload large-sized files, such as video clips, as supplementary materials.

Author's Proof

The author can view and edit the final form of the manuscript before posting on the public web site.

Summary submission for Twitter advertisement

Upon acceptance for publication in LEBS, you will be requested to provide a short summary (less than 230 characters including spaces, periods and commas) for Twitter advertisement:
https://twitter.com/LEBS_official