The Journal of Anthropological Sciences (JASs) publishes reviews, original papers and notes concerning human paleontology, prehistory, biology and genetics of extinct and extant populations. Particular attention is paid to the significance of Anthropology as an interdisciplinary field of research. Only papers in English can be considered for publication. All contributions are revised by the editorial board together with the panel of referees.

GUIDE TO AUTHORS (April 2016)

TYPES OF CONTRIBUTIONS

Invited Reviews

Periodically the editorial board invites a number of specialists to write a review on arguments of general interest to the anthropological audience. Apart from describing the state of the art, the authors may present critical comments and personal points of view. The distinctive feature of JASs Invited Reviews is in the attention the authors pay to the way in which other disciplines may help solve open problems as well as to the usefulness of notions, approaches and methodologies discussed in the paper for other fields of research. This may be done by including an ad hoc section Interdisciplinary implications or by incorporating the discussion in other sections. Furthermore, whenever possible, a list of selected web sites relevant to the argument treated should be presented in the section Info on the web.

The writing style and use of explanatory figures should make the contents accessible to a wide audience ranging from specialists to graduate and phD students. The length should not exceed 20,000 words (text,  abstract and references) with no more than 6 figures and 6 tables.  The authors are also encouraged to submit updates of particular importance of their work after publication of the review, which will be both put online and published in the subsequent volumes (see below).

JASs Historical Corner

This section is devoted at presenting studies of the history of Anthropology, which are usually invited (see Destro Bisol and Paine, JASs 89:7-8). The same rules of Invited Reviews apply to these contributions.

Reports

The JASs welcomes original reports of scientific research or commentaries concerning all fields of evolutionary Anthropology. The length should not exceed 10,000 words (text,  abstract and references), with 4 figures and 4 tables.

Correspondence & Notes

This section is devoted to:

·   concise presentations of research work;

·   comments and clarifications concerning works previously presented in the JASs.

·   points of view on open problems for research, teaching and scientific policy of Anthropology.

All these contributions are neither subdivided in sections or require an abstract. Their maximum length is of 1500 words for the text, with no more than 2 figures or tables and 10 references.

JASs forum

Periodically the JASs editorial board chooses an interdisciplinary subject of topical interest and invites one or more specialists to write a commentary. We encourage colleagues to submit their comments on the forum and guarantee a quick refereeing by the Editorial Board. Please note that all contributions to the JASs forum will be put both online and published in the printed version. The  length should not exceed 1500 words of text (with no abstract) with no more than 5 references.

MANUSCRIPT PREPARATION

The manuscript must be arranged in a single file as follows:

·     title of the article;

·     names and surnames of the authors; e-mail address should be provided only for the corresponding author;

·     full address of all the authors (institution/s and address/es);

·     e-mail address of the corresponding author/s;

·     summary (no more than 300 words), to be arranged as a single paragraph;

·     4-6 keywords;

·     a short heading of no more than  40 characters including spaces;

·     text of the article, subdivided in paragraphs (bold) and, if necessary, subparagraphs (italics);

·     acknowledgements, in italics, including dedication and financial support;

·     references (see below for style);

·     tables;

·     figures;

·     legends to the figures.

Footnotes are not accepted.

Only Word files format can be accepted.

References

Bibliographic references must be reported in alphabetic and chronological order. Should there be more quotations in a same year by a given author, they should be distinguished with "a", "b", etc. The notation “et al.” is used after the third author.
Multiple-authored references by the same first author should be arranged chronologically.

The following examples may be of some help, also with reference to the blank spaces, capital letters, punctuation, etc.:

Lieberman D.E., Pilbeam D.R. & Wood B.A. 1988. A probabilistic approach to the problem of sexual dimorphism in Homo habilis: a comparison of KNM-ER 1470 and KNM-ER 1813. J. Hum. Evol., 17: 503-511.

Bahuchet S. 1999. Aka Pygmies. In B. Richard & R. Daly (eds.): The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Hunters and Gatherers, pp. 190-194. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Oxnard C.E. 1987. Fossils, teeth and sex: new perspectives on human evolution. University of Washington Press, Seattle.

For Journal title abbreviations, follow https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nlmcatalog/journals.

Citations of participations in Congresses (both podium and poster presentations) must be avoided.

Only when really necessary, web sites and online resources may be cited in the text. They must be listed and described in a few lines using the ad hoc section “Info on the web”. The full URL and the date when the web site was last accessed should be given.

Tables and figures

Tables and figures should begin with a capital letter in the text as "Figure n" and "Table n"; they should also be abbreviated in brackets as "Fig. n" and "Tab. n". Tables out of the text should be indicated by an alphabetical sequence.  

When compiling illustrations, the reduction to the printing format of the journal shall be taken in due consideration: after reduction, horizontal figures may be 6.6 cm (if published in  one column) or 13.2 cm wide, with a maximum height of  16 cm, whereas vertical figures may have a maximum width of 16 cm and a maximum height of 12 cm. The letters, numbers, and symbols must be easily readable once they have been adapted and reduced for printing. As a rule, photographs should always contain a metric scale reference.         

Online material

Figures and tables which exceed the above limits for each type of contribution, along with other types of material (e.g. audio and/or video files, demo, applets) may be put online if they provide a useful addition to the paper.

Special note

The Pliocene-Pleistocene boundary has recently been redefined by the International Union of Geological Sciences from 1.8 to 2.6 Ma, but there is opposition to that move among many researchers who work on late Cenozoic (post-Miocene) topics. We ask authors who use the terms Pleistocene and Pliocene in their submitted manuscripts to state in the text (e.g. in the introduction) which of the two current options they use, citing the relevant reference. The recognition of Neogene and Quaternary is at the discretion of the author (for brevity, the co-identity of Period/System, Epoch/Series, and Age/Stage is understood). The options are:

(1) To continue using the last major published time scale, in which the base of the Pleistocene is defined by the GSSP of the Calabrian Stage at 1.806 (1.8) Ma [Gradstein F. M., Ogg J. G. & A. G Smith (eds) 2004. A Geologic Time Scale 2004. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge].

OR

(2) To use the revised time scale approved by IUGS, in which the base of the Pleistocene is defined by the GSSP of the Gelasian Stage at 2.588 (2.6) Ma [Gibbard P. L., Head M. J., Walker M. J. C. & the Subcommission on Quaternary Stratigraphy. 2010. Formal ratification of the Quaternary System/Period and the Pleistocene Series/Epoch with a base at 2.58 Ma. J. Quaternary Sci., 25: 96–102].

OPEN ACCESS AND TRANSPARENCY

According to the Open Access policy of the Istituto Italiano di Antropologia, all JASs articles are distributed under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 Unported License. No article processing charge is required (Gold Road – No APC).

Deposit Policy*

JASs allows authors to deposit pre-prints, post-prints and publisher’s version (PDF file) in personal and/or institutional websites or other repositories (e.g. Arxiv, bio-Arxiv) with non-commercial purposes. Author deposit of publisher’s version must include a link to the article in the JASs website (**). Author must remove pre-print and post-print after depositing publisher’s version.

Data sharing

Authors of JASs papers are asked to make their primary datasets openly available, with as few restrictions as possible, using preferably open online databases (e.g. GenBank, Dryad or Zenodo). The Anthro-DigiIt^data; repository, managed directly by the Istituto Italiano di Antropologia, may also be used alternatively or concurrently. Exceptions may be considered only for ethical, legal or scientific reasons; in these cases authors are requested to provide an ad hoc public statement. To make data more assessable and useable, we welcome manuscript submissions including data management plan.

Open Peer Review

After paper publication, we encourage authors and referees to made public the review process and referees to sign their comments.

Author Contribution

The actual contribution of each author must be succinctly described before the Reference section.

(*) See www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeoinfo.html for definitions

(**) Example: http://www.isita-org.com/jass/Contents/2014vol92/Destro/25020017.pdf