The Journal of Crustacean Biology (JCB) is the official journal of The Crustacean Society (TCS). JCB is a peer-reviewed, online-only scientific journal containing articles of broad interest on the biology of crustaceans (including aquaculture, conservation, genomics, and paleobiology) and other marine arthropods and pertinent TCS announcements. Articles are published in English only. See current issues.
Peter Castro (Professor Emeritus, California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, CA, USA); e-mail: jcb@cpp.edu
Authors should observe high standards with respect to publication ethics as set out by the Commission on Publication Ethics (COPE). Falsification or fabrication of data, plagiarism (including duplicate publication of the authors’ own work) without proper citation, and misappropriation of the author's work are all unacceptable practices. Any cases of ethical misconduct are treated very seriously and will be dealt with in accordance with the COPE guidelines. For more information on OUP policies related to publication ethics and authorship criteria, please see here.
Authors are asked to submit their manuscript online via the Editorial Manager (EM) online submission system. First-time users of the EM site need to register first. Go to the website and click on the “Register Now” link in the login menu. Enter the information requested.
Select e-mail as your preferred method of contact when you register. Upon successful registration, you will receive an e-mail message containing your Username and Password. If you should forget your Username and Password, click on the “Send Username/Password” link in the login section, and enter your first name, last name, and e-mail address exactly as you had entered it when you registered. Your access codes will then be e-mailed to you.
Prior to submission, authors are strongly encouraged to read these Instructions. When submitting via the website, you will be guided step-by-step through the submission process. A revised document is uploaded the same way as the initial submission. The system automatically generates an electronic (PDF) proof, which is then sent for reviewing purposes. All correspondence, including the editor’s request for revision and final decision, is sent by e-mail.
All submissions to the journal are initially reviewed by the Editor-in-Chief and/or an assigned Associate Editor. At this stage manuscripts may be rejected without peer review, if it is deemed that they are not of high enough quality or outside the scope of the journal. This fast rejection process means that authors are given a quick decision and do not need to wait for the review process.
Manuscripts that are not rejected are sent out for peer review, usually to at least two independent reviewers. Based on the feedback from these reviewers and the judgment of the Associate Editor and the Editor-in-Chief, a decision is rendered on the manuscript. Suggestions for revisions are then sent to the author.
For information on the journal’s review process or a manuscript’s progress, please check your Author Area in the EM site or contact the JCB Editorial Office at jcb.editorialoffice@oup.com.
The editorial board strives to keep the review process as short as possible and aims to inform the author of a decision within two months after submission.
JCB accepts American or British spelling, which must be consistently applied throughout. Metric units of measurement are to be used. Authors whose native language is not English must take particular care. We recommend that such authors either involve a native speaker, someone who is highly proficient in writing scientific English, or consult an organization for editing assistance (please see Language Editing below).
Language editing does not guarantee that your manuscript will be accepted for publication. Please see our Language Services page for further information on available services. Authors are liable for all costs associated with such services.
The text should be concise and clear, and contain no footnotes. The original of the manuscript must be double-spaced, leaving margins of at least one inch. Please insert double spacing above headings, number pages consecutively at the top right-hand corner, and use 12 pt Times New Roman font. Manuscripts must be uploaded as an editable Word document. Correspondence regarding the format and style of manuscripts should be sent to the Editor-in-Chief.
Manuscripts must strictly conform to JCB format and style. Please consult a JCB number published starting in 2017 or later. The sequence of material should be:
The abstract should not exceed one doubled-spaced page. It should include: 1) the reason for undertaking the research, 2) a summary of important findings, and 3) implications of these findings.
All generic and binomial names must be in italics and followed by the authority. The actual reference for the authorities of genera and species of Crustacea only, but not of suprageneric taxa, must also be included in "References." The World Register of Marine Species (WoRMS) is an excellent source of information on authorities and associated references. You are not required to supply the references for taxonomic authorities for articles focusing on areas such as biochemical processes, genetics, genomics, and physiology, unless stipulated by the Editor-in-Chief.
All publications referred to in the text must be listed in “References.” References of three or more authors will be cited in the text using the surname of the first author followed by “et al.” Multiple references cited in the text must be arranged chronologically (not alphabetically) and separated by semi-colons: “(Herreid & Full, 1988; Boxshall & Halsey, 2004).”
Titles in “References” must be arranged alphabetically by the surname of the first author followed by initials (no space between initials) and, if having two or more authors with the same first author, must be listed alphabetically by second author, not chronologically. Titles with two authors are listed before those with three or more authors with the same first author. Titles of periodicals must be written in full and in italics, followed by a comma and volume number in bold, with en-dashes (–) between page numbers, as follows:
Wehrtmann, I. S., Magalhães, C. & Orozco, M. 2014. Freshwater crabs in Lake Atitlán, Guatemala: not a single-species fishery. Journal of Crustacean Biology, 34: 123–125. [cited as “Whertmann et al. (2014)” or “(Whertmann et al., 2014)” in text]
Articles available only online must be accompanied by a doi number:
Yasuhara, M. & Myhre, S.E. 2016. Biodiversity-ecosystem functioning relationships in long term time series and palaeoecological records: deep see as a test bed. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 371:20150282 [doi:10.1098/rstb.2015.0282].
Book titles are to be cited in italics, followed by publisher, city, and country (in cases where city is not a large one where country is not obvious to the reader):
Boxshall, G.A. & Halsey, S.H. 2004. An introduction to copepod diversity. The Ray Society, London. [cited as “Boxshall & Halsey (2004)” or “(Boxshall & Halsey, 2004)” in text]
Articles in a book:
Herreid, C.F. & Full, R.J. 1988. Energetics and locomotion. In: Biology of the land crabs (W.W. Burggren & B.R. McMahon, eds.), pp. 337–377. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK. [cited as “Herreid & Full (1988)” or “(Herreid & Full, 1988)” in text]
Treat as books, with university (together with location) instead of publishers, indicating if it is a Ph.D., M.S., M.A., or M.Sc. thesis:
Feng, L. 2011. The effect of dietary HUFA on the ovary development and tissue biochemical composition of the swimming crab P. trituberculatus. M.S. thesis, Shanghai Ocean University, Shanghai, China.
A manuscript model provides additional detailed instructions for the preparation of manuscripts.
Description of New Taxa
Any descriptions of single species must be accompanied by discussions or reviews that apply information gained from the new species to broader questions of systematics/phylogeny, biogeography/ecology, and/or comparative biology. Unless justified, the authors of new taxa should not exceed three, and the authors of the article describing such taxa should be the same. New names of taxa must be proposed in accordance with the relevant Articles of the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN) and with due attention to the Code's Appendix A (Code of Ethics) and Appendix B (General Recommendations, particularly concerning the establishment and formation of new names). Descriptions must be in telegraphic style.
Immutable Advance Access. JCB publishes articles online ahead of inclusion in an issue via OUP’s Advance Access.
In order to comply with the requirements of ICZN with regard to nomenclatural works, ALL articles, regardless of whether they include nomenclatural information, that are published in JCB will be immutable from their publication date; this means that no changes will be allowed to any article without the publication of an erratum clearly stating the changes that have been made. Therefore, it is the responsibility of the authors to carefully check their proofs for accuracy, and to notify the publisher of any changes that are necessary prior to Advance Access publication.
Nomenclatural Works. Articles describing new taxa and other proposing nomenclatural and/or taxonomic acts (establishment of neotypes, new name combinations, etc.) are first published online as Advance Access. You will be asked during the submission process whether your article contains a nomenclatural act such as the description of a new taxon. For such an electronic publication to be an available work, the ICZN requires new taxa to be accompanied by a ZOOBANK registration number (LSID), which will be obtained by the Editor-in-Chief. We will insert a nomenclatural statement, which includes the LSID number, into the article. Your article will also include the online publication date, and the statement “Version of Record, first published online [online publication date], with fixed content and layout in compliance with Art. 8.1.3.2 ICZN.”
Figure and table files must be uploaded separately onto the Editorial Manager site of JCB at the same time as the submission of the manuscript (see above). All table and figure captions must be self-explanatory and not include reference to the manuscript text. Please upload figures as .tiff files (.jpg, .jpeg, or .eps files are not acceptable) at a resolution of 1,000 to 1,200 dpi for line art and a minimum resolution of 300 dpi for photo art. Table files must be in Word format. All figures and tables should be cited in the main text following strict numerical order. The approximate positions of figures and tables will be indicated in the text file by the Editor-in-Chief.
Figures must be in final form, and all lettering should be of professional quality and be provided by the author(s). Multiple components of figures should be designated in uppercase letters, for example Figure 1A and Figure 1B. Figure captions for all illustrations should be printed together on one or more separate pages and should always mention the name(s) of the species concerned, if relevant.
The journal publishes online only, so there is no charge for the use of color in figures or tables. The journal encourages the use of color in figures and tables.
For more detailed information on how to submit figure files, please see the Oxford Journals page on figures. You can also send queries about figure files to jcb.editorialoffice@oup.com.
Each table must be provided with a concise and clear heading and be numbered with an Arabic numeral. The formatting of tables should be consistent throughout the manuscript. Vertical rules should be avoided. Tables and figures should be kept to a minimum; authors are strongly encouraged to include figures and long tables as Supplementary Material (see below).
Submit all material to be considered as supplementary material, which consists of tables, figures, and/or appendices that will be available to readers of JCB online. Ensure that the supplementary material is referred to in the manuscript. The authors should also ensure that these files are clearly and succinctly presented, that the style conforms with the rest of the manuscript, and that the presentation will work on any Internet browser. It is not recommended for the files to be more than 2 MB each, although exceptions can be made at the Editorial Office’s discretion.
Where ethically feasible, Journal of Crustacean Biology strongly encourages authors to make all data on which the conclusions of the paper rely available to readers. We suggest that data be presented in the main manuscript or additional supporting files, or deposited in a public repository whenever possible. For information on general repositories for all data types, and a list of recommended repositories by subject area, please see choosing where to archive your data.
Authors retain the right to make an Author’s Original Version (preprint) available through various channels, and this does not prevent submission to the journal. For further information see our Online Licensing, Copyright and Permissions policies. If accepted, the authors are required to update the status of any preprint, including your published paper’s DOI, as described on our Author Self-Archiving policy page.
Manuscripts for Research Notes should not exceed 10 pages. The format, style, and sequence of material must be the same as that of regular research articles (see above) except that the text itself will not be subdivided into sections (“Introduction,” “Material and Methods,” etc.). The abstract must be short and concise.
Authors will receive a link to the PDF proof of their article on our online system by email, so it is essential that a current email address be supplied at submission. Proofing instructions will accompany the PDF file but the proof should be checked immediately upon receipt and uploaded in accordance with the instructions. Only essential corrections should be made at the proof stage.
Accepted manuscripts arrive at OUP and go through the production process until the final versions are ready to publish. These are then published on Advance Access.
By submitting a manuscript, the author agrees that the copyright for the article is transferred to The Crustacean Society if and when the article is accepted for publication. For that purpose the author needs to sign online the License to Publish that will be sent via a link in the “Welcome Email” to the author when the article is first entered into production at Oxford University Press.
In order to reproduce any third-party material, including tables, figures, or images, in an article, authors must obtain permission from the copyright holder and be compliant with any requirements the copyright holder may have pertaining to this reuse. When seeking to reproduce any kind of third party material authors should request the following:
It is particularly important to clear permission for use in the journal; we are not able to accept permissions which carry a time limit because we retain journal articles as part of our online journal archive. Further guidelines on clearing permissions can be downloaded as a pdf.
If you will be publishing your paper under an Open Access license but it contains material for which you do not have Open Access reuse permissions, please state this clearly by supplying the following credit line alongside the material:
Title of content
Author, Original publication, year of original publication, by permission of [rights holder]
Oxford University Press requires declaration of any conflict of interest upon submission online. If the manuscript is published, conflict of interest information will be communicated in a statement in the published paper.
JCB authors have the option to publish their article Open Access, whereby, for a charge (see below), their article will be made freely available online immediately upon publication.
After your manuscript is accepted, the corresponding author will be required to accept a mandatory license-to-publish agreement. As part of the licensing process you will be asked to indicate whether or not you wish to pay for open access. If you do not select the open access option, your paper will be published with standard subscription-based access and you will not be charged.
Authors publishing in JCB can use the following licenses for their articles:
Visit the OUP licensing website to find out more about Creative Commons licences.
We also offer the UK Crown copyright and US Government license options.
The Open Access charges are as follows:
You can pay Open Access charges using our Author Portal.