Article Type |
|
Aims |
Word & Figure Limits |
Letter |
|
Reports of new research findings or conceptual analyses that make a significant contribution to knowledge. |
5000 words, 6 figures, tables, or text boxes |
Method |
|
Description of new methods (e.g. statistical or analytical methods), including survey methods, or applications of new technologies; Method papers must include comparison with existing methods, and evidence that the method can demonstrate findings of relevance to the journal aims. |
5000 words, 6 figures, tables, or text boxes |
Review |
|
Empirical, theoretical or conceptual syntheses that address substantial questions or hypotheses in wildlife science, including systematic reviews and meta-analyses. |
7500 words, 6 figures, tables, or text boxes |
Concept Analysis |
|
Describes a new concept, theory, or framework with broad relevance to wildlife science, including a quantitative demonstration of the ability of the concept to contribute in substantial ways to the aims of the journal. |
5000 words, 6 figures, tables, or text boxes |
Forum |
|
Scientific commentary that gives expert opinion on one or more published papers, summarizes the current understanding or status of a subject area, or how practice (management or conservation) should be undertaken |
2500 words, 3 figures, tables, or text boxes |
Forum Reply |
|
A response to a Forum article giving expert opinion that furthers the current understanding or status of a subject area, or how practice (management or conservation) should be undertaken. |
2500 words, 3 figures, tables, or text boxes |
We recognize that re-formatting a manuscript requires work, and that some manuscripts have been submitted to and declined for publication in another journal. Because of this, Wildlife Letters offers Free Format submission where the article can remain in the format for another journal, providing it meets the Aims (above) of one of the article types for Wildlife Letters. In the absence of preexisting formatting, authors should follow the guidelines for formatting described below.
Letter articles give concise reports of new research findings or conceptual analyses that make a significant contribution to knowledge in wildlife science. These are original research articles and contain substantial new findings that are not published elsewhere. The research should contribute either to sustainable wildlife management or conservation, or to understanding and responding to current and emerging challenges to wildlife from global and anthropogenic change. Wildlife science includes diverse topics within ecology and evolution of wildlife species (e.g., genetics, landscape ecology, behavior, ecophysiology), effects of wildlife on ecological systems (e.g., food webs, ecosystems), and more interdisciplinary topics such as from social sciences, economics or anthropology, and can be empirical or theoretical. Letter articles can contain a maximum of 5000 words and 6 figures, tables or text boxes.
Method papers describe new methods or applications of new technology, provide comparison with existing methods of relevance, and demonstrate that the method can produce new findings in wildlife science. Methods include survey methods, descriptions of new technologies or applications of new technologies to wildlife science. We could imagine a wide range of such technologies, including camera trapping methods, unmanned aerial vehicles for remote sensing, molecular methods, use of artificial intelligence, and individual tracking and monitoring technologies. We encourage papers describing survey methods or protocols with the aim of surveying presence/absence or abundance of wildlife species. Papers should contain Introduction and Discussion sections, but beyond this, other sections are free for the author to decide. They may contain up to 5000 words and 6 figures, tables, or text boxes.
Review articles contain empirical, theoretical, or conceptual syntheses that address substantial questions or hypotheses in wildlife science. Reviews containing meta-analyses or other quantitative analyses are encouraged. Reviews need to be structured around major questions or hypotheses in wildlife science and contain new findings based on the analyses that they contain. They can contain a maximum of 7500 words and 10 figures, tables or text boxes.
Concept Analysis articles describe a new concept, theory or framework with broad relevance to wildlife science. Concept articles are required to demonstrate the ability of the concept to contribute in substantial ways to wildlife science. The concept, theory or framework should be of broad interest in wildlife science and these articles will usually require a quantitative analysis to demonstrate the value of the new concept, theory, or framework. They can contain a maximum of 5000 words and 6 figures, tables, or text boxes.
Forum articles contain expert opinion summarizing current understanding or status of a subject area as represented in the published literature, or how practice in management or conservation should be undertaken. Dialogue should be of a scientific nature (including social science), representing wildlife science or conservation policy. Meeting reports are not acceptable, but if the dialogue is appropriate, it should be written as a scientific dialogue supported by published references. A literature cited section is required. They can contain a maximum of 2500 words and 3 figures, tables, or text boxes.
Forum Reply articles contain a response to a Forum article published within the previous 12 months. They should contribute substantially to the dialogue in the original article, representing current understanding, status of a subject or practice, and should be based on natural science or public policy analysis from social sciences. A literature cited section is required. They can contain a maximum of 2500 words and 3 figures, tables, or text boxes.
Article Preparation Support
Wiley Editing Services offers expert help with English Language Editing, as well as translation, manuscript formatting, figure illustration, figure formatting, and graphical abstract design – so you can submit your manuscript with confidence.
Also, check out our resources for Preparing Your Article for general guidance about writing and preparing your manuscript.
Free format submission
For manuscripts that are already formatted for publication in another journal, Wildlife Letters now offers Free Format submission for a simplified and streamlined submission process. The article may remain in the format for another journal, providing it meets the aims of one of the article types of Wildlife Letters.
Before you submit, you will need:
To submit, login at https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/wll2 and create a new submission. Follow the submission steps as required and submit the manuscript.
Title Page
The title page should contain:
Main Text File
The main text file should be in Word or PDF format or LaTeX. When submitting a Latex Main Document, you must also provide a PDF version of the manuscript for peer review. Please upload this file as "Main Document - LaTeX PDF." All supporting files that are referred to in the Latex Main Document should be uploaded as a “LaTeX Supplementary File.”
Your main document file should include:
Reference Style
This journal uses Harvard reference style. Because the journal offers Free Format submission, however, this is for information only and you can format your references in any consistent style. Reference format will instead be taken care of by the typesetter.
Figures and Supporting Information
Figures, supporting information, and appendices should be supplied as separate files. You should review the basic figure requirements for manuscripts for peer review, as well as the more detailed post-acceptance figure requirements. View Wiley’s FAQs on supporting information.
We recommend that illustrations are prepared so that they are accessible to our many color-blind readers. The following site contain useful information, tips, and tools on appropriate use of color in illustrations: https://towardsdatascience.com/two-simple-steps-to-create-colorblind-friendly-data-visualizations-2ed781a167ec.
The following guidelines should be observed:
Graphical TOC/Abstract
The journal’s table of contents (TOC) and abstracts for individual articles will be presented in graphical form with a brief graphical TOC/abstract.
The graphical TOC/abstract entry must include the article title, the authors' names (with the corresponding author indicated by an asterisk), no more than 80 words or 3 sentences of text summarizing the key findings presented in the paper and a figure that best represents the scope of the paper.
Table of contents entries should be submitted to ScholarOne as ‘Supplementary material for review’ during the initial manuscript submission process.
The image supplied should fit within the dimensions of 50mm x 60mm and be fully legible at this size.
Genetic Nomenclature
Sequence variants should be described in the text and tables using both DNA and protein designations whenever appropriate. Sequence variant nomenclature must follow the current HGVS guidelines; see varnomen.hgvs.org, where examples of acceptable nomenclature are provided.
Sequence Data
Nucleotide sequence data can be submitted in electronic form to any of the three major collaborative databases: DDBJ, EMBL, or GenBank. It is only necessary to submit to one database as data are exchanged between DDBJ, EMBL, and GenBank on a daily basis. The suggested wording for referring to accession-number information is: ‘These sequence data have been submitted to the DDBJ/EMBL/GenBank databases under accession number U12345’. Addresses are as follows:
Proteins sequence data should be submitted to either of the following repositories:
Structural Data
For papers describing structural data, atomic coordinates and the associated experimental data should be deposited in the appropriate databank (see below). Please note that the data in databanks must be released, at the latest, upon publication of the article. We trust in the cooperation of our authors to ensure that atomic coordinates and experimental data are released on time.
Once the submission materials have been prepared in accordance with the Author Guidelines, manuscripts should be submitted online at https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/wll2
For help with submissions, please contact: [email protected]
This journal does not charge submission fees.
Open Access
This journal is a gold open access title. Please note: Article Publication Charges (APCs) are currently waived. For more information on this journal’s APCs, please see the Open Access page.
Cover Letter and Novelty Statement
A covering letter is required to be uploaded in Scholar One and should concisely describe why the enclosed work is novel, exciting and of general interest to a wildlife audience. Place your work in the context of other published studies and say how differs. For instance, a new Concept paper might extend an existing (named) theory and test this using published data, or a Letter might expand the tests of an important general hypothesis that has previously only been tested in limited regions or for certain types of study organisms. In general, the statement of novelty could include things like new discoveries, or ideas, the generality of the work and how this compares with previous studies, important findings for wildlife management and conservation, or impacts of global change. New methods or survey methodologies should include the potential gains from using the new method or methodology and state how this compares with other published methods.
Preprint Policy
Please find the Wiley preprint policy here.
This journal accepts articles previously published on preprint servers.
Data Sharing, Data Availability and Data Citation
Wildlife Letters mandates data sharing. Review Wiley’s Data Sharing policy where you will be able to see and select the data availability statement that is right for your submission. Exceptions to the data archiving policy may be granted at the discretion of the Editor-in-Chiefs for sensitive information such as the location of endangered species. Authors may request an embargo of up to a year with details of the justification for the request. Requests for longer periods will be declined.
Data are a central part of science and are important products that need to be accessible and preserved for future public use (see Wiley’s Data Citation policy). Wildlife Letters requires that the actual data used to generate the results in the paper are archived in one of the following public repositories: Dryad, Figshare, Hal, Zenodo, OSF, US federal agencies repositories, Environmental Data Initiative (EDI). Existing published datasets with a DOI can be cited if the entire dataset is the same as that used in the submitted paper; otherwise a subset of data or modified dataset would require a new data deposition in one of the repositories named above. In such cases, open science best practices should be followed and authors should provide code (e.g., in R) that is able to access the cited DOI, retrieve the raw data used for the study, and manipulate it into the form used for analyses. The manipulated data can then be placed along with other data used in the paper in a new data deposition with a new DOI.
To make sure that data are reusable, both the data files analyzed to produce the results in paper and a metadata file are needed. The metadata file should explain the variables used and entries in each row and column of the data file, including units of measurement and a plain English description of each variable.
Computer code used to produce the results in papers must also be archived in a public repository such as Zenodo or Figshare. Code must be annotated so the purpose of each segment or function is clear. Both the data and code must be archived. Further guidance is available at https://authorservices.wiley.com/author-resources/Journal-Authors/open-access/data-sharing-citation/index.html.
DNA sequences must be deposited in the EMBL/GenBank/DDJB Nucleotide Sequence Databases. An accession number for each sequence must be included in the manuscript.
Authors must complete a data accessibility statement for all accepted papers, stating where the data can be accessed. This will confirm to the journal that each of these actions has been undertaken. The data accessibility statement is written in Manuscript Central at the time of manuscript submission. Editors will screen a portion of data prior to publication. If, at a later date, it is found that authors of published papers have not adhered to the journal policies, the paper will be retracted by the editors and a statement made in the journal justifying this action.
Data Protection
By submitting a manuscript to or reviewing for this publication, your name, email address, and affiliation, and other contact details the publication might require, will be used for the regular operations of the publication. Please review Wiley’s Data Protection Policy to learn more.
Funding
You will be required to enter all funding sources into Manuscript Central when you submit the manuscript. The information from Manuscript Central will appear in the PDF file of the manuscript that is viewed by reviewers and will be published in articles that are accepted for publication. You will need to select a designation for the organization type for funders when you enter the information, and you are responsible for the accuracy of this designation. If in doubt, please check the Open Funder Registry for the correct nomenclature.
Authorship
All listed authors should have contributed to the manuscript substantially and have agreed to the final submitted version. Review editorial standards and scroll down for a description of authorship criteria.
Manuscript Central, our manuscript submission system, uses the CRediT (Contribution Roles Taxonomy)—more information is available on our Author Services site.
This journal requires ORCID for all authors. Authors must enter their ORCID ID in their profile when submitting a manuscript. Please refer to Wiley’s resources on ORCID. Institutions are increasingly requiring authors to have ORCID IDs.
Author Biography
During the submission process, you will be required to provide a biography for the main author in the space provided (Step 6 in the online submission process), and asked to upload a profile photo in the ‘File Upload’ step, designated as an 'Author Profile Photo’. The author biography will not be part of the peer-review process and will only appear in the finalized article PDF after acceptance.
Reproduction of Copyrighted Material
If excerpts from copyrighted works owned by third parties are included, credit must be shown in the contribution. It is your responsibility to also obtain written permission for reproduction from the copyright owners. For more information visit Wiley’s Copyright Terms & Conditions FAQ.
The corresponding author is responsible for obtaining written permission to reproduce the material "in print and other media" from the publisher of the original source, and for supplying Wiley with that permission upon submission.
Peer Review
This journal operates under a single-blind peer review model. Except where otherwise stated, manuscripts are peer reviewed by at least three anonymous reviewers and an Associate Editor. Papers will only be sent to review if either of the co-Editor-in-Chiefs or their designees from the editorial board determine that the paper meets the appropriate quality and relevance requirements.
In-house submissions consisting of papers authored by Editors or Editorial Board members of Wildlife Letters, will be sent to Editors unaffiliated with the author or institution and monitored carefully to ensure there is no peer review bias.
Wiley's policy on the confidentiality of the review process is available here.
Special issuesRefer and Transfer Program
Wiley believes that no valuable research should go unshared. This journal participates in Wiley’s Refer & Transfer program through which we transfer articles that cannot be published to other Wiley participating journals and receive articles from Wiley journals with which we have a transfer arrangement. If your manuscript is not accepted at Wildlife Letters, you may receive a recommendation to transfer your manuscript to another suitable Wiley journal, either through a referral from the journal’s editor or through our Transfer Desk Assistant.
Fast-track Submission for Outstanding Papers
Wildlife Letters is open to receiving manuscripts that have previously been submitted to high-profile general science journals and have been sent out for review but declined for publication in that journal. Authors should submit such manuscripts to Wildlife Letters as free-format submissions. If authors wish, they may also send the editorial office and Editors-in-Chief the reviewer comments and editorial comments that you received from the high-profile general journal and request an expedited review. We would then evaluate the manuscript and consider it for expedited (rapid) review at Wildlife Letters. We stress that all manuscripts must not be under consideration for publication at another journal; in other words simultaneous submissions to more than one journal are not permitted.
Guidelines on Publishing and Research Ethics in Journal Articles
The journal requires that you include in the manuscript details of IRB approvals, ethical treatment of human and animal research participants, and gathering of informed consent, as appropriate. This information should be prepared in a new section entitled ‘Ethics Statement’ and should be under the ‘Acknowledgements’ section in the main text file. You will be expected to declare all conflicts of interest, or none, on submission. Please review Wiley’s policies surrounding human studies, animal studies, biosecurity, and research reporting guidelines.
Animal Studies: A statement indicating that the protocol and procedures employed were ethically reviewed and approved, as well as the name of the body giving approval, must be included in the ‘Ethics Statement’. Authors are encouraged to adhere to animal research reporting standards, for example the ARRIVE guidelines for reporting study design and statistical analysis; experimental procedures; experimental animals and housing and husbandry. Authors should also state whether experiments were performed in accordance with relevant institutional and national guidelines for the care and use of laboratory animals:
Artificial Intelligence Generated Content
Artificial Intelligence Generated Content (AIGC) tools—such as ChatGPT and others based on large language models (LLMs)—cannot be considered capable of initiating an original piece of research without direction by human authors. They also cannot be accountable for a published work or for research design, which is a generally held requirement of authorship (as discussed in the previous section), nor do they have legal standing or the ability to hold or assign copyright. Therefore—in accordance with COPE’s position statement on AI tools—these tools cannot fulfill the role of, nor be listed as, an author of an article. If an author has used this kind of tool to develop any portion of a manuscript, its use must be described, transparently and in detail, in the Methods or Acknowledgements section. The author is fully responsible for the accuracy of any information provided by the tool and for correctly referencing any supporting work on which that information depends. Tools that are used to improve spelling, grammar, and general editing are not included in the scope of these guidelines. The final decision about whether use of an AIGC tool is appropriate or permissible in the circumstances of a submitted manuscript or a published article lies with the journal’s editor or other party responsible for the publication’s editorial policy.
Research Permits
Where research has been carried out in areas for which research permits are required (e.g., nature reserves), or when it deals with organisms for which collection or import/export permits are required (e.g. protected species), the authors must clearly detail obtaining these permits in the Acknowledgments section.
Wildlife Letters follows the core practices of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and handles cases of research and publication misconduct accordingly (https://publicationethics.org/core-practices).
Wildlife Letters uses iThenticate’s CrossCheck software to detect instances of overlapping and similar text in submitted manuscripts. Read Wiley’s Top 10 Publishing Ethics Tips for Authors and Wiley’s Publication Ethics Guidelines.
First Look
After your paper is accepted, your files will be assessed by the editorial office to ensure they are ready for production. You may be contacted if any updates or final files are required. Otherwise, your paper will be sent to the production team.
Wiley Author Services
When an accepted article is received by Wiley’s production team, the corresponding author will receive an email asking them to login or register with Wiley Author Services. You will be asked to sign a publication license at this point. Please note: Article Publication Charges (APCs) are currently waived. For more information on this journal’s APCs, please see the Open Access page.
Copyright and Licensing
Wildlife Letters is an Open Access journal: authors of accepted papers pay an Article Publication Charge starting in 2026, and their papers are published under a Creative Commons license. This journal uses the CC-BY Creative Commons License. Note that certain funders mandate a particular type of CC license be used.
Proofs
Authors will receive an e-mail notification with a link and instructions for accessing HTML page proofs online/with their proofs included as a pdf. Authors should also make sure that any renumbered tables, figures, or references match text citations and that figure legends correspond with text citations and actual figures. Proofs must be returned within 48 hours of receipt of the email.
Cover Photos
Wildlife Letters accepts cover images for consideration for publication. They may be uploaded as supplementary files.
Wiley Editing Services offers a professional cover image design service that creates eye-catching images, ready to be showcased on the journal cover. This is an optional service with a fee payable by the author(s). In addition to generating interest in your article’s issue, you can use your Cover Image in your other article promotion efforts. For instance, this could include use in a poster, other printed material, multimedia and videos, or on websites and social media.
Article Promotion Support
Wiley Editing Services offers professional video, design, and writing services to create shareable video abstracts, infographics, conference posters, lay summaries, and research news stories for your research – so you can help your research get the attention it deserves.
Author Name Change Policy
In cases where authors wish to change their name following publication, Wiley will update and republish the paper and redeliver the updated metadata to indexing services. Our editorial and production teams will use discretion in recognizing that name changes may be of a sensitive and private nature for various reasons including (but not limited to) alignment with gender identity, or as a result of marriage, divorce, or religious conversion. Accordingly, to protect the author’s privacy, we will not publish a correction notice to the paper, and we will not notify co-authors of the change. Authors should contact the journal’s Editorial Office with their name change request.
Correction of Authorship
In accordance with Wiley’s Best Practice Guidelines on Research Integrity and Publishing Ethics and the Committee on Publication Ethics’ guidance, Wildlife Letters will allow authors to correct authorship on a submitted, accepted, or published article if a valid reason exists to do so. All authors – including those to be added or removed – must agree to any proposed change. To request a change to the author list, please complete the Request for Changes to a Journal Article Author List Form and contact either the journal’s editorial or production office, depending on the status of the article. Authorship changes will not be considered without a fully completed Author Change form. (Correcting the authorship is different from changing an author’s name; the relevant policy for that can be found in Wiley’s Best Practice Guidelines under “Author name changes after publication.”)
Additional Guidelines for Cover Pictures and Visual TOC/Abstracts and Table of Contents Graphics
Graphics that do not adhere to these guidelines will be recommended for revision or will not be accepted for publication.
Embedded Rich Media
This journal has the option for authors to embed rich media (i.e. video and audio) within their final article. These files should be submitted with the manuscript files online, using either the “Embedded Video” or “Embedded Audio” file designation. If the video/audio includes dialogue, a transcript should be included as a separate file. The combined manuscript files, including video, audio, tables, figures, and text must not exceed 350 MB. For full guidance on accepted file types and resolution please see here.
Ensure each file is numbered (e.g. Video 1, Video 2, etc.) Legends for the rich media files should be placed at the end of the article.
The content of the video should not display overt product advertising. Educational presentations are encouraged.
Any narration should be in English, if possible. A typed transcript of any speech within the video/audio should be provided. An English translation of any non-English speech should be provided in the transcript.
All embedded rich media will be subject to peer review. Editors reserve the right to request edits to rich media files as a condition of acceptance. Contributors are asked to be succinct, and the Editors reserve the right to require shorter video/audio duration. The video/audio should be high quality (both in content and visibility/audibility). The video/audio should make a specific point; particularly, it should demonstrate the features described in the text of the manuscript.
Participant Consent: It is the responsibility of the corresponding author to seek informed consent from any identifiable participant in the rich media files. Masking a participant’s eyes, or excluded head and shoulders is not sufficient. Please ensure that a consent form (https://authorservices.wiley.com/author-resources/Journal-Authors/licensing/licensing-info-faqs.html) is provided for each participant.
Author Guidelines updated on 3 January 2023