About : Instructions to authors

Created by Shavawn Donoghue, last modified by Administrator on Apr 07, 2014

Scope of wiki

Authors are encouraged to contribute content to SOKI wiki as well as participate in editing existing pages.  SOKI wiki covers information and knowledge on the ecosystems of the Southern Ocean. The scope of the wiki is best described by structure of the spaces in the wiki:

Ecological Review and Application

The Ecological Review and Application space provides:

  • background, syntheses and conclusions of ecological studies and applications
  • reviews of the literature on particular themes
  • descriptions of the application of ecological knowledge in policy and management
  • summaries of the policy and administrative environment in which science may play a part.

Ecological Knowledge 

The Ecological Knowledge space consolidates Southern Ocean ecosystem research outputs, providing:

  • an information base to support current and future projects, theoretical developments and policy initiatives
  • summaries of data
  • published and unpublished information
  • interrogation of Antarctic datasets available online.

 All material within this space includes citation of published information, web links and directives to further information where applicable. 

Research Tools and Activities

The Research Tools and Activities space describes current research activities and available tools for research on the Southern Ocean ecosystem. These are summarised by: 

  • descriptions of methods that sample, monitor and model the status of marine biota and their habitats
  • links to datasets or descriptions of data generated by projects
  • project descriptions
  • ecological indicators - their function, attributes, current status and trends, management strategies and objectives 

Types of pages

SOKI wiki is relatively unrestricted in terms of the types of pages/content that can be contributed. Page content can be contributed voluntarily by members of the wiki community, or by invitation from the Editorial committee.

The wiki, at this stage, is not expected to be a place for traditional research papers - i.e. original articles with an abstract, introduction, methods, results and discussion - but in a similar style to a scientific journal, the content can be grouped as follows:

  • Short Communications
  • Comment 
  • Review 
  • Food for thought: short articles on topical issues, often provocative or innovative in nature, solicited or offered to stimulate dialogue, research, and ideas generally.

There are only a few rules regarding content. The majority of rules that do exist on the wiki surround the appropriateness with regards to placement, structure, consistency, review and moderation.

Pages can be created for internal purposes, with their editing and viewing permissions restricted, not all pages of the wiki will be public. 

Submission process

See the SOKI Wiki Editorial Policy for detail on editorial criteria, and how pages are handled by our editors between submission and acceptance for publication.

To create a page, you need to have registered and been given a login. Pages cannot be created anonymously. As part of the login process, we would like to have as much information about you as possible - this is important in developing an understanding of our wiki community, and allows for members of the wiki community to find other individuals with complementary (or not) interests and skills. The information provided to obtain a login includes your full name, eAbout Me (a brief summary of your key interests and research areas), Location. The minimum information you need to provide to obtain a login is your name and email address.

Templates

Templates are available for new pages of the wiki. The templates provide for the inclusion of standard content as well as providing a guide for the type of information to include on pages.

All pages, at a minimum, need to use the "SOEC" template (available from the 'Add page from template' in the menu on the top right of each page).

All pages MUST have the provision for citation, recognition of page contribution and a last modified date (these are provided by the SOEC template).

The SOEC template also includes a "draft" notification at the top of the page. Once the page is finalised, this can be removed by placing the page into 'edit mode' and removing the macros.

Templates are also available for the Biota, Methods and Indicators subspaces.

Templates can be generated for specific areas of the wiki if required. This is done in consultation with the Site Administrator and Content Manager.

Format

The format of the pages within the wiki is guided by the templates, and the styles inherent from Confluence (e.g. paragraph, heading 1 etc.). 

Page names - cannot have a "&" or "( )" in the page title.

All links to content within the wiki need to be made relative. When determining a link from within the wiki, do not use the URL of the page, but generate the link through the search function (or recently viewed) of the 'insert link' macro. This ensures that if the page is moved to another space/sub space, that any links to the page will not be broken. It is the responsibility of page authors to ensure there are no broken links. The wiki community is asked to participate in this process by reporting any broken links to the page creator (in the first instance) and then to site admin. Any broken links found will be removed by site admin. 

Links for pages outside the wiki will need to be done via URL (web link in 'insert link' macro) please minimise these where possible; any external links should preferably be to the 'root' URL rather than the actual document (i.e. if you find  a document on the IWC website, don't put a direct link to the document). The preferred process for including links found externally to the wiki: download document, attach it to the wiki page, source the document as www.iwcoffice.org (or whatever is appropriate) within the text. 

Figures and tables

Any figures or tables reproduced in the wiki need to have permissions from the original author and/or publisher. The size of the image needs to be reduced to 300 or 500 px and linked to the original (this option is available when you insert the image - you do not need to manually resize the image before attaching it to the page). All images in the wiki must be attached to the page with the source of the image (and link if appropriate) in the text immediately below it.

There are detailed Instructions for developing a Biota profile which can provide more information on the specifics of pulling together pages within the wiki.

Additional functionality on pages

Any dynamic web functionality on pages must be done with the approval of the site administrator. This is to ensure the security and integrity of the wiki.

Style

Where possible, the text needs to reflect where statements are based on expert judgement or as the result of analysis. To do this, please ensure that statements are referenced or they are composed in a way that reflects the judgement and the basis for that judgement.  

Please use British English spelling throughout. Dates should appear in the day-month-year format. Measurements should be metric and use the SI conventions for units and abbreviations.

  1. From AAD Intranet
    1. Web publishing style guide (AAD Intranet only)
    2. AAD Style guide (AAD Intranet only)

  2. From UTas (if licenced under ACE-CRC then these apply too?)
    1. Editorial style guide

References

The references section needs to be accurate and consistent with the wiki´s style. We use the Harvard referencing system.

Guidelines are as follows:

  • Cite references chronologically in the text by the author and date (e.g. Miles 2005, Miles 2009)
  • Multiple references from the same year should be cited alphabetically. (e.g. Miles 2005a, Miles 2005b)
  • In the text, the names of two coauthors are linked by ´and´; for three or more, the first author´s name is followed by ´et al.´. (e.g. Miles and Roberts 2001, Miles et al. 2008)
  • Avoid excessive citation of references.  For example, if your point is with respect to the original concept then please cite only the original concept (this is preferable to citing the most recent use of the concept).  If it is for a recent revision of a concept then the lineage of the recent adaptation may be required.  Examples of the application of a concept are not needed unless (i) they add significantly to the meaning of the text or (ii) breadth of application needs to be demonstrated.
  • All references cited in the text must be listed at the end of the paper, with the names of authors arranged alphabetically, then chronologically (examples here).

No editorial responsibility can be taken for the accuracy of the references so authors are requested to check these with special care.

If references are available electronically a link can be provided - this can be to the article itself or to the online abstract (depending on access). Preference is to link to the journal article or abstract, however many authors make their publications available online, and linking to the author's electronic archive is also acceptable.

Peer review

Our peer review process is described in the Editorial Policy and further details are provided on the Peer Review page.

 

Citation

Page contributors: 

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