Submissions and publication policies
Contents
- Call for Submissions
- Submissions
- Style Notes
Call for Submissions
We invite you to submit an article for the following special issues. Human Biology charges no publishing fees, and preprints are open access and are posted within several days of final acceptance of the article. Formatting guidelines can be found further down this page.
Current Trends in Bioarchaeology
Human Biology is currently seeking contributions to an upcoming special issue focused on Bioarchaeology. We are looking for applied case studies (large or small-scale), current trends, as well as commentaries on ethical considerations. There are no temporal or geographic restrictions. Not all articles need be genetically focused, and we welcome articles that discuss isotopic, paleoproteomics, paleopathology, aDNA, histology, peptides, etc. Articles in this issue do not necessarily need original data analysis, and we may accept review articles that discuss timely social or ethical issues surrounding bioarchaeology in practice.
If you are interested, please contact megan.fry@floridamuseum.ufl.edu with a brief summary or abstract of your proposed manuscript. We aim to have submissions submitted by December 31, 2024, so the review process can begin in January. Please feel free to reach out if you have any questions.
Practicing NAGPRA
Human Biology is currently seeking contributions to an upcoming special issue focused on the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA). This issue is broadly focused on current trends, decolonizing strategies, and building best practices toward NAGPRA compliance. Potential contributions could include discussions on challenges and positive paths forward, collaboration between institutions and Tribal Partners, negotiation and consultation strategies, or changes in internal practices/workflows to comply with the newly updated guidelines. We are particularly interested in work that is collaborative between practitioners and Tribal communities.
If you are interested, please contact megan.fry@floridamuseum.ufl.edu with a brief summary or abstract of your proposed manuscript. We aim to have submissions submitted by December 31, 2024, so the review process can begin in January. Please feel free to reach out if you have any questions.
Submissions
Submissions should consist of the following items, submitted through the Human Biology Digital Commons website:
- A cover letter to the editors and
- a single manuscript file (MS Word). The manuscript file must include the full text of the article, the reference section, and the tables and figures and corresponding captions. All text should be double spaced. See more information at the Submit Article link.
- Each figure uploaded separately (as Supplemental Content) as a high-resolution TIF or JPG file of at least 300dpi.
Style Notes
General
Authors should submit their revised manuscript as a MS Word document. The manuscript should be double spaced throughout, including the author affiliations, references, figure captions, and tables. The article should follow the style of Human Biology (see below) and should be written concisely.
The manuscript should be organized as follows. The first page should be a title page, including the title of the paper, authors’ names, complete authors’ affiliations, email address of the communicating author, a short title, and key words.
The second page should contain the abstract of the paper (500 words maximum). The abstract should give a summary of the article and not be merely descriptive. For example, state the results and the conclusions; do not use such phrases as “The results are discussed in terms of epidemiology.” The pre-review made by the editor is based solely on the abstract and title; therefore the abstract should be well-written and informative.
The third page starts the actual text. The text should contain the following sections: an introduction (untitled) outlining the background of your topic and stating your purpose in writing the present article; the Materials and Methods (the study population, statistical methods, measurement methods, etc.); the Results; and a Discussion, followed by a Conclusions section, if needed, and finally, a complete list of Literature Cited. In the text, references should be cited by author and date; see examples below. In the Literature Cited section references should be in alphabetical order by author. The Literature Cited should include all references cited in the text, figure captions, and tables. Following the Literature Cited section are the tables and figures plus captions. Please ensure that all figures and tables are included in the single document submission. Please also upload each figure separately as an "additional file" upon submission.
References
Each in-text citation should be author name plus year as follows:>
- - Single author - (Harrington 2021)
- Two authors – (Follis and Mulligan 2025)
- More than two authors - (Kolman et al. 2011)
- More than one publication with the same first author and same year – (Tushingham, Damatio, et al. 2020; Tushingham, Eerkens, et al. 2020)
Each reference in the Literature Cited section should be complete. For journal articles with more than three authors, include the names of the first three authors et al., date, title of article, journal title (abbreviated according to Index Medicus, or spelled out completely if the journal is not listed in the Index), volume number, and inclusive page numbers. For articles with two or three articles, "and" should precede the last author name. See examples below:
Article
Morton, N. E., C. Smith, R. Hill et al. 1976. Population structure of Barra (Outer Hebrides). Ann. Hum. Genet. [Vol. no.]:339–352.
Article in press
Huang, X., Z.-Y. Xia, and X. Bin. (In press). Genomic insights into the demographic history of southern Chinese. Innovations.
Book
Davidoff, L., and C. Hall. 1987. Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle Class 1780–1850. [ed. here]. London: Hutchinson.
Chapter within an edited volume
Melton, P. E. 2012. Mennonite migrations: Genetic and demographic consequences. In Causes and Consequences of Human Migration: An Evolutionary Perspective, [edition goes here, e.g., 2nd ed.], M. H. Crawford and B. C. Campbell, eds. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 299–316.
Book with translator
Herodotus. 2003. The Histories. A. de Sélincourt, trans. London: Penguin.
Master's thesis
Isaacks, M. 2015. The use of near-infrared remote sensing in the detection of clandestine human remains. Master’s thesis, Texas State University.
PhD dissertation
Kim, J. 2016. Understanding population-specific age estimation using multivariate cumulative probit regression for Asian skeletal samples. PhD diss., University of Tennessee.
PReprint
Kahanamoku, S., R. A. Alegado, A. Kagawa-Viviani et al. 2020. A Native Hawaiian–led summary of the current impact of constructing the Thirty Meter Telescope on Maunakea. Preprint, https://arxiv.org/abs/2001.00970.
Xia, Z.-Y., S. Yan, C.-C. Wang et al. 2019. Inland-coastal bifurcation of southern East Asians revealed by Hmong-Mien genomic history. Preprint, https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/730903v1, doi: 10.1101/730903.
Online publication
Popp, J. 2018. How Indigenous knowledge advances modern science and technology. The Conversation, 2 January. https://theconversation.com/how-indigenous-knowledge-advances-modern-science-and-technology-89351.
General web page
US Environmental Protection Agency. 2020. Environmental justice. https://www.epa.gov/environmentaljustice (accessed 29 May 2020).
Conference proceedings
Vigil-Hayes, M., M. E. Duarte, N. D. Parkhurst et al. 2017. #indigenous: Tracking the connective actions of Native American advocates on Twitter. In Proceedings of the 2017 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing, February 2017, Portland, OR, USA. New York: Association for Computing Machinery, 1,387–1,399.
Software
R Core Team. 2016. R: A Language and Environment for Statistical Computing. Vienna: R Foundation for Statistical Computing. https://www.R-project.org.
Tables
Place the tables after the Literature Cited section. Each table should be placed on a separate page, double-spaced. Use the table function in Word if at all possible (if you cannot use the table function, use tabs between entries to make the columns; do not insert a series of spaces). Do not use vertical or slant rules. Keep in mind that the table should not contain more columns of data than will fit on a printed page turned sideways. Tables should be numbered sequentially in the order they are to appear. Make sure that each table is cited in the text in sequential order. Each column should have a heading, and all units should be clearly marked (%, cm, etc.).
Figures and Figure Captions
After the tables should be a list of figure captions, followed by the figures. Because the figure captions are typeset, they should not be part of the actual figures. Figure captions should be placed on a separate page, double-spaced. You do not have to use a separate page for each caption. All illustrations should be numbered sequentially. Keys and other internal matter should be lettered on the figure, or if possible, included in the figure caption.
Images should be supplied as high-resolution TIF or JPG files. Resolution should be approximately 300 dpi at actual printed size (i.e., the size when printed in the journal).
The ideal format for figures, charts, and graphs is a "vector" format (i.e., Adobe Illustrator .AI or .EPS files, or a vector .PDF file), as this allows the most flexibility for re-sizing as required for the journal, and the best possible quality when printing. If a vector format is not available, then submit a high-resolution TIF or JPG. Please make sure that legends, axis labels, and other text elements are of sufficient size to be readable when re-sized to fit the journal layout.
Reviewed Books
Books produced by North American and international publishers should be sent for review to Connie J. Mulligan, Department of Anthropology, 2033 Mowry Rd, PO Box 103610, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32610-3610.
Addendum
It is the style of Human Biology to use the Human Gene Mapping Workshop nomenclature for genetic systems. This nomenclature system and its terminology are explained by Shows et al. in their article “Guidelines for Human Gene Nomenclature: An International System for Human Gene Nomenclature (ISGN, 1987)” [Cytogenet. Cell Genet. 46:11
