Original Contributions

Original Contributions present new findings, approaches, or concepts relevant to cat conservation. This is the most data-oriented section of Cat News, typically presenting original information, analysis or discussions that will be subject to peer review. Short review papers on a specific topic are welcome. Original contributions should not be longer than 4 printed pages in Cat News including references and figures. Depending on illustrations, the length of a manuscript is 2,500–3,000 words (20,000 characters including spaces depending on illustrations). Original contributions need to consist of an abstract (max. 250 words), and subheadings. These articles are peer-reviewed. Original articles are exemplified by colour photos, diagrams, and/or maps. After publication, Original Contributions are integrated into the Digital Cat Library as Portable Document Format file (PDF/Adobe Acrobat). See examples of original contribution articles in CN79.

Short Communications

Short Communications report mainly new discoveries regarding distribution, behaviour, or ecology of cats. Length is 1, exceptionally 2 printed pages (5,000-10,000 characters including spaces depending on illustrations). Short Communications are illustrated by at least one colour photo, possibly diagrams and/or maps. They also need an abstract (max. 250 words). New discoveries or interesting confirmations of presence of cats in a specific place are described with longitude, latitude and altitude  (in degrees, minutes and seconds, e.g. 15°11’12’’ N / 12°12’13’’ E; or in decimal degrees with 6 digits after the decimal point, e.g. 15.186667 / 12.203611), and must provide evidence for the presence of the cats (photo, genetic analysis or any other robust proof). Short Communications are editor reviewed, exceptionally peer reviewed. After publication, Short Communications are integrated into the Digital Cat Library as Portable Document Format file (PDF/Adobe Acrobat). See examples of short communication articles in CN79.

News from the Red List and Green Status of Species  Assessment

RLA or GSS news segments are 1-page articles (i.e. 5,000 characters including spaces depending on illustrations) covering recently published Red List or Green Status Assessments and report on any possible changes in status between assessments. These articles are formatted as news articles and are signed by the authors. There is no abstract in this type of article. One of the figures is a map of the current distribution of the species and there is a box with information to be filled in including: picture of the species, year of RLA/GSS, category and criteria assessed for RLA or Category and Species Recovery Score for GSS, status change, global population trend, global population size and range. There is no reference list in this type of article except for a reference to the most recent Red List, respectively Green Status Assessment of the taxon. These articles are editor reviewed or exceptionally peer-reviewed. See examples of RLA news articles in CN79

News from the Working Groups

Working Group news segments are 1-page articles (i.e. 5,000 characters including spaces depending on illustrations) covering recent activities of working groups that are affiliated with the Cat Specialist Group. These articles are formatted as news articles and are signed by the authors. There is no abstract in this type of article. There should be a total of two of these Working Group news segments per regular issue. Please note that the News from the Working Groups articles also should include a box including the following information: logo, name of the Working Group, year of establishment, number of members, and mission statement of WG. These articles are editor reviewed or exceptionally peer-reviewed. See an example of a Working Group news article in CN79.

Ex Situ News

Ex situ news articles cover ex situ topics and should be about 2 printed pages, which is 10,000 characters including spaces depending on illustrations. These articles are formatted as news articles and are signed by the authors. There is no abstract in this type of article. There should be a total of one of these ex situ news segments per regular issue. Please note that the Ex Situ News articles should include a box including the following information: logo, picture of the species, ex situ population size, number of institutions involved in the breeding programme and year of last published studbook. These articles are editor reviewed or exceptionally peer-reviewed. See an example of an ex situ news article in CN79.

Manuscripts submitted to Cat News must follow these Guidelines. To have an example document, these guidelines themselves have been organised in the format of manuscripts to be submitted, including the way in which the reference list has been formatted. All articles must be submitted as a MS Word file or a compatible text file format (*.doc, *.docx, *.rtf). Typeface and size is Calibri 12 pt, left aligned without word division (hyphenation), paragraphs separated by an empty line throughout the manuscript. Pages and lines must be numbered. Title and chapter headings are formatted boldface, subchapter titles italic. Scientific names of all species are added after the vernacular name only when mentioned for the first time, without brackets, author and year – for instance Eurasian lynx Lynx lynx – but are not given in the title of the article.

Original contributions and Short Communications in Cat News should be organised like any other scientific paper – abstract, introduction, methods, results, discussion – but it is not mandatory to use these terms as chapter headings. Articles in Cat News are written in British English. Times are indicated with the 24 h system, not with AM and PM. Abbreviations should not be in parentheses and use km² and not ha.  Specific places are described with longitude, latitude and altitude (in degrees, minutes and seconds, e.g. 15°11’12’’ N / 12°12’13’’ E; or decimal degrees with 6 digits after the decimal point, e.g. 15.186667 / 12.203611). Dates are written in the following form: day month year, so for example 23 April 2024.

Tables and illustrations

Tables are organised and formatted as presented in Table 1 (please note: that it should not be formatted as the checklist presented in Table 2). The width of a table should not exceed the page width of Cat News. Tables have a heading and are consecutively numbered. Do not integrate tables and figures in the text in a submitted manuscript, but insert tables after the text and before illustrations and their captions.

Illustrations are line drawings, diagrams, maps or photographs, referred to in the text as Fig. 1, Fig. 2, etc. Captions are mandatory for all illustrations. Illustrations with their captions must be added in chronological order at the end of the manuscript. Photo credits are mentioned in the caption, but not integrated into the picture. All photos and colour figures have to be submitted, each separately, as Joint Photographic Experts Group (*.jpg) files, size 15 x ~10 cm and a resolution of 300 dpi (1772 x 1350 pixel). For MS Excel figures, the original files (*.xls or *.xlsx) must be submitted. Filenames must indicate the number of the illustration as used in the manuscript.

All tables and figures must be referred to in the text and must be referred in consecutive order, e.g. Fig. 2 cannot be mentioned before Fig. 1.

Citations of references

Cat News articles are fully referenced. References can be journal articles of one, two or several authors cited in the text as follows: Karanth (2003), Wegge & Stooras (2009), Marker et al. (2008). The full reference is given in the reference list in alphabetic order at the end of the text. For the correct citations of books or book chapters (Malbrant & Maclatchy 1949, Payán et al. 2013) see the reference list at the end of these guidelines.  If there are multiple references inserted in one location, these are first ordered chronologically and then alphabetically. Authors are requested to prepare the reference list very carefully and to refer to these Guidelines or any recent issue of Cat News for citations and preparation of the reference list. For articles with more than 10 authors, please write out the first six names followed by “…, &” and then the name of the last author (see Kitchener et al. 2017 citation in the reference list of this manuscript).

Taxonomy

In Cat News, the taxonomy of Kitchener et al. (2017) is used.

Supporting Online Material

Extended tables, appendices, additional graphs and photographs can be submitted as Supporting Online Material, which is available in the Cat News section of the Cat SG website. It should be referred to as such in the text. E.g., the first time as Supporting Online Material Table T1 or Supporting Online Material Fig. F1 and then consecutively as SOM Table T1 or SOM Fig. F1.

Authors are invited to submit articles for any of the five categories to Cat News. Manuscripts including tables and captions to figures should be submitted in electronic form to the Editor in Chief (ch.breitenmoser(at)kora.ch). The editors decide whether an article is suited for publication in Cat News. Manuscripts of Original Contributions and exceptionally Short Communications prepared according to these Guidelines will then be submitted to a peer review process. Considering the judgement of the reviewers, the editors then decide whether a paper is refused or accepted with or without revision. The lead authors will then be informed of this decision. Once a paper is accepted for publication, the editors will inform the lead author in which issue the article will be published.

Once a paper is accepted for publication, it will be put in the Cat News layout by the Technical Editor. Throughout this process, the Technical Editor may or may not reach out to the lead author to ask for additional information wherever necessary. Once all the articles for a specific issue have been put into the layout, all lead authors will receive a galley proof of their article for approval. When receiving this proof, it is very important that all authors take a careful look at the article to check for any possible (hyphenation) errors or typos and inform the technical editor if there are any issues to be corrected. It is not possible to change the content of the article in the galley proof, but is about ensuring that the submitted article is put into the layout correctly and all errors are discovered and corrected. At this stage, the authors will also be asked to confirm in writing that they and all co-authors agree to this latest version of the galley proof – including the spelling of their names and their affiliations –, and have permission to use all of the illustrations and data that are incorporated in the article. This is done by filling in the authorisation form that is sent along with the galley proof by the Technical Editor.

Once all proofs of the papers have been approved by the authors, Cat News is being sent off for printing. When the Cat Specialist Group has received the printed copies of the journal, they are being sent to the lead authors of the article, members, and friends of the Cat Specialist Group. Once this is done, the abstracts of the regular issues will be published on our website (and the full articles in our online digital cat library). For Special Issues, the full chapters are both published on our website and in the digital cat library. The Technical Editor will send all of the lead authors the final pdf of their respective article to share with their co-authors.

Karanth K. U. 2003. Debating conservation as if reality matters. Conservation and Society 1, 65–68.

Kitchener A. C., Breitenmoser-Würsten C., Eizirik E., Gentry A., Werdelin L., Wilting A., … & Tobe S. 2017. A revised taxonomy of the Felidae: The final report of the Cat Classification Task Force of the IUCN Cat Specialist Group. Cat News Special Issue 11, 80 pp.

Malbrant R. & Maclatchy A. 1949. Faune de l’Equateur africain français. Tome II. Mammifères. Paul Lechevalier, Paris. 320 pp.

Marker L. L., Fabiano E. & Nghikembua M. 2008. The use of remote camera traps to estimate density of free-ranging cheetahs in north-central Namibia. Cat News 49, 22–24.

Payán E., Carbone C., Homewoord K., Paemelaere E., Quigley H. B. & Durant S. 2013. Where will jaguars roam? The importance of survival in unprotected lands. In Molecular Population Genetics, Phylogenetics, Evolutionary Biology and conservation of the Neotropical Carnivores. Ruiz-Garcia M. & Shostell J. (Eds). Nova Science Publishers Inc., New York, USA, pp. 603–628.

Wegge P. & Storaas T. 2009. Sampling tiger ungulate prey by the distance method: lessons learned in Bardia National Park, Nepal. Animal Conservation 12, 78–84.

Table 1. Types and length of articles submitted for publication of Cat News

Table 2.  Final checklist for the submission of your final article to Cat News.

Illustrations and their captions

(Add here captions to figures (photos, diagrams or maps) in chronological order including copyright information). Please see CN79 for examples of figures and their captions.

Fig 1. Description of the figure (Copyright information).