Guide for Authors

The journal publishes papers reporting results of original research, review papers, short reports (less than 2000 words), book reviews, conference abstracts and announcements.

Submission of contributions



Submission to this journal proceeds totally online. Use the following guidelines to prepare your article. Authors are encouraged to nominate suitable reviewers for their paper (these should not include the authors' current or past collaborators). The online submission page of this journal ( http://ees.elsevier.com/beproc) will guide you through the creation and uploading of the various files. The system automatically converts source files to a single Adobe Acrobat PDF version of the article, which is used in the peer-review process. Please note that even though manuscript source files are converted to PDF at submission for the review process, these source files are needed for further processing after acceptance. All correspondence, including notification of the Editor's decision and requests for revision, takes place by e-mail and via the author's homepage, removing the need for a hard-copy paper trail. Manuscripts should be submitted to either:
Prof. F. Cézilly (papers on ethology and behavioural ecology)
or
Prof. C.D.L. Wynne (papers on behaviour analysis, comparative cognition and experimental psychology).
Authors are encouraged to nominate suitable reviewers for their paper (these should not include the authors' current or past collaborators).

Language

The official language of the journal is English. Prospective authors whose mother tongue is not English should have their work checked for style, syntax and grammar by someone well versed in the language.

Manuscript layout and preparation

Layout. The title should not be capitalized. It should be brief, not exceeding two lines, and should use significant words that best express the nature of the study.
The authors' names should appear following at least one line space, including their full first and middle names preceding surnames (not capitalized).
The authors' addresses (name of institute, location) should appear after a line space. Superior letters should be used to identify addresses with respect to authors when there are more than two. If the address of the author(s) at the time of when the paper will appear is other than the institute in which the work was carried out, it may be given in a footnote as Present address:...
Every paper should include an abstract of less than 200 words; this should be understandable without reference to the paper.
The heading Keywords: should appear after a line space, followed by 3-6 keywords (taken from Index Medicus), singular and in alphabetical order, separated by semicolons.
Lines should be numbered.
For research papers, the text should be organised into sections under the following headings: Introduction, Materials and methods, Results, Discussion (may be combined with Results), Acknowledgements, References. The start of each paragraph should be indented 3-4 spaces.
Use abbreviations with restraint. If abbreviations are used, the first mentioned should be spelled out in full. Abbreviations should be avoided in the title. SI units should be used and biological nomenclature should follow the accepted international codes. In formulas, symbols, not acronyms, should be used.
All tables and figures should be mentioned in the text. Tables should be numbered with Arabic numerals.
References in the text should be cited as the name of the author(s) followed by the year of publication. The reference list should be in alphabetical order. Periodicals, books and multiauthor-edited books should accord with the following examples:

Brown, R.E. and Douglas, S., 1991. The behaviour of adult Long-Evans rats Rattus norvegicus towards pups of different ages. Behav. Process., 23: 89--102.

Gray, J.A., 1987. The Psychology of Fear and Stress. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 422 pp.

Rodgers, R.J., 1981. Drugs, agression and behavioural methods. In: P.F. Brain and D. Benton (Editors), Multidisciplinary Approaches to Agression Research, Elsevier/North-Holland, Amsterdam, pp. 325--340.

Language Services
Authors who require information about language editing and copyediting services pre- and post-submission please visit http://www.elsevier.com/locate/languagepolishing or contact authorsupport@elsevier.com for more information. Please note Elsevier neither endorses nor takes responsibility for any products, goods or services offered by outside vendors through our services or in any advertising. For more information please refer to our terms and Conditions http://www.elsevier.com/termsandconditions

Supplementary material

Electronic supplementary material is now accepted to support and enhance your scientific research. Supplementary files offer the author additional possibilities to publish supporting applications, movies, animation sequences, high-resolution images, background datasets, sound clips and more. Supplementary files supplied will be published online alongside the electronic version of your article in Elsevier web products, including ScienceDirect: http://www.sciencedirect.com. In order to ensure that your submitted material is directly usable, please ensure that data is provided in one of our recommended file formats. Authors should submit the material in electronic format together with the article and supply a concise and descriptive caption for each file. For more detailed instructions please visit our Corporate Website at http://www.elsevier.com/authors.

Ethics
Data Access and Retention
It is a condition of publication in Behavioural Processes that authors honour any reasonable request for materials or methods needed to verify or replicate experiments reported in the journal and to make available, upon request, any data sets upon which published studies are based. Anyone who encounters a persistent refusal to comply with these guidelines, or has reason to suspect some other departure from acceptable standards of scientific conduct, should contact the appropriate Editor of the journal. The Editor will act in accordance with the guidelines of the U.K. Committee on Publication Ethics and may inform an author's institution of a purported infraction. Ethics
Manuscripts submitted for publication must contain a statement to the effect that all human studies have been approved by the appropriate ethics committee and have therefore been performed in accordance with the ethical standards laid down in the 1964 Declaration of Helsinki. It should also be stated clearly in the text that all persons gave their informed consent prior to their inclusion in the study. Details that might disclose the identity of the subjects under study should be omitted. Reports of animal experiments must conform to the 'Guidelines for the use of animals in research' as published in Animal Behaviour (1991, 41, 183-186)." The Editors reserve the right to reject manuscripts that do not comply with the above-mentioned requirements. The author will be held responsible for false statements or for failure to fulfill the above-mentioned requirements.

Copyright

Submission of an article implies that the work described has not been published previously (except in the form of an abstract or as part of a published lecture or academic thesis), that it is not under consideration for publication elsewhere, that its publication is approved by all authors and tacitly or explicitly by the responsible authorities where the work was carried out, and that, if accepted, it will not be published elsewhere in the same form, in English or in any other language, without the written consent of the Publisher. Upon acceptance of an article, authors will be asked to sign a "Journal Publishing Agreement" (for more information on this and copyright see http://www.elsevier.com/copyright). Acceptance of the agreement will ensure the widest possible dissemination of information. An e-mail (or letter) will be sent to the corresponding author confirming receipt of the manuscript together with a 'Journal Publishing Agreement' form or a link to the online version of this agreement. If excerpts from other copyrighted works are included, the author(s) must obtain written permission from the copyright owners and credit the source(s) in the article. Elsevier has preprinted forms for use by authors in these cases: contact Elsevier's Rights Department, Oxford, UK: phone (+44) 1865 843830, fax (+44) 1865 853333, e-mail permissions@elsevier.com. Requests may also be completed online via the Elsevier homepage ( http://www.elsevier. com/permissions).

Author enquiries

For enquiries relating to the submission of articles, please visit this journal's homepage at http://www.elsevier.com/locate/behavproc. You can track accepted articles at http://www.elsevier.com/trackarticle and set up e-mail alerts to inform you of when an article's status has changed, as well as copyright information, frequently asked questions and more. Contact details for questions arising after acceptance of an article, especially those relating to proofs, are provided after registration of an article for publication. All questions arising after acceptance of a manuscript by the editors, especially those relating to proofs, publication and reprints, should be directed to Elsevier Ireland Ltd., Elsevier House, Brookvale Plaza, East Park, Shannon, Co. Clare, Ireland; Tel.: +353 61 709600; Fax: +353 61 709100.

Proofs

One set of page proofs in PDF format will be sent by e-mail to the corresponding author (if we do not have an e-mail address then paper proofs will be sent by post). Elsevier now sends PDF proofs which can be annotated; for this you will need to download Adobe Reader version 7 available free from http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html. Instructions on how to annotate PDF files will accompany the proofs. The exact system requirements are given at the Adobe site: http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/acrrsystemreqs.html#70win If you do not wish to use the PDF annotations function, you may list the corrections (including replies to the Query Form) and return to Elsevier in an e-mail. Please list your corrections quoting line number. If, for any reason, this is not possible, then mark the corrections and any other comments (including replies to the Query Form) on a printout of your proof and return by fax, or scan the pages and e-mail, or by post. Please use this proof only for checking the typesetting, editing, completeness and correctness of the text, tables and figures. Significant changes to the article as accepted for publication will only be considered at this stage with permission from the Editor. We will do everything possible to get your article published quickly and accurately. Therefore, it is important to ensure that all of your corrections are sent back to us in one communication: please check carefully before replying, as inclusion of any subsequent corrections cannot be guaranteed. Proofreading is solely your responsibility. Note that Elsevier may proceed with the publication of your article if no response is received.

Offprints

The corresponding author, at no cost, will be provided with a PDF file of the article via e-mail. The PDF file is a watermarked version of the published article and includes a cover sheet with the journal cover image and a disclaimer outlining the terms and conditions of use.

Additional paper offprints can be ordered by the authors. An order form with prices will be sent to the corresponding author.

US National Institutes of Health (NIH) voluntary posting ("Public Access") policy.

As a service to our authors, Elsevier will deposit to PubMed Central (PMC) author manuscripts on behalf of Elsevier authors reporting NIH funded research. This service is a continuation of Elsevier's 2005 agreement with the NIH when the NIH introduced their voluntary 'Public Access Policy.'
The service will help authors comply with the National Institutes of Health (NIH) revised ''Public Access Policy,'' effective April 7, 2008. The NIH's revised policy requires that NIH-funded authors submit to PubMed Central (PMC), or have submitted on their behalf, their peer-reviewed author manuscripts, to appear on PMC no later than 12 months after final publication.
Elsevier will send to PMC the final peer-reviewed manuscript, which was accepted for publication and sent to Elsevier's production department, and that reflects any author-agreed changes made in response to peer-review comments. Elsevier will authorize the author manuscript's public access posting 12 months after final publication. Following the deposit by Elsevier, authors will receive further communications from Elsevier and NIH with respect to the submission.
Authors are also welcome to post their accepted author manuscript on their personal or institutional web site. Please note that consistent with Elsevier's author agreement, authors should not post manuscripts directly to PMC or other third party sites. Individual modifications to this general policy may apply to some Elsevier journals and society publishing partners.
As a leading publisher of scientific, technical and medical (STM) journals, Elsevier has led the industry in developing tools, programs and partnerships that provide greater access to, and understanding of, the vast global body of STM information. This service is an example of Elsevier willingness to work cooperatively to meet the needs of all participants in the STM publishing community.

Disclaimer

Whilst every effort is made by the publishers and editorial board to see that no inaccurate or misleading data, opinion or statement appears in this journal, they wish to make it clear that the data and opinions appearing in the articles and advertisements herein are the sole responsibility of the contributor or advertiser concerned. Accordingly, the publishers, the editorial board and editors and their respective employees, officers and agents accept no responsibility or liability whatsoever for the consequences of any inaccurate or misleading data, opinion or statement.