Author Guidelines

For additional tools visit Author Resources - an enhanced suite of online tools for Wiley Online Library journal authors, featuring Article Tracking, E-mail Publication Alerts and Customized Research Tools.

• Permission Request Form

Manuscript Preparation

Research Articles: Original papers will be considered dealing with human or animal bone research from any area of the world. Typically, research articles would be studies analysing, large data sets, significant themes, or offering major contributions to method or theory.

Short Reports: New findings or results that would be of value to the international readership of IJO can be submitted in a more compact format as a Short Report. Typically, short reports would be case studies, short case series, or pilot studies of new techniques.

Commentaries: Should refer to a recent publication or a timely issue related to the general field of osteoarchaeology. Commentaries generally provide clarification or raise important questions about a recent publication or issue.

Review Articles: Papers bringing together the key past work on a topic in order to reach new conclusions or gain an improved understanding of a research field. Merely summarising past work would not be sufficient for acceptance, as it is how the reassessment of the topic is used to improve understanding that justifies publication of a review article.

Methods and Tools: Osteological identification guides that provide advances in diagnostic criteria for osteoarchaeological research, such as zooarchaeological species identification. These will offer major contributions to method and practice. This format offers greater capacity for visually illustrating criteria, which can also be supported with downloadable supplementary materials. 

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.

Submitting Manuscripts

Free Format submission

International Journal of Osteoarchaeology now offers Free Format submission for a simplified and streamlined submission process.

Before you submit, you will need:

• Your manuscript: this should be an editable file including text, figures, and tables, or separate files – whichever you prefer. All required sections should be contained in your manuscript, including abstract (which does need to be correctly styled), introduction, methods, results, and conclusions. Figures and tables should have legends. Figures should be uploaded in the highest resolution possible. If the figures are not of sufficiently high quality your manuscript may be delayed. We also encourage you to include your figures within the main document to make it easier for editors and reviewers to read your manuscript. References may be submitted in any style or format, as long as it is consistent throughout the manuscript. Supporting information should be submitted in separate files. If the manuscript, figures or tables are difficult for you to read, they will also be difficult for the editors and reviewers, and the editorial office will send it back to you for revision. Your manuscript may also be sent back to you for revision if the quality of English language is poor.
• An ORCID ID, freely available at https://orcid.org. (Why is this important? Your article, if accepted and published, will be attached to your ORCID profile. Institutions and funders are increasingly requiring authors to have ORCID IDs.)
• The title page of the manuscript, including:
  • Your co-author details, including affiliation and email address. (Why is this important? We need to keep all co-authors informed of the outcome of the peer review process.)
  • Statements relating to our ethics and integrity policies, which may include any of the following (Why are these important? We need to uphold rigorous ethical standards for the research we consider for publication):
• data availability statement
• funding statement
• conflict of interest disclosure
• ethics approval statement
• patient consent statement
• permission to reproduce material from other sources
• clinical trial registration

To submit, login at https://wiley.atyponrex.com/journal/OA and create a new submission. Follow the submission steps as required and submit the manuscript.

All new submissions should be made via the Research Exchange submission portal https://wiley.atyponrex.com/journal/OA. Should your manuscript proceed to the revision stage, you will be directed to make your revisions via the same submission portal. You may check the status of your submission at anytime by logging on to submission.wiley.com and clicking the “My Submissions” button. For technical help with the submission system, please review our FAQs or contact [email protected].

Only manuscripts submitted via the online submission site will be considered for publication. If you require any assistance during the submission stage please contact: Andrea Lewis at [email protected]

Authors submitting manuscripts to IJO do so on the understanding that the work has not been published previously and is not being considered for publication elsewhere, and has been read and approved by all authors.It is recommended that authorship be based on the following four criteria:

• Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; AND  
• Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content; AND
• Final approval of the version to be published; AND
• Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.  

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, including, when necessary, sharing with the publisher (Wiley) and partners for production and publication. The publication and the publisher recognize the importance of protecting the personal information collected from users in the operation of these services, and have practices in place to ensure that steps are taken to maintain the security, integrity, and privacy of the personal data collected and processed. You can learn more at https://authorservices.wiley.com/statements/data-protection-policy.html

Limits and restrictions

Research Articles: These are limited to 6000 words including references with a total of ten figures and/or tables.

Short Reports: These must be no more than 3000 words inclusive of bibliography with a total of five figures and/or tables permitted.

Commentary: These must be no more than 1500 words including references and it may contain one figure or table).

Review Articles: These are limited to 8000 words including references, with a total of ten figures and/or tables.

Methods and Tools: These are limited to 5000 words including references with a total of 25 figures and/or tables. 

Any manuscripts over the above word limits will be returned to authors without editorial or external review.

Preparation guidelines

Language:

Only manuscripts in English will be considered for publication. Authors for whom English is a second language may choose to have their manuscript professionally edited before submission to improve the English. A list of independent suppliers of editing services can be found at: http://wileyeditingservices.com/en/ and http://www.wiley.co.jp/journals/editcontribute.html

NOTE: All services are paid for and arranged by the author, and use of one of these services does not guarantee acceptance or preference for publication.

Files to be submitted:

Submissions via the new Research Exchange portal can be uploaded either as a single document (containing the main text, tables and figures), or with figures and tables provided as separate files. Should your manuscript reach revision stage, figures and tables must be provided as separate files. The main manuscript file can be submitted in Microsoft Word (.doc or .docx) or LaTex (.tex) formats.

If submitting your manuscript file in LaTex format via Research Exchange, select the file designation “Main Document – LaTeX .tex File” on upload. 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.” Cover Letters and Conflict of Interest statements may be provided as separate files, included in the manuscript, or provided as free text in the submission system. A statement of funding (including grant numbers, if applicable) should be included in the “Acknowledgements” section of your manuscript.

Title Page and Abstract

• The title page should include the full title of the paper; the full names of all the authors; the name(s) and address(es) of the institution(s) at which the work was carried out (the present addresses of the authors, if different from the above, should appear in a footnote); the name, address, telephone and fax numbers and email address of the author to whom all correspondence and proofs should be sent; the email addresses of all the authors if possible; a suggested running title of not more than 70 characters, including spaces; up to 8 key words, which describe the importance of your paper for indexing purposes.
• An abstract of up to 300 words for all articles must be entered. Your abstract must provide a concise summary of the whole paper, not just the conclusions, and is understandable without reference to the rest of the paper. It should contain no citation(s) to other published work.

Limitations of the Study

No research is perfect, and there will always be some limitations to every study. We strongly encourage those submitting research articles and short reports to this journal to include an honest paragraph in their discussion section describing the limitations to their study. In this way those reading the article will receive a fair and balanced account of the strengths and weaknesses of all published research.

Supporting Information

Supporting Information, such as datasets or additional figures or tables, can be submitted. Supporting Information will not appear in print, but will be viewable via the online edition. Only material that is a valuable addition to the article should be included. Supporting Information will be reviewed. The content of the Supporting Information must not be altered after the paper has been accepted for publication.

The availability of Supporting Information should be indicated in the main manuscript by a paragraph, to appear after the Acknowledgements, headed ‘Supporting Information’. Short legends should be included here, listing the titles of all supporting figures, tables, data etc. Full (more detailed) legends for Supporting Information must also be uploaded as a separate Word document. This version will be used online, alongside where the Supporting Information is hosted, but not in the manuscript text, which instead uses the short versions of the legends. For image files (i.e. TIFF, JPEG etc.), legends should not be embedded. Instead, when uploading the image file to ScholarOne, please use the space provided to paste in the legend so that it appears underneath the figure in the PDF that is sent to the reviewers. In order to protect reviewer anonymity, material posted on authors’ websites cannot be reviewed.

Supporting Information items should be referred to in the text as follows:

• Supporting figures: Figure S1, Figure S2 etc.
• Supporting tables: Table S1, Table S2 etc.
• Supporting data: Data S1, Data S2 etc.
• Supporting experimental procedures: Methods S1, Methods S2 etc.
• Supporting animations: Movie S1, Movie S2 etc.
• Any other text-based Supporting Information: Appendix S1, Appendix S2 etc.

The above order should be used when listing the Supporting Information legends, both in the short versions in the main manuscript text file, as well as in the separate full legends file.

Figures

Figures should be uploaded in separate files with the figure number indicated in the file name. Compound figures e.g. 1a, b, c should be uploaded as one figure. Tints are not acceptable. Lettering must be of a reasonable size that would still be clearly legible upon reduction, and consistent within each figure and set of figures. Where a key to symbols is required, please include this in the artwork itself, not in the figure legend. All images must be supplied at the correct resolution:

• Black and white and colour photos – 300 dpi
• Graphs, drawings, etc – 800 dpi preferred; 600 dpi minimum
• Combinations of photos and drawings (black and white and colour) – 500 dpi 

Tables should be part of the main document and placed after the references. If the table is created in an Excel file it should be uploaded separately.

It is the responsibility of the author to clarify whether or not the colour figures are required in print when submitting the manuscript for review. If colour images are supplied electronically in either .TIFF or .EPS format, they may be used in the .PDF of the article at no cost to the author, even if this image was printed in black and white in the journal. The PDF will appear on the Wiley Online Library site.

References

All references must be complete and accurate. Where possible the DOI for the reference should be included at the end of the reference. Online citations should include date of access. If necessary, cite unpublished or personal work in the text but do not include it in the reference list.

Submission of Revised Manuscripts

Authors should submit the revised version of their manuscript online via the submission site http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/oa following the instructions provided in their editorial correspondence. Any changes in authorship must be noted and explained in the cover letter.

Additional requirements for revisions:

1. A letter of response to the reviewers' comments, detailing point-by-point the changes made and giving reasons for those not made.
2. If appropriate, a completed Colour Work Agreement form.

LaTeX users: When submitting your revision you must still upload a single PDF that you have generated from your now revised source files. You must use the File Designation “Main Document” from the dropdown box. In addition you must upload your TeX source files. For all your source files you must use the File Designation “Supplemental Material not for review”. Previous versions of uploaded documents must be deleted. If your manuscript is accepted for publication, we will use the files you upload to typeset your article within a totally digital workflow.

Editorial Policies

Wiley requires that all authors disclose any potential conflict of interest. Any interest or relationship, financial or otherwise, which might be perceived as influencing an author’s objectivity is considered a potential conflict of interest. These must be disclosed when directly relevant or indirectly related to the work described in the manuscript. Potential conflicts of interest include, but are not limited to, patent or stock ownership, membership on a company’s board of directors, membership on an advisory board or committee for a company, or consultancy for or receipt of speaker’s fees from a company. The existence of a conflict of interest does not preclude publication in this journal. If the authors have no conflict of interest to declare, they must also state this at submission. It is the responsibility of the submitting author to review this policy with all authors and to collectively list in the cover letter to the Editor-in-Chief, in the manuscript (in the footnotes, Conflict of Interest or Acknowledgments section), and in the online submission system all pertinent commercial and other relationships.

The International Journal of Osteoarchaeology adheres to the definition of authorship set up by The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE). According to the ICMJE, authorship criteria should be based on 1) substantial contributions to conception and design of, or acquisition of data or analysis and interpretation of data, 2) drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content and 3) final approval of the version to be published. Authors should meet conditions 1, 2 and 3. By submitting a manuscript to OA, all authors warrant that they have the authority to publish the material and that the paper, or one substantially the same, has neither been published previously, nor is being considered for publication elsewhere. Submissions may be subject to testing for textual similarity to other published works via the CrossCheck software employed by OA.

IJO is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics COPE and will adhere to the proscribed guidelines when dealing with any ethics cases.

If suspected, your manuscript will be subjected to iThenticate which helps Editors and the Editorial team check written work for plagiarism and attribution.

NOTE to NIH Grantees: Pursuant to NIH mandate, Wiley-Blackwell will post the accepted version of contributions authored by NIH grant- holders to PubMed Central upon acceptance. This accepted version will be made publicly available 12 months after publication. For further information, see http://www.wiley.com/go/nihmandate

Open Access. Open Access is available to authors of articles who wish to make their article freely available to read, download and share. With Open Access the author, their funding agency, or institution pays a fee (APC) to ensure that the article is made available to non-subscribers upon publication via Wiley Online Library, as well as deposited in PubMed Central and PMC mirror sites. In addition to publication online via Wiley Online Library, authors of Open Access articles are permitted to post the final, published PDF of their article on a website, institutional repository, or other free public server, immediately on publication. For more information on this journal’s APCs, please see the Open Access page.

Authorship. On initial submission, the submitting author will be prompted to provide the email address and country for all contributing authors.

Ethics, Human Remains, and Engagement with Culturally Affiliated Descendent Communities

The IJO appreciates that in certain regions of the world the indigenous communities feel strongly that they should be consulted if the remains of their ancestors are to be excavated, studied, and curated in museums or universities. Therefore, the journal asks that when papers are submitted to the journal for consideration, if the remains originate from such regions of the world, then it should be made clear in the paper how the local culturally affiliated communities have been consulted, and that they have given their approval for the research to take place on their ancestors. It should be stated how the community consultation took place, provide the evidence for the permission of those affiliated groups, and explain how the results of the study will be shared with the interested culturally affiliated population. If no surviving culturally affiliated descendent population exists today, then this should be stated. This information can be given after the text of the paper, and before the bibliography, under the heading ‘Engagement with Culturally Affiliated Descendent Communities’.

Copyright Transfer Agreement

If your paper is accepted, the author identified as the formal corresponding author for the paper will receive an email prompting them to login into Author Services; where via the Wiley Author Licensing Service (WALS) they will be able to complete the license agreement on behalf of all authors on the paper.

For authors signing the copyright transfer agreement

If the Open Access option is not selected the corresponding author will be presented with the copyright transfer agreement (CTA) to sign. The terms and conditions of the CTA can be previewed in the samples associated with the Copyright FAQs below:
CTA Terms and Conditions

For authors choosing Open Access

If the Open Access option is selected the corresponding author will have a choice of the following Creative Commons License Open Access Agreements (OAA):

• Creative Commons Attribution License OAA
• Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License OAA
• Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial -NoDerivs License OAA

To preview the terms and conditions of these open access agreements please visit the Copyright FAQs hosted on Wiley Author Services and visit http://www.wileyopenaccess.com/details/content/12f25db4c87/Copyright--License.html.

If you select the Open Access option and your research is funded by The Wellcome Trust and members of the Research Councils UK (RCUK) you will be given the opportunity to publish your article under a CC-BY license supporting you in complying with Wellcome Trust and Research Councils UK requirements. For more information on this policy and the Journal’s compliant self-archiving policy please visit: http://www.wiley.com/go/funderstatement.

Production and Publication

For accepted manuscripts the publisher will supply proofs to the corresponding author prior to publication. Authors will receive an e-mail notification with a link and instructions for accessing HTML page proofs online. Page proofs should be carefully proofread for any copyediting or typesetting errors. Online guidelines are provided within the system. No special software is required, all common browsers are supported. 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. Return of proofs via e-mail is possible in the event that the online system cannot be used or accessed. Once your article is published online no further amendments can be made. Free access to the final PDF offprint of your article will be available via author services only (unless otherwise stated).

For further information on author services please visit: http://olabout.wiley.com/WileyCDA/Section/id-404516.html

Early View

Early View articles are complete full-text articles published online in advance of their publication in a printed issue. Early View articles are complete and final. They have been fully reviewed, revised and edited for publication, and the authors' final corrections have been incorporated. Because they are in final form, no changes can be made after online publication. The nature of Early View articles means that they do not yet have volume, issue or page numbers, so to cite Early View articles please follow the examples below:
To link an article from the author's homepage, take the DOI (digital object identifier) and append it to “http://dx.doi.org/” as per following example:
DOI 10.1002/oa.755, becomes http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/oa.755. To include the DOI in a citation to an article, simply append it to the reference as in the following example:
Estevez J. 2004. Vanishing carnivores: What can the disappearance of large carnivores tell us about the Neanderthal world? International Journal of Osteoarchaeology 14 : 190–200. DOI: 10.1002/oa.755

Cover Image Submissions

This journal accepts artwork submissions for Cover Images. This is an optional service you can use to help increase article exposure and showcase your research. For more information, including artwork guidelines, pricing, and submission details, please visit the Journal Cover Image page.

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.