•  
  •  
 

Author Guidelines and FAQ

Follow the guidelines below to prepare all materials for your submission or revision to Human–Wildlife Interactions. The answers to frequently asked questions are also provided to help you know what to expect with journal processes and timelines relating to submission, review, revision, and publication.

Contact the editorial office at with any additional questions about journal processes.

Before Uploading Your Submission

To ensure your submission is complete and meets the journal's formatting requirements, and to ensure that you are aware of all author expectations, please check that you have addressed the following questions before you make your submission.

Is your cover letter complete and effective?

You will need to submit a cover letter using the journal's cover letter template to accompany your manuscript submission. The cover letter should be treated as an intentional component of your submission and is required for all categories of submissions. An effective cover letter explains the relevance of your work while including important information for the editors. The mandatory cover letter template will ask you to:

  • Briefly summarize the research and how it fits the journal scope and audience.
  • Confirm that the submission is not under consideration elsewhere.
  • Include all author names and affiliations
  • Specify which author is the corresponding author for the submission. The journal will only be able to correspond with this one designated author, who is expected to serve as a liaison between the journal and co-authors.
  • Confirm that all authors have agreed to the submitted material.
  • Include suggested reviewers (optional but helpful to the editors).
  • Disclose conflicts of interest or AI-generated content, if any.
  • Confirm that the authors understand and agree to pay the publication charges if the submission is accepted. Authors who cannot pay the page charges should apply for a waiver instead of submitting their manuscript to the journal, as no waivers will be considered after submission.

Is your manuscript prepared for double-anonymous peer review?

A double-anonymous review facilitates fair review processes to increase equity in scholarly publishing. Information identifying the authors or their affiliations should not be located anywhere in the article document, including on the title page, headers, or footers. Because the manuscript should not have any identifying author information, it is critical to include all author names in the online manuscript submission form AND in the mandatory cover letter, as these will be the only locations the editors can access author information. The reviewers will not know whose paper they are reviewing.

Is your manuscript formatted to journal guidelines?

Consistent document formatting helps the reviewers and editors to assess submissions. Your manuscript should include:

  • Continuous line numbers AND page numbers throughout the document.
  • Continuous article sections rather than page breaks (i.e., do not start the next section on a new page, including after the abstract and key words).
  • Double-spaced (2.0) line formatting, with the first line of each paragraph indented.
  • 12-point font and 1-inch margins on all sides.
  • All sections pertaining to your submission category, including an abstract, key words, study area, methods, results, discussion, management implications, acknowledgments, and literature cited, unless instructed otherwise by the editors.
  • Embedded color figures, tables, and captions placed together at the end of the document, not where they are referenced in the text. These components must not exceed the document margins and must have a text size and clarity that is readable.
  • Supplemental files attached to the submission form, if needed. Supplemental files can include appendices, supplemental figures or tables that would not be published in the article, datasets, surveys, or other content directly relevant to understand the research. Combine supplemental materials into one document for ease of access for reviewers and editors.

Are your citations complete, consistent, and correct?

Manuscripts with excessive citation errors or inconsistencies between the literature cited section and in-text citations can distract editors and reviewers from the research. Before you submit your manuscript, be sure:

  • All references in your literature cited are mentioned in the text.
  • All in-text citations (except for unpublished data, if any) are included in the literature cited.
  • The spelling of author names and accent marks are correct and consistent between the literature cited and in the text.
  • All author names are included in the literature cited (i.e., include all author names in a citation; do not use […] to indicate that there are more authors).
  • The publication year is correct and consistent between the literature cited and in the text.
  • The access date (month, date, and year) is provided for all website citations.
  • In-text citations are formatted according to journal guidelines. Correct example: (Conover and Vail 2014, Linz et al. 2017, Frey et al. 2022, Vail 2022, Frey 2023).

After Your Submission

After you submit your manuscript, you can expect the following processes and timeframes.

Peer review timeframe

Due to challenges of securing reviewers in recent years, the typical timeframe between submission and decision is about 4 months. This process includes obtaining review feedback from 2–3 peer reviewers, an associate editor, and the editor-in-chief. You can assist in shortening the time to the decision by 1) suggesting potential reviewers in your cover letter and 2) ensuring complete submission materials so that the review stage may begin immediately after submission.

Checking your submission status

The journal's manuscript platform will indicate that the submission is under review until the editor-in-chief sends the decision email, after the feedback from reviewers and the associate editor are completed. Thus, your status will remain unchanged between the initial manuscript submission and the decision. If you have more specific questions about the status of your manuscript in the review stage, you should contact the editorial office directly at . Emails sent to any other location may not arrive at the editorial office.

Submission updates after review begins

Once a submission is in the review stage, changes should not be made to the manuscript. However, feel free to contact the editorial office directly at with any questions or concerns, especially if it is within a week after submission or if the designated corresponding author has changed.

Before Uploading Your Revision

Please address the following questions about your revision materials before uploading your revision.

How did your decision email instruct you to upload a revision?

Unless otherwise instructed in your decision email from the editor-in-chief, please upload your submission as a revision, not as a new submission. You can do this by going into your existing submission and clicking on “revise submission.” If the decision email explicitly instructed you to submit your revision as a new submission that would go through a new review process, then follow the online submission process as you did with your initial submission.

Is your revision cover letter complete and effective?

When you upload a revision, you will need to include a detailed revision cover letter. The cover letter needs to explain the changes that you did or did not make based on feedback from reviewers and editors. Only one document can be uploaded as the cover letter. Thus, if you have additional documents of information (such as a track change document, etc.), please combine all information into one document with the written letter portion as the first page. Upload your cover letter as a Word document or PDF. Upload a clean copy (i.e., no track changes showing your edits) as a Word document in the revision upload section of your submission in the online portal.

Did your decision email specify a track change document from the editor?

The editor-in-chief will sometimes attach a document with track change edits as a link at the absolute bottom of the decision email. This location is set by the manuscript system and is easy for authors to miss. Be sure to check this area to access the track change document if one is mentioned within the decision email message. This is a different document and location than where you access your review feedback. If you are uncertain or need assistance accessing a track change document, contact the editorial office directly at .

Are your citations still complete, consistent, and correct?

Citations are often added or omitted during the revision stage. Please ensure that all references in the literature cited are mentioned in the text, and vice versa. Ensure that author names and publication dates are correct and consistent between the literature cited section and the text.

Additionally, format your references to journal guidelines to the best of your ability. This speeds up time to publication if your revision is accepted. Following are examples of typical citation formatting according to journal editorial guidelines:

Journal article

Scasta, J. D., J. D. Hennig, and J. L. Beck. 2018. Framing contemporary U.S. wild horse and burro management processes in a dynamic ecological, sociological, and political environment. Human–Wildlife Interactions 12:31–45.

Book

Linz, G. M., M. L. Avery, and R. A. Dolbeer. 2017. Ecology and management of blackbirds (Icteridae) in North America. CRC Press, Boca Raton, Florida, USA.

Chapter in a book

Martin, J. A., T. J. Conkling, J. L. Belant, K. M. Biondi, B. F. Blackwell, T. L. DeVault, E. Fernández-Juricic, P. M. Schmidt, and T. W. Seamans. 2013. Wildlife conservation and alternative land uses at airports. Pages 117–128 in T. L. DeVault, B. F. Blackwell, and J. L. Belant, editors. Wildlife in airport environments: preventing animal–aircraft collisions through science-based management. The Wildlife Society and Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, Maryland, USA.

Government or technical publication

Homan, H. J., R. J. Johnson, J. R. Thiele, and G. M. Linz. 2017. European starlings. Wildlife Damage Management Technical Series, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, Wildlife Services National Wildlife Research Center, Fort Collins, Colorado, USA.

Conference proceedings

DeVault, T. L., J. Kubel, O. E. Rhodes, Jr., and R. A. Dolbeer. 2009. Habitat and bird communities at small airports in the midwestern USA. Proceedings of the Wildlife Damage Management Conference 13:137–145.

Herrero, S. 1989. The role of learning in some fatal grizzly bear attacks on people. Pages 9–14 in M. Bromly, editor. Bear–people conflicts. Proceedings of a Symposium on Management Strategies, Northwest Territories Department of Renewable Resources, Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, Canada.

Website

Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). 2020. Advisory Circular (AC) 150/5200-33C-Hazardous wildlife attractants on or near airports. Federal Aviation Administration, Washington, D.C., USA, <https://www.faa/gov/documentLibrary/media/Advisory_Circular/150- 5200-33C.pdf>. Accessed August 3, 2022.

General notes on editorial style

  • All names after the first author have the initial(s) followed by the last name.
  • Include periods and a space between initials.
  • The publication year should not be set in parentheses.
  • Only the first word and proper nouns in a title should be capitalized. All else, including the first word after a colon (:) should be lowercase.
  • Use an en-dash (–) and not a hyphen (-) in page number ranges.
  • Include city, state/province, and country with publisher information.
  • Include page title; organization's city, state/province, and country; and access date of month, day, and year for website citations.

After Your Revision

How long does the revision assessment stage take?

In most cases, an associate editor will be asked to assess your revision and provide a recommendation to the editor-in-chief. The process may take 1–2 months between revision upload and the next decision email.

Will I be able to respond to the revision decision?

After assessing your revision, the editors may require another revision of your submission. In that case, you should revise the submission according to editor feedback and prepare another revision cover letter. If your revision is rejected, the editor-in-chief will provide an explanation in the decision email as well as links to any new feedback.

Between Acceptance and Publication

How and when should I send the required article components if my submission is accepted for publication?

Author bio components

The acceptance decision email will instruct the corresponding author to collect all author bio materials, including a written bio (required) and a photo (optional, but preferred) of each author, and send them in one email to the managing editor at . These bios will be published at the end of the article. Written bios should be 75–125 words, written in the third person, and all names and middle initials should match the author listing in the initial cover letter and in the submission information. The corresponding author may send the bio materials any time, but production of the accepted article cannot begin until these materials are received.

Figures, tables, and supplemental material

If your submission is accepted, the managing editor will contact you regarding how to finalize your figures, tables, and/or supplemental files. Do not upload or email any of these files until you receive instructions about any adjustments that may be needed to align with journal style guidelines. In most cases, the managing editor will contact you when your article is nearing the proof stage rather than directly after acceptance, especially if there are author queries that arise during the final copyediting portion of the production stage. Contact with any questions about article components.

How and when should I pay the author page charges?

You will be invoiced upon article acceptance and will need to pay the page charges according to journal policies within a month of invoicing. Once the invoice is paid and the author bios (see above) are received, the production on your accepted article will begin. No page charge waivers or discounts will be considered after article submission to the manuscript system or after publication. It is the corresponding author's responsibility to contact the journal at with any questions about invoicing and payment.

The author agreement to pay the page charges upon article acceptance is included in the Author Submission Agreement that you completed during the initial submission of your manuscript. It is also in the mandatory cover letter template upon initial submission. All submissions, including invited articles for special topic issues, incur full page charges unless arrangements are made in writing through a waiver or discount awarded by the editor-in-chief prior to initial submission.

How long until my accepted article is published?

Time to publication after acceptance depends on several factors, including whether the article is part of a special topics issue or how soon the author queries (if any) and other article components are adjusted and finalized. The journal publishes three issues per year in spring, fall, and winter. Typically, the accepted manuscript will be slated for publication in the soonest upcoming issue, unless the editors specify otherwise. Early publication is possible so that articles ready to publish can do so ahead of a full completed issue being released. The DOI (direct object identifier) can only be generated when the article is published. In the meantime, you may list your publication as being in press. The corresponding author should contact the editorial office directly at with any inquiries.

What is the process for reviewing article page proofs?

The managing editor will send the corresponding author a PDF proof when it is available, after all of the required article components are submitted to the editorial office. The proof stage is for the correction of errors only, not for further editing of article text. The typical turnaround time for returning a proof is around a week. The corresponding author should collect all corrections from the other authors and send everything to in one email with the combined corrections.

Contact Us

To ensure an email response, contact the editorial office directly at . Do not reply to previous emails you have received through the manuscript system. Please mention your 4-digit submission number in all correspondence. In some cases, the managing editor may take a few days to reply; you are welcome to reach out again to with any questions or assistance needed.