“Vegetation classification of islands and archipelagos” collection calls for contributions
The Vegetation Classification and Survey (VCS) launched a new special collection to bring together studies on island and archipelago vegetation around the world. Preliminary abstracts need to be submitted by 31 January 2025.
According to the journal’s scope, contributions need to either develop or apply a vegetation classification framework of any type. For example, this can be a phytosociological classification system, the International Vegetation Classification (IVC), habitat types, formations, or biomes.
Specially welcome are the following types of contributions:
- Classification of selected vegetation types occurring on islands
- Vegetation maps of islands
- Synthetic overviews of all vegetation types of an island or archipelago
- Conservation assessment of vegetation types of an island or archipelago
- Quantifying vegetation change in terms of turnover of vegetation types
Apart from traditional research papers, the collection also invites several other article types available at the journal:
- Reviews and Syntheses
- Forum Papers
- Long Database Reports
- Nomenclatural Proposals
All contributions are expected to address the peculiarity of the island situation.
The special collection is managed by three editors: Jorge Capelo (Instituto Nacional de Investigação Agrária e Veterinária and LEAF Research Centre, Portugal), Jürgen Dengler (Zurich University of Applied Sciences, Switzerland and University of Bayreuth, Germany) and Riccardo Guarino (University of Palermo, Italy). The team is ready to appoint one or two additional guest editors in case of an exceptionally high number of submissions, so that publication is not delayed unnecessarily.
Deadlines & timeline:
- By 28 February 2025: preliminary abstracts need to be sent to Jürgen Dengler (dr.juergen.dengler@gmail.com). Please refer to the VCS Author Guidelines when organising your submission.
- By 20 March 2025: authors will be informed whether their planned work is eligible for submission.
- By 30 June 2025: authors of invited papers need to submit their manuscripts, which will then undergo peer review.
The complete special collection is expected to be published by the end of 2025 or early 2026 at the latest. It will be accompanied by an editorial written by the guest editors.
We would like to bring to your attention that VCS is a Gold open-access journal, where authors are normally required to pay article processing charges (APCs). Thanks to the generous support by IAVS, IAVS members from high- and medium-income countries enjoy special discounts, while IAVS members from low-income countries can publish for free.
These discounts are even larger for submissions made by the end of 2024. Authors who are ready to submit their full manuscripts to the collection by 31 December and make use of the 2024 rates are welcome to contact Jürgen Dengler.
“We look forward to receiving your contributions and hope that you will join us in making this Special Collection a valuable resource for the IAVS community,” say the editors of the collection.
Image caption: Vegetation on islands around the world. Photos by J. Capelo, J. Dengler and R. Guarino.
To follow the latest publications, news and highlights from VCS, we invite you to subscribe for the journal’s newsletter by using the Email alert field on this website’s homepage, and follow the journal on Twitter and Facebook.