Manuscripts should be submitted online at: https://www.editorialsystem.com/ac. They should be written in either British (preferably) or American English, and spelling and usage should be consistent throughout. Poorly written and/or formatted manuscripts will be returned without further review. It is a condition of submission of a manuscript for publication in Acta Chiropterologica, that it has not been submitted at the same time to any other journal and that the facts reported will not be released to the press until after the paper has been published by Acta Chiropterologica, except if a priori arranged with the Editor. Prior to acceptance for publication, each manuscript is reviewed by at least two anonymous referees. During the submission process authors will be asked to identify at least 3 reviewers of their work and supply a cover letter that summarizes why the manuscript is a valuable addition to the scientific literature, and briefly relates the study to previously published work. If any cited ‘In press’ article is not yet available (online), it must be uploaded and provided to the Reviewers.

All parts of the manuscript should preferably be submitted as a single file. Accepted file formats are: DOC (preferred), RTF (preferred) or eventually DOCX (Times New Roman 12pt, line spacing 1.5, unpaginated). During submission the names of at least three potential reviewers with their e-mail addresses should be provided. Figures should be provided as separate attachments. Use tab commands, not spaces, for paragraph indents. The entire text file should be justified to the left, including headings, subtitles, etc. In the Materials and Methods, include a statement indicating whether research followed guidelines for collections and, in the case of live animals, was approved by an institutional animal care and use committee (see also Sikes et al., 2011. Journal of Mammalogy, 92: 235–253). Do not apply continuous line numbering to the text.

Manuscripts must conform to the following layout:

(1) Title page should include title, authors, institutions, address of the corresponding author (including E-mail address and phone number, as applicable), key words, and short running title. E-mail addresses should be as stable as possible and in the case of students, best not to use the university address as such will become obsolete in a few years. The title should be concise but informative. When submitting a paper with multiple authors, one author must accept the responsibility for all correspondence.

(2) The abstract should be informative, concise, summarizing key findings, and in a form that is fully intelligible in conjunction with the title. It should not exceed 375 words and should not include any citation of references. A list of no more than 8 key words should follow the abstract.

(3) The standard arrangemen for the full-length paper is as follows: Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results, Discussion, Acknowledgements, Literature Cited. Please note that Acknowledgements for a peer-review process should be deleted from the main manuscript and provided as a separate file during the online submission.

(4) References in the text should be cited chronologically, e.g., Hill and Koopman (1981), Tupinier (1989), Koopman (1993, 1994); dealing with two authors use ‘and’ as a connecting word; for references with more than two authors use the form ‘et al.’. References in the Literature Cited section should be listed alphabetically with book and journal titles given in full. Use small letters a...z to indicate references published by the same author/authors within one year. For papers published using an alphabet other than Latin but having a summary, title, or abstract in Latin alphabet, cite this ‘original’ translation. If there is no such translation, use an English translation in brackets [ ] with an indication of the original language.

Examples:
AMENGUAL , B., J. E. WHITBY, A. KING , J. S. COBO , and H. BOURHY. 1997. Evolution of European bat lyssaviruses. Journal of General Virology, 78: 2319–2328.

NORBERG , U. M. 1998. Morphological adaptations for flight in bats. Pp. 93–108, in Bat biology and conservation (T. H. KUNZ and P. A. RACEY , eds.). Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, D.C., xiv + 365 pp.

STRELKOV, P. P. 1997. Breeding area and its position in the range of migratory bat species (Chiroptera, Vespertilionidae) in East Europe and adjacent territories. Communication 1. Zoologicheskiï Zhurnal, 76: 1073–1082. [In Russian with English summary].

In the case of 11 or more authors, list the first 10 and then add et al.

(5) Tables should be kept as simple as possible. Do not present the same data in both tables and figures. Do not use vertical lines. Tables should appear at the end of your manuscript, after the reference list and before any appendixes.

(6) Figures are referred to as ‘Fig., Figs.’ in the text. Figure captions should be typed on a separate sheet and numbered consecutively. For submission, do not supply figures in other formats than jpg, png, tiff or pdf and preferably keep size of a single file below 2 MB. Please ensure that their quality is sufficient for the review process. Contact the editor before sending other formats. After acceptance of your article, you will be asked to submit final figures. High-resolution files (600 dpi) of images in standard formats (preferably in TIFF or PSD (Photoshop) for bitmaps and CDR (CorelDraw) or AI (Adobe Illustrator) for vector graphics) are accepted. Figures should be sized to fit on single 81 x 238 mm (column) or 168 x 238 mm (whole page) sheets. Multi-paneled figures must have all panels assembled into one piece and supplied as one file. Each panel must be labeled with uppercase letters (A, B, C, etc.). Use the same font (typeface) and font size throughout the figure. Arial is preferred. Authors who have illustrations of bats (including sonograms, CT scans, SEM photos, etc.) that are particularly attractive or interesting may suggest these be used on the cover of Acta Chiropterologica in which the paper will appear. Submit possible cover images to the Editor-in-Chief. The author is obliged to supply copyright permission for illustrations published elsewhere if they are to be reproduced in the same or similar form.

(7) Names of genera and species should be presented and italicized. Use SI units and appropriate symbols. The International Code of Zoological Nomenclature must be strictly followed. Prefer the use of Latin names rather than vernacular names.

(8) Data repository. All DNA sequences should be placed in GenBank (or similar archive) and the accession numbers included in the manuscript. Other data types may be deposited in Dryad (http://datadryad.org/), which is a curated general-purpose repository that makes data discoverable, freely reusable, and citable.

(9) Page proofs. Page proofs will be sent to authors as a pdf file. They should be returned to the Editor as soon as possible by e-mail or fax.

(10) Reprints. There are no reprints available, instead a pdf file with the final version of the article will be sent to the corresponding author.

(11) Fees. There are no page charges in the journal. There are also no charges for color figures.

(12) Copyright. Acceptance of the manuscript for publication means that the right to publish the whole paper or any substantial part of it is transferred to the Publisher. This applies to all media. However, the use of the authors' own published material is always granted, provided that the source of publication is acknowledged.

(13) Open Access. Acta Chiropterologica offers the possibility to publish the article as Open Access for Euro 500 (US$ 550). Students with no external funding can apply for a discount.

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