Journal of Forestry
Guide for Authors
Editorial Policy
Guide for Authors
The Journal of Forestry seeks manuscripts that advance the profession of forestry by presenting significant developments and ideas of general interest to forest management professionals in North America.
In addition, the Journal of Forestry is open to a limited number of submissions devoted to North American species being grown abroad, manuscripts devoted to the roots of the profession, the analysis of international markets and other topics with direct application to forestry in North America.
We encourage manuscripts of a more international nature to submit to our sister journal, Forest Science.
Manuscripts must not have been published previously and must not be under consideration for publication elsewhere.
Acceptance for publication is based on both editorial criteria and peer review.
The Society of American Foresters holds copyright to the Journal of Forestry, and authors will be asked to assign their rights before their contributions are published. A form will be provided for this purpose. Authors whose work is not subject to copyright, (e.g., United States federal government employees) should so state when they submit their manuscripts.
Contact Morgan Fincham, Director of Publications, if you have any questions or need further guidance. Journal of Forestry, 2121 K St. NW, Suite 315, Washington, D.C. 20037; (301) 897-8720.
Journal Policies
Authorship Policy
Journal of Forestry credits authorship to those who have made a substantial contribution. Authorship constitutes the following roles in manuscript development:
The individual has participated sufficiently in the research, design, or analysis of the study
The individual has participated in the drafting, critical review, and evaluation of the manuscript.
The individual agrees to be accountable for the work following publication.
All others may be listed in the acknowledgments section of the manuscript. Additional details about SAF’s authorship policy are available on the SAF webpage.
Conflicts of Interest
Each author must reveal any financial interests or connections, direct or indirect, or other situations that might raise the question of bias – including pertinent funding for the individual author(s) or for the associated department(s) or organization(s), personal relationships, or direct academic competition.
Open Access
Journal of Forestry offers the option of publishing under either a standard licence or an open access licence. Please note that some funders require open access publication as a condition of funding. If you are unsure whether you are required to publish open access, please do clarify any such requirements with your funder or institution.
Should you wish to publish your article open access, you should select your choice of open access licence in our online system after your article has been accepted for publication. You will need to pay an open access charge to publish under an open access licence.
Details of the open access licences and open access charges.
OUP has a growing number of Read and Publish agreements with institutions and consortia which provide funding for open access publishing. This means authors from participating institutions can publish open access, and the institution may pay the charge. Find out if your institution is participating.
Please note that you may be eligible for a discount to the open access charge based on society membership. Authors may be asked to prove eligibility for the member discount.
Submission Guidelines
All scientific articles are evaluated through a double-blind peer review. All articles, must be uploaded through SAF’s online submissions platform, Editorial Manager. The journal follows the Chicago Manual of Style.
Scientific and Scholarly Articles
All scientific or scholarly manuscripts must include an Abstract of no more than 150 words and a Study Implications section that provides a clear and concise interpretation to help a layperson understand the article. Maximum of 100 words.
Add paragraph: Study Implications: Research articles and brief communications submitted to Journal of Forestry must include a study implications section that provides a clear and concise interpretation to help a layperson understand the article. Maximum of 100 words. Because the review process is double-blind, please ensure that authors are not identified anywhere in the manuscript (including headers and footers).
Original Research Articles
Format
Word limits (excluding tables, figures, and literature cited): Main document 4,500 encouraged, 6,000 maximum (excluding tables, figures, and literature cited).
Review Articles
Review Articles provide syntheses of the current knowledge in broad topical areas of current importance. Review Articles should consider diverging paths of thought within a topic without necessarily pronouncing judgment.
Word limits: Main document 6,000 maximum (excluding tables, figures, and literature cited).
Brief Communications
Preliminary or novel results on limited scientific data sets or applications of existing methodologies to new research areas.
Word limit: 2,500 maximum (excluding tables, figures, and Literature Cited).
Editorial Features
Commentaries
Short opinion pieces are evaluated at the discretion of the editors and/or editorial board; commentaries may be sent to outside reviewers.
Word Limit: 2,500 maximum
Figures: Author headshot strongly encouraged
Discussions
Longer opinion pieces are evaluated at the discretion the editors and/or editorial board and may be sent for outside review.
Word limit: 4,500 maximum
Figures: Author headshot strongly encouraged
Letters
Directly address ideas or facts presented in the Journal within the past six months.
Word limit: 250 maximum
Field Notes
New field techniques, novel computer algorithms or software applications, and interesting results from non-replicated administrative studies are some possible examples. Field Notes are NOT considered peer reviewed and are NOT outlets for reporting original research.
Word limit: 2,500 maximum (excluding tables, figures, and literature Cited).
Requirements: Article title must begin with “Field Note:…”
Practice of Forestry
Address a compelling need of forest and land managers and present the latest science in a management context. A short glossary of technical terminology may be included, as well as a short list of recommended readings.
Word limit: 4,500 maximum (excluding tables, figures, and literature cited).
Exploring the Roots
Short introductions revisit seminal articles previously published by SAF journals and discuss topics of historical import to the field of forestry.
Word limit: 1,000 maximum
Picture the Past
Preserve and share the visual legacy related to historic images of forests, forestry, lumbering, or the processing of forest products.
Word limit: 250 maximum
Figures: One to three. Include any title, the artist/photograph, original publication year, where the image currently resides. Image must be in the public domain or the contributor must have the right to reuse the image.
Style and Form
Nomenclature and Terminology
Common names are used for most plants and animals. Scientific names are included in parentheses following the first use of the common name. The Checklist of United States Trees (Native and Naturalized) by E.L. Little Jr. (Agriculture Handbook 541, USDA 1979) and the appendixes of Forest Cover Types of the United States and Canada (SAF 1980) are useful references for plant names. Technical usage in forestry and allied fields follows The Dictionary of Forestry (SAF 2018).
Literature Cited
References appearing in the text need to appear in the citation list at the end of the article per Chicago Manual of Style.
List all references alphabetically at the end of the paper and cite them parenthetically in the text by the author-date system per Chicago Manual of Style, e.g. (Smith 2006).
Examples of Literature Cited style:
Book
Houghton, J.T., G.J. Jenkins, and J.J. Ephraums. 1990. Climate change: The IPCC scientific assessment. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom. 365 p.
Chapter in Book
Brokaw, N.V.L. 1982. Treefalls: Frequency timing and consequences. P. 101-108 in The ecology of a tropical forest: Seasonal rhythms and long term changes, Egbert Giles Leigh Jr., A.S. Rand, and D.M. Windsor (eds.). Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, DC.
Article in Journal
Jurgensen, M.F., J. Johnson, M.A. Wise, C.S. Williams, and R. Wilson. 1997. Impacts of timber harvesting on soil organic matter, nitrogen, productivity, and health of Inland Northwest forests. For. Sci. 43(2):234-251.
Proceedings
Blake, J.I., G.L. Somers, and G.A. Ruark. 1990. Perspectives on process modeling of forest growth responses to environmental stress. P. 9-20 in Proc. of conf. on Process modeling of forest growth responses to environmental stress, Robert K. Dixon (ed.). Timber Press, Portland, OR.
Personal Communication
John Helms, pers. comm., University of California-Berkeley, Aug. 10, 2006.
Technical Report
Fischer, W.C., and A.F. Bradley. 1987. Forest ecology of western Montana forest habitat types. USDA Forest Service Gen. Tech. Rep. GTR-INT-223, Intermountain Forest and Range Experiment Station, Ogden, UT. 95 p.
Thesis/Dissertation
Korol, R.L. 1985. The soil and water regime of uneven-age interior Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii var. glauca). M.Sc. thesis, Univ. of British Columbia, Vancouver, B.C., Canada. 164 p.
Web Publications
USDA Forest Service. 2002. The process predicament: How statutory, regulatory, and administrative factors affect national forest management. Available online at www.fs.fed.us/publications.html; last accessed Apr. 15, 2005.
Tables and Figures
All tables and figures must be cited in numerical order in the text.
Place each table and figure on a separate page with its title at top. Do not embed tables and figures within the main text.
Place table titles and figure captions together at the end of the manuscript. They should not appear as part of the image itself. Common abbreviations are yr (year and years), dbh (not DBH), bd ft, mbf, ac, ha, ht, vol, m3, ft2, in. (inch and inches), cm, g, lb. Labels for figures should be in initial cap and lowercase.
Tables
Table files should be uploaded after the main document before figure files. Upload each table as a separate Word file. Tables should be in portrait orientation no more than 7 inches wide and 9.66 inches tall.
Titles, column heads, and side heads should be in initial cap and lowercase.
Figures
Figures must be submitted as separate high-resolution EPS, TIFF, or JPG files.
Figures may be presented in color or black and white. There are no fees associated with the publication of color figures.
Supplemental Materials
Authors may upload supplementary data for online-only publication. Supplementary materials are not essential but are specifically relevant and help readers better understand the work, particularly if available in a format not conducive for a printed outlet. There is a 10 MB limit to supplemental files.
Supplemental material(s) are not edited or peer-reviewed; it is therefore the authors' sole responsibility to ensure that supplemental materials are accurate. Reference to each piece of supplemental material should be made in proper context in the text of the article, with an "S" placed in front of each reference (e.g., Table S1, Figure S2, Video Clip S3).
A list of supplementary materials should be provided following the Literature Cited section with a descriptive, one-line caption included for each unique supplement. Examples:
Examples of Supplementary Materials
Supplement 1. Video clip of modified skyline logging system using new rigging structure in steep terrain.
Supplement 2. FORTRAN code of program developed to simulate different stress loads of modified skyline logging system under different wind conditions, soil conditions, and types of timber.
All files uploaded as supplements should have their preferred version of the commercial software listed, and if possible be presented in formats that can be read in free, publicly available programs (e.g., PDF or ASCII files for text documents rather than those in a native (proprietary) word processor or spreadsheet format). Supplementary data should not contain certain types of files, such as executable files (e.g., *.exe, *.com) or those script or macro files (e.g., *.vbs) or compressed files (e.g., *.zip).
Rights and Permissions
Oxford University Press publishes Journal of Forestry on behalf of the Society of American Foresters. Upon receipt of accepted manuscripts at Oxford University Press, authors will be invited to complete an online copyright license to publish form. It is a condition of publication in Journal of Forestry that authors grant an exclusive license to the Society of American Foresters.
Please note that by submitting an article for publication you confirm that you are the corresponding/submitting author and that OUP may retain your email address for the purpose of communicating with you about the article. You agree to notify OUP immediately if your details change. If your article is accepted for publication, OUP will contact you using the email address you have used in the registration process. Please note that OUP does not retain copies of rejected articles.
Preprint policy
Authors retain the right to make an Author’s Original Version (preprint) available through various channels, and this does not prevent submission to the journal. For further information see our Online Licensing, Copyright and Permissions policies. If accepted, the authors are required to update the status of any preprint, including your published paper’s DOI, as described on our Author Self-Archiving policy page.
