Tropics
Tropics is an international, peer-reviewed, and Open Access journal published twice yearly with one volume comprising two issues by the Japan Society of Tropical Ecology (JASTE). Tropics publishes manuscripts covering all aspects of ecology and ecology-related science about tropical regions. Manuscripts are limited to three types: original articles, reviews, and field notes. Each manuscript must be a report of original research that has not been previously published in whole or in part, and is not under consideration for publication in any other journal except for a preprint server. Manuscripts should be written in English. Tropics has been listed in Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI) since 2017 and received its first journal impact factor 0.7 in 2023.
The journal is open to the results of original research, experimental or descriptive, and to significant reviews of aspects of the ecology and ecology-related science about tropical regions. Its aim is not only to act as a valued means of communication between Japanese ecologists and other field scientists, but also to stimulate the research activities of ecologists and scientists of tropical regions. Those interested in contributing to Tropics are highly encouraged to submit their work.
Special issues of monographs or reviews may be published on occasion by decision of the editorial board.
Manuscripts published on a preprint server can be submitted to Tropics under the following conditions. The manuscript must be the original version of the manuscript describing primary research. The revised manuscript, following reviewers' comments, and the manuscript accepted to Tropics should not be posted to the preprint server. When the manuscript is accepted and published in Tropics, the authors should update the information on the preprint server to make a link to the manuscript in Tropics on J-Stage.
Full text PDF files of recent volumes are available at J-STAGE.
Editorial Office of TROPICS
Takeshi TOMA
Editor-in-Chief of TROPICS
e-mail: tropics.jaste@gmail.com
1. Editorial Board
Editor-in-Chief: Takeshi TOMA (FFPRI) Forest Ecology and Rehabilitating Degraded Forests
Shin-ichiro Aiba (Kagoshima Univ.) Forest Ecology
Makoto Ehara (FFPRI) Policy and Livelihoods
Fuminori Ito (Kagawa Univ.) Ecology and Taxonomy of Insects
Koichi Kamiya (Ehime Univ.) Population Genetics
Shumpei Kitamura (Ishikawa Pref. Univ.) Ecology of Birds
Taiki Mori (FFPRI) Material Dynamics
Miyabi Nakabayashi (Hiroshima Univ.) Ecology of Mammals
Shinta Ohashi (FFPRI) Wood Science
Masahiko Ota (Nagasaki Univ.) Policy and Society
Daisuke Terauchi (Tsukuba Univ.) Commons and Livelihood
Toshihiro Yamada (Hiroshima Univ.) Forest Ecology
Reiji Yoneda (FFPRI) Silviculture
2. Publication ethics and malpractice statement
Research misconducts and malpractice harm individual and society. Although researchers may get temporal benefits from their publication by misconducts and malpractices, such publication retard the advance of science and the authors also suffer disadvantages much larger than the temporal benefits once the misconducts revealed. The editors of Tropics work hard to avoid publishing research papers from misconducts and malpractices in Tropics. In addition to those efforts, we need cooperation and understanding from the authors to avoid misconducts and malpractices. So, the editorial board requests all authors to take “3. Authors’ responsibility” listed below, before submitting their manuscript to Tropics.
3. Author's responsibilities
The authors should confirm that the study was carried out within appropriate ethical frameworks of their society and also scientific fields. To avoid publishing research results by malpractices*, the editorial board requests all authors to confirm following points before submitting their manuscript to Tropics.
・The study has not been published and is not currently under review in other journals.
・All authors have contributed to the study and read the submitted version of the manuscript.
・All authors have committed for avoiding research misconduct such as fabrication, falsification, plagiarism as well as multiple submission of the same research results and inappropriate authorship.
・All authors have agreed to submit the manuscript to Tropics as well as to participate the peer review process of Tropics.
・All authors have declared any possible conflict of interests or they have confirmed that there is no conflict of interests.
・All authors have agreed that the editorial board may request authors to show evidences they followed necessary ethical framework and they will respond the request.
・All authors have agreed that they and the editorial board are obliged to provide retractions or correction of mistakes before and after publication of their manuscript.
・All authors have agreed that they transfer the copyright of their articles to JASTE effective when the articles are accepted for publication and JASTE publishes the articles under the Creative Commons CC BY 4.0 International license.
*: Ex. Guides for avoiding research misconducts
Japan Science and Technology Agency:
To All Researchers- Conduct for Responsible Research Activities-
P1-7 Japanese, P8-13 English, P14-19 Chinese
Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) https://publicationethics.org/
4. Submission of manuscripts
Submissions to Tropics should include the following three items:
(1) Submission Form downloaded from the web site of the Japan Society of Tropical Ecology (JASTE) here
(2) A Microsoft word file containing the title page and text pages of the manuscript prepared in accordance with the instruction for manuscript preparation .
(3) A PDF file containing the tables and figures.
Authors should submit these three items to the Tropics Editorial Board at the following address: tropics.jaste@gmail.com
5. Peer-review process
The TROPICS Editorial Board reserves the right to accept or reject manuscripts for publication. Papers are first reviewed for suitability by the Editorial Board. Suitable papers are then critically reviewed by two or more experts. Based on the recommendation of the reviewers, the editorial board will make one of the following decisions:
A. Your manuscript was accepted for publication.
B. Your manuscript will be accepted if revised adequately according to the comments.
C. Please revise according to the comments and resubmit.
D. It is recommended to submit your revised manuscript as a new manuscript for an adequate category.
E. Please decline submission.
For decisions B and C, the authors are expected to submit revised manuscript within one month from the decision.
6. Publication fee
The first author should be responsible to cover publication fee of the manuscript. The publication cost of Tropics is covered by the membership fees of JASTE. If the first author is a JASTE member, his or her manuscript will be published in free of charge. If the first author is NOT a JASTE member, a publication fee per article will be charged upon acceptance of a publication.
Member of the JASTE: No charge
Non-member: JPY6,000-
Non-member (student, overseas resident): JPY1,000- or USD20-
Anyone interested in becoming a member of JASTE may contact to jaste.adm@gmail.com
7. Ownership and management
The copyright of the articles and other documents published by the Japan Society of Tropical Ecology (JASTE) and disclosed on the JASTE’s website belong to JASTE.
Copyright transfer and Open Access
All authors shall agree to transfer the copyright of their articles to JASTE effective when the articles are accepted for publication. The use of copyrighted material requires the permission of JASTE. JASTE has the right to authorize third parties to use such materials; as a result of this authorization, any payment from third parties will be transferred to JASTE’s account. Authors have the right to use their articles on their own website or a website belonging to another society, so long as it is indicated that the article’s copyright is owned by JASTE.
After January 2024, JASTE will publish the articles accepted to Tropics under the Creative Commons CC BY 4.0 International license, which allows users to share and adapt an article, even commercially, if appropriate credit is given. Some funding bodies require articles funded by them to be published under a specific Creative Commons license. Before submitting your work to Tropics, check with the relevant funding bodies to ensure that you comply with any mandates.
Extent of Copyright
Copyright means all the rights defined by the Copyright Law of Japan (Revised on 21st December 2004), including Article 21 (right of reproduction), Article 22 (right of showing and playing), Article 23 (right of public transmission), Article 24 (right of morality), Article 25 (right of exhibition), Article 26 (right of distribution), Article 26-2 (dominion), Article 26-3 (right of lending), Article 27 (right of translation), and Article 28 (right of original author to secondary use of copyrighted works) of the copyright law.
8. Archiving
All articles published in TROPICS are archived in J-STAGE.
The articles will be available even after TROPICS is no longer published.
9. Instructions for Manuscript preparation [pdf]