Conservation Biology of Freshwater Turtles and Tortoises
A compilation project of the IUCN SSC Tortoise And Freshwater Turtle Specialist Group
Information for Contributors
This monographic project started out in the mid-2000s with the original intention to produce a single published book detailing the conservation biology of all freshwater turtles (and later adding tortoises as well). However, after some years of frustratingly slow completion of species accounts it became clear that we would never achieve completion of all accounts at a single point in time.
Instead, in 2008 we started the gradual publication of species accounts one by one as they became finalized. With the advent of open-access online publishing capabilities this model has been operative since then. All accounts in this on-going project are published online with official DOI numbers on downloadable pdf’s to make them immediately available and citeable as professional peer-reviewed publications in the public realm.
Contributing Authors
Original Accounts
Authorship of accounts is by invitation only, but we encourage any specialists with expertise on particular turtles or tortoises to contact us <[email protected]> about volunteering to take on (as senior author) or to join an account (as a co-author), or eventually, to help revise an already-published older account (see below). Many species accounts have already been assigned, but several unassigned accounts remain. Most accounts have been done or assigned at the species level, but we also include some individual subspecies accounts, and there are many opportunities for volunteering to take the lead on authoring such accounts. If you are interested, please contact us at the e-mail address above.
Accounts already Published, or In press, or In prep., or with Authors Needed are all listed in the Table of Contents.
We thank all Contributing Authors for the accounts that are already published, and list them all on the Contributing Authors page with links to their respectively authored accounts.
Any accounts listed in the Table of Contents as In prep. or Authors Needed or not listed at all, are available for new authors with relevant data for those species to be considered for authorship on the account, or to be considered to join existing authors as a co-author on the account. Please contact Anders Rhodin <[email protected]> or through the contact form if you would like to be considered for an authorship role. We encourage potential contributors to volunteer to help.
Revised Accounts
As time progresses, accounts produced early in this project are gradually becoming increasingly out-of-date. As this begins to occur we encourage any of you, especially the original authors of the accounts, but also new authors, to contact us about revising and updating the account. If someone new (not one of the original authors) wants to help revise or take the lead on revising an older account, we will contact the original author(s) and make a joint decision as to the best way to move forward with a revision that would also include the input and authorship or co-authorship of the new people volunteering to lead or help with the process.
Any such revised account would then also be posted online account, with the older account still remaining available on the website. This process will help assure that the whole project will remain up-to-date and hopefully functional and relevant for many years to come.
Account Format Guidelines
For authors wishing to consider authoring or revising an account, we require that our standardized account format be followed.
Content and formatting protocols and literature citations for CBFTT accounts
Contributing Photographers
We encourage any and all who have good photographs of freshwater turtles and tortoises to consider submitting them to us for consideration of inclusion in upcoming new accounts or eventually revised older accounts. Photos may be submitted either by authors of accounts or anyone else, and need to include information as to who the photographer is, what species or subspecies is being photographed, and where the animal was from (either specific or general location). Photos need to be in good focus and digitally scanned in color and submitted as jpg files with at least 600 dpi resolution, but 1200 dpi preferred. For each species we hope to publish the following types of photos: 1) a portrait-style photo of a whole animal in reasonably natural habitat to serve as the frontispiece or cover photo for the species and included on the webpage for the species account summary; 2) detailed carapace and plastron shots of an adult; 3) a close-up head shot of an adult; 4) dorsal and ventral shots of a hatchling; 5) habitat photos; and 6) other photos of threats. If you are interested in submitting photos, please contact us at <[email protected]>. All photos used will be acknowledged in the published accounts and on this website on the page for Contributing Photographers. Thank you.