Annals of Forest Science moves to SNAPP, the new manuscript management system developed by Springer.
From January 28, 2025 on, all new manuscripts will be submitted via the Springer Nature Article Processing Platform (SNAPP), instead of the former Editorial Manager platform. You will experience a completely new user-interface that is much more user-friendly than the earlier one. It is also standardised among Springer journals, with many common features, and however some specificities. For instance, the review process at Annals of Forest Science remains a double-blind process, with the difference that no separate “title page” will be required (the corresponding information will be in the metadata of the manuscript and not communicated to the reviewers). Another stable requirement: we still insist that, like in a growing number of journals, data and codes related to the manuscript, should be deposited into a public and “FAIR” repository.
The new submission link is here: Annals of Forest Science.
A novelty is the possibility to choose different paper formats. The three main formats are still “Research paper”, “Review paper”, “Data paper” (called now “Database”). To help you format a manuscript according to these formats, we provide suitable templates on our website. Some formats that were specific to Annals of Forest Science changed: “Opinion papers” are now detailed in three different formats: “Comments”, “Matters arising” and “Perspectives”. “First reports” are now “Case Reports” with exactly the same features. “Editorial”, which is mainly used by the journal’s editors is still the same. The definition of these formats is now much more standardised across Springer journals. Should you have any doubt or question, please refer to the descriptions provided in SNAPP and/or send us a message at annforsci@inrae.fr .
A fully new format is already listed, but still requires some adjustments within the editorial landscape of Annals of Forest Science during the coming months: it is that of the “Registered Reports”. This quite novel format corresponds to a new publication process that implies submission, peer-review and eventually publication of experimental designs, protocols and research questions before the experiments are actually launched. The results and discussion will be published later on whatever is the outcome of the experiment. This procedure is expected to avoid some of the common replication issues and allow publication of “negative” (i.e., non-conclusive results) which is a major issue in many disciplines.
We are adjusting the guidelines for publication to take all these changes into account. They should be ready soon.
As Editors of “Annals of Forest Science”, we will have to get familiar with the new environment. This will require some time and practical experience. Please accept our apologies in advance whenever we make mistakes during the first weeks. However, we are confident that the guidance provided to the editors end the reviewers by SNAPP will help us overcome these difficulties.
By the way, the manuscripts submitted before January 28 will still be handled via the good old Editorial Management procedure. The switch to SNAPP will be complete once these last manuscripts have been published in a few weeks.
At the editorial board of Annals of Forest Science, we are very keen to see this new experiment developing!
The co-chief editors of Annals of Forest Science.