Guidelines for Bergey’s Manual Contributors
Bergey's Manual offers a comprehensive overview of prokaryotic taxa recognized in the literature, characterized through traditional cultural techniques and, more recently, through metagenomics. The primary focus of Bergey's Manual chapters should be to summarise the accumulated knowledge for each taxon, covering its current classification, metabolism, ecology, and other relevant features of interest. This page provides essential information for authors preparing chapters. To assist authors in preparing new chapters, we have created downloadable templates that ensure consistency and high-quality content.
Why Use These Templates?
Our templates assist authors in effectively structuring their chapters. They cover essential information, including formatting, style, cross-references, and permissions for reusing previously published materials, all while avoiding redundancy. All templates are provided at the bottom of this page. Please consider the templates as guides and delete sections that are not relevant to your taxon or add sections to include important information.
What Do the Templates Include?
In addition to general publishing guidelines, the templates include examples of descriptions for both lower and higher taxa. When dealing with taxa that have a high number of subcategories, consider offering a general overview of phylogeny and ecology based on the authors' research and other relevant literature.
Higher Taxa Chapters:
These describe taxa from above the genus level up to the phylum. We encourage contributions on underrepresented phyla.
Lower Taxa Chapters:
To prevent redundancy, Bergey's Manual does not publish species chapters. Please focus on the genus rank and above and provide references for published species. However, genus chapters can include detailed species or genus descriptions and serve as the defining publication for names for validation in the International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology.
Key Considerations for Authors
Taxonomic Reference:
We use the Genome Taxonomy Database as the primary taxonomic framework but welcome discussion of different perspectives within chapters.
The Taxonomy Tree viewer on the GTDB website also provides links to the corresponding chapters in Bergey's Manual, which can be accessed using the institution's subscription.
Nomenclature:
Consult databases like LPSN for the comprehensive information and latest published opinions on nomenclature.
Formatting references:
"My Library.json" contains the file for formatting references in Zotero in the BMSAB style. See the Contributor Guidelines for more information about formatting references. Citing other chapters in BMSAB: The "Bergey's cross-ref list" contains the identifier for all the chapters in the Manual. When these identifiers are inserted into the text, a link to the chapter will be created by the copyeditors.
These guidelines and templates will help authors shape their chapters, ensuring clarity and consistency without repeating previously published work. For further questions or additional content suggestions, please contact us directly. For any other information related to publishing, please consult with Authors Guidelines.
Downloadable templates and other information:
Thank you for your valuable contributions!