IUCN WCPA PARKS: Guidelines for Lead Author(s)
Revised August 2025
PARKS accepts two types of contribution:
PARKS is deeply committed to the peer review process. For full articles, our reviewers are primarily drawn from amongst Commission experts and academics in related fields. Short communications are reviewed by two members of the editorial team.
Letters (a right to reply to articles, etc.) and book reviews.
The Convention on Biological Diversity’s protected area targets and programme[1] provides a framework for defining the content of the journal. Papers accepted for publication should ideally focus on:
Purely theoretical studies without field application or research papers based in protected areas but with little or no management content (such as descriptions of newly described species) are unlikely to be accepted. Papers to stimulate debate on new or forthcoming issues relevant to protected areas are normally commissioned.
Papers submitted for publication should be evidence-based, using accepted methods (conventional science or Traditional Ecological Knowledge) or be based upon precise observations that support the conclusions. Papers should meet the guidelines for submission (see below) and must pass a peer review process before publication. Purely descriptive approaches are unlikely to be accepted.
Lead authors should work closely with the Editor of PARKS and the assigned Handling Editor. Authors of articles do not have to be members of the IUCN World Commission on Protected Areas. Lead authors note:
All submissions should be initiated through on this platform
PARKS articles should be clearly written in British English as per IUCN WCPA house style (except for direct quotations) and use British English style (e.g. per cent instead of percent or % in text), free of jargon, and intelligible to readers, many of whom are not English native speakers. Use of 1st and 2nd person is acceptable but if ‘we’ is used please specify at the first use who is meant if it is not the authors of the paper (e.g. a project team, etc.). Italics and bold type should not be used within the main text for emphasis within sentences.
Section headings (Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion and Conclusions) are not numbered and only two levels of sub-headings are normally used.
The title should not exceed 15 words unless special approval is given by the editor. Each article should have an abstract of no more than 200 words encapsulating the main arguments and findings of the article. Abstracts will be translated into French and Spanish.
Please include 5-6 key words or phrases. Do not include words that are already present in the title of the paper.
Please provide short biographies (of no more than 50 words) for each author. If there are more than nine authors, biographies should be no longer than 25 words each. Biographies for Short Communications should not exceed 25 words for each author.
Author names and affiliations and the email address of the corresponding author should be provided. All authors are encouraged to list their ORCID id. Authors without an ORCID id can obtain one at https://orcid.org/register
Articles should be fully referenced. Convert all reference lists prepared using bibliographic software (e.g. Endnote, Zotero or similar) to plain text. Guidelines to IUCN WCPA citation style are available in the IUCN WCPA Style Manual at https://www.iucn.org/our-work/science-led-approach/publications-and-publishing/how-publish-iucn
IUCN WCPA uses author-date reference citations and has adopted the APA (American Psychological Association) style for references. Order in-text citations by different authors alphabetically, separated by a semi-colon (e.g. (Abebe, 2022; Singh & Gonzalez, 2020; Wang et al., 2023)). For article titles and book titles, capitalise only the first word and any proper nouns. Journal titles are capitalised and written out in full with a comma after journal title. Please use the en-dash (–) not the hyphen (-) for page number ranges.
Journal article:
Chawla, L. (2020). Childhood nature connection and constructive hope: A review of research on connecting with nature and coping with environmental loss. People and Nature, 2(3), 619–642. https://doi.org/10.1002/pan3.10128
Online article:
Thin Green Line Foundation (2021). Stand with the families of fallen rangers. https://thingreenline.org.au/fallen-ranger-appeal-lp/
Book:
Global Witness (2021). Last line of defence: The industries causing the climate crisis and attacks against land and environmental defenders. London: Global Witness.
Edited chapter in book:
Wells, N. M. & Lekies, K. S. (2012). Children and nature: Following the trail to environmental attitudes and behavior. In J. Dickinson & R. Bonney (Eds.) Citizen science: Public collaboration in environmental research (pp. 201–213). Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. https://doi.org/10.7591/9780801463952-021
Referencing multiple authors with up to 10 authors include all author names: e.g. Singh, R., Galliers, C. H., Appleton, M. L., Hoffmann, M., Long, B., Cary-Elwes, J., Fritze, C., McCallum, J. & Parry Jones, R. (2021). The vital role of rangers in conservation. Parks Stewardship Forum, 37(1), 128–136. https://doi.org/10.5070/p537151745
Referencing 11 authors or more include the first nine authors, an ellipsis and then the final author name: e.g. Díaz, S., Settele, J., Brondizio, E. S., Ngo, H. T., Agard, J., Arneth, A., Balvanera, P., Brauman, K. A., Butchart, S. H. M., … Zayas, C. N. (2019). Pervasive human-driven decline of life on Earth points to the need for transformative change. Science, 366(6471). https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aaw3100
Website: Links to websites which give more information about projects, sites, and initiatives should be given as end notes. PARKS assigns DOI numbers to all papers, which means all references need to include DOI numbers where available. Most journal papers prominently include DOI numbers, if you cannot find the number you can search the crossref system at: http://www.crossref.org/guestquery/
Use a species common name first followed by the scientific name in brackets and italics, e.g. Otter (Lutra lutra). Common names should use capitals for all first letters, e.g. Grey Pika. After one mention of the species’ scientific name, only the common name should be used. There are exceptions particularly with plants, for which common names, if they exist, are not universally recognised. In these cases, scientific names should be used throughout but only in full once within any section. For example, Microcryptorhynchis orientissimus, thereafter, orientissimus. When referring to a group of species with the same generic scientific name, this may be expressed as, for example, Varanus spp. Varanus sp. denotes only one species of Varanus.
Use accepted anglicised versions, e.g. Rome, Moscow, Beijing.
The SI metric system must be used, unless there is a compelling need to use another measurement system, in which case the SI equivalent must follow in brackets. Abbreviated unit names should be in lower case without full stops, for example cm, km, g, kg, ha; separate the unit name from the figure by one space. In prose, numbers are given in words from one to nine, in figures from 10 upwards (with commas to denote thousands), but use ‘million’ (e.g. 2.6 million, not 2,600,000). Where monetary figures are given a US$ equivalent for the current period should be given.
Tables should be short (around half an A4 page) and ideally columns contain text of equal length. Very large tables are difficult to format and will either need to be reduced in size or moved to Supplementary Online Material. Boxed text can be included but should be of no more than 200 words per box. Endnotes should be kept to a minimum (a maximum of 10). Footnotes are not used.
Supplementary Online Material (SOM) can be included on the PARKS website together with the online version of the paper. All SOM should be submitted as separate files.
Margaret Kinnaird