Transitional Waters Bulletin

Transitional Waters Bulletin (TWB) aims at a large, multidisciplinary audience and is dedicated to rapidly publishing innovative results of field and laboratory experiments on river mouth ecosystems, lagoons, coastal lakes and brackish wetlands.
Our target is a rapid peer review process, editorial decision and publication. The authors will receive the referee's comments within 4 weeks from the manuscript submission, for Report papers, and within 8 weeks, for Article papers.

Aims & Scope
Transitional Waters Bulletin is expected to have a wide audience, encompassing scientists in research institutes, universities, industry, environmental organisations and all level of government as well as aquatic habitat managers and policy makers concerned with these issues.

Contributes on the following topics are strongly encouraged:

• Transitional water ecology & phenomena
• Species distribution in relation to varying environments
• Transitional water sedimentary processes and bio-geochemistry
• Modeling of transitional water ecosystems
• Habitat typology and community classification
• Theoretical principles underlying ecosystem health surveillance and monitoring
• Impact assessment research and study cases
• Management, conservation and rehabilitation of habitat and communities
• Sustainable and adaptive management of the natural heritage of transitional landscapes including historical and socio-ecological adaptive management
• Methodological innovations or new technical developments in the fields of more general interest
• Technical reports on taxonomic databases
• Legal framework for conservation

Types of contributions

Research articles – Research articles report original research results that are never published before on the main topics of the Journal. Submissions may contain up to 20 manuscript pages, roughly 5000 words with an up to 200 words abstract. Manuscript longer than 20 manuscript pages, up to 50 manuscript pages, can be accepted as Articles. The increased length of Articles relative to Reports must be justified by their scientific content and significance. The abstract can have a maximum of 350 words. Anyway, papers should not contain more than 8000 words, and not more than 8 figures and 3 tables.

Data articles - Data papers are expected to be detailed descriptions of lagoon abiotic and/or biotic components. Papers should contain extensive data reports: 1. on physical and chemical characteristics of either water column or sediments; 2. on biotic components, as species lists of both animals or plants. Data papers are required to report an accurate description of all methodological aspects of the sampling procedures and sample analysis. Authors are encouraged to organize data paper dividing introduction, methods and results description from data lists that have to be reported in Appendix.

Review articles –Review articles are expected to be pivotal papers providing synthetic overview, critical commentary, historical and multidisciplinary perspective, primarily by established scientists and outstanding experts in transitional aquatic ecosystem ecology and management. Reviews will be generally invited papers, but aspiring authors should feel encouraged to contact the Editor-in-Chief.

View point articles, Brief notes and Editorials –Are short papers discussing specific scientific themes of recent interest, or new science frontiers. These are generally invited papers, but aspiring authors should feel encouraged to contact the Editor-in-Chief. The structure of these papers is free but a brief abstract of maximum 200 words is required and papers could be no longer than 5 pages.

Project Reports - Reports and articles are expected to disclose original and innovative work that substantially advance a field, overturn existing ideas or enhance the knowledge on transitional water ecosystems at eco-regional level. Reports are expected to be concise and effective presentations of theoretical, analytical, experimental, empirical, historical, or descriptive work, with an average length of 5-6 printed pages.

The journal publication started in 2007.
It is published by SIBA of the University of Salento and it is available at URL http://siba-ese.unisalento.it.