General Submission Guidelines

Submit text for articles as an MS Word document (preferably in Times font). Send the finished article attached to, or in the body of, an email. Handwritten or typed manuscripts will not be accepted. Include all contact information including name, mailing address, phone and email with the article or other submission.

We want our contributors and the journal to shine in the best possible light; therefore, if necessary, you may be asked to rewrite your article to improve readability, grammar, sentence structure, or value of content. The editor also may do rewriting. Acceptance of articles or other content is at the editor’s discretion.

Articles naming new species will not be accepted. The Begonian is not a peer-reviewed journal.

Announcements, corrections, address changes or any other content need to be sent to the editor by email. Notes or phone calls requesting information updates or write-ups will not be honored.

Articles and photos that have been previously published in another publication need prior approval from the editor before possible acceptance in The Begonian.

Submissions sent for publication in a specific issue cannot be guaranteed. Issue placement of an article is at the editor’s discretion. Submit articles as early as possible.

Keep formatting to a minimum! Avoid visual formatting like all caps, bold text, excessive tabs, changes in font size or font type, colored text, indentions, underlining, highly stylized tables, etc.

Please provide figure captions, acknowledgments, etc., where needed.

Include the author’s name exactly as it should be published. Be sure to add city and state/country as well as any title you might want to include. Please send a mailing address if you wish to have contributor copies sent to you after the publication of the article.

Articles over 800 words need prior approval from the editor.

Photos and Illustrations

Photos require the photographer’s permission. Please do not send photos from websites or that have been scanned from other publications.

Photos must be submitted in .tif or .jpeg format with a resolution of at least 300 dpi. Photos must be at least 2½” x 2½” with good composition, good lighting, and high resolution as mentioned. Photos with messy or distracting backgrounds may be declined. Photos need to be attached separately to an email. We cannot accept photos that are pasted into Word or Excel documents or that are to be picked up from online photo books like Facebook, flickr or smugmug.

Photos must be accompanied by captions or plant identification if known. It’s preferable that submitted photos or illustrations be cited or mentioned in the text. Photos may be further checked for accurate ID by The Begonian staff.

With few exceptions, only original drawings or paintings are accepted. Copies generally do not reproduce well. Submit drawings or paintings in electronic format.

Miscellaneous

Numbers over 999 need commas, for example 1,980; $2,540.32; 5,000 km, etc.

Italicize species names, book titles and journal names, i.e., Begonia herbacea, Begonias of Malaysia and Journal of Tropical Medicine. Italicize the name of a journal but use quotation marks for article titles, i.e., …an article called “Plants I Love” in The Begonian. No underlining or bold, please.

The name of our publication is written in italics as The Begonian.

Begonias with U numbers will be written as – B. U###. Capital B [italicized] – period – space -capital U [not italicized] – NO space – number i.e., B. U496.

The word “begonia” will be italicized and capitalized when referring to a specific species plant, i.e. Begonia luxurians. Notice luxurians is lowercase. Before a cultivar name, “B” is always italicized, however, the cultivar name is not and includes single quotes, e.g., B. ‘Kit Kat’. When speaking of begonias in general use regular font and begin with a lowercase letter, i.e. I’ve grown begonias all my life.

Latin terms like nomen nudum, sp. nov should be italicized. The abbreviation, var., need not be italicized.

Submit materials electronically to begonian@begonias.org