Manuscript format
All electronic manuscripts should be presented on A4 with double spacing and wide margins. Double spacing should also be used for references, tables and captions. Each page should be numbered.
Each of the following sections of the manuscript should begin on a separate page:
- title page.
- abstract.
- main text.
- references.
- tables (each on a separate page).
- figure captions.
The title page should contain the full title of the paper, the authors listed in the order in which they are to appear in print and a complete address for each author, grouped by institution when possible. Due to the requirements of the review process, authors’ names should not appear on any page of the manuscript other than the title page. Running heads, if used, should indicate only the title of the article. The title page must also include a conflict of interest declaration (see below for guidance on what this should look like).
Title and abstract
The title and the abstract of the article should be concise and should reflect the content of the paper accurately. The abstract should be of an appropriate length and should be able to stand alone as a summary of the paper, its arguments and its conclusions. Polar Record publishes papers from a variety of academic disciplines, and therefore it is particularly important to ensure that abstracts avoid disciplinary jargon.
Sectional headings
Papers should be divided into sections, described by short headings; secondary and tertiary sections may also be used, each with short headings. No further subdivisions may be used.
Footnotes
Polar Record will not normally accept footnotes, and they will be allowed only at the Editors’ discretion. Places where they are considered essential should be marked in the text, and the footnotes listed at the end of the main text, before the references. Endnotes, similarly, are not used in Polar Record.
Figures
All figures (charts and photographs) should be submitted as .tif or .eps files, saved at a resolution of at least 300dpi. The figures should be saved at final size, with the size not exceeding 165 mm wide and 240 mm long.
Do not include any text that you do not want to appear on the final figure.
Line drawings must be made with strong black lines, with lettering of sufficient size to be legible.
Avoid gross disparities in sizes of lettering. Captions should be listed consecutively, double spaced, on a separate sheet.
Figures must be referred to in the text by their number (for example, ‘Fig. 1’); cardinal numbers are used when citing figures or tables.
Tables
Tables must be typed one per page, preferably in the same word-processing program as the main text of the paper. They should be capable of fitting onto a single page of the journal in portrait or landscape format. They must be numbered in Arabic numerals and referred to in the text by their number (for example, ‘see Table 2’).
Required Sections
Acknowledgements
You may acknowledge individuals or organisations that provided advice, support (non-financial).
Formal financial support and funding should be listed in the following section.
Financial support
Please provide details of the sources of financial support for all authors, including grant numbers. For example:
“This work was supported by the Medical Research Council (grant number XXXXXXX)”
Multiple grant numbers should be separated by a comma and space, and where research was funded by more than one agency the different agencies should be separated by a semi-colon, with “and” before the final funder. Grants held by different authors should be identified as belonging to individual authors by the authors’ initials. For example:
“This work was supported by the Wellcome Trust (A.B., grant numbers XXXX, YYYY), (C.D., grant number ZZZZ); the Natural Environment Research Council (E.F., grant number FFFF); and the National Institutes of Health (A.B., grant number GGGG), (E.F., grant number HHHH)”
Where no specific funding has been provided for research, please provide the following statement: “This research received no specific grant from any funding agency, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.”
Conflict of interest declaration
As stated by ICMJE, public trust in the scientific process and the credibility of published articles depend in part on how transparently conflicts of interest are handled during the planning, implementation, writing, peer review, editing, and publication of scientific work.
A conflict of interest exists when professional judgment concerning a primary interest (such as the validity of research) may be influenced by a secondary interest (such as financial gain). Perceptions of conflict of interest are as important as actual conflicts of interest.
Conflict of interest declaration: All authors must include a conflict of interest declaration in the title page they submit. This declaration will be subject to editorial review and may be published in the article. Conflicts interest are situations that could be perceived to exert an undue influence on the content or publication of an author’s work. They may include, but are not limited to, financial, professional, contractual or personal relationships or situations. If the manuscript has multiple authors, the author submitting must include conflicts of interest declarations relevant to all contributing authors. Example wording for a declaration is as follows: “Conflict of interest: Author A is employed at company B. Author C owns shares in company D, is on the Board of company E and is a member of organisation F. Author G has received grants from company H.” If no conflicts of interest exist, the declaration should state “Conflict of interest: The author(s) declare none”.
Ethical standards
Where research involves human and/or animal experimentation, the following statements should be included (as applicable):
“The authors assert that all procedures contributing to this work comply with the ethical standards of the relevant national and institutional committees on human experimentation and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2008.”
- and
“The authors assert that all procedures contributing to this work comply with the ethical standards of the relevant national and institutional guides on the care and use of laboratory animals.”
Manuscript style
Spelling
All papers should be written consistently either in British or American English and spelling should generally follow The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Current English.
Abbreviations and acronyms
When used, the full wording must be used on the first mention, followed by the abbreviation or acronym in parentheses. Latin abbreviations should not be used, but should be replaced by the English equivalents. The abbreviation ‘Fig.’ is always used. Accepted abbreviations are used for units of measurement.
Capitalisation
Arctic, Antarctic, sub-Arctic and sub-Antarctic are always capitalised, whether used as a noun or an adjective. Points of the compass are lower case, except as official political entities. Anglicised versions of Latin names do not begin with capitals, nor are they italicised. Capitalisation should also occur whenever a person is being referred to, for example, “Adelie penguin” but “gentoo penguin”.
Dates and times
Full dates are given in the text, using cardinal rather than ordinal numbers and omitting commas (for example, 23 November 1958). Abbreviated forms should be in European format (for example,23.11.1958) and may be used for dates in tables and figures.
Units of measurement
Each paper must be internally consistent, using metric units following the International System of Units.
References
Please note: Potential contributors to Polar Record are advised that careful attention to the references will greatly assist the Editors, and will speed up the processing of their manuscript. Poorly prepared references will be returned to authors and cause unavoidable delays in the processing of your manuscript.
The Polar Record Referencing Style Guide can be found here.
If you require any further assistance with the references please contact the Editors.
English language editing services
Authors, particularly those whose first language is not English, may wish to have their English-language manuscripts checked by a native speaker before submission. This step is optional, but may help to ensure that the academic content of the paper is fully understood by the Editor and any reviewers.
In order to help prospective authors to prepare for submission and to reach their publication goals, Cambridge University Press offers a range of high-quality manuscript preparation services, including language editing. You can find out more on our language services page.
Please note that the use of any of these services is voluntary, and at the author's own expense. Use of these services does not guarantee that the manuscript will be accepted for publication, nor does it restrict the author to submitting to a Cambridge-published journal.
Competing Interests
All authors must include a competing interest declaration in their title page. This declaration will be subject to editorial review and may be published in the article.
Competing interests are situations that could be perceived to exert an undue influence on the content or publication of an author’s work. They may include, but are not limited to, financial, professional, contractual or personal relationships or situations.
If the manuscript has multiple authors, the author submitting must include competing interest declarations relevant to all contributing authors.
Example wording for a declaration is as follows: “Competing interests: Author 1 is employed at organisation A, Author 2 is on the Board of company B and is a member of organisation C. Author 3 has received grants from company D.” If no competing interests exist, the declaration should state “Competing interests: The author(s) declare none”.
Authorship and contributorship
All authors listed on any papers submitted to this journal must be in agreement that the authors listed would all be considered authors according to disciplinary norms, and that no authors who would reasonably be considered an author have been excluded. For further details on this journal’s authorship policy, please see this journal's publishing ethics policies.
Author affiliations
Author affiliations should represent the institution(s) at which the research presented was conducted and/or supported and/or approved. For non-research content, any affiliations should represent the institution(s) with which each author is currently affiliated.
For more information, please see our author affiliation policy and author affiliation FAQs.
ORCID
We encourage authors to identify themselves using ORCID when submitting a manuscript to this journal. ORCID provides a unique identifier for researchers and, through integration with key research workflows such as manuscript submission and grant applications, provides the following benefits:
- Discoverability: ORCID increases the discoverability of your publications, by enabling smarter publisher systems and by helping readers to reliably find work that you have authored.
- Convenience: As more organisations use ORCID, providing your iD or using it to register for services will automatically link activities to your ORCID record, and will enable you to share this information with other systems and platforms you use, saving you re-keying information multiple times.
- Keeping track: Your ORCID record is a neat place to store and (if you choose) share validated information about your research activities and affiliations.
See our ORCID FAQs for more information. If you don’t already have an iD, you can create one by registering directly at https://ORCID.org/register.
ORCIDs can also be used if authors wish to communicate to readers up-to-date information about how they wish to be addressed or referred to (for example, they wish to include pronouns, additional titles, honorifics, name variations, etc.) alongside their published articles. We encourage authors to make use of the ORCID profile’s “Published Name” field for this purpose. This is entirely optional for authors who wish to communicate such information in connection with their article. Please note that this method is not currently recommended for author name changes: see Cambridge’s author name change policy if you want to change your name on an already published article. See our ORCID FAQs for more information.
Supplementary materials
Material that is not essential to understanding or supporting a manuscript, but which may nonetheless be relevant or interesting to readers, may be submitted as supplementary material. Supplementary material will be published online alongside your article, but will not be published in the pages of the journal. Types of supplementary material may include, but are not limited to, appendices, additional tables or figures, datasets, videos, and sound files.
Supplementary materials will not be typeset or copyedited, so should be supplied exactly as they are to appear online. Please see our general guidance on supplementary materials for further information.
Where relevant we encourage authors to publish additional qualitative or quantitative research outputs in an appropriate repository, and cite these in manuscripts.
Author Hub
You can find guides for many aspects of publishing with Cambridge at Author Hub, our suite of resources for Cambridge authors.