DEI Committee Members
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Ann Paterson (Co-chair)
Mizuki Takahashi (Co-chair)
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Erim Gomez
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Sarah Kupferberg
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Sheila Poo
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Jennifer Sheridan
Review Process
Manuscripts must be submitted electronically as Microsoft Word (MSWord) documents to the appropriate Section Editor.
Section Editors will remove as much identifying information as possible. This information will include author names and affiliations, biographies, acknowledgments, and other relevant information (as requested by the corresponding author). Section Editors will also confirm that identifying metadata has been removed from the manuscript (e.g., author names in Word documents). Manuscripts will then be sent to peer reviewers without the aforementioned identifying information.
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee
Herpetological Conservation and Biology welcomes and encourages submissions by all authors regardless of ethnicity, gender identity or expression, national origin, or other characteristics.
Implicit biases exist in the peer-review process against certain groups of authors based on language, socioeconomics, gender, and other factors. We strive for a more equitable peer-review process.
We acknowledge that our governing and editorial boards need to have increased diversity. To provide fair reviews and decisions to all authors, we commit to continue and expand our work to establish more diverse representation on both boards.
We also commit to develop and ensure an effective system to disseminate educational information to our editors and reviewers concerning evidence of the peer-review biases and ways to reduce them.
DEI Contact Information
Name Change Policy
Herpetological Conservation and Biology (HCB) recognizes that authors may change their names for a variety of reasons (e.g., marital status change, religious conversion, gender identity change) and wish to have their name changed on previously published papers. We respect the need for this option.
Authors who wish to have their name, pronouns, name-based e-mail address, or any other identifier changed on a paper published by HCB must contact the relevant Section Editor or any member of the Board of Directors and clearly state exactly what change(s) they are requesting. They must also attest that they are requesting a change of their own name. Name changes will not be made based on requests from anyone other than the individual requesting the change.
HCB will maintain a record of name change requests and attestations to document that we are honoring requests that we receive in good faith based on the understanding that the request has been received by the author whose name is affected.
This process will be entirely confidential unless an author requests a formal reference to the change on the paper. There is no need to send notification to or to acquire approval by co-authors of the paper. Please note that HCB has no control over citations of HCB articles in other publications and websites.
Upon receiving a request of this nature, HCB will update the published paper and webpage listing promptly on the HCB website. Previous versions of the manuscript may remain available elsewhere.