About the Journal

History of the Journal of the Florida Mosquito Control Association

The Florida Mosquito Control Association (former Florida Anti-Mosquito Association organized since 1922) had published the report of annual meeting since 1922 (Vol. 1) to 1975 (Vol. 46). The Florida Anti-Mosquito Association had changed the publication title from report to the Proceedings of the FAMA since 1976 (Vol. 47) to 1980 (Vol. 50) annually, only Vol. 50 (1980) was semi-annual. The FAMA has changed the publication title  from proceedings to the Journal of the FAMA Vol 52, 1981 to Vol 60, 1989. Since 1990, the FAMA changed the association name from the FAMA to the Florida Mosquito Control Association (FMCA) and also changed the publication name from the JFAMA to the Journal of the Florida Mosquito Control Association (JFMCA) with the issued ISSN number for print and published Vol 61, 1990 to Vol. 65, 1993 semi-annually. In 1994, the FMCA published the JFMCA Vol. 65 (last Volume). During the 24-year period, the FMCA published 10 Volumes of the Technical Bulletin of the FMCA (TBFMCA) at irregular basis. In 2018 the FMCA Board decided to continue to publish the JFMCA annually (one Volume per year) with the same number of ISSN for print and a new number of the ISSN for online, and since 2019 the FMCA has published the JFMCA Vol. 66, Vol. 67, 2020, Vol. 68, 2021, Vol. 68, 2022, and Vol. 70, 2023. Also the FMCA continues to publish the Technical Bulletin of the FMCA at irregular basis.  

 

Policies of the Journal of the Florida Mosquito Control Association

Open Access Policy
JFMCA is a peer-reviewed journal and provides immediate open access to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge. There are no publication charges now, and all content is freely available without charge to the user or their institution. Users are allowed to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of the articles in this journal without asking prior permission from the publisher or the author for non-commercial purposes. Nonetheless, reproduction, posting, transmission or other distribution or use of the article or any material therein requires credit to the original publication source with a link to both the article and the license. This open access policy is in accordance with the Budapest Open Access Initiative's (BOAI) definition of open access.

Peer Review Policy

JFMCA is a peer-reviewed journal (anonymous reviewers and disclosed authors).  All submitted manuscripts will normally receive 2-3 external reviews from experts within the field. Initial review time is about 2-4 weeks depending on topic and reviewer availability.

Review Process

All manuscripts are reviewed initially by the Editor-in-Chief for suitability, consistency with format, etc. The Editor-in-Chief will typically make a decision on whether to move the manuscript to review, decline the submission directly (i.e., does not fit within the scope of the journal) or send back to the author for more information within seven days.  The Editor-In-Chief assigns a Manuscript to a member of the JFMCA Subject Editors or JFMCA Guest Editors to handle the peer review process once the manuscript moves to review. Manuscript acceptance or rejection is decided by the Subject Editor or Guest Editor who based on the 2-3 peer reviewers’ recommendation and author’s revision situation, then forwarded the final version to the Editor-in-Chief for further process once the review and revision process are completed. During the peer reviewing process, if the authors are not satisfying or complaint about his/her paper rejected by the subject/guest editor, the Chief-In-Editor will make the final decision whether additional peer reviews are needed or not after reviewing the process, subject/guest editor’s decision letter and major reason, and the peer-review recommendation. If the authors are still not satisfying about the rejection by the Editor-In-Chief, then this issue will be brought to the editorial board/ publication committee to discuss and make the final decision.

Ratings Descriptions

  1. ACCEPT: Publish as is or with editing of typographical errors.  This is rare.
  2. REVISIONS REQUIRED: Publish after appropriate content corrections. Subject/Guest Editor can judge if corrections were made (i.e., re-review not required). 
  3. RESUBMIT FOR RE-REVIEW: Substantial changes required and Editor-In-Chief will decide whether to have re-reviewed. 
  4. REJECT/DECLINE SUBMISSION: Not up to JFMCA standards or not enough new information. 

Guidelines for JFMCA Reviewers

  • Articles published in JFMCA must be of interest to mosquito control and/or public health professionals.
  • The level of the expository material must also be appropriate for the readership.
  • Ideally, articles will be of interest to both experts and nonexperts. Although this ideal is often difficult to reach, any suggestions in this vein will be appreciated.
  • Although JFMCA publishes a wide variety of articles, they are all expected to be scholarly.
  • Compared to existing literature, submitted manuscripts should represent a reasonably significant advance.
  • The writing should communicate clearly without any distractions from poor grammar, incorrect spelling, and poor organization. Figures and tables should be neat, clearly presented, and necessary. These problems can usually be fixed by revising the manuscript.
  • Infrequently, manuscripts lack sufficient detail and are too short. Please delineate what additional information and details would be useful or needed. The more typical problem is excessive length. Please delineate what can be combined, condensed, or removed. It is especially helpful if reviewers give their opinion about removing or combining figures and tables.

Quality and Ethical Standards for Articles

JFMCA articles should be prepared with the same care as technical articles; however, the style can be more informal and some use of the first person may occur. Articles need to reflect knowledge of the appropriate technical literatures. As an absolute minimum, authors should search the literature, summarize, and cite appropriate articles on relevant topics. Recent JFMCA contributions can be searched within the Archives on this site.  Authors should also perform a diligent search of other relevant journals, including Journal of American Mosquito Control Association, Journal of Medical Entomology, and Journal of Vector Ecology. Submitted manuscripts must be related, in some way, to the field of biology and control of mosquitoes and public health arthropods or closely related disciplines.

Manuscripts that have been published in a non-archival medium, such as Buzz Word/Newsletters and organization reports, can be submitted to JFMCA if publication would not violate copyright agreements and there are significant enhancements to the original article. The original publication needs to be cited, and the introduction should include specific comments about how the original article has been enhanced. The best way to write the enhanced article is to rewrite the entire article; however, if parts of the article are identical to the original article, overlapping portions of text must be identified and treated as quotations. Republishing is most appropriate when the original publication consisted of preliminary results that can be expanded upon in the JFMCA article. As a rule of thumb, at least 1/3 of the article must be significantly different than the previous article. Articles that have been published in or are being considered by other archival journals should not be submitted to JFMCA.

Presentations from annual meetings and related workshops can also be submitted for publication in JFMCA, assuming the presentation was recast into the proper format for an article. The original presentation venue should be acknowledged (e.g., presented as a at the FMCA annual meeting or certain professional workshop).  All such submissions will undergo the normal editorial and peer review processes.

Plagiarism and self-plagiarism (reuse of your own material without permission and/or without using proper citation procedures) of copyrighted material owned by someone else is illegal. In practical terms this means that you cannot cut/copy and paste material from one of your articles and reuse it in a new JFMCA article unless the original source is cited, copyright permission is obtained, and text is treated as a quotation. Also, you can not copy whole texts or paragraphs from A.I. and searching engine softwares, such as ChatGPT. Even if copyright permission is not an issue, plagiarism and self-plagiarism are violations of JFMCA standards. If the original source is a JFMCA article and you are preparing a new JFMCA article, do not cut and paste any of the text, including the literature review, to save yourself time – condense the old material, add new material and rewrite it. Only parts that are absolutely necessary, such as a table or figure, should be reused, and then the original source must be clearly identified.

JFMCA is published by the FMCA and the LibraryPress@UF, and expects authors to follow the FMCA Code of Ethics. Failure to meet any of the JFMCA/FMCA standards is likely to result in rejection of the manuscript. Authors who fail to meet the standards involving copyright, plagiarism and self- plagiarism will have their manuscripts rejected and may be barred from submitting future articles to JFMCA.

Finally, the JFMCA Publications Committee and Editorial Team advise authors to follow additional ethic codes of the Committee of Publication Ethics (COPE) at https://publicationethics.org

Copyright to Your Publication
As described in the Author Agreement, author(s) retain copyright to their publications in JFMCA. The Florida Mosquito Control Association (FMCA) retains the ownership and copyright of the journal. As an open access journal, we disseminate all content under a Creative Commons Attribution - Non Commercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0 license). By publishing in JFMCA, authors agree that the terms of this license will be applied to the submission.

JFMCA adopted a CC BY-NC 4.0 license to publish all articles beginning with Volume 68, No. 1. Authors of all articles published prior to the official adoption of the license retain copyright to their work, granting the Journal of the Florida Mosquito Control Association right of first publication.

Self-Archiving Policy
JFMCA permits and encourages authors to post items submitted to the journal on personal websites or institutional repositories both prior to and after publication, while providing bibliographic details that credit, if applicable, its publication in this journal.

Preservation Policy
Content published in JFMCA will be preserved by the George A. Smathers Libraries at the University of Florida. The Libraries are committed to long-term digital preservation of all materials in UF-supported collaborative projects. Redundant digital archives, adherence to proven standards, and rigorous quality control methods protect digital objects. The UF Digital Collections provide a comprehensive approach to digital preservation, including technical supports, reference services for both online and offline archived files, and support services by providing training and consultation for digitization standards for long-term digital preservation.

Content will be preserved indefinitely, unless a specific request for removal of a specific item is directed to the journal managers. If you believe that your copyrighted material has been deposited into this journal without consent, please contact the administrators of JFMCA.

Content is also preserved in the PKP Preservation Network (PKP PN) and CLOCKSS.

Plagiarism Statement
JFMCA does not accept articles containing material plagiarized from other publications or authors.

For the purposes of this policy, plagiarism is defined as copying of or reliance on work — including text, images and data — by others or yourself without proper attribution. Please be aware that you can plagiarize yourself; you must provide proper attribution in all cases where your previously published material or previously used data or images are included in your manuscript.

Plagiarism detected prior to publication will cause rejection of your manuscript. Plagiarism detected after publication will cause the published article to be amended to state that it contains plagiarized material; in extreme cases of plagiarism, the publication will be removed at the Editors’ discretion, and the reason for removal stated on the journal's website.

JFMCA does not consider the following situations to be plagiarism when proper attribution is made:

  • Translations into English of a previously published paper not in English;
  • Publication of all or part of a revised thesis or dissertation;
  • Publication of a paper previously made public as a conference presentation, white paper, technical report, or preprint.

The Journal of the Florida Mosquito Control Association follows workflows developed by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) to deal with cases of plagiarism.

Use of Third-Party Copyrighted Materials
When submitting your manuscript, please be mindful of copyright laws in the United States and (if outside the U.S.) your home country. JFMCA respects the intellectual property of scholars, students, and publishers, and we ask that you secure appropriate permissions or evaluate whether your incorporation of images, figures, charts, quotations, and other materials falls within the scope of fair use/fair dealing.

If you are incorporating published materials that you have previously authored, be aware that in many cases your publisher may now own the copyright and you may need to seek permission to reprint your own work.

The George A. Smathers Libraries at the University of Florida provides resources on copyright and fair use, with an emphasis on U.S. Copyright Law: https://guides.uflib.ufl.edu/copyright. 

Correction, Retraction, and Removal of Articles
Correction. Despite the best of efforts, errors occur and their timely and effective remedy are considered the mark of responsible authors and editors. JFMCA will publish a correction if the scholarly record is seriously affected (e.g., if accuracy/intended meaning, scientific reproducibility, author reputation, or journal reputation is judged to be compromised). Corrections that do not affect the contribution in a material way or significantly alter the reader's understanding of the contribution, such as misspellings or grammatical errors, will not be published. When a correction is published, it will link to and from the work. The correction will be added to the original work so that readers will receive the original work and the correction. All corrections will be as concise as possible.
Retraction. JFMCA reserves the right to retract items, with a retraction defined as a public disavowal, not an erasure or removal. Retractions will occur if the editors and editorial board finds that the main conclusion of the work is undermined or if subsequent information about the work comes to light of which the authors or the editors were not aware at the time of publication. Infringements of professional ethical codes, such as multiple submission, inaccurate claims of authorship, plagiarism, fraudulent use of data will also result in retraction of the work.
Removal. Some circumstances may necessitate removal of a work from JFMCA. This will occur when the article is judged by the editors and editorial board to be defamatory, if it infringes on legal rights, or if there is a reasonable expectation that it will be subject to a court order. The bibliographic information about the work will be retained online, but the work will no longer be available through the journal. A note will be added to indicate that the item was removed for legal reasons.

Data-Sharing Policy
Authors of research papers submitted for publication in JFMCA are encouraged to make the data underlying their articles available online whenever possible. For the purposes of this policy, the term "data" is understood broadly and refers to both quantitative and qualitative research outputs, spanning observations and analysis of social settings (producing numbers, texts, images, multimedia or other content) to numbers attained through instrumental and other raw data gathering efforts, quantitative analysis, text mining, or citation analysis, as well as protocols, methods, and code used to generate any specific finding reported in the paper. The JFMCA editorial board prefers that the data be submitted as supplemental files accompanying the article, or be archived in a secure repository that provides a persistent identifier, assures long-term access, and provides sufficient documentation and metadata to support re-use by other investigators.

Acceptable solutions include institutional repositories; repositories specifically focused on data curation, or domain specific repositories. If there is no relevant public repository available, and the data cannot easily be included in a supplement, authors should describe how the data are being curated and made available or, in the case where they cannot be made available (e.g., IRB restrictions), why that is so. In any case, a citation to the dataset should be made in the article itself in accordance with the data citation principles of the FORCE11 "Joint Declaration of Data Citation Principles", including an ORCID for the researcher(s) associated with the data. Finally, we recommend that whenever possible authors explicitly define the terms of re-use by assigning a license to their data, choosing, for instance, among Creative Commons or Open Data Commons licenses.

This data policy does not require data publication and citation at this time due to still-emergent standards for data peer review; the lack of sufficiently robust and distributed infrastructure to support the variety of disciplinary research occurring in our field; uncertainty whether JFMCA should provide a third mode of data publication in the form of “data papers” or “data descriptors”; and insufficient preparation and notification to JFMCA contributors to ensure datasets are properly curated with the aim of publication. Authors unable to share their data must provide written explanation of this circumstance in their cover letter at the time of submission.

Copyright Notice
By submitting to JFMCA, the author(s) agree to the terms of the Author Agreement. All authors retain copyrights associated with their article contributions and agree to make such contributions available under a CC BY-NC4.0 license upon publication.

By granting this license, I acknowledge that I have read and agreed to the terms of this agreement.