Submission Instructions

Welcome! Thank you for your interest in submitting a resource. This page describes the types of resources we accept and guidelines for submission and peer review.

We invite scientists and science educators to submit teaching resources related to ecology, botany, evolution, and economic botany concepts for use in the classroom, lecture hall, laboratory or informal education experience. Each online submission requires some descriptive information (metadata) to be considered for publication in the library. Resources suitable for middle school through college audiences are accepted. The author guidelines and review criteria below outline the requirements for the different resource types.

How to Submit

To submit a resource, you must first create an account and log in. On the right menu bar in the grey area, click on "Add New Resource".

Please be sure to fill out all metadata fields completely. You can save your submission and edit it later.

Note on the Concepts and Competencies Metadata field

You will be asked if your resource is aligned with the K-12 Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) or the Vision and Change for Undergraduate Biology Education (V&C) core concepts and competencies. Please review carefully before you make your selection as this impacts how users will find your resource. If your resource is clearly intended only for K12 audiences, please do NOT select the V&C items. Similarly, if your resource is appropriate only for undergraduate audiences, please do NOT select the NGSS items. This will ensure that users are not frustrated when looking for resources for specific audiences.

Here is a Guide on Submitting Metadata

Review of Submissions

Resources can be submitted at any time. All submissions are selected for scientific accuracy, instructional value, and visual quality. The metadata provided with each submission are important for educators searching for resources and deciding how to use them effectively in their courses. Therefore, both the resource and its corresponding descriptions are required for a submission to be complete.

Questions? please contact us

When filling out the metadata in the online submission form, submitters select a Primary Resource Type. In general, this indicates how the resource will be reviewed. Review criteria for three general classes of resource types–photographs and illustrations, figures and tables, and learning activities—are linked below. Two anonymous peer reviewers assess each submission prior to publication. This peer review policy applies to all resource types except course syllabi, and photographs and illustrations, which are subject to the approval of one of the editors from a LifeDiscoveryEd Digital Library Society partner.

Please note that resource types and review criteria for the LifeDiscoveryEd Digital Library and Partner Portals are under development. If you have a resource you would like to submit that is not described here, please contact us. Your resource might fit a type we're reviewing on a more selective basis while we refine the criteria.

File Types

Currently LifeDiscoveryEd Digital Library Portals accept the following file types: doc, gif, html, exe, jpeg, mpeg, pdf, ppt, tiff, xls, and zip. Maximum file size is 10MB.

Resource Types

Learning Activities

Photographs and Illustrations

Please note that photographs will only receive Editorial review rather than peer review.

Figures and Tables

Access resources

Once a resource is published in the LifeDiscoveryEd Digital Library, it can be accessed from any of the Partner Society Portals by logging in with a valid user account. A user account to LifeDiscoveryEd Digital Library and all Partner Society Portals is free. The same login can be used for all portals. All resources can be accessed from every portal.

Portals:
LifeDiscoveryEd Digital Library
EcoEd Digital Library
PlantEd Digital Library
EvoEd Digital Library
EconBotEd Digital Library

Citations of LifeDiscoveryEd Digital Library resources

To cite a resource from LifeDiscoveryEd Digital Library, or any of the Partner Society Portals, please use the following format:

Primary Author Last Name, Primary Author Initial. Secondary Author Initial, Secondary Author Last Name. Year. Full Title of Resource. LifeDiscoveryEd Digital Library Portal, URL linking to full record of specific resource.

Example:

Wyatt, K.H., A.R. Rober and P. de Tezanos Pinto. 2010. Using a cascading food-web case study to assess the ecological and economic impacts of management decisions. EcoEd Digital Library, http://ecoed.esa.org/index.php?P=FullRecord&ID=316.

For Peer Reviewers

Guide for New LDDL Reviewers [PDF]

EcoEdDL