About the Journal

About the Journal

Treatise Online was first established in 2010 with the purpose of providing scholars and researchers early access to current sections of upcoming volumes of the Treatise on Invertebrate Paleontology.  There are currently 165 published articles that will become components of the twelve Treatise volumes currently in preparation.

Treatise Online is complemented by the Treatise on Invertebrate Paleontology, an online collection of all 53 previously published volumes of the Treatise on Invertebrate Paleontology, available as downloadable PDF files.

Focus and Scope

Treatise Online provides morphologic, taxonomic, systematic, stratigraphic, and biogeographic information/data on organisms comprising all the “invertebrate” phyla with a significant fossil record, as well as certain unicellular organisms, e.g., “Protoctista”, “Protista”, and Eubacteria/Archaea. 

Submissions

Submissions are invited by the coordinating author of each future volume of the Treatise on Invertebrate Paleontology. 

Policy on Artificial Intelligence

The Treatise of Invertebrate Paleontology, including its publication the Treatise Online, has specific policies when it comes to the use of content created by Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools.

  • The journal will not use Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools to select associate editors or reviewers for submitted articles.
  • Authors must also take responsibility for the accuracy and originality of all material submitted.
  • Articles entirely written by AI tools are not permitted
  • AI tools cannot be listed as authors of papers.
  • If AI tools are used to generate or help generate any part of a manuscript, such as text and figures (note, this does not include software that corrects spelling or grammar), or are used to translate material, etc., they must be described in detail in the Methods section of submitted papers.
  • In addition, the unmodified AI generated content must be shared as supplementary material.

Peer Review

All articles are peer reviewed.  Authors are known to reviewers; peer reviewers can choose whether they wish to remain anonymous or waive anonymity.

Copyright and Open Access

Copyright in the articles in the Treatise Online is held by the authors.  Authors agree to make their articles available under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.  Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The effect of open access and downloads ('hits') on citation impact: a bibliography of studies).

All authors are required to sign the Publication Agreement at the point of acceptance. 

All articles will be made available open access through the Treatise Online site until they are incorporated into volumes that are made available open access on the Treatise on Invertebrate Paleontology site. 

Historical Note:  The Paleontological Institute used to hold the copyrights for all Treatise Online articles published before 2024.   In late 2023, the Institute decided to apply a Creative Commons Attribution license to all Treatise Online articles and in 2024, they returned the copyrights for all previously published volumes to the authors.  The PDFs of these older works still reflect the obsolete copyright information. 

Fees

The journal does not charge fees to publish. 

The Treatise on Invertebrate Paleontology is published by the Paleontological Institute at the University of Kansas, and receives financial support from the Paleontological Society.