GENERAL INFORMATION

The POLISH JOURNAL OF ECOLOGY accepts only articles written in English. The responsibility for the correct language of the text lies entirely with the Author. Submission of a manuscript implies that the paper has not been published before and is not being considered for publication elsewhere. A cover letter verifying these points must accompany the manuscript. Approximately three months following manuscript submission the Author will receive comments and remarks of anonymous reviewers and editors. At that time, authors will also be informed of the Editor’s decision concerning publication of the manuscript. If publication is recommended the Author will receive specific instructions for correcting and improving the manuscript. The revised manuscript should be returned to the Editor within three months of the time of receipt.

The proof will be sent directly to the corresponding author who is responsible for detecting all errors. No changes in text content and illustrations are allowed at this stage. However, the Editor can make himself the corrections of the figures if they are not suitable for reproducing process. Authors receive their article in pdf format soon after printing. The printed reprints will be not available. Copyright permission must be obtained for any table, diagram or illustration already published elsewhere and aimed to be reproduced in the Author’s article in exactly the same or slightly modified form.

COST OF PUBLICATION

The cost of one printed page is currently equal to 60 PLN. The authors will be informed on the exact cost at the stage of proofs. The article will be published after receipt of the corrected proofs and payment. The authors who wish to include the colour photos, plates etc. are supposed to cover the extra cost of publication.

The payment should be made on the account of Museum and Institute of Zoology, Polish Academy of Sciences in:

Bank Gospodarstwa Krajowego, IBAN: PL 88 1130 1017 0020 1465 5520 0013 , SWIFT: GOSKPLPW

INSTRUCTIONS FOR MANUSCRIPT PREPARATION

Authors should send a manuscript by e-mail to the Editor: (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.).  Research papers, including illustrations and references etc., should not exceed 30 pages. Special papers should not exceed 50 pages. Research notes  should be limited to 8 normalized pages.  Text and tables should be edited in Word for Windows (7.0 or higher) and the font Times New Roman 12 points is preferred. For reviewing process the figures and their captions should be also prepared in Word and sent together with the text and tables in one Word file.

Research papers should be arranged according to the following manner:

- Author name(s) and surname(s)

- Institution(s) and the postal address, as well as e-mail address of corresponding author

- Title of the paper − should be an accurate indicator of the contents of the paper and should stimulate interest in the reader. Titles composed of two parts (separated by a colon) are acceptable; part 1 indicating a general problem, process or method and part 2 specifying a topic of the paper.

- Abstract − should be informative and concise, up to 250 words. For most papers it functions as the summary. One or two sentences should describe the general context of the research and indicate the aim and main hypothesis. Two sentences should describe methods, study area etc., and the final sentences should present the main results and conclusions referring to the hypothesis. It is desirable to include selected data. Long, purely descriptive sentences should be omitted.

- Key words − no more than 5−7 characterising the paper as to the problem, environment and object considered.

- Running page headline − should be suggested by Author (no more than 50 characters).

- Introduction − should present the general ecological context of the research, main hypotheses and the aim of the studies should be presented and related to  the existing literature. Cited literature should include beside the classic papers also the most recent papers. Introductions based only on old (1960’s and 70’s) and/or local literature will not be accepted.

- Study area − geographical names of localities (for instance to indicate the study sites) should be omitted. Names of regions, mountains, lakes and districts should be given together with their geographical coordinates. Copies of topographical maps are not acceptable. Maps should be professionally drawn and should contain only these geographical names that are cited in the text and are necessary to understand the paper. A country outline with the study area marked with a point is desirable.

- Material and methods − all indices, coefficients, etc., used to describe the material should be fully explained here, including also symbols, components, units, etc. Statistical procedures adopted in the paper should be explained. Units should follow the International System of Units (SI).

- Tables and figures − should be set out on separate sheets with titles and numbered by Arabic numerals. The number of tables and figures should be limited to the minimum. Figures should not contain data already given in tables. The illustrations in total should not exceed 40% of the total paper length. Tables should contain no more than 5 columns and 8 lines and not exceed one typed page. The width of figures (base) should be adjusted to 7 cm (one column wide) or 14.5 cm ( double column wide); with other dimensions adjusted  accordingly. Thickness of lines at least – 0.3 mm, coordinates – 0.2 mm, descriptions (numerals, letters, symbols etc.) at least – 10 points and preferably written in Arial. Please remember that the captions in tables and figures should be self-explanatory. In other words, the reader should not have to read the manuscript text in order to understand the figure content!

- Results − should be described according to appearance of tables and figures in the text. Please indicate in the manuscript margin the place to insert the relevant table or figure. Reported data should include no more significant digits than the precision of the used methods warrants! Species names are to be typed in italics. Author’s name of species must be given at the first citing of the species.

- Discussion and Conclusions − could be presented in one section or separate sections. The discussion of the results and conclusions should be arranged in the context of the aims of the study and the hypotheses presented in the Introduction. Additionally, the results of the study may be discussed in the context of recent knowledge presented in the literature. Clear statements indicating new ideas, data, methods etc. that resulted from the Author’s research are highly desirable!

• References− should be listed in alphabetic order. Titles of papers written in Latin alphabet should be given in their original version. Papers in Cyrillic alphabet should be translated into Latin according to international rules (ISO Recommendations). The titles of papers or books written originally in languages other than English, French or German (e.g. Polish, Russian, Spanish) should be translated into English and given in square brackets (see No. 6 below). Titles of journals should be abbreviated according to the Word List of Scientific Periodicals.

References should be presented in following form:

1. Salonen K., Jokinen S. 1988 – Flagellate grazing on bacteria in a small dystrophic lake –Hydrobiologia, 161: 203–209.
2. Ulrich W. 2007 – Body weight distributions of central European Coleoptera – Eur. J. Entomol. 104: 769–776.
3. Sun R.Y., Zheng S.W., Cui R.X. 1982 – [Home range of the root vole Microtus oeconomus] – Acta Theriol. Sin. 2: 219–232 (in Chinese, English summary).
4. Harris G.P. 1986 − Phytoplankton Ecology. Structure, function and fluctuations − Chapman and Hall, London, New York, 384 pp.
5. Rigler F.H. 1972 − The Char Project. A study of energy flow in a high arctic lake (In: Productivity problems of freshwaters, Eds: Z. Kajak, A.Hillbricht-Ilkowska) − PWN, Warszawa-Kraków, pp. 287−300.

6. Ejsmont-Karabin J., Karabin A. 1986 −  [Parameters and indices useful in controlling zooplankton changes in lakes undergoing eutrophication] (In: [Monitoring of lake ecosystems] Ed: A. Hillbricht-Ilkowska) − Ossolineum, Wrocław-Warszawa, pp. 23−45 (in Polish, English summary).

 Items 1, 2 and 3 refer to journals, items 4, 5 and 6 to books. References should not contain unpublished papers (which should be cited in the text only as: A.M. Davis − unpublished). If the paper is in press then the Authors surname should be followed by: title of paper − title of journal – volume – (in press). Papers of the same author published in the same year should be distinguished by adding the suffixes a, b etc. to the year, e.g. Lusk S. 1968a, Lusk S. 1968b. All references should be quoted in the text as: Golley (1961) or (Golley 1961). Where are two authors, the names should be bind by and (Ejsmont-Karabin and Karabin 1986) and as more than two authors are referred to: Grodziński et al. (1978). When citing more than one paper − a chronological order should be observed.

Research notes  should have title, author name and address, a short abstract (composed as above) and the main text with tables and/or figures as well as references.  They can be typed without division into sections, but they should follow the logical sequence described above.

After all corrections required by reviewers and editors authors are obliged to prepare the final version of their text, tables and references in Word for Windows (7.0.or higher) and figures as Adobe Illustrator eps or tiff/jpg bitmaps (resolution 300-600 DPI).