Manuscript should be submitted electronically, using Editorial System: https://www.editorialsystem.com/ao/. The condition of manuscript submission is that it has not been published before or has not been submitted at the same time to any other journal, and the manuscript itself and its submission to Acta Ornithologica has been approved by all co-authors.
Manuscripts are reviewed, although the editor reserves the right to reject MS without review.
There are no page charges in the journal.
All parts of the manuscript should be prepared in one file (Word, pdf). Please save your manuscript in
an older file type (.doc not .docx), in pdf files line numbers are mandatory. If the size of the whole MS exceeds 10 MB, all figures could be send separately. Together with the MS, the names of three potential reviewers with their e-mails should be provided.
In general, the format of the submitted manuscript is not particularly important, but authors are encourage to use instructions listed below. Figures and Tables could be also modeled on those in recent issues of the journal.
1. Manuscript format. The manuscript should be written in English, with 1.5 or double spacing between lines. A blank line should be used to separate headings and sections from the text that follows. Use line number (per page) when the file will be submitted in pdf format. Headings should not be centred, nor should they end with a full stop. The English names of bird species should begin with capital letters. Their Latin names should also be given with the first usage in the text. The Latin names of genera and species should be in italics but not in parentheses, higher taxa in normal font. Words at the end of lines should not be divided.
2. The title page should be arranged in the sequence: 1) title, 2) author(s) full given name(s) and family name(s), 3) author(s) address(es), 4) abstract, 5) key words, 6) suggested running title. Editor should be informed about all changes in auhor(s) addresses.
In the postal address, the institutional affiliation of the author(s) and the name(s) of the country(ies) should be in English. An e-mail address is recommended.
3. The abstract should not repeat information from the title. It should be a brief statement of the methods applied and the main results, rather than a list of the paper's contents. It should be complete in itself without reference to other parts of the paper.
4. The text should be concise and formulated in short sentences. It should not repeat data presented in tables and illustrations. The results of the work, and the way in which they were obtained, should be described in the past tense. Avoid “empty” phrases, like “it should be noted that...”, “it is interesting that...”, “Fig. 1 shows…” etc. Do not use long sentences in parentheses.
5. Dates and numbers: dates should include the month as a word or abbreviation, and the year(s) in full. The components of dates and other numerical expressions should be separated by spaces: e.g. 3–5 May 1999, 1990–1999, 3 p/10 ha, pp. 3–10, 10 km, x = 7 + 0.1, p > 0.05. Decimal points, not commas, should be used in numerical values.
6. Citations of bibliography should be made with the author and year system. Examples: one author — reported by Taczanowski (1882), (Taczanowski 1882); two authors — according to Dyrcz & Wink (1999), (Dyrcz & Wink 1999); more than two authors — the figures given by Dyrcz et al. (1984), (Dyrcz et al. 1984). Multiple references should be given in chronological order of authors according to the years of their first publications cited (Rydzewski 1935, 1979a, 1979b; Czarnecki 1954, 1979). Papers “in press” may be cited and listed in the References section only if they have been formally accepted for print. Personal communications, works in preparation and unpublished data should be cited in the text with the author’s initials (inf. J. Kowalski, J. Kowalski — unpubl. data). M.Sc. and Ph.D. theses may be cited in the References section. Tables and figures should be cited in the text with Arabic numerals (Table 3, Tables 1 and 3, Fig. 3).
7. Tables and figures. The same data should not be presented in both tables and illustrations, nor should either of this repeat information given in the text. Captions and headings should be as short as possible, without footnotes.
Figures itself and legends within larger figures should not be framed. Comments and information concerning methods or statistics should be in the body of the text, not in figure captions or table headings.
Tables should be prepared without vertical lines, using specific “Table” function in the Word program. If figures are scanned, they must be of an appropriate quality, i.e. drawings should display contrasts, the lettering and other details must be large enough to remain legible after reduction in printing. Illustrations in colour, for which a charge is made, require the Editor's individual consent.
The author is obliged to supply copyright permission for tables or illustrations published elsewhere if they are to be reproduced in the same or similar form.
8. References cited in the text should be listed in alphabetical order according to the patterns below. Titles of journals should be abbreviated as in the World List of Scientific Periodicals, or full names should be used.
Journals: Dyrcz A., Tomiałojć L. 1974. Application of the mapping method in the marshland habitats. Acta Ornithol. 14: 348–353.
Books: Cramp S., Simmons K. E. K. (eds). 1983. The Birds of the Western Palearctic. Vol. II. Oxford Univ. Press.
Chapters: Pinowski J., Zając R. 1990. Damages to crops caused by birds in Central Europe. In: Pinowski J., Summers-Smith J. D. (eds). Granivorous birds in the agricultural landscape. PWN, Warszawa, pp. 333–347.
Titles of works originally published in languages other than English, French or German (e.g. Polish, Russian, Spanish) should be given only in the English translation [in square brackets]. The author is responsible for the accuracy of the references cited.
9. The proof will be sent as a pdf file by e-mail, to the corresponding author. It should be returned to the Editor as soon as possible by e-mail.
10. Copyright. Acceptance of the typescript for publication means that the right to publish the whole paper or any substantial part of it is transferred to the Publisher. This applies to all media.
11. Reprints. There are no reprints available, instead the pdf file with the final version of the article will be send to first or corresponding author.
