Manuscript should be submitted online at: http://system.miiz.waw.pl/ao. The submission is considered on the condition that the manuscript 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 the manuscript without external review. Acta Ornithologica uses a policy of double blind reviewing, which means that the identity of the authors and the reviewers is kept confidential.
There are no page charges in the journal.
All parts of the manuscript should preferably be submitted as a single file.Accepted file formats are: DOC (preferred), DOCX and RTF. During submission the names of three potential reviewers with their e-mail addresses should be provided.
The authors are encouraged to submit the manuscript prepared following the journal guidelines, however, this is not a prerequisite for the submission.
Guidelines for manuscript presentation
1. The manuscript should be written in English, with 1.5 or double spacing between lines without line numbering. No right justification, no paragraph indents, no underlining or any highlighting (e.g. bold, different-sized font) should be used. A blank line should be used to separate headings and sections from the text that follows. Headings should not be centered, nor should they end with a full stop. The English names of bird species should begin with capital letters. Their Latin names should 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. Title page should be arranged in the sequence: 1) title, 2) abstract (up to 250 words), 3) key words (up to 8), 4) suggested short title (up to 45 characters).
3. Abstract should not repeat information from the title. It should be a brief statement of applied methods and main results. It should be complete in itself without reference to other parts of the paper.
4. The text should be concise. It should not repeat data presented in tables and figures. 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 should be made using 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 (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 figures, nor should either of them repeat information given in the text. Captions and headings should be as short as possible, without footnotes. Taxa listed in tables should be identified by Latin names only. Tables should be prepared without vertical lines,using specific “Table” function in the Word program. 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. Each table (with its heading) should be presented on a separate page, and all figure captions should be presented together on a separate page. Figures should be of high quality, preferably as high resolution tiffs. 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. 2. 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]. References written in a non-Latin script (e.g. Cyrillic) should be transcribed according to the international rules (ISO). 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 or fax.
10. Copyright. Acceptance of the manuscript 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. Open Access. Acta Ornithologica offers the possibility of publishing the paper as Open Access. For more information contact Editorial Office at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
12. Reprints. There are no reprints available, instead the pdf file with the final version of the article will be sent to the corresponding author.
