Submissions

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Submission Preparation Checklist

As part of the submission process, authors are required to check off their submission's compliance with all of the following items, and submissions may be returned to authors that do not adhere to these guidelines.
  • The submission has not been previously published, nor is it before another journal for consideration (or an explanation has been provided in Comments to the Editor).
  • The submission file is in Microsoft Word, OpenOffice, or RTF document file format.
  • The text is single-spaced and the lines are numbered .
  • Illustrations, figures, and tables are placed within the text at the appropriate positions, rather than at the end. Figures do not need to uploaded separately at initial submission (but will if the contribution is accepted for publication).
  • Tables must be made with the word processor's table tool or in Excel, and cannot be entered directly in the manuscript with tabs or spaces separating columns.
  • The text adheres to the stylistic and bibliographic requirements outlined in the Author Guidelines.
  • Where available, DOIs for the references have been provided (or alternative URLs if no DOI is available).

Author Guidelines

Contributions should be written in accordance with recent issues of the journal. The title should be short (preferably less than 125 characters), informative and contain words that are useful for indexing and information retrieval. The text may be written in English or Swedish and the paper should end with an extensive summary in the other language (editorial assistance can be provided in this matter). Table and Figure legends should be in both languages. 3–7 keywords that do not occur in the title must be submitted.

Types of contributions

Research Papers

These accounts of primary research should start with an Abstract in English, preferably not exceeding 175 words, and no longer than 200 words. The text should be divided by no more than three levels of subheadings. The following primary subheadings are recommended: Introduction, (Study areas,) Materials and methods, Results, Discussion, Acknowledgements, and References.

Review Articles

Review Articles syntehsizing published research follow the same specifications as Research Papers.

Brief communications

Short contributions should not exceed 2,000 words, typically include no more than two Figures/Tables, and should aim for less than 30 references. Brief communications should start with an Abstract in English, preferably not exceeding 125 words. Subheadings, if present, should be restricted to one level.  

Taxonomy and Nomenclature

Ornis Svecica refers to the current version of the IOC World Bird List for taxonomy and English and scientific nomenclature, while Swedish names should follow BirdLife Sweden's current list. If relevant, refer to version names of those lists. Deviations from those lists can be made, but should be explained and clearly indicated.

References

In-text citations should be given using name and year, and if there is more than one reference to the same author(s) and year, also letters (a, b, and so on). Please note that the in-text citations should be ordered according to ascending publication year (not alphabetically according to the author name) and separated by comma. In the reference list, journal names should be written without abbreviation. For references that have a DOI, this must be provided as a link format, as https://doi.org/<DOI>. If you need help to find DOIs, you can paste your reference list in CrossRef's free tool, and it will match the individual references with DOI links.

Citations in the text

  • Birds fly (Bond 1913a, 1913b, Andersson 1985), sometimes above the clouds (Carlsson & Dennis 1956) and sometimes not (Eriksson et al. 1989, Ottvall et al. 2008)
  • Bond (1913a, 1913b) and Andersson (1985) discovered that birds fly. While Carlsson & Dennis (1956) argue that they fly above the clouds, Eriksson et al. (1989) and Ottvall et al. (2008) suggest they sometimes do not.

Authors need not italicize et al. in the manuscript, as this is done during typesetting.

In the reference list

  • Andersson B. 1985. Populationsförändringar hos tranan Grus grus under 100 år. Vår Fågelvärld 50: 211–221. 
  • Bond AP. 1913a. A new theory on competitive exclusion. Journal of Evolutionary Biology 67: 12–16. https://doi.org/1016/j.ecolind.2019.01.083
  • Bond AP. 1913b. Breeding biology of the Pied Flycatcher. Pp 123–156 in Ecology and Adaptions in Birds (French J, ed). Whinchat Publishers, Nairobi.
  • Carlsson T & Dennis WA. 1956Blåmesens liv. Tower University Press, Trosa.
  • French J (ed). 1913. Ecology and Adaptions in Birds. Whinchat Publishers, Nairobi.
  • Ottvall R, Green M, Lindström Å, Svensson S, Esseen P-A & Marklund L. 2008. Ortolansparvens Emberiza hortulana förekomst och habitatval i Sverige. [Distribution and habitat choice of the Ortolan Bunting Emberiza hortulana in Sweden]. Ornis Svecica 18: 3–16. https://doi.org/10.34080/os.v18.19596
  • Partridge, L. 1974. Behavioural aspects of the ecology of some Paridae. PhD thesis, University of Oxford.

Please adhere to the citation style in terms of names, initials, puctuation, order of elements, and how volumes, issues, and pages are written. Additional formatting (bold/italics) is not necessary, as it will be applied in the production stage. If the main language of a paper is in another language than English, but there is an English summary and title, state the main title followed by the alternative English title within square brackets.

Style and writing

Please refer to recently published papers, and contact the Managing Editor should you have specific questions. Tables and figure are referred to without abbreviations in the text: (Figure 1a).

Names

Follow the taxonomy and nomenclature according to above. English species names are written with initial capitalization of each word, whereas Swedish species names are never capitalized (should they not consitute the first word of a sentence). Scientific genus, species, and subspecies names are italicized and follow common names without parentheses. The scientific names should be spelled out directly following the common names in the title; in each figure, table, and caption; in the first instance in the abstract; and in the first instance in the main text and in the summary in the alternative language. The genus and species epithet should be spelled out in full, but if additional species are listed in the same section, the following species should have the genus abbreviated. If subspecies are stated, the species name should be abbreviated if followed by the nominate subspecies. Names of family, order, or other taxonomic levels higher than genus, are not italicized and should be enclosed within parentheses if following the common name of the group. 

Example: "We studied Great Reed Warblers Acrocephalus arundinaceus, Sedge Warblers A. schoenobaenus, Willow Warblers Phylloscopus trochilus, and the southern and northern subspecies of Common Chiffchaff, Ph. c. collybita and Ph. c. abietinus, in central Sweden, as well as their interactions with finches (Fringillidae)."

Supporting material and data availability

Supplementary material (text, tables, and figures) can be submitted as appendices to the main manuscript, and will be published together with the paper, if accepted. We strongly urge authors to make primary data available to the community. This can be done, at no charge, at Zenodo, where the dataset(s) are provided DOIs and can be cited in the manuscript. 

Manuscript preparation

Your manuscript should be submitted as a Word, OpenOffice, or RTF file. Include line numbers, and insert figures and tables together with their captions at appropriate places in the manuscript (i.e. do not place these last). If your contribution is accepted, you may be asked to submit figure files separately, as well as the underlying data for charts.

Free submission and publishing

Ornis Svecica charges no submission fee, and charges no publishing (article processing) fee for accepted contributions. The journal constitutes an option for authors who have no means to pay any publishing charges, and is and will remain free.

Short Communications

Short Communications should aim not to exceed 2,000 words, include no more than two Figures/Tables, and should aim for 30 refereces or less. Abstracts should be around 125 words or shorter. Please note that these are guidelines, and that there may be justifications for deviating from these. Get in touch with the managing editor if you have any questions.

Errata and corrigenda

Contact the managing editor to discuss the submission, should you discover error(s) in your published work.

Forum

Forum is our section for opinion and debate contributions.

Essays

This section is for classification of previously published texts. If you are interested in contributing an essay (as opposed to a research or opinion paper), please first contact the managing editor at os@birdlife.se.

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