Scientific Journal of the BirdLife Hungary

A Magyar Madártani és Természetvédelmi Egyesület tudományos folyóirata

Instruction for authors

- General
- Types of papers published in the journal
- Manuscript format
- Manuscript submission and reviewing
- Proofs
- Electronic publications of the accepted papers



General

All papers submitted are considered for publication with the understanding that they have not been published, submitted or accepted for publication elsewhere. In the case of multiple authors, the approval of all authors is required to submit the manuscript. Please, send in the duly completed and signed information form appended to the manuscript.

Types of papers

The journal publishes as original scientific articles, those theoretical, or empirical studies presented in detail, which are structured in the usual manner. In the case of empirical studies it gives preference to hypothesis-testing research articles. Bilingual abstracts are required for the submittal of articles. (In the case of authors, whose mother tongue is not Hungarian, the translations will be prepared by the editors.)
Short communications are articles, which are not more than5 printed pages in length, (about 2000-3000 words, plus a maximum of 2 tables, or figures) These provide an opportunity to present, for example, interest commanding observations, new methods, or equipment. A bilingual abstract is required for the submittal of an article. Review papers summarize existing knowledge within specific fields of ornithological research. A bilingual abstract is required.

Manuscript format

The electronic version of the manuscript should be either in file formats produced by commonly used word processors (e.g. RTF, DOC), or in PDF file format. Please, specify the type and version number of the word processor. Manuscript should follow the rules of British spelling.

The format of the manuscript should be in accordance with articles recently published in the journal (find a sample article here). The preferred text structure of research articles: title page, abstract (both in English and in Hungarian), main text (introduction, material and methods, results, discussion, acknowledgements, bibliography), tables, figure legends, figures.

The title page should display the title of the paper, the name of the authors, their affiliations, postal and email addresses, and the name of the corresponding author, (in the case of multiple authors, if it’s not identical with the primary author.)

The abstract should not exceed 200 words. It should give a brief and easy to understand summary of the research by presenting information on the aims of the study, its methods, main results and conclusions. Papers published in English must have a second summary appended to them in Hungarian, which in the case of foreign authors will be prepared by the editorial staff. Please, provide the key words of the study (5 expressions at the most) after the abstract, in English and in Hungarian Please, choose key words, which don’t appear in the title of the study.

The text of the manuscript should be structured into sections (introduction, material and methods, results, discussion, acknowledgement, bibliography, tables, figure legends, figures). The sections, and possible sub-sections - with the exception of the title, the abstract, acknowledgement and bibliography - should be numbered using Arabic numbers (e.g. 1., 2., 2.1., 2.2. etc.). Pages should also be numbered.

Use SI units in the course of measurements, equations and calculations. Standard statistical terms and abbreviations should be used to indicate the results of statistical analyses. Use italics for statistical notations (e.g. t-test, t = , Z = , X2 , n = , df = , SD = , SE = , P< etc).

In the paper the names of bird species should appear in English, according to the language of the manuscript. English names of species should be capitalized in the text (e.g. House Sparrow). Latin names (in italics) should be provided at the first mention of the bird species (e.g. House Sparrow Passer domesticus) in the text. In tables with extensive list of species provide only the Latin names. In case of Latin names, do not name the author and date of first description.

References in the text may be cited in two ways: either as Hale (1980), or as (Hale1980). Multiple references should be listed in a chronologically order and within that an alphabetical one (Keve & Schmidt 1974, Schmidt 1974a, Schmidt 1974b, Aradi 1983). Separate the references with commas, as in the example, don’t place any punctuation marks between the author’s name and the year of publication. References with more than two authors should be cited, by using “et al.” after the name of the first author (e.g. Smith et al. 2002). Only those writings should be included in the bibliography, to which an actual reference is made in the text. The bibliography should follow an alphabetic order and within that a chronological one. If there are references to writings by the same author, both single author and multiple author articles, and if in the articles with multiple authors he is the primary author, then the single author papers will precede the multiple author papers. Examples for the style of citations currently used in Ornis Hungarica:

Article:
Ferns, P. N. 1992. Thermoregulatory behavior of Rock Doves roosting in the Negev Desert. – Journal of Field Ornithology 63: 57—65.
Book:
Harrison, C. 1980. A field guide to the nest, eggs and nestlings of British and European birds. – Collins, London.
Book chapter:
Walsberg, G. E. 1985. Physiological consequences of microhabitat selection. Pp. 389-413. In: Cody, M. L. (ed.). Habitat selection in birds. – Academic Press, Orlando, FL.

In case of non-periodical type publications, for example in a compilation volume, conference material, possibly a passage from a book a “Pp.” marking is required before the page numbers. In the case of references, always refer to the year of publication, not, for example, the year in which the conference took place.

The acknowledgement section in the article should be concise, and placed at the end of the article.

Tables, figure legends, and figures should be appended to the article. Displaying the same result in both table and figure formats is redundant. The journal can only publish extensive tables and photos, and especially colour photos and drawings on its home page as supplements.

Both the tables and the figures should be prepared in a way, that they are interpretable by themselves, and should contain a legend to all numbers and markings within them.

The numbering of tables should be displayed using Arabic numbers, in the order, which they are referred to in the text. The legends of tables should be displayed above the tables. Each and every table should be placed on a separate page. The tables should be designed, so in print, they will have the width of one, or two text columns (the width of a text column is approximately 6.5 cm).

Figures (graphs, photos, maps etc.), similarly to the tables should be numbered using Arabic numbers, in the order, which they are referred to. The legends of figures shouldn’t be placed above the figures, rather on a separate sheet, displayed under each other in a continuous flow, after “Figures, Legends”. The size of markings on the figures should be determined, so they will not be smaller than 2 mm in a printed form. Each figure should be on a separate page. Exceptions are the figures consisting of several segments, all the segments of these should be edited onto a single sheet (for example: “Fig. 1a & Fig 1b” types, generally graphs placed under each other). The tables should be designed, so in print, they will have the width of one, or two text columns. While preparing the figures, please strive to design them according to these dimensions even in the original, submitted version, since in this way quality deterioration due to resizing is avoidable.

In the electronic version of the manuscripts (1), all tables and figures may be placed at the end of the file containing the text (meaning, that a single file should contain the entire manuscript), or (2) the figures and tables may be attached to the text of the manuscript in separate files. In the case of the latter, for example, a Word file contains the text (title, abstracts, introduction, material and method, results, discussion, acknowledgement, bibliography, figure legends), while each of the specific tables and figures are in separate Excel files. (Electronically stored images may be submitted in JPG, or TIF formats).

Manuscript submission and reviewing

Manuscripts may be submitted to the editor-in-chief (csorgo@elte.hu). The manuscripts will be evaluated by two independent referees whose opinions will be sent to the authors. Based on professional opinions and format requirements the editor-in-chief makes the decision, regarding the manuscript’s acceptance, rejection, or revision according to arisen suggestions. We request, that manuscripts recommended for revision be returned to us as soon as possible. If the author returns the article recommended for revision after more than three months, the editorial office will consider it as resubmitted, and will send it to two referees for evaluation again. The decision of the editor-in-chief is final.

Proofs

The editorial office will send the proofs to the authors in e-mail, which the authors are required to proof-read, and return as soon as possible (within a week). Authors are not allowed to make substantial changes to the proof, insert additional text, or delete existing ones. The proof-reading is restricted to the correction of divergences between the manuscript and the proof (errors).

Electronic publication

In the interest of improving publication speed and the accessibility of the articles, we publish articles appearing in Ornis Hungarica in an electronic form as well. The accepted articles will be displayed as PDF files on the journal’s webpage after the final editing of the corrected proof, preceding the print of the next volume. All articles are open access and free of any page charges.