Ornis Fennica

Instructions for authors

These summary instructions may be used for initial submission. Full instructions need to be adhered to if your manuscript is accepted or is nearing publication (minor or moderate revision).

Manuscripts should be submitted to the Editor-in-Chief by e-mail: , or alternatively, through Peerage of Science (www.peerageofscience.org). The manuscript should be written in English, with – if possible – a Finnish or Swedish summary (expected from Nordic authors). Use 1.5 or double spacing between lines. A blank line should be used to separate headings, sections and paragraphs from the text that follows. Use page and line numbering (per page) if available in your word processor. Ordinary Research articles and Reviews have a maximum of 10,000 words and Brief reports at most 4,000 words for the whole manuscript including references, tables and figure captions. The paper should follow the following format:

Cover page: title, authors and addresses. Do not capitalise and include a running title of maximally 80 characters including spaces. Always use the full first name, initial(s) of other name(s) and surname, indicating which author is responsible for correspondence. Postal address should be given separately for each author, e-mail address only for the corresponding author.

Abstract: should be on a separate page, consisting of one paragraph of up to 250 words. Articles submitted as Brief reports do not require an abstract.

Headings of chapters: Introduction, Material and Methods, Results, Discussion should be numbered decimally starting with 1. Abstract, References and Acknowledgements are not numbered. Sub-chapters headings must also be numbered.

References: ampersand (&) should be used instead of ‘and’ to separate authors and use et al. if more than two authors. In the text, when referring to more than one publication, arrange by year of publication (ascending) and alphabetical order for the same year. In the list of references, journal names are not italicised and written in full. Each reference must be separated from the next one with one blank line. Click here for a full list of referencing styles.

Tables and figures: place tables on separate pages after References or embedded in the appropriate places in the text. Figures should be placed at the end of the manuscript, with the figure legends all on the same page immediately before the figures themselves. In the text refer to each table as Table and each figure as Fig., followed by their number.

Nomenclature: use English and scientific names as presented in Dickinson, E. C. (ed.) 2003: The Howard and Moore Complete Checklist of the Birds of the World: Third Edition. — Princeton University Press. 1056 pp.

Ornis Fennica is a quarterly, international journal for the publication of research on birds. Ornis Fennica publishes analytical and experimental papers on the ecology, behaviour, biogeography and conservation of birds. The geographical emphasis of Ornis Fennica is on Fennoscandia, but papers from other regions will also be considered.

There are no page charges for publication in Ornis Fennica. Ornis Fennica is an open-access journal. All published articles (from 1924 onwards) are freely available from the journal website.

Authors submitting a manuscript do so on the understanding that the work has not been published before, is not being considered for publication elsewhere, and has been read and approved by all authors. Only manuscripts prepared on a computer will be considered. After submission, the editor will decide whether the manuscript fits the scope of the journal and whether it sufficiently adheres to the journal’s format and language requirements (described below). After this, approved manuscripts will be reviewed by at least two peer reviewers.

Submit your manuscript to the Editor-in-Chief or, alternatively, through Peerage of Science (www.peerageofscience.org).

Andreas Lindén
Centre for Ecological and Evolutionary Synthesis (CEES)
Department of Biosciences
University of Oslo
P.O. Box 1066 Blindern
NO-0316 OSLO
Norway

E-mail:

To speed up the reviewing process, electronic submission via e-mail is preferred. Alternatively, three copies of the complete manuscript can be sent by regular mail. Submitted material will normally not be returned.

The manuscript should be written in English (consistent usage of either UK or US spelling), with – if possible – a Finnish or Swedish summary. The text of a manuscript should be typed without special style settings (unindented, no boldface, capitalization, multiple spaces or other unusual formatting). Use 1.5 or double spacing between lines. A blank line should be used to separate headings, sections and paragraphs from the text that follows. Ordinary Research articles and Reviews have a maximum of 10,000 words and Brief reports at most 4,000 words for the whole manuscript including references, tables and figure captions.

Numbering: Number all pages, starting with the title page (page one). Use line numbering (per page), if available in your word processor.

Italics: Use italics only for scientific names of species (e.g., Parus ater), words that are originally not English (e.g., in vitro, et al.), and Roman mathematical symbols (do not italicise Greek letters).

Species names: Use capital initial letters for each word in species names of birds. Using species names in English is encouraged, but on first mention of a species in the abstract and in the text, always indicate the scientific name, e.g., Coal Tit (Parus ater).

Title: Capitalize only the words that are capitalized elsewhere in the text. Give, apart from the full title, also a running title of maximally 80 characters including spaces.

Author: Always full first name, followed by initial(s) of other name(s), if any, and surname (e.g., James T. Brown). Indicate clearly which author is responsible for the correspondence relating to the manuscript.

Address: Postal address should be given separately for each author, e-mail address only for the corresponding author.

Abstract: should be on a separate page, consisting of one paragraph of up to 250 words. It should be informative (summarising) rather than indicative (listing). All relevant key words should be included in the title and the abstract, and should not be given as a separate list. Articles submitted as Brief reports do not require an abstract.

Headings of chapters: Introduction, Material and methods, Results, Discussion and other main headings are numbered decimally starting with 1. (Abstract, References and Acknowledgements, are not numbered). Sub-chapters headings must be numbered e.g., 1.1., 1.1.1. and so on, depending on how many levels of sub-chapters you have in your article.

Referring to literature in the text (examples): Mihok et al. (1985) or (Mihok et al. 1985). Kurtén and Anderson (1980) or (Kurtén & Anderson 1980). (Kurtén & Anderson 1980, Mihok et al. 1985).

When referring to more than one publication, arrange them using the following keys: 1. year of publication (ascending), 2. alphabetical order for the same year of publication.

Referring to tables and figures in the text: Tables are referred to as ‘Table’ and figures as ‘Fig.’, followed by their number.

Lists: Begin each item with a single hyphen-dash ‘-’ in the beginning of the line followed by one space. Each item always occupies a separate line e.g.: – first item, – second item.

Equations: Each equation occupies a separate line. Indicate its number on the right-hand side e.g.:

N = 0.3W ln(a + b)

(1)

In the text, equations are referred to as ‘Eq.’. For complicated equations, only Microsoft Word’s or MathType’s Equation Editor can be used.

References: Begin with the heading ‘References’; they must have the same format as the text. Journal names are written in full. Each reference must be separated from the next one with one blank line.

Ordinary journal article:

Järvinen, O. & Väisänen, R.A. 1978: Long-term changes of the most abundant south Finnish forest birds during the past 50 years. — Journal of Ornithology 119: 441–449.

Book:

Kurtén, B. & Anderson, E. 1980: Pleistocene mammals of North America. — Columbia Univ. Press, New York.

Clutton-Brock, T.H. (ed.) 1988: Reproductive Success. — University of Chicago Press, Chicago.

Chapter in a publication:

Burnham, K.P. 1993: A theory for the combined analysis of ring recovery and recapture data. — In Marked individuals in the study of bird populations (ed. Lebreton, J.-D. & North, P.M): 199–213. Birkh user, Basel.

Non-English publications: Use Latin symbols for the author’s name. Use translated title only if given in the original publication. State within parentheses the original language and indicate presence of an English summary:

Okulewicz, J. 1989: Breeding biology and ecology of the Reed Bunting (Emberiza schoeniclus) in the region of Milicz fish pond area. — Ptaki Slaska 7: 1–39. (In Polish with English summary)

Glutz von Blotzheim, U.N. & Bauer, K.M. 1997: Handbuch der Vogel Mitteleuropas, vol. 14. — AULA Verlag, Wiesbaden. (In German)

Article in press may be included in the references list, with ‘(in press)’ instead of the year of publication.

Material in preparation or unpublished cannot be included in the reference list, and can only be referred to in the text using all authors’ initial(s) and name(s) followed by ‘in prep.’, ‘unpubl.’ or ‘pers. comm.’.

Figure captions: should concisely describe the content of the figures. All captions should be gathered, separately from the figures. Captions should be clearly numbered and separated by a blank line.

Tables: should have self-explanatory headings. At initial submission Tables should be placed on separate pages after References, or embedded in the appropriate places in the text along with a self-explanatory heading. Tables must fit an A4 page (upright) and are exclusively made using tab stops (one tab stop per column) in the same word-processing program as the other text. Click here DOC for more info about tab stops. Never use multiple spaces or spaces and tabs while formatting tables. Do not use vertical lines as dividers, only horizontally dashed lines (-----) are allowed.

Figures and drawings: can be inserted in the end of the document at initial submission, each on a separate page. Every figure must be identified with the name of the first author and the number of the figure. Plan your figures and drawings to suit the journal’s standard widths 69, 107 or 142 mm. Relate the font size, the thickness of lines, and the size of other parts of a figure, to the size of the figure itself in order to make sure that figure is intelligible. Explain all graphic symbols within the figure in the caption. Identify parts of a composite figure with letters, not numbers. Do not use fine rasters for filling of columns or areas. Only solid (white and/or black) or line-type fillings should be used. Avoid fancy design (e.g., 3-D). Figures produced using a computer program should be PDF files with all fonts included. Scanned figures should be bitmap files in the file formats TIFF or JPG, resolution at least 1,000 dpi.

Photographs: are printed in black-and-white, but can be in colour in the PDF offprints. You can send paper copies on glossy paper or slides in regular mail. However, scanned photographs are preferred – they should have the resolution 300 dpi (grayscale or RGB) and be adjusted to the standard widths 69, 107 or 142 mm. Digital camera pictures should be sent as JPG files in colour, file size preferably 2–4 megabytes.

Formulate with sufficient detail your statistical model. Make sure that it makes biological sense, i.e., parameters to be estimated provide quantitative and straightforward answers to the questions of interest. If not obvious, justify your choice of model. Distinguish model parameters (to be estimated), random effects (to be integrated out; mixed models) and variables (data).

Describe the scale of the variables (e.g., continuous, discrete, ordinal, categorical), and their role in the analysis (e.g., response/dependent, or explanatory/independent). Describe the study design, such as replication, and make sure sample size is reported.

Always report the biologically relevant effect sizes. Complement point estimates with estimates of uncertainty, such as standard errors. Confidence/credibility intervals are encouraged for parameters of interest.

In frequentistic applications, make sure that any null hypotheses to be tested are biologically feasible. Do not report ‘naked p-values’ without associated effect sizes. Do not imply lack of effect from a non-significant null hypothesis test, but appreciate the possibility for lack of power.

Explain how the model was fitted (e.g., least squares, ML, REML, MCMC), and give reference to the software used.

Avoid unnecessary problems of multiple testing and overfitting. Include in your models only the most relevant and biologically justified explanatory variables, interactions, polynomial terms, etc. In applications where extensive multiple testing is done for clearly exploratory purposes, consider using corrections for significance levels, such as Bonferroni or false discovery rate.

In model selection, acknowledge the risk for biased statistical significances in cases where a large number of intitial variables are refined to a 'reduced model' (e.g., stepwise procedures). Consider consulting only a small number of a priori defined biologically sensible models, rather than all possible subsets of explanatory variables.

All manuscripts within the scope of the journal are reviewed by at least two reviewers. Authors will generally be notified of provisional acceptance or rejection within three months. The Author(s) should consider all suggestions proposed by the referees and the Editor, and make appropriate changes. Major changes presuppose a new review process. At final submission all tables, figures, drawings and photographs must be separate files. The Editor retains the right to modify the style and length of a manuscript; for major changes the Author(s) will be consulted.

The correspondence author will receive a pageproof for approval. Extensive alterations are not allowed at this stage. The journal provides a free electronic offprint in PDF format.


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