Guidelines for Authors

Rivista Italiana di Ornitologia - Research in Ornithology publishes the following article types:

Overview

Manuscripts will be carefully scrutinized for evidence of plagiarism, duplication and data manipulation; in particular, images will be carefully examined for any indication of intentional improper modification.

Any suspected misconduct ends up with a quick rejection and is then reported to the US Office of Research Integrity.

Submission checklist

You can use this list to carry out a final check of your submission before you send it to the journal for review. Please check the relevant section in this Guide for Authors for more details. Ensure that your work is written in correct English before submission.

Ensure that the following items are present:

One author (multiple corresponding authors are not allowed) has been designated as the corresponding author with contact details:

E-mail address
Full postal address

All necessary files have been uploaded:

Manuscript file
Include keywords (no more than seven)
All figures (include relevant captions)
All tables (including titles, description, footnotes)
Ensure all figure and table citations in the text match the files provided

Further considerations

Please prepare your manuscript for the single-blind peer review;
Ensure that all references mentioned in the Reference List are cited in the text, and vice versa
Permission has been obtained for use of copyrighted material from other sources (including the Internet)
A competing interests statement is provided, even if the authors have no competing interests to declare
Journal policies detailed in this guide have been reviewed
Referee suggestions and contact details provided, based on journal requirements
Manuscript has been 'spell-checked' and 'grammar checked'. Ensure that your work is written in correct English before submission. Note that submitted manuscripts will not go through language-focused copyediting with the journal prior to or after acceptance; language-focused copyediting is the responsibility of the authors prior to submission. Professional copyediting can help authors improve the presentation of their work and increase their chances of being taken on by a publisher. In case you feel that your manuscript would benefit from a professional English language copyediting checking language grammar and style, you can find a reliable revision service at:

Submission Procedure

The Corresponding Author (multiple corresponding authors are not allowed) must submit the manuscript online only through our Manuscript Submission System. The Authors' metadata must be duly completed, by adding "contributors" when needed. Metadata are crucial for the indexing of the paper and authors, and for attribution of copyright to ALL authors.

Attention: any submission received for a manuscript with more than one contributor, in which only one author has been inserted in the metadata, will result in immediate rejection, asking for a correct re-submission.

Authors are kindly invited to suggest potential reviewers (names, affiliations and email addresses) for their manuscript.

Declarations

All manuscripts must contain the following sections (compulsory):

Ethics approval and consent to participate
Consent for publication
Availability of data and material
Competing interests
Funding
Authors' contributions
Acknowledgements

Preparing your manuscript

The scientific journal Rivista italiana di Ornitologia – Research in Ornithology was founded in 1911 to publish original research in ornithology. The Editorial Board will not accept papers that do not meet the following guidelines.

All manuscripts must be submitted online at http://sisn.pagepress.org/index.php/rio Contributions must be preferably written in English. Articles and short notes written in Italian must contain an extended summary in English. Authors whose native language is not English are strongly recommended to have their manuscript checked by a language editing service. Manuscripts should be saved and submitted as a single .DOC file containing the full paper, references, tables and figures captions. Tables and figures should be submitted as Supplementary Files. All the illustrations are considered as figures and must be cited into the main text. In case of acceptance, high-resolution images (.tiff or .jpg format) must be provided for publication. The first page of each manuscript should include the names, initials and surnames of the Author(s); their full affiliation and postal address (including e-mail), and the title of the paper.

Scientific names: common names of organisms should always be accompanied, when first cited, by their complete scientific name in italics (genus, species). All papers must conform to the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature (ed. IV, 1999) and subsequent updating (http://iczn.org/code). When first mentioned, a plant or animal should include the full scientific name.

Geographical names: geographical names should follow the Times World Atlases style (http://www.timesatlas.com/Pages/default.aspx).

Footnotes: must be preferably avoided; when used, they should be listed at the end of the text and identified by Arab numerals in superscript.

Tables and Figures

If tables are used, they should be double-spaced on separate pages of the manuscript, not embedded throughout the text. They should be numbered and cited in the text. Tables should be provided as editable Word files, and authors should ensure they are presented in a publication-ready format. Considering how a table fits on a page in a wordprocessing program can often provide insight into how it will appear on a journal page.

Larger or more complex tables will be made available online as supplementary material at the Editorial Office's sole discretion, including ensuring efficient readability of the paper publishing format.

If figures are used, they should be numbered and cited in the text and inserted at the end of the manuscript. Figures should be designed using a well-known software package. Please note that the Production Office will not redraw or re-letter any image.

A different caption for each figure must be provided at the end of the manuscript. Figures with different panels must be grouped into a plate, and panels marked with letters.

In case of acceptance, authors are required to provide the figures as .tiff or .jpg files, with the following digital resolution:

Color (saved as CMYK): 300 dpi - maximum width 18 cm - minimum width 8.5 cm
Black and white/grays: 600 dpi - maximum width 18 cm - minimum width 8.5 cm

References

References must be formatted according to the following styles:

Fowler J. & Cohen L., 2002 - Statistica per ornitologi e naturalisti. Bologna: Muzzio Editore.
Newton I., 2004 - The recent declines of farmland bird populations in Britain: An appraisal of causal factors and conservation actions. Ibis, 146: 579–600.
Lefranc N., 1995 - Decline and current status of the Lesser Grey Shrike (Lanius minor) in Western Europe. In Shrikes (Lanidae) of the world: Biology and conservation. Proc. of the 1st international shrikes symposium. R. Yosef R. & Lohrer F. E. (eds.). Western Foundation of Vertebrate Zoology. (6) (pp. 167–171).
BirdLife International, 2014 - Gypaetus barbatus. The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Version 2014.2. http://www.iucnredlist.org/details/22695174/0 (downloaded on 6th October 2014).

Please list papers by more than two authors, but with the same first author, by year sequence and alphabetically within each year. Citation of authors in the text should appear in the form: (Polaszek, 1996). Authors should be cited in chronological order as: (Blackman et al., 1994; Roberts & Kumar, 1995). Papers by the same author (or combination of authors) that were published in a single year should be distinguished by letters (a, b, c...) and cited accordingly in the text, e.g. Brown (2010a; 2010b; 2010c) or (Brown, 2010a; 2010b; 2010c).

Peer-review policy

All submissions to the Rivista Italiana di Ornitologia - Research in Ornithology are first checked for completeness (criteria for desk reject are available in the Guide for Authors) before being sent to an Editor, who decides whether they are suitable for peer review. If an Editor is on the author list or has a competing interest in a particular manuscript, another member of the Editorial Board will be assigned to oversee peer review. When making a decision, Editors will consider the peer-reviewed reports, but they will not be bound by the opinions or recommendations contained in them. A single peer reviewer's or the Editor's concern may result in the manuscript being rejected. Peer review reports are sent to authors along with the editorial decision on their manuscript.

Please see the About the Journal page for more information.

Authorship and Contributorship

All persons designated as authors should qualify for authorship according to the ICMJE criteria. Each author should have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for the content. Authorship credit should only be based on substantial contributions to each of the following: i) conception and design, or analysis and interpretation of data, to ii) drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content, on iii) final approval of the version to be published, and iv) agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work. Participation solely in the acquisition of funding or the collection of data does not justify authorship. General supervision of the research group is not sufficient for authorship. Authors should provide a brief description of their individual contributions. Those who do not meet all four criteria should not be listed as authors, but they should be acknowledged. Those whose contributions do not justify authorship may be acknowledged individually or together as a group under a single heading. Authors can find detailed information on the Publisher's website.

Artificial Intelligence (AI)-Assisted Technology

Authors must disclose whether they used artificial intelligence (AI)-assisted technologies (such as Large Language Models [LLMs], chatbots, or image creators) in the creation of submitted work. Chatbots (such as ChatGPT) should not be listed as authors because they cannot be held accountable for the work's accuracy, integrity, and originality, all of which are required for authorship. Because AI can generate authoritative-sounding output that is incorrect, incomplete, or biased, authors should carefully review and edit the result. Authors should be able to assert that their paper contains no plagiarism, including text and images generated by AI.

Changes in Authorship

Authors are expected to consider carefully the list and order of authors before submitting their manuscript and provide the definitive list of authors at the time of the original submission. Any addition, deletion or rearrangement of author names in the authorship list should be made only before the manuscript has been accepted and only if approved by the journal Editor: Authors are requested to sign and send to the Editors a statement of agreement for the requested change from all listed authors and the author(s) to be removed or added.
Please note that if your manuscript is accepted you will not be able to make any changes to the authors, or order of authors.

No changes to the Authors or Corresponding Author can be made after publication of the article. Instead, a corrigendum may be considered by the journal editor.

Protection of Human Subjects and Animals in Research

When reporting experiments on human subjects, authors should indicate whether the procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation (institutional and national) and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2013. If doubt exists whether the research was conducted in accordance with the Helsinki Declaration, the authors must explain the rationale for their approach and demonstrate that the institutional review body explicitly approved the doubtful aspects of the study. An Informed Consent statement is always required from patients involved in any experiments. When reporting experiments on animals, authors should indicate whether the institutional and national guide for the care and use of laboratory animals was followed. Further guidance on animal research ethics is available from the World Medical Association (2016 revision). When reporting experiments on ecosystems involving non-native species, Authors are bound to ensure compliance with the institutional and national guide for the preservation of native biodiversity.