Policy on prior publication
When authors submit manuscripts to this journal, these manuscripts should not be under consideration, accepted for publication or in press within a different journal, book or similar entity, unless explicit permission or agreement has been sought from all entities involved. However, deposition of a preprint on the author’s personal website, in an institutional repository, or in a preprint archive shall not be viewed as prior or duplicate publication. Authors should follow the Cambridge University Press Preprint Policy regarding preprint archives and maintaining the version of record.
Conventions
Whenever possible, authors should consult an issue of BCI for style and layout. Spelling generally follows The shorter Oxford English dictionary, supplemented by various standard references such as 'Topography' in A dictionary of birds (1985) and the most recent edition of The Times atlas of the world.
Localities with well-known other spellings or older names should have these placed in parentheses after first mention,while localities too small to be in the Times atlas should be given their precise geographical co-ordinates (preferably with some evidence of source).
Authors are encouraged to follow BirdLife International’s taxonomy (the latest Checklist can be downloaded here) and to provide explanations of any deviation, if they choose not to. On first mention of a bird both English and scientific name should be given, thereafter only one, preferably the English. Scientific trinomials need be used only if sub specific nomenclature is relevant to the topic under discussion. These recommendations also apply for any other animal or plant species mentioned.
Where reference is made to the IUCN Red List, the latest categories and criteria should be used (or with dates as appropriate; these can be accessed/checked at http://www.iucnredlist.org/).
If a conservation intervention was tested, provide a least a sentence summarizing the evidence related to the intervention in the introduction. If there is no previously published evidence, please state that. A good place to check for existing evidence relating to conservation interventions is the database found at Conservation Evidence.
Metric units and their international symbols should be used (other systems of measurement can be added in parentheses), with temperatures in the Centigrade (Celsius) scale. Numbers one to nine are written in full except when linked with a measurement abbreviation or higher number, thus 'five birds' but '5 km' and '5-12 birds'; numerals are used for all numbers above ten, four-figure numbers and above using the comma thus: '1,234', '12,345'. Details of experimental technique, extensive tabulations of results, etc., are best presented as appendices.Dates should be written 1 January 1985, times of day as 08h30, 17h55 (24- hour clock), etc. When citing a conversation ('verbally') or letter ('in litt,'), the contact's name and initials should be included preferably with the year of communication.
Abstract
The abstract should be no more than 300 words long and should not include figures, citations or references.
Keywords
A list of at least three keywords should be provided for publication in the journal. These should accurately and concisely reflect the content of the paper and relevant scientific names not given in the title should be included here.
Figures
Figures should be numbered consecutively as they appear in the text with an appropriate reference such as ‘(Figure 1)’. The position of each figure should be indicated in the margin. The numbered figures and their captions should be placed on separate pages at the end of the manuscript or as separate files. Wherever possible they will be reproduced with the author's original lettering. Maps are best marked with a scale and north arrow, and drawn very neatly, ensuring that text and symbols are large enough to be legible if the figure is reduced in size (as is often necessary). Good photographs are also considered.
Tables
Tables should also be numbered consecutively as they appear in the text with an appropriate reference such as ‘(Table 1)’. The position of each table should be indicated in the margin. The numbered tables with concise headings should be typed on separate pages at the end of the manuscript.
References
References in the text should not use ampersand or comma before the date, and should be chronologically listed, alphabetically if in the same year. Publications by the same authors in the same year may be distinguished by a, b, etc., after the date. Full references must be listed alphabetically at the end in conformity with the existing system of presentation (which should be carefully checked before submission).
Proofs
The corresponding author will receive by e-mail, page proofs for checking which they are required to return within three days of receipt. Textual changes in proof cannot normally be countenanced and the publisher reserves the right to charge authors for excessive correction on non-typographical errors.
Offprints
No paper offprints will be supplied to the author but he/she will receive by email a pdf copy of their published paper.
Colour Charge
There is no charge for publishing figures in colour in the online version of the journal. However, authors who choose to have figures in their article printed will need to pay a fee for colour printing. This fee is set at £200 per colour image (which is capped at £1000). If you request colour figures in the printed version, you will be contacted by CCC-Rightslink who are acting on our behalf to collect Author Charges. Please follow their instructions in order to avoid any delay in the publication of your article.
Acknowledgements
You may acknowledge individuals or organisations that provided advice, support (non-financial). Formal financial support and funding should be listed in the following section.
Financial support
Please provide details of the sources of financial support for all authors, including grant numbers. For example, "This work was supported by the Medical research Council (grant number XXXXXXX)". Multiple grant numbers should be separated by a comma and space, and where research was funded by more than one agency the different agencies should be separated by a semi-colon, with "and" before the final funder. Grants held by different authors should be identified as belonging to individual authors by the authors’ initials. For example, "This work was supported by the Wellcome Trust (A.B., grant numbers XXXX, YYYY), (C.D., grant number ZZZZ); the Natural Environment Research Council (E.F., grant number FFFF); and the National Institutes of Health (A.B., grant number GGGG), (E.F., grant number HHHH)". Where no specific funding has been provided for research, please provide the following statement: "This research received no specific grant from any funding agency, commercial or not-for-profit sectors."
English language editing services
Authors, particularly those whose first language is not English, may wish to have their English-language manuscripts checked by a native speaker before submission. This step is optional, but may help to ensure that the academic content of the paper is fully understood by the Editor and any reviewers.
In order to help prospective authors to prepare for submission and to reach their publication goals, Cambridge University Press offers a range of high-quality manuscript preparation services – including language editing – delivered in partnership with American Journal Experts. You can find out more on our Language Services page.
Please note that the use of any of these services is voluntary, and at the author's own expense. Use of these services does not guarantee that the manuscript will be accepted for publication, nor does it restrict the author to submitting to a Cambridge-published journal.
Competing Interests
All authors must include a competing interest declaration in their main manuscript file. This declaration will be subject to editorial review and may be published in the article.
Competing interests are situations that could be perceived to exert an undue influence on the content or publication of an author’s work. They may include, but are not limited to, financial, professional, contractual or personal relationships or situations.
If the manuscript has multiple authors, the author submitting must include competing interest declarations relevant to all contributing authors.
Example wording for a declaration is as follows: “Competing interests: Author 1 is employed at organisation A, Author 2 is on the Board of company B and is a member of organisation C. Author 3 has received grants from company D.” If no competing interests exist, the declaration should state “Competing interests: The author(s) declare none”.
Ethical standards
Where research involves human and/or animal experimentation, the following statements should be included (as applicable): "The authors assert that all procedures contributing to this work comply with the ethical standards of the relevant national and institutional committees on human experimentation and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2008." and "The authors assert that all procedures contributing to this work comply with the ethical standards of the relevant national and institutional guides on the care and use of laboratory animals."
Open Access Publication in Bird Conservation International
Cambridge Open Option allows authors the option to make their articles freely available to everyone, immediately on publication. This service reflects Cambridge Core’s commitment to further the dissemination of published academic information.
The programme allows authors to make their article freely available in exchange for a one-off charge paid either by the authors themselves or by their associated funding body. This fee covers the costs associated with the publication process frompeer review, through copyediting and typesetting, up to and including the hosting of the definitive version of the published article online. Payment of this one-off fee entitles permanent archiving both by Cambridge University Press and by the author; however, it also enables anyone else to view, search and download an article for personal and non-commercial use. The only condition for this is that the author and original source are properly acknowledged.
The Cambridge Open Option is only offered to authors upon acceptance of an article for publication and as such has no influence on the peer review or acceptance procedure. The paper will continue to be made available in both print and online versions, but will be made freely available to anyone with Internet links via our online platform, Cambridge Core. In addition, such papers will have copyright assigned under a Creative Commons Attribution licence, which enables sharing and adaptation, providing attribution is given. All articles will continue to be handled in the normal manner with peer-review, professional production and online distribution in Cambridge Core. Articles will also be included in the relevant Abstracting& Indexing services and in CrossRef, and can have supplementary content (text, video or audio) added to their online versions. Cambridge Core will also deposit the article in any relevant repositories on the author’s behalf, where that is a condition of the funding body.
For more information on Open Access and Cambridge Core, please follow this link.
Supplementary materials
Material that is not essential to understanding or supporting a manuscript, but which may nonetheless be relevant or interesting to readers, may be submitted as supplementary material. Supplementary material will be published online alongside your article, but will not be published in the pages of the journal. Types of supplementary material may include, but are not limited to, appendices, additional tables or figures, datasets, videos, and sound files.
Supplementary materials will not be typeset or copyedited, so should be supplied exactly as they are to appear online. Please see our general guidance on supplementary materials for further information.
Where relevant we encourage authors to publish additional qualitative or quantitative research outputs in an appropriate repository, and cite these in manuscripts.
Authorship and contributorship
All authors listed on any papers submitted to this journal must be in agreement that the authors listed would all be considered authors according to disciplinary norms, and that no authors who would reasonably be considered an author have been excluded. For further details on this journal’s authorship policy, please see this journal's publishing ethics policies.
Author affiliations
Author affiliations should represent the institution(s) at which the research presented was conducted and/or supported and/or approved. For non-research content, any affiliations should represent the institution(s) with which each author is currently affiliated.
For more information, please see our author affiliation policy and author affiliation FAQs.
ORCID
We require all corresponding authors to identify themselves using ORCID when submitting a manuscript to this journal. ORCID provides a unique identifier for researchers and, through integration with key research workflows such as manuscript submission and grant applications, provides the following benefits:
- Discoverability: ORCID increases the discoverability of your publications, by enabling smarter publisher systems and by helping readers to reliably find work that you have authored.
- Convenience: As more organisations use ORCID, providing your iD or using it to register for services will automatically link activities to your ORCID record, and will enable you to share this information with other systems and platforms you use, saving you re-keying information multiple times.
- Keeping track: Your ORCID record is a neat place to store and (if you choose) share validated information about your research activities and affiliations.
See our ORCID FAQs for more information.
If you don’t already have an iD, you will need to create one if you decide to submit a manuscript to this journal. You can register for one directly from your user account on ScholarOne, or alternatively via https://ORCID.org/register.
If you already have an iD, please use this when submitting your manuscript, either by linking it to your ScholarOne account, or by supplying it during submission using the "Associate your existing ORCID iD" button.
ORCIDs can also be used if authors wish to communicate to readers up-to-date information about how they wish to be addressed or referred to (for example, they wish to include pronouns, additional titles, honorifics, name variations, etc.) alongside their published articles. We encourage authors to make use of the ORCID profile’s “Published Name” field for this purpose. This is entirely optional for authors who wish to communicate such information in connection with their article. Please note that this method is not currently recommended for author name changes: see Cambridge’s author name change policy if you want to change your name on an already published article. See our ORCID FAQs for more information.
Use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools
We acknowledge the increasing use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools in the research and writing processes. To ensure transparency, we expect any such use to be declared and described fully to readers, and to comply with our plagiarism policy and best practices regarding citation and acknowledgements. We do not consider artificial intelligence (AI) tools to meet the accountability requirements of authorship, and therefore generative AI tools such as ChatGPT and similar should not be listed as an author on any submitted content.
In particular, any use of an AI tool:
- to generate images within the manuscript should be accompanied by a full description of the process used, and declared clearly in the image caption(s)
- to generate text within the manuscript should be accompanied by a full description of the process used, include appropriate and valid references and citations, and be declared in the manuscript’s Acknowledgements.
- to analyse or extract insights from data or other materials, for example through the use of text and data mining, should be accompanied by a full description of the process used, including details and appropriate citation of any dataset(s) or other material analysed in all relevant and appropriate areas of the manuscript
- must not present ideas, words, data, or other material produced by third parties without appropriate acknowledgement or permission
Descriptions of AI processes used should include at minimum the version of the tool/algorithm used, where it can be accessed, any proprietary information relevant to the use of the tool/algorithm, any modifications of the tool made by the researchers (such as the addition of data to a tool’s public corpus), and the date(s) it was used for the purpose(s) described. Any relevant competing interests or potential bias arising as a consequence of the tool/algorithm’s use should be transparently declared and may be discussed in the article.
Author Hub
You can find guides for many aspects of publishing with Cambridge at Author Hub, our suite of resources for Cambridge authors.