Avian Research

Aims and Scope

Avian Researchis an open access, peer-reviewed journal publishing high quality research and review articles on all aspects of ornithology from all over the world. It aims to report the latest and most signi ficant progress in ornithology and to encourage exchange of ideas among international ornithologists. As an Open Access journal,Avian Researchprovides a unique opportunity to publish high quality contents that will be internationally accessible to any reader at no cost.

The journal is jointly sponsored by Beijing Forestry University and the China Ornithological Society.

Open access

All articles published byAvian Researchare made freely and permanently accessible online immediately upon publication, without subscription charges or registration barriers.

Authors of articles published inAvian Researchare the copyright holders of their articles, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited.

Article-processing charges

The publication costs forAvian Researchare covered by Beijing Forestry University, so authors do not need to pay an article-processing charge.

Coverage and indexing

Avian Researchis now covered and indexed by:

· Science Citation Index Expanded

· Scopus

· Current Content - Agriculture, Biology & Environmental Sciences

· Zoological Record

· BIOSIS Previews

Portability of peer review

In order to support efficient and thorough peer review,we aim to reduce the number of times a manuscript is re-reviewed after rejection fromAvian Research, thereby speeding up the publication process and reducing the burden on peer reviewers. Therefore, please note that, if a manuscript is not accepted for publication inAvian Researchand the authors choose to submit a revised version to another BMC journal, we will pass the reviews on to the other journal's editors at the authors' request. We will reveal the reviewers' names to the handling editor for editorial purposes unless reviewers let us know when they return their report that they do not wish us to share their report with another BMC journal.

Editorial policies

Any manuscript, or substantial parts of it, submitted to the journal must not be under consideration by any other journal. In general, the manuscript should not have already been published in any journal or other citable form, although it may have been deposited on a preprint server.Authors are required to ensure that no material submitted as part of a manuscript infringes existing copyrights, or the rights of a third party.

Plagiarism detection

Avian Research's publisher, BMC, part of Springer business,is a member of the CrossCheck plagiarism detection initiative. In cases of suspected plagiarism CrossCheck is available to the editors ofAvian Researchto detect instances of overlapping and similar text in submitted manuscripts by using the plagiarism detection tool iThenticate. Cross-Check is a multi-publisher initiative allowing screening of published and submitted content for originality.

Citing articles in Avian Research

Articles inAvian Researchshould be cited in the same way as articles in a traditional journal. Articles do not have page numbers for citation purposes; instead, they are given a unique article number.

Article citations follow this format:

Authors: Title. Avian Research [year], [volume number]:[article number].

e.g. Alström et al.: Integrative taxonomy of the Plainbacked Thrush (Zoothera mollissima) complex (Aves, Turdidae) reveals cryptic species, including a new species. Avian Research 2016, 7:1.

For details of how to prepare and submit a manuscript through the online submission system, please see the instructions for authors at http://avianres.biomedcentral.com/submission-guidelines.