The American Ornithological Society (AOS) journals, Ornithology and Ornithological Applications, are pleased to announce two new article types: Insights and Monographs.
Insights are invited, short papers (15 pages maximum, inclusive of all content except figures, figure captions, and tables) framed around a high-quality photo, video, audio, computer animation, or illustration of a bird, behavior, species interaction, habitat feature, or other facet of avian biology that represents a natural history discovery likely to inspire new ornithological research. Simple descriptions of new natural history findings, e.g., the first nest of a species or a range extension, are not suitable. The primary graphic or audio must have a caption that gives locality and date information and a concise, non-scientific description of the observation being discussed in the paper; the primary media and caption also serve as the graphical abstract. Submissions must (1) describe how and where the observation was made; (2) the importance of the discovery to our understanding of avian natural history; (3) place the observation in a broader, biological context; and (4) pose novel, broadly applicable hypotheses that can be tested in future research. Authors are encouraged to include a table and/or figure to support the proposed hypotheses.
Monographs are invited papers (60 pages maximum, inclusive of all content except figures, figure captions, and tables) documenting complex studies that cannot be presented effectively in a standard-length Research Article. Large datasets or long-term studies alone do not warrant consideration of a manuscript as a Monograph.
Prospective authors must send a pre-submission inquiry to aospubs@americanornithology.org that identifies the target journal and describes the article’s objectives. For Insights, provide the central media file(s) via attachment or file-sharing link; for Monographs, also justify the article length based on the research question or topic.
Please see our Instructions for Authors for detailed submission instructions.