BirdingASIA – Guidelines for Contributors

BirdingASIA (ISSN 1744-537X) is a forum for articles on the avifauna of the Oriental region. It seeks to combine features designed to appeal to birders with more classically ornithological papers. 

• Examples of birder-centric topics include articles on identification, enigmatic or globally threatened species, overviews of birdwatching destinations, little-visited birdwatching 'hotspots', species under threat, tales of exciting birding trips and conservation issues, plus photographic essays (‘photospots’). 

• Typical ornithological content includes new country records or other important novel distributional information, new or interesting ecological findings, taxonomic thinking, assessments of conservation status, unusual anecdotal records and short field-based studies. 

• New publications for review, records for 'From the field' and Letters to the Editor are always welcome and will be published as soon as possible after receipt.

Manuscripts submitted are subject to editing and, where appropriate, informal refereeing. The Editor is happy to discuss contributions with authors and advise on preparation. Some basic guidelines are given below:

General
Spellings should follow the Oxford English Dictionary. Moreover, British English, not American, spelling must be used, thus: ‘colour’, not ‘color’; ‘grey’, not ‘gray’; ‘analysed’, not ‘analyzed’ etc. Metric units and their international symbols must be used, dates should be written 1 January 2020, times of day as 08:30, 17:55 (24-hour clock). Numbers one to nine should be written in full, except when used with a measurement abbreviation or higher number, thus: five birds, but 5 km and 5–11 birds. Numerals are used for all numbers greater than nine, written thus: 11; 110; 1,100; and 11,000. Single quotation marks are to be used except when reporting direct speech or quoting directly from the literature (when double quotation marks should be used). Species listed as globally threatened or Near Threatened by IUCN/BirdLife International should be indicated as such at first mention.

Taxonomy and nomenclature
When a bird species is first mentioned, both the English and scientific name (the latter in italics, but not in parentheses) must be given, thereafter the English name only – except in captions or other situations where it makes sense (e.g. an annotated list). Scientific trinomials need be used only if subspecific nomenclature is relevant to the topic under discussion. These recommendations apply also for other animal or plant species mentioned. Taxonomy and nomenclature should generally follow AviList (avilist.org) but deviations from this are permitted so long as this is specified at the start of the manuscript, e.g. “taxonomy and nomenclature follow del Hoyo & Collar (2014, 2016)”. This may be particularly important for articles seeking to challenge current taxonomic thinking.

Submitting
Submissions should be emailed to the Editor (currently James Lowen) at Birding.Asia.magazine@gmail.com. Text, tables, figure captions (which must be self-explanatory), plate captions (which, at a minimum, should contain the species’s vernacular and scientific names, location, date and photographer) and appendices should be combined in a single Word.doc file. Photographic images must be submitted separately, not embedded in the Word file (see below).

Images
BirdingASIA takes pride in publishing high-quality photography. All relevant images submitted will be evaluated and, if appropriate, the editorial team reserves the right to swap images. JPEG files must be 'maximum' quality, i.e., at their minimum compression, and must be submitted uncropped and unprocessed (or lightly processed) wherever possible. Slides must be scanned on a specialist slide scanner. If images are large, please email them with a file-transfer service (e.g. WeTransfer, Dropbox, Google Drive).

Figures (maps, diagrams)
These should be sent as high-resolution files (JPEG, PNG or TIFF). Maps should be marked with a sensible scale (in km) and north arrow.

References
Please see a recent issue for the approach to referencing. In brief, references in the text should follow the form “(Campbell & Lack 1985)” and "Sien Yao-hua et al. (1964) suggest ...". More than one within the same parentheses should be chronologically listed, alphabetically if of the same year. Publications by the same authors in the same year may be distinguished by "a", "b", etc., after the date. Initial capitals are reserved for proper nouns and words at the start of a sentence. Full references must be listed alphabetically at the end in the form:

del Hoyo, J. & Collar, N.J. (2016) HBW and BirdLife International illustrated checklist of the birds of the world. Volume 2: passerines. Barcelona & Cambridge, UK: Lynx Edicions and BirdLife International.

Fischer, W. (1970) Ornithological observations and an attempt to record bird populations at the Mongolian desert lakes Orog and Buncagan. Zool. Abh. Ber. Tierk. Dresden 30: 101–129. [In German.]

Fry, C.H., Fry, K. & Harris, A. (1992) Kingfishers, bee-eaters and rollers. London, UK: Christopher Helm.

Hoogerwerf, A. (1949) Bijdrage tot de oölogie van Java. Limosa 22: 1–279. 

Kirwan, G.M., del Hoyo, J., Woodall, P.F. & Collar, N. (2021) Banded Kingfisher (Lacedo pulchella), version 2.0. In: Kirwan, G.M. & Maleko, P.N. (eds). Birds of the world. Ithaca, NY: Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, NY, USA. Accessed at https://doi.org/10.2173/bow.bankin1.02 on 11/08/2025

Lim, K.S., Yong, D.L., Lim, K.C. & Gardner, D. (2024) A field guide to the birds of Malaysia including Sabah and Sarawak. Oxford, UK: John Beaufoy Publishing. 

Manaa, A., Souttou, K., Sekour, M., Bendjoudi, D., Guezoul, O., Baziz-Neffah, F., Doumandji, S., Stoetzel, E. & Denys, C. (2013) Diet of Black-shouldered Kite Elanus caeruleus in a farmland area near Algiers, Algeria. Ostrich 84: 113–117. 

Parejo, D., Avilés, J.M., Ferrero, J.J., Rivera, D. & Casas, J.M. (2001) Communal roosting and diet of Black-shouldered Kites (Elanus caeruleus) wintering in southwestern Spain. J. Raptor Res. 35: 162–164.

Ramli, R. & Fauzi, A. (2016) Nesting biology of Black-shouldered Kite (Elanus caeruleus) in oil palm landscape in 

Carey Island, Peninsular Malaysia. Saudi J. Bio. Sci. 25: 513–519. 

Rasmussen, P.C. & Anderton, J.C. (2005) Birds of South Asia: the Ripley guide. Washington, DC and Barcelona: Smithsonian Institution and Lynx Edicions.

Yeap, C.A., Sebastien, A.C. & Davison, G.W.H. (eds.) (2007) Directory of Important Bird Areas in Malaysia: key sites for conservation. Kuala Lumpur: Malaysian Nature Society.

Disclaimer
Every effort is made to retain articles in their submitted form, but the BirdingASIA editorial team reserves the right to make necessary changes, occasionally without notifying the author. Authors will receive proofs of their article prior to publication to check for errors. All contributors submitting material to BirdingASIA also give permission for its use on the OBC websites. It is assumed that the above conditions have been understood and accepted.

Contact addresses
The Editor, BirdingASIA: Birding.Asia.magazine@gmail.com