General Information: Sylwan publishes original papers, reviews, correspondences and short communications concerning forest research of relevance to forests and forestry of temperate and sub-boreal regions. The journal is published in English. The manuscript should be the intellectual property of the authors, has not been published before and is not under consideration for publication anywhere else, and all authors have approved its publication. The publisher will not be held legally responsible should there be any compensation claims. Sylwan is an Open Access monthly journal, which provides immediate open access to its content under the Creative Commons BY 4.0 license. Authors who publish with this journal retain all copyrights and agree to the terms of the above-mentioned CC BY 4.0 license.

Types of Publications
Sylwan has no restrictions on the length of manuscripts, provided that it is comprehensive and concise. Some papers are rejected or recommended for publication in other, more specialised journals if they are unrelated to journal scope. The maximum length of research papers, including references, tables and figures, is 10,000 words.

• Original paper: should report the results of original research.
• Review: should present a synthesis of recent advances in a particular area of research.
• Correspondence/commentary: should present an important event, critical or alternative point of view or contributing to new information in the discussed field.
• Short communications: short papers that present original and significant research that needs to be published quickly.

Manuscript: should only be sent in electronic form to the address sylwanar@ibles.waw.pl. Materials should be archived (packed) using the free 7-zip archiver or other popular archiving tools (WinZIP, WinRAR, etc.).
Research manuscript should contain:

• Front matter: title, author list, affiliations, abstract, keywords.
• Research manuscript section: introduction, materials and method, results, discussion, conclusions.
• Back matter: extended summary, acknowledgements, author’s contributions, funding source, conflicts of interest, references.
• The names of the suggested 2-4 reviewers.

Once the article is accepted for publication the Author(s) will be requested to provide the manuscript organised according to the guidelines specified below.

Author:
All authors should clearly indicate the given name and family name. The authors’ affiliation addresses (where the actual work was done) should be presented below the names and need to contain the full postal address of each affiliation, including the country name. One author should be clearly indicated as the corresponding author with the e-mail address.

Title:
The title of the manuscript should be concise and informative. The author should avoid abbreviations and formulae, if possible.

Abstract:
All papers, except commentaries, should be preceded by an abstract. It should be 300-400 words long and contain information about the scope and purpose of the work, place of research, methods and used materials, the most important results and main conclusions.

Keywords:
Keywords should consist of 5-7 words in alphabetical order. The keywords should not repeat the title of the paper and avoid words such as “and” or “of”.
Editors return papers that are incorrectly formatted and/or contain incorrectly created and written abstracts and keywords.

Text:
The text should be written in correct English, preferably verified by a native speaker. All pages and lines of the manuscript must be numbered consecutively. Do not use any other text formatting (bold, italic, underline) except for the Latin names of plants, animals, fungi, and bacteria. The preferred recording format is .RTF. It is allowed to save in .DOC or .DOCX format. Latin binomial nomenclature (in italic script) and authority should be given after each common name when it is first mentioned in the main text and in the title, and abstract, and abbreviated at each subsequent mention (e.g. Carabus violaceus - C. violaceus). Units must be presented according to the International System of Units (SI).
Literature should be cited by giving the name of the author and the year of publication of the bibliographic article in brackets, e.g. (Wilczkiewicz, 1992, 2000a, b) or the names of co-authors or the phrase “et al.” – if there are more than two authors or “and” if there are two authors and the year of publication, e.g. (Bing et al., 1981; Kowalski and Nowak, 2000) (in chronological order).

Materials and methods:
They should be described in sufficient detail that others can replicate it. The new methods should be described in detail and the well-known methods can be briefly described and properly cited.
The author should give the name and version of the software used.

Tables and figures:
Tables and figures should be limited to the necessary minimum and excluded from the text of the manuscript. All tables and figures should be numbered using Arabic numerals consecutively with their accordance in the text. Tables can contain a maximum of 7 columns. In justified cases (consultation with the editorial office required) it is possible to compose up to 13 columns. The maximum type area is 12,7 cm width. Figures (charts, drawings and photographs) must be clearly lettered and suitable for reproduction to fit this width (12,7 cm). Only black and white figures will be printed at the expense of the editorial office, while colour figures will be payable by the author. Figures should be saved in JPEG, TIFF, PNG or BMP format. It is advisable to provide graphic materials with a high level of detail (e.g. maps) in “open” i.e. fully editable files, e.g. PSD with separate layers of descriptions and graphics.
Tables with captions and the captions of figures should be placed at the end of the text. Figures should be provided as separate source materials (files) along with an overview material presenting its expected form in the publication; names of the files should contain the names of the figures (e.g. fig_1.jpg). Charts should be included as spreadsheet files in .XLS format that contain both the charts and the data used to create them. Graphs (graphic files) developed in other programs, e.g. statistical programs, should be accompanied by a set of final data (values) saved in .XLS format and used to create them or - at least - as PDF files of sufficient resolution.

Extended summary:
The Polish summary should be a total of 3000 (minimum) to 5000 (maximum) characters, including spaces. It is intended to be accessible for Polish-speaking readers. The summary should present a broader context and the purpose of the study, the results obtained, major interpretations and conclusions. It should contain references to all figures and tables appearing in the main text. Polish-speaking authors are required to submit the extended summary in Polish (including the Polish wording of the article title). Other authors are requested to submit an extended summary in English. It will be translated into Polish at the effort and expense of the editorial office.

References:
At the end of the text, list the literature alphabetically by the authors’, last names, then chronologically if there are two or more items by the same authors. The list of references should not include commonly known items, e.g. textbooks. All publications cited in the text should be included in the references according to the Harvard Referencing System. Each item of literature should contain: Author’s name and the first letter of their name, year of publication, title of the paper, name of the journal, volume (issue number) and page range (from-to), for book publishers an abbreviation of the publisher’s name and place of publication. The names and titles written in Cyrillic should be given in transliteration. Author’s name, the first letter of their name and year of publication should be in bold. For the publications in the languages others than English, the original and English (in brackets) title should be provided, if such a title exists in the publication. Do not translate to English the titles of publications that have a title only in orignal language - in that case provide only the original title of publication. Journal titles should be given in full. For journal article DOI (digital object identifier, if available) should be given.

Examples:

Reference to a journal publication:
Damszel, M., Szmidla, H., Sierota, Z., 2021. Disease prevention instead of fungicides – An emerging reality in forest protection. Sylwan, 165 (11): 796-809. DOI: https://doi.org/10.26202/sylwan.2021081.

Oszako, T., Żółciak, A., Tulik, M., Tkaczyk, M., Stocki, M., Nowakowska, J.A., 2019. Wpływ Bacillus subtilis i Trichoderma asperellum na rozwój sadzonek brzóz zainfekowanych patogenem drobnych korzeni Phytophthora plurivora. (Influence of Bacillus subtilis and Trichoderma asperellum on the development of birch seedlings infected with fine root pathogen Phytophthora plurivora.) Sylwan, 163 (12): 1006-1015. DOI: https://doi.org/10.26202/sylwan.2019106.

Reference to a book:
Berrymann, A.A., 1986. Forest insects. Principles and practice of population management. New York: Plenum Press, 279 pp.

Galewski, W., Korzeniowski, A., 1958. Atlas najważniejszych gatunków drewna. Warszawa: PWRiL, 255 pp.

Reference to a chapter in a book:
Christiansen, E., Bakke, A., 1988. The Spruce Bark Beetle of Eurasia. In: A.A. Berryman, ed. Dynamics of Forest Insect Populations: Patterns, Causes, Implications. New York: Plenum Press, pp.479-503.

Conference proceedings:
Bing, D., Downey, R.K., Rakow, G.F.W., 1981. Potential of gene transfer among oilseed Brassica and their weedy relatives. Proceedings of the GCTRC Eighth International Rapeseed Congress, 9-10 July 1991, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. 1022-1027.

Article in an internet journal:
Sorvari, J., 2021. Distribution of Finnish mound-building Formica ants (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) based on using a citizen science approach. European Journal of Entomology [online], vol. 118, pp. 57-62. Available from https://www.eje.cz/pdfs/eje/2021/01/07.pdf [accessed: 01.03.2021].

Publications, reports from government institutions, organisations, companies (no author):
Department for Education, 2011. The Importance of Music: a National Plan for Music Education [online]. Department for Education. Available from: https://www.education.gov.uk/publications/eOrderingDownload/DFE-00086-2011.pdf [accessed 22.12.2011].

Manuscripts sent to Sylwan are reviewed (see “Manuscript proceeding” section). The author can suggest up to four potential reviewers with appropriate expertise to review the manuscript during the submission process. The editors will not necessarily approach these reviewers. The editorial office reserves the right to make corrections and digests.