Guide for Authors

Journal of Agricultural Research and Animal Science (JARAS) publishes semiannually and considers original research articles, reviews, short reports or letters, methodological insights, case studies, editorials, hypothesis and analysis and opinion pieces of outstanding scientific significance for the prompt disclosure of fundamental research on all topics covering agricultural and animal sciences.

Following are the instructions to prepare your manuscript comprising style and format, manuscript organization and parts of a manuscript. We recommend authors to follow this ‘guide for authors’ that summarizes the vital steps in preparing a manuscript. Also, take notice of the information about Authors’ Rights, Ethics and Plagiarism found in our policies.

To give your manuscript the best chance of publication in JARAS, follow these formatting guidelines.

Style and Format

Quick points:

• Manuscripts must be submitted in English.
• Manuscript files must be in DOC, DOCX, or RTF formats and should not be locked or protected.
• Use double line spacing and do not format text in multiple columns.
• Include line and page numbering (do not restart the numbering on each page).
• No restrictions on word count, number of figures, or amount of supporting information. We encourage you to present and discuss your findings concisely.
• Use a standard font size and any standard font.
• Use the Insert ? Symbol function in your word processor to add symbols to the manuscript.
• Use SI units: Please ensure that all special characters used are embedded in the text, otherwise they will be lost during conversion to PDF.
• Define abbreviations upon first appearance in the text. Do not use non-standard abbreviations unless they appear at least three times in the text.
• Limit manuscript sections and sub-sections to 3 heading levels. Make sure heading levels are clearly indicated in the manuscript text.
• Dr. Science uses references in “Vancouver” style, as outlined in the ICMJE (APA format).
• Footnotes are not permitted. If your manuscript contains footnotes, move the information into the main text or the reference list, depending on the content.
• Use MathType for display and inline equations. And to insert single variables (e.g., “a² + b² = c²”), Greek or other symbols (e.g., β, Δ, or ′ [prime]), or mathematical operators (e.g., x, ≥, or ±) in running text as normal text with the correct Unicode (hex) values wherever possible.
• Use correct and established nomenclature wherever possible. And scientific names should be italicized.
• Figures must be submitted as separate image files, not as part of the submitted manuscript file.

Please note: Editable files are required for processing the manuscript. If your manuscript contains any non-editable files (such as PDFs) you will be required to re-submit an editable file when you submit your revised manuscript, or after editorial acceptance in case no revision is necessary.

Manuscript Organization

Manuscripts should be organized as follows. Instructions for each element appear below the list.

Beginning section: The following elements are required, in order:

• Title page: List title, authors, and affiliations as first page of manuscript
• Abstract
• Introduction

Middle section: The following elements can be renamed as needed and presented in any order:

• Materials and Methods
• Results
• Discussion
• Conclusions (optional)

Ending section: The following elements are required, in order:

• Acknowledgments
• References
• Supporting information captions (if applicable)

Other elements

• Figure captions are inserted immediately after the first paragraph in which the figure is cited. Figure files are uploaded separately.
• Tables are inserted immediately after the first paragraph in which they are cited.

Supporting information files are uploaded separately.

Parts of a Manuscript

Title page

The title, authors, and affiliations should all be included on a title page as the first page of the manuscript file.

Title

The title should include a full title and a short title for the manuscript. Full title must be within 250 characters and should be specific, descriptive, concise, and comprehensible to readers outside the field.

Example: Impact of cigarette smoke exposure on innate immunity: A Caenorhabditis elegans model

And the short title must be within 100 characters and should state the topic of the study.

Example: Cigarette smoke exposure and innate immunity

Titles should be written in sentence case (only the first word of the text, proper nouns, and genus names are capitalized). Avoid specialist abbreviations if possible. For clinical trials, systematic reviews, or meta-analyses, the subtitle should include the study design.

Author list

Enter author names on the title page of the manuscript in the following order:

• First name (or initials, if used)
• Middle name (or initials, if used)
• Last name (surname, family name)

Each author on the list must have an affiliation that includes department, university, or organizational affiliation and its location, including city, state/province (if applicable), and country. Authors can include a current address in addition to the address of their affiliation at the time of the study. The current address should be listed in the byline and clearly labeled “current address.” At a minimum, the address must include the author’s current institution, city, and country.

Include an email address for each corresponding author listed on the title page of the manuscript.

If a manuscript is submitted on behalf of a consortium or group, include the consortium or group name in the author list, and provide the full list of consortium or group members in the Acknowledgments section.

Cover letter

The length of a cover letter should limit to 1 page including the following information:

• Summarize the study’s contribution to the scientific literature
• Relate the study to previously published work
• Specify the type of article (for example, research article, systematic review, meta-analysis, clinical trial)
• Suggest 3-5 reviewers (name, institution, email, expertise). Criteria: Suggested reviewers should NOT be at your institution, and should have some expertise in your content area/method. You should NOT have substantially worked with the reviewer in the past few years, and in particular, this should not be someone who has already reviewed or otherwise contributed to the manuscript. To the best of your knowledge, reviewers should not have conflicts (financial, personal) which would interfere with their objectivity.

Abstract

The Abstract comes after the title page in the manuscript file. The Abstract should be in 300 words describing the main objective(s) of the study, explaining how the study was done, including any model organisms used, without methodological detail and summarizing the most important results and their significance.

Introduction

The introduction should provide background that puts the manuscript into context and enable readers outside the field to understand the purpose and significance of the study. It should define the problem addressed and why it is important. Include a brief review of the key literature, note any relevant controversies or disagreements in the field and conclude with a brief statement of the overall aim of the work and a comment about whether that aim was achieved.

Materials and Methods

This section should provide enough detail to allow suitably skilled investigators to fully replicate your study. Specific information and/or protocols for new methods should be included in detail. This section should include:

• the aim, design and setting of the study
• the characteristics of participants or description of materials
• a clear description of all processes, interventions and comparisons. Generic names should generally be used. When proprietary brands are used in research, include the brand names in parentheses
• the type of statistical analysis used, including a power calculation if appropriate

If materials, methods, and protocols are well established, authors may cite articles where those protocols are described in detail, but the manuscript should include adequate information to be understood independent of these references. Methods sections describing research using human or animal subjects and/or tissue or field sampling must include required ethics statements as mentioned in our policies. Read our policies.

Results, Discussion, Conclusions

These sections may all be separate, or may be combined to create a mixed Results/Discussion section (commonly labeled “Results and Discussion”) or a mixed Discussion/Conclusions section (commonly labeled “Discussion”). These sections may be further divided into subsections, each with a concise subheading, as appropriate. These sections have no word limit, but the language should be clear and concise. Together, these sections should describe the results of the experiments, the interpretation of these results, and the conclusions that can be drawn. Authors should explain how the results relate to the hypothesis presented as the basis of the study and provide a succinct explanation of the implications of the findings, particularly in relation to previous related studies and potential future directions for research.

Acknowledgments

Those who contributed to the work but do not meet our authorship criteria should be listed in the Acknowledgments with a description of the contribution. Authors are responsible for ensuring that anyone named in the Acknowledgments agrees to be named.

Declarations

All manuscripts must contain the following sections under the heading ‘Declarations’:

• Ethics approval and consent to participate
• Consent for publication
• Availability of data and material
• Competing interests
• Funding
• Authors’ contributions

References

References are listed at the end of the manuscript and numbered in the order that they appear in the text. In the text, cite the reference number in square brackets (e.g., “We used the techniques developed by our colleagues [19] to analyze the data”). Dr. Science uses the numbered citation (citation-sequence) method and first six authors, et al. Do not include citations in abstracts or author summaries. Make sure the parts of the manuscript are in the correct order before ordering the citations. Any and all available works can be cited in the reference list. Acceptable sources include published or accepted manuscripts and manuscripts on preprint servers, providing the manuscript has a citable DOI or arXiv URL. Do not cite the following sources in the reference list:

• Unavailable and unpublished work, including manuscripts that have been submitted but not yet accepted (e.g., “unpublished work,” “data not shown”). Instead, include those data as supplementary material or deposit the data in a publicly available database.

• Personal communications (these should be supported by a letter from the relevant authors but not included in the reference list)

Formatting references: Dr. Science uses the reference style outlined by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), also referred to as the “Vancouver” style. Please see ICMJE sample references for example formats. Journal name abbreviations should be those found in the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) databases.

Supporting Information

Authors can submit essential supporting files and multimedia files along with their manuscripts. All supporting information will be subject to peer review. All file types can be submitted, but files must be smaller than 10 MB in size. Authors may use almost any description as the item name for a supporting information file as long as it contains an “S” and number. For example, “S1 Appendix” and “S2 Appendix,” “S1 Table” and “S2 Table,” and so forth. Supporting information files are published exactly as provided, and are not copyedited. List supporting information captions at the end of the manuscript file. Do not submit captions in a separate file. The file number and name are required in a caption, and we highly recommend including a one-line title as well. You may also include a legend in your caption, but it is not required. Example caption: S1 Text. Title is strongly recommended. Legend is optional. We recommend that you cite supporting information in the manuscript text, but this is not a requirement.

Figures

Do not include figures in the main manuscript file. Each figure must be prepared and submitted as an individual file. Cite figures in ascending numeric order upon first appearance in the manuscript file. Figure captions must be inserted in the text of the manuscript, immediately following the paragraph in which the figure is first cited (read order). Do not include captions as part of the figure files themselves or submit them in a separate document. At a minimum, include the following in your figure captions:

• A figure label with Arabic numerals, and “Figure” abbreviated to “Fig” (e.g. Fig 1, Fig 2, Fig 3, etc). Match the label of your figure with the name of the file uploaded at submission (e.g. a figure citation of “Fig 1” must refer to a figure file named “Fig1.tif”).
• A concise, descriptive title

The caption may also include a legend as needed.

Tables

Cite tables in ascending numeric order upon first appearance in the manuscript file. Place each table in your manuscript file directly after the paragraph in which it is first cited (read order). Do not submit your tables in separate files. Tables require a label (e.g., “Table 1”) and brief descriptive title to be placed above the table. Place legends, footnotes, and other text below the table.

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