Instructions to authors
Scope and policy
The Acta Scientiarum. Agronomy journal publishes original articles in all areas of Agronomy, including soil sciences, agricultural entomology, soil fertility and manuring, soil physics, physiology of cultivated plants, phytopathology, phyto-health, phytotechny, genesis, morphology and soil classification, management and conservation of soil, integrated management of plant pests, vegetal improvement, agricultural microbiology and production and processing of seeds.
Articles will be reviewed by three peers acknowledged for their scientific production and research, from higher institutions in Brazil and abroad. After the necessary corrections and possible suggestions, the paper shall be accepted if two peers give a favorable statement.
Its aims are:
- To publish original articles in thematic areas relevant to Vegetal Production;
- To publish articles that significantly contribute towards the knowledge of Vegetal production, featuring a scientific stance and in-depth knowledge on themes and trends within Vegetal production;
- To reach its target public which mainly consists of undergraduate and postgraduate students and researchers working in universities, research centers and firms both in Brazil and abroad.
- To provide a strict evaluation policy with articles sent for publication; each manuscript is evaluated by three revisers who are carefully selected from the scientific community, especially doctoral supervisors and CNPq's productivity researchers; acceptance of article is the result of the revisers' assessment and of the editors concerned;
- To respect the ethical principles of research which should be explicitly acknowledged in the Materials & Methods section (and approved by the ethics committee in vegetal research) and taking into account the biosecurity norms inherent to this type of research;
- To maintain a high ethical behavior with regard to the review and its collaborators;
- To maintain strict quality in scientific article to be published;
- To select revisers featuring ethical stance and professional respect to authors, impartial in their decisions and imparting constructive and professional criticism;
- To select revisers scientifically acknowledged by colleagues in their area of knowledge, with special preference to CNPq's productivity scholars.
All articles should be written in English, which will be verified by the American Journal Experts (AJE).
OPEN ACCESS POLICY
Acta Scientiarum. Agronomy is published under the Open Access model and is therefore free for anybody to read and download, and to copy and disseminate according to the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 policy.
APCS (ARTICLE PROCESSING CHARGES) AND SUBMISSION CHARGES
Acta Scientiarum. Agronomy is free of any kind of submission/publication fees, thus the authors are not charged to publish with us.
POLICIES AGAINST PLAGIARISM AND BAD CONDUCT IN RESEARCH
In the wake of our tradition in excellence, we would like to inform collaborators on editorial improvements that foreground the integrity of articles published by the Acta Scientiarum. Following guidelines by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) stimulating the identification of the practice of plagiarism, bad practices, frauds, possible violations in Ethics and indicting, we would like to recommend the following:
1. Authors are invited to visit the COPE website http://publicationethics.org for information on authors and editors on Ethics in research;
2. Prior to submission of scientific articles, authors should follow the criteria below:
- articles that contain data acquisition or analysis and interpretation of data from other publications should refer to the latter explicitly and directly;
- articles with a critical review on the intellectual contents of other authors should duly quote the latter authors;
- all authors should attend to the authorship criteria of an unpublished article and no researcher involved in the investigation should be omitted from the list of authors;
- the definite approval of the article is the role of the respective editors and of the editorial board.
3. So that the above criteria could be complied with, the following procedures will be taken:
a) Editors will evaluate manuscripts by CrossCheck system immediately after submission. Contents of the scientific articles will be evaluated to identify any sort of plagiarism, double submissions, already published articles and possible frauds in research;
b) With these results in hand, the editors and the editorial board decide whether the manuscript is sent for the review of peers, who will also make their own evaluations;
c) After acceptance and prior to publication, the article may again be assessed.
Form and preparation of manuscripts
The Acta Scientiarum: Agronomy publishes original articles in all areas of Agronomy.
Sections:
Agricultural Engineering - Irrigation
Engineering
Crop Protection
Soils
Genetics and Plant Breeding
Crop Production
Plant Breeding
Agricultural Engineerig
Agronomy
Soils and Plant Nutrition
Agriculture Microbiology
Crop Physiology
Abstract:
Abstracts in Portuguese and English, up to 200 words, shall contain brief information on the aims of the research, experimental material, methods employed, results and conclusion. Key words, up to six, in Portuguese and English, shall be added at the end of the abstracts and should not include words found in the title.
Standardization:
Figures and Tables should be preferentially 7.65 cm wide, not exceeding 16 cm.
Digitalized Figures should have a 300 dpi resolution and recorded in jpg. Colored illustrations will not be accepted.
The International Measurement System is mandatory.
Equations should be in software compatible to text editor.
Variables should be identified after the equation.
Utilize regression analyze for quantitative factors.
Eighty percent (80%) of the references should have been listed on the database ISI Web of Knowledge, Scopus or SciELO during the last 10 years. Preference to international citations
of articles is recommended. Citations from theses, dissertations, monographs, proceedings, abstracts, expanded summaries, newspapers, magazines, technical bulletins and electronic documents will not be accepted. Author Guidelines
INSTRUCTIONS TO AUTHORS AND STYLESHEET
1. Acta Scientiarum. Agronomy, ISSN 1807-8621 (print) and ISSN 1807-8621 (on-line), is published four times a year by the State University of Maringá, Maringá, Paraná, Brazil.
2. The journal publishes original articles in all areas of Agronomy, including soil sciences, agricultural entomology, soil fertility and manuring, soil physics, physiology of cultivated plants, phytopathology, phyto-health, phytotechny, genesis, morphology and soil classification, management and conservation of soil, integrated management of plant pests, vegetal improvement, agricultural microbiology, agricultural parasitology, production and processing of seeds.
3. Author(s) should state that the manuscript, reporting original work, was not sent, in part or in whole, for publication to another scientific journal. This statement may be found at down.
4. Data, concepts, opinions and the preciseness of works cited are the author's/ authors' entire responsibility. Mention of products and commercial trademarks do not imply in any recommendation for use by the journal's editorial board.
5. Research should be based on the most advanced and state-of-the-art techniques. When necessary, a declaration of the institution's Ethic and Bio-security Board should be attached.
6. Articles should be written in English. Articles received before 2009 will be published in the language in which they were submitted or in an English translation.
7. Articles will be reviewed by three peers acknowledged for their scientific production and research, from higher institutions in Brazil and abroad. After the necessary corrections and possible suggestions, the paper shall be accepted if two peers give a favorable statement; the article will be rejected if two peer reviews are unfavorable.
8. Articles are to be sent via Internet through the Portal ACTA homepage. http://www.uem.br/acta
9. Conflict of interests may be personal, commercial, political, academic or financial. Conflict of interests occurs when authors, revisors or editors have vested interests that may affect the writing or the evaluation of unpublished papers.
Authors are requested that on submitting a paper for possible publication they should acknowledge or disclose financial conflicts or others that may have affected their scientific work. Authors should identify all financial funding given during the execution of their work and other personal bonds with regard to the above. The revisor should inform the editors on any conflict of interests that may influence the manuscript's analysis and should declare him/herself ineligible for this particular task.
10. Articles in English accepted for publication shall be corrected by the American Journal Experts.
11. Articles dealing with field experiences shall only be accepted for publication if data of at least two years of agricultural evaluation are given.
12. Formatation and other conventions are set below:
a) On submission the full name(s) of the author(s) (six at the most), her/his/their institutional address(es) and the e-mail of the author for correspondence should be inserted.
b) Articles should be subdivided into the
following subtitles (in bold and unnumbered): Abstracts and Key Words in Portuguese and English; Introduction, Material and Methods, Results and Discussion, Conclusion, Acknowledgements (Optional) and References.
c) The title, up to twenty words, in Portuguese and English, must be to the point. A Running Title, up to six words, is also mandatory.
d) Abstracts in Portuguese and English, up to 200 words, shall contain brief information on the aims of the research, experimental material, methods employed, results and conclusion. Key words, up to six, in Portuguese and English, shall be added at the end of the abstracts and should not include words found in the title.
e) Articles should not be longer than 18 pages, including figures, tables and bibliographical references, 1.5 line spacing, Times New Roman 12, numbered pages and lines, in MS-Word, or compatible.
f) Paper format should be A4 paper, with all page margins at 2.5 cm.
g) File containing the article to be transferred during submission should not exceed 2MB, and should have no identification label of the author, including in the option properties of Word.
h) Tables, Figures and Graphs shall be inserted within the text, immediately after being cited.
i) Figures and Tables should be preferentially 7.65 cm wide, not exceeding 16 cm.
j) Digitalized Figures should have a 300 dpi resolution and recorded in jpg. Colored illustrations will not be accepted.
k) The International Measurement System is mandatory.
l) Equations should be in software compatible to text editor.
m) Variables should be identified after the equation.
n) Utilize regression analyze for quantitative factors
o) Review of articles will be published when authors are invited by the Editorial Board or by the Chief Editor of Eduem.
p) Eighty percent (80%) of the references should have been listed on the database ISI Web of Knowledge, Scopus or SciELO during the last 10 years. Preference to international citations
of articles is recommended. Citations from theses, dissertations, monographs, proceedings, abstracts, expanded summaries, newspapers, magazines, technical bulletins and electronic documents will not be accepted.
q) This citations or Works Cited should be placed in alphabetical order, based on the Brazilian Association for Technical Rules (ABNT), following examples below. For in-text quotes, use surname and year: Lopes (2005) or (LOPES, 2005); for two authors, use ";" (SOUZA; SCAPIM, 2005); tree authors or more, utilize the first and et al. (WAYNER et al. 2007).
REFERENCE MODELS
References should be organized in alphabetic order, justified, following examples below, based on the American Psychological Association (APA). List all authors. Titles of journals should be written in their entire and in italics, without the place of publication.
ARTICLES
One author
Oerke, E. C. (2006). Crop losses to pests. Journal of Agricultural Science, 144(1), 31-43.
Two to seven authors
Caporusso, N. B., & Rolim, G. S. (2015). Reference evapotranspiration models using different time scales in the Jaboticabal region of São Paulo, Brazil. Acta Scientiarum. Agronomy, 37(1), 1-9. doi: 10.4025/actasciagron.v37i1.18277
Achten, W. M. J., Verchot, L., Franken, Y. J., Mathijs, E., Singh, V. P., Aerts, R., & Muys, B. (2008) Jatropha bio-diesel production and use. Biomass and Bioenergy, 32(12), 1063-1084.
Eight or more authors
Soares, M. A., Leite, G. L. D., Zanuncio, J. C., Sá, V. G. M., Ferreira, C. S., Rocha, S. L., ... Serrão, J. E. (2012). Quality Control of Trichogramma atopovirilia and Trichogramma pretiosum (Hym.: Trichogrammatidae) adults reared under laboratory conditions. Brazilian Archives of Biology and Technology, 55(2), 305-311.
BOOKS
Falconer, D. S., & Mackay, T. F. C. (1996). Introduction to quantitative genetics. Edinburgh, SC: Addison Wesley Longman.
Kevan, P. G., & Imperatriz-Fonseca, V. L. (2006). Pollinating bees: the conservation link between agriculture and nature (2nd ed.). Brasília, DF: Secretariat for Biodiversity and Forests.
Parra, J. R. P. (1991). Consumo e utilização de alimentos por insetos. In A. R. P. Panizzi (Ed.), Ecologia nutricional de insetos e suas implicações no manejo de pragas (p. 9-65). São Paulo, SP: Manole.
Average time between submission and publication of articles published in 2015: 30.2 months.
Submission of manuscripts
The articles should follow the Notes for Contributors / Guidelines and should be sent through the address http://www.uem.br/acta
The names of all authors (maximum six) should be mentioned, together with their institutional addresses and the e-mail address of the author for correspondence.