Submission Instructions

Unbiased independent, reliable evidence on agriculture in the environment

A peer-reviewed, open access, on-line journal to discuss problems confronting world agriculture and food security. Articles are based upon scientifically derived evidence and directed towards opinion formers, decision makers and practitioners. It will accept suitable articles on the climatic, ecological, economic and social interactions affecting agriculture, agroforestry, fisheries and horticulture.

Submission process

Authors wishing to submit a paper should complete the form on the submit page of the web site or send a short summary in English to the Managing Editor by email to editor@world-agriculture.net. Papers should use MS Word, formatted to A4 with justified text in Calibri 12 point. Authors’ names, qualifications, honours and affiliations should be included and submission will assume that the author accepts the conditions laid down in these Instructions and that copyright is held by World Agriculture.

All articles will be reviewed by an editor with relevant experience who reserves the right to modify statements or to ask for a revision. The edited version will be sent to the senior author for his or her agreement before publication. It is essential that authors respond quickly to requests for amendments to avoid delays.

Authors should provide a photograph to be used as the icon linking to their article and should include hyperlinks from the text to their references, figures and tables.

Comments, Opinions and Letters to the Editor will be considered. These should be concise and comment on published articles, or on important subjects that have not been covered. Contributors to the Discussion Forum shall be responsible for the legal, ethical and moral liability for their comment. The editors reserve the right to monitor discussion threads and to remove inflammatory or discriminatory comment and unsuitable contributions.

Instructions

All articles should be written in clear, concise British English and papers not meeting these criteria may be rejected. This page provides outline guidance; for more information follow the links for each section.

Authors should take a critical approach and advance new concepts or novel interpretations of world-wide issues. Statements of fact must be based on sound, peer-reviewed evidence for which the reference must be given. All arguments must be rational and logically derived. Papers should not exceed 2000 words. The Journal will not accept previously unpublished experimental work.

Articles should be laid out in a rational order with clear and appropriate headings and sub headings. Figures and tables should be used whenever possible and all references should use the Harvard system with superscript numbers in the text. These should be linked to the relevant reference in a discrete reference section. SI units must be used with spelling being generally that of the Concise Oxford Dictionary, so that words such as fertiliser should use ‘ise’ rather than the American ‘ize’ spelling.

Standard abbreviations (e.g. Fig. and Figs) are acceptable, but specialist abbreviations and terms should be defined in a short Glossary, immediately beneath the Abstract. Currency references should use the standard international abbreviations.

The full Latin binomial of an organism should be given at the first mention and international codes of nomenclature should be followed.

Articles will be indexed by consecutive numbers with a four digit code representing the year and paper number as yynn.

General

Hyphens should be avoided if possible, for example use ‘cooperate’ rather than co-operate’.
Standard deviations, standard errors of the means and “n”, the number of observations associated with each mean, should all be presented in tabular data when appropriate. Levels of significance should also be noted.
Where authors need to reproduce information protected by copyright they must obtain permission to reproduce the item before the article is published in World Agriculture.
A Glossary should be included beneath the abstract where specialist terms are defined and a hyperlink should link the first use of each such phrase to the definition.
Commercial chemicals should be referred to by their approved common names, but where a proprietary name is relevant and unavoidable it should be used with a capital initial letter and the manufacturer named at the first mention.
Dates should be expressed as day, month, year, as for example, 18th May 2017.

Units

Billion should be expressed as thousand million (e.g. a billion hectares as 1 000 Mha) although the SI expression Gha is acceptable. Concentrations and rates of application should be clearly expressed and unambiguous, using, for example, mg/litre, or mg/L, mg/kg but not ppm.

Use numerals for specific units of measurement (e.g. 14 m, 3 ha, 2 day). For other quantities up to and including nine, spell out in full (e.g. four plots, two experiments, nine larvae), using numerals in all instances for ten or over (e.g. 20 fields). Large numbers should be separated by spaces every 000, rather than by use of a comma, e.g., 10 000.

Return to top

Abbreviations

Full stops are not used for commonly accepted abbreviations (e.g., USA, UK) or when an abbreviated word ends with the same letter as the complete word (e.g., Florida as FA, yr for year, wk for week or ca for circa) but are used when the abbreviation ends with a different letter as cv. for cultivar. Latin terms and binomials such as circa should be italicised.

Return to top

Currency

US$, € and £ are acceptable for US dollars, Euro and GB £ respectively. Wherever possible financial details should be quoted in one of these currencies, although where this is not possible a standard list of abbreviations is available at <http://www.forex-rates.biz/currency-abbreviations.htm> accessed March 2011.

Return to top

Nomenclature

For example Heterodera avenae subsequent mentions may be abbreviated, e.g. H. avenae. Names should follow the appropriate international codes for nomenclature. Naturally occurring infraspecific variants should be described as varieties, as for example Medicago polymorpha var. hispida and where used repeatedly in the text variety may be abbreviated to var. or vars. The word cultivar should be restricted to forms in cultivation and which need to be propagated either by seed or vegetative means only and can be abbreviated to cv. or cvs in the text. Named cultivars should be in normal, i.e. not italicised font as for example Taxus baccata ‘Variegata’ or Taxus baccata cv. Variegata.

Return to top

Sequence of headings

Abstract

Approximately 250 words to provide a concise, accurate summary of the subject covered and the conclusions drawn. Bullets points may be used to improve comprehension.

What this article adds or proposed changes to policy

Below the abstract provide a synopsis of about 100 words to explain:

Why the article is important, what it shows and how it affects current views;

Key questions posed by the article;

Proposed changes to policy or practice;

Glossary and unusual abbreviations

How to cite the article

Immediately above the Introduction insert the phrase - This article should be cited as: Author (yyyy). Title. World Agriculture yynn <world-agriculture.net>