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Agronomía Colombiana

Print version ISSN 0120-9965

Agron. colomb. vol.37 no.2 Bogotá May/Aug. 2019  Epub Mar 12, 2020

 

Editorial

Editorial policy


Agronomia Colombiana is a scientific and technical publication of the agricultural sector, edited by the Faculty of Agricultural Sciences of Universidad Nacional de Colombia - Bogota campus. It is directed to agricultural science researchers, extension workers and to all professionals involved in science development and technological applications for the benefit of agricultural producers and their activity.

Issued as a four monthly journal, it is intended to transfer research results in different areas of tropical agronomy. Original unpublished papers are therefore accepted in the following areas: physiology, crop nutrition and fertilization, genetics and plant breeding, entomology, phytopathology, integrated crop protection, agro ecology, weed science, environmental management, geomatics, soils, water and irrigation, agroclimatology and climate change, post-harvest and agricultural industrialization, rural and agricultural entrepreneurial development, agrarian economy, and agricultural marketing.

The authors of the articles submitted to the journal Agronomía Colombiana must be aware of and avoid scientific misconduct (code of conduct by Committee on Publication Ethics, COPE) related to: scientific fraud in all or part of the data of the study and data falsification and manipulation; dishonesty due to fictitious authorship or gifting or exchange of co-authorship, duplicate publications, partial or complete, in different journals and self-plagiarism by reusing portions of previous writings; citation omission, citation copying without consultation and excessive self-citation, among others. The authors have the following rights: fair and impartial evaluation of articles done in a reasonable amount of time, correspondence shall be taken seriously and requests for changes and corrections shall be respected, subject to review by the evaluators, and articles shall remain unaltered.

Agronomia Colombiana uses double blind peer review process with a previous quick preliminary review. The articles must be submitted according to the rules established in the instructions to authors. If the articles fulfill minimum criteria established for the preliminary review in terms of language and scope, they will be sent to three or more expert reviewers in the specific area of knowledge, up to obtain two or three evaluations; two of them must be external to Universidad Nacional de Colombia, and the third one belonging to the research and teaching staff of the University. When the manuscript reaches two approval evaluations, the article is accepted for publication. If two of the reviewers consider that the scientific level of the manuscript is not acceptable for publication, the article will be rejected. When accepted, the author(s) must introduce the suggested corrections and answer all the questions from the reviewers or the Editor Finally, the Editor in Chief or the Editorial Committee reserves the right to accept or reject the submitted manuscripts.

For additional information, correspondence, subscriptions and journal swap, you may contact Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Facultad de Ciencias Agrarias, Journal Agronomia Colombiana, Bogota campus; P.O. Box 14490, Bogota-Colombia; phone numbers: (571) 316 5355 / 316 5000 extension 10265; e-mail: agrocol_fabog@unal.edu.co; the digital version of the journal is available at http://www.scielo.org.co; http://www.revistas.unal.edu.co/index.php/ agrocol

Instructions to authors

The articles sent for publication to the editorial committee must be unpublished. In consequence, those that have been previously published in other journals, technical or scientific publications, will be rejected. To submit manuscripts, authors must be registered in our platform (https://revistas.unal.edu.co/index.php/agrocol/about/submissions#onlineSubmissions) and follow the submission instructions. Corresponding authors will be required to use an ORCID iD when submitting a manuscript. After manuscript submission, papers can be screened for plagiarism using specialized software. In case of finding significant level of duplication, the manuscript will be rejected.

In a preliminary review stage, two aspects, English grammar and scope, will be assessed in order to ensure mini-mum requirements of any manuscript to be peer reviewed. If the manuscript is rejected in the preliminary review because English grammar aspect, authors are encouraged to edit for language their manuscript using professional services and submit the manuscript again. When reason for preliminary reject is a mismatch of the scope between the manuscript and journal interests, resubmission should be avoided.

Agronomia Colombiana accepts the following two types of original articles:

  • Scientific and technological research papers: those documents presenting detailed original research results. The most generally applied structure has four main parts: introduction, materials and methods, results and discussion, and conclusions.

  • Scientific note: brief document introducing original preliminary or partial results of a scientific or technical research, which usually need immediate publication.

Format and organization of the text

Research article length should not exceed 5,200 words, whereas scientific notes should not have more than 4,000 words. Tables and figures, that is to say, diagrams, drawings, schematic and flow diagrams, pictures and maps, should be consecutively numbered (Table 1 ...Table n; Figure 1... Figure n, etc).

Texts and tables should be prepared using an MS-Word® processor. Double-space all text including table head, figure captions and cited literature. All pages must be numbered consecutively and line numbering on each page is mandatory, Tables and diagrams of frequency (bar and circular diagrams) should be included in the mentioned Word file, as well as in their original MS-Excel® or any different format. Other figures, including photographs and drawings should be submitted in digital JPG (or JPEG) digital compression format, with a minimum resolution of 300 dpi.

As a general rule, tables and figures should only be submitted in black and white, except for those intended for the cover page of the Journal, for those cases in which it is absolutely necessary to present them in color (at the judgment and discretion of the editor), or when the costs of color publication are covered by the authors.

Languages, units, and style

The journal's official language is English. Regarding measurement units, the metric system (SI) should be consistently used through the manuscript, unless the need is seen to apply any specific units that are of frequent use by the scientific community. Multiplication followed by negative superscript (e.g., kg ha-1) can only be used with SI units. The slash (/) is a mathematical operation symbol that indicates "divided by". Anyway, in sciences it is used as a substitute of the word "per", and it is used to indicate rates. Use the slash to connect SI to non-SI units (e.g., 10°C/h or 10 L/pot).

All abbreviations should be explained in full length when first mentioned in the manuscript.

With regards to the tenses, the most commonly used ones are the past, for the introduction, procedures and results; and the present, for the discussion.

Title and authors

The title in English, as well as its corresponding Spanish translation, shall not exceed 15 words. The scientific names of plants and animals shall be italicized and lower cased, except for the first letter of the genus (and of the species author), which must be upper cased.

The authors (including first and second names) shall be listed in order of their contribution to the research and preparation of the manuscript, in completely justified text format (filling the whole line, or, if necessary, the next one below) under the translated version of the title. At the bottom of the article's first page include only the name and city location of the employer or supporting institution(s), and the e-mail address of the corresponding author.

Abstract, resumen, and key words

The abstract should be written in English with Spanish translation for the Summary. Both texts should contain brief (no longer than 200 words in a single paragraph) and accurate descriptions of the paper's premise, justification, methods, results and significance. Both language versions shall be mandatorily provided with a list of (maximum six) key words that have not appeared in the title or abstract, and included in the Agrovoc thesaurus by Agris (FAO).

Introduction

In the introduction, include the delimitation and current status of the problem, the theoretical or conceptual basis of the research, the literature review on the topic, and the objectives and justification of the research. Common names must be accompanied with the corresponding scientific ones, plus the abbreviation of the species author surname when mentioned for the first time.

Materials and methods

Besides a clear, precise and sequential description of the materials used for the research (plant or animal materials, plus agricultural or laboratory tools), this section illustrates the procedures and protocols followed, and the experimental design chosen for the statistical analysis of the data.

Results and discussion

Results and discussion can be displayed in two different sections or in a single section at the authors convenience. The results shall be presented in a logical, objective, and sequential order, using text, tables (abbreviated as Tab.) and figures (abbreviated as Fig.). The latter two should be easily understandable and self-explaining, in spite of having been thoroughly explained in the text. The charts should be two-dimensional and prepared in black and white, resorting to a tone intensity degradation to illustrate variations between columns. Diagram curves must be prepared in black, dashed or continuous lines (----or---), using the following conventions: ■, A, ♦, ·, □, Δ, ◊, O. The tables should contain few columns and lines.

Averages should be accompanied by their corresponding Standard Error (SE) values. The discussion shall be complete and exhaustive, emphasizing the highlights and comparing them to the literature.

This section should briefly and concisely summarize the most important findings of the research.

Conclusion (optional)

A short conclusion section is useful for long or complex discussion. It should provide readers with a brief summary of the main achievements from the results of the study. It also can contain final remarks and a brief description of future complementary studies which should be addressed.

Acknowledgements

When considered necessary, the authors may acknowledge the researchers or entities that contributed - conceptually, financially or practically - to the research: specialists, commercial organizations, governmental or private entities, and associations of professionals or technicians.

Citations and literature cited

The system (author(s), year) will be consistently applied to all citations intended to support affirmations made in the article's text. When the cited reference has three or more authors, the citation shall only mention the name of the first author, accompanied by the Latin expression et al. (which means 'and others'), italicized and followed by a period, and separated from the year by a comma: (García et al., 2003).

Alternatively, you can leave just the year in parenthesis: García et al. (2003). In case of references with only two authors, citations should include both names separated by 'and': (García and López, 2012) or García and López (2012).

The complete list of cited references in alphabetical order, according to the authors' surnames, is to be included at the end of the article. When the list includes various publications of the same author(s), they shall be listed in chronological order. When they correspond to the same year, they must be differentiated with lower case letters: 2008a, 2008b, etc. Each citation must contain a DOI (digital object identifier) at the end. Furthermore, the text of the manuscript must contain a minimum of 30% of the citations found in the Literature Cited section with their respective DOIs. Only original citations will be accepted. Avoid web citations unless their future availability is guaranteed

Illustrative cases:

• Books: author(s). Year. Book title. Edition. Publisher, city (and country, if the city is not a capital) of publication.

E.g., Dubey, N.K. (ed.). 2015. Plants as a source of natural antioxidants. CABI, Wallingford, UK. Doi: 10.1079/9781780642666.0000.

• Book chapters: author(s). Year. Title of the chapter. Pages (pp. #-#). In: Surnames and names of the editors (eds.). Title of the book. Edition. Publisher, city (and country, if the city is not a capital) of publication.

E.g., Milne, E. and J. Smith. 2015. Modelling soil carbon. pp. 202-2013. In: Banwart, S.A., E. Noel-lemeyer, and E. Milne (eds.). Soil carbon: science, management and policy for multiple benefits. SCOPE Series Vol. 71. CABI, Wallingford, UK. Doi: 10.1079/9781780645322.0202

• Journals: Author(s). Year. Title of the article. Abbreviated name of the journal. Volume (number), page-page. E.g.: Zhu, J.K. 2001. Plant salt tolerance. Trends Plant Sci. 6, 66-71. Doi: 10.1016/S1360-1385(00)01838-0.

• Reference to a website: Author(s). Year. Title of the document. Retrieved from: URL; consulted date. E.g.: FAO. 1994. Neglected crops 1492 from a different perspective. Retrieved from: http://www.fao.org/docrep/t0646e/T0646E00.htm#Contents; consulted: August, 2017.

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