NOTES TO CONTRIBUTORS OF UNISWA JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURE

MANUSCRIPT REQUIREMENTS

Preparation of the text
Manuscripts must be written in British English and should not normally exceed 20 double-spaced pages, including literature cited and appendices. Book reviews, preliminary results of important research, and news items, should not normally exceed 1,000 words.

The manuscript should be prepared using a word processor (MS Word or WordPerfect) and printed with double-spacing, and margins that are 2.5 cm wide. The recommended font is Times New Roman, font size 12. Authors should use S1 units (Système International d'unités).

Punctuation in manuscripts
It is recommended that authors carefully follow ordinary rules of punctuation as found in standard English dictionaries. A good reading material that clearly and comprehensively treats punctuation is The Chicago manual of style (University of Chicago Press, 1993). Use a comma before ‘and’ or ‘or’ in a series of three or more items. Examples: “2.5, 3.2, 5.1, and 4.9 kg/ha.” Do not use a comma in dates when written as 2 July 2005; July 2005, but use a comma when the date is written as July 2, 2005. Commas and full stops (periods) should come before a closing quotation mark, an asterisk, or a superscript footnote number; semi colons and colons come after. Use single quotes around cultivar names the first time the names are used in the abstract or text. Place punctuation outside of the single-quote marks. Where scientific names or other nomenclature require brackets to be inserted within an existing brackets, use square brackets and write in the form, “sweetpotato [Ipomoea batatas (L.) Lam.] was …” An alternative is to use commas, as in “sweetpotato, Ipomoea batatas (L.) Lam., was …” Use a hyphen in a compound adjective that includes a number e.g., 20-year-old plantation, 5-cm depth, 90-cm quadrat, 5- to 10-cm level. Endeavour to spell-check your manuscript, but always double-check it because word processors may not recognise technical terms (unless a technical dictionary is used), and may not detect contextual use between words such as effect/affect, then/than, vet/wet, soil/boil, drying/frying.

STRUCTURE OF MANUSCRIPTS
Authors should arrange their work in well-defined sections thus: TITLE, AUTHOR(S), INTRODUCTION (including literature review), MATERIALS AND METHODS (or METHODOLOGY), RESULTS AND DISCUSSION, CONCLUSIONS, RECOMMENDATIONS), ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS (optional), and LITERATURE CITED.

Title
The first page of the manuscript should show the title at the top of the page. The title should be CAPITALISED, bolded and centred. It should not end with a full stop (period), except where the full stop is required to complete a scientific name or other accepted nomenclature. It should be short, concise, accurate and informative.

Author documentation
Below the title should appear the name(s) of the author(s), initials and the last name in that order without professional titles. Below the name(s) should follow the current institutional/mailing addresses(es), with telephone and fax numbers; and e-mail addresses (if available). The name(s) and address(es) of the author(s) should be bolded and centred, but not capitalised except for the first letters of the proper nouns. In case of more than one author, please, clearly indicate to whom correspondence should be addressed.

MAIN TEXT
On the second page should start the main text of the manuscript, beginning with the INTRODUCTION. The text should be structured to have major headings, sub-heading and sub-sub-headings. Major headings should be flushed to the left, CAPITALISED and bolded. Sub-headings should also be flushed to the left; only the first letter of the beginning words of sub-headings should be capitalised, but the rest of the words should be in lower case, except in the case of proper nouns. The sub-sub-heading should also be flushed to the left but written in italics. Only the beginning word of the sub-sub-headings should be capitalised. The major headings expected in each article are listed above under ‘Structure of manuscripts’.

CITATION OF REFERENCES IN THE MAIN TEXT

Only the author-year notation should be used in citing references. In the text, references should consist of the surname of the author(s), followed by the year of publication in parentheses. Within the text, references for one author may be cited as Gardener (1956). For two authors, the citation may be made as Fischer and Quail (1990), or, Seka and Cross (1995a). For more than two authors, the term et al., is italicised in the text e.g. Havlin et al. (2005); et al is not used in the References section. Personal communication is information from someone else other than the author; it is indicated in the text, and is not listed in the LITERATURE CITED section. Provide the source, institution, and date when you received the communication. Example: (Dlamini, V. Z., University of Swaziland, personal communication, 2005).

Paragraphs
The first line of each paragraph should not be indented, but paragraphs should be shown by skipping a line.

Tables
All tables should be double-spaced and must be inserted at the appropriate pages. Horizontal and vertical grid lines should be used in all tables (the lines will be deleted by the Editor-in-Chief at the printing stage). The use of grid lines is to avoid the shifting of data into wrong rows or columns. Tables must be numbered in Arabic numerals according to the table sequence (e.g. Table 1) in the text. Tables should be numbered by section, nor should they be numbered as Table 1a. They should be referred to in the text. At the top of each table, there should be a self-explanatory descriptive title, not in bold, ending with a full stop. Only the first letter of the beginning word of a table title should be capitalised; the rest should be in lower case, except in the case of proper nouns, scientific names or certain symbols.

Avoid the indiscriminate use of capital letters and acronyms. The fact that land equivalent ratio is abbreviated as LER, does not mean that it should be spelt as “Land Equivalent Ratio” Also, indiscriminate use of capital letters in the body of the table should be avoided. The same data should not be presented as both tables and figures; only one format is required.

Figures and plates
Figures, like tables, must be inserted at the appropriate pages. Both the hard and electronic copies as well as in the submitted diskette. Figures should be photo-ready for reproduction, thus there should be internal consistency in the use of fonts and fonts sizes in the figure. Figure titles should be at the bottom of the figure, and should end with a full stop. Only the first letter of the beginning word of a figure title should be capitalised; the rest should be in lower case, with the exception of proper nouns or scientific names. Any data recorded over time should be presented as line graphs, rather than as histograms. Include error bars, LSDs, SEDs or SEs in your figures. Be consistent in the use of these. Avoid the use of three-dimensional figures in the paper. They are recommended for oral but not written presentation.

Whenever possible, a line-drawing rather than a photograph should be used. Photographs should be refereed to as plates both in the text and in the title of the plate. The title of the plate should be at the bottom of the plate as is the case with figures, with a capital letter “P” as in Plate. Unless very necessary, colour photographs should be avoided as much as possible.

MATERIALS AND METHODS (METHODOLOGY)

The results of any experiment depend very largely on the materials and the methods (Methodology). Therefore, this section should be as detailed as possible. Please indicate the coordinates of the site where the experiment was conducted if possible. State average meteorological data for the site where applicable and also whether it is field and/or greenhouse trial. Details of experimental design, number of replications, plot sizes, methods and times of fertiliser applications, where possible, should be indicated. A brief statement of method used for, say nutrient analysis would be useful. Please avoid reporting that data were analysed by MSTAT-C statistical programme. Please note that MSTAT-C is not a person, rather say, data were analysed using MSTAT-C.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

The text should be followed by a table, a figure or a plate, where possible. Do not split a table or a figure between two pages, where possible. Indicate level of significance, where appropriate. For example, “there were significant (P < 0.5) differences between the low and the medium phosphorus levels” Use “kg/ha” and not “kgha-1” The RESULTS AND DISCUSSION section should include debate on the results and an elaboration of what is/are in the table or figure. Long quotations from other authors are not encouraged. If long quotations of about three to four lines are unavoidable, they should be indented on both on the left and on the right and written in italics.

LITERATURE CITED

All references should be listed alphabetically, by the author’s surname, at the end of the manuscript, and not given as a footnote. The last name should be followed by the initials of the authors. There should be no space between the last letter of the surname of an author and the comma following the surname. There should be one space between the initials of an author’s name. For multiple authors, after the last initial, a period follows. A comma is inserted after the period before the surname of the co-author follows. The year of publication in the Reference section should be in round brackets. There should be a full stop on each side (outside) of the round brackets. All references cited in the text must be listed in the LITERATURE CITED section; any reference not cited in the text should not be listed. Journal names in the Literature Cited section should be in italics, and spelt out in full, without abbreviations. There should be no comma or period between the Journal name and the Journal volume. In formatting the LITERATURE CITED section, only the first line of each reference is flushed to the left; the other lines of the same reference are indented (2.5 cm). Internet references must show the date when the article was accessed. Do not justify entries on Internet references; they should be flushed to the left, and with indentation on the left margin, where appropriate.

Examples illustrating different types of references are listed below.

Examples of how to write and punctuate REFERENCES for UNISWA Journal of Agriculture

Journal article by one author:
Gardener, W. R. (1956). Calculation of capillary conductivity from pressure plate
outflow data. Proceedings of Soil Science Society of America 2: 317-320.

Journal article by two authors:
Fischer, R. A., and Quail, K. J. (1990). The effect of major Norin 10 dwarfing genes on yield potential in spring wheats. Euphytica 46: 51-56.

Journal article by more than two authors:
Ossom, E. M., Pace, P. F., Rhykerd, R. L., and Rhykerd, C. L. (2001). Effect of mulch on weed infestation, soil temperature, nutrient concentration and tuber yield in Ipomoea batatas (L.) Lam. in Papua New Guinea. Tropical Agriculture (Trinidad) 78 (3): 144-151.

Journal articles by the same authors in the same year:
Seka, D., and Cross, H. Z. (1995a). Xenia and maternal effects on maize kernel development. Crop Science 35: 80-85.
Seka, D., and Cross, H. Z. (1995b). Xenia and maternal effects on maize agronomic traits at three planting densities. Crop Science 35: 86-90.

Book by one author:
Farnsworth, M. W. (1988). Genetics. 2nd edition. Harper and Row, Publishers, Inc., New York. University of Chicago Press. (1993). The Chicago manual of style. 14th edition. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.

Book by two authors:
Steel, R. G. D., and Torrie, J. H. (1980). Principles and procedures of statistics: A biometrical approach, 2nd edn. McGraw-Hill, New York.

Book chapter by one author:
Woolley, J. (1993). Bean cropping systems in the tropics and subtropics and their determinants. In: Common beans research for crop improvement. van Schoonhoven, A., and Voysest, O. (Eds.). pp. 679-706.

Book chapter by more than two authors:
Havlin, J. L., Beaton, J. D., Tisdale, S. L., and Nelson, W. L. (2005). Nitrogen. pp. 97-159. In: Soil Fertility and Fertilizers, 7th edition. Prentice Hall Upper Saddle River, New Jersey, U.S.A.

Paper/Chapter in a Proceedings volume
Power, J. F., and Biederbeck, V. O. (1993). Role of cover crops in integrated crop production systems. pp. 167-174. In: W. L. Hargrove (Ed.) Cover crops for clean water. Proceedings of International Conference, Jackson, Tennessee. 9-11 April 1991. Soil and Water Conservation Society, Ankeny, Iowa.

Internet article:
Sullivan, P. (2000). Intercropping principles and production practices - Agronomy systems guide. Appropriate technology transfer for rural areas. <http://www.attra.ncat.org/attra-pub/intercrop.html. 6/09/03>.

Thesis or dissertation:
Thwala, M. G. (2004). Effects of maize-legume association on crop growth, yield and weed infestation. Unpublished B.Sc. Dissertation. University of Swaziland, Luyengo.

Annual Reports:

Anonymous. (2005). Annual Report for Malkerns Research Station, 2004. Malkerns Research Station, Malkerns

From newspaper or magazine:

Dlamini, Y. (2005). Country’s population is at 1.2 million. The Swazi Observer. 16 October 2005. Mbabane. p. 12.