Author Guidelines

Agricultural Research Journal (published bi-monthly- February, April, June, August, October & December) reports original research in various fields of agriculture mainly including crop improvement, crop production and protection, post-harvest management, value addition, farm mechanization, agricultural economics and kindred sciences. Besides, in general, each issue carries review paper and/or opinion/perspective piece which highlight knowledge gaps, current issues, new concepts or future line of action in areas covered by the journal; these are exclusively invited from the scientists having long standing and renown in the field.

Agricultural Research Journal considers all manuscripts on the strict condition that (i) the manuscript is your own original work and it does not duplicate any other previously published work, including your own work, (ii) the manuscript has not been submitted or is under consideration for publication in some other journal.

All authors are urged to read the manuscript critically prior to its submission. The article should accompany an Article Certificate duly signed by all the authors. The contribution of each author to the research work including manuscript preparation is to be indicated as a foot note on the title page of the paper. The articles conveyed for publication should not generally report data that are more than two years old. The articles once rejected by the Editorial Board should not be resubmitted for publication in the Journal subsequently.

PREPARATION OF MANUSCRIPT

The manuscript should be typed in Arial, font size 12, in double-space and it should not exceed 20 typed pages including tables/figures. The position of figures, photographs and tables should be indicated clearly in the text of the manuscript. A serial number assigned to each new manuscript will accompany its acknowledgement to the corresponding author.

Each article should be organized as follows:

Title: The title, in capital letters, should be brief, specific and informative. It should identify the nature of study.

Author(s) and Institute Address: It should contain the name(s) of author (s) and the place where research was conducted. The e-mail ID of the corresponding author and the contributions of the different authors to the research work being reported may be given as a footnote.

Abstract: A brief abstract typed in single space and bold letters, not exceeding 150 words, should be a concise summary of the findings. It should run only in one paragraph and should not contain any references to literature, illustrations and tables. Abstract is not required for research notes.

Keywords: A list of key words (not more than five in alphabetical order) may be included below the abstract.

Headings: Main headings of the paper viz. ABSTRACT, MATERIALS AND METHODS, RESULTS AND DISCUSSION and LITERATURE CITED should be in capital, bold letters aligned in the centre. Secondary headings should be aligned left.

Introduction (without heading): The background, relevance, main objectives and importance of the study should be briefly stated. A brief mention about the work already done in the field may be given but it should not contain lengthy review of literature.

Materials and Methods: Relevant details should be given for the materials used and the methods including experimental design and techniques employed. The methods already well established need not be elaborated, only a reference will suffice. However, any new or modified technique, if applied, should be given in detail.

Results and Discussion: Results may be tabulated and/or presented in figures, but these should not be too many. Tables/figures should be numbered and supplied with proper headings. These should be typed on separate pages and their placement indicated clearly in the text. Under discussion, results obtained may be compared with those of other workers and their significance should be highlighted. It should not repeat what has been said under introduction. All scientific names should be in italics.

Author's contribution: Contribution of each author has to be mentioned in the following heads. The name of the authors to be given in abbreviated form within the parenthesis against each head:

Conceptualization and designing of the research work ( ); Execution of field/lab experiments and data collection ( ); Analysis of data and interpretation ( ); Preparation of manuscript ( ).

Declaration: The authors should declare that they do not have any conflict of interest.

Literature Cited: Only those references which have been cited in the text should be given at the end of the article. These should be arranged in the alphabetical order and each reference should contain the following order: author(s) name (s), year, title of the article, abbreviated name of the journal, volume number and page number. In the case of books, name of the publisher and place of publication should be given. For the standard abbreviations of the names of journals, World List of Scientific Periodicals may be consulted.

The references should be listed in the following manner:

Journals

Fonseca S and Patterson F L 1968. Yield component heritabilities and relationship in winter wheat (Triticumaestivum L.). Crop Sci 8 : 614-17.

Books

Elliot W H and Elliot D C 1997. Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. Oxford University Press Inc. New York, 274p.

Edited Books

Amsterdam D, Cunningham R K and Van Oss CJ (eds.) 1966. Immunological and Molecular Diagnosis of Infectious Diseases. Marcel Dekker Inc., New York, 258p.

Articles in Edited Books

Defago G and Hass D 1989. Pseudomonads as antagonists of soil-borne plant pathogens: Mode of action and genetic analysis. In Soil Biochemistry, Bollog J M and Stotzky G (eds.). Academic Press, New York, pp. 249-99.

Anonymous Publications

Anonymous 1988. Package of Practices for Rabi Crops. Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana, pp. 20-25.

Tables: Tables should be typed in double-space on separate pages, each one referred to in the text and numbered with Arabic numerals (e.g. Table 1). The title of each table should identify its contents so that reference to the text is not necessary. Title and column headings should be brief and typed in bold. Unnecessary descriptive matter should be avoided. Column and row headings with footnotes should be self-explanatory. Capitalize only the first letter of the first word of each column and row heading. Use lower case letters from the beginning of the alphabet (a, b, c) as asterisks with explanatory foot notes for significance at 5% level.

Illustrations: Figures and photographs should be in black and white and of good printable quality. A line drawing should not be larger than a sheet of manuscript (22 x 28 cm), while a photograph should be within the printed area of the Journal page (12 x 17 cm). Preferably, the illustrations should be sent as soft copy. The legends should be typed on a separate page.

Abbreviations: In both text and tables (except for the first word in a sentence) long words or terms used repeatedly should be abbreviated. Use standard abbreviations. Names of organic chemicals and other terms, abbreviated for the reader's convenience should be spelled out first, with parenthetical abbreviation used.

For Research Notes (short communications), the text should be in running form without Abstract and without headings of Materials and Methods and Results and Discussion.

Authors are further referred to the following editorial for learning more about issues related to the ethics, propriety and effective scholarly communication:

Sekhon B S 2022. Avoiding some pitfalls in manuscript preparation. Agric Res J 59(1): 1-2

DOI No. 10.5958/2395-146X.2022.00002.3